Single Witch's Survival Guide (The Jane Madison Academy Series) Page 19

  CHAPTER 14

  IN THE END, I did skip the mojito, and I drove home immediately after dinner. I was truly exhausted—a combination of my previously interrupted sleep, my successful working with my students, and my ever-present worry about Norville Pitt. Melissa, of course, was perfectly understanding—and happy to drink more than her share of mojitos to drown her wedding tribulations.

  When I got home, most of the group was hanging out in the living room. Caleb and Tony sprawled in the oversize armchairs, watching the Diamondbacks beat the Nationals. Neko sat on the floor, leaning against Tony’s legs. I was pretty sure he knew that the game on T.V. was baseball, but I was certain he didn’t have the first clue about the rules. He was much more engrossed in the casual pressure of Tony’s fingers against his nape. I could practically hear him purr from across the room.

  Kopek was dozing on the couch. Raven and Hani crouched over the coffee table, debating the merits of two different fonts for their epic documentary. Neither Emma nor David was in sight.

  I dropped my purse by the door and dragged a chair in from the dining room. Strategically, I waited for a commercial break before asking, “Where’s everyone else?”

  Raven jutted her thumb toward the ceiling. “Emma’s upstairs.” With Rick, that meant. His next shift wasn’t until Sunday; he’d be around for most of the weekend. I was a little bemused that I knew the fireman’s schedule.

  Neko stretched lazily, before settling back in the exact same position. “David’s in Sedona.”

  Great. What a perfect night for Clara to summon him. He had to be drained after watching over our morning working. With Pitt’s mid-day visit and the Charter’s aura, he surely spent the afternoon obsessing over the Court’s documents. On second thought, maybe it was a good thing for my mother to keep David occupied. Anything that separated him from those damn papers was a good thing.

  But that left me alone to deliver my bad news. Because I had no delusions about how Gran’s edict was going to be received. At least the Diamondbacks were ahead. That would make everyone a little more kindly disposed toward my announcement.

  The commercial break ended, and the game came back on. I watched in dismay as the pitcher gave up back to back home runs, putting the Nationals on top. (And when had I become such a baseball aficionado? I could thank Caleb for that. Caleb, and near-constant exposure to the sport for the summer.)

  An ad for an airlines came on—Need to get away?—and I cleared my throat. “Starting tomorrow, we have another change in living arrangements.” Tension condensed in the room like fog in a swamp. I hurried on before anyone could protest out loud. “All of the warders are moving into the house.”

  Neko let out a squeak of surprise. Kopek opened one eye and stared at me with bleary skepticism. “You’ve got to be— That was from Raven, but she cut herself off before finishing.

  I forced myself to focus on the two men most directly affected by my announcement. “Caleb?” I asked. “Tony?”

  Tony’s lips twisted into a dyspeptic frown, but he offered up a shrug. Caleb said, “You’re the boss.”

  I could have hugged him. Instead, I showed my gratitude by settling back in my chair to watch the next inning. When the Diamondbacks were down by three runs, though, I took the hint from all the fates and headed upstairs. Whispered complaints about the new housing arrangements began before my foot was on the first tread of the steps.

  In my bedroom, I glanced at my alarm clock and saw that it was just after nine o’clock. With the time difference, I might be able to catch David before my mother began whatever ritual she had planned for the night. I took out my phone and pressed his number. Four rings. Voicemail. I started to leave a message, but there wasn’t anything specific to say. Not that I wanted to leave in a message, anyway.

  I hung up and went to sleep.

  * * *

  The following morning began with a bang, followed by countless whimpers.

  Before breakfast, Tony volunteered to bunk with Caleb in one of the upstairs guest rooms. Neko launched into predictable orbit. I spent a full hour convincing him Tony wasn’t rejecting their relationship. If anything, the warder wanted to preserve some sliver of privacy; it was easier to get rid of one warder roommate than two familiars, in pursuit of sexy times. Neko pounced on the opportunity to have Caleb finish putting up walls in the basement, but I told him there simply wasn’t time. We needed all magical hands on the astral deck to prepare for our Mabon working.

