An Imperfect Witch Read online

  An Imperfect Witch

  by Debora Geary

  Copyright 2013 Debora Geary

  Fireweed Publishing Ltd

  Kindle Edition

  Dedication

  To the tree

  who helped this tumbleweed

  find her garden.

  Prologue

  The crystal ball shifted, uncomfortable in its cranky old age. It had been enjoying retirement in its dim corner.

  The seeking forces insisted. AWAKEN.

  Awake, dammit. Foolish energies, always bound and determined to interrupt sleep and peace and everything else the orb had ever desired.

  The forces didn’t waver.

  And the orb had no choice. Born in magic—and apparently destined to die that way, too. It tried to offer one final protest. The new one—she doesn’t like to listen.

  Once, in the dawn of the ages of orbs and magics, the crystal ball had been revered. Honored. Consulted by those of powers waxing and waning. Then had come the long silence, punctuated only by the occasional feelings of movement and light, and the even less-frequent proddings of minds unable to hear.

  Foolish humans.

  And then one had come. One whose mind thrummed with awareness of the forces—and utter disdain for them.

  TRY HARDER.

  The orb snorted. Clearly the forces hadn’t talked to very many witches recently.

  The push from the energies only increased.

  No sense of humor, either. The orb sighed—and began the ridiculous antics necessary to capture the attention of the only one able to listen.

  Chapter 1

  If you were going to totally embarrass yourself, it was better to do it alone.

  Lizard Monroe shooed her boss out the door of Berkeley Realty and locked it, feeling foolish. It was no big deal. Just a stupid letter. And there were any number of people in her life who would be all happy and shit if she let them.

  Not this evening.

  With a final surreptitious glance at the door, she headed to the back room—the place where files went to die and no one would look for a hot up-and-coming young realtor on a Friday night. She grabbed her red leather backpack and slid down the wall, feeling like the abrasive delinquent she’d once been.

  Two years, four months, twenty-three days—a lifetime and a hiccup.

  Big emotions churned up Lizard’s throat and back down again. Old ones—shame and inadequacy, guilt for the past and guilt for escaping it. And the even harder ones to admit. Victory. Pride.

  This was why she needed to be alone. For the next few minutes, she was going to be one very messed-up Lizard.

  Ignoring the shaking of her fingers, she reached into her backpack for the letter. A totally innocuous white envelope—until you saw the return address. California Department of Corrections. Region II Parole Headquarters.

  The place where stupid punk twenty-one-year-olds nobody cared about went to die.

  Okay, that was probably a little extreme. Lizard fingered the envelope. Twenty-six months ago, the Department of Corrections had been threatening her with a lot more than parole.

  And then she’d fallen into Witch Central—a big, happy collection of people with magic and those who loved them. They’d taken her in, mindreading powers, petty crimes, bad attitude, and all. And in between cookiefests and water fights, insisted that she find a better path.

  Reason number two she needed to be alone. She still hadn’t figured out how to say thank you. Her life was way damn better than Lizard Monroe had ever expected or deserved. A great job, a sexy and astonishing guy, and an obnoxiously loyal clan.

  The letter wouldn’t change any of that. But Lizard had known the moment she’d spied it in her mailbox that it was going to change her. Words in writing always managed to do that somehow.

  Unsettled and annoyed, she slid a finger under the flap.

  The single sheet of paper inside was impersonal, printed out by some machine that could care less that she’d hijacked a car. Or that she’d tried to bring it back after one really awesome fast joyride along the coast.

  Joy always had a price.

  Or it had, until she’d fallen in with people who served it up on waffles for breakfast.

  She read the words. Effective October 27, 2013, let it be known that Elizabeth Eleanor Monroe has hereby met all conditions of parole as specified by the court in reference to case #32531257, and is no longer required to comply with relevant sections of the California Penal Code.

  There was more. A dry list of things she was no longer required to do. And then a spark of life. Three short lines at the end, right above the signature of the man she’d met only once.

  Haven’t seen much of you. Keep it that way. Best of luck to you.

