The girl was spending far too much time negotiating real estate contracts. However, she'd left a loophole. "It's not me that's going to touch them." Jennie waited until she had both sets of eyes pointed her direction. "You're going to do it for each other."
Lizard's snorted. "I believe we've both already made some pretty substantial progress that direction." She mimicked her roommate's slightly snotty tone to perfection, much to Elsie's amusement.
"You have." Jennie paused, wanting them to read how much she meant that. "And you've come to know each other very well in the past few weeks. There's love in this house." Elsie's cheeks flushed and Lizard squirmed, but neither of them denied it. Good.
Jennie smiled. "Now I'm asking you to be the final push for each other. Look deep into your friend's heart and come up with an assignment that will help with the chains that are still hanging around." She paused a beat, fingers itching again when the two of them just raised matched eyebrows and stared. "WitchLight brought you together. Now it's time to be WitchLight for each other."
It wasn't a freaking assignment. It was a dare. Lizard was well aware of the difference. Words mattered, and Jennie hadn't picked the right one.
This wasn't about sweetly encouraging a friend. It was about getting in their face and making their life really uncomfortable.
She was tempted to tell Jennie to take her "assignment" and shove it. Really, really tempted.
But then she thought about Elsie dropping a gazillion-dollar check on the table. That had been a big, fat, elephant-sized dare. And Elsie Giannotto had never wimped out of an assignment in her entire life. So there would be a dare for Lizard Monroe, and damned if she was going to opt out and let Elsie off the hook - not when there was a hook coming straight for her own butt.
Besides - she knew the perfect dare.
She'd known for weeks. Every night when Elsie went to sleep, she had the same dream. Not the cowboy one. The other one - the one that made her soul fly.
But if she was going to mess with Elsie's dreams, she needed help. And backup. And that meant visiting a new planet.
Lizard pulled open the door to Spirit Yoga and gingerly looked around. No granola on the floor - that was a start. It smelled kind of weird, but not in a bad way. She walked over to the small store display, attracted by a vivid swirled-orange tank top. And then snapped her hand back like it was hot. Or contagious, or something. Yoga was for people like Elsie.
"Don't let my wife hear you say that." Jamie stood leaning against a wall, looking amused.
Damn mind witches were always eavesdropping. "What are you doing here?" He didn't seem like the yoga type either.
"When you're married to a yoga teacher, you do yoga. It's a rule." He grinned. "And it's not as bad as you think. Just stay far away from the hip-openers classes."
She'd sign up for pole-dancing lessons first. "So, I have this thing. I'm supposed to come up with a dare for Elsie. Something to really mess with her soul and all that stuff."
"Sounds heavy." Jamie moved off the wall, reached through a door, and came back with his arm wrapped around his wife. "Lizard's supposed to mess with Elsie."
Nat wiped her face with a towel. "On purpose?"
Lizard didn't want to know what kind of yoga could make Nat sweat like a pig. "Yeah. It's our WitchLight assignment for the week."
"How can we help?" Nat leaned against the wall next to her husband.
Man, in her old neighborhood, nobody ever agreed to help with anything without knowing what it was first. Witches were weird. "I have the idea and everything, but I need to know if you think Elsie's up for it."
"Isn't that the point of a dare?" asked Jamie. "To push her to do something she might not be up for?"
"Hardly." Nat tossed the towel in the general direction of her husband, who ducked and grinned. "The point is to make it something she can do, but believes she can't." She looked over at Lizard. "You want Elsie to succeed."
Yeah. After she scared the pants off her. Fifty-three thousand dollars worth of oh-my-god. Lizard laid out her idea, taking pains to explain all the safeguards in place so that Elsie wouldn't actually die. And then stopped and waited for a second opinion.