Witches on Parole: Unlocked

Chapter 19
Lizard opened the oven and scowled at her biscuits.

“Something wrong?” asked Elsie, pouring orange juice. “They smell delicious.”

They were golden brown perfection, and they’d taste like heaven. None of which was going to make her day any better. She looked over at her roommate, belatedly realizing Elsie didn’t seem so perky this morning either.

Lizard sighed. Sometimes she wished for stick-butt Elsie back—she’d been easier to ignore. “The biscuits are fine. I have a sucky day coming up at work, that’s all.”

Elsie moved quietly to the table with glasses of juice, ignoring the obvious invitation to complain about her day too. “Lauren says you’re becoming an excellent realtor. That’s something to be really proud of.”

Lizard frowned—her roommate sounded almost wistful. “Yeah. Today I get to give Josh his keys.”

“And that’s a bad day?” Elsie’s eyebrows winged up. “I thought he was really happy with the property you found for him.”

It was so weird to have a roommate who actually listened to stuff you said and remembered it. “He is. It’s a nice house, right around the corner from the diner, and half the neighbors love him already.”

“Sounds nice.” Elsie sounded wistful again. “So what’s the problem?”

Lizard squirmed, suddenly realizing she was having this conversation out loud. Dammit, it was hard to keep people out of her personal life when they asked questions before breakfast. “He wants cooking lessons. Hey, can’t you cool those things off?”

Elsie grinned, tossing a still-hot biscuit hand-to-hand. “Fire magic’s only good for making things hot.” She broke it in two and dropped it on a plate, then deposited the plate in front of Lizard. “Josh wants cooking lessons?”

Yup. She actually listened. Lizard wished briefly for the kind of roommates she used to have—the stupid, unreasonable ones that let her sulk in peace. “He can’t cook, and he thinks I should teach him.”

“If you don’t want to teach him, I’m sure he’d understand.” Elsie was back to biscuit tossing again. “That goes well beyond your obligations as a realtor.”

Lizard grinned. Sometimes stick-butt Elsie still made a brief appearance, and it was oddly reassuring. “Nah, this is a separate deal. He’s not one of those clients.” Some were, and she was usually tempted to zap them with mind magic, something her boss unfortunately frowned on.

“Then why…” Elsie’s voice trailed off, and her eyes suddenly got a look that made Lizard squirm. “You don’t want to spend time alone with him in his house.”

Frack. The old Elsie had been way less smart. “It’s just his kitchen.” Lizard scowled. “Besides, the diner is right around the corner, and he’s richer than Borneo. Why does he need to learn how to cook scrambled eggs?”

“I have no idea how rich Borneo is, but I take your point.” Elsie’s lips quirked. “Maybe he really likes eggs.” She touched a biscuit with a finger, mind suddenly filled with gratitude. “Or maybe he knows that really good food makes a place feel like home.”

Okay, they were getting way too touchy-feely this morning. Lizard started to scowl, and then got hit by a brainwave. “Hey, you make pretty decent eggs now. You could show him, and then you could teach him how to make spaghetti sauce. Not your special stuff, just a basic recipe.” Josh would totally go for that. Scrambled eggs and spaghetti pretty much covered all the food groups a single guy needed.

Elsie got up from the table and reached up into the cupboard over the fridge. She came back bearing two jars of red sauce and a package of fettuccine noodles. “A housewarming gift.”

Jeebers. That probably meant she wasn’t getting out of scrambled-egg-lesson duty, but it was worth one last try. “You could go drop them off yourself—he’s getting his keys in about an hour.”

Her roommate’s face went blank. Which wasn’t nearly as scary as the sudden emptiness in her mind. “I have some other things to take care of this morning.”

Lizard stared. This wasn’t even stick-butt Elsie. It was worse. What the heck? “Where are you going?”

No answer. Just—distance.

To hell with that. Lizard reached out, hands and mind both demanding an answer. “Where are you going?”

Elsie slid back into her own head—real again, and ineffably sad. “To visit my mother. It’s time.”

~ ~ ~

Jennie beamed straight into Melvin’s living room. She didn’t have time to knock.

And found him sitting in his usual chair, hand wrapped around his pendant, eyes focused on faraway places. She knew better than to interrupt, even though her heart knocked with fear.

It nearly undid her when his fingers reached out to curl in hers. “Thank you for coming, sweet Jennie. I need the company.”

That wasn’t the answer she was looking for. “What’s going on? Why are the pendants going nuts?”

He was silent a long while. “There are moments in every person’s life. Moments of infinite hope and great danger, when the egg of the soul cracks open.” His grip on her fingers tightened. “One of those moments is today.”

