A Modern Witch - By Debora Geary Page 0,96
headed your direction. He was playing in the back yard by himself, so we weren’t sure how long he’d been gone. Let me talk to him a minute.”
Aervyn listened to Nell for a few moments. “I don’t want to come back, Mama. I want to see Uncle Jamie and Nat.” Whatever Nell said in return, it had Aervyn shaking his head adamantly.
Lauren didn’t want to know if you could force a four-year-old witch to port somewhere he didn’t want to go. She reached for the phone. “Hey, Nell. Listen, let me call Jamie and Nat and have them pop over.”
Aervyn bounced with glee. “I can get them!”
Jamie and Nat thumped onto her living room floor in a tangled bundle. Thank goodness for sheets, thought Lauren, and gave in to helpless laughter.
Nat joined her. Jamie, made of tougher stuff, only snickered. “Hey, hot stuff. Mind sending us back for a minute so we can get dressed?”
Aervyn frowned. “Uncle Jamie, why are you nakey?”
“Because, dude, and that’s all the answer you get until you send me back for some clothes.”
Nat grinned. “I have spare clothes here at Lauren’s.”
Jamie stuck out his tongue at her, which Aervyn thought was far funnier than a couple of naked people. “Fine, then—I’ll go back. Beam me up, Scottie.”
Jamie disappeared. Lauren hoped Aervyn had good aim. It was a very cold night to be wandering naked in the streets of Chicago.
Nat lifted off the floor, sheet wrapped around her like some drunken toga, and headed off to the bedroom.
“Why were they nakey, Lauren?”
Aervyn was persistent, but Lauren was smarter than Jamie. She held out her phone, where Nell could still be heard laughing. “Here, ask your mama.”
She had no idea what maternal wisdom Nell shared when Aervyn asked his question yet again, but he nodded, giggled, and hung up. “She said to call when you’re ready to send me back.” Shadows of mutiny crossed his face again. “I don’t want to go back. I want to stay here.”
Her phone rang again. Jamie was ready to return. Maybe he could handle the porting-home negotiations.
The four of them hung out for over an hour, playing and talking and studiously avoiding any mention of Aervyn needing to go back to California. It was clear no one wanted to be the bad guy and try to make their impromptu visitor go home.
Lauren made some quick mental rearrangements to her plans for the next three days. She’d just closed two deals, and everything else could be handed off. “Aervyn, sweetie, how would you like to go back to California with me?”
Aervyn looked a bit skeptical. “I don’t know if I can port you, too. You’re pretty big.” He brightened and looked at Jamie. “I could if you helped.”
Lauren was still sane enough to want to get to Berkeley the old-fashioned way. “No, I was thinking we could fly there. You can stay here tonight, and we’ll take a plane ride tomorrow morning. I’ll move my flight up a couple of days.”
Aervyn considered. “What about Uncle Jamie and Nat?”
Jamie answered. “We’ll come in two days, kiddo. Nat still has some classes to teach, and I have to help her carry all the presents she bought.”
“I could port the presents.”
Lauren tweaked Aervyn’s nose. “We’ll let them travel on an airplane, too. I’ll call your mama and let her know what the plan is. Deal?”
“Deal.” Aervyn nodded solemnly, and then ran in circles making airplane sounds. “I’ve never been on a plane ride before.”
Jamie looked at Lauren. “Sucker.”
She certainly was. “You guys sleeping over?”
“Yeah.”
Lauren was pretty sure she hadn’t seen Jamie so happy in weeks.
Chapter 24
Lauren was very, very happy Nell was meeting them at the airport in San Francisco. Getting a small witch through airport security and onto the plane had been more than enough escort duty. She wanted reinforcements. Aervyn had played havoc with security scanners, even when he wasn’t trying.
Now they were on the plane, and he was strapped to a seat, temporarily awed watching the world go by out his window. She wasn’t even going to think about what he could do to airplane electronics.
Aervyn turned away from the window. “I can’t see anymore. It’s all clouds.”
“You’ll be able to see more when we get to California. We’ll fly over mountains and the ocean—it’s pretty cool.”
“I’m hungry.”
For this, at least, she was prepared. Since airline meals had been replaced by meager bags of pretzels, Lauren had a backpack full of snacks Aervyn had helped pick out.
“Apple, chocolate-covered peanuts, or cheese sandwich?”
“Chocolate