A Hidden Witch

chapter 6

Elorie put her hand on the mouse and watched in confused frustration as once again, the readout she’d dubbed the Power-O-Meter spiked happily. That screen was becoming her own personal definition of hell.

She’d been working with Jamie and Ginia for almost an hour as they tweaked and re-tweaked the scanning code for more precise readings. Even her renowned patience was becoming very thin.

She’d been raised to serve the witching community in any way she could, so when Jamie had asked for an hour, she agreed.

Now it was time for this insanity to end. Elorie Shaw was not a witch, and she was very tired of trying to prove it. “It still says I’m a witch. I don’t feel like we’re making a whole lot of progress here.”

Nell walked into the room with a tray of milk and cookies and a big bowl of strawberries. Elorie’s heart tightened in momentary homesickness as she remembered the going-away bucket of blueberries her witchlings had picked. Jamie glanced at her in brief sympathy, a reminder that her brain was clearly still very leaky where mind witches were concerned.

He tapped Ginia’s shoulder, and she looked up from her code. “Okay, group huddle. Nell, can you brainstorm with us for a few minutes?”

Elorie got up to leave, but Jamie motioned her back to the table.

“I’m not a coder, Jamie. I don’t think I can contribute to this conversation.” And I think it’s better you work on this without me.

He met her eyes for a moment. “You’re a thinker, and a student of witch history. Brainstorming works best when there are lots of different ideas at the table.”

Elorie tried to fight off a lifetime of good manners, and lost. She sat.

Nell handed her a cookie, the witch fix-all. “So bring me up to speed, daughter mine. What have you tried so far?”

Ginia squared her shoulders. “We know that the computer is reading power traces for Elorie, and Uncle Jamie can’t pick them up in a regular scan done at the same time.”

“Okay.” Nell swiped the cookie Jamie was trying to grab. “And have we checked anyone else for this power source yet?”

Jamie nodded. “Yup. When you passed on Marcus’s idea, we headed to Realm and scanned everyone we could find in the witch-only levels. That’s why we’re trying to refine the scans, to see if we can find a common element in their readings and Elorie’s.”

Elorie frowned. This was a lot more information than she’d been given up until now. “What idea of Uncle Marcus’s?”

“He thinks,” Ginia said, “that maybe you aren’t the only one with this new kind of power.”

Since when had Uncle Marcus stopped being a hermit and started making up wild theories about new kinds of magic?

Nell touched Elorie’s hand. “It’s only a theory right now, but Marcus thinks you may be accessing a form of power that only registers in Internet space. He also thinks it might not be just you.”

Three exhausting days were catching up with Elorie. “Let me get this straight. Uncle Marcus thinks there are a bunch of witches running around the Internet with some kind of invisible magic?”

Nell shrugged. “Okay, it sounds a little hocus-pocus when you put it that way. But it’s a good idea. He thinks people like Ginia, who are good at spellcoding, might share your mysterious talent.”

Why was it so stinking hard for everyone to believe she wasn’t a witch? Elorie shoved in the last of her cookie. They could sit in dark basements and theorize all they wanted. She was done.

Ginia finished her milk as Elorie stood up. “We tried scanning me, but nothing showed up.”

Nell was silent for a moment. “What were you doing when you got scanned?”

“Holding the mouse, just like Elorie does…” Ginia slid to a halt, her eyes opening wide.

Jamie snapped his fingers. “Nell, you’re brilliant. Elorie, two more minutes. Please.”

Elorie stood and watched the sudden flurry of activity in the basement, utterly confused. In moments, there was a new computer setup at the table, and Ginia was typing madly into her keyboard. Elorie could see the graphics for Enchanter’s Realm on her screen.

“Keep it simple,” Jamie said. “We just need a basic spell to do the test.”

Ginia nodded. “I’m coding an easy three-step spell. That way, you’ll have three chances to get a reading.”

Jamie nodded, watching over her shoulder. “Good thinking, cutie.”

