A Hidden Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 2) (3 page)

Most days.

Then there were the days when a fetching spell
went wrong and sparked the tinder of hope she couldn’t quite
eradicate from the hidden corners of her heart. She wasn’t a witch,
but neither was she entirely free of the desire to be one.

She squeezed her eyes shut against the hurt,
just for a moment.

As a thirteen-year-old girl, she’d believed she
needed
to be a witch. When that had failed to come, and with
Gran’s gentle persistence, she’d found a path for herself, a
purpose and a sense of belonging that didn’t require magic. Not an
easy feat for a non-witch.

And still not quite enough to free her from the
wanting.

Sitting on the beach in the quiet morning sun,
Elorie could admit to herself one more hard truth. She was afraid
that part of the reason she wanted a baby was the hope that power
might skip a generation and bloom in her child.

Then she shook her head ruefully. If Gran had
taught her nothing, it was that every child needed to find their
own way. If she turned into some terrible, hovering mother, Gran
would lead the charge to thunk her over the head. In Nova Scotia,
you still had a village raising a child, and that was a very good
thing.

She pushed away the errant thought that Gran
might not be around to watch her children grow. Irish witches
usually lived very long lives.

Then there was Aaron—he would make a wonderful
father.

One day she would walk these beaches with a
toddler of her own, looking for colorful bits of glass. And that
would be a magic of its own.

~ ~ ~

Nell shook her head at her triplets. “There must
be a bug, girls. We fetched Elorie. You remember her—Moira’s
granddaughter.”

Mia rolled her eyes. “We know, Mama. She was
here for our birthday. But we tested our code a lot. It’s not
wrong, so Elorie must be a witch.”

Ah, the arrogance of youth. Her girls were
awesome coders, but no programmer was invincible. “Moira has tested
Elorie ever since she was a child, just like we keep an eye on all
of you. If your code is right, that means you’re saying Moira is
wrong. Is that really what you mean?”

Three faces frowned and turned back to their
respective screens, brains humming louder than the roomful of
computers. They were old enough to know that Moira’s word was
gospel in the witching world, and for good reason—she was rarely
wrong.

Ginia finally looked up. “I still don’t see
anything. Maybe we need to run a test.”

Shay, who often wore the pessimist mantle in
their trio, shook her head. “We’ve already done lots of testing on
us. You get fetched, Mia and I don’t.”

“I know,” Ginia said. “But right now, the only
way to know if someone is a witch is to see if they get fetched or
not. That’s what Dad calls an indirect consequence. He says it’s
hard to debug if you only see the end result—you gotta see all the
stuff going on in the middle.”

Nell hid a smile and tucked that little tidbit
away to share with Daniel. It was largely to his credit that Ginia
was still prouder of her coding skills than her emerging elemental
powers. And that was a good thing, with two non-witch sisters.

“So, how do we do that?” Mia asked, always ready
for a new experiment.

Ginia grinned. “We show Mama our other
surprise.”

What was it about turning nine that had
transformed her triplets into giggly secret keepers? Nell raised an
eyebrow and waited.

Ginia typed on her laptop for a moment. Because
all their monitors were screen sharing, Nell could see her log into
an encrypted file labeled “Keep Out—Girl Coders Only.” That made
her smile, but Ginia’s encryption layers on the file made her
blink. Her husband must have added beginner hacking to his coding
lessons.

Shay went over to the corner cupboard and got
out an old computer mouse with princess stickers on it.

Nell raised an eyebrow. “Where’d you find that?
That thing’s ancient.”

“It was in Aervyn’s toy box. We tested different
ways of doing the scan, and this works best.”

Nell was pretty sure she hadn’t caught up yet.
“What scan?”

Shay set the mouse down in front of her and
plugged it into a vacant USB port. “Here, try it. Just hold the
mouse like you were going to use it, but don’t do anything.”

Nell followed instructions and watched her
computer screen. In a few moments, a series of tables and chart
readings popped up, along with a flashing pink “Yay, You’re a
Witch!” graphic.

Holy crap. Nell grabbed her cell phone and
texted her brother.

