A Reckless Witch - By Debora Geary Page 0,2

tipping point.”

“Yeah.” TJ finished the last of his beer. “It’s still about twenty percent below the threshold, but at the rate it’s been growing, we’ve got three or four months before we have some serious weather perturbations on our hands.”

In weather speak, three or four months meant it was time to stop watching this anomaly and start doing something about it instead. It was what the two of them did—smooth small bumps in the weather patterns where they could so disasters didn’t develop.

It wasn’t very sexy work—but if TJ’s data modeling was correct, they’d saved almost half a million lives in the last ten years. Plus or minus 15.7 percent.

He went back to staring at the readings. “We need to figure out the source.” Magic couldn’t fix what it couldn’t see.

TJ raised an eyebrow. “What do you suggest—camping out on the Oregon Coast and watching for warm-water magnets?”

Govin sighed. “I’ll dig into the geo-oceanic data again.” That was the most likely source of their problem, but damned if he could find it.

TJ just stared at his computer monitor. “This isn’t geo, bro. I don’t know what it is yet, but it doesn’t smell like anything natural.”

Govin chuckled, knowing exactly where this conversation was headed. “No alien conspiracy theories before breakfast. Come on, the sausage smells ready.”

The aliens—or whatever was causing their anomaly—could wait half an hour.

~ ~ ~

Sophie: Is Nat going stir-crazy yet?

Nell: Does she ever? I swear, by the time my due date rolled around, I was ready to reach in there and yank the baby out myself, but she just folds up into lotus and meditates. It’s eerie.

Moira: Well, you didn’t exactly have easy pregnancies to wait out, Nell. The triplets were a bellyful, to be sure, and Aervyn wasn’t patient in those last weeks.

Nell: That would be an understatement. Nat and Jamie’s baby has been playing with power streams for so long that we expected something similar from her, but she’s been really quiet. Lauren says her mind is pretty content in there.

Sophie: Jamie’s going to pop Nat into Realm tomorrow so we can all check out her belly.

Nell: That will make Ginia feel better.

Sophie: She’s been doing a beautiful job of monitoring Nat. This is just to spoil me and Aunt Moira.

Moira: At my age, I deserve to be spoiled. And Sophie, are you sure we can’t meet in our Realm room now? This typing is still so hard for my poor fingers.

Sophie: Which is exactly why we’re doing this the old-fashioned way. You know the deal—one typed chat a week. It’s good physical therapy. Besides, we can’t fetch some poor new witch into Realm without any warning. Pulling them into a chat room with no warning is tricky enough.

Nell: You’re sure you want to be fetching more newbies right now? We have births, Winter Solstice, and the big push on the WitchNet library.

Moira: My Elorie’s a splendid organizer. She tells me WitchNet is coming along very nicely.

Sophie: She is indeed, and she’s got Jamie and his team hopping. Nell, we can wait if you want—but with all these babies on the way, I figured it was going to stay busy for a while. Maybe we can just look for actively practicing witches for the moment, though, and keep building our community that way. I’m not sure we have the energy to handle another Lauren or Elorie right now.

Nell: Okay, I’ll set it up. One day, though, I’m going to retire and sit on the beach and drink mimosas all day long.

Moira: Good luck with that, my dear. Just when you think that day’s arrived, some sprightly young witch will show up and tell you she needs you to help with her new project.

Sophie: Witches’ Chat wouldn’t be the same without you, Aunt Moira. And you don’t even like mimosas.

Moira: The sitting-on-the-beach part sounded lovely, though.

Nell: Just tell us what beach you’d like to visit. Aervyn’s getting pretty talented at schlepping people through Realm to wherever they need to go.

Moira: Ah, my soaking pool takes good care of me. I don’t really need to be anywhere else.

Sophie: Way to call her bluff, Nell :-). We’ve been trying to send her to the beach for weeks now. Some warm-water swimming would be good for her.

Moira: All these healers are trying to turn me back into a twenty-one-year-old instead of an old lady. Not everything works perfectly when you’re my age.

Nell: Ha. That’s already true for me, and I’m half your age. All right. I’ve turned on the