by Debora Geary
He was pretty sure he could convince Moira to sit on a broom with him. Or with Aervyn. She had a serious soft spot for the little dude. He’d put Lauren on his broom. “Deal.”
She blinked. “Moira’s going to fly on a broomstick?”
“Sure.” He winked. “I can be very persuasive.”
Lauren stared a long minute and then snorted. “No wonder Nell does such a great job with Aervyn. She’s had three brothers’ worth of practice with that ‘I’m cute, so give me a mile’ look.” She turned to the door and knocked. “How come you’re here, anyhow?”
He was pretty sure he’d just been complimented and insulted in one short sentence. She was good. “Sierra messaged me.”
“Really?” She frowned. “Me too. Cryptic message about being here at 6 p.m.”
His Spidey senses started tingling just as his phone beeped again. Incoming message. Open the door, silly. Mia.
Lauren, phone in her hand, started laughing. “Open it carefully. They probably have it booby-trapped or something.”
He grinned. “You’ve been hanging around witches too long.”
“Tell me about it.” She studied the door. “Can you do some kind of scan for spell traces or something?”
There was apparently still a thing or two he could teach a newbie witch. “It’d be faster if you just scan for the perpetrators and mindread their devious plans.” He had visions of four girls hiding behind The Monster, giggling.
“Good point.” She paused a moment, and then frowned. “The apartment’s empty. There’s no one in there.”
Huh. The Monster didn’t really eat girl children, even ones who deserved it. “What are they up to?”
Lauren grinned. “We could just walk away.”
“I don’t think I’m genetically capable of that.” He shook his head at his phone. “And those little punks know it.”
She waved at the door. “After you.”
He laughed and pushed the door open. “Mom taught me better than that. Water magic’s not much good for shielding, but I can cover you better in front of me.”
She rolled her eyes, but stepped forward, leading the way down the dark hall. He followed—and then ran smack into her as they reached the living room and she stopped dead.
His fast hands kept them both upright. At least until he took a good look at Sierra’s living room.
Cozy table.
White tablecloth.
Two flickering candles. A single red rose.
And the smells of Romano’s signature linguine steaming from two plates.
Uh, oh.
His phone beeped again. Don’t make us lock you in. Shay.
Punk girl children. He knew exactly what they were trying to do. And no way in this lifetime was it going to work.
Then he looked over at Lauren, still staring at the table in shock—and realized it just might. Damn.
~ ~ ~
Lauren stared at the flickering candles, strains of Puccini echoing in her ears.
This should be funny. Nine-year-old matchmakers should be a joke. Except it didn’t feel that way. There had been another moment, less than a year ago, when she’d stood in an apartment with Jamie and known her life had changed forever.
Her gut said she’d just hit another one of those moments. And there was another Sullivan standing beside her.
She looked over at Devin. He wasn’t laughing either. “What do we do now?”
He met her gaze—and she felt her bones melt. “We eat. Those punk girls left my favorite food.”
Lauren closed her eyes in one last-ditch effort to find the control mechanism on her heart. “No. They left mine.”
His laugh was low and long—and reached deep into her belly. Uh, oh. She felt her brain trying to resist. This was Devin Sullivan, world traveler and adrenaline junkie. No way this worked—even if he did love linguine.
She could feel the panic beating in her ribs. Small deals could be made on the fly. Big ones—well, big ones needed time. And thought. And sanity.
None of which were going to happen in a room with Puccini, linguine, and the gravitational pull of a man she still needed to think about really, really hard. Lauren reached for coherent words. “I think I need to go.”
He caught her hands, words soft and inescapable. “You don’t want this?”
“I don’t know.” Honesty fought with the fluttering panic. “Maybe.”
He grinned, and the intensity in the room plummeted. “Then eat some linguine with me. We’ll have dinner, curl up on The Monster later. Watch a movie. Plot revenge on those nieces of mine.”
Lauren just stared. She knew expert negotiating tactics when she saw them. Devin Sullivan was a very dangerous man. No way was she going to hold onto “maybe” through linguine and a date with the Monster.
