Witches on Parole: Unlocked

Chapter 5
Elsie opened the door of the oven, rather proud at the muffins she pulled out. Not bad for 6 a.m. She’d realized the evening before that desire to cook had very little to do with actual results, so she’d knocked on Caro’s door at ten o’clock at night and asked for a recipe to try. Amazingly enough, her first attempt looked almost like muffins, except for the little burned bits on the edges.

She’d set the table nicely and walked to the store for orange juice while the muffins were in the oven. It wasn’t biscuits, but it was an acceptable breakfast for her first baking attempt. And it might make up for the disaster of a dinner she’d tried to serve the night before. Good intentions weren’t always edible, especially when served with undercooked chicken.

Hearing Lizard’s clomping on the stairs, she grabbed two—very hot!—muffins and put them on the pretty green plates she’d also found at the store. She looked up as her roommate blew into the kitchen. “Good morning. I made breakfast for you—I hope you like banana muffins.”

“Gotta run.” Lizard swooped a muffin off the counter and dropped it on the floor. “Shit! These are still hot.”

Elsie looked at her breakfast table for two in dismay. “They’ll be cool in just a minute. I was hoping we’d have a chance to eat together.” She took a closer look at Lizard, currently tossing a muffin hand to hand. “You look tired—did you have trouble sleeping?”

“Yeah. Essays and neighborhood maps kind of get in the way of the whole shutting-your-eyes thing.”

“You were up late?” Her roommate really did look exhausted, with big circles under her eyes and the kind of zippy edginess that came from too much coffee.

Lizard snorted. “Dunno. Is 4 a.m. late?” She shoved the muffin in her bag. “More sleep than I got the night before, though. Thanks for the food.”

Elsie stared at the suddenly empty kitchen doorway, feeling bereft. She turned around, looking at her now-sad table and its two slightly burned muffins.

She jumped as the front door slammed, and backed up in surprise as Lizard torpedoed into the kitchen. “Sorry, I forgot about the music thing. Do you have your computer?”

Elsie pointed at the counter—Caro had emailed her the muffin recipe.

“Pandora.” Lizard pulled up a website on Elsie’s laptop. “It’s a music site that starts with a song you like, and then plays songs that are related.” Soft sounds began streaming out of the computer. “You just need to thumbs up or down here when you love or hate something, and it will learn your preferences.”

Elsie moved in, fascinated.

Lizard looked up and grinned. “Perfect for someone who doesn’t know squat about music.”

Elsie frowned, catching strains of the music. “What’s playing now? I like that.”

“Dude named Leonard Cohen.” Lizard increased the volume. “This song’s the closest real-music thing I know to opera. Lots of people sing it, but he wrote it, so I started with the original.”

The music tugged on Elsie. Such a deep voice, wise and sad. And then the chorus hit, and she grabbed the counter to hold herself up, totally staggered.

Lizard grinned and clicked on the thumbs-up button. “I seeded some other songs in here to get you started. Once you figure out what you like, then we can put it on your iPod.”

Words finally penetrated Elsie’s musical haze. “You worked on this? Last night, when you were up so late?”

“No big.” Lizard shrugged. “My eyes were kind of bleeding from reading anyhow.”

Elsie stared for a moment—and then grabbed her roommate’s arm. “Sit. Take two minutes for breakfast.” It wasn’t a gift like the music, but her banana muffins didn’t look all that bad. And the green plates were pretty. “I have orange juice, too.”

Lizard dropped into a chair. “How come you’re getting all domestic?”

Until that moment, she hadn’t been exactly sure. Elsie smiled. “Someone needs to make sure we have something to eat around here.” She nodded, pleased with her forming idea. “Summer school is for five weeks, right? You study, and I’ll try to learn how to cook for us a little.”

“Deal.” Lizard guzzled her orange juice and stood up, pocketing the last half of her muffin. “If you cook them for three minutes less, they won’t get crispy. Our oven runs kind of hot.” She plunked her plate and glass on the counter on her way out. “Nice plates, by the way. Later!”

It hadn’t exactly been a conventional breakfast. But it had been nice. Elsie sat tracing the swirls on her plate, a silly grin on her face.

And then sat bolt upright, panicked, remembering why she’d gotten up at 5 a.m. in the first place. Oh, God. She had four hours before Jamie came to port her to Vero’s house. Four hours to find three favorite songs.

Well, two. That song with all the Hallelujahs was lovely.

~ ~ ~

Lizard waved goodbye to Freddie as she hopped off in front of Berkeley Realty. His bus was still the best place in the universe to do homework. Maybe she could make it through her last required-reading article before Lauren got to the office.

She pulled her computer out of her bag as she unlocked the front door and turned on the lights—and then cursed roundly as a stranger walked in the door right behind her. So much for getting to work early to study. Should have stayed on the bus.

