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

  “Rainwater collected under a full moon.”

  “Exactly. And what else?”

  Emma answered. “A branch of rosemary, to sprinkle the water.”

  “Or?”

  “Sage,” Raven said. “And a source of fire.”

  “Exactly!” I almost clapped my hands, but I realized they might think I was mocking them, treating them as if they were preschoolers. And that was not my intent, not at all.

  “It’s all about classifying the information,” I urged. “Instead of thinking about rituals as individual bits, as solitary elements where we succeed or fail on our absolute understanding of each tiny piece of magic, we’re going to focus on the whole. How does the silver reflect the power of the rosemary? What happens when the fire kindles the sage? When the droplets of water turn to steam, what effect does that have on the bowl, on the rosemary, on the sage? It’s all connected. It’s all a system. We’re all parts of the whole.”

  Raven shook her head. “But every witch has an innate bond to a single practice. We’re best at herbs or spells or crystals. Emma and I work well together because I can manage herblore, and she can balance the elements.”

  “You have worked well together,” I agreed. “But you’ve never grown beyond your basic skills. You haven’t moved past the magic you could work when you were children.” I rounded on Emma. “You know what I’m talking about. You felt it when we cleaned the kitchen.”

  She nodded slowly. “But washing up was such a wee thing. I could grasp it all at once. The energy it would take to hold onto everything at the same time, in a Major Working…” She trailed off.

  “It will require energy. But we’ll structure a system for that. A new balance. Throughout the working, we’ll each give where we have strength. Then we can take where we have need.”

  I could tell they wanted to believe me. They wanted to understand. They wanted the time they had spent at the magicarium to mean something.

  I held out my hands to them, pushing the last drop of my enthusiasm into my explanation. “We’ll all be working together, so we can share all the tricky parts. We’ll help each other past the truly tough sections. Three witches. Three familiars. Three warders watching over us. We’ll have more than enough power to do it all.”

  David cut through my excitement with a chainsaw. “It’s too dangerous.”

  I whirled to face him. I had expected resistance from my students—I was asking them to rethink the essential way they used their powers. I wasn’t surprised by the skepticism on Kopek’s face either, or Hani’s. My proposal would require them to find new methods to bolster our powers.

  But David? Splashing cold water on my proposal when I’d barely finished presenting it? Belatedly, I realized I should have brought him into the loop before I shared this plan with everyone. But I hadn’t, and now I had to live with the consequences. What was it I told Melissa yesterday? I had to sell the idea. And that sale began with letting him express his objections.

  “Why is it too dangerous?” I asked.

  “You’ll raise too much energy before you have enough control to manage it.”

  “You’ve seen me do it before! This is exactly how I work with Clara and Gran.”

  He shook his head. “Your students have more raw ability than your mother and grandmother. Your method multiplies forces, creates greater energy than any of its component parts. Until you learn how to manage that, it will be Lughnasadh, all over again. In a worst-case scenario—”

  “What about a best case?” I couldn’t keep from cutting him off.

  He shrugged. “I’m a warder. I don’t spend time on best cases.”

  I knew he was a warder. We’d both made that abundantly clear, ever since the Fourth of July. But I wouldn’t get anywhere by losing my temper. I needed allies.

  “Caleb? Tony? What do you think?”

  I’d purposely addressed the guys in that order. Caleb was sitting opposite Emma, taking his cues from her. I’d only known the man for a month and a half, but I’d learned that he built things. He crafted solutions—whether that meant picking up a hammer or adjusting to a witch with a new man in her life. He was my best bet for structuring a resolution that would work for everyone.

  We all looked at the tall, blond warder expectantly. He leaned forward on his chair and dangled his hands between his knees. “I guess I see it this way. It’s the bottom of the ninth, and we’re down by two runs. The bases are loaded. Two outs; the count is three and two. You bring in your best pinch hitter, and he swings for the fences. Everyone goes wild. But if the ball doesn’t get out of the park, you’ve got to have a coach you can trust at third base. If he makes a mistake, waves home the guy from first, and the runner gets tagged at the plate, you’re into extra innings. You might lose it all. But if he holds up the runner, your game is tied, and you’re still batting.”

