A Modern Witch - By Debora Geary Page 0,34

was impressed. “You cook?”

“I do. And I assume you’re starving.”

“I am. Were you eavesdropping?” It occurred to Lauren that he might well be able to do that.

“No. To quote my mother, ‘just because witches can, doesn’t mean they should’.”

Nat cocked her head. “So, you could have listened.”

“Didn’t, but yeah, that’s fairly basic magic. Lauren here will be able to do it fairly shortly. Telepathy works fairly well over short distances. For me, it’s easier to do with an elemental spell. I’d activate air to push the sound currents far enough for me to hear, or something similar. Not that I’ve ever done it, of course,” he added with a grin.

Lauren laughed. “Liar.” She took two of the plates from Jamie and walked over to her small dining table.

“Every witchling tries it at least once. Takes longer for some of us to get caught, but in a family of witches, it’s hard to come up with something new. My mom set up a counterspell that turned my ears bright red for days. End of my career as a witch spy.”

Lauren’s interest in witching families was suddenly more personal. “Do most witches have children with power, too?”

“It depends. Witching talents definitely run in families. In my family, I’d say on average, one child in two is a witch. A few more have wisps of talent—not enough to do anything with, just a few echoes. They tend to give birth to witchlings, though. Kind of like they’re carriers for witching talent, even if they don’t manifest any real power themselves.”

Lauren thought about her family. “So ,was one of my parents maybe a carrier or something? How did I end up a witch?”

Jamie shook his head. “That’s one of the questions that make witch genealogists a little nuts. Nobody knows. Maybe there were unrecognized or hidden talents in your family, but about twenty-five percent of witches have no family history. Odds are you fit into that group.”

Nat had been really quiet. Lauren gave herself a mental kick. She wasn’t the only one with reason to have a personal interest in witches and their families. Dating a witch was one thing. Having his babies was a whole other pile of stuff to think about.

She squeezed Nat’s hand under the table. “So, what’s next in Witch Training 101?”

“We need to get you to a place where you can walk down the street without overloading. Eventually, you’ll be able to control your barriers and decide how much you want to take in. For now, though, we need to use the bricks.”

“What happened to bubbles?”

“That was a good idea until I blew your channels wide open. If you want to go to work tomorrow, we need to practice brick walls. Once you have those down, we’ll get back to bubbles. We’ll use Nat as the measuring stick. I want you to build a barrier tight enough that you can’t sense anything from her anymore. If you can block one person totally, that’s a start to what you’ll need in a crowd.”

“I can’t hear her now.”

Jamie patted her hand cheerfully. “That’s because I have a nice concrete wall around your head right now, the one I put in place outside the bagel shop. Come on into the living room, and I’ll take it down.”

…

Nell was getting seriously itchy to hear from Jamie. She knew how much trouble he could dig himself into in a few hours. It was a big sister’s job to throw him a rope.

Or to harass him about pretty ladies and snowmen. The sister job description was wide ranging and flexible. Nell grabbed her phone and texted Jamie. Chat. Now. She added ‘please’ when she messaged Sophie and Moira.

Nell: About time, brother mine.

Sophie: Jamie! We’ve been dying for an update. How is it going with Lauren?

Jamie: I just left. I’m pretty sure she hates me at this exact moment. We worked on barriers for three hours solid.

Moira: That seems a bit much, Jamie. Aren’t you in a bit of a hurry?

Jamie: I don’t have a choice. She overloaded yesterday.

Sophie: Ouch. What happened?

Jamie: My fault. We were doing some really basic work with barriers. She was finally making some progress, and I got hit with a precog episode. Only had two in the last year, and one hits when I’m mindlinked with a newbie witch.

Nell: Must have been a heck of a precog episode to jump your control, Jamie.

Jamie: Yeah, it was. She got caught in the backwash and it overloaded her channels. It probably wouldn’t have,