She tried not to growl as she turned around, sticking out her hand. “I’m Lizard. How can I help you?” Then she blinked. He was way younger than most of their clients, and cute, in a geeky kind of way. Maybe he was lost.

“I’m Josh. I just moved to Berkeley and I need a place to live. I heard you guys were the best.”

Probably not lost, then, and she couldn’t very well kick him out after he said stuff like that. “Sit. I’ll get coffee.” She sighed, trying to remember it was her job to be nice now. “Do you want something to eat?”

“No, thanks. I just had breakfast at this awesome greasy diner.”

Lizard grinned. “The one with the happy faces on the plates?”

“Yeah. Guess I’m not the first person to discover it, huh?” He waved at her chair. “It’s okay—you don’t have to wait on me or anything. Just help me find a place to live. Hotels suck.”

He looked like a starving student, and rentals in this town weren’t cheap. Lizard frowned. “What brings you to Berkeley?”

“The desire to see green things.” He shrugged. “I’m working at a small start-up in San Francisco, but I don’t really need to be there every day. I did the downtown condo thing in Seattle, but I think I want an actual neighborhood vibe this time.”

Okay, definitely not a starving student. “You might want to walk around some. Figure out the kinds of areas that fit the vibe you’re looking for.” She might even be talked into taking him on a tour.

“Already did that.” He grinned and pulled a cool gadget out of his pocket. Then he clicked a couple of buttons and a map sprung up on the wall—a color-coded, annotated map. “Red are the places I liked best.”

She was in geek love. With the map. “How did you make it do the color gradients like that?” Google Maps had so far resisted her efforts to do the same thing.

“I tweaked the API code.”

Lizard tried not to drool and pulled up her own maps, which suddenly looked shabby by comparison. “This shows the price range and kinds of houses by neighborhood. Let’s see how the areas you like overlap with your price range. Do you want to rent or buy?”

“Buy. And price isn’t a big deal.” Josh looked moderately embarrassed. “I sold my last company for quite a bit of money. You tell me what my budget needs to be to get what I want.”

Cripes. Clients weren’t supposed to say stuff like that.

And she couldn’t take him to see every listing in Berkeley, or even just in his red neighborhoods. Time to narrow things down a little. “So, you want green stuff. The kind you look at, or the kind you mow?”

He grinned. “Look at. I’m better with computers than lawn mowers. Things with motors tend to break when I touch them.”

Check. No grass, or window-box air conditioners. Space for a home office, probably. Not a problem on an unlimited budget. “What else?” She glanced back at his totally mag map. “Tell me about the neighborhoods you liked best. What things turned an area red for you?”

“That’s going to blow my cool, single-guy cover.” He sighed. “I liked the ones with kids biking down the street and little old ladies taking care of their flowers. Where people actually seem to stop and talk to each other, or a cute kid on a skateboard told me where to find the best fried-egg breakfast in town.”

If she hadn’t been a mindreading witch, Lizard would have been sure he was kidding. Young, rich, cute guys didn’t want family neighborhoods where people liked to stop and chat. But this one really did.

He shrugged, deprecating grin back in place. “Am I hopeless, or can you find me a home?”

She knew exactly the property—a small townhouse three blocks away. Just listed, vacant, and right around the corner from the diner. Frack. She was so not going to get her homework done. “I might know something. Do you have a few minutes to go look now?”

His eyes brightened. “Yeah.”

As she grabbed her stuff, Lizard wished, for just a moment, that she was the kind of girl who liked geeky and sweet. Because this client needed a girlfriend in the worst way. He had white-picket fence written all over him.

~ ~ ~

They were no strangers to guests, even now, but this one was special. Vero fussed with the flowers on the little table in her singing room, waiting for her student to arrive. She adored the little frissons of anticipation dancing in her chest—it almost felt like standing in the wings onstage, awaiting her cue.

Silly old woman. Vero laughed lightly at herself, but with the permissiveness of one who had always accepted her own silliness. There were much worse vices in the world than flights of fancy.

Adjusting the last stem, she turned and walked over to the piano, a gorgeous and well-used baby grand. It had been a gift from Melvin, back in the days when the money for such a gift had come from years of scrimp and sacrifice. It had moved all over the world with them, and she treasured it more than anything else she owned.

With a sniff for her less-than-agile fingers, she re-stacked the sheet music, wondering briefly if Elsie knew how to read music. No matter. Melvin had often said Veronica Liantro could teach a willing lamppost to sing, and Elsie was no lamppost.

Picking one of her favorites, Vero began to hum. It was a simple tune, well suited to a beginner.

