.5 To Have and To Code

by Debora Geary

  No red skirt today—but somehow, cut-offs and flip flops weren’t making his life any easier.

  She held out a plate. “Cookie?”

  Oddly, those didn’t help his hormones calm down either, but they smelled good enough to marry. “Employee benefit?”

  “Not always.” Her grin wasn’t entirely comforting. “Apparently, my mother likes you. Today.”

  Being in the Sullivan household was a bit like being in-game. Innocent and sleepy—until someone whipped out a sword and lopped off your head. Daniel took a cookie and hoped it wasn’t laced with something deadly.

  Nell took a seat. “I don’t know where you’ve worked before, but we’re pretty informal around here. Technically your job is senior programmer, but mostly it’s working alongside Jamie and me on getting the new release ready and taking care of whatever emergencies we have going on.” She eyed him over a cookie. “I assume any guy who can cause a big mess knows how to clean one up.”

  Generally he left that job to someone else. “I prefer to prevent the messes in the first place.”

  Her laughter was uncomplicated and genuine. “Good luck with that.” She waved at one of the workstations. “Feel free to spend as much time wandering in-game as you like. Try to stay out of the bushes.”

  Daniel rolled his eyes, took a seat in front of the computer, and made himself a promise. One day, he was going to tangle with the cocky Jamie Sullivan again—and it wasn’t going to end in a draw. “You and your brother have very different gaming styles.”

  Nell chuckled, still amused. “Yup. We’re two very different people. And eat your cookie. These ones aren’t poisoned, I promise.”

  He picked one up, mostly to keep her happy—and discovered that there was, in fact, something in the world almost as good as sex. Warm, velvet chocolate made mad, passionate love to his taste buds and fired off little spurts of pleasure all over his body.

  If they were poisoned, he was going to die a very happy man.

  When he landed back on planet Earth again, Daniel set the cookie down on a nearby napkin. Reverently. Something that obscenely good needed to be eaten very, very slowly. He looked up at Nell’s knowing smile. “Your mother made those?” If so, Retha Sullivan had missed her calling. Realm had made her famous—these cookies could have made her the ruler of the free world.

  His new boss nearly choked on her cookie before dissolving in a puddle of hiccupping laughter. “No. If my mother ever bakes you anything, run for the hills. She’s the worst chef in Berkeley.”

  He tried to realign the cookie-blown neurons in his brain. “She has seven kids and she can’t cook?”

  Sometimes you didn’t know about the landmines until you heard the click. Nell raised an eyebrow, all stiff, cool threat. “You think that’s a prerequisite to being a good mother?”

  Holy hell. She’d gone from amused and sexy to warrior leashed faster than he could blink—and both versions sent heat racing through his system. However, judging from the fireworks in her eyes, she was about to melt him where he sat. Daniel tried valiantly to remember the question. Moms. Cookies. “No. I think good moms are adaptable, open-minded, and solid as a rock.” At least, that described his own fairly well. “Is your dad the cook?”

  And just like that, the sparks in her eyes fled and amused sex was back. “Nope. Kindly neighbors fed us until Jamie and I learned to boil eggs.”

  He grinned. That sounded like typical family mythology—hints of truth stretched into whatever form was funniest. He picked up his prized cookie and took another bite, trying manfully not to make any groaning sounds. “You made these?” It would fit—cookie seduction from a woman who exuded sex appeal just by breathing.

  “No.” Something else hit her eyes. “My best friend. She runs Sammy’s Sweet Stuff downtown.”

  Heaven could be bought? “Where?”

  This time, he knew what chased over her face along with the smile. Sorrow. “She’s only going to be open a few more days. She’s getting married and moving to Texas.”

  Oh, damn. Daniel tried to imagine Pedro leaving town and instantly knew he’d rather deal with amputation of a limb or two. “Sorry—that totally sucks. How long have the two of you been friends?”

  “Nine years. Since college.” Nell turned away to face a monster-sized computer screen, her shoulders hunched like a small, sad girl.

