A Reckless Witch

CHAPTER 10



Sierra raced through the still-dark streets of Berkeley on Jamie’s borrowed moped, hair streaming in the wind. Dumb helmets anyhow—you couldn’t feel the air on your face that way. Momma never would have made her wear a helmet.

She’d woken under the bed, crying from the nightmare she could never remember and haunted by a dead baby bird and the awful hurt in a little boy’s eyes.

He’d been right. It was her fault.

Her magic wasn’t safe. Even playing with the dolphins wasn’t safe, and she’d been doing that her whole life. How many other baby birds had she killed and not even known it?

And why had Momma let her do it? Why didn’t she know how to do magic properly?

She peeled around a corner, heading straight for the ocean. She needed the water. And then she needed to leave. Anywhere far away from Aervyn and the awful truth in his eyes.

Catching the tang of saltier air, she let out the throttle a little more—and then screamed as everything in front of her went blank.

Strong arms wrapped around her, pulling her in. “Sorry. Shh. Sorry, sweet girl. You’re okay. We’ve got you.”

Nell. Sierra desperately tried to suck air into her lungs, oxygen walled off by the terror layered over the aching hurt. Nell just rubbed her back and held on.

“Sorry about that.” A new set of hands, a new voice. Jamie. “Porting at speed is a bit tricky. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Her brain tried to turn on—and all that came was a flood of anguish.

“Shh now.” Nell’s voice was warm and soft and wrapped her up like Momma’s once had. “You need to rest, sweet girl. I’m going to use a small spell to help you sleep. We’ll figure things out in the morning.”

She hadn’t planned to be there in the morning. God. They wouldn’t even let her run away.

No, we won’t. You’re ours now.

The words reverberated in her head as the fog of the sleep spell hit. You’re ours now.

~ ~ ~

Devin pulled his bike up outside Nell’s house. She’d called for backup—and in the tone of voice that would have had him coming on the dead run no matter where on the planet he was.

With both Aervyn and Sierra under her roof, it wasn’t hard to imagine why she needed help. Although besides making his world-famous pancakes, he didn’t have a clue how he was going to do that.

Walking in the door, he ran into the first problem. Aervyn sat just inside the entrance, hat pulled down over his ears and sad-looking blankie in his hand. Devin was pretty sure the blankie hadn’t been out of its storage box in over a year. “Hey, bud.” He squatted down beside his nephew. “Having a rough morning?”

“I was waiting for you. Mama said I could, and maybe you can help my heart feel better.”

Oh, sure. Leave him with the easy job. “I can try. Are you still sad about the bird?”

Aervyn snuggled in and nodded. “I bet its mama is sad too.”

Baby birds born out of season often got abandoned by their mamas, but this wasn’t the time for a nature lesson. “Sometimes really bad things happen. It’s okay to be sad.”

Aervyn just cuddled for a bit, thinking. “Is Sierra a bad witch?”

She’s a witch who knows all too well how an abandoned baby bird feels, thought Devin, but he didn’t say that, either. “No. She’s a really strong witch, like you are. But you know how Uncle Jamie teaches you all kinds of stuff about how to be careful and safe?”

Aervyn nodded, eyes still drenched in sadness.

“Well, nobody taught Sierra those things. So she did some magic yesterday, and something bad happened, but she didn’t mean to.”

A long, long silence. And then a big sigh. “So she’s probably really sad too.”

That was a heck of a piece of growing up for a four-year-old. “Yup. She’s really sad too. We need to teach her how to be a safer witch, but maybe we can help her feel a little better first. You can’t learn magic when you’re all sad inside.”

Aervyn thought a bit longer, and then took his hat off. “’Kay.”

He turned and walked down the hall, small boy on a mission. Devin followed and hoped he hadn’t committed a big uncle screw-up.

Sierra sat in the kitchen with Nell, a plate of untouched waffles in front of her. So much for the pancake idea. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, eyes haunted—and when she saw Aervyn, she practically stopped breathing.

Devin held up a hand as Nell moved to intercept her son. It was a gamble, but he didn’t make half-assed bets.

Aervyn went and stood at Sierra’s side. He tilted his head sideways, waiting until she looked at him. “Can I sit on your lap?”

Sierra just stared—so Aervyn climbed on up.

He looked right into her eyes. “I’m sad too.” He held out his ratty old blankie. “If I cuddle this, it helps me feel better. Maybe we can both hold it for a while.”

Sierra sat frozen for a long moment. Then she wrapped her arms around witchling and blankie and they began to rock, sharing sounds of incoherent sadness.

Nell turned away, tears flooding her eyes. “Thank you,” she mouthed.

Devin wrapped an arm around her shoulders and they stood together, watching as two hearts grieved and healed a little.

