A Hidden Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 2) (9 page)

Nell touched Elorie’s hand. “It’s only a theory
right now, but Marcus thinks you may be accessing a form of power
that only registers in Internet space. He also thinks it might not
be just you.”

Three exhausting days were catching up with
Elorie. “Let me get this straight. Uncle Marcus thinks there are a
bunch of witches running around the Internet with some kind of
invisible magic?”

Nell shrugged. “Okay, it sounds a little
hocus-pocus when you put it that way. But it’s a good idea. He
thinks people like Ginia, who are good at spellcoding, might share
your mysterious talent.”

Why was it so stinking hard for everyone to
believe she wasn’t a witch? Elorie shoved in the last of her
cookie. They could sit in dark basements and theorize all they
wanted. She was done.

Ginia finished her milk as Elorie stood up. “We
tried scanning me, but nothing showed up.”

Nell was silent for a moment. “What were you
doing when you got scanned?”

“Holding the mouse, just like Elorie does…”
Ginia slid to a halt, her eyes opening wide.

Jamie snapped his fingers. “Nell, you’re
brilliant. Elorie, two more minutes. Please.”

Elorie stood and watched the sudden flurry of
activity in the basement, utterly confused. In moments, there was a
new computer setup at the table, and Ginia was typing madly into
her keyboard. Elorie could see the graphics for Enchanter’s Realm
on her screen.

“Keep it simple,” Jamie said. “We just need a
basic spell to do the test.”

Ginia nodded. “I’m coding an easy three-step
spell. That way, you’ll have three chances to get a reading.”

Jamie nodded, watching over her shoulder. “Good
thinking, cutie.”

If she had to stand here, the least they could
do was explain why. Elorie leaned over toward Nell. “I’m so
confused. What’s going on?”

“We’re trying to figure out if Marcus is right,
and witches who can spellcode share your talent. You test for it
even with passive readings, but it’s trickier in witches with
multiple magics. We’re thinking that if Ginia has what you have, it
might be easier to read when she’s actively spellcoding.”

That much made sense. Active magic was a lot
more visible—even she could sense the power flows sometimes when
one of her witchlings was doing a more complicated spell.

Ginia looked up, all nine-year-old seriousness.
“Ready.”

“Ready here, too.” Jamie intently watched his
screen.

Elorie watched. Absolutely nothing happened.

Suddenly a familiar voice spoke out of Ginia’s
computer. “You called, Warrior Girl?”

Ginia giggled. “Hi, Gandalf. We’re doing a test
to see if I have the same power as Elorie. I needed to code a spell
to get the reading. I hope you like your new costume.”

Nell leaned over to look at the screen and
clapped a hand to her mouth, snickering. She motioned Elorie to
look.

Marcus’s gruff voice boomed out again. “It’s not
funny, Nell. I’ll be the laughingstock of Realm.” Elorie moved in
and got an eyeful of Marcus dressed in Xena splendor.

Ginia grinned. “Nah. That will happen tomorrow.
I wrote this one in a hurry, so it probably won’t take you too long
to reverse it.”

Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “What happens
tomorrow?”

“I hate to interrupt,” Jamie said dryly, “but is
anyone interested in the results of the scan while Ginia was
spellcoding?”

Every head in the room swiveled, including
Marcus’s onscreen. Jamie looked around and grinned. “Whatever magic
you’ve got, Elorie—Ginia has it, too. We got a very nice spike of
the same unknown power during step two of that spell.”

Ginia bounced on her seat. “That’s the hardest
step, so it should have been the easiest to see.” She and Nell both
jumped up to look at the readouts on Jamie’s monitor. Elorie felt
oddly naked, floating on the edges of something she didn’t pretend
to understand.

Jamie looked up at Elorie, eyes deep with
sympathy. “You’re a witch, little sister. Welcome.”

She felt the breath simply leak out of her.

Ginia came to hold one of her hands, and Nell
the other. Elorie looked down at the joining of her very first
witch circle, and let the tears come.