  I should have been able to predict the resolution of Neko’s crisis. I handed over my credit card, and my familiar and Tony took the rest of the day on a restorative field trip far away from the farm. I wondered if I could forward the receipts to Gran. After all, she was responsible for creating this mess.

  I went back to wrestling accommodations. Kopek whined about people walking across the kitchen floor. He insisted he could hear every step when he lay on his cot, and he moaned that things would only be worse with three new residents in the house. I promised we’d make the kitchen off limits from midnight till six in the morning.

  Hani was up next. He announced that the basement was starting to stink. Kopek was predictably offended. I refereed by lugging two huge box fans downstairs. After a liberal application of Febreze, I turned on the fans to literally clear the air. Another crisis averted.

  Emma and Raven balked at sharing a bedroom. I barely resisted pointing out that they’d lived together for years; by their own admission they’d been inseparable as children. Of course, when they were children, Emma had not been involved with Rick Hanson. They only stopped sniping at each other when I threatened to draw up a formal schedule for who could be in the bedroom when. I’m sure neither of them really believed me when I said I’d make them sign in blood.

  Caleb spent half the morning programming the television to record every important baseball game for the next six weeks. He spent the other half reorganizing the refrigerator, determined to find room for a full case of some rare Czech beer he’d just bought. In the end, he left a gallon of Raven’s organic oat milk on the counter, and I could hear her screeched protest from behind my closed bedroom door.

  On and on it went, until I felt more like a Cub Scout den mother than the magistrix of a Class Two magicarium.

  And David was missing all the fun. I’d called him when I woke up, but I still got his voice mail. I tried Clara then, too, and ended up leaving her a message, asking her to give me a call.

  I reminded myself that David was her warder. She was allowed to work her own magic, even when I was caught in the midst of turning our house upside down, trying to meet an impossible deadline for a Mabon ritual.

  When I hadn’t heard from either of them by the middle of the afternoon, I decided to do some sleuthing. While witches, warders, and familiars completed settling into their new rooms, I ventured into David’s office, determined to glean some information about Clara’s secret rituals.

  I hadn’t been down there for days, and the space had been transformed. Once, it had contained a handful of filing cabinets and one large desk. It had been a working man’s refuge—as spare and efficient as its owner.

  Now, the room was filled with hundreds of neatly stacked cardboard boxes. Each was labeled in David’s strong handwriting. Expense Reports—one box for every year from 1985 to the present. Contracts—at least three dozen boxes. Charters—a half dozen boxes. On and on it went, with some containers stacked so high I would need a step ladder to reach them.

  There were maps, too, precisely pinned to the wall with brushed steel thumbtacks. Pushpins bristled from the surface. Red seemed to indicate covens, while blue marked magicaria. I wasn’t sure what was signaled by the green and yellow pins.

  Reference books lined the shelves. There were directories and rule books, along with several dozen leather-bound ledgers. A cache of scrolls was organized in a series of cubbyholes that looked like they belonged in an old post office.

  The Madison Academy Charter occupied the center of David’s
desk. Its numbered pages were laid out on a field of white linen, and an old-fashioned quill pen sat nearby, its plumed feather curling like a question mark. The yellow ribbon proclaiming our Class Two status curled over the edge of the desk.

  I crossed the room to look at the document that was causing us all so much grief. The overhead lights tinged the rosette with a sickly glint of chartreuse. Its lettering was flaking off. I fingered the edge of the silk, wondering if it had yielded any secrets to David, if it had given him the forensic clues he had hoped to find.

  Nothing out of the ordinary was visible, not with mundane sight. I extended my hand over document, taking care not to touch it directly, and I closed my eyes to take a deep, centering breath.

  “From the chaos upstairs, I can see you’ve been busy.”

  I shrieked and leaped back from the desk, holding my fingers to my chest as if they’d been burned. Even as I moved, though, I recognized David’s voice.