~ ~ ~

Jamie reached for a wrench, ready to re-attach the bumper to his moped. He’d ported Sierra into Nell’s backyard with as gentle a landing as he could manage on four hours of sleep. The moped hadn’t been so lucky. Not that it was any stranger to bumps and bruises.

Although to the best of his recollection, it had never been used in an attempt to run away. He’d have to ask Mom. And then ask her to give Sierra the same “wear your helmet or get shackled to my leg for the rest of your life” speech she’d once given Devin. It had been extremely effective.

She had always seemed to know how to keep Dev just this side of insanity, even through their rather eventful teenage years.

He was beginning to think he needed to sit Mom down, get her talking, and take notes. The little girl cozying in Nat’s belly was showing her own brand of Sullivan charm already. And with magic on board, they were likely to have a fairly interesting ride. Starting day one.

He felt Nat’s presence before he heard her. Her mind was like a soft breeze on his cheeks—it always had him turning, seeking more. “Sorry, did I wake you up?” Banging the dent out of the bumper probably hadn’t been the best of ideas while she was still sleeping.

“It’s 10 a.m. Hunger woke me up.” She dropped down on the grass beside him and handed over half her bagel. “Should have had some breakfast before I went back to bed.”

Nell’s “witch AWOL” page had woken them both up in the wee hours of the morning. He’d crawled back into bed after the rescue long enough to snuggle Nat back asleep, and then fixed himself breakfast. Tracking and porting a fleeing witch had used up a lot of energy, and he couldn’t sleep with a gas tank clanging on empty.

Nat reached out and touched his cheek. “How’s Sierra?”

“Still in Berkeley, and eating her waffles.” He and Nell had kicked themselves three ways to Sunday for leaving her sleeping alone after such a traumatic day, but all they could do now was try to repair the damage. “Nell says Dev’s working his usual magic.”

“He would understand her.” Nat took a bite out of his bagel. Their baby girl must be hungry.

“Yup. He’s the original reckless witch.” He handed back the rest of the bagel. “Or maybe that honor belonged to Sierra’s mom.”

Nat laughed. “I’d guess Moira could give you a long list down through history. I doubt the reckless gene got started in the last generation.”

She had a point. He laid a hand on her belly, and got a good swift kick for his troubles. “Think we’ve got the next generation of reckless in here?”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “It feels strange to slot her into a box before we even look into her eyes.”

Maybe. But Nat hadn’t felt their little girl’s hands reaching for power. “Are we ready if she is?”

Her smile was gentle. “No. But at least she won’t be able to drive a moped for a few years yet.”

Jamie remembered the look on his mom’s face the day Devin had first straddled the moped. And finally understood the terror in her eyes. He gulped. “Maybe she’ll prefer walking."

Nat’s laughter rang in his ears long after she headed back inside for another bagel.

~ ~ ~

A hand slapped down on Govin’s desk. “Five more minutes to sulk, and then you gotta snap out of it.” TJ walked back toward the kitchen. “I’ll even cook us some breakfast.”

That got Govin moving. TJ was an abysmal cook. “I’ll do it. What do you want?”

“I got some of that sausage stuff you like, and fresh eggs, and rolls from Caro.”

Govin stopped dead. “You went to see Caro?” The last time those two had been in a room, actual sparks had flown—and not the happy kind.

TJ’s head was buried in the fridge. “She makes good rolls.”

This from a guy who ate potato chips that had been sitting in a bowl for a week. Govin reached for the eggs, absurdly touched. “Thanks. After all the magic yesterday, I’m pretty hungry.”

“So what the hell happened yesterday, anyhow? I got readings that will confuse my models for a year.”

Explaining complex magic to a ruthlessly logical mathematical genius was never easy. Govin tried the short version. “Sierra sucked the energy out of the rogue waves. She pulled it into herself and passed it back out through the rest of us, down our groundlines.”

He could see TJ’s brain doing the calculations. Then his eyes got scared. “That’s insane.”

Govin just nodded. “Yeah.”

“Dude.” TJ frowned, and then cracked a grin. “If I’d known that, I’d have gotten you more sausage.”

Govin snorted, amused. TJ had always used humor to diffuse the frequently life-and-death stress of their jobs. And it almost always worked. “Let’s just say I’m not lining up to do it again anytime soon.”

“Better do a good job of training her, then.”

“Yeah.” Just one of the issues he’d been moping about. Sometimes it sucked to be right. “Any ideas on that?”

TJ sat down with a bowl of chips big enough to ruin any other man’s breakfast. “You’re the witch, dude. I’m the data geek. Does she like data?”

Since only about three people on the planet liked data as much as TJ, the odds weren’t high. And in his limited experience with eighteen-year-old girls, bubbly, outgoing Sierra didn’t strike him as having a big dose of inner geek. However, smart mathematicians played the long odds.

Govin poured the egg mixture into the frying pan, happy with the crackle and smell of frying butter. “Feel free to show her your models. Maybe she’ll love them.”