Then she heard footsteps in the hallway and turned to greet her student. “Hello, Elsie. Welcome to our home.” She ignored the awestruck eyes—the grueling reality of voice lessons would make that fade soon enough. “I hope your trip here was uneventful.” It would be a very cold day before she let herself be zapped through a computer, but it was a fine way for younger people to travel.

Elsie took a deep breath, looking down. “I think so—hopefully all of me has arrived.”

Vero chuckled, rich and deep. “Now there’s something you don’t hear said every day.”

Elsie’s giggle seemed to surprise her. They would need to work on that. To sing well, the singer must first feel.

And obviously small talk wasn’t going to help the poor girl relax. “Right. Let’s get started, then.” Vero turned to the piano and touched a key. “I’m just going to sing some very simple notes to warm up. I want you to repeat them after me.”

She could barely hear Elsie’s voice at first, and what little did come out sounded like a tortured cat. Vero just kept playing and singing simple runs of notes, trusting the music to do its work. As Elsie relaxed, her voice got stronger—untrained, for sure, but clear and true to the notes, and the girl had quite a nice range for a beginner.

Vero dropped her hands to her lap. “You have a lovely voice, dear, but your diaphragm is entirely wimpy. Let’s work on that, shall we?”

“I’m so sorry.” Elsie looked horrified. “I’ve never taken singing lessons before. I don’t have any idea how to do things correctly.”

“Of course you don’t.” And it was a sin that the girl had never been properly taught. “That’s why you’ve come to see me. I’m considered a bit of an expert on fixing wimpy diaphragms.”

Elsie wrung her hands in dismay. “You’re a genius. I really appreciate you offering to teach me, but I’m not remotely qualified to be your student.”

A successful opera singer could pull emotion on a moment’s notice, and Vero never missed her cues. She rose from the piano stool, summoning a healthy dose of wrathful indignation. “Are you saying that Veronica Liantro isn’t qualified to pick her own students? That I can’t pick where to share my genius—I could choose Pavarotti, but I can’t choose you?” That last might be a bit over the top, but she’d always loved a good rant.

Elsie couldn’t even manage a stutter. She tried several times, and then just shook her head. That much, Vero had anticipated. What she hadn’t expected were the fascinated eyes.

“Good.” Vero swirled back down to the piano stool, knowing even as she sat that it was not doubt that most haunted her student—it was desire. Well-covered, terrified desire. And that, she could most certainly work with. “Then let’s try a song, shall we? Tell me the name of one of your favorites.”

“I can’t sing them!” Elsie practically squeaked. “I just like them. I didn’t know I was supposed to pick ones I could sing.”

Vero reached out a hand in comfort. “No one can sing at their first lesson, cara mia. But your choices will tell me something about your musical soul.” She smiled. “I believe that’s had more practice than your voice.”

Elsie stared—and then finally pulled a piece of paper out of her bag. “I’ve been listening all day. These are my favorites so far.”

Vero read the list. Interesting. Mostly soft, pretty things—emotive, but only in a small range. She wondered if Elsie was aware of the thread of safety running through all of the songs she’d picked. Then she noticed one at the bottom that had been scratched out. “What’s this last one?”

Elsie flushed. “Lizard played a song for me this morning, and it was wonderful. But I wasn’t paying enough attention to the name, and I can’t figure out how to make my computer play it again.”

And yet she’d tried to put it on the list. “We don’t need a computer, love. You heard the song once, yes?” She put her hands on the piano. “Sing it for me.”

“I…” Elsie was back to stuttering. “I don’t know how it starts.”

Ah, but she remembered something—it was in her eyes. Vero stalked her quarry. “Sing whatever you remember. There are few songs on this earth I can’t figure out from a few notes.” Even some of that boisterous rap nonsense was growing on her.

Her flustered student opened her mouth to sing. Once. Twice. And then shook her head, looking down at the floor. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Of course you can.” Vero tilted up Elsie’s chin, command in her voice. “This song has grabbed your heart, dear one. It would be an injustice to let it disappear into the ether. Sing for me.”

This time, a few wobbly notes came out. And a word. Hallelujah.

Vero motioned for more—that particular word didn’t narrow down the musical world very much. More Hallelujahs…

And then musical magic happened. “I did my best, it wasn’t much.” Elsie’s eyes flew open as the words leaked out of her mouth. “I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch…” She ground to a halt, dejected. “I’m sorry. I can’t remember the next line.”

Emotion swelled in Vero’s chest. She could. And with those few words, she knew Elsie had found her anthem—one full of angst and hope and gloriously gritty melody. Bless Leonard, and bless the girl’s gut instinct for what she needed. Vero put her hands on the piano. “You’ve remembered enough. From the top, shall we?”

The look on Elsie’s face when the opening chords played nearly had Vero’s tears spilling over. “Sing with me, child. The words will come.” This much she could do—this much of a gift was hers to give. By the time the lesson was over, she would have the words etched on her student’s soul.