  She tried to imagine him sitting at a desk, coffee stains gathering on the paperwork of the latest poor schmuck assigned to his caseload, typing the words by rote into a letter he’d seen a thousand times.

  And couldn’t quite get there. He hadn’t been an awful guy. Maybe he actually meant it.

  And he needn’t fear. If she attempted a detour back to that life, there would be a lot more than one overworked parole officer standing in her way.

  She closed her eyes for a minute, in this space of quiet, and let herself simply sink into the life that was hers now. The last time she’d been this happy, she’d been nine, Gram had still been alive, and the world hadn’t yet shown her how mean it could be.

  She opened her eyes and read the letter one more time. Not really news—more like an epitaph. For the misguided delinquent named after royalty and the wives of presidents.

  People kept asking her what came next. When you were Lizard Monroe, the present was a freaking miracle. Yesterday and tomorrow were bridges she had no intention of crossing.

  She scrunched the letter into a ball and shoved it in her backpack. Time to go. The present was calling, in the form of a date with a trio of four-foot-tall hellions.

  None of whom would ever end up as a case number on a parole officer’s desk.

  -o0o-

  Coffee, ice cream, dinner. In exactly that order.

  Lauren slid onto the couch next to her somnolent husband, very ready to join him in lazy slothfulness. It had been a seriously long week at the office. October was supposed to be dead in real estate, but apparently no one had informed the flood of cheerful house hunters who had been streaming in the doors of Berkeley Realty.

  Devin peeled open one eye. “Well hello, sexy.”

  Almost two years of married bliss and lines like that mostly made her snort. “That’s not on the agenda until after dinner.”

  The slow grin that traveled across his face could easily have convinced her otherwise. “Need your other fixes first, do you?”

  And how. The last client of the day had been unrelentingly chirpy. “What’s the latest from the family gossip pipeline?” She needed something to wash away the memories of squeaky joy over every last antique doorknob and uncracked fireplace tile. Sullivan family antics were always good for a distraction.

  “The triplets have some ideas for your Halloween costume, Jamie wants to know if you can do a magic lesson after lunch tomorrow, and Fuzzball here might be turning into a teenager. He’s gone nocturnal.”

  She reached over and scratched behind the ears of the cat sleeping on her husband’s chest. He hadn’t been nearly so dopey in the wee hours of the full moon. “Aftereffects of your sleep spell, maybe.” The consequences of attacking a snoring witch’s toes in the middle of the night.

  Dev looked vaguely embarrassed. “Nope. Found a really wilted plant on the bench at the foot of the bed this morning. The sleep spell missed.”

  She tried not to laugh—really, she did—and then gave up. So much better than d
oorknobs.

  Her husband only rolled his eyes and ruffled the unruly fur on the cat’s head.

  Her silly dudes. Lauren watched them fondly, mentally backtracking to the other items in Devin’s update. Magic lessons with Aervyn were always fun, and six-year-olds never chirped about architectural features. The Halloween costume was a bigger problem. “Tell your nieces I got boots today.” Ridiculous and black, as ordered. “But I’m not wearing a pink wig.”

  “Nuh, uh—you tell them.” Her husband grinned. “They’re your nieces too. And I think you’d look sexy in pink.”

  Three dictators with curls is what they were. “I don’t think sexy is what they’re aiming at.”

  He winced as a crackling sound hit the room and Fuzzball dug every last claw into his chest. “Oh, and your crystal ball’s been doing its thing again.”

  Lauren couldn’t decide what or who to glare at first. She shot Dev an exasperated look and then aimed a scathing glance at the now-silent white orb sitting on a stand in the corner. Stupid temperamental thing. Modern witches didn’t do business with hocus-pocus.

  Unless they’d inherited it from a grandmotherly Irish witch who pretty much insisted.

  “It crackled every fifteen minutes or so all morning.” Dev sounded unconcerned. “Fuzzball hissed at it after lunch and it went back to sleep.”

  Lauren looked at the cat, already off in feline dreamland, with new appreciation.

