A Modern Witch

Chapter 9

Lauren walked into her office Monday morning knowing it would be a very good day. The Greenleys were coming in to sign the final paperwork on the brownstone contract, and her head was lovely and quiet, thanks to some kick-ass brick walls.
To avoid a repeat of the bagel shop disaster, Jamie had drilled Mind Magic 101 yesterday until both she and Nat begged for mercy. Taskmaster he might be, but this morning before leaving her apartment, she had visualized a brick wall of protection and felt it drop into place with a quick and satisfying thunk. She was making progress, even if Jamie had added a little extra reinforcement spell to her own capabilities. Just a precaution.
With cheery waves to a few colleagues, Lauren slipped into the conference room and greeted the Greenleys. “Hello, you two. I just stopped by the selling realtor’s office and picked up the accepted offer. A couple of signatures from both of you, and we’ll be set. You’ll be in your new home in a few weeks.”
Kate leaned into Mitch and grinned. “We’re so excited. It’s such a perfect home for us; we can’t thank you enough.”
This was the part Lauren loved best—a successful match. She reached for Kate’s hand. “Invite me to the baby shower. I love to see my clients in their homes.”
She couldn’t feel it. Kate was obviously brimming over with happiness; the room should have been vibrating from it. Instead, with a head swaddled in bricks, Kate Greenley could have been a stranger.
Lauren held on to her composure as she walked them through the paperwork. She wanted to cry. Being a realtor was serious work, and a lot of the work was disappointment and drudgery. The payoff came with what she thought of as the three C’s—click, contract, and close.
The moment when a client clicked with a property was the absolute best—nothing beat it. But finalizing the contract and handing over the keys on closing day mattered, too. Those were the moments she worked for, and here she was in the middle of one of them, missing all the good stuff. She knew the Greenleys were happy, but dammit, she wanted to feel their happiness.
It was hard not to curse Jamie. Before he’d shown up, none of this had been an issue. She hadn’t asked to be a witch. Her life had been just fine without some freaky magical accident waking up her twitchy mind powers.
And that, thought Lauren, was more than enough whining. It had happened, and she would deal. Time to stop feeling sorry for herself. She controlled the bricks.
She thought back through Jamie’s instructions and blew a candy-pink mental bubble inside the brick wall. Then she gave a swift and satisfying kick to a couple of bricks and watched a hole open up.
Like a dam breaking, thought and feeling rushed through the hole. A green room, gorgeous artist murals on the wall, and sleeping baby in the crib. Satisfaction at a big item checked off the to-do list, and a tinge of both pride and worry about the future. Warm floating and a rhythmic drumbeat, da-dum, da-dum. So peaceful.
Concern! “Lauren.” Mitch had a hand on her shoulder.
“Sorry?” Lauren felt oddly disoriented. There was a strange drumming in the background, and worry radiating off Mitch and Kate.
Too deep. Too much. Bricks, fix the hole. Trying not to panic, Lauren retreated and imagined her brick wall firm, strong, and unbroken. Okay, hole plugged.
“I’m so sorry. I had a bit of a crazy weekend.”
Kate grinned. “I hope he was cute.”
If only it were that simple. Lauren flipped through the paperwork one last time and arranged to deliver keys to the brownstone on the closing date. As the Greenleys walked out of the room, she deflated into a chair.
On Friday, when she’d found the Greenleys their brownstone, she was a realtor with impeccable instincts. Now it was Monday, and she was a witch with an oversensitive head and a big mess of bricks and bubbles she couldn’t control.
What had just happened? Obviously, kicking holes in a brick wall was bad for more than her toes. It had been too much at once. The mental to-do list had to have been Mitch. The green room with the amazing murals must have been Kate’s vision for the nursery—the baby in the crib had looked like a miniature Mitch.
Then there had been the drumming. Lauren sat up very slowly as she realized exactly what that had been. Warm, dark waters and a drumbeat. She’d mind-connected with the baby.
Tears came to her eyes as she remembered the feelings that had come. Such peace and safety. She’d wanted to stay. Lucky baby.
Lauren reached for her papers and stood up. She might be a newbie witch, but she still had a job to do, and damned if she was going to do it with a totally swaddled head. She took a deep breath and focused on her bricks. Make them a little thinner, a few cracks in the mortar, maybe some moss growing into the brick. Better.
She opened her eyes and smiled, pleased with her remodeled and slightly more porous brick walls. Walking out into the office, the normal Monday morning chatter hit. Maxine was happy; she must have closed her deal. Jenna Mae was bored and trying to check out wedding dress websites without anyone noticing.
Whoops. Lauren realized she couldn’t actually see Jenna Mae or her computer. Maybe the modified bricks were letting a little too much through, but she was still functional. For today, that was good enough.