  I stared at him. He might have been speaking Urdu, for all I understood. But if I asked him to explain, was I going to get another extended metaphor about table saws and nail guns and ball peen hammers? Or could it be worse than that? Did Caleb have other hobbies I didn’t even know about?

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t quite follow that.”

  Tony cut in aggressively. “He’s saying it’s a dangerous situation, and you have to manage the risk. Will you trust your warders if we say you’ve gone too far? Will you break off a working if your warder says to?”

  I heard the old belligerent Tony in the questions—the man who had challenged David at swordpoint, the fighter who had punched a car in mindless anger. But the aggressive Tony was the same man who had waded into battle to protect his witch from an unknown enemy with unknown skills on unknown territory. He could be hot-tempered and short-sighted, but he was also fiercely devoted to Raven.

  Caleb nodded, accepting Tony’s translation. “If you let us have the final say on what is and isn’t safe, then I’m in.”

  Tony shrugged. “Me too.”

  I could see David wasn’t happy. He was the only one of the three warders who had witnessed communal magic of any real complexity. He understood the multiplier effect; he had watched Gran and Clara and me become more than the sum of our parts.

  But he also knew how much this mattered to me. If I couldn’t pursue a new method of teaching, the magicarium would never complete a Major Working by Samhain. David’s veto would effectively terminate the Madison Academy.

  And then Norville Pitt would win.

  I saw David reach the same conclusion, at nearly the same instant in time. His jaw tightened, and he raised his chin. “All right,” he said. “But only if you promise. If any warder says a working is too dangerous, will you stop immediately?”

  “I will,” I said and waited for him to nod his acquiescence.

  I looked at my witches. “Any questions?” When there weren’t any, I squared my shoulders. “All right. Let’s eat a light lunch, and then we’ll get to work. By the end of today, I want to complete a purification ritual.”

  Chalk one up for the librarian team. I’d successfully sold an idea.

  * * *

  Alas, I’d always been an optimist.

  By the end of Tuesday, we were nowhere near completing a purification ritual. With David taking first shift as warder (or babysitter or third base coach, whatever that really meant), we witches had gathered all our supplies and moved out to the stretch of sun-dried lawn between the house and the cornfield.

  We’d discussed the various steps for the rite, defined how we were going to proceed. We’d attempted to balance the energies inherent in mugwort tea, in fresh-needled rosemary sprigs, in rainwater and silver and sage and spells.

  And we’d failed miserably, spectacularly, each and every time we tried to work the rite.

  There were simply too many things to keep in balance. There were the four literal elements—earth and air, fire and water. And there were the component tools—herbs and water and a silver bowl. And there were the words of a spell, along with its undefinable arcane
power.

  Mostly, though, there were the jagged edges of our personalities. If I tasked Raven with taking the lead, she could rapidly build a bridge to Emma’s strengths. But as soon as she brought me into the loop, that span twisted, torquing under my unfamiliar weight and collapsing into nothingness.

  If Emma started, she could bond with me. But the instant she brought Raven into the meld, my balance was overwhelmed by the other woman, by the distraction of her overwhelming physical presence.

  And if I started, we got absolutely nowhere. I was diverted by the flicker of power between the sisters. My attention snagged on Emma’s British facade, by the foreign rhythm of her speech. I lost my concentration when Raven ran her fingers through her hair, highlighting the violet stripe at her temple. There was always something that kept me on edge, something that kept our work from flowing.

  Once, just once, I found the proper balance. It was late afternoon. Despite numerous applications of sunblock, we were all turning pink from the sun. We had consumed gallons of water to fight dehydration. We were sweaty and tired and ready to give up for the day.

  But I took energy from Emma. I fed it to Raven. I felt the swirl of our collective forces growing, swelling, as if it were a new-birthed animal breathing on its own.