Her phone beeped. There’s tiramisu in the fridge for dessert. We love him. You could too. Ginia.
Oh, God. She was in really serious trouble.
Chapter 19
Moira unraveled some wool from her ball and continued knitting. She’d taken to popping into the Witches’ Lounge for an hour or two every day. It was warm and cozy, and someone usually dropped by.
With no warning, her chair and the rest of Witches’ Lounge suddenly shimmered and disappeared—and she found herself dumped rather unceremoniously on a beach. With purple water and orange palm trees. Oh, my.
Sierra landed beside her, spewing apology. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t know anyone was in the Lounge. Hang on, I’ll get you back there.”
Another moment and her chair reappeared under her bottom, back in the Witches’ Lounge, much to Moira’s relief. Sierra stood right beside her, still looking horrified. “Hello, my dear. What was that wee trip about?”
“I’m trying to write a program to turn this into a beach.” Sierra’s words tripped over each other. “The triplets wanted to know what Hawaii looked like, so I was going to show them.” She scowled. “It’s more complicated than I thought.”
Ah, and weren’t so many things. Moira smiled and pointed to the seat beside her. “Well, the colors did look a bit odd, but the sand seemed very real.”
Sierra sat down, sighing. “Sand’s easy. Water’s really hard. I don’t know why. I thought…” her voice trailed off, yearning written all over her face.
It tugged on Moira’s heart. “What is it, sweet girl?”
“I wanted to go swimming.” The girl’s voice was quiet and sad. “The water here’s nice enough, but it’s cold. I miss the warm water.”
Missed the connection to her mama, too—that was plain as day.
Fortunately, this was a problem easily fixed. Moira collected her knitting and stood up. “Meet me back here in ten minutes.” She smiled. “Wear a swimsuit and bring a towel.”
Sierra stared, speechless, as Moira activated the spell to transport out of Realm back home. She needed a swimsuit too—and perhaps another traveler or two.
~ ~ ~
Nat giggled as her husband squirmed yet again. “Hold still, or I’ll end up sticking you with one of these pins.”
He was tempted to wiggle one more time just to hear her laugh. “There’s got to be someone more Aervyn’s size who can model this while you finish it.” Several someones.
“None that know how to keep a secret.”
She had a point there. Well, maybe he could amuse himself while he waited. A quick flick of power, and he activated the spell. The cloak shimmered and disappeared, along with most of the guy wearing it. As Sierra would say, “awesome cool.”
Nat laughed at the part of her husband she could see. “We know the invisibility spells works, silly. Now bring it back so I can get it hemmed—otherwise, superboy will trip and break his nose as he skulks around.”
Jamie shimmered back into visibility. “You know Nell’s going to kill us for this, right?” He was pretty sure giving the most powerful witchling in the world a Harry Potter invisibility cloak wasn’t going to make her life any easier. However, sometimes ideas we
re so perfect you just had to roll with them and brave the sisterly wrath.
Nat pulled the last pin out from between her lips. “I suspect she’ll just get even.”
Crap. That could be even worse. Nell could be frighteningly creative. “Hopefully she’ll wait until our little girl is walking, at least.” That might buy them some time to redeem themselves.
“By then, we might not be too worried about Nell.” Nat undid the cloak, moving it to the table. “Okay, I just need to hem this, and then we’re done. I’ve heard stories about what Devin in particular was up to by the time he could walk.”
He grinned. “Most people blame all three of us.”
She handed him an apple. “Most people don’t know you very well.”
Devin had almost always been the instigator, but he and Matt hadn’t been unwilling followers. “We probably would have just found some other kind of trouble without Dev around.”
“You go on believing that.” Eyes twinkling, she tried to thread the cape under the sewing machine foot. It wasn’t the easiest of fits, working around her belly.
He sighed and threw another rock at his bastion of masculinity. “Want me to do it?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You can sew?”