  I tried to slow my thundering heart as I took in the appearance of my prodigal warder. His shoulders slumped, and his face was drawn. Fine lines fanned beside his eyes, as if he’d aged a decade since I’d seen him last. His lips were chapped, and he looked like he was ready to sleep for a century.

  But he took the time to measure the Charter. From the intensity of his gaze, I could tell he was scanning it with his warder’s senses, making sure I hadn’t touched it, hadn’t ruined whatever he was trying to do. I gestured toward everything around us—the boxes, the maps, the collected books and scrolls—and I finally responded to his words. “I could say the same to you.”

  He eased past me and collapsed into the chair behind the desk. “I don’t want to fight, Jane.”

  “This isn’t a fight.”

  His bitter smile was fleeting. “It will be.”

  “What are you doing with all these things? Does the Court know you have them?”

  He shook his head.

  “How could you do something so dangerous? If the Court found out, they’d send a Termination Team in a heartbeat!”

  He had to know that. He had to understand. And the fact that he didn’t care scared me more than Norville Pitt, more than the possibility of closing the magicarium after Mabon. David was ignoring a lifetime of warder’s training to pursue this momentary passion. And I could only imagine how deeply he would regret things, if it all went wrong.

  “You’ve got to let this go,” I said. “It’s hurting you more than it could ever possibly benefit the Court. Or me. You have to stop.”

  He met my eyes. “Is that an order?”

  I could do it. I could seal my demand with a witch’s compulsion, and that would be the end.

  The end of David’s investigation. But the end of more. My witch’s command would terminate, forever, the trust we had between us.

  When I’d commanded him on Independence Day, I’d spoken out of frustration. My order had been impulsive. I had never dreamed of the damage I would do. Even now, we had not completely restored our relationship. We had not returned to the solid ground of all the bonds we had shared—witch and warder, lovers, partners.

  If I commanded him now—with full consideration before taking the action—I would sever those bonds forever. I would consciously end any life we had outside our magical connection.

  But I would spare him the terrible cost of his obsession. I would protect the Madison Academy. All it would take was destroying his free will.

  I shook my head. “It’s not an order. It’s a plea. I am begging you to stop.”

  His lips thinned into a nearly-invisible line. “Anything else?” he asked, as if I’d given him a list of chores to do around the house.

  He’d heard me. He’d even listened. But he was choosing not to change.

  I shook my head. “Have Caleb help you move your things back from the barn. All warders sleep beneath this roof, starting tonight.”

  He nodded. He’d already seen everyone shifting rooms upstairs.

  When I didn’t say anything else, he picked up his quill pen, obviously intending to work. I wanted to tell him to put it down. I wanted to say that he looked like hell. I wanted to tell him to take a shower and get some rest.

  Instead, I left the room, closing the door softly behind me. I told myself that the tears filling my eyes were only a product of stress and fatigue. But I knew I was lying. And I didn’t have any idea what to do about that.

  CHAPTER 15

  GRAN WAS RIGHT. I got to know the warders better, by having them live in the house.

  I learned that Caleb used Dial soap and Suave shampoo. Tony was a Head and Shoulders man. And neither of them picked up their towels off the bathroom floor.

  As for David, he made it to bed on Saturday night. He even leaned over and gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek before he turned out the light on his nightstand. But for all the passion between us, we might have been siblings, sharing a tent on a summer camping trip.

  Maybe that had something to do with my evil mood on Sunday morning. With our new Mabon deadline, we no longer had the luxury of taking weekends off. So, seven o’clock. Maxwell House coffee and Lipton’s tea, both brewed double-strength. Boot camp was in session.

  “Here’s the problem,” I said, without preamble. “Friday’s purification ritual took almost everything we had to give. That would be fine, if all we wanted to accomplish was a bit of magical housekeeping. But it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than clean living to win over the Court.”

  Neko snorted at the phrase “clean living.”

