eleven years. Beth gulped and got out the last of the hard words. "My magic needs to go. I need training. But I don't belong there." It wasn't a rational belief, but she couldn't shake it. The faces in the room had haunted a very long night of wakefulness.
For a long time, Liri stood very still. And then she leaned over, picked up the little crystal fire dragon, and wrapped Beth's fingers around it. "You belong here. And when it's time, you'll come home."
Beth clutched the piece of glass tightly. She didn't believe in crystals or dragons. But she believed in love, and that was enough.
-o0o-
Nell landed in Lauren and Devin's tiny cottage by the sea and wondered, yet again, how it always seemed to be full of witches. Even when they hadn't been summoned.
Moira smiled from her place of honor on Lauren's green couch, Sophie's son Adam asleep in her lap, two knitting needles clutched in his hands.
Nell grinned. "He's getting so big."
"Aye. And he's not much for cuddles while he's awake, this one, so I have to sneak in my fill while he's sleeping."
Sophie smiled. "You sneak them regularly enough when he's awake, too."
Devin rolled his eyes. "Moira steals all the cute babies." He wrapped a casual arm around his wife's shoulders. "Why don't you go sit on the couch too - put your feet up. You had a long day yesterday."
Lauren chuckled and kissed his cheek. "It's not contagious, you know."
Devin wiggled his eyebrows Moira's direction. "It could be."
Nell tried not to laugh. Apparently her brother had the baby bug. Someone needed to warn Lauren to be on the lookout for fertility spells.
The witch in question sat down, running her finger over Adam's fuzzy hair. And then kissed Moira on the cheek. "Don't get any ideas."
Her husband snickered and headed for the door. "Going on a linguine run so we have something to eat after this horde decimates the ice cream stash. Back in ten."
Her brother wasn't good at worrying while standing still. Nell waved at his disappearing back, hoping he remembered the extra Alfredo sauce. And surveyed the crowd he planned to feed - the bat signal had been pretty strong.
Witch Central had screwed up, and with a good sleep under her belt, it was time to convene the masses and make things right.
Lauren slid off the couch and sat cross-legged in front of the low coffee table, passing out cookies and ice cream. A signal. Nell felt the vibe in the room shifting - time to get down to business. She resisted the lure of Ben & Jerry's. With linguine coming, it would be worth the wait, and someone needed to get a grip on what had just happened. "A lot of us are missing big parts of the story, I think, and Lauren, you might have more of it than anyone else. Can you start at the beginning and fill us in?"
Lauren kept handing out sugar fixes. "Pretty sure the beginning was a spellcode malfunction."
Nell winced. The guilt hadn't dissipated any overnight. "Yeah. I used some of the transport code in the fetching spell. One of the triplets cut and pasted the wrong two lines." And fixed it thirty seconds later, but Beth had reached for her mouse at exactly the wrong moment.
"It wasn't just the code." Lauren stared pensively at her ice cream. "Beth was thinking about Jamie."
That was new. And ominous. "What?"
"When we visited their coven meeting back last winter - no, two winters ago - she was the most talented witch in the group. When we left, he invited her to contact him if she wanted more training." Their storyteller looked up. "She was considering it."
Nuts. And considerably eerie. "Wow, we have really crappy timing."
"It's the solstice." Moira spoke quietly from the couch. "Magic is a little more mysterious at this time of year. Perhaps her fetching wasn't entirely an accident."
The only thing worse than a big coding snafu was woo-woo magics they couldn't see or fix. "You think our spell reached out and grabbed her because she happened to be thinking about my baby brother?"
"Aye. Ancient energies are stirring. If you sit in the dark