Brought on by the magic of exactly the right clothes and people who saw you as you could really be. Damn, damn, damn. She had the insane need to leap tall buildings in a single bound. “What do we do?”

His face sheathed in pain. “We wait.”

Unacceptable. Jennie jumped up, reaching for her cell phone.

He stopped her with a whisper. “It’s not ours to do, bright Jennie. It’s ours to wait.” A tear ran down his cheek. “And I’m terribly sorry it’s been asked of you.”

It hit her then, like a sledgehammer. He’d done this before. Lived with this tearing need in his soul—and done nothing but waited.

She crouched down at his knees. “You did this for me.”

“Yes.” He rested his forehead on hers. “It doesn’t get any easier.”

~ ~ ~

Elsie fussed with Gertrude’s ribbons, double-checked the lock, and kissed the head of her brand-new lime-green frog, riding in a place of honor on Gertrude’s handlebars. She hoped it would give her courage.

And remind her of the woman she wanted to be—the kind who got pleasure from kissing cosmically ugly green frogs. The kind who rode her bike in a pretty skirt and sandals, just because the sun was shining. They weren’t her Helga-gifted red shoes—even the new Elsie was pretty sure she couldn’t ride a bike in four-inch heels.

But in the quiet hours of the night, she’d gone through the bouquet of clothes in all the untouched shopping bags and found those that made her happiest. The flirty, jewel-blue skirt was the sort of bold, daring color she never wore—and it had delighted her heart to slip it on this morning.

She brushed her hands over the vibrant material and sighed. A bold woman wouldn’t be standing here terrified to go knock on her own mother’s door.

Elsie touched her frog one last time for luck, and then walked through the white picket gate of the front yard where she’d grown up. Automatically she scanned the gardens, lovely as always. Her mother sank all of her earth-witch talents into the summer blooms. Elsie reached for a blue flower almost the color of her skirt and sent it a wisp of power, pleased when the blue petals perked up under her touch.

“Your skills have improved,” said a voice from the front door. “Perhaps this internship is doing you some good.”

“Hi, Mom.” Elsie closed her eyes for a moment, trying to channel Nat’s calm, and then turned. “You taught me how to use my earth magic well. I just had to learn to keep my fire power separate. I’ve gotten some help with that now.”

Her mother turned sheet white. “You’re not a fire witch. What ridiculousness is this?”

“I am.” Elsie reached out her palm and lit a small fire globe. “And without knowing that, I always used earth and fire magic together. It’s why I wilted the flowers.” Her inability to tend to the gardens had always been a permeating disappointment.

“Parlor tricks.” Her mother dismissed the fire globe with a flick. “Your father could do the same. True magic is power that can be controlled and put to good use.”

Elsie’s fingers nearly crushed the poor blue flower. “Papa was a fire witch?” Sudden, irrational anger flared. Why did they always talk about her father in the past tense? “He has fire power?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Her mother’s gaze was level. “He’s not real for me anymore, Elsie. And he abandoned you. His magic was weak, just like his love.”

Elsie gently magicked the small blue flower back to health—and felt a tug of empathy for the woman who had been left alone with a small, bereft child to comfort. As a lost child, the why’s had mattered little, but as a trained therapist, she knew that loving and being a responsible adult weren’t always the same.

She snuffed out the fire globe—and then felt her anger streaming back. Her head might understand, but her soul still seethed with slow-burning fury. And her mother had always preached the importance of proper training and control. “What about my magic? I’m not Papa. How could you ignore magical talent?”

“What good is a ball of light, Elsie?” She could hear the conviction, belief in a path well followed. “What use are a few magic tricks? Better that you learned to use your magic for good.”

“What, because it was Papa’s magic too, it can’t possibly be worthwhile?” Elsie could feel the pressure building inside her head. “Who are you to decide that?”

“I’m your mother.” Again, the conviction.

Elsie’s temper exploded. She reached up her hands, letting fingers spark to the sky. “I could have been dangerous. Fire power can be deadly.” The words screamed from her throat. “I could have burned the house down.”

“I know.” Her mother’s voice rasped sharp against the summer day, her eyes glued to the smoky residue of Elsie’s outrage. “I sat outside your room with a bucket of water and a fire extinguisher when your magic emerged. Every night for three months. I kept you safe, Elsie Bean.”

The old childhood nickname stopped Elsie’s streaming firepower in its tracks. The image of her mother, exhausted, sitting guard over her room at night, nearly undid her.

She’d come to rail against the injustices of a child denied her power and her passions, a child guided into a life of efficient emptiness.

And found love.

