A Hidden Witch

chapter 5

Nell sat down at her computer and prepared to get some serious grocery shopping done. Not only did she have her hordes to feed, but poor morning-sick Nat couldn’t stand the sight of even online food, so she had two grocery orders to fill.

Aervyn said there was only one baby in Nat’s tummy, but Nell had to wonder. Her nausea had been far worse with the triplets.

She’d only made it as far as the virtual cheese aisle when a Witches’ Chat alert popped up on her screen.

Nell: Good morning, Moira.

Moira: It’s not, actually—it’s Marcus. Hang on a minute while I change my user name.

Marcus: There, that’s better.

Nell: We can do video chat, if you like.

Marcus: No, I’d prefer this conversation stay private for the time being.

Nell: What can I do for you? How is Elorie doing?

Marcus: You’ll know that before I will. She’s on a plane heading your direction.

Nell: Yeah, we’ll pick her up in a few hours. I don’t think we’ll be able to entirely avoid talking about what happened, but we’ll try to keep it out of the way of her art show.

Marcus: Isn’t being a witch more important than any hobby?

Nell: Spoken like an old-school witch. Elorie is a deeply talented artist, and if what I hear is true, she’ll likely earn more in the four days of the Art Fair than most people in Nova Scotia earn in six months.

Marcus: I stand corrected. Her bobbles are attractive enough, but they’re just beach glass. Decoration.

Nell: This from the guy who has the biggest costume collection in Realm?

Marcus: Those are necessary for my game strategy.

Nell: Dammit, warn me when you’re going to be funny. I just spit coffee all over my monitor.

Marcus: Try a simple kitchen spell, dear.

Nell: I’m not a kitchen witch, and only Moira gets to call me dear. If you’re not careful, Gandalf, I’ll be helping my daughter take you down a notch.

Marcus: She doesn’t need your help.

Nell: Oh, really.

Marcus: I’m the biggest challenge she has left, and it’s not going to take her much longer to leave me in the dust. She took a good run at it earlier today. The little punk sent a sneaker to try to infiltrate one of my spells. I’m not entirely convinced there was only one. She’s a very tricky little witchling.

Nell: Well, I guess you’re not a total loss.

Marcus: What I am is the only witch in Nova Scotia who believes your computer scans. Which means, like it or not, I’m in a position to help.

Nell: I don’t know that there’s much of anything to do until we can figure out what kind of power source Elorie’s accessing. The girls and Jamie are huddling over code, trying to figure it out.

Marcus: Warrior Girl got me to thinking this morning, and I have an idea about that.

Nell: All ears.

Marcus: Her power might be connected to the online world in some way. A kind of power we haven’t seen before.

Nell: It seems a little hard to believe she has some kind of completely unique magical talent.

Marcus: Exactly. Perhaps she’s not unique.

Nell: Now you’ve lost me.

Marcus: Pay better attention, then.

Nell: Careful, or I’ll have Moira drag out her cauldron for you to scrub.

Marcus: I’m in possession of an excellent scrubbing spell. Let me try to explain more simply. Elorie’s not the first witch to combine technology and magic.

Nell: Well, there’s spellcoding, but that’s different.

Marcus: How?

Nell: It’s a blend of magical power sources with online code. But the power sources are the traditional ones.

Marcus: Correct. Can every witch spellcode?

Nell: Hell, no.

Marcus: Why not?

Nell: What is this, a test? Because most of them are crappy coders, for one.

Marcus: Agreed. But think about Realm. There are plenty of players in the witch-only levels who are pathetic spellcoders, and it’s not always well-correlated to either their coding capabilities or their strength as a witch.

Nell: True… Wait—are you suggesting that spellcoding is a separate talent?

Marcus: Something like that.

Nell: Keep talking.

Marcus: If spellcoding was simply about adding good code together with decent magical strength, then I think the rankings in Realm would be very different. Look at your daughter. She’s an innovative little witchling, and a smart coder, but she can’t come close to matching my magical power yet. She’s been a witch for what, a few months now?