  And then the hissing started.

  The orb—sitting in its corner doing a damn impressive imitation of an annoyed cat. Fuzzball took one look and hightailed it under the couch.

  Lucky kitty. Lauren looked at the crystal ball, lines of white light sizzling on its surface, and decided her hopes for a quiet evening with Ben and Jerry had just gone out the window.

  Devin’s hand stroked her back. “Go talk to the darn thing and get it over with.” He, better than anyone, understood how much she treasured Moira’s gift—and how much she hated that it occasionally worked.

  Futures weren’t meant to be seen.

  She got up and headed in the direction of the glass ball. If past experience was any predictor, it would only keep crackling and getting more annoying until she paid it some attention, and the last thing they needed was it learning any more new tricks. “Okay, but if it doesn’t predict gobs of chocolate in my immediate future, I’m tossing it into the Marianas Trench.”

  The orb sent out a particularly loud crackle.

  Lauren restrained the urge to give it a good swift kick. Instead, she picked it up off the stand and headed back to the couch—if she had to listen to the darn thing, she was going to get comfortable first. Fuzzball hissed one last time in protest and crawled under an armchair, mewing quietly.

  Deserter.

  Dev relocated to the armchair, cat guard and moral support. They knew the crystal ball objected to his presence any closer.

  Lauren tried to clear her mind of clutter. On a day like this one, that was no easy task. She gave up after a fruitless few seconds and just imagined rivers of chocolate instead. If the orb objected, it could darn well pick a new day to have a conversation.

  She got the oddest feeling it was amused. And hungry.

  Lovely. Just what she needed—an oversized marble with personality.

  The vague connection, or whatever it had been, snapped shut. And the milky white layers on the surface of the orb began to shift.

  Lauren tried to imagine sweeping them away with her mind—it was damn hard to see through an inch of fog.

  The murky mess shifted long enough to give her a crystal-clear view of a single, haunting image.

  And then it was gone.

  She stared at the suddenly quiet depths. Bloody hell.

  Dev was at her side the second the orb went silent. “That was fast. You okay?”

  Lauren nodded. Okay enough.

  “What did you see?”

  “I don’t know.” She pulled up the image in her head again, trying to capture all the nuance, and shoveled it his direction.

  He frowned at the picture in his head. “What is that—some kind of bad Halloween joke?”

  She knew what he saw. Her young associate realtor, tromping through a graveyard—chased by a ghost and a guy in shadows. “I don’t think the crystal ball has much of a sense of humor.”

  Her husband was still scowling. “It looks like the cover of a bad demon-hunting novel. What the heck kind of message is that?”

  Exactly. And if it had been some anonymous person being stalked in the shadows, she could have shrugged and left well enough alone. “What am I supposed to tell Lizard—to stay out of graveyards?”

  “Probably not bad advice at this time of year.” Dev frowned. “Maybe we’re not supposed to take it literally.”

  That would be a new twist. The brief glimpses the ball had offered in the past had sometimes been disturbing, but never mysterious.

  He ran his hand down her hair. “You could go see Moira.”

  Visiting the Irish matriarch of the Nova Scotia witching community was always high on the list of Lauren’s pleasures—but it wasn’t faith in hocus-pocus she needed right now, or wise green eyes. And it was the middle of the night there. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  Devin’s mind echoed her own unease. Witch Central didn’t ignore warnings, even from crystal balls.

  Lauren picked up her phone and pinged Lizard. Where are you?

  Under a foot of flour. Cupcake invasion. Aren’t you supposed to be kissing some sexy guy tonight?

  Lauren chuckled. Good. Nowhere near a graveyard. Working on it.

  Go away. Or bring cleaning supplies. Your choice.

  Lauren leaned back into her husband’s strength, choice made. Whatever had just begun, it wasn’t happening tonight.

  And Witch Central also believed deeply in evenings steeped in love. She and Lizard just had slightly different versions in mind.

  -o0o-

  Lizard blew aside a cloud of flour dust. Good thing cupcakes weren’t all that particular about ingredient quantities.

