Single Witch's Survival Guide (The Jane Madison Academy Series) Read online

  Neko wasn’t giving up yet. “Maybe Caleb can put up a few walls down there?”

  I thought about the cost, quickly weighing lumber and drywall against my familiar’s continued sulking. “You can ask him—once. But if he says he doesn’t want to or it can’t be done, that’s it. End of discussion.”

  Neko nodded, transforming his sulk to a beatific expression. “May I borrow your credit card?”

  “Absolutely not!” My shout was a visceral reaction. “What do you want it for?” I asked reluctantly.

  “I need to buy some baseball tickets. Fast.”

  I shook my head. “Finance your own bribes. And no asking David for a handout, either!”

  Neko was still grumbling as I walked away.

  * * *

  With the house in chaos and the familiars unavailable for magical work, I decided to play hooky for the afternoon. I headed down to D.C. to visit Melissa. I wasn’t sure when I’d next be able to break away, not with the full court press we were about to mount to save the Madison Academy.

  For once, there was a parking space just a few doors away from Cake Walk. I slipped inside as a family of tourists was leaving, laughing with Texas drawls as they exclaimed about the size of the Monster Mouthfuls they’d just consumed. I shut the door quickly to keep the air-conditioner from working any harder than necessary.

  “I’m meeeelting,” I said in my best Wicked Witch imitation, as I staggered dramatically toward the counter.

  Melissa laughed and poured some Boardwalk Blackberry over ice. A pair of crisp Ginger Sequins were the perfect complement.

  “All right,” I conceded after administering emergency food and drink. “I might live.”

  Melissa responded with, “Rock, paper, scissors.”

  “What?”

  “Come on! Rock, paper, scissors.” She tapped her right fist against her empty palm. “One.” By reflex, I mirrored her actions. “Two. Three.”

  I cast paper. She threw scissors.

  “I win!” she crowed.

  “Win what?”

  “You’re going to help me select a watercolor artist.”

  “Why do you need a watercolor artist?” I looked around the shop, with its sunny yellow and orange walls. It really wasn’t a watercolor kind of place.

  Melissa sighed. “Jane, Jane, Jane. Don’t you understand? We’ve become too addicted to computerized images in our daily, electronics-laden life. We have to get in touch with the emotions behind the things we see. We need to reach out to the people we truly love in new and unique ways. We should have an artist paint our wedding reception—a collage of watercolor scenes, plus special portraits of the groom, the bride, and the bride’s second cousin, once removed.”

  “Ah,” I said, finally clued in by that last self-centered bit of information. “So this is another relative’s idea?”

  “Cousin Genevieve. On my father’s side.”

  “What do I have to pay, to make sure the artist doesn’t paint the maid of honor?”

  “You’ve got a bad attitude!”

  I clicked my tongue. “Is there any way to have a good attitude about this? Seriously, Melissa. Watercolors?”

  “Believe me. This is the lesser of a million evils.”

  “What else could anyone possibly be pushing?

  “Cousin Marty thinks we should have a cigar roller, to create personalized smokes for everyone. Aunt Laura wants a special lighting feature, with Rob’s and my entwined initials projected onto the walls. Great-aunt Terry can’t imagine anything more hilarious than a pair of granny panties, size 34, for Rob to display after he goes for my garter. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

  Poor Melissa. This wedding insanity was enough to make me grateful I had a tiny family. Even if that limited pool included Clara. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll go with you. But I don’t know the first thing about evaluating watercolors.”

  “You’re a librarian,” Melissa said loyally. “And you have three weeks to do your research. We can’t get all the artists’ work together until the 23rd. I’m sure you’ll be an expert by then.”

  When she put it that way…. I tried a wry smile. “It’ll be a good excuse to get away from the farm.”

  “Things aren’t any better?”

  “If anything, it’s worse.” I filled her in on the past few days, concluding with: “So now, I’ve wasted a month of classes, David’s living in the barn, five people I don’t want as roommates are living in the house—six if I count Tony—and we have less than three months to figure it all out and complete a Major Working. I don’t remember the last time I felt this lost.”

  “I do,” she said helpfully. “It was when you started at the Peabridge.”

  Before she could elaborate on my past sense of failure (what else are best friends for?), the bakery door opened to admit a customer. A tattooed and pierced guitar player leaned his instrument case against the counter and started to quiz Melissa about her selection of vegan and gluten-free treats. I wondered if I should invite the guy back to the farm. It sounded like he and Raven would get along brilliantly.

  As Melissa ran through her options, I thought about what she’d said. My struggle with the magicarium wasn’t all that different from my fight to get settled at the Peabridge. Sure, as magistrix I didn’t have to worry about wearing a colonial costume. I didn’t have to greet neighborhood matrons or babysit local kids or brew coffee by the gallon.

  But both jobs represented major turning points in my professional life. With the Peabridge, I’d finally left behind the world of academics, of collecting university degrees for the sheer joy of learning, without paying any attention to things like paying the rent and buying groceries. For the first time in my life, I had to come to work on time and stay all day long. I had to meet the very specific job requirements of a very demanding boss. I’d needed to find ways to work with others, even when I disagreed with them about the finer points of my profession. I’d become to become a grown-up.