Nell: Huh. Yeah, she’s leapfrogged some pretty skilled witches recently. You don’t think it’s just her coding skills?

Marcus: Your husband Daniel has reason to respect my coding abilities. I’m not quite at his level, but not all that far behind, either. Your daughter would find me more difficult to beat code-to-code.

Nell: That’s not the impression you gave her.

Marcus: Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t eat young girls for breakfast.

Nell: That’s still open for debate. So, you think she has some separate dose of spellcoding talent.

Marcus: I’m wondering if perhaps there is a magical ability we’ve never really isolated and identified because it tends to come along with other powers.

Nell: Ah. And you think Elorie might possess this talent.

Marcus: Yes. And only that talent.

Nell: But any known talent leaves power traces. Why wouldn’t this one?

Marcus: It does. It simply leaves them in a different place.

Nell: ??

Marcus: Online, Nell. That would be why Moira and I can’t read it, but your scanner did.

Nell: It leaves virtual power traces?

Marcus: A fascinating thought, no? And one I leave with you to pursue. There are very few computer-competent witches on this coast, but you have access to two groups with deep coding skills and witch power. A good test population, I would think.

Nell: Yeah, the witch-level Realm players would go nuts to help with this. What’s the second group?

Marcus: Your family, my dear. If this is a talent that runs in family trees, I’d predict it runs straight through you.

Nell stared at her suddenly blank monitor. Dammit, he’d just called her “dear” again. The man had no social skills and some seriously outdated ideas about women, but he’d jumped to a plausible theory faster than any of the spellcoding geniuses in her household.

She looked at her hands ruefully. Spellcoding came so naturally she’d never really tried to break down how it worked. Leave it to some crusty old hermit witch to ask the obvious.

Time to page the troops. She’d set them loose on Marcus’s brainstorm before heading to the airport to fetch Elorie.

~ ~ ~

Nell had a strange moment of déjà vu as she waited with Aervyn in the always-bustling San Francisco airport. Why was it that her fetching spell kept finding these women who were unhappy to be witches? Maybe next time around they could grab some nice person who would say “thank you” and show up for the occasional solstice circle.

Lauren’s first days as a witch had been more than a little rocky, and Elorie’s didn’t look to be any easier—hell, they couldn’t even reach consensus that she was a witch.

“Mama, do you need a snack?” Aervyn asked. “You feel grumpy.”

Nell grinned. He was probably right. He was also angling for one of the cookies she had stashed in her bag. She pulled out the cookie container and handed it to her permanently hungry son.

Aervyn opened the tin and studied the contents for a moment. Then he handed Nell two of the three cookies inside. “Here. I think you need more cookies than I do. I’m only a teeny, tiny bit grumpy.”

Punk witchling. She rubbed his head and took the two cookies. Passengers started flooding out the arrivals gate, and Nell tried to spot Elorie.

“I see her, Mama!”

Elorie waved and walked over to meet them, carrying the world’s biggest backpack.

“That’s a huge bag, girl,” Nell said. “How’d you get that on the plane?”

Elorie sighed. “I’m not sure, exactly, but it has most of my work for the show, and I wasn’t about to let it out of my sight. Customs was a small hassle, but I’m here now, and grateful.”

Aervyn held out half his cookie. “Here, have some of my cookie. It’s good for making the grumpies go away.”

Elorie smiled, clearly used to questionable witchling manners. “I’m not really grumpy, just tired, but thank you. I feel like I ate breakfast three days ago.”

“You didn’t eat for three days?” Aervyn’s eyes got big. He wiggled his fingers just a little and held out the much larger cookie canister he’d obviously just teleported from the kitchen at home. “Here, have lots of cookies. Mama can make more if we run out.”

