A Modern Witch - By Debora Geary Page 0,64

the shoes you’ll be asked to fill.

Lauren: And the channeler does what, exactly?

Moira: Once the circle has collected power, the channeler gathers it up and focuses energies toward the spellcaster.

Lauren: And then the spellcaster works the magic. Sounds simple enough.

Moira: You’re quite delightful, Lauren. It is indeed simple, and also very complicated. I’ll be most interested to hear your reactions to your first full circle.

Lauren: I’ll come chat with you again, I promise.

Moira: Please do. This is still a bit odd for me, but I’ve very much enjoyed the chance to know you a little better. Blessed be.

…

Lauren lay on her back in Jamie’s back yard and clutched Sophie’s emerald crystal in her hand. She hoped it would make a difference soon. Her head ached like it had bench-pressed three hundred pounds.

Circle work was clearly difficult for others, too. Aervyn lay beside her on the grass, astonishingly still for a four-year-old boy.

Jennie spoke. “I’m sorry, Lauren; I know that round was hard on you. I feel like we’re not quite getting the connection right, but I’m not sure where we’re going wrong.” She looked to Nell and Jamie for input.

Jamie stuffed the rest of a chocolate chip cookie in his mouth. “I’m wondering if the issue is Lauren’s power source. Normally channelers are elemental witches, so they power their channeling differently than she will. Nell and I know how to do the hook-up with an elemental-witch channeler, but it might work differently with a mind witch.”

“Well, Edric will be at the circle on Monday,” Jennie said. “He’s the only mind-witch channeler in the Western states right now.”

Jamie shook his head. “He has elemental powers too, so he may still connect in differently than what Lauren will need to do.”

Lauren roused herself enough to take the two cookies Jamie offered and passed one to Aervyn. It was hardly reassuring that three experienced witches couldn’t figure out how this was supposed to work.

She knew they were deliberately keeping the power level in the circle very low, but her role as channeler still felt like trying to plug a fire hose into a USB port while the water was on full blast. Aervyn was trying to help, but neither of them was getting the job done, and trying to contain all the leaking power was exhausting both of them.

Lauren tried to think. Jamie was saying she needed to hook people in differently. Or maybe… the problem was the order.

Buoyed by the hope of a new idea, Lauren managed to sit up. “Instead of me connecting to the circle first, and then trying to join with Aervyn, can we try joining him and me first, and then adding the circle? I don’t feel like I can contain the circle’s power on my own. I need a place to send it first. When we did Cat Woman, he was already waiting for whatever it was that I did.”

Nell looked thoughtful. “Totally ass-backward from how it’s usually done, but it makes sense. We’re all funneling you elemental power, and you’re the only channeler I know with absolutely no elemental talent, so it might be that you can’t contain it at all—but maybe you can direct it.”

Jennie nodded slowly. “Piggybacking on that, I’m going suggest something a little different as well. I’ve been drawing on elemental power, but this time I’ll try sharing mind power.”

“That’s a great idea,” Jamie said. “Put a form of power in the mix that we know Lauren can handle. Maybe it will make the whole flow easier for her to guide.”

Everyone returned to a seated circle and clasped hands. This time, Lauren reached a channel out to Aervyn first and felt the already easy familiarity of that connection settle into place. Then she focused for a minute in her center, visualizing what she wanted to do next.

She began to grow rainbow-bright tendrils out from her dome. Working carefully, she wove them together, a beautiful web that stretched over her barrier, all anchored to her connection with Aervyn.

Now it was time to add the circle. She visualized the strands of her web sending shoots outward, questing tendrils in search of a place to root. Gently she stretched a handful of tendrils toward Jennie. Hopefully she would recognize this modification of their mind-magic drills.

Lauren silently cheered when she saw the seeking lights of Jennie’s mind power reaching out. Carefully they wove Jennie’s light together with her rainbow threads. It was like turning on the tree lights at Christmas time. The entire web of threads