A Modern Witch

CHAPTER 6



Jamie: Nell, that is a touchy login spell. It told me I had the wrong password twice.

Nell: It’s meant to keep out troublemakers, brother mine :-).

Jamie: Be nice to me, punk sister. I have at least partially good news for you.

Sophie: That must mean Lauren let you in.

Jamie: I brought coffee and bagels. I also ambushed her early in the morning. Figured I might get further if she wasn’t entirely awake.

Moira: Surely that wasn’t necessary, Jamie? Such manners.

Jamie: I didn’t know how else to play it, Moira. It didn’t seem like good manners would get the job done in this case. Since she let me in, I figure it wasn’t such an awful choice.

Sophie: Were you able to test her?

Jamie: Yeah, got a solid test done this time. Total dud on elementals, but she’s at least moderately strong on all forms of mind magic. I’m going back tonight to start some basic barrier work with her.

Nell: No elemental powers—that’s unusual. How did she do with the testing?

Jamie: She was pretty overwhelmed when I left. Most of the people we test want to be witches, or at least know they’re different. I’m not used to being the bearer of unwelcome news.

Moira: Is it unwelcome, Jamie, or is she just needing some time?

Jamie: I don’t know. She can project emotions with a hell of a wallop, and she definitely got pretty wound up. I can’t blame her, honestly. We don’t usually start with the mind-witch training because it’s so much more invasive.

Nell: That, and it’s usually the elemental powers that get witchlings into trouble.

Jamie: Well, that too. But there’s a lot more intimacy involved in mind-reading practice than working with candle flames or blooming flowers.

Sophie: The first magic I ever did was helping a flower bloom, and you’re right—I didn’t even realize at the time that Aunt Moira was assisting me.

Moira: I remember that, Sophie dear. You were so excited.

Jamie: She was actually pretty relaxed for receiver testing. It’s when I tested her on projection that she reacted strongly. She feels like I invaded her headspace.

Moira: I’m sure you had better manners than that.

Jamie: Did, but there’s no reason for her to believe that.

Sophie: What now?

Jamie: She has a good friend coming over for dinner. I’m going to try to work some basic exercises with the two of them. Once Lauren has a bit of barrier control, she can experiment a little on her own.

Nell: She still thinks it might be you doing all this.

Jamie: It’s the most rational explanation, if you don’t believe in witches.

Nell: Tell her your mind-witch talents are really wimpy.

Jamie: I did, actually, but it’s not words that will convince her at this point. She needs to do something with her own powers that can’t be explained any other way.

Moira: Wise. She’ll feel safer with a friend by her side, as well.

Nell: Sounds like it’s still a little rocky, but honestly, I think that’s about as good a start as we could have hoped for. I’m not sure there’s any easy way to spring this kind of news on someone.

Jamie: One more thing. You guys might want to consider what the next steps are if she’s stronger than average. I think there’s a decent chance of that.

Moira: Mind powers can be hard to measure, initially.

Jamie: I know, but she picked up very soft broadcasting—emotional and sensory undertones included—with no training.

Moira: Oh, my. That definitely puts her on the stronger side of things.

Nell: Well, you can handle at least the basic training with her.

Jamie: I can. But leaving a reasonably sensitive mind witch on her own with only rudimentary barrier training doesn’t sound like the world’s best idea.

Moira: And we won’t, if it comes to that. One step at a time, lad. Get a better read on her, and then we’ll formulate a plan.

Jamie: Thanks. It was a bit of a shock to find that kind of strength, actually. You’d think someone would have noticed.

Sophie: She doesn’t live in witch central, Jamie. Lots of empaths can cobble together mental barriers if they don’t get training, so that might be why she didn’t have any sense of her powers. If she doesn’t have any elemental magics, those are the ones that usually hit teens hardest, so she might have come gradually into her powers without really realizing it.

Jamie: I hear you, but still. She’s strong, Soph. I don’t have any real data to say that yet, but that’s what my gut says. It’s usually the weaker talents that manage to slip under the radar.

Sophie: Does she have any healing talents?

Jamie: Didn’t test those yet. I’ll throw that in tonight if I have a chance, but I’d say not. I’d guess that her empathic sensitivities, in combination with healing, would have made her too vulnerable to pain in others to live as normally as she does.

Sophie: That combination usually produces the most powerful healers.

Jamie: Indeed—but can you think of any empathic healers that made it to adulthood undetected?

Moira: No. And we’ve a lot of empathic healers here. They’re so over-sensitive as children until they get some barriers in place. I’ve seen some empaths live as non-witches, though. That’s an easier skill to hide or ignore, if it’s all she has.