Moments later, Jamie materialized in the room.
Teleporting was a very convenient talent for quick arrivals. “Hey,
my favorite nieces, what’s up?”

Ginia gave him a hug. “We built a witch
scan!”

Jamie had plenty of practice rolling with
surprises. “Cool. What’s that?”

Ginia led him over to Nell’s chair and handed
him the mouse. “Here, hold this.”

Jamie looked at the princess stickers in perhaps
not entirely fake disgust. “I’d be happy to get you girls a new
mouse. This thing’s an antique.”

Mia laughed. “Don’t be silly, Uncle Jamie. No
one actually uses a mouse any more. It’s our scanning device. Just
sit there and hold it.”

He followed instructions too, and pretty soon
the “Yay, You’re a Witch” graphic showed up onscreen again, along
with party streamers and glittery stars.

Holy shit,
he mindsent to Nell.
Did
you help them with this?

She just shook her head.

“Very glittery. How come I get pink
messages—can’t it tell I’m a boy witch?”

The triplets looked at each other in
consternation. “Maybe we could add that. Does girl-witch power look
different than boy-witch power?”

Ha,
Nell sent.
You walked right into
that one, brother mine.

“Stop mindspeaking, Mama,” said Ginia. “That’s
rude.”

Jamie looked at Ginia in surprise. “You’re
picking up mindspeech now, kiddo?”

Three sets of eyes rolled. “No,” Mia said. “You
and Mama both get wrinkles between your eyes when you do it. Aunt
Jennie says it’s because you don’t practice enough.”

Jamie belatedly got smart enough to change the
subject and turned back to his screen. “So, tell me about all these
little graphs and squiggles. You’re obviously scanning power
signatures, but what’s the rest of the data?”

Nell sat back and watched in amused pride as
three heads joined his and started pointing to all the bells and
whistles they’d built into their new toy.

In a few moments, he leaned back and glanced at
Nell. “So, what we have here is a remote scanning device that can
detect power traces and give a probability readout on whether the
person being scanned is a witch.”

Ginia nodded. “It only works for elemental and
mind powers. Aunt Jennie said it wasn’t a good idea to scan for
some of the other kinds of power.”

Nell blinked. “Aunt Jennie helped you with
coding?”

Mia giggled. “Mama, don’t be silly. She helped
us with the scanning spell, cuz Ginia didn’t know how to do that
yet. Then Ginia spellcoded that to hook it up to the rest of what
we’d done.”

Okay, that made more sense. Aunt Jennie was
awesome cool, but a spellcoder she was not.

“So, what do we do with this fancy new toy?”
Jamie asked.

“Use it to scan Elorie,” said Ginia. “Except we
need a little help to make it work with a trackpad if she doesn’t
use a mouse.”

Jamie laughed. “I think they’re still using mice
in Witch Central East, although maybe not one quite this old.”

Ginia paused for a moment, looking suddenly shy.
“And we wondered if maybe you could use it in Enchanter’s
Realm.”

You didn’t need to be a mama to read the hope
gleaming in three sets of eyes. Nell felt her own misting over. She
and Jamie had been the primary coding team for their gaming world
for almost fifteen years. It looked like they had just gained an
assistant staff of three.

Jamie looked over at Nell and grinned. “Oh, I
think maybe we could find a use for it.” He pointed at the graphics
on his screen. “We might have to tweak your design a little,
though.”

Shay looked at the screen in confusion. “Why?
What’s wrong with it?”

Nell did the smart mama thing and slipped out to
make lunch. Jamie could handle the explanation of why Realm wasn’t
pink and glittery.

~ ~ ~

Nell:
Moira, have you had a
chance to talk to Elorie?

Moira:
Not today. She
disappeared to the beach this morning, looking for more of her sea
glass.

Nell:
Hmm.

Sophie:
What’s up?

Nell:
Well, I spent the
morning digging into the fetching spell with my girls. It’s clearly
picking up power traces from Elorie, and I can’t find any errors in
their coding.

Moira:
There must be, Nell.
I’m not trying to tell you how to spellcode, but I wouldn’t have
missed a witch who practically lives under my own roof.