  He didn’t think. He just moved. Pushed back his wheeled chair and laid a hand on her shoulder, trying to offer… something.

  She jerked under his touch and looked up, eyes far too glittery for comfort. “I’m fine. Let’s go take a look at that hole you wormed your way through.”

  She wasn’t fine, but she clearly wasn’t looking for comfort from the likes of him.

  It should have pissed him off. Instead, as she sat on a chair in ratty cut-offs, eating chocolate cookie heaven and trying not to sniffle, she yanked on his insides in a way that made it hard to breathe. Daniel pushed his chair away slowly, trying to find enough oxygen for his computer-geek brain to function.

  He was going to count surviving until lunchtime a major victory. Assuming he lasted that long.

  -o0o-

  Nell closed the front door of the house she’d grown up in and tried to amass enough of her scattered brain cells to make it down the sidewalk.

  Somehow, in the safe sterility of Realm’s downtown offices, she’d failed to figure out the obvious. Daniel Walker was seriously potent stuff. The kind of guy where you wanted a few lightning bolts, a virtual world, and a bush between you.

  Three hours in close captivity and every channel she had was humming, she was famished, and there was a torpedo’s worth of power storming through her veins. Her trainer, Caro, had always said fire magic and sexual energies had an affinity. Until 9:38 a.m. that morning, Nell had thought it was an old witches’ tale.

  She stumbled out the front gate, well aware all-seeing mom eyes were still in the house. Brain melt, starvation, and heaping sexual frustration. Three big problems to deal with—and she had two hours.

  Then she was scheduled to lock herself back in The Dungeon for another three hours with the source of all her current problems.

  God. Nell leaned against a convenient lamppost. She wasn’t going to survive until dinner.

  Drawing strength from the warm metal at her back, she mentally inventoried her options. Sammy would feed her—and ask way too many questions. Restaurants frowned on big displays of magic that scared off the paying public. Caro was away on some retreat thing.

  Only one place to go. She pushed off the lamppost and headed for her old digs. Nothing put TJ off his food—and Govin was one of the few witches who could match her in power long enough to blow off some steam.

  Not that kind of steam. Nell walked and grinned, glad nobody was close enough to read her mind. That might ruin even TJ’s appetite.

  Govin wasn’t an outlet for sex. Only magic. And today, that would have to do. There had been mild sparks between them once or twice—the easy, teasing exploration of two witches who had grown up side by side. For some, those sparks flared into something deeper.

  For her and Govin, they had simply spluttered into sibling love.

  But he’d fire up his engines of magic if she asked. And then they’d eat, and his gentle, incontrovertible logic would help get her brain back on track. Or at least distract her from the coming train wreck of an afternoon.

  Her feet walked the long-familiar path from her childhood home to her college-years home, the simple, repetitive motion helping the messy scatter that was Nell Sullivan pull herself together.

  By the time she hit Govin’s door, Nell felt mostly sane again.

  But power still roared in her veins.

  Gov took one look at her, backed into the emptiest room in the house, and threw up a monster training circle.

  She reinforced the circle herself, blessing his easy friendship. “Ready?”

  He grimaced. “I think so.”

  She loaded a bolt of lightning on her
fingers and held it steady, waiting for his to reach across the circle to meet her. Tempered her magic as they balanced the flows, one lightning bolt against the other. Waited for him to check and re-check the fit.

  And then let loose all the hot and stormy fire coursing in her veins.

  His eyebrows flew up as the kick of her magic hit their joined power flows. And then she felt him push back. Always precise, always balanced—Govin had been born a careful witch. And because of that, she could trust him with her madness.

  Straight down the middle, she fired bolt after bolt of energy, pushing against the wall of fire he held up for her. It was an old and familiar ritual. Fire witches often overloaded in training—and when they did, the best medicine was generally more fire.

  By the time they finished, sweat poured down both their brows, Govin’s magic was down to spluttering remnants, and Nell was slightly less ready to explode.

