mind-boggling to imagine selling that much in a weekend, but Elorie believed in her art. She had almost four hundred pieces ready to take with her to California, and her exhausted hands were evidence of just how hard she had worked.
“I need to go back out tonight and pack up for the plane, but everything is ready to go.”
Aaron smiled and switched to rubbing her other hand. “I’ll come out and help you with that. Your booth setup should arrive in California tomorrow, and Nell’s going to pick you up at the airport.”
Elorie tried to find the energy to protest. “She doesn’t need to do that. I can catch a cab.”
“And when was the last time we let a guest take a cab?”
He had a point. “It will be nice to see everyone again. I made sea-glass pendants for the girls, since they were so enamored with mine when I visited in March.”
“They’re pretty magical for young girls. I’ve seen it here, too. Lizzie would happily have a different necklace for every day of the week.”
Aaron held out his last meatball. All of hers had magically disappeared. Maybe her super-secret hidden witch talent only worked on meatballs.
He tugged her hair, as if following her jumbled thoughts. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to remind you about all that.” She’d spent a decent chunk of their night away in tears.
“It wasn’t you, it was the meatballs.” Her husband, long used to her conversational tangents, waited patiently for her to start making sense. Rather than explain the meatballs, she just told him what he really wanted to know.
“I’ve already wasted far too much of my life hoping to turn into a witch. I’ve held on to that dream for so long, what happened with the computer scan was bound to affect me some. But I have a good life, and a really important opportunity coming up, and I don’t plan to blow it by worrying about stealth magical powers.”
He just smiled. Aaron was always good for a sanity check, and when your world was full of witches and spells, that was a very good thing.
Getting away for their anniversary had helped. Her adult life had always had two important gravitational pulls. Her work for and with the witching community was one, and her life with Aaron and her sea glass was the other. A little time away had helped her find steady footing again, on entirely non-magical ground.
She reached for his hands. “When I get back, maybe we can get started on adding a little Shaw around here.”
Aaron scooped her up. He moved fast for an innkeeper. “What’s wrong with now?”
That pretty much ended dinner.
~ ~ ~
Jamie scowled at the melted computer parts on the table. Marcus had quietly overnighted him the innards of Moira’s cooked computer, but there wasn’t much to see besides a mess of mangled metal.
Not that he could see very well with three curly heads all leaning over the table too.
“What do you think?” Ginia asked.
“There’s not a lot to work with, girls. I was hoping Elorie had just shorted something out and we could get a read on some of the data, but…”
Mia giggled. “I don’t think there’s any data left alive in there. She totally fried it.”
Jamie nudged Shay, usually the most contemplative of the three. “What do you think?”
Shay tilted her head. “Are we sure Elorie did this?”
Quiet didn’t mean slow, Jamie thought. Shay was by far the best debugger of the three because she never skipped any steps, even when the answers seemed obvious.
Mia shrugged. “What else could have done it? Uncle Jamie, have you ever seen anything like this?”
He shook his head. “No, but Shay asked a great question. I suspect Elorie’s the culprit, but good coders rule out weird possibilities, too. Elorie wasn’t the only person in the room when this happened.”
Mia considered the melted mess. “I bet Aervyn could melt a hard drive if he wanted to, and he might not even have to be in the same room.”
Three sets of eyes looked up in sudden fascination. Uh, oh. This was the kind of stuff where he was supposed to be the adult. His internal debate didn’t last long. He wasn’t a father yet, and trying to zap hard drives with magic sounded like serious fun.
Mia grinned and jumped up. “I’ll go get Aervyn.”
Shay looked at Jamie. “I bet you could do it too, couldn’t you?”
Jamie started digging in boxes, looking for old hard drives. They were about to find out.