~ ~ ~

––––––––––––––

To: [email protected]

From: Vero Liantro <[email protected]>

Subject: Ah, my heart sings again.

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Dearest Jennie,

Such a lovely girl, our Elsie—and what a heart she has for the music. It just sweeps her off her feet. Not an altogether comfortable sensation for her, but oh, such a gift she has. Not the voice—she sings adequately, and will sing rather well before I’m done with her, but no more than that.

She was, however, born with a rare talent for listening to the music with her soul. And soon enough, it will not be sufficient just to listen.

She will not fail on her journey—the music will not permit it. My heart feels certain of it now. There may, however, be some interesting detours along the way. The music will help open her, and experiencing freedom for the first time is always fraught with a few difficulties.

You might be interested to know that I believe it was Lizard who helped Elsie to find her song—that one song we all have deep in our souls that is meant to journey along with us. One by my friend Leonard, of all people. He would be amused. I’ve sent her away with some homework—to listen to the many and varied versions of Hallelujah, and then to return next week and sing it with me again. It’s a song that can evoke so many possibilities—dark, light, and everything in between. I will be most curious to see what she chooses, and how that changes as she travels. It’s a splendid song for a woman on a journey.

As for Lizard, Melvin reports that she is brushing off his requests to go visit Realm with Ginia. She tells him she has too much work to do. Is the child taking time for play? He is concerned.

I believe that’s all for now. Come visit soon—if Elsie can trust her body parts to a computer, then surely you can as well.

Love and light,

Vero

~ ~ ~

Lizard collapsed at the kitchen table, staring at the yogurt container in her hand in disgust. It was the only thing edible left in the fridge. Somebody hadn’t been grocery shopping, and she couldn’t get her brain in gear enough to remember if it was supposed to have been her.

Elsie ate yogurt, and she didn’t die, so maybe it wasn’t really white toxic waste. Lizard sniffed. Eew. It smelled like cough syrup and slightly rotten milk. No possible way could she eat this.

She stood up to go toss it in the garbage and grabbed the table, swaying. She held on until the light-headed feeling passed. Crap. No food and no sleep was a really, really bad combination. And since sleep wasn’t happening anytime soon, rotten-cough-syrup toxic waste was pretty much her only choice.

Plugging her nose with one hand, Lizard stuck a spoonful in her mouth, gagging as she swallowed. Gross—it felt like swallowing boogers. Big, slimy boogers. Totally repulsive.

She was not going to eat boogers. Even desperate witches had their limits. Making sure she had her balance, Lizard headed for the door. Time to go beg.

She didn’t even make it to Caro’s steps before the door opened and one very annoyed witch stepped out onto her porch. “What the hell is wrong with you, girl? I can hear your belly growling from my kitchen, and your mind is flat-out exhausted.”

Lizard threw herself on the mercy of the gooey heart behind the bite. “Feed me, please? All we have is yogurt. Tastes like boogers.”

Caro snorted in amusement. “Come on in, then. I’ve got some pretty good stuffed-manicotti leftovers—I’ll warm you up a plate. Better than boogers, anyhow.” She turned and headed back to her kitchen, leaving the door open.

Anything Caro baked hit at least delicious on Lizard’s personal food scale. She followed down the hallway, already drooling. “Can I take it to go? I have a crapload of work to get done before this afternoon.”

“Don’t you dare ditch the water-balloon fight.” Caro rummaged in her fridge. “Not after recruiting me to your team.”

She hadn’t really been considering it. Not seriously. Lizard rested her head in her hands. “I’ll be there. But I have an essay to write, five hundred pages to read, and a house contract to write up before then.”

Caro looked up from the light flame on her palm she was using to heat a plate of food. “You sell a house?”

“Maybe.” Totally. Geek boy had fallen in lust about three seconds after she opened the door to the townhouse. “But he wants to pay cash, and I have to look up how to do that.” She scowled. How come she got all the hard clients?

“Don’t you have a boss to help you with that stuff?”

“I don’t want to bug her.”

“Don’t be a silly witch.” A plate thunked down in front of Lizard’s seat. “Here, eat this. Maybe it will get your brain working right again.”

The smells nearly sucked her nose right into the plate. The first bite and her stomach wanted to marry Caro. “Thanks. I’ll send something over the next time we have good leftovers.” Whenever she had a chance to cook again. Elsie’s muffins had been edible, but kind of a strange texture.

“Since when do I ask for a trade in exchange for feeding you?”

Lizard ducked as annoyance returned to Caro’s mind with a vengeance. “Sorry. I’m a little punchy.”

“I know.” Caro’s hand on her hair was gentle. “I can feel it. You can’t keep up this pace—you know that, right?”

Yeah, she did. She just had no idea which of the totally required tasks on her list to blow off.