“What’s not to love?” TJ leaned back and grinned. “Can I show her my aliens stuff?”

Govin laughed. “I think you have to tweak your aliens model some to take our rogue witch out of the picture.” Sierra was the likely source of a number of the weather anomalies TJ had tagged as “of alien origin” over the years.

“She’s not rogue, Gov.” TJ’s face was suddenly dead serious. “She’s dangerously ignorant, but think about what she did yesterday.”

He shrugged, irritated. “Blasted the hell out of every witch in the chopper?”

“No, not that part.” TJ tapped the table. “She used your groundlines. To reroute the energy.”

“Yeah.” Govin could tell he was missing something.

TJ rolled his eyes. “Didn’t she just learn about groundlines like two days ago?”

Govin froze, spatula in mid-air.

TJ nodded, obviously six steps ahead as usual. “She did huge magic, under serious pressure, and not only did she remember grounding, she used it to solve a very big problem.”

“She didn’t need to do so much.” Govin wasn’t sure why he was fighting this. “The beaches were clear—she put five witches at risk for a few birds.”

TJ’s eyes were back to serious. “When’s last time she worked with four other witches?”

Crap. Never. Govin shook his head, realizing just how difficult a task Sierra had faced. And how little credit he’d given her for what she had done.

“Don’t think so hard.” A tossed banana thudded off his chest. “Train her. Maybe she’s not the hardcase you think she is. And don’t burn my breakfast. I stood in line at the farmers’ market at six freaking a.m. for those eggs.”

~ ~ ~

Nell looked around the Witches’ Lounge and took a deep breath. Even her pretty feeble mind powers could sense the buzz of unhappiness, uncertainty, and fear in the room.

It had been a very rough twenty-four hours. And while they’d managed to pull everybody back from the brink, there were very few days she could remember when Witch Central had been in this much turmoil. She was pretty sure it was going to get worse before it got better.

Assessing the room, Nell saw Moira watching her steadily and sighed. She knew that look. Handoff. There was no way this meeting was going to stay calm, but they could start off that way.

She held up a hand for silence. “Okay, all. We have ourselves a bit of a situation. I know we each touched different pieces of the drama yesterday, so maybe we can hear from everyone before we start trying to fix anything.”

Jamie rolled his eyes as she borrowed a tool straight out of Mom’s family meeting handbook—let everyone have a say before you laid down the law. Nell wished someone could actually walk in and straighten this one out. Some parts of being a kid were kind of handy.

Trying to start with one of the less volatile minds in the room, Nell tipped her chin at Sophie. “You want to kick us off?”

Typical of an earth witch, Sophie took a moment to contemplate before she answered. “I saw a whole lot of witches who pushed the edges of their personal safety. Aervyn’s mostly emotional distress. The rest of you ran yourselves pretty dry.”

“Not much choice,” said Devin quietly. “It was either that or cook a witch. You don’t put down a spell like that.”

Sophie raised her hands. “I’m not arguing with that. But it’s a rare day we have that many drained witches.”

Jamie nodded slowly. “We’re good at scrambling whatever resources we have in an emergency. We scrambled Sierra, knowing she’s got big power and some serious training holes.” He sighed. “At some level, what happened after that is on us.”

“What, are you channeling TJ now?” Govin shook his head. “He said the same thing this morning. We’re used to working together with a team. She’s not. We’re very lucky she didn’t cook someone’s channels.”

Nell felt the dread in her heart rising again. One of those “someones” had been her baby boy. “Realm makes scrambling a team a lot easier. We need to add some thinking steps.”

Jamie looked guilty. “Ones like not putting four-year-olds on the crisis-response team?”

Much as she wished the answer to that could be yes, she knew she couldn’t keep Aervyn in a box forever. “Not necessarily.” She smiled wryly at her brother. “But you might consider skipping the supersonic helicopter magic next time.”

Every man in the room looked totally mystified. Nell sighed. “Southern California has plenty of Internet access, and more than one witch. You could have beamed through Realm to get closer.”

If things hadn’t been quite so serious, the look on Jamie’s face would have been high comedy, at least for the two seconds it lasted. Then he looked horrified. “Shit. I didn’t even think of that.”

Nell relented. “Me neither. It hit me about six o’clock last night.” About eight hours too late.

Govin’s hands looked like they were trying to find something to break. “Those are details. Important ones, but let’s get to them later. We have a loose cannon. She’s dangerous. There could have been people on those beaches yesterday.”

“Her dangerous, combined with our stupid.” Jamie looked at Nell, abject guilt on his face. “There was more than one bad decision yesterday, and Sierra didn’t make all of them.”

Just for a moment, Nell wished she’d never come up with the damn fetching spell.