  It would have to be enough.

  He just looked at her for a minute—and then dropped the training circle and headed to the kitchen. “I had sandwiches ready. You can have TJ’s.”

  She wasn’t in a place to be picky. If they didn’t eat in the next ten minutes, both of them would end up limp noodles on the floor.

  The sounds of rummaging in the fridge were comforting, in a way that told her just how off-kilter she still was. Damn.

  Govin walked back into the dining room, juggling plates, a bowl of something that hopefully contained chocolate, and two gigantic glasses of milk. Well-balanced witch meal.

  She sat down at the table, taking the frat-boy-sized sandwich he handed her.

  He slid into a chair on the other side, an impressively sized hoagie on his own plate. “So. What got into you?”

  Nell took several monster bites of sandwich before she answered. Stomach emergency—and it gave her time to think. “We hired a new guy. Maybe to replace you, if he’s any good.” She was thrilled Govin and TJ had landed their mongo grant, but filling his shoes at Realm was going to be hell. Some might have his programming skills and even his magic. But no one else would do calm in The Dungeon inferno nearly as well.

  Daniel Walker gave “inferno” new meaning.

  Her oldest friend munched on his sandwich and waited patiently. It was a routine they’d been through many times before. He wouldn’t talk for a while. Just listen. And when he did talk, it would be worth listening to.

  She reached for the milk jug and poured—hospitality at the college homestead was generous and rudimentary. “The new guy’s good. Knows his stuff.” She sighed, knowing he’d probably figured out the rest already. “And he’s making me crazy.”

  Govin blushed. “Yeah. Got that part.”

  Nell tried not to squirm. Gov threw huge chunks of magic into trying to temper the world’s weather—and lived like a monk the rest of the time. And they were math geeks. Mostly they tried to pretend sex didn’t exist.

  Except for when it did. And yowza—today it did. “I needed to blow off some steam. Have to work with him again this afternoon.”

  Her old roommate lifted up his palm and produced one sad, very faint fireglobe. “Pretty sure I’m not going to be any good for you again until at least tomorrow.”

  She tried to avoid thinking about the alternatives. “I’ll handle it.”

  He frowned. Started to say at least two different things. And stopped, looking more uncomfortable than she’d ever seen him.

  This day was not getting better. “What? Out with it.” Nell stabbed a dill pickle and tried to ignore the fork warming in her palm—she didn’t want her pickle freaking toasted.

  He blushed again, this time fire-engine red. “You know what Caro would tell you.”

  Yeah. Their trainer had always been extremely clear. Blocking fire magic was bad. Period. And there were only so many ways to let it out. The fun choices required a partner.

  Which left her the magical equivalent of a cold shower or knitting a scarf long enough to stretch across the continent. Nell stabbed another pickle. She really, really hated knitting.

  Govin reached a hand across the table. “Take a break. You can’t go back there today.”

  “Can’t. We have work to do.”

  He didn’t say a word. Didn’t move his hand. And when Nell finally looked up, his eyes held quiet, immovable mountains.

  “I hate it when you’re right.”

  He grinned and stole her pickle. “I know.”

  She munched on her sandwich, resistance gone. “I’ll send him downtown. They always have paperwork. He can fill some out.” Anything was better than knitting.

  Govin grinned and bit into her pickle. “That’ll teach him to steal my avatars.”

  Nell was pretty sure even paperwork wouldn’t tame The Hacker for long.

  Chapter 9

  Nell walked down the last two stairs to The Dungeon, more of Sammy’s cookies loaded on a plate. Day two survival food. And saw sexy brown curls disappearing under her desk. Good grief, did the man not use a computer like regular people? She craned her neck, trying to see without spilling the cookies. After the server room yesterday, she wasn’t wedging herself into any more tight places with one Daniel Walker. “Now what?”

  The curls popped back out. “Morning. Most people spend lots of money on Internet security and forget about the basics of keeping their equipment secure in the first place.” He shrugged. “You guys use top-of-the-line stuff, but someone could just walk in and take off with half of it.”

