.5 To Have and To Code

by Debora Geary

  He nodded absently, pulling out a tape measure. “I’ll get the room dimensions.”

  When you were trying to fit in a space station’s worth of monitoring gear into a living room, dimensions mattered. Nell eyeballed this one. Looked like it would work—and the view was ridiculously good.

  Not that she expected either guy living here to look up much.

  She took a quick survey. Three good-sized bedrooms, a shower big enough for TJ to turn around in, and a kitchen with plenty of potato-chip storage. She wasn’t personally in love with the retro sixties decor, but the weather geeks would never notice.

  When she walked back into the living room, Govin was grinning and the agent was swooning. Those were probably both good signs. “Did we find it?”

  “I think so.”

  Nell aimed another look at the swooning agent and took her friend’s arm. Time to have a private chat about negotiating tactics, especially where perky girls were involved. “Come take a walk with me.”

  Govin followed her meekly enough out to the garden—and then pulled them both to a stop. “It’s the right place, and I’m going to make a full-price offer and drive you crazy.”

  Argh. “Why?”

  “Because we have work to do, and this is just distraction. The grant gave us a budget to purchase a location to work from, and this fits the budget.”

  She hated it when he got all math-y and reasonable. “But you could probably get a better deal.”

  “Sure. And someone else could swoop us in the meantime.” He smiled and looked out at the pathetic excuse for a garden. “You want to help us out—talk your dad into turning this into something pretty to look at.”

  He wouldn’t need asking. “You guys will never notice.”

  “You never know.” He reached over to inspect a half-dead flower. “It’s time for us to do what you did a long time ago.”

  He was doing his math-mystic thing again. Nell frowned. “And what is that, exactly?”

  “Move out and grow up.” He shrugged. “Maybe we’ll start smelling flowers and eating well-balanced meals.”

  Right. And the moon was going to commence daylight-cartwheel maneuvers. Nell had a wisecrack reply on the tip of her tongue—and then she wondered if there was more going on here. “Is that what you want, Gov? Flowers and three meals a day?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked her way and smiled. “Probably not, and no, I’m not tired of the truck-sized genius we both call friend.”

  She pushed one more time. Gently. “You’ve been taking care of him for a long time.”

  “You really think it’s that lopsided?” He raised an eyebrow. “Without him, what do you think would have happened to me?”

  Nell blinked and considered the question. “You’d do what you do now. Work twenty-four hours a day until someone comes along to make you eat and sleep.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded, eyes serious. “But I don’t do it alone, and that makes a difference.”

  Nell felt the truth of that land in the part of her heart that worried about both the roommates she loved. TJ cared about weather and fixing it as much as Govin did. Their obsession would have swallowed her whole—it sustained the two of them. “Partners.”

  “Yup.” His smile tilted wryly. “And when the big things work, little stuff like moldy socks and a genetic inability to cook don’t matter all that much.”

  Nell glanced sideways at her calm—and very tricky—friend. “We’re not talking about you and TJ anymore, are we?”

  He just brushed his fingers over another hardy flower and didn’t answer.

  He didn’t have to. She knew what he was trying to say. For whatever it was worth, Daniel had earned the approval of her oldest friend. “You think he’d stick.”

  “Yeah.” Govin’s words were quiet, and as rooted and strong as the flower he touched. “I do.”

  -o0o-

  Daniel walked through the doors of Skate’s offices and winced. “What, did you hit the prison discount store for paint?”

  Skate looked up from his desk. “What’s wrong with puke green?”

  The walls might have been puke green two decades ago. Now they looked like something he’d last seen in an unfortunate trip to a frat-house toilet. Daniel surveyed the rest of the place—in a decade of friendship, he’d never actually ventured into Skate’s place of work. Crammed shelves, filthy windows, chairs that looked like they’d lived through a century of bar fights. “Your offices suck, my friend.”

  Skate snorted. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “You need help painting, just say so. Getting rid of this color would be a service to humanity.”

