A Modern Witch Read online

  Nell: Way to take one for the team, brother mine.

  Jamie: That’s a freebie. You owe me for the rest. I think it’s still legal to shoot the messenger here in Chicago.

  Nell: Oh, shit. What rest?

  Jamie: Well, I ran a couple of really basic tests while we talked. She didn’t notice anything when I grabbed power before the levitation spell, and I did it fairly loudly, on purpose. So her elemental talents are likely weak at best, but she can read broadcasted mind images, and the volume doesn’t have to be all that high.

  Moira: A mind witch, then.

  Jamie: I think so, but you know as well as I do how tricky mind-witch powers can be to evaluate in a crowd.

  Moira: Indeed, I do. I also know that it’s a little easier for that talent to fly under the radar. Mind witches don’t set things on fire, but she may well be unintentionally manipulating the minds around her.

  Jamie: I understand the risks well enough. The problem will be convincing Lauren.

  Sophie: How did she react to the mind broadcasting? I presume she read what you sent, so surely she’s aware that’s not typical?

  Jamie: If a strange guy showed up, did a few magic tricks, and then you got some images from his mind, what would you think?

  Nell: Crap. She thinks you did it.

  Jamie: Bingo. She might believe I’m a witch, but it’s going to be a whole different can of worms to convince her that she is. I can’t do that without at least some cooperation on her part.

  Nell: Dang. I was hoping this might resonate for her at some level—most of our trainees have at least some sense that they have unusual talents.

  Jamie: I’m pretty sure she was telling you the truth when she believes she doesn’t have any. Empathy’s not one of my stronger skills, but I didn’t get any sense she was hedging. I might have made a little headway asking about intuition right at the end of our conversation. She’s the top realtor in her office.

  Nell: I wondered about that. Mind powers would be pretty useful for a realtor.

  Jamie: Hopefully I planted a seed, but mostly I think she was just backpedaling from the weird guy who can levitate plates.

  Sophie: Well, maybe first contact was a little rough, but this is one of the reasons we started Witches’ Chat. We may not have intended to reach an untrained witch this quickly, but we did.

  Moira: Aye, we have a responsibility here. An untrained witch is a dangerous witch.

  Sophie: Not that I don’t believe you, Aunt Moira, but what are the possible dangers here?

  Jamie: The biggest is what Moira already mentioned. Lauren could be manipulating minds around her without realizing it. Pushing people into homes they don’t really want, manipulating negotiations, that kind of thing.

  Sophie: That’s not good.

  Moira: Also, like other talents, mind powers can amplify in times of great emotion or stress. There was a woman back when my grandmother was a girl. No one knew she was a mind witch until she went into labor. It was a particularly difficult birth. No one in the room with her was ever right in the head again, including the babe.

  Sophie: That’s awful. How tragic.

  Jamie: Now I know why you all sent me to surprise her. Thanks a lot, guys.

  Nell: Be brave, brother mine. She’s not likely to come up with anything a trainee hasn’t done to you before.

  Jamie: That’s not exactly comforting.

  Moira: It isn’t meant to be. Untrained witches should always be handled with care. Jamie, you need to speak with her again.

  Jamie: I don’t think I’m exactly her favorite person right now. Anyone else want to come to Chicago? Weather’s lovely.

  Moira: Perhaps she just needs some time to think. It must have come as a bit of a shock to her.

  Jamie: Even if she steadies a bunch, it’s still a pretty sticky situation. I really need to be alone with her to do a decent assessment of her mind power. Other people send out too much mental interference.

  Nell: Try a park or something.

  Jamie: It’s as cold as the North Pole here.

  Nell: Nuts. Well, why don’t you hang with Nash tonight and go visit her in the morning. Maybe a good night’s sleep will change her perspective some.

  Jamie: It’s a little weird to show up on her doorstep. She probably already thinks I’m stalking her.

  Moira: You haven’t a choice, Jamie. You can hardly test her for mind powers in the middle of a crowded restaurant. Hopefully you’ve established enough trust today that she’ll let you in. If not, we’ll keep trying.