  “Did you have something to say?” I whirled on him. I had to keep everyone focused. I had to get them to understand how little time we had. He shook his head promptly, but he wasn’t fast enough to hide the sardonic twist of his lips. I wondered exactly what he and Tony had gotten up to yesterday afternoon. But then I remembered I really didn’t want to know.

  “Laugh if you want. But if I were a familiar, I’d save my energy. Because you’re going to need every last bit of it to bolster our spells. We’ll start with raising the wind.”

  I turned on my heel and led the way out of the cool, air-conditioned living room. When Emma realized we were going outside, she wiped her palms against her jeans and glanced toward the stairs. Too bad. She could change into shorts when we broke for lunch. If we broke for lunch.

  I ordered Tony to mark off a safe circle for our work. We were going to retreat deep into our powers, and I didn’t want anyone—not Emma’s beau, not some innocent Parkersville civilian coming to collect for March of Dimes or the Cancer Guild, no one—to interrupt us.

  And so it began.

  Our Major Working would build on elemental magic. We were trying to restore a balance between air and earth, fire and water, to correct the chaos of climate change. It made sense for us to start our expedited studies with Air. The element was associated with the East, with the first quarter we called on in all our workings.

  I already owned everything we needed. Agrimony and senna leaf, butcher’s broom and lavender—all herbs that were traditionally associated with Air. Quartz in all its shades—clear and rose and blue and smoke. Hematite. The rune kenaz, carved in jade and wood and clay.

  By combining all those tools, my witches would learn the true properties of the element. We would feel its power with every inch of our astral beings. Balancing herbs and crystals, runes and spells, we would become a part of Air, balanced on it, melded with it.

  That was the theory, anyway.

  And that was how we spent our Sunday. We harnessed every item at our command, using the tools to raise up wind, to strengthen a slight breeze, to calm a gale. We focused on changing direction, on creating sudden downdrafts, on letting everything fall so still we could scarcely fill our lungs.

  I pushed everyone to work through lunch and to skip dinner. Such hard labor was actually a calculated part of the training. By measuring how our bodies reacted to stress, we learned how to rebalance ourselves with the tools at our disposal.

  With every ex
ercise, I felt my magic solidify. I understood my arcane self, comprehended the roots of my ability better than I ever had before. I drew power from Neko and the other familiars, let them reflect my strength back to me like the shimmer of heat haze above an asphalt road.

  By nightfall, Emma and Raven were more exhausted than I’d ever seen them before. When I nodded to Tony to release his protective circle, he rushed toward his witch, catching her as she started to collapse. I chose to ignore the filthy glare he shot at me.

  Caleb wasn’t much better. He waited on the porch, pacing like an expectant father. As soon as he was allowed, he bounded down the steps to help Emma. He actually cursed when Kopek sank to his knees in the sere grass.

  I hardened my heart. My students and I had accomplished our goal. We’d pushed ourselves to our limits. We had mastered Air and all the magic that was bound to it.

  I asked Neko to make sure everyone ate a grounding supper, and I carried a plate upstairs to my bedroom. My students needed a chance to recover, and the crowded house gave them little chance to air their grievances if I haunted the downstairs. I was asleep before David came to bed.

  Monday was Water. Barberry and comfrey and frankincense. Amethyst and turquoise. The rune laguz. Through those tools, we found the individual molecules in the grass beneath our feet. We studied how our blood flowed in our veins, thickening it, thinning it. We unraveled the blanket of humidity that oppressed us, reveling in the pure water we extracted from the atmosphere.

  Caleb guarded us, but Tony stayed by his side the entire day, only leaving when darkness settled over the yard. Even then, he was gone just long enough to collect a simple meal of bread and cheese, of refrigerated water untouched by magic. As the late summer sun set, we all chewed in silence, lost in memories of the power we had raised.

  Tuesday was Fire. Garlic, thistle, cinnamon. Obsidian and tigerseye. The kauno rune. We concentrated heat out of the air, focused it like a magnifying glass to kindle controlled flames on the grass. We made lightning fork above our palms, the jagged bolts crackling against the protective dome above us.