Nell: She could be a spellcaster, too. That would be a nice mix. Easier to coordinate a circle when you can send everyone a mental map of where a spell is headed.

Jamie: There’s no way to know right now. She’ll need more training before we can assess that, of course. Sorry to repeat myself, but what do we do about training?

Nell: What’s bothering you?

Jamie: Right now, it’s just a gut feeling. I’ll go back and start some basic work with her on clearing and setting barriers, but I’m no good to her beyond a few lessons. If she’s as strong as I think she is, once she opens those channels a little, she’s going to need more training, and quickly.

Moira: You have a point there. If she’s fairly sensitive, basic barriers aren’t going to be enough.

Jamie: She lives in the middle of downtown Chicago—there are people everywhere. If her sensitivity is high and her barriers are shaky, that’s not something we can walk away from.

Moira: Indeed. For her safety and theirs.

Jamie: Exactly. I don’t want to leave her unable to function, and I sure as heck don’t want to leave her unstable and a danger to others.

Nell: If it comes to that, we’ll figure something out. You’re just the first line.

Jamie: Good point. I need some downtime, and then I’m headed back over for dinner. We’ll see where Chinese food and ice cream take us. First contact report complete, over and out.


Nell clicked out of chat and rolled her mouse around aimlessly. Jamie didn’t get worried without good reason. He’d worked with plenty of trainee witches. Heck, he was Aervyn’s primary trainer. Power, even abundant power, wasn’t enough to make Jamie jumpy.

Maybe Lauren’s legs were just too distracting. Knowing Jamie, that was the real problem.

...

Nothing was more delicious than a Saturday afternoon nap on the best couch in the world. Lauren stretched in contentment and considered rolling over for a second dose of lethargy.

She’d earned it this morning. Coffee-bearing witches who could talk in your head and long-distance snoop into your nail polish collection were hard work.

It was still possible this was all Jamie. His mind magic, his apparently very real powers. She definitely preferred that theory.

Unfortunately, if it were true, it meant three women in a chat room and a guy in California had formed this wacko conspiracy to convince a sane woman she was a witch. Her ego just wasn’t big enough to think she was the chosen target of a very odd witch hunt.

What was that Sherlock Holmes line? Eliminate the impossible and whatever’s left, however weird, must be true. Something like that.

So, maybe she had some feeble telepathy. In Jamie’s world, that made her a witch. In her world, it probably just made her a better realtor. She had good gut instincts, and really, how much bigger a stretch was it to think your brain could sense things, if you believed your guts could?

Lauren rolled over and decided to take nap part two after all.

…

Nat danced her way down Lauren’s street. Three yoga classes today, all packed to the rafters. Spirit Yoga was making its mark. There was nothing she liked better than taking a group of people and sending them all home more limber and centered than when they’d arrived.

Growing up, she never could have imagined a life this happy. Or—she laughed at herself—one so much at odds with what was expected of a Smythe. Teaching yoga might not raise eyebrows in some families, but in hers, it was up there with joining a cult or hitting the local bar for karaoke night. Fairly close to unthinkable.

And never mind yoga—she was apparently about to have dinner with a witch. That probably set a new Smythe record for profoundly inappropriate behavior. Shallow, maybe, but she enjoyed her little part in rebalancing the family karma.

Not that she needed any more reasons to come to dinner. Lauren had asked, and that was enough.

She was very curious about Lauren’s witch. Magical mind powers and floating plates. And some kind of mind-reading practice. It was going to be a fascinating dinner.

…

“Better. You still need to relax and open your channels more, but that was better.” Jamie twisted a little to relieve the kinks in his spine. He and Lauren had been sitting on her floor for over an hour, working on the most basic of mind-magic exercises—opening and closing mental channels.

“Your barriers are still really rigid. Don’t think of them as a wall—more like a soft and flexible bubble. When you want to block most things and keep the emotions and thoughts of others at a distance, you inflate the bubble. To be more sensitive, you deflate the bubble and pull it in tighter, so you can read what’s outside more clearly. Very rarely do you want to let go of the bubble entirely; that leaves you completely vulnerable.”

“It’s a wonder I’ve survived for twenty-eight years,” Lauren said wryly.

“Oh, your current barriers are effective enough. You likely don’t pick up much that you don’t want to hear. But to truly use mind magics, you also need to be able to choose when to open and when to send. You can’t do that with the clunky walls you currently have in place. You need more refined tools.”

“Bricks, bubbles, pink feathers. I guess I still don’t really see the point.”