If she had to stand here, the least they could do was explain why. Elorie leaned over toward Nell. “I’m so confused. What’s going on?”

“We’re trying to figure out if Marcus is right, and witches who can spellcode share your talent. You test for it even with passive readings, but it’s trickier in witches with multiple magics. We’re thinking that if Ginia has what you have, it might be easier to read when she’s actively spellcoding.”

That much made sense. Active magic was a lot more visible—even she could sense the power flows sometimes when one of her witchlings was doing a more complicated spell.

Ginia looked up, all nine-year-old seriousness. “Ready.”

“Ready here, too.” Jamie intently watched his screen.

Elorie watched. Absolutely nothing happened.

Suddenly a familiar voice spoke out of Ginia’s computer. “You called, Warrior Girl?”

Ginia giggled. “Hi, Gandalf. We’re doing a test to see if I have the same power as Elorie. I needed to code a spell to get the reading. I hope you like your new costume.”

Nell leaned over to look at the screen and clapped a hand to her mouth, snickering. She motioned Elorie to look.

Marcus’s gruff voice boomed out again. “It’s not funny, Nell. I’ll be the laughingstock of Realm.” Elorie moved in and got an eyeful of Marcus dressed in Xena splendor.

Ginia grinned. “Nah. That will happen tomorrow. I wrote this one in a hurry, so it probably won’t take you too long to reverse it.”

Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “What happens tomorrow?”

“I hate to interrupt,” Jamie said dryly, “but is anyone interested in the results of the scan while Ginia was spellcoding?”

Every head in the room swiveled, including Marcus’s onscreen. Jamie looked around and grinned. “Whatever magic you’ve got, Elorie—Ginia has it, too. We got a very nice spike of the same unknown power during step two of that spell.”

Ginia bounced on her seat. “That’s the hardest step, so it should have been the easiest to see.” She and Nell both jumped up to look at the readouts on Jamie’s monitor. Elorie felt oddly naked, floating on the edges of something she didn’t pretend to understand.

Jamie looked up at Elorie, eyes deep with sympathy. “You’re a witch, little sister. Welcome.”

She felt the breath simply leak out of her.

Ginia came to hold one of her hands, and Nell the other. Elorie looked down at the joining of her very first witch circle, and let the tears come.

~ ~ ~

Moira: Hello, Nell. Is my sweet Elorie there? I was hoping to speak with her.

Nell: Sorry, you just missed her. With the time change, it might be tricky to connect with her in the next couple of days. Jamie, Nat, and the girls took her down to the Art Fair to set up her booth. That’s probably way more help than she needs, but everyone is a little excited right now.

Sophie: I just heard the news—I ran into Marcus in Realm.

Nell: Yeah, he’s rounding up witch players so we can do more widespread testing.

Moira: Pardon an old woman for a moment. It’s true, then—my Elorie is a witch?

Nell: She is. She was just a very well-hidden one.

Sophie: Your girl’s a witch, Aunt Moira. We have a new sister.

Moira: It’s a little hard to take in just yet. I never imagined we would find out quite like this, with her practically on the other side of the world.

Sophie: Nell, please give her a hug, and all my blessings. We haven’t been as close in recent years, but she is the sister of my childhood.

Moira: It was very difficult for her as you grew into power, sweetheart.

Sophie: I know it.

Moira: I also know it’s one of the reasons you live so far away.

Sophie: Not the only one, but yes. Her heart is there, and it would ache more often if I lived underfoot.

Moira: Know that mine aches for the choice you made. It wasn’t a fair one to ask of you. In my heart, you have always had a home here.

Sophie: I love you, too :-). Power is not always fair, or easy. It won’t be for Elorie, either, but this feels right. I’m so very happy for her.

Moira: My heart is full to bursting, but my head is very confused. Nell, please have pity and explain to me exactly what you’ve discovered. Marcus was talking about spells and coding and such and I admit to not understanding a word of it. My granddaughter is a witch, but that’s all I know.