~ ~ ~

Moira:
Hello, Nell. Is my
sweet Elorie there? I was hoping to speak with her.

Nell:
Sorry, you just missed
her. With the time change, it might be tricky to connect with her
in the next couple of days. Jamie, Nat, and the girls took her down
to the Art Fair to set up her booth. That’s probably way more help
than she needs, but everyone is a little excited right now.

Sophie:
I just heard the
news—I ran into Marcus in Realm.

Nell:
Yeah, he’s rounding up
witch players so we can do more widespread testing.

Moira:
Pardon an old woman
for a moment. It’s true, then—my Elorie is a witch?

Nell:
She is. She was just a
very well-hidden one.

Sophie:
Your girl’s a witch,
Aunt Moira. We have a new sister.

Moira:
It’s a little hard to
take in just yet. I never imagined we would find out quite like
this, with her practically on the other side of the world.

Sophie:
Nell, please give her
a hug, and all my blessings. We haven’t been as close in recent
years, but she is the sister of my childhood.

Moira:
It was very difficult
for her as you grew into power, sweetheart.

Sophie:
I know it.

Moira:
I also know it’s one
of the reasons you live so far away.

Sophie:
Not the only one, but
yes. Her heart is there, and it would ache more often if I lived
underfoot.

Moira:
Know that mine aches
for the choice you made. It wasn’t a fair one to ask of you. In my
heart, you have always had a home here.

Sophie:
I love you, too :-).
Power is not always fair, or easy. It won’t be for Elorie, either,
but this feels right. I’m so very happy for her.

Moira:
My heart is full to
bursting, but my head is very confused. Nell, please have pity and
explain to me exactly what you’ve discovered. Marcus was talking
about spells and coding and such and I admit to not understanding a
word of it. My granddaughter is a witch, but that’s all I know.

Nell:
The important part is
that we believe there’s a power source we hadn’t previously
identified, and Elorie is not the only one who can use it.

Sophie:
Net power. That is so
cool.

Nell:
You’re a pretty good
spellcoder, Sophie—make sure Jamie tests you in the next few days.
He and Marcus are just doing some tweaking first to make sure we
don’t melt any more computers doing the remote scanning.

Moira:
Old-lady English,
please…

Nell:
Sorry, Moira. We’re
still trying to understand this new power source. You remember back
when I was a child, and they were just beginning to understand how
shapeshifting and such worked?

Moira:
Indeed. It took some
of our best minds to figure out the source powering those magics.
Harder still because it’s a relatively rare talent.

Nell:
Well, this is another
power source we don’t understand much about yet. The good news is,
it may not be so rare. Ginia tests for it, and we think that anyone
who can spellcode probably has some degree of this talent. Marcus
does, as do Jamie and I. Ginia’s the strongest we’ve found so far,
though.

Sophie:
I repeat, this is so
cool.

Nell:
Get Jamie to test you,
girl.

Moira:
And you think my
Elorie has this Net power. She will be a spellcoder, then?

Nell:
That’s where things get
confusing again. For most of us, our scan only registers power when
we’re actively spellcoding. For Elorie, all she has to do is touch
a mouse and we get higher readings than we see from anyone
else.

Sophie:
Meaning what,
exactly?

Nell:
We’re all guessing.
Moira, maybe you can help us think this through. There are
witchlings who have an unusual affinity for certain power sources,
right? Even when they’re not actively doing magic?

Moira:
Certainly. Your Aervyn
was one of them, playing with power threads while he was still in
your belly.

Nell:
Exactly. And Jamie and
Nat’s babe plays with fire, although no one but Aervyn can see that
yet.

Moira:
It’s normally a sign
of a very strong talent, and one that will emerge early.

Nell:
Right. So if Elorie has
a natural affinity for Net power, even when she’s not doing active
magic…

Moira:
You’re saying she
might be particularly strong with this talent.

Sophie:
I want her for my
partner in Realm.