  Nell felt her jaw hit the floor. Was he stark, raving mad? Nobody stole things from the Sullivans.

  He waved at the server room. “There’s not even a lock on the door.”

  Those were fairly redundant when you had a figure-eight sentry spell in place. “Magic’s pretty effective at deterring thieves.” Most of them.

  Now it was Daniel’s turn to stare. And then he crawled out from under the desk, a very odd look on his face. He opened his mouth, presumably to explain whatever weirdness was suddenly going on—when alarms started flashing on every monitor in the room.

  Nell jumped to her keyboard, fingers flying. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  Daniel was leaning over her shoulder in a heartbeat, scanning the screen. “What?”

  “Realm emergency. Big one.” She jabbed her finger at the screen. “Marcus Buchanan. Third-best player in the game. Launched some kind of sneak attack that’s backwashing through the game-level spellcode somehow.” Magic run amok, and from a guy who coded almost as well as she did.

  She yanked on first-aid code, trying to stem the bleeding—and knew one set of hands was never going to get it done. Three quick keystrokes and she popped the guts of Realm up on her second monitor. Tossing a keyboard at Daniel, she split and synched their screens. “There’s a hole in the dike somewhere. Until we plug that, it’s just going to get worse. Find it.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Surrounded by smart-ass men—she needed a life. Just as soon as this emergency was fixed. Nell ran traces on Marcus’s imploded spell, trying to find the piece that had destabilized 250,000 lines of code. Needle-in-the-haystack time—and Jamie was off on a beach somewhere, singing sonnets to his motorcycle.

  “Got it.” Daniel’s finger drilled the screen. “One of those weird dead-variable calls wasn’t really dead.”

  She had absolutely no idea what he was talking about—but Nell, zooming in on his finger point, didn’t care. He’d found the needle. A freaking magical hiccup. Pulling power, she readied a containment spell and flung it down the lines of code. Time to de-snot the engine room of Realm. And then she needed to have a chat with a certain grumpy witch and tell him to take his hand off the mouse before he sneezed next time.

  Her containment spell melded into the mess and warning alarms started shutting down all over Realm. Disaster averted—the game would stay online. “Got it. We need a serious cleanup in aisle three, but I think the rest is under control.”

  When she finally looked up, Daniel was still mopping erran
t lines of code. “You can leave that for now. We’ll work on it this afternoon when Jamie’s back. Cleanup’s his job this week.”

  He rolled away from the keyboard, eyes quizzical. “This happens often?”

  The truth would likely make him run screaming. “Something that breaches the admin code—no. That’s fairly rare. But we get alarm bells in here every day or two.” It amused her brother to feel like he worked on the bridge of the starship Enterprise.

  “You give players a huge amount of latitude,” said Daniel slowly. “Lots of freedoms that most other games don’t allow.”

  Most games bored her silly inside of a week. “Witches like to have fun.”

  “Makes a lot of work for you.”

  Nell leaned back in her chair, suddenly wanting him to understand. “Games let us be different than the person we are in real life. It lets people try on new things, maybe find something they can take out of the game with them.”

  His head tipped to the side, considering. “I’ve always thought you could learn a lot about a person from how they play. I’m not sure much changes offline except the window dressing.”

  She couldn’t resist. “You spend a lot of time behind bushes in real life?”

  His snorting laughter came easily—and poked at the part of her that still considered him a lowlife and a thief. She grabbed a cookie off the plate. Day two was trading an inferno of sparks for something far more complicated. Sexy as hell, she could hold at arms’ length. A guy who could laugh at himself? That was going to be far harder to resist.

  She gritted her teeth. Time to do something a lot more boring. “Let’s fix security problems.” She waved at Daniel’s screen and recited Govin’s passwords from memory. All three levels of them.

  He nodded in approval, fingers flying on the keys. “Let’s start with the image leaks.”

  Nell snorted. “You think we left open the door you came in? Fixed those days ago.”