Free A Dangerous Witch (Witch Central Series: Book 3) by Debora Geary Page B

moving in time to the music.
    “Whoa,” said Devin softly.
    “Yeah.”  Even Fuzzball watched the orb’s show without his usual suspicion.  “Pretty sure Moe’s a fan of whatever Shay’s playing.”
    Their musician turned slowly, following the shifted gaze of her audience.  And smiled as she saw the orb’s delicate lights.  A quick trill, and she sped up whatever she was playing, grinning as the light show accelerated in response.  Carefully, she moved her song around, watching as the lights followed.
    It was beautiful—ethereal and somehow deeply personal.  A marble, dancing as if no one was watching. 
    But it was the emotion emanating from Moe that moved Lauren most deeply.  She’d grown used to the orb’s moods, but this one was entirely different.  No haughty disdain or cranky discomfort, no tinges of an entity deeply unhappy with the lot it had been cast.
    Just happiness.  A glass sphere entirely in this moment.
    The music had drifted back to gentle and slow again, but with an insistent resonance underneath.  A song, morphing.  Lauren frowned, feeling Moe’s mood shift but not able to read why.  And then she realized it was far easier to read the intent of the musician.
    Eleven-year-old eyes watched the orb’s lights now, but not as a spectator.  Notes, played for a purpose.
    The crystal ball’s lights dimmed.  Spit and crackled and then turned off entirely.
    The musician never wavered.  Out shimmered the notes again, the lilt of invitation blending with that quiet, baseline insistence.
    Devin watched, fascinated.  What’s she doing?
    Not sure yet.  Sending a message of some sort.
    Shay stepped closer to the clearly resistant orb.  And trilled on a single, beautiful, implacably persistent note.  An order, if Lauren had ever heard one.
    Something in Moe breathed out—and the lights began to dance again.  Smaller this time.  And a lot more self-conscious.
    But under them, a trickle of shocked conviction.
    Lauren directed a mindchannel at the orb, insanely curious.  And then backed out again.  Even cranky orbs deserved privacy.
    A shrug.  And then an embarrassed reply to the question not quite asked.  She says I’m beautiful when I dance.
    It was impossible not to smile.  You are.
    Riptides of embarrassment now.  Dancing isn’t useful.  Tools aren’t meant for such silly things.
    And yet, the lights still wove in the air above the crystal ball.
    Lauren smiled at her niece’s bright eyes, playing for the joy of a hunk of glass and insisting that Moe’s pleasure had a right to exist in the world. 
    Yup.  It was going to be a very good day.
    -o0o-
    The orb often gazed on the fabric of time.  A meditation, almost.  A way to pass the time when it had eternity to spend and nowhere to go. 
    Always, the weaving had fascinated.  Thick threads and ephemeral ones.  Ones no longer than a breath, and ones that stretched far off into the distance.
    But never, in all the years of its existence, had the orb been so very certain it gazed on the thread of Mohana Nitya Ratna Mandeep.
    It wasn’t a particularly noticeable bit of string.  Certainly not an important one.  But it touched three Moe knew well—the sparkly, simmering trio of threads that could be none other than the triplet girls.
    Today, it wasn’t the child of fire who shone brightest.  It was the thread of green, undulating in time to celestial music.  And tucked in just next to it—a humble, slightly awkward filament of yellow.
    The orb’s reason protested.  Tools didn’t enter the fabric of time.  They lived outside of temporal realities, serving the forces that wove the cloth.
    So Moe had believed since the moment of its birth.
    And still.  It could not look away from the little yellow string or the dancing green one at its side.
    Today, Shay Walker was making her presence known in the fabric of time.
    And somehow, so was her little yellow sidekick.
    -o0o-
    Nell walked over to the stove and gave her husband a