Nell shook her head and laughed. “Welcome to Witch Central, where life is always a bit crazy. Aervyn, send the cookies back home, please. Elorie already has enough to carry.” And the smell of Nutella cookies might cause an airport stampede.

Aervyn contemplated Elorie for a moment, and then wiggled his fingers again. Nell didn’t have to wonder what he was up to for long. Elorie squealed and spun around. “My backpack!”

Nell tried to reassure her with a look. “It’s okay. Aervyn just ported your bag to our house.” The look she gave her son was more pointed. “That bag has some things in it that are really important to Elorie. You scared her when you made it disappear without asking.”

She could see his brain twisting that around for a minute. “I’m really sorry, Elorie. I didn’t mean to scare you. Do you want me to bring your bag back?”

Elorie shrugged her shoulders. “No, actually. Thanks, it’s a lot lighter this way.” She reached for the cookie tin Aervyn was still holding and grinned. “Besides, now I have two hands free for cookies.”

Phew, thought Nell. Thank God for visitors who could roll with witchling antics. That would make the next few days a lot easier. Normal life at the Walker house tended to register pretty high on the chaos scale.

Aervyn reached for Elorie’s hand to lead her out of the airport. “So, how come you don’t want to be a witch?”

Didn’t I tell you to wait until she was settled before you asked questions like that? Nell sent to her son.

I did, Mama. I gave her cookies, and ported her bag, and everything. Besides, you want to know, too. Everybody does.

Her son might need a refresher on mind-witch manners, but he was right. Nell did want to know.

Elorie met Nell’s eyes for a moment, and then she looked down at Aervyn. “When I was little like you, I wanted to be a witch more than anything. But I grew up and found out I’m not a witch. That used to make me a little sad, but now I know it’s just who I’m supposed to be.”

“Nuh, uh.” Aervyn blew off her answer with the confidence of a four-year-old who knew he was right. “You melted a computer, and Uncle Jamie and I can’t do that. You must be a witch, just like Superman.”

Oh, crap. Nell was pretty sure Elorie’s confused face meant no one had actually told her about the melted computer. She linked elbows with their visitor and pulled out the best distraction she could think of. “So, do you think my daughters have found your backpack full of jewelry yet?”

Elorie turned a little pale. Nell reached into the tin and gave her a cookie.

~ ~ ~

Jamie walked up to the door of Nell’s house, holding the hand of his lovely wife and wishing he didn’t feel like he was about to lose yet another argument. “It just seems like we should be extra careful with our girl in there.”

Nat snorted. “Babies are supposed to bounce around a little. That’s why they live inside a nice water cushion.”

A personal water balloon didn’t seem like nearly enough to keep a baby safe. “I just don’t see a lot of pregnant women doing handstands.” Watching Nat do yoga used to give his hormones a good kick. Now it just scared the crap out of him. He kept expecting her to land in a big belly flop on the floor.

She touched his face. “She’s more protected in my belly, even upside-down, than she’ll be the whole rest of her life. Relax, Daddy—she’ll be fine.”

Nell opened the door as Jamie tried to marshal his rebuttal. Maybe she’d be on his side. “Hey, sister mine. Did you ever do handstands when you were pregnant?”

“Do you honestly think I’m dumb enough to answer that question? Come on in.”

Nat hugged her sister-in-law. “Feel free to tell him the truth.”

“I don’t do handstands ever, so no. But we were in the middle of a new Realm release when I was four months pregnant with the girls. I coded sixteen hours a day and lived on Doritos and peanut butter. They turned out fine.”

Jamie remembered. He’d never been able to eat Doritos again after watching Nell dip handfuls of them straight into the peanut butter jar.

Nat’s face brightened. “Hey, do you have any Doritos? Those sound totally yummy.”

Nell laughed. “Sorry, no. I can’t even look at them anymore.”

His wife wanted to eat Doritos? The woman who made him eat vegetables and tofu for dinner? He’d Googled everything he could find on what to expect during pregnancy. When this was all over, he was going to create a new website for expectant fathers—one that told the truth. Nobody warned you about Doritos and handstands.