  Moira stood up from her computer and went to fetch a cup of tea.

  It was a delicate business, an untrained witch. No one wanted to invade Lauren’s privacy, but if she was a mind witch, a stranger in her home was only the first of many intimacies they would request.

  And she couldn’t shake the feeling that this particular turn of events had been meant. Fate could be a very tricky thing.

  …

  It might be a two-pint night, Lauren thought as she considered the mostly empty container of ice cream. Lunch with a witch seemed like it ought to qualify.

  She nestled deeper into her beloved couch. She’d worked the entire interior design of her downtown loft around the couch, and it had been worth it. It was her nest—a squishy, earth-toned mass of deep pillows and interesting textures.

  Cuddling her feet under the handmade throw that had been Nat’s housewarming gift, Lauren leaned her head back into a pillow and exhaled deeply. When you’d had a really weird day, there was no better place to hide from the world.

  If it weren’t for the matter of a couple hundred plates floating in the air, she could just slide Jamie into the ranks of her more offbeat acquaintances. However, the plates were hard to ignore. She supposed that had been his point. If you were trying to convince someone you were really a witch, fancy tricks were probably pretty handy.

  And that wasn’t really the crux of the problem. Lauren sighed. If you couldn’t be honest with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, you were in serious trouble.

  She liked quirky people. Heck, she kind of collected them. Telekinesis was a little quirkier than most, but if that’s all this was, she’d probably just add Jamie to her collection of interesting friends. See what other cool tricks he could do.

  But why in all that was holy did he have to think she was a witch too? That was kind of a deal breaker on the relaxed-but-quirky friendship front.

  She sighed again. It was also hard to dismiss. The man floated plates. Maybe witchy powers could sense other witchy powers. Nell’s fetching spell had seemed to think it had grabbed a witch. And pretty much everyone who knew her could vouch for her uncanny instincts.

  God, was she seriously sitting here wondering if she had some mysterious powers tucked away under her kidney, or something? Lauren unfolded her legs and dug out of the couch. Definitely time for a second pint.

  Chapter 5

  Jamie bespelled the outer-entrance door lock on Lauren’s apartment building. No point warning her he was on the way up. He hoped the coffee and bagels would earn him enough of a pardon to get past her front door. In this weather, anyone should appreciate coffee.

  He’d hung out with Nash last night and done the guy thing—pizza, beer, talking about random shit as they surfed the sports channel. If he was really lucky, Lauren had done whatever suspicious women do at night and was in a more receptive mood this morning.

  A man with three older sisters should know how to handle female moods. Hell. A man with three older sisters knew when to run for cover.

  Nell was really going to owe him. Schlepping all Aervyn’s teleported stuff back for weeks on end had been bad enough, but at least she’d fed him well, and it was warm in California. He wondered if magical powers ever just froze to death.

  Did the woman have to live four stories up in a building with no elevator? Who designed places like this? Grumbling, he climbed the last few steps and knocked on Lauren’s door.

  His timing was excellent. She still
looked half asleep. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t get anywhere with a fully-awake Lauren.

  She obviously gave serious consideration to closing the door in his face. He tried to look as innocuous and unwitchlike as possible, and resisted the temptation to send out even tiny calming vibes. The decision needed to be entirely hers.

  “Coffee first. Talk later.” She grabbed a cup and walked back into her apartment. Jamie took a deep breath and followed her in. She hadn’t dumped the coffee on him. Yet.

  Recognizing a fellow coffee addict, he said nothing, just unwrapped a bagel & egg sandwich and handed her half. For a few minutes, they ate and drank at the kitchen counter in relatively companionable silence.

  “I appreciate the coffee and breakfast. Do I want to know why you’re outside my door at nine on a Saturday morning? I won’t even ask how you know where I live.” Lauren picked up a funky green can and started watering her plants.

  “Nothing weird. Power of Google.” Jamie paused until Lauren turned to look at him. “I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable yesterday.”