  With the Academy, I was carrying all that training one step further. I was the one responsible for setting the schedule. I determined the scope of our study, and I was the very demanding teacher. I forged the paths to communicate with my students, even when one insisted on sounding like an extra from Downton Abbey and the other gave pin-up girls a run for their money. I was responsible for all of it.

  But this time through, I had the tools to make it all work. I’d earned them, fair and square, at the Peabridge reference desk.

  Guitar Guy left, and Melissa turned her bright gaze on me. “What? You obviously had some epiphanic breakthrough while I was wrapping up Belly Laughs.”

  “I need to be a librarian.”

  “What? You’re going back to the Peabridge?”

  I shook my head. “No. Not literally. I need to take the skills I learned as a librarian and apply them to the magicarium.”

  Melissa’s doubtful shrug was cut off by the arrival of two young lawyers. Despite the summer heat, both wore button-down shirts and ties, and they were spiritedly debating the merits of res ipsa loquitur with regard to medical malpractice cases. Those words meant less than nothing to me, and I let their chatter become white noise as I thought about my discovery.

  I’d reached out to my students when they first arrived, finding out who they were and what they wanted from the Academy. I’d done that by applying the technique of a reference interview—a tried and true library tool. I made them focus, made me focus on what was really important.

  Relying on familiar methods had given me the backbone to put a stop to Raven’s cinematic aspirations. The reference interview had helped me understand the unique aspects of my students’ power, why they had come to me instead of any run-of-the-mill coven magicarium. It had carried me through my first crisis of faith about the Academy.

  Only when Melissa refilled my glass did I realize the lawyers were long gone, and I’d been completely lost in thought.

  “Okay,” she said. “So you’re going to open a library, instead of a school for wi
tches?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I’m going to apply what I learned in the library to make my school a better place.”

  “How are you going to do that?” She honestly sounded curious.

  Well, that was the tricky part, wasn’t it? My fingers opened and closed, as if I could almost … just … grasp an answer. “Budget,” I finally said.

  “What?”

  “As a librarian, I had to learn how to manage an institutional budget.” I thought about some of my spectacular failures on that front, especially seeking grant funding that had been as difficult to track down as Clara’s tuition payments. “I’m going to tell David to sell the southern point. That money will remove a lot of pressure—our day-to-day concerns about food, and supplies, and Neko’s shopping sprees.”

  “David has enough land to cover Neko’s bills?” Melissa and Neko had not always been on the best of terms. I made a face.

  “I hate to do it. But we’ll need the funds for future semesters, even if we scrape by now. Even if Clara does finally send a check.”

  “And he did offer,” Melissa reminded me.

  Of course that was before the Fourth of July. Before everything had changed. But I knew David would say the money was a warder thing. It was part of his protecting the Academy. I hated the necessity, but I’d ask him to complete the sale.

  “What else?” Melissa asked.

  “Education. Librarians are always learning about new developments, applying new technologies.”

  Certainly, I’d read the basics about magical education; that had all been part of my summer procrastination. I’d focused on how the Rota worked, how most covens structured their classes. That sort of basic background had been mandatory, because I’d never completed a traditional education on my own. Under David’s tutelage, I’d avoided the standard steps.

  But I hadn’t done anything like a complete literature review on magical educations. I hadn’t thought I needed to—the Madison Academy was supposed to be so thoroughly different from any other school for witches out there.

  That oversight was easily rectified. I would survey my collection as soon as I got home, focusing on footnotes and indexes, on references to other materials. Neko would be invaluable—he could reach out to the familiars’ silent communication network. With his help, I could identify additional materials in no time. After that, it was a relatively simple matter of obtaining them. I’d borrow what I could, and buy what I had to.

  Melissa nodded, as if I’d spoken my self-education plans out loud. “And?” she urged.

  “Selling new ideas.”

  “What do you mean? Three ideas for a dollar? An extra if they’re day-old?”

  “You should stick to running a bakery,” I said, and I laughed when she held up her hands in mock surrender. “No. I mean getting buy-in. When I worked at the Peabridge, I realized I needed an assistant. I couldn’t begin to complete my daily duties, much less work on the big projects, the ones that made the job fun. Evelyn rejected the idea immediately, of course, because we didn’t have any money. But I convinced her to bring in an intern. For the summer only, at first, but then during the academic year. I just had to make her understand that increasing our manpower was a benefit for the entire library, not just for me. I had to sell the new idea.”

  “I think it’d be easier to price them three for a dollar.”

  I made a face, but was spared the need to come up with a real retort when the bell jangled and another family of tourists surged into the shop. As they started debating the relative merits of Mocha Mud Bars and Triple Chocolate Madness, I sipped my Boardwalk Blackberry and plumbed my library skills for further inspiration.

  “Where were we?” Melissa asked, after she’d boxed up both chocolate desserts, with a handful of Lime Stars on the side.

  “Organization skills.”

  “We were?”