Both women were looking at him expectantly. He’d clearly missed something. “What?”

Nell shook her head in dismay. “Doritos, brother mine. Your job is to procure whatever weird things the mother of your child wants to eat, at whatever weird time of day she wants to eat them.”

He took mental notes for his new website. Fortunately, Doritos were easy. Closing his eyes for a moment, Jamie mentally raided the cupboard in his basement. Nell might not eat them anymore, but her three girls were all Dorito fiends, so he kept a large supply on hand.

Nat dove into the teleported bag like a teenage boy. “Thanks, sweetie.”

Drawn by Dorito fumes, several sets of feet came thudding down the stairs. “Uncle Jamie, Auntie Nat!”

A little slower than the triplets, Elorie smiled and waved in welcome.

Oh, crap. Not again. Even as he felt himself being pulled under, Jamie was aware enough to hold onto something other than his pregnant wife. He grabbed his sister instead and felt visions of the future roll over him.

When he snapped back into the present, he was sitting against the wall, Nat crouched at his feet, and way too many sets of eyes peering at him.

Once she’d decided he was okay, Nat smiled and spoke very quietly. “Are you going to have precog episodes every time you see a pretty girl?”

God, he really, really hoped not. Meeting Nat had triggered the mother of all precogs, but this one had been pretty loaded, too. And not one he really wanted to discuss while sitting on the floor surrounded by inquiring minds.

He struggled to his feet and faced Nell’s new houseguest. “Hi, Elorie. Welcome to insanity, and sorry about almost passing out on you.”

Jamie was just contemplating whether he could skirt the whole issue of his precog episode when Aervyn’s voice piped up from the crowd. “See, Elorie—I knowed you were a witch.”

Aervyn! Jamie had just enough energy left to halt his nephew before he let anything else out of the bag.

Fortunately, Nell, who was very used to directing chaos, caught the edge of his mental blast. “Aervyn, can you and your sisters go get snacks and drinks for everyone from the kitchen?”

She herded the adults into the living room and raised an eyebrow at her brother. What the heck’s going on?

In answer, Jamie sent back a snapshot from his precog—Elorie, belly enormous, standing at Ginia’s right shoulder in the magical light of a full circle at peak power.

What is up with you and precog and pregnant women?

He shrugged helplessly. Now what the hell do we do? No one was better thinking on the fly than his sister.

Nell looked at him for a moment. Leave it be, for now. Precog isn’t a guarantee, so we really don’t know anything more than we knew before. One step at a time, brother mine. Let’s see if we can learn more about our maybe-witch via some slightly more scientific methods.

Damn, he hated precog.

~ ~ ~

Moira: Hello, Nell—do you have our Elorie?

Nell: We do. She’s settling into her room now, which really means she has my three daughters urging her to pull out every last piece of jewelry and show it off.

Moira: She makes truly splendid things. I have a new pendant she made for me with some lovely blue glass in it.

Nell: I hope she brought enough with her. I think half the witch population of California plans to visit her at the Art Fair.

Moira: I do appreciate that, Nell. She was a little nervous about bringing her designs to such a fancy exhibition. It’s a bit different than selling it in a few shops like she does here.

Nell: We support our own, you know that. And witch or not, Elorie is one of our own.

Sophie: Do me a favor and snag me a couple of things if you go, Nell. Something green, maybe.

Moira: And good evening to you, Sophie. I didn’t see you come in.

Nell: She’s a sneaky witch, our Sophie.

Sophie: Ha. I was brewing a couple of potions on the stove—sorry I’m a little late.

Nell: Can we switch to video chat? I spent a lot of time coding today, and my fingers are tired.

Moira: I’m not entirely sure how to do that on this new computer of mine. It doesn’t have one of those wee cameras sitting on top.

