A Hidden Witch - By Debora Geary Page 0,2

welcome to create her own site, but I’d be delighted to sell her work on mine. There’s certainly magic in all that sea glass she collects, and it would be a nice expansion of my current wares.

Moira: It would be a joy to see my girls working together again.

Sophie: One step at a time, Aunt Moira.

Moira: Just tucking a little seed into the dirt, my dear. There’s much love between the two of you yet, but I know it’s complicated.

Sophie: Consider it planted.

Nell: Speaking of your site, Sophie, I was thinking of a couple of enhancements to our fetching spell for Witches’ Chat.

Sophie: I thought it was working quite nicely. We’ve had some delightful witches join us in chat lately.

Nell: We have, but they’ve all been actively practicing witches. I was remembering back to when we pulled Lauren in, how she wasn’t aware she had power.

Moira: She’s been a wonderful addition to the witching community.

Nell: Exactly. I was thinking that maybe we want to find more like her.

Sophie: You’re a brave woman. Supposing we wanted to, how would we do that?

Nell: I looked at the power signatures of the witches we’ve been chatting with lately and compared them to Lauren’s early readings. Hers were strong, but much less disciplined.

Sophie: That would make sense—she’d had no training.

Nell: Right, and I think we can use that. I can tweak the spell to seek those with less-disciplined power traces. We’ll either find witches with less training, or those who aren’t aware of their gifts.

Moira: That was a little rocky last time around, Nell. It’s all turned out for the best, but I think we were fortunate Lauren didn’t slam the door in our faces.

Sophie: I agree, but it’s tempting—we know there’s a need for it. We’d definitely want to have someone on tap to go evaluate them, like Jamie did for Lauren. There’s a lot more to helping an untrained witch than simply finding her, and we didn’t have much of a plan last time.

Nell: The girls and I are working on a virtual scan so we could assess someone remotely, but we haven’t finished it yet. And Jamie isn’t free to travel this time—Nat’s been dealing with morning sickness, and I don’t think he’d want to leave her.

Sophie: Someone should have mentioned she was having trouble. I have a couple of crystals that will help, and I’ll blend her some tea.

Nell: That would be great, Sophie. I need to send Ginia out to train with you—we’re really short on healers here, and I’d love to know if she’s got that talent.

Sophie: With her earth power and affinity for plants, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

Moira: Bring Ginia this summer, Nell. We’ve healers here, especially with Sophie coming to visit as well. If Ginia’s got healing talents, that’s just one more reason to gather in one place for a time.

Nell: A week attempting to laze on the beach sounds good to me. Just let me work out the logistics. In the meantime, should I tweak the fetching spell to find witches who aren’t actively practicing the craft, or leave it alone?

Moira: If we’re having ourselves a training gathering, then it seems like fortuitous timing to find someone who might be untrained.

Sophie: When can you have the spell adjusted, Nell?

Nell: I think the girls have been working on it in secret. There’s an encrypted folder on our network called Codename: Hidden Witch.

Sophie: Ginia’s turned into an awesome spellcoder. She’s kicking all our butts in Realm.

Nell: That’s my girl. I’ll see what they’ve got, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we’re ready to go in time for our regular chat tonight.

Moira: In that case, I’ll have myself a wee bit of dinner and talk to the both of you in a couple of hours.

~ ~ ~

Elorie could feel her hands cramping, and the natural light was getting dim enough that she had to squint to see the delicate silver wires she was twisting together. This particular piece of sea glass was one of her favorites, a brilliant blue that made her think of Venice.

Blues were the rarest of her beach finds and she hoarded them, only dipping into that jar when she wanted to make a particularly special piece. This was a necklace for Gran, and it didn’t come any more special than that. Gran shared her love for the history and resilience the sea glass represented.

Elorie liked to imagine the long life of each treasure she worked on. She held the bit of glass