Nell: The important part is that we believe there’s a power source we hadn’t previously identified, and Elorie is not the only one who can use it.

Sophie: Net power. That is so cool.

Nell: You’re a pretty good spellcoder, Sophie—make sure Jamie tests you in the next few days. He and Marcus are just doing some tweaking first to make sure we don’t melt any more computers doing the remote scanning.

Moira: Old-lady English, please…

Nell: Sorry, Moira. We’re still trying to understand this new power source. You remember back when I was a child, and they were just beginning to understand how shapeshifting and such worked?

Moira: Indeed. It took some of our best minds to figure out the source powering those magics. Harder still because it’s a relatively rare talent.

Nell: Well, this is another power source we don’t understand much about yet. The good news is, it may not be so rare. Ginia tests for it, and we think that anyone who can spellcode probably has some degree of this talent. Marcus does, as do Jamie and I. Ginia’s the strongest we’ve found so far, though.

Sophie: I repeat, this is so cool.

Nell: Get Jamie to test you, girl.

Moira: And you think my Elorie has this Net power. She will be a spellcoder, then?

Nell: That’s where things get confusing again. For most of us, our scan only registers power when we’re actively spellcoding. For Elorie, all she has to do is touch a mouse and we get higher readings than we see from anyone else.

Sophie: Meaning what, exactly?

Nell: We’re all guessing. Moira, maybe you can help us think this through. There are witchlings who have an unusual affinity for certain power sources, right? Even when they’re not actively doing magic?

Moira: Certainly. Your Aervyn was one of them, playing with power threads while he was still in your belly.

Nell: Exactly. And Jamie and Nat’s babe plays with fire, although no one but Aervyn can see that yet.

Moira: It’s normally a sign of a very strong talent, and one that will emerge early.

Nell: Right. So if Elorie has a natural affinity for Net power, even when she’s not doing active magic…

Moira: You’re saying she might be particularly strong with this talent.

Sophie: I want her for my partner in Realm.

Nell: Get in line. However, we don’t know that spellcoding is the only way for this talent to work. That’s how most people use it right now, but really, it’s just a power source.

Sophie: Ah. So just like I use my earth magic to heal or make flowers bloom, Elorie may be able to use her power in more than one way.

Nell: Possibly. Most magics have a likeness to their power source—it would be really hard to use earth magic to create a windstorm—so we’re guessing she’s not a weather witch, but we’re not exactly sure what she might be able to do.

Moira: Start at the beginning, then.

Nell: Which is?

Moira: She must learn to call her power reliably and use it in small spells. Once she has that control, you can work out what else she can do.

Nell: Wise words, Moira. Thanks.

Sophie: Does this mean Elorie gets spellcoding lessons?

Nell: I think so.

Moira: The poor girl.

Sophie: I’ll take her into Realm. Ginia could use some backup taking Marcus down.

Nell: Careful with that. Next to Ginia, Marcus has the highest Net power reading on our scans so far.

Sophie: That figures.

Moira: It’s like a foreign planet, that game of yours.

Nell: You’re welcome to come for a visit. Marcus will be over later today to teach you the basics of spellcoding.

Moira: Me? Goodness sakes, why?

Nell: Because most witch talents are hereditary. If your nephew and your granddaughter are both Net witches, there’s a decent chance you are, too.

Nell pushed back from her computer and grinned. She really should have put on video chat—Moira’s face would have been priceless. She didn’t envy Marcus his task. Moira might just turn him into a frog, or worse.

Then again, her assignment for the afternoon was to teach Aervyn some basic spellcoding, and that was a fairly risky proposition as well. Mia and Shay were currently unhooking all the most precious electronics in the house from the Internet so Aervyn didn’t fry them with an errant line of code or two. Daniel was reinforcing their network firewall so Wonder Boy didn’t accidentally fry the computer of anyone else in the neighborhood, either. Life was never boring at Witch Central.