…

Sophie wandered into her stockroom—her third bedroom, really, but with the built-in shelves and desk full of shipping supplies, there was no room left for sleeping. The little mid-century ranch house had been a lot of work to fix up, but it held her and the business end of A Modern Witch very well.
The master bedroom and bath were her retreat, done up in restful greens that soothed and restored her mind and her earth magic. A second bedroom was her herbals room, where she prepared ingredients for the lotions and salves for sale on her website. This room held everything else, the crystals and books and other basic witching supplies she stocked.
She walked over to the shelf where her crystals were stored, straightening some out-of-place items as she went. It had been a busy time, getting the chat room up and running. Her stockroom needed some attention, and soon.
Considering her stock, she began to select some crystals. Carnelian for supporting creative mental work. Citrine for working with power. Emerald to help the physical mind heal—Lauren would probably overload again before her training was done. White moonstone for balance. And most importantly, lapis for clarity and heart connection.
Sophie slipped a large, intensely blue lapis crystal into a wrapper fashioned from silver wire. She loved the artistry these handcrafted settings added to the crystals. Tools performed better when surrounded by beauty. She slid the twined lapis onto a silver chain. It was the right gift for a mind witch.
She would overnight the package to Lauren, along with some instructions on the use of each of the crystals. Maybe some lavender lotion as well; that was very good for relaxing and clearing communication channels.
Holding the lapis, Sophie reached for the moss-agate crystal hung around her own neck and collected her powers.
“I ask the powers of earth
That flow through me,
Strengthen this gift and let it aid
As Lauren learns who she must be,
Of what she is made.
As I will, so mote it be.”
…

Jamie and Nat both looked up as Lauren literally stumbled through the door of her apartment. She looked at the food on her table and gave an exhausted smile.
“Well, make yourselves at home. Food smells yummy.”
Nat handed her a cup of tea. “Jamie cooked. I was the taste tester—it’s stupendous. Come sit down.”
Lauren collapsed into a chair, took a sip of tea, and made a face. “Jeez, Nat—did you put a cup of sugar in here?”
“You need the boost. Your blood sugar is crashing.” Jamie carried two more cups of tea to the table and sat down. He sent a light probe to see if the spell reinforcing Lauren’s barriers was still holding. Crap, it was gone.
He sent a stronger probe. Not only was the reinforcement spell missing in action, her brick wall was noticeably different. Nice touch with the moss, but that would weaken the wall. Girls. Always trying to make stuff prettier. No wonder she was exhausted.
Lauren drained her tea. “Disgusting, but you’re right; it’s helping. You seriously cooked this, Jamie?”
Nat nodded. “He did. Pumpkin and avocado green curry. It’s amazing, and there’s chocolate cake for dessert.”
Lauren tasted a bite and closed her eyes in obvious bliss. “Will you marry me?”
Her eyes flew open again. “Okay, you two. I don’t know what’s up between you, and I don’t have the energy to ask right now. But if you’re both going to freak out when I say the word ‘marry’, could you at least do it out of my head?”
She rubbed her forehead. “Jamie, I hate to ask, but my barriers are about to crash and burn. Can you put some up for me again like you did yesterday?”
Jamie mentally kicked himself for not taking care of that sooner, especially if she was going to drop the big M word randomly in conversation. Interesting that he wasn’t the only one it had stirred up. One woman at a time, though, and right now, he had a newbie witch to prop up.
He cast some barriers for Lauren and watched her visibly sag in relief. “Hard day today?”
“Yes. I feel like blood is about to gush from my ears.”
“Think maybe that has something to do with your redecorated barriers?” Lauren flushed. Yeah, he didn’t think those had been an accident.
Nat looked confused, so he explained. “The barriers we practiced yesterday were the level-one brick walls we first teach to all mind witches. They’re clunky, but effective—they keep everything out. Then we slowly work on modifying those walls to softer and more penetrable forms to allow for better control. Judging from the state of Lauren’s barriers, she tried some alterations already today.”
Lauren looked surprised. “You can see that?”
“That’s what they pay me for. Why’d you do it? Today would have been a lot easier if you’d left them alone.”
“Easier on my head, maybe, but the bricks were making it a lot harder to do my job. The Greenleys came in this morning.” She looked at Nat. “You remember them—they’re the clients who wanted the downtown condo, and I sold them the brownstone instead.”
That was an interesting tidbit, thought Jamie. Time to learn a little more about how his trainee witch used her powers in daily life. “How did you convince them to buy something they didn’t want?”
“I didn’t have to convince them. We’d toured pretty much everything downtown, and I could tell nothing had quite clicked for them. A good realtor can pick up on that, and I’m very good. I trusted my instincts and took them to see this great brownstone in a neighborhood just outside downtown. Turns out they’re having a baby and the place is perfect for them.”