  “You’re making me uncomfortable now.”

  Jamie tried humor. It had gotten him out of a tight spot with her at the restaurant. “Usually I like hearing that from a woman, but I’m guessing it’s not my charm and good looks that are making you nervous.”

  Lauren snickered. “I’m not sure whether to be grateful or frustrated, but I don’t think there’s that kind of buzz between us.”

  “Thanks, I think. Probably good in this case, though. Sexual vibes can get in the way of a good assessment. We need to know if you have any power, Lauren. If you do, it needs to be trained.”

  Lauren gave him a steady look. He had to give her credit; she didn’t shake easily. “You push your luck. I’m still wondering whether it was a good idea to let you in. Coffee’s a decent bribe, but I’m not sure it lets you stay.”

  She resumed watering her plants. Jamie was pretty sure they were all drowned by now. “Yesterday,” Lauren said, “you seemed pretty convinced I had power. Why is your story different today?”

  Oh, boy. Jamie had hoped it would soften her discomfort to let the assessment speak for itself, rather than the bull-in-a-china-shop approach that had failed miserably yesterday. Clearly she wasn’t going to let him off that particular hook.

  “Can we park that for a bit? If we start doing some of the basic steps in an assessment, the answer will be pretty obvious to both of us fairly shortly. Give me an hour. If you still think you’re not a witch in an hour, you’ll be right, and I’ll leave you in peace.”

  Lauren’s eyes were back to suspicious. “What exactly is an assessment? I don’t want you inside my head.”

  “Fair enough. I think Nell told you that I work—we both work, sometimes—as trainers for young witches. The first step in training is to do some simple tests to identify where someone’s power lies.

  “There are seven basic categories of witching talent. Some witches only manifest one type of power; a very few have all seven. Most of us have one or two stronger gifts and a couple of minor talents. The tests are simple and as non-intrusive as possible. We do them on children regularly. They’re nothing to fear.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  Jamie took a gamble. “You let me in. I think you did because at least some tiny part of you wonders if I might be right.”

  Lauren sat down and just looked at him for a minute, clearly having an internal debate.

  Jamie resisted the urge to tap into her upper layer of thoughts. First, it wasn’t strictly ethical. Second, she’d shown some initial signs of mind powers yesterday, and she might actually feel him tap in. He suspected that would not end well.

  He read her assent before she spoke it. The power of coffee and bagels shouldn’t be underestimated.

  “Okay,” Lauren said. “For now, I’ll roll with this. You have an hour to try to convince me that I have more than just good instincts.” She sighed. “And I’ll do my best to keep an open mind.”

  Phew, thought Jamie. Now he just had to tread carefully during the test. The last person he’d tested was a cute seven-year-old girl missing three front teeth. She’d been entranced when he made rainbows dance inside her head. Lauren seemed destined to be a little pricklier.

  He guided them both toward the couch in the main living space. It looked insanely comfortable, and was pretty clearly where she hung out at home. The safer she felt, the better the test would go. Lauren settled on one end of the couch and he folded into the other, deliberately stacking some pillows between them. A clear physical separation was best, at least for now.

  “I’m guessing this will be easier for you if I give you a bit of an introduction to what I’ll be doing and what we’re looking for?” At Lauren’s nod, Jamie kept going.

  “In the past, witching talents tended to be categorized on results—you had weather witches, kitchen witches, mindspeaking witches, witches that were good with charms and potions. In recent years, there’s been a lot of effort to understand how witchcraft works, and we tend to categorize a little differently now.”

  “Sounds pretty scientific for ‘double, double, toil and trouble’.”

  Jamie grinned. “Shakespeare didn’t help us out any more than Harry Potter. Sorry, I can skip the details if you want.”

  “No, that’s fine—I like information. So, how do you classify modern witches?”

  “The first question we ask is what kinds of power you can tap. There are five different power sources. The way you do magic, and the types of magic you can do, depend on what types of power you can access.”