  “Didn’t call you here to be my interior decorator. The place looks too pretty, it makes my clients nervous.”

  That seemed like a shabby reason to choose to work in the reception offices of hell, but Daniel let it slide. Something more important had just landed on the table. “Why did you call me?”

  “Need your help.” Skate pointed at a pile in the corner. “Can you hook those up for me?”

  Daniel looked at the pile of computer parts on the floor. Someone had raided the Microsoft cemetery, circa 1975. “I’m pretty sure that stuff’s dead.”

  “Nope. Guy assured me it was all in working order.”

  Guys who sold stuff off the backs of trucks were not reliable sources of information. But Skate knew that. “If you need a new computer, I have a bunch of parts lying around. I can probably put something together.”

  “Need six.” Skate bit into an apple that looked like something out of a Snow White fairy tale compared to the rest of his surroundings.

  “Six?” Daniel smelled trouble brewing. “You only have two hands.”

  “Yup. But Poison’s got two. And he’s got a couple of buddies coming too.” Skate tapped the file folders on his desk. “Pretty sure I can find you a couple of other students once I get through the pile here. How do Wednesday nights work?”

  Daniel looked at the files, the pile of ancient computer guts, and Skate’s far-too-innocent smile. And knew he’d detected the ambush far too late. “Not a chance.”

  “Okay. How about Tuesdays?”

  Rock, meet immovable object. Daniel reversed course, looking for a way out of the dead-end canyon. “I’m not teaching your guys anything involving a computer. They’d probably rob the Federal Reserve or something.”

  “They already know some stuff.” Skate offered up a half grin. “Probably not the good things. I want you to teach them the legal crap that will help them land jobs. This is 1997, man. Nobody hires someone who doesn’t know how to use a computer.”

  “So get one of those community-college types to do it. I’m no teacher.”

  “Dead volunteers are too much paperwork.” Skate pitched his apple core in the garbage. “I need someone who can survive an hour in a room with my guys and knows how to use a computer. That limits the field quite a bit.”

  Yeah. Skate’s crew could probably figure out a hundred varieties of murder-by-computer-part. Daniel felt the pincers closing. “One condition.”

  Parole officer to Berkeley’s least redeemable looked far too happy. “Name it.”

  Daniel surveyed the parts pile in disgust. “I get to supply the computers.”

  Skate scowled, the kind of look that probably still had old ladies dropping their handbags in terror on a regular basis. “What’s wrong with the stuff I got?”

  Something that looked like a Commodore 64 motherboard peeked out of the top of the pile. Daniel surveyed the remains again. “I’ll take it all with me.” He knew a bunch of gamers who would probably trade working laptop parts in exchange for an antique or two. “Lemme go get some boxes.” Ones without communicable diseases.

  Skate waited until he was almost at the door. “Thanks.”

  Daniel just kept walking. Ignored the voice in his head that sounded stupidly excited. And hoped that with Poison in the room, he wouldn’t get murdered on day one.

  Then he had t
o grin. This probably wasn’t the kind of team Pedro’d had in mind.

  -o0o-

  It was time to be done with the tears and the sad. Nell reached up into her cupboards and pulled out flour, baking soda, sugar. Lifted the lid off the seriously ugly butter dish she’d made in second grade. Dug into her super-secret stash of extra-dark chocolate chips. And dared the universe to mess with her.

  It was time to bake cookies.

  A fitting homage to Sammy and excellent witch comfort food, all at the same time.

  She reached into the back of her bottom cupboard, seeking the old and scarred stainless-steel bowl Caro had gifted her along with the really ugly butter dish. Tried and true baking tools. She fingered the largest dent in the side of the bowl and grinned—it was a perfect match for eight-year-old Devin’s head.

  Opening her spoon drawer, she stopped, caught off guard by its emptiness. And then straightened her shoulders. The Texas spoon migration was not going to stop her from baking cookies. Pulling open the other cutlery drawer, she yanked out a large fork, a potato masher, and a set of tongs. One of those would probably get the job done.