Nell: If it’s new, it likely has the camera built in—try clicking on the video chat button and see what happens.

Just like magic, Moira thought as she watched Nell and Sophie come to life on her screen. “Isn’t that lovely, now.”

“I’m envious of your new computer,” Sophie said. “Mine feels like a clunker, even though it’s only two years old.”

Nell snickered. “The witchlings in my basement are having fun melting laptop hard drives. If you want to donate yours to the cause, just let me know.”

Hard drive. Moira tried to get her creaky brain working. That had been one of the words Marcus used when he tried to explain what had happened to her old computer. “And why would you be melting computers?”

The guilty look on Nell’s face was timeless.

“Nell Aria Walker, what kind of trouble are you getting into?”

Sophie burst out laughing. “Aunt Moira, you do that very well, but Nell’s a grown woman. I’m guessing it won’t be quite as effective on her as it is on witchlings.”

Nell rolled her eyes. “It might. That was pretty good—I might have you give me lessons when I bring my crew out this summer.”

An old witch could still be embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Nell, forgive me—I’ve been a wee bit unsettled lately. This has something to do with Elorie, doesn’t it? Marcus is convinced she’s the one who caused my old computer to stop working.”

“It’s more than that,” Nell said, looking serious. “Someone utterly melted the insides of your laptop. That’s no easy feat, even with witch power. Aervyn couldn’t do it, even with an assist from Jamie.”

It was good to know there were things beyond Aervyn’s power just yet. Small boys needed some limits. However, the rest of what Nell was saying seemed like nonsense. “Then why do you believe Elorie was involved? Things don’t seem to be very well made these days, so perhaps my little machine just broke.”

Nell shook her head. “I’ve seen pretty much every way a computer can break, and I’ve never seen anything like this. With three witches in the room when it happened, it’s not a big leap to believe power was involved.”

It wasn’t often she lost her temper, so Moira struggled for calm. “Unless we had a small child under the table, there were only two witches in the room. I’m sorry, Nell, but I just can’t take the word of your scanning program over everything I know to be true. Marcus scanned Elorie as well. I even—” she ground to a halt for a moment, ashamed to go on.

There should be no secrets amongst witches. Speaking quietly, she continued. “I asked my scrying bowl to look into her future. It wouldn’t speak to me. I even tried Great Gran’s crystal ball. If Elorie was a witch, surely the portents would foretell.”

Sophie smiled sadly. “You love her so very much, Aunt Moira. And that crystal ball’s never worked, you know that.”

Tears threatened, and Moira tried to fight them off. “I know it. But I had to try. I’d be the very first in the line of happiness if my beloved girl were a witch, and I know you’d be right behind me. But this isn’t right, and we need to stop. It’s tearing her apart. Your scan must simply be wrong, Nell.”

“It’s not just scans now.” Nell shrugged helplessly. “This isn’t really mine to tell, but Jamie had a flash of precog when he first saw Elorie earlier today.”

Moira felt her heart clench. “And what did he see of my girl’s future?”

“Remember, precog isn’t certain,” Nell said, her eyes pleading.

“I know that.” Moira reached gently for the screen. “Tell me, Nell. It’s better that I know.”

“I didn’t have time to talk with him, but he mindsent at least part of what he saw. My girl and yours, in the magic light of a working full circle.”

Now the tears came, a great well of them. “My Elorie, she does magic?”

“It’s only a possibility,” Sophie whispered, her face a tangle of emotions.

In her head, Moira knew what Sophie said to be true. In her Irish heart, she felt the agony of hope.

Precognition was an age-old way of witch knowing—unpredictable at times, and fickle at others, like many magics—but her blood heard and trusted, in a way it never could with Nell’s gadgets and machines. If Jamie saw magic in her girl, then they must seek to unveil it.

“Well, then,” she said, her voice a wee bit quavery. “We need to find out, don’t we? An untrained witch is a dangerous witch.”