  The potential astonished me. Even I had never expected to find so much pure energy available. I gasped in surprise, and the bond broke. The energy washed over us, as shifting and shapeless and impossible to grasp as water pouring from a broken balloon. I came back to full awareness of the mundane world, of David’s hovering form.

  I was actually shaken by that last effort. Maybe we were attempting too much. Maybe I was stretching the definition of witchcraft too far.

  I shoved my doubts as deep as I could, though. “Excellent,” I said, faking the confidence of a proper magistrix. “We’ll pick up from here tomorrow morning.”

  My witches lost no time stepping away from our circle. They were both steady on their feet, but I could see fatigue in the slope of their shoulders. Kopek tagged along beside Emma as she made her way to the porch, to the farmhouse and its air-conditioned rooms. The familiar looked like a weary puppy who didn’t have anywhere else to go. Hani might have given Raven the same sort of support, but she shook her head irritably, telling him to take a break before she headed indoors alone. I suspected her fingers were itching for her phone. Maybe she wanted to play spare-time cinematographer without his intervention. In any case, Hani took offense and stalked off into the forest.

  I looked at Neko. “Well? I’m sure you have plans, too.”

  He actually blushed. “Tony and I had talked about going out tonight.”

  “To a party?” I tried to picture Tony in a costume—any costume—and I came up totally empty.

  Neko shook his head. “To dinner. We were thinking about trying the new steakhouse in Frederick.”

  The new steakhouse. I couldn’t imagine that red meat had been Neko’s first choice. Maybe his relationship with the warder actually was something deeper than I’d believed.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Thanks for all your hard work.”

  As he scampered off, I was surprised to find myself stifling a yawn. David’s raised eyebrows might have been an off-hand question. How was I doing? Tough day at the office? How about that ninth inning?

  But he wasn’t making any casual inquiry. He was gathering evidence about our new model of working. And I had promised I would accept his evaluation of our safety, safety that included my health. “Okay,” I conceded. “Working this way does involve a lot of power. You were right, and I was wrong.”

  “I don’t want you to be wrong,” he said, and his voice was gentle enough to bring tears to my eyes. I must be even more exhausted than I’d thought.

  I rubbed hard at the back of my neck, trying to release some of my tension. “You just want to be right?” I asked.

  He rewarded me with a smile as he eased behind me. I leaned into his touch, letting his strong fingers find the pressure points along my spine. “That feels like heaven,” I said.

  “Just another footnote in the warder’s handbook.” He kept his tone light, but I heard the subtext as if it were shouted through a bullhorn. Warder. Witch. And nothing more.

  I braced myself for the conversation I’d been avoiding. “About the southern point,” I started.

  “Jonathan’s already drawn up the papers. He’s got three buyers, already interested.”

  “How did you know I would agree to the sale?”

  He shrugged. “We’ll need the money for the future. Even if your mother comes through with funds for this semester.” Those were practically the identical words I’d said to Melissa. Of course they were. David and I both wanted the magicarium to succeed.

  “Thank you,” I said. The two words weren’t nearly enough.

  He smiled and urged me toward the house with a gentle push. “Eat,” he said. “I’ll call Jonathan.”

  In the kitchen, I barely managed to stand in front of the refrigerator long enough to find a piece of fruit. I stumbled upstairs to my bedroom and fell asleep in my sweaty clothes, too spent to pull on pajamas.

  Wednesday dawned, and I immediately headed for the shower. Alas, my housemates had shared the same idea before I did; there was no hot water. In the kitchen, I had to rinse a bowl for my cereal. Even then, my breakfast was interrupted by the acrid stink of coffee baking dry on the heating element.

  I hadn’t thought it would make a huge difference, having the familiars living in the basement. After all, they’d been around the house constantly before they moved in. But I’d underestimated the impact of their twenty-four-hour-a-day presence. I was seriously regretting my promise to Gran.

  At least I didn’t feel as penned in when I met my students on the lawn outside the house. Hot, yes. Sweaty, yes. But there were no walls to feel like they were closing in.