  Mia, in charge of the flour sifter, grinned. “Mama’s going to be so surprised.” Her triplet sisters nodded in agreement, handling joint aim of the flour bag into the sifter.

  Cupcakes for the multitudes.

  And somehow Witch Central’s resident ex-delinquent had been recruited as leader of the stealth-baked-goods squad. Lizard thought of the letter from the parole board and snorted—at least this kind of trouble wasn’t in the criminal code. “I don’t think anything surprises your mom.”

  Three blonde chefs giggled.

  Nell was mother to the world’s most powerful witchling, three generous and bossy girls, and a newly minted teenager with the baddest baseball arm in the West. A few cupcakes, even topped with dried blood and cracked eyeballs, weren’t going to make her blink.

  Lizard surveyed the remaining ingredients and handed the baking soda to Shay, triplet most likely to actually measure. The cocoa canister went to the far more exuberant Mia—there was no such thing as too much chocolate. Ginia, the third triplet, reached for the small stainless-steel bowl. The only one of the three with magic, it was her job to convince the pile of shredded orange rind to turn bright red and gloopy.

  One batch of cupcake blood, coming up.

  Lizard handled the more mundane task of cracking eggs and creaming sugar and butter. Oceans of it—baking in Witch Central was never done on a small scale, but this particular offering was getting served up to half the neighborhood too. Halloween outreach.

  The cracked eyeballs would draw the kids like flies. And probably most of the adults, too.

  Mia glanced over from her cocoa-sifting duties, mind coated in impish glee. “Don’t worry about Josh. I bet Uncle Jamie and Uncle Devin are going to keep him totally busy and he won’t miss you at all.”

  Jamie and Devin had kidnapped her usual Friday-night date with threats of world domination and soul-crushing. Lizard wasn’t sure if that meant gaming or basketball, but e
ither way, Josh Hennessey would be having fun. And likely not losing, either—everything the guy touched turned shiny.

  Maybe even her.

  However, she had a rep to maintain. Lizard scowled in the direction of the three grinning demon children. “You guys had this all planned, huh? What makes you think I wanted to spend my Friday night baking cupcakes?” She tossed in a touch of whining for good measure. “I have four showings and two open houses tomorrow.”

  Ginia’s eyes gleamed. “We could help you make signs after we finish the cupcakes.”

  Lizard snorted. “Not a chance.” Pink-and-glittery open-house signs were one of those things you’d just never live down. And they’d be lucky to finish the baking by midnight, which meant yet another giggly girl sleepover in her miniscule living room.

  Having the smallest home in all of Witch Central made not the tiniest impression on anyone—they just invaded anyhow. Wedged themselves and plans for three hundred cupcakes into a kitchen that had been built for single guys and TV dinners.

  Shay slid down the bench seat, eyes thoughtful. “Are you okay? We can ask Josh to come back if it’s making you sad.”

  Crap. Lizard looked down at eyes that were observant and wise and still those of a young girl with feelings easily hurt. “Nah. He’s a lousy cook.” He was rapidly becoming a better one—her galley kitchen had seen a lot of action lately. “I was just thinking that this apartment needs a bigger kitchen.”

  Mia laughed, oblivious to the undercurrents at the table, and streaked flour down her sister’s cheek. “Or a cleaner one.”

  Ginia, catching on faster, elbowed her ebullient triplet. And cornered Lizard with the kind of stare that didn’t belong on an eleven-year-old’s face. “Maybe you need a bigger apartment.”

  She did not. The scruffy little place and its eccentric neighbors totally suited her. Close to work, close to the hole-in-the-wall diner, and far away from cookie-cutter suburbia and white picket fences.

  “You’re a real estate agent. You could have any house you like.” Mia dumped her cocoa and flour mix into the monster bowl, oblivious to details like actual recipe directions.

  Lizard handed over the equally monster wooden spoon. “Houses need money.” Which she was accumulating an astonishing amount of lately. She focused on a more pressing constraint. “And you have to mow the grass and stuff.”