Sigh. “Yeah. And knit, and braid, and even make a passable friendship bracelet. I draw the line at cross-stitch, though.” Nobody sane wanted to work on the same inch of work for three days.
She pulled herself up from the chair and handed over the cape. “My hero. No wonder your nieces love you.”
It was his coding skills they loved, and he was sticking to that story. “So you don’t think I’m as crazy as Dev, huh?”
Her arms snuck around his shoulders, belly pressing into his back. “Do you?”
Nope. Much as it burnt him to admit it. “He got an extra dose, I guess.”
She sat down beside him as he got the cape lined up. “Do you think he’s here for a reason? And Sierra?”
Uh, oh. He couldn’t sew and be mystical at the same time. “What are you getting at?”
She rubbed slow circles over her belly. “I just wonder if we needed to learn from them. About the different kinds of reckless. So we’re smarter when our baby girl arrives.”
He grinned at her. “Nothing happens without a reason?” It was one of her favorite themes. And she had a point. He’d grown up with Dev, but they’d still taken a couple of serious wrong turns with Sierra. Maybe he was smarter now.
Or not. He shrugged. “If nothing else, Devin might keep us out of hot water with Nell.” His brother had spent several days perfecting the world’s best flying broom. Red, shiny, and bat-out-of-hell fast. And that was without Aervyn driving.
He started up the sewing machine. Somewhere to hide might not be such a bad idea.
~ ~ ~
Devin stood, towel in hand, beside a totally mystified Sierra. And grinned as Aervyn came hurtling into the room, wearing his fire-engine-red swim trunks. “Ready to go, superdude?”
“Uh, huh.” Aervyn crashed to a halt, breathless. “Mama says not to lose me, or she’ll be really mad at you.”
Sierra took his hand. “We won’t.” She looked over at Devin. “Where the heck are we going, anyhow?”
“You’ll see.” He grinned and activated the Realm transport spell, his eyes on Sierra’s face as they materialized at the other end. Joy hit first—and then she shrieked and went racing for the water, Aervyn’s hand still firmly in hers, his feet a foot off the ground.
Moira landed just as their shrieks hit maximum volume. “Ah, good. I thought she might enjoy this.” She let go of the little girl with her. “Go on in, Lizzie. Just don’t go out too far until we join you.”
Devin felt Lizzie pulling power. No worries—she was clearly a pretty potent little water witch. He looked over at Moira. “Are you going in?”
Her regal glare had him squirming. Clearly that had been a really stupid question. “Of course I am. What, you think old witches can’t swim?”
He wasn’t dumb enough to make the same mistake twice. “I’m sure you can.” And he’d be sticking close.
“The day I can’t swim in warm ocean waters is the day I’m dead, my boy.” She grinned at him and dropped her towel on the sand. “Race you!”
It was totally embarrassing that she beat him to the water. Mostly because he was laughing too hard to move, but still. Devin trailed behind as she swam out to where the young ones played, diving under small waves like giggling otters.
Sierra stuck her head up, face radiant. “Thank you so much. This is perfect!”
And it was. The warm water soaked into Devin’s bones, the ultimate luxury for a water witch. He’d never admit it, but even he got cold in the blustery weather of December. Sunny rays beat down on whatever body parts momentarily stuck out of the water, and he spied gorgeous colors under the waves—little fish come to tickle their toes.
This was the life. Maybe Lauren was a swimmer. Devin froze as that last stray thought registered—and then spluttered as salt water exploded up his nose. Dammit. Water witches didn’t get hit by waves unless they were really, really distracted. He dove down, clearing his nose—and hopefully his head. He had enough to do with four witches to watch without worrying about one who wasn’t even here.
When he surfaced, Sierra was showing the two witchlings how to bodysurf. Moira was treading water watching him, a knowing smile on her face. “Something on your mind, my dear boy?”
He scowled, knowing full well that wouldn’t disturb her a bit. “Nothing that needs to be.”
Moira nodded out toward the threesome zooming on their bellies on the wavetops. “Can you feel what our young Sierra is doing?”
He tapped into power, stretching a finger out toward where they played. “She’s making them surfboards.” Smart, and safe. “Good. Bodysurfing’s tricky. This way they can play and have fun, and nobody gets water up their nose.”
“Aye. She’s being all kinds of responsible.” Moira smiled as Aervyn tumbled off the end of a wave into Sierra’s waiting hands. “And having all kinds of fun while she’s at it.”
Devin nodded. It was very good to see. “It worried me, that she was going to swing too hard away from the fun of magic. Sink too deep into the responsibility.”
“It’s never one or the other. Every witch needs to find their balance. She’ll swing around a bit yet, but she’s finding her own way.” Moira’s eyes held hints of mischief. “It’s a lesson we all need to revisit occasionally.”
He stared at her, nonplussed—and dodged too late as the second wave of the day sent water up his nose.
She was laughing in delight as he surfaced moments later. “Ah, Devin my love. I should have taken you up on your last marriage proposal. Come. Let’s go teach our two littlest ones how to swim in the big swells, shall we?”
He swam behind her, wondering how in the hell this little trip had gotten so out of hand. They were only two-foot waves. Why did he suddenly feel like he was swimming in the Bermuda Triangle?
Heads turned as they approached. Moira simply gestured and angled to swim out to sea. Sierra’s eyes widened. “Is that safe?”
Damned if he had any idea what that meant today. “Should be. We might want to give Moira an assist, though.” He linked power with Sierra, reaching a gentle current forward to the three ahead of them—and discovered that Lizzie and Aervyn, cavorting like dolphins, had already taken care of it. Punk witchlings. They both had water power to burn.
Putting his head down, he matched Sierra’s steady front crawl. Apparently they had to get out the hard way.
~ ~ ~
Govin scowled at his computer, at the southeast coastline of Indonesia on his screen, just where it had been for the last two days. “It’s getting worse, Teej.”
“It’s only class two right now.” His partner continued to bounce a superball off the wall.
“Smells bad.” After ten years, you got a feel for the kind of class-two storm that would eventually fall apart after
it drenched a few people. This one wasn’t that kind. He knew it in his bones, however unscientific that might sound.
“Yeah.” TJ was running models, figuring out if they had any options to intervene. “That area’s got good mojo, though.”
It was true—big waves hitting that coastline often caused less damage than their models predicted. They liked being that kind of wrong. However, even mojo was only so useful when you were dealing with waves big enough to kill people. “You got anything yet?”
“Working as fast as I can, dude. Go feed us, or something.”
The storm was edging past Australia, picking up meanness as it went. “What if we get closer? I think we’ve got witches in Australia—maybe Jamie can push us there through Realm.” Govin winced as TJ growled. “Sorry. You’ve probably already thought of that.”
TJ looked ready to pull out his hair—what little of it was still left. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to make a model that says ‘How can I fix this, assuming I can drop a witch pretty much anywhere on the planet we’ve got Internet?’”
Yeah. Models with a zillion moving parts sucked. And TJ was probably the best mind in the world with them. Govin zoomed in on the storm and tried to imagine how he’d intervene if he was standing on the Australian coast. And realized pretty quickly what the problem was. In general, the best way to help dissipate a storm was to slow its rotation. Australia was exactly the wrong place to do it from.
He held up his hands to triangulate. Shit. The exact right place was middle of nowhere in the Indian Ocean. Not exactly a good place to find witches with Internet access.
Damn. He had a really bad feeling about this.
Chapter 20
Turning five was an uber-major event, at least if you were a Sullivan. Sierra held up one end of a rainbow-colored streamer and tried to turn around without falling off the ladder. “Here?”
The decorating committee conferred. Shay finally looked up. “Yup. Uncle Jamie, your end’s gotta go higher. They aren’t even.”
Sierra tried not to giggle as Jamie glanced around at the off-kilter streamers already up and wisely bit his tongue. The triplets took decorating very seriously. Jamie got his end anchored higher, and they both crawled down their respective ladders.