It had been love misguided—but it still mattered. And it quenched her need to rage against the woman who hadn’t been the mother she needed.

Elsie Bean’s past was already written—no amount of fire and fury could change it. But the future was entirely up to her.

To start, she could offer Mom a chance to get to know the woman she intended to be. Elsie smiled and held out a hand. “Come meet my new bike. Her name is Gertrude Geronimo, and she sparkles.”

It was worth the entire trip just to see the melting shock on her mother’s face. Elsie grinned. She might have to accept the past, but there was no need to make the future entirely easy. Time for Mom to meet her new daughter—the one with fire in her soul and ribbons on her bike.

~ ~ ~

Hand clutching her pendant, Nat strode swiftly down a street she didn’t know, in a neighborhood she’d never been to before. Seeking… something.

After a session of moonlit yoga in the wee hours of the morning, delightfully interrupted by her husband, she’d been indulging in a morning of lazy sleep. And then her pendant had gone nuts, a frantic beacon that had yanked her out of bed and into the car, trying to follow the mangled directions of a rock that clearly didn’t understand motorized vehicles couldn’t fly.

She was close now. And whatever curses she might want to rain on her hapless pendant, it had gotten her close. That much she could tell.

She didn’t often wish for magic, but mind powers would have been really useful right about now.

And then her pendant exhaled, its sense of impending crisis fading away on the release of breath. Cripes. She had a bad case of yoga brain. Rocks didn’t breathe—but the urgent beat in her palm was almost gone.

Nat paused a moment, trying to get a better read. Her pendant still thrummed. All right. Time to find Elsie and whatever in this neighborhood of cookie-cutter suburbia was chasing her. But she probably didn’t need to call in cops, witches, or the Sullivan family SWAT team.

She began to move again and then crashed to a halt as realization hit. Add a few million dollars, and this was exactly the kind of proper sameness her own parents lived in. Elsie had gone to see her mother.

Now Nat didn’t need the pendant’s pounding alert to feel sick to her stomach. She remembered all too well the day she’d gone to confront the demons of her childhood—and left with machine-gun holes in her soul.

Beautiful yellow dresses and siren-red shoes didn’t protect against bullets.

Nat’s eyes ranged more desperately now, cursing her pedant’s ill-timed quiet. Then a flash of color caught her eye and gladdened her astonished heart. Elsie, flying down a distant street on Gertrude Geronimo. Smiling.

Then Nat’s heart beat harder—and she somehow knew that the smiles came through tears. She stepped into the street, waving, fingers of her other hand still wrapped around her pendant. Whatever magic was hers to use, she willed it to catch Elsie’s attention.

When Gertrude turned and headed in her direction, she breathed a deep sigh of gratitude.

“I didn’t expect you here.” The bicycle wobbled as Elsie jerked to a halt, face streaming with tears—and oddly happy. “Sorry—I’m a bit of a mess, I think.”

Nat reached out a hand, gently wiping tears. “My pendant paged me. It seemed to think you might want some company.”

Elsie tilted her head and swiped at her face. “Maybe I do.” She swung off her bike and began pushing on Gertrude’s handlebars. “Do you mind if we walk? I think I need to get out of here.” She looked around, shuddering. “It’s all the same. Why did I never realize that growing up?”

Nat smiled, hearing the wobbles—and sure now that there were no life-threatening bullet holes. “No Gertrudes here. That’s a supremely cool frog, by the way.”

Elsie grinned, still sniffling. “It was ugly and brown when I found it. Aervyn helped me turn it the right color.”

The mental image of a four-year-old and the once-proper Elsie pouring lime-green love into a mud-colored plastic frog was one Nat tucked away to treasure. Sometimes transformation came in the most unexpected ways.

Elsie patted her frog’s head, giggling at the squeaky belch. “I think the frog was the last straw for my mom.” She ran a hand gently down Gertrude’s pink and sparkly stem. “I came to blast her, Nat. To hit her with all the pain of living this many years believing I was the child she wanted me to be.”

Nat’s heart ached. “I know. I made that same journey once.”

Elsie’s eyes widened. “I mostly didn’t do it. I couldn’t. She was wrong in so many ways, and for so many reasons. But she loves me.” She exhaled in a sharp blast. “So I showed her Gertrude instead. And invited her to come visit me sometime.” Her eyes twinkled. “The Arts District will totally freak her out. Lizard will, too.”

From anger to forgiveness to active reaching. In one morning.

It was a breathtaking journey. Nat reached for the handlebars, stopping Gertrude, and hoped Elsie could read the immense respect in her eyes. “It has taken me fifteen years, Elsie. Fifteen years, and I haven’t traveled as far with my mother as you did this morning.”