Nell:
Get in line. However,
we don’t know that spellcoding is the only way for this talent to
work. That’s how most people use it right now, but really, it’s
just a power source.

Sophie:
Ah. So just like I
use my earth magic to heal or make flowers bloom, Elorie may be
able to use her power in more than one way.

Nell:
Possibly. Most magics
have a likeness to their power source—it would be really hard to
use earth magic to create a windstorm—so we’re guessing she’s not a
weather witch, but we’re not exactly sure what she might be able to
do.

Moira:
Start at the
beginning, then.

Nell:
Which is?

Moira:
She must learn to call
her power reliably and use it in small spells. Once she has that
control, you can work out what else she can do.

Nell:
Wise words, Moira.
Thanks.

Sophie:
Does this mean Elorie
gets spellcoding lessons?

Nell:
I think so.

Moira:
The poor girl.

Sophie:
I’ll take her into
Realm. Ginia could use some backup taking Marcus down.

Nell:
Careful with that. Next
to Ginia, Marcus has the highest Net power reading on our scans so
far.

Sophie:
That figures.

Moira:
It’s like a foreign
planet, that game of yours.

Nell:
You’re welcome to come
for a visit. Marcus will be over later today to teach you the
basics of spellcoding.

Moira:
Me? Goodness sakes,
why?

Nell:
Because most witch
talents are hereditary. If your nephew and your granddaughter are
both Net witches, there’s a decent chance you are, too.

Nell pushed back from her computer and grinned.
She really should have put on video chat—Moira’s face would have
been priceless. She didn’t envy Marcus his task. Moira might just
turn him into a frog, or worse.

Then again, her assignment for the afternoon was
to teach Aervyn some basic spellcoding, and that was a fairly risky
proposition as well. Mia and Shay were currently unhooking all the
most precious electronics in the house from the Internet so Aervyn
didn’t fry them with an errant line of code or two. Daniel was
reinforcing their network firewall so Wonder Boy didn’t
accidentally fry the computer of anyone else in the neighborhood,
either. Life was never boring at Witch Central.

Jamie, Ginia, and Marcus would test the Realm
players, and by the end of the day, they’d likely have a pretty
good list of Net witches.

Then they just had to figure out what to do with
them.

~ ~ ~

Jamie had no idea how he’d gotten roped into
setting up a jewelry booth with five giggly girls. Nat and Elorie
were no better than the triplets, trying on a gadzillion different
necklaces and debating which ones were their favorites. As far as
he could tell, the favorites pile was bigger than the discards.

Nat sidled up to him, some creation of copper
and sea glass around her neck. “What do you think?”

He was wise in the ways of women. “Don’t you
have to wait until tomorrow to buy stuff?”

She shook her head in amused dismay. “In six
months, you’re going to be the most important man in the world to
our baby girl. You need to get better at questions like this.”

“Don’t I get a couple of years of training while
she learns how to talk?” He hoped.

His wife gave him one of her brain-melting
smiles. “You’re a slow learner, so you might want to get started
now.” She gestured at his three nieces, all festooned in jewelry
and giving him the same “so what do you think” look.

He was taking Aervyn to a ball game later. It
was a matter of guy survival.

Elorie dug in her bottomless backpack. “Girls, I
have something special for you. ” She pulled out three very similar
chains, each with a gorgeous piece of sea glass entwined in silver
wire and two smaller pieces of glass, one on each side. Each
necklace had the same three colors of glass, but with a different
color as the central focus.

Even Jamie, a triplet himself, could see that
Elorie had captured the bond of identical, but unique, sisterhood.
His nieces were speechless.

He could feel Elorie’s joy at the gifting. She
had an incredibly open mind, and that wasn’t always a good thing,
but right now, he appreciated the second-hand glow. It was a nice
improvement over the emotional swings she’d been going through
since yesterday.

She grinned and reached into her bag once more,
this time coming out with a copper pendant holding a blue orb. He
would have denied it to his last breath, but he coveted the deep
blue. It called to him.