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

  He finally took a step back and ran a hand over his trio of hairs. “Of course, Miss Madison. After all, you’re the magistrix. For now.”

  I snatched up the pages and waited for the repulsive man to excuse himself, to head across the beach so David and I could have a little privacy. Fat chance. Instead, David snapped his fingers to command Spot’s attention, and then he led us both out onto the dock. David kept one eye on Pitt as I turned my back on the clerk. “What the hell happened between the two of you?” I asked.

  “You heard him. He was my boss, when I was sent back to the Court.”

  “That doesn’t explain that level of animosity.”

  David pointed out, “We don’t have time for this now.”

  “Fine.” At least the remnants of his fear were gone, completely replaced by anger. I’d get the truth from him later. “I can’t sign this, David. I can’t bet everything on a single ritual. Not when I can’t even raise a simple wind spell with my students.”

  “I don’t know how he talked them into this. All those Charters I filed, and not a single hint of a Major Workings clause before.”

  “What happens if I don’t sign?”

  “You’ll be declared rogue. The Court will send a letter demanding you shut down operations. If you don’t comply in a week, they’ll send a Termination Team.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It isn’t. They’ll bring a dozen warders to guarantee I won’t be a factor. An equal number of witches to restrain you. They’ll carry off the Osgood books, and whatever you’ve collected on your own. And Neko, too, of course.”

  Of course. I’d lost Neko before. I never wanted to live through that nightmare again. I glared at the Charter. “I’ll take my chances against their Team. I’m stronger than they think I am.”

  “You’re not listening. This is the Court. They make the Washington Coven look like Matchbox cars test-driving the Indy 500. If a dozen witches aren’t enough to restrain you, they’ll bring two dozen. A hundred. They have unlimited resources, and they’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “What’s a Major Working, anyway? How major is Major?”

  David shrugged. “I don’t know. I suspect they don’t either. You’ll have to choose something big enough that there can’t be any doubt.”

  Great. Maybe I could negotiate peace in the Middle East while I was at it.

  But what choice did I have? If I went rogue, Neko was automatically forfeit. If I signed the damned Charter, at least I had a fighting chance to keep him. And I meant to fight. A lot.

  I turned on my heel and stalked back to the beach, Spot on my left side, and David on my right. Thrusting the Charter in Pitt’s face, I asked, “What do I do? Sign it in blood?”

  “Ink should suffice.” He smiled as if he’d just told the best joke in the world. As I fumed, he extracted a Bic from his well-protected pocket. My stomach turned when I saw the cap had been chewed to a pulp.

  He flipped to a page in the middle of the Agreement. “I am required to point out that you have a deadline here.” He tapped the paper. “Please initial where it says you have until Samhain to complete your Major Working.”

  “Samhain!” That was Halloween. A mere four months from now. The Madison Academy semester didn’t end until December; we should have had until Yule to prove ourselves. But Samhain marked the traditional end and beginning of the pagan year. And if I argued, Pitt would probably move the deadline up to Lughnasadh, to the first of August.

  I clenched my jaw and initialed the deadline.

  Then, I signed the last page of the Charter, taking great care to make my name legible. Pitt added his own signature on behalf of the Court before he passed the sheaf of papers to David. “If you’ll bear appropriate witness?” he asked with oily politeness.

  David nearly tore the paper as he crossed the “t” in Montrose.

  “Excellent,” Pitt declared, snorting with adenoidal glee. I half expected him to start rubbing his palms together like Snidely Whiplash. “We