Jamie, Ginia, and Marcus would test the Realm players, and by the end of the day, they’d likely have a pretty good list of Net witches.

Then they just had to figure out what to do with them.

~ ~ ~

Jamie had no idea how he’d gotten roped into setting up a jewelry booth with five giggly girls. Nat and Elorie were no better than the triplets, trying on a gadzillion different necklaces and debating which ones were their favorites. As far as he could tell, the favorites pile was bigger than the discards.

Nat sidled up to him, some creation of copper and sea glass around her neck. “What do you think?”

He was wise in the ways of women. “Don’t you have to wait until tomorrow to buy stuff?”

She shook her head in amused dismay. “In six months, you’re going to be the most important man in the world to our baby girl. You need to get better at questions like this.”

“Don’t I get a couple of years of training while she learns how to talk?” He hoped.

His wife gave him one of her brain-melting smiles. “You’re a slow learner, so you might want to get started now.” She gestured at his three nieces, all festooned in jewelry and giving him the same “so what do you think” look.

He was taking Aervyn to a ball game later. It was a matter of guy survival.

Elorie dug in her bottomless backpack. “Girls, I have something special for you. ” She pulled out three very similar chains, each with a gorgeous piece of sea glass entwined in silver wire and two smaller pieces of glass, one on each side. Each necklace had the same three colors of glass, but with a different color as the central focus.

Even Jamie, a triplet himself, could see that Elorie had captured the bond of identical, but unique, sisterhood. His nieces were speechless.

He could feel Elorie’s joy at the gifting. She had an incredibly open mind, and that wasn’t always a good thing, but right now, he appreciated the second-hand glow. It was a nice improvement over the emotional swings she’d been going through since yesterday.

She grinned and reached into her bag once more, this time coming out with a copper pendant holding a blue orb. He would have denied it to his last breath, but he coveted the deep blue. It called to him.

“It’s a marble,” Elorie said, handing it to Jamie, “tumbled in the sea for years, or maybe centuries. Guessing from the size, it’s hand blown, and probably very old.”

He rolled the rough sphere between his fingers, sensing that it was a hard piece for her to give up, one of her favorite treasures. Refusing to take it, however, would dim her joy, and that he wasn’t willing to do. He’d never bought into the trappings of witchcraft, but as he hung the pendant around his neck, he was very sure it would stay there.

Elorie handed two very similar, but smaller, pendants to Nat. One was a gorgeous pink, and looked like it was born to match the crystal already around her neck. The second was fire red.

Jamie was puzzled, but as four sets of eyes got all gooey, it was obvious he was the only one who was lost.

“Oh,” Ginia said softly. “It’s for the baby.”

Fire red for his little fire witch.

He could feel his eyes getting all gooey, too. Dang.

As Nat linked her fingers with his, a very official-looking man arrived, asking Elorie to come sign some paperwork. With a last worried look at her booth, she followed him off.

“She’s a really special person,” Nat said. “She’s struggling, though.”

As always, Jamie was somewhat awed by his non-witch wife’s ability to pick up emotional undertones. “I think it threw her to find out she really is a witch.”

“Why does that make her sad?” Ginia asked.

Nat helped Ginia clip on her necklace. “I think it’s mostly confusing, sweetie.”

“But she’s always wanted to be a witch. She told me it was her dream. And she’s a really cool new kind of witch.”

And that, Jamie thought, was the crux of the problem. “Not everyone wants to be something new and different, cutie. It’s exciting for you, but where Elorie comes from, witches are pretty traditional. When she dreamed about being a witch, I don’t think this is quite what she imagined.”

He watched as Ginia, who had been born adaptable, struggled to understand someone who was less open to change. “Maybe she just has to get used to it a little. I can teach her how to spellcode.”

He nodded. “That’s definitely a good thing to work on, but first she has to be able to access her power. We don’t really know how to do that yet, so we need to figure it out before we can train her.”

Ginia frowned. “I tried to do it really slow so you could see.”

“I know you did. We’ll keep trying.”