  Caleb watched over us while we worked. We didn’t make any progress, but we did succeed in exhausting ourselves to the point of punch-drunk silliness. At one point, Emma fumbled the words of our spell, and we all collapsed into hysterical giggles.

  Thursday wasn’t any better. On the household front, I went to the linen closet for a hand towel, only to find that the cupboard was bare. Literally, bare. There wasn’t a towel or sheet to be found. Down in the basement, I solved the mystery—a half dozen loads of laundry were piled in front of the washing machine.

  My exasperated cry startled Kopek, who acknowledged the pile with a sheepish expression. Hani started in with an explanation that involved an abortive attempt to hang sheets as temporary dividers between rooms, pending the completion of Caleb’s renovation work. I stormed upstairs, trying not to think about rusty nail holes ruining all of Neko’s recent expensive purchases.

  Under Tony’s gaze, we tried our working again, but we never came close to succeeding. That evening, I tried to find a quiet corner to figure out what we were doing wrong. Hani and Raven were bickering in the living room, though, and Emma was cooking dinner for Rick in the kitchen. I retreated to the basement to collect a few books, working on the literature review I’d promised myself back in the bakery. Before I could find the most recent arrivals, Neko’s loud throat clearing alerted me to the fact that the room was occupied. I grabbed the closest book in the room and fled.

  I literally stumbled over Kopek in the upstairs hallway. “Sorry,” he said, pulling in his legs, so I could get by. “I was just looking for a place to read.” He held up a battered paperback. I sighed and closed my bedroom door behind me. For the rest of the night, I felt like I was hiding in my own home. That feeling of claustrophobia wasn’t helped by my being awakened at least half a dozen times. It seemed like there was always someone going up the stairs, down the stairs, in or out of a room and slamming doors.

  And that brought us around to David’s watch again. And we repeated the entire cycle. For two entire weeks.

  All right, not fourteen straight days. I gave everyone time off on Saturdays and
Sundays. Otherwise, we might have killed each other. Even then, the sniping got pretty bad in the house. By the end of each weekend, everyone felt the need for a little alone time. There just weren’t enough rooms, nowhere near enough spaces to escape the constant pressure of witchcraft relationships, and family relationships, and romantic relationships, and every other possible interaction.

  By our third Friday, I decided we were only going to work until noon. All three of us witches were drained. The familiars were showing stress as well—I’d caught Neko snarking at Hani twice, rolling his eyes at the gelled ridge of the redhead’s hair and mocking the turned-up collar of Hani’s polo shirt.

  David was warding us, with his usual perfect attention to detail. In an effort to focus more deeply, I’d skipped breakfast that morning, allowing myself only a single cup of honey chamomile tea.

  Now, flanked by my students, I stared at the equipment between us, at all the accoutrements displayed in perfect balance. Silver bowl. Flask of rainwater. Mugwort leaves. Rowan wand. Rosemary sprig. Closing my eyes, I allowed myself to envision each item against a velvet backdrop in my head. I knew these tools completely. My palms knew their weight to within a fraction of a gram. My fingertips understood the cool touch of silver, the prickle of rosemary, the smooth warmth of my wand.

  I held that knowledge inside me and let it swell with a dozen steady breaths. I settled the fingertips of my right hand on Emma’s palm. I reached out to Raven, on my left. I glanced at our familiars, carefully placed across the circle from each partner witch in a hopeless, helpless effort to bolster our strength.

  My students were ready. I breathed with them, another dozen breaths. Deep. Even. Centering.

  I opened myself to Neko, to his familiar energy emanating from his seat at Emma’s side. He leaned against her, and I could sense him homing in on the steady power of her breathing. Hani was next to me, doing the exact same thing. At some point I had become accustomed to the bantam familiar’s psychic presence; I now knew the balance of his energy without giving it a conscious thought. The same was true of Kopek—I didn’t need to think about how he mirrored Raven’s strengths for this working.