  “So like earth, air, fire, water?”

  “Those are all elemental energies, which are one type of power source. Many witches work with only one or two elements. Those with earth power, like Sophie, tend to be very good with plants and herbs. People who work with air and water can really impact weather. I have a cousin who chases storms for a living. Fire witches were battle mages in the old days. It’s not a hugely common talent these days, perhaps because most battle mages didn’t live long enough to pass on their genes.”

  “So, magic is genetic?” Lauren looked intrigued. That was a good sign.

  “Not always,” Jamie said. “I have a cousin who does witch genealogy. In some families, the inheritance patterns are really obvious. Other times, they make no sense at all. Then you get someone like Sophie, who isn’t related to any witches, but has strong talent.”

  Lauren finished off her bagel. “Okay. So far, I follow you. What are the other four power sources?”

  “Mind powers are one.”

  “Like telepaths?”

  “Yeah, and empaths. Those are receptive skills, when you can read someone else’s words or emotions. Most mind witches can also send into someone else’s head.”

  Lauren raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound so friendly.”

  “Like most witching powers, it can be used for harm or good. One of Moira’s daughters works in a hospital with children about to go into surgery. She pushes them words and feelings of comfort. It’s pretty cool to be able to calm a scared kid facing a difficult operation.”

  Lauren nodded slowly. “I remember having my tonsils out. It was terrifying.”

  Jamie debated with himself, and then took the opening. “Hospitals are full of lots of scared, hurt people. You might have sensed more of that than most kids would.”

  Lauren raised the other eyebrow. “Interesting theory. Let’s go back to the science. Elemental powers, mind powers. What else?”

  “Life-force energy. That’s usually where you find the healers. Most healers are limited by the amount of their own life force they can safely use up. Some, like Sophie, can link their healing to elementals and not drain themselves as much.”

  “Is it dangerous for the healer?”

  “It can be,” Jamie said. “All witchcraft can be dangerous. That’s why training matters; it decreases the risks.”

  “Cheery. What else have you got for me
?”

  Jamie wasn’t used to students who wanted to hear this stuff. “The last two power sources are a lot less common. Some witches are good at what used to be called animal magics—speaking to animals, or even shapeshifting. A lot of shamans had these kinds of powers. We’re still learning and testing, but the power source seems to be our own DNA, the energies of a shared evolution and prehistory.”

  Lauren’s eyebrows just kept traveling higher. Jamie hoped it was a good thing. After shapeshifting, maybe mind powers would sound fairly normal. “Some witches can access power in the astral plane, or the afterlife. This is where you find your mediums, time travelers, fortunetellers, oracles. They’re pretty rare.”

  Lauren laughed. “Not so much. I can turn on the TV and hire you as many as you’d like for just two dollars a minute.”

  Jamie grimaced. “They don’t do us any favors either. There are plenty of fakes.”

  “If I pretend I’m crazy, I can almost wrap my head around a weather witch or someone who can mindspeak. Time traveling, shapeshifting—sorry. Too big a leap for my first day.”

  Jamie grinned. “Tell me about it. I have a great-uncle who shapeshifts. It’s entirely creepy. The first time I saw him shift, I was about four, and I had nightmares for a week.”

  “Why would he do that where a child could see?”

  He hoped telling Lauren some of his family’s crazier escapades wasn’t a bad idea. “It wasn’t on purpose. I’d been playing snake wars with my brothers. We’d bespell little plastic snakes and fly them through the air at each other.

  “My uncle happened to walk around the corner at the wrong time and got dive-bombed by plastic snakes. He was old and couldn’t see all that well, and apparently he was terrified of snakes. He shapeshifted into a hawk in self-defense. Scared the three of us silly.”

  Lauren shook her head. “Sounds like you earned that one. Your brothers are witches too? How did your parents survive?”

  “Mom’s a witch, and a good one. She has some precog—she sometimes catches bits of the future. We didn’t get away with much, although I still don’t know how much of that was magic and how much was mama instinct.”