“You’re smart witches.” Moira’s voice was balm to the stress-filled room. “We’ll figure things out. Govin’s right. Today our job is to figure out how to help our loose cannon use her magic more safely. One step at a time. She’ll need training, and quickly.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be fast.” Govin was pacing. “We can teach her basic safety precautions, and after yesterday, she might even understand the need for them. But her magical judgment stinks.” He scanned the group. “That’s really what we teach to our witchlings with all the practice and magic tricks and games. We teach them to use magic wisely. Amelia taught Sierra the games, but none of the judgment.”

“Amelia didn’t have the judgment.” Moira looked as distraught as Nell had ever seen her. “We tried for years. If Sierra’s head is as hard as her mother’s…”

Jamie shifted restlessly in his chair, nodding. “She added groundlines when we asked her to, but she couldn’t see why. And she blasted us all nearly to the ground yesterday, but she has no idea. Even if she’s less resistant than Amelia was, we’ll be trying to undo the way she’s used magic for years.”

Nell debated, and then added her biggest concern to the top of the pile. “It’s a lot more than that. Magic is her strongest connection to Amelia. The way she currently does magic is her mother’s legacy, and it’s one Sierra treasures.”

“We have to fight memories of a dead woman?” Govin rested his forehead against the wall for a moment. Nell felt his frustration and fear. If they couldn’t adjust the way Sierra used magic, and quickly, he’d be on the front lines of trying to keep the damage contained.

Then she swallowed against her own dose of fear. If it got really messy, there was only one witch capable of shutting her down. And he was currently asleep in his bed with his old blankie.

~ ~ ~

Lauren had seen it happen in big real estate negotiations. Fear would leak in one corner and infect the whole room, like a nasty oil slick. She’d just never seen it happen in Witch Central. Some of the most capable people she’d ever known were trying to psyche themselves into losing a war.

And an eighteen-year-old girl was going to be the casualty.

Somebody needed to be on cleanup. Two somebodies. There was only one other witch in the room who wasn’t swimming in fear. And after watching him croon to a girl in the throes of heartbreak, she was pretty sure Sierra couldn’t ask for a better defender.

A really smart negotiator knew when to act—and when to work behind the scenes. Swiftly, she reached out to Devin’s mind, knocking lightly. You’re the only one who’s not scared.

He didn’t even blink at the mind contact. Yeah. You wanna lead off, or should I?

Jeebers. How the heck had he figured out how she was feeling? What, is my poker face losing its touch?

Yup. His mindvoice carried a touch of humor, and more than a touch of respect. You look like Electra ready to bust some heads.

Nine months of hanging out with wonderboy, and Lauren was totally up on her superhero references. Not every woman would think that was a compliment.

You’re not every woman. Devin looked around the room. Can you pipe me a mind feed? This’ll go a lot easier if I don’t have to guess how everyone’s feeling.

That wasn’t precisely ethical. However, it was right. Lauren set up the feed and settled back. She was pretty sure this was going to be impressive.

Devin stood up—and the moment he did, he owned the room. He looked around, meeting every set of eyes. “She’s an eighteen-year-old girl. An orphan. Since when does that make Witch Central cower in fear?”

It had been right to have him go first. Only someone raised in their midst could have said something that harsh and gotten everyone listening.

Lauren felt him check in with the mind feed—and then double down. “We fear her power.” He held up a hand as Govin started to protest. “I get it, dude. I really do. We’ve had two hurricanes hit Costa Rica in the last year. I’ve cleaned up the bodies.”

Govin winced. “We tempered the first one a little. The second, we couldn’t touch.”

“I know.” Devin’s eyes held on to those of his old friend. “And I know the pain you feel for every life you can’t save. But I also held the hand of the little girl who looked for her mama after the first storm—and found her, right on the edge of the flood zone.” He paused. “Alive, Gov. The lives you save mean something too.”

Govin scraped his hands through his hair. “So how do we deal with a witch who might put more faces up on my mental dead board?”

Devin’s mind was part friend, part avenging angel. He looked over at Moira. “We follow the advice of one of the wisest witches I know. We love her. It has been, and always will be, love that keeps a reckless soul safe.”

It was then that Lauren realized how thoroughly she’d underestimated Devin Sullivan. In three sentences, he’d sucked half the fear out of the room.

Moira nodded in quiet acknowledgment. “We talked about that in our last meeting. If anything, this makes welcome blankets and painting parties all the more important.”

Only witches would carry paint chips into battle.

“We all need some time to recover, anyhow.” Sophie was wearing her healer glare again. “None of you, Sierra included, needs to be doing any magic for the next day or two.”

Lauren could feel Govin’s impatience. And his dread. She piped both through to Devin. He’s not convinced.

He stepped up to Govin’s shoulder. I know. And I don’t blame him. He’s got the most to lose if we’re wrong. But sometimes, you have to relax in the eye of the storm, or you don’t make it out the other side.

That wasn’t exactly comforting.