Nat cocked her head. “What are you trying, exactly?”

“Uncle Jamie’s trying to watch inside my head while I spellcode, but he can’t quite see what I’m doing.”

He handed out granola bars from his messenger bag. Nat was looking hungry, and nine-year-old girls were always up for a snack. “One of the advantages of being a mind witch is that I can watch and see how people are using power. Then I can mindshow the steps to someone else.”

Nat nodded. “So, you want to see what Ginia’s doing, and then use that to teach Elorie.”

“Right. Except it’s all kind of fuzzy, and it doesn’t seem to work like elemental power, so I’m having trouble getting the steps in focus.”

“It’s cuz he’s a feeble mind witch,” Gina said, mouth full of granola bar.

“Brat.” Jamie wondered if she was too old to hang upside-down in public.

Nat held up her hand to forestall any niece tormenting. “So, if you were a stronger mind witch, you’d be able to see what Ginia does more easily?”

Great, now his wife was calling him feeble.

She kissed his cheek. “Stop thinking like a man and ask for help. Lauren’s coming over this afternoon, and I’m sure she’d be happy to play.”

Ginia nodded. “That’ll work. Lauren’s a rockin’ mind witch. She can see practically anything.”

Duh. He’d totally missed that one. Feeble and slow. Good thing he had a really smart wife.

~ ~ ~

Sophie: What’s up, Marcus? I was just about to trip a nice little spell on Warrior Girl when you interrupted.

Marcus: You should thank me. I tried that exact move last week—she has a stealth counterspell in place.

Nell: And at least you could have helped me out of the sorcerer fog when you called.

Marcus: You can blame your daughter for the fog. She’s been leaving deception spells like that all over Realm. I think she’s preparing something big.

Sophie: She’s got mad spellcoding skills. If we can get it figured out, I bet she’s one of our strongest Net witches.

Marcus: I might have another candidate. I spent some rather unenjoyable time teaching Aunt Moira to spellcode this afternoon.

Sophie: Aunt Moira’s coding??

Marcus: Hardly. She threatened to curse my computer—one of those old Irish witch curses you can’t get rid of—and I believe she meant it.

Nell: Go, Moira.

Marcus: Wait until it’s your laptop she’s threatening.

Sophie: So how’d she do?

Marcus: I handled most of the coding, but she has a deft touch blending spell and code.

Nell: Moira’s a Net witch—now there’s deep irony for you.

Sophie: That is so very hard to imagine.

Marcus: Indeed. Nell, did you manage to get a reading on that boy wonder of yours?

Nell: Nope. We tried, but he’s four. He just doesn’t have the logic circuits to program yet. It never occurred to me to try doing the coding part for him, though.

Marcus: It stood to reason that the important part was activating the spell, not writing it.

Nell: You’d have saved me a couple of painful hours by mentioning that a little sooner.

Marcus: You have a perfectly good brain of your own.

Nell: Try to avoid being a conceited ass for five more minutes, and then we’ll let you go back to getting your butt kicked by my nine-year-old.

Sophie: Keep it up, and I’ll help her.

Marcus: As I believe I’ve said before, she doesn’t need help. Have you managed any more work with Elorie?

Nell: Not really. She’s fairly shaken, and also very busy with her Art Fair, so right now, we’re proceeding without her. Ginia’s readings are really strong, and Jamie’s mindlinking with her as she spellcodes to try to figure out how the magic actually works.

Marcus: Smart man.

Nell: Smart girl—it was Ginia’s idea. Lauren’s coming in tomorrow to help as well. I don’t think you’ve met her yet, Marcus. She’s our newest resident mind witch.

Marcus: We hear things even in the boonies of Nova Scotia.

Nell: Cranky old man.

Marcus: No one would argue with you.

Sophie: I need to head to bed, you two. Blessed be.

Nell: It seems I need to go chase Warrior Girl to bed as well.

Marcus: Do that. Perhaps the rest of us can catch up while she sleeps.