“It will make more sense when your friend Nat gets here. I’ll support your barrier control while you try some simple sending and receiving with her. Then you’ll see the difference between bricks and bubbles, trust me. Let’s try the bubble one more time.”

Jamie patiently walked Lauren through the deepening of quiet mind and sending breath to her mental barriers, floating her bubble on a wave of breath. With a quiet mental touch, he encouraged her to slowly deflate the bubble. Good—she was doing better this time.

Different students needed different visualizations. For some, bricks worked just fine. Bubbles weren’t his favorite—he always imagined them popping—but they seemed to be working for Lauren.

Deep in concentration, neither of them heard Nat let herself in the front door. Jamie sensed her first, a new presence at the edge of the training circle he’d cast.

Not wanting to jar Lauren while she was so exposed, he sent Nat a gentle mental signal to stop. He was grateful that she didn’t seem at all distressed by voices in her head. Perhaps his trainee could take some cues from her friend. Splitting his energies, he held the bond with Lauren steady and opened the training circle to allow Nat in.

Then he slowly opened his eyes and saw Nat for the first time.

Lauren felt her head explode. Brain-pounding tsunamis of feeling. Shock. Desire. Fear. Acceptance. Love.

Jamie felt the dropped connection in his head as he heard Lauren hit the floor. Out cold. Oh, shit.

Nat was beside Lauren in an instant. She reached for her friend and turned big eyes to Jamie. “Help her. What happened?”

He looked at Nat. His control was tighter now, so the tidal wave wasn’t quite as big. But he knew, absolutely knew, that she was the rest of his life. And he was pretty sure the backwash of his reaction had hit Lauren down her wide-open channels.

With the training of thirty years, he snapped his barriers in tight. He sent out a finger of power to monitor Lauren and heaved a breath of relief. “Simple overload. Nothing too serious, but she needs to sleep for a bit. Where’s her bed?”

Jamie picked up Lauren and followed Nat down the hallway. He laid Lauren down gently on the bed and sat beside her. His legs weren’t feeling too steady either, and he couldn’t blame it on newbie-witch status.

Breathing to center himself, he closed his eyes and reached gently for Lauren’s mind. He was no healer, but all witch trainers learned the basic spellwork to treat symptoms of power overload. He calmed and closed her channels, and sent her deeper into sleep.

When he opened his eyes, Nat sat on the other side of Lauren’s bed, her legs wrapped into the easy lotus pose that only came with long practice.

“She’s fine—she just needs rest.”

They sat together for a moment, listening to Lauren’s peaceful breathing.

Nat had a very restful mind, and a very open one. Her single thought was crystal clear to Jamie. Every life had some really big turning points, and her closest friend in the world had obviously just crashed headlong into one.

That about covered it, thought Jamie. And she isn’t the only one.

He spoke quietly to Nat. “You can sit with her—that will be calming. She’ll be starving when she wakes up. We’ll let her sleep for an hour or so, and then she’ll need to eat. I’ll go order Chinese.”

…

Jamie walked into the kitchen, took out his cell phone, and then just sank into a chair. His very weak and totally unpredictable precog talent had picked a hell of a time to put in an appearance.

One look at Nat and he’d been overwhelmed with vision fragments of their future life together. Their potential future life. Precognition showed possibilities, not certainties.

Screw that. It had felt freaking certain.

Dancing at the Shattuck in downtown Berkeley, Nat’s face full of laughter and invitation. Christmas morning with his family. Sunrise yoga together, and the wildly improbable sense that he actually enjoyed it.

Nat’s belly rounded with their first baby.

Building a snowman in their front yard with a toddler that looked shockingly like Aervyn. And damn it all to hell and back, because it didn’t snow in Berkeley. It snowed in Chicago, where he would live with Nat, at least one very cute kid, and a snowman.

Where he would love Nat, and a little boy, with shocking fierceness.

He’d been hit by all of that while holding someone else’s mental channels in his hands. Unbelievably bad timing.

Generally he was pretty laid back about training incidents. Shit happened, and when you trained witches, it happened fairly frequently. Cleaning up spell misfires, healing minor injuries, pulling innocent bystanders out of the way—all part of the job description.

Jamie leaned his head back against the wall. He could try to pretend this was a training incident, but really, Lauren had just been an innocent bystander. Any mind witch within a mile would have felt the shock waves of a precog episode that strong. Lauren had been pretty much at ground zero, and unbarriered.

It had, however, answered a very important question. Only a mind witch of major proportions would have been able to absorb that kind of tidal wave with only a relatively mild case of overload. Lauren was going to be a very powerful witch.

And he’d just blasted her channels wide open.