  “Close enough.” I was warming to my topic. “As a librarian, I put books where my patrons needed them to be. Sometimes, I ignored the Dewey Decimal System and grouped items by specialized collections. I need to do the same thing with magic. Forget about individual items from specific disciplines—herblore, crystal work, runes. We need to approach things from the end-point. From the overall segments of the actual ritual.”

  Melissa laughed. “I’m sure that makes sense to you. To me, it sounds like gibberish.”

  It did make sense. It was like a specialized form of communal magic, similar to the theory I’d had when I first launched the Academy. I never should have panicked when Norville Pitt showed up and ruined everything. I never should have retreated to the limits of an ordinary education.

  The bell above the door rang again, and I didn’t even turn around to see what customers entered. Instead, I asked Melissa, “Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?”

  She thrust a legal pad at me, along with one of the pens she kept by the register. As she dished up baked goods, I started scribbling notes to myself. I began with broad topics—Purification, Centering, Calling the Elementals, all the building blocks for our ritual. Beneath each general category, I started to list individual items—specific crystals and herbs and witchcraft tools. I added entries for individual books in my collection, actual texts that spoke to precise magical points.

  I started to flip back and forth between my scribbled pages, adding details to one category, taking them from another. Some topics—Weather-working, for instance—were gigantic. I had to break that down, into Rain-making and Preparing the Earth, and Protecting the Innocent.

  But in the end, it all made sense. In the end, it all held together. I had reduced our Major Working to a giant outline with roman numerals and capital letters and numbers and periods and parentheses.

  And when I read through the list, I was nearly overwhelmed. There was so much to do. So much to explore. How had I ever thought my students could handle any of this in our Lughnasadh working? We’d be pushing to get it all done by Samhain.

  I looked up to find Melissa drying a stack of plates. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I mean, when did you wash those?”

  “Somewhere between that page,” she gestured toward one of my scribbled documents, “and that one. It’s good to see you fired up about what you’re doing. And before you panic about how late it is, here’s dessert for tonight.”

  She handed me a pasteboard box as I looked at the clock. How had it gotten to be 5:00? I handed back her pen with a grateful smile. “Is everything in here organic?”

  “Nope. But you can tell Raven it is.”

  “Or maybe I won’t,” I said with an evil chuckle. “Then there’ll be more for the rest of us to enjoy.” I folded my papers and clutched them close. “Hey,” I said, sinking back in my chair. “Thank you.”

  She laughed. “Glad I could help. At least I won’t be totally in your debt on the 23rd.”

  The 23rd? Oh. Watercolor day. I was actually looking forward to using my librarian skills to find out more about wedding watercolorists. It was the least I could do to help my best friend in the world.

  CHAPTER 12

  IT SEEMED LIKE such a simple thing, my discovery at Melissa’s. And yet, it opened completely new horizons.

  On Tuesday morning, I summoned the entire magicarium into the living room. It took us a couple of minutes to find seats for everyone—several chairs were filled with boxes from the familiars’ not-entirely-completed move.

  Fortunately, Rick was on duty at the firehouse, so there was no need to excuse Emma’s boyfriend from our conversation. Mundane companions might accept the existence of magic in the world around them, but this conversation was going to get into the specifics of a new approach to witchcraft. It was going to be a challenge for everyone concerned, and I didn’t want outsiders muddying the waters.

  Everyone stared at me expectantly. I’m sure they thought I was going to change the living arrangements yet again. Maybe I’d have the warders take over the house, and the rest of us could live out of the minivan… I forced myself
back to the challenging topic at hand.

  Swallowing hard, I said, “I realized something important yesterday, something I’d forgotten for far too long. It affects all of you, and I’m sorry I didn’t think it through before now.”

  That got their attention—a magistrix apologizing. I hurried on. “I’ve been coming at this all wrong. I’ve been focusing on the individual elements of our working, pushing us to perfect each component part of our magic. Over and over again, I’ve invested our efforts in mastering the tiny details.”

  Emma nodded and Raven shrugged. Of course I’d focused on perfection of form. That’s what witches did. I held up a hand to forestall their questioning.

  “But you know I planned on something different for the Academy. I told you that, your first day here. We were going to find communal balance, work together with mingled powers as we relied on the reflective nature of our familiars. But we failed the first time we tried that, and then I changed our focus. We never found our new paradigm.”

  This was it. Time to launch the Jane Madison Academy 2.0.

  “Okay,” I said. “Starting today, we’re doing something completely different. We’re tearing down the old classification schemes—herb magic, separate from crystals, separate from runes. Instead, we’ll do them all at once, all combined.” Oops. From the blank looks on their faces, I’d lost them completely. Frustrated, I paced two steps away, then whirled back to face them. “We want to purify an altar cloth. What do we need?”

  They stared at me like I was speaking in tongues. “No,” I said. “I’m really asking you. What do we need? Emma?”

  She shook her head, obviously not understanding where I was going. She glanced at Caleb, then at Kopek, but both men offered confused shrugs.

  “Don’t think about it!” I said. “You walk into the basement, and you collect the supplies for the ritual. What do you grab? Emma!”

  I shouted her name, jolting her out of her hesitation. “A silver bowl!”

  “Raven, what else?”