This is the woman who thought she wasn’t a witch. Jamie shook his head at the irony and leaned forward to speak. He paused at Nat’s touch under the table.
Nat spoke casually as she took another bite of curry. “Lauren, did you arrange to see the brownstone before or after you found out they were having a baby?”
“Before. I’d toured them through a condo that morning, and I could tell something was up when Kate arrived to see the brownstone. She was practically bubbling over with the news. She’d just come from the doctor.”
Jamie shot Nat an appreciative smile. She was a smart and tricky woman. “So clearly you’ve had at least partial use of your mind magic for quite some time,” he said to Lauren.
She looked totally shocked. “How do you figure?”
Jamie started ticking off on his fingers. “One—you can routinely tell if a client has ‘clicked’ with a property or not. Two—you trust your instincts enough to follow them to fairly irrational places, which suggests they serve you often and well. Three—you knew a client was pregnant before she did.”
“I didn’t.”
He gave Lauren a steady look. “Really?”
She started to speak, and then stopped. He gave her a moment to work through the data. “Maybe I did know. I hadn’t put it into words, but the day before, while we were looking at condos, she’d been feeling sick. I knew something was up. They were ready to buy, and they just weren’t clicking with a place. They should have—you get a good feel for that after a while.”
Jamie nodded. “I’d guess that you’ve picked up bits and pieces from people your whole life. Without a way to understand your magic, you’d see that as good instincts. I bet you’re a very good realtor.”
“I am, but…” Lauren’s voice trailed off.
Nat spoke softly. “It’s not cheating, Lauren. You help people find homes. It serves the good.”
Jamie watched Lauren’s eyes fill with tears. Where had that come from? For a non-witch, Nat had an uncanny ability to read people. Forget that—she was a lot more perceptive than most witches he knew. Including himself, apparently.
“There are some ethics for using magic, particularly mind powers. But the pieces you picked up would have been brief and fairly surface. Not really all that different from a realtor with ordinary good instincts.”
Lauren nodded her head slowly. “It’s more than that now, though, isn’t it? The Greenleys came in this morning to sign the final offer paperwork. I was upset, because it’s usually a pretty happy moment, and I couldn’t feel anything with my head swaddled in bricks.”
Getting the picture now, thought Jamie. “So you adjusted them some?”
She blushed. “I kicked a hole in the bricks. I blew a bubble up inside them first, but I don’t think it was nearly strong enough.”
Jamie laughed. Pissed-off witches were always unpredictable, whether they were eight or twenty-eight. “When you punched a hole, you short-circuited my reinforcement spell. That alone would have made your barriers a lot harder to hold. What happened?”
“It was like taking my finger out of the dyke. I picked up thoughts from Kate and Mitch.” She paused. “And the baby.”
Nat’s eyes widened. “The baby in Kate’s belly? Lauren, she’s just barely pregnant.”
“I know, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. Nat, it was so amazing to feel the baby, so peaceful. I could hear Kate’s heartbeat. Part of me just wanted to stay there.”
Well, hell. Jamie castigated himself for yet another big training mistake. He was racking them up on this visit. That was about to end.
“Lauren.” He waited until both women were looking at him. “You need to come to California with me, and you need to do it now. You need more training than I can give you. My Aunt Jennie is a strong mind witch, and she’ll work with you.”
Lauren shook her head in protest. “I can’t, Jamie. I have a job to do here. Maybe in the summer, when real estate slows down for a bit.”
Jamie shook his head. “Trainer veto. It’s not safe to wait. There are risks to being a mind witch. One of them is that you can get so connected to another mind that you lose your way and can’t get out. You came close enough to that today with the baby.”
Nat turned white. “Why didn’t you warn her?”
Because he’d been trying not to scare the crap out of her. “You have to be both a very strong empath and a decent channeler to fall into another mind that far. Lauren shouldn’t have been able to do that yet. When a trained witch connects that deeply, they use a monitor to pull them out if need be.”
Lauren started to shake her head again. He glared her down. “It’s time to stop taking chances. You’re a strong witch, Lauren. We need Aunt Jennie to test you more thoroughly and get you trained—at least enough that you don’t put yourself or anyone else at risk. It’s the first rule of witchcraft—do no harm.”
Lauren turned as white as Nat. “I could have hurt the baby?”
Congratulations, Jamie—now you’ve scared the crap out of everybody. “No, I don’t think so, but you could have hurt yourself. I’ve blown it twice now as your trainer, and I’m not going to do it again. I’ll book tickets for tomorrow.” He collapsed her barriers long enough that she would be hammered by his seriousness and Nat’s worry. Unfair, maybe, but he needed to get her to California. He needed help.
Lauren just nodded mutely.
Nat reached for her friend’s hand and met Jamie’s eyes. “Book three tickets.”