A Reckless Witch - By Debora Geary Page 0,20
hands. “Quesadillas—I know it’s dinner time for some of you.”
“Seedling thanks you.” Sophie laughed, rubbing her belly.
Jamie reached for the plate. “It’s never too early for dinner. Hang on, and I’ll ping Ginia to send us some drinks.”
A tray materialized on the coffee table in front of him. Drinks, apples, and napkins. Nell grinned. “Do you really think I’d miss a detail like that?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “No cookies?”
“Time-delayed transport.” Nell rolled her eyes. “Ginia’s brainstorm. She has this weird idea we should eat our veggies first.”
Jamie laughed and bit into his quesadilla. “Since when is cheese a vegetable?”
“It’s what I hide in the cheese.” The whole room laughed as Jamie looked at his dinner in not entirely faked horror.
Govin chuckled and handed Moira an apple and a plate. He’d run tame in the Sullivan house growing up. He knew that bickering was a sign of love, Jamie really was fairly allergic to vegetables, and Nell did most of her serious negotiating over food. He bit into a quesadilla and waited.
“How is our Sierra doing?” Moira asked. “I was surprised you wanted to meet so soon after the wee girl arrived.”
Nell passed out napkins. “She’s sound asleep on Aervyn’s top bunk. The kids were playing hide-and-seek after the Great Brownie Cleanup, and she conked out waiting for someone to find her.”
Her brother grinned. “She’s an extrovert. They gain energy from being with other people. As soon as the kids abandoned her, boom. Out like a light.”
Everyone in the room shook their head, amused. Jamie had taken a recent interest in trying to find patterns in witch talents and personality traits. As a result, they’d all been filling out a lot of multiple-choice tests.
Govin smiled. He was a bigger fan of data than most, but clearly not everyone was in love with Jamie’s latest venture.
Nell handed her brother another quesadilla wedge. “You might be right. She was barely sitting up on the car ride back from the train station, but our mob of kiddos turned that right around.”
“That’s interesting.” Sophie tilted her head. “Sierra’s eighteen, but it sounds like she was more attracted to the young ones than the adults.”
That hadn’t failed to escape Govin’s notice, either. On its own—no big deal. Coupled with what else he’d noticed, and he was nervous. It was why he’d asked Nell to call a meeting.
Jamie shrugged. “Well, the kids kind of swooped down on her. But if I remember correctly, Amelia spent a lot of time playing with us when she came to visit, too. Maybe Sierra inherited her mother’s love of kids?”
“For Amelia, it was more than that.” Moira sipped her tea pensively. “In many ways, she was forever a child—she shared their joy in laughter and a life of fun and games.” She looked over at Govin. “And their lack of concern for the consequences of their actions. You’ve seen something of her mother in our Sierra, I think.”
Moira had always been a very perceptive witch. He nodded slowly, not sure where to begin. “She was playing Hot Potato with the other kids just after she arrived.”
Jamie reached for more food. “She held Aervyn to a stand-off. That was some pretty impressive control she had.”
Nell tossed an apple hand-to-hand and looked at Govin. “Tell them what you told me.”
“She did have impressive control.” He laid down his plate. “She was essentially using storm magic to control the flying brownie chunks. The little funnel at the end? Make that a hundred times bigger, and your house would have been doing a pretty good imitation of Dorothy and Toto in The Wizard of Oz.”
Sophie blinked. “You think she’s that strong?”
“No idea.” He shook his head. “Or at least, no quantifiable data. But unless she played an awful lot of Hot Potato with her mother, she had to develop those skills somehow. And they’re easier to learn moving bigger streams of power.” It was one of the ironies of magic that small spells were often more difficult than large ones.
Jamie was frowning now. “You think she learned on house-sized funnels?”
“I suspect so.” Govin nodded. That wasn’t the part that had him most concerned, but it was a start. “At the very least, it’s a strong possibility—and she controlled three power streams at a time like it was child’s play.” For her, it had been exactly that.
Moira sat up straighter. “That kind of power might be enough to disturb planetary weather patterns.”
Exactly. They all sat silent for a moment as Moira’s words sank in. Most witches