trying to watch over a fragile witch from this far away. Nell hoped six pints would be enough. "Was it safe to leave her?"
Sparks hit Lauren's eyes almost as fast as they hit Devin's.
Oops. "Sorry, that didn't come out right. I'm sure you wouldn't have left her if it wasn't."
"S'okay." Lauren waved a spoon. "None of us had much time to think. I did the best I could, but it's entirely possible I screwed up. Liriel seemed very competent, though."
A crazy situation and an unusual witch on the verge of panic. "You took charge while the rest of us were still trying to find our noses."
"Her mind was a screaming mess. I figure that nominated me." Lauren's eyes were somber. "It was bad, Nell. We really scared her."
Yup, and the weight of that would have Realm's programming team up into the wee hours setting up yet more fail-safes around their transport spells. "I know."
Two pairs of eyes met in shared guilt.
They'd blown some poor witch to shreds - and then their resident mind witch had stepped in, salvaged the pieces, taken her home, and was now burning every inch of her considerable power trying to monitor Beth through feet of concrete and a thousand competing minds.
Nell shook her head - no wonder Devin looked ready to conquer several large countries. "You should have paged us sooner."
"Yeah." Lauren rolled her eyes. "Tell the weather guy."
Freaking snow. Nell took a deep breath. They couldn't change the past, and the next step was to make sure the initial crisis was over. "What now?"
"I don't know. But she's improving, I think." Lauren dug back into her Phish Food. "What I can pick up through walls and a ton of people, anyhow. She lives in the apartment above the shop across the street. The neighbors are having a Christmas party. Lots of interference."
"So stop monitoring her from this far away." Devin's face was mutinous. "We'll go knock on the door and check in on her like normal people."
His wife reached over and kissed his cheek, gave him a spoon, and then tilted her head to the side, a woman listening to a small voice in the wilderness. "No need. Liriel's calling. Time for me to go up."
"Not alone." Devin was on his feet like a shot. "I'll go with you."
"No." Lauren's voice held love - and finality. "Beth doesn't do well with strangers, and we've already ganged up on her today. Just me. It will be a small miracle if I make it in the door. If someone had flattened you like that, I'd skewer them and ask questions later."
Nell hid a grin as her brother spluttered - matrimony had not been good for his ability to have the last word. And there was more than one way to skin a cat. She checked one last message from Jamie and held out her phone. If they were sending a witch out on a mission, they could at least give her a bat signal. One not dependent on cooperative weather patterns.
Lauren frowned. "Yours isn't going to work any better than mine in this snow."
"It will now." The triplets and Jamie had just ringed greater Chicago with magically enhanced receivers. If Lauren so much as breathed on the phone, they'd know.
Magic had screwed up once today - it wasn't happening again.
Chapter 3
The irony of knocking on a strange witch's door in the middle of a Chicago winter was not lost on Lauren. A full circle of sorts - she'd been that witch not so long ago.
However, if memory served, she hadn't been all that thrilled with Jamie's arrival, and all he'd done was levitate a few plates. Lauren still had no idea how to adequately apologize for accidentally porting someone halfway across a continent.
That Liriel had sent for her at all was a rather large surprise.
Lauren squared her shoulders - realtors dealt with the inane and the abysmal all the time. She'd manage.
She lifted a hand to the door and jumped as it quietly slid open. Liriel's deep gray eyes regarded her with a mix of suspicion and resignation. The guardian at the gate. "Beth has asked to see you."