.5 To Have and To Code (26 page)

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 reached 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.

“Nope.”  Michael’s eyes paced the room while the rest of him held still.  “He said they’re Daniel’s.”

Oh, hell.

Her husband pinned her with one of his famous presidential stares.  “It’s time to tell her.  The Prophecy needs to be Nell’s now.”

She nodded.  It was well past time—and still, she didn’t know how.

Michael gathered her gently in his arms.  “If they’re meant to hold in the future, they’ll handle the message now.”

Chapter 18

Retha felt Nell’s familiar mind presence coming up the front walk.  Sunny, happy, with stray thoughts about a lost dragon and chocolate chip cookies.  And some plan for Jamie involving scrubbing a lot of lines of code.  Just another day at the office.

Wishing with all her heart that it could be so, Retha moved to the door to greet her daughter.

“Hey, Mom.”  Nell juggled bags and kissed her cheek.  “Wanna come help with dragon clean-up?  The southern kingdom is infested again.”

It only took one dragon to be an infestation.  Fire-breathing creatures could cause a ridiculous amount of trouble.  Retha smiled despite herself—that was fairly true of fire witchlings, too.  “No thank you, sweetheart.  If you have a moment, I’d like to talk with you.”

Nell held out one of the bags.  “Sure.  Here are some cookies.  They’re not Sammy’s, but I don’t think we totally ruined them.”

The “we” nearly crumpled Retha’s heart.  “Daniel bakes cookies, does he?”

Her daughter’s eyes snapped up.  “Reading quite a bit this morning, are you?”

It wasn’t an accusation—but the conversation had moved to high alert.  Damn.  Retha wrung her hands and tried to figure out where to start.  She led her daughter into the living room and took a seat—for some reason she couldn’t fathom, this conversation didn’t belong at the kitchen table.  “I saw something, darling girl.  On the day you were born.  And it’s well past time that you know what I saw.”

Nell nodded slowly.  “You said that once before.”

“Your birth was a wild one.”  Retha sank into the reminiscence, trying to find solid ground.  “We didn’t know yet that you would have magic, but you blasted into the world.  It was a fast, hard birth—very different from your older brothers.”

A frustrated attempt to be patient danced in her daughter’s mind.

Retha grinned—Nell had never been very good at listening to stories.  “During the last part of labor, which you will one day understand is a very intense and surreal experience, I saw snippets of your future.  Strong, clear ones.” 

Her girl child’s eyes were flat and intent.  “You think what you saw is true.”

She did, with all her heart.  She always had.  “They were powerful visions, Nell—the kind that are hard to ignore.  Much of what I saw has already come true.”  She pulled up the neat catalog of images in her head and tossed a favorite one to her daughter.  “I saw a girl of fire and grit, magic and temper.  Right down to the stripey tights you wore when you cast your first stasis spell on your brothers.”

Nell flashed a grin, remembering.  “Maybe this precog of yours has a sense of humor.”

Not so much.  Retha reached for her daughter’s hand.  “It showed me a wonderful grown daughter and a very talented witch.”

Her very smart daughter was catching on fast.  “Sounds like it was a home movie of my life.”  Nell’s breath caught.  “Wait.  My life’s not over yet.  Why didn’t you tell me—what are you so afraid is coming?”

Retha couldn’t breathe.

Nell’s mind blazed with fury and fear.  “Mom.  What have you been keeping from me all my life?”

“A child.  One who will have the magic of ten.”  One who would live every day in life-threatening danger, thanks to the talent running in his veins.

Shock hit, along with rebellion, fear, and fury.  “You can’t possibly know that.  Magic is totally fickle—you didn’t even know if I would have any, and I’m your child.”

Retha held up a hand to stem the babbling.  “You’re right.  I don’t know if it will be true.”

Nell quieted and studied her mother’s face.  “But you believe it.”

She didn’t answer.  The certainty in her mind would speak for her.  As would the fear.

Nell’s spine stiffened.  She’d heard the fear.  “Why tell me now?” 

Retha closed her eyes.  Tried to match her girl’s fierce bravery.  And sent Nell the face of the child she’d held in her heart for twenty-seven years. 

She felt the earthquake of shock in her daughter’s heart.  Nell’s eyes flew open.  Wordless.  Pleading.

Some moments as a parent were desperately hard.  “I’ve been looking at that face for as long as you’ve been alive.  Telling myself he has your father’s eyes.  Your brothers’ curls.”

And then she’d laid eyes on Daniel.

“You should have told me.”  Nell’s voice was quiet, but her mind screamed the words.

Retha didn’t block a single one.  Her mind rocked in agony along with her daughter.  “I didn’t know when.  And I didn’t know how.  We didn’t want it to shape your life.”  One day, maybe, her daughter would understand that parenting had so very few absolutes.

She watched, paralyzed, as her daughter teetered on the precipice, torn between love and betrayal.  Felt the cells of motherhood rend asunder, waiting for the fall that could so easily come.

She saw it first in her daughter’s eyes.  Forgiveness.

Retha gulped air, pathetically grateful for the oxygen back in her world.  And held her girl child as tightly as she had that very first day.  “I love you so very much, daughter mine.”

“I know.”  Nell buried her head in her mother’s shoulder and held on.

The weight of the future settled over them both.  And love rose up to meet it.

Retha marveled at the wondrous daughter that was hers—and waited for the battle to come.  Nell Sullivan wasn’t going to meet destiny quietly.