Emotion flooded Elsie’s eyes. Shock. Pride. And then finally pain—and an ocean of empathy. She reached for Nat’s hands, fingers whisper gentle. Her voice, however, was edged in steel. “Then she must not love you enough to make the trip worth it.”

Nat felt the great, gaping slice in her soul as the last dark roots of hate and fear were lopped off by Elsie’s sharp, bright words. The lacking, the reason why she couldn’t reach her mother—didn’t live in her.

She clung to her student’s shoulders, racked with great, gulping sobs. Sometimes truth was the most brutal weapon of all. And the greatest gift.

Now she knew why her pendant had rung. It had rung for her.

~ ~ ~

She would be an uber-professional realtor if it killed her. She’d even worn a damned suit. Lizard squirmed, ready to hate Josh just for that. Why people with lots of money chose to wear the most stupidly uncomfortable clothes on the planet was a complete mystery.

Then she spied Josh coming down the street. In jeans with holes in the knees. Fine—maybe not all rich people were totally stupid.

Then again, he was buying a house with a big kitchen and he couldn’t cook. That was a point in the pretty-dumb column. She had some nice single-boy condo listings with a microwave and takeout menus tattooed on the wall.

Her pendant vibrated in warning. It seemed to like Josh.

Yup. It was going to be an entirely craptastic day. She pasted a cheery smile on her face and went to greet her client. “Good morning. Ready to be a homeowner?” Cripes, that sounded like something from the worst of the realtor-training videos.

Josh, however, just grinned. “I am. I think my hotel room’s giving me hives.”

Ha. He never spent any time there. The neighbors had been feeding him all week—she had her sources. “When are you moving in your stuff?”

“Already did.” He waved in the general direction of the front porch, where a couple of duffle bags, three boxes, and a really ugly chair were sitting. “I didn’t have much.”

That was an understatement. “You sleep on the floor?”

“Not usually.” He grinned, and headed up the walkway. “I’m going shopping after I dance around the living room a couple of times. Want to come?”

No. The professional-realtor thing drew a firm line at having anything to do with the client after they owned the house. A fruit basket, maybe. Or a Christmas card.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Liar, liar, pants on fire. He had an empty house and an unlimited budget. It would be the best shopping trip ever.

She was so not going. He did funny things to her insides, and made her want to believe they lived in a universe where Planet Lizard and Planet Josh didn’t implode on contact. He might like her new window dressing—but what lay underneath just didn’t mix with guys like Joshua Hennessey.

He thought she could help him pick out a new TV. She could tell him several places to pick up a fenced one for cheap. Different planets.

She got the lockbox pieces off the front door handle—just in time to see her totally hip-and-cool client leap across the threshold with a warrior yell and turn a cartwheel down the hallway. A really good cartwheel. Then he ran up the stairs and slid down the banister, practically landing in her lap. “Sorry. Damn, that’s fast. I’ll have to put a crash-pad at the bottom, or something.” He grinned. “Wanna try it?”

There were forty-three reasons that was a bad idea. She went with the obvious one and looked down at her skirt in disgust. “I don’t think I dressed right.” Yup. Suits sucked.

Josh laughed. “I guess that rules out cartwheels down the hallway too.”

Nope. Basic klutziness ruled those out. Lizard tried to remember the whole realtor thing. “So you’ve signed all the paperwork, but we should do a quick last inspection. Make sure they didn’t leave holes in the walls or anything.”

“Holes can be fixed.” He raised an eyebrow. “Are you always so grumpy when you do key delivery?”

“No.” That was usually Lauren’s job. Or at least one they did together, where Lizard could kind of skulk in the background. She’d expected the same thing to happen today, until she’d arrived at the office to a pile of paperwork, keys, and a note that said “Good luck.”

Josh grinned. “I’m special then, huh? What do I have to do to get you to stop making faces at me?”

Crap. Scowling was totally not professional. She tried the realtor-video fake smile again, and then snorted as he pulled his shirt up over his face.

He shook his head as he came back out. “Quit doing that—it’s totally creepy.”

This so wasn’t going like she’d planned. “I’ll go so you can move in your boxes.”

He snagged her hand. “Does that mean you’re not going shopping with me?”

It was a big, fat line in the sand. And she was a big girl who knew which side she belonged on. “I can’t. Got stuff to do.”

His face didn’t so much as flicker out of casual-guy mode—but his mind was keenly disappointed. “Maybe one day soon. I’ll probably be shopping for weeks.”

“Maybe.” Screw professional. Lizard muttered something under her breath and got the hell out of the house of the guy she needed to stay really, really far away from.