  The recipe sat on the screen of her open laptop, but instead, Nell contemplated the ingredients on her counter. Waited for them to speak to her like they’d always talked to Sammy. And when they just sat there, unmoved by her pleas, decided to sing to them instead.

  Which is how she missed the knocking on her door. Nobody sang R.E.S.P.E.C.T. quietly.

  She did not, however, miss the hilarity that floated in through the walls. Nell froze mid-chorus, stick of butter in one hand, sugar in the other. What are you doing here?

  The reply was impossible to make out.

  Dammit. He was way too new to assisted mindspeech to talk through walls. She put down the sugar bowl and yanked open the door. “Go away. I’m making cookies.”

  Daniel grinned and leaned against the doorjamb. “Does that usually make people go away?”

  No. She’d never been stupid enough to put those two sentences together before. “This is my apartment. No one comes here.”

  He only smiled. And waited.

  Dammit—for a guy who’d vanished at the slightest provocation a week ago, he was getting awfully darned sticky. Nell scowled.

  He leaned over and kissed her cheek. And smiled. And waited.

  It took all Nell’s self control not to slug him in the chin. And ever more not to drag him into the hall and have her way with him. She backed up a step and eyed him carefully. “Some ground rules. In my place, cookie baking isn’t a spectator sport. And if you eat all the chocolate chips, I’ll turn your underwear pink and sparkly.”

  His laughter rolled into the apartment, right through her heart.

  Crap. She resisted the urge to cover her flaming cheeks. “Sorry—that just kind of came out. It’s a fairly effective threat with my brothers.”

  He kissed her again, a lot more spectacularly this time. “I’ll help. And I’m extremely tempted to eat all the chocolate chips.”

  God. If he kept that up, the chocolate chips would be a melted puddle of goo. Nell slid out of his arms—and made it two steps down the hallway before she had to know. Slowly she turned around again, feeling the uninvited lump hit her throat. “Why are you here?”

  He watched her a long time before he answered. “Because I want to be.”

  Something inside her got a lot more melty than the chocolate chips. “Okay.” She waved a hand around the tiny space that was all hers. “Want the five-cent tour?”

  He stepped into the living room, mind radiating curiosity.

  She waited for the surprise to hit. It always did.

  His eyes traveled over the room, taking in the photographs on the walls, her crazy CD collection, the books of her girlhood. The pillow mountain made him smile. “It suits you.”

  She blinked. “How do you figure? There are no computers, no video games. No Doritos.”

  “You don’t work here.” He shrugged. “But it feels like you. Warm, with flashes of hot and interesting. Little bits of homey everywhere. History. Pieces of the girl you were and the person you’ve become.”

  Holy hell. “What are you, a shrink?”

  “Nope. Baseball player, gamer, and occasional cookie assistant.”

  He was a lot more than that. And he’d seen her place for what it was. That made him part of an extremely exclusive group.

  She could practically hear Sammy’s voice in her head telling her not to be an idiot. And for once, Nell decided to listen. She took the three steps across the room and laid a quiet hand on his cheek. “Welcome to my home. Let’s go bake cookies.”

  It didn’t surprise her a bit that he understood her words exactly as she’d meant them.

  -o0o-

  Daniel watched her blend butter and sugar in a bowl that looked like it had survived the second World War. “What comes next?”

  She shrugged, intent on beating up on the butter. “Not sure. Have a chat with the eggs—see if some of them want to volunteer.”

  That sounded more than a little sketchy. “Sammy talked to the eggs?”

  Nell’s eyes flew up, full of wordless questions.

  Mindreading clearly didn’t tell you everything. “You’re baking cookies. I figure you must be missing her.”

  “Yeah.” She focused on a chunk of misbehaving sugar. “Everyone tells me it isn’t really over. She’s still my friend, yada yada.”

  They’d told him that about college baseball, too. “Nope. Sometimes things end. Sucks.”

  Her face flashed gratitude—and she stopped torturing the sugar.

  He offered up an egg and hoped it was a willing sacrifice. “Tell me about Sammy.”

  “We met in college. She had hippie parents who conceived her in a VW Bug after watching one-too-many Bewitched reruns.”

  He blessed his mother’s obsession with old, quirky TV. “She was your non-witch sidekick, was she?”

  Nell chuckled and added two eggs to her bowl. “Sammy was nobody’s sidekick.”

  Daniel debated, and then decided he hadn’t come to tread carefully. “How did she feel about you being a witch?”

  “Did I mention that her parents were hippies?” Nell smiled, but her eyes were still careful. “It was mostly parlor tricks for her. She knew about all the stuff, but I think she just ignored the parts that made her nervous.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Parlor tricks, huh? She obviously got a gentler introduction than I did.”

  Nell snorted and reached for the flour. “You haven’t seen anything yet, pretty boy.”

  It felt like he’d fallen through a wormhole and landed on the basketball court with Skate. Only a dummy left his elbows down in that situation. “Let’s see. You tormented me with lightning while I hid behind a bush, totally unarmed—“

  “You hacked my turf,” said Nell dryly.

  He flashed her a grin. “Don’t interrupt. This is the world according to Daniel Walker.”

  That got the first totally free laugh he’d heard from her in days. So he kept going. “Then you made me your Realm slave and put me on magical mop-up while forgetting to mention you or anyone else was a witch.”

  Her eyes rolled hard enough they almost landed in the cookie dough.

  “Flashed a column of flames my way, sent voices into my head,” Daniel enumerated on his fingers, “left glitter in my eyebrows, and coerced me into attending a wedding. Oh, and all the Dustkickers want to know why we don’t have any girls on the team now.”

  Her lips twitched. “That last part doesn’t have anything to do with magic. And you guys could use a few more players who actually know which way you’re supposed to run around the bases.”

  He couldn’t disagree with her there, but he wasn’t here to recruit for baseball, either. “My point is, Sammy got the parlor tricks. Pretty sure I got something different.”

  “Yes.” Her voice was quiet, but her eyes fixed on his, intent. “You got the witch.”

  “I did.” He reac
hed for her hands and backed toward a chair, done with using cookie dough as a barricade. “She’s not all I want.”

  She slid into his lap, but her shields were still in place. He could feel them—an invisible wall of brick. And sorrow tinged her eyes. “I still scare you.”

  “Yeah.” He let the hitch in his breath stay. “It’s a lot to wrap my head around. You terrify me sometimes, and not just with your magic.”

  He ran his hands slowly up and down her arms, feeling their strength—and their trembling. And then felt the gentle touch of incoming mindlink.

  He held his breath. And let her in.

  A tornado of white-hot sex, he might have handled. What walked in the door of his mind instead was entirely different. Strength at the core, and depth—and twisting, beautiful tendrils growing like some kind of magical tree of light.

  You can see that? Her voice in his head sounded stunned.

  It was impossible to miss. And he already knew just how much he’d miss it if she took it away. Don’t go. What is it?

  It took a very long time for the answer to come. It’s me. My insides. Mom calls it my soul, but she’s into flowery stuff like that.

  Something inside him cracked wide open. The solid sound of bat hitting home run and a life that would never be the same again. He reached for her, with his heart and with his hands. And knew that who she was would never scare him again.

  -o0o-

  “Who are you peeping at now?”

  Retha turned away from the window to her husband and smiled. “Just looking out at the flowers.”

  “Hmmm.” Michael sounded skeptical. “I just got a call from Jamie. Something about locking Nell in a tower and throwing away the key.”

  She blinked—that sounded fairly extreme for a sunny Wednesday afternoon. “What’s going on?”

  “His precog is acting up. Three blonde, curly heads. Girls.”

  Jamie was going to have triplets? Retha walked toward her husband, fascinated. “He’s seen his own children?” Precog was notoriously unreliable—except where bloodlines and progeny were involved. Her strongest visions had always been of her kids.