Nell:
Exactly. Which is very
puzzling. The girls have rigged up another nice piece of
programming that might help. I was hoping I could run the test on
the two of you.

Sophie:
I’ll be your guinea
pig. What kind of test?

Nell:
It’s a virtual scan.
They took a regular scanning spell—Aunt Jennie’s, in this case—and
twinned it with some snazzy programming code. Let me activate the
spellcode, and then all you should need to do is hold onto your
mouse.

Sophie:
Should I be using
power?

Nell:
No, not necessary,
although I’ll have you do that in a minute so I can see how the
readings change.

Sophie:
It’s not easy typing
with one hand. Should I be feeling anything?

Nell:
I’m done. It shows you
have strong earth power, a little water, and an unidentified power
source. The girls only have this set up to test for elemental and
mind powers right now, so that would be your healing talent.

Sophie:
Wow. Think how useful
this would have been in the spring with Lauren!

Nell:
I’m guessing Jamie’s
pretty happy he had to go to Chicago, but yeah. It’s a pretty cool
toy.

Moira:
Can you really see
Sophie’s powers through the Internet, then?

Nell:
More or less. It’s not
all that different from what the fetching spell does—it’s just
giving us more information.

Moira:
I don’t want to sound
suspicious, but are you sure it isn’t just reading your knowledge
of Sophie? That’s always a risk when we scan in person.

Nell:
Do you have a spare
witch nearby? We can test them without you telling me who it
is.

Moira:
In fact, there are
witchlings eating cookies in my kitchen. Let me go get one.

Sophie:
You so have to put
this in Realm.

Nell:
Jamie’s already on it,
with three very willing assistants.

Moira:
All right, I have a
volunteer. He just needs to hold this wee mousie, then?

Nell:
That’s all. Give me
just a minute… Okay. The scan is picking up fire, water, and air
power, with a little mind power as well.

Moira took the mouse back from Kevin and
switched to video chat. She was getting pretty comfortable with all
this modern gadgetry for an old witch, but some things were much
easier done face-to-face. Nell and Sophie’s faces showed up on her
screen.

Making sure Kevin was fetching her a cookie as
she’d asked, she turned back to Nell. “You’re sure on the last? The
rest is true enough, but we haven’t tested young Kevin for the
latter in quite some time.”

Nell grinned. “That might be worth doing in the
next day or two. I’d be very curious to see if our little scanning
program is right.”

Moira wasn’t entirely convinced yet, but she had
two other witchlings at her elbows clamoring to be scanned.
Lizzie’s readings showed her strong water elementals, and hints of
something else. That was no surprise—little ones could grow new
talents as fast as they grew out of their clothes.

When Sean held the mouse, Nell looked very
surprised. “Sean, honey, are you a spellcaster?”

Sean brushed cookie crumbs off his face. “Gran
says so, but I’ve only worked with small circles so far.”

Moira hadn’t lived this long without knowing
some things weren’t meant for small ears. She picked up the plate
of cookies. “Why don’t you three take the cookies into the garden
and pick some nice, fresh flowers to brighten my table.”

When their voices grew faint, she turned back to
Nell. “What are you seeing in our Sean?”

Nell frowned. “I can’t be sure of this part of
the code—we haven’t done enough testing. But Sean has a big spike
in the unknown powers category, which could be healing, casting, or
something more rare.”

“I don’t think he’s a healer,” Sophie said. “I
spent some time with Sean last summer, and he didn’t show any
evidence of healing talent.”

Moira nodded. “I agree, and we’ve seen no signs
of astral travel or precognition. He does very well with complex
spells for a boy of ten, so we assume he’ll be a solid
spellcaster.”

“His spike is almost as big as Jamie’s,” said
Nell.

Oh, my, Moira thought. Jamie was a talented
spellcaster at the peak of his powers. “That’s a little more than
we thought we were dealing with. We haven’t a full circle’s worth
of witches on hand at the moment, but the next time we do, perhaps
we’ll test him in a bigger circle.”

“Maybe when we all come for witchling training
this summer,” Sophie said. “With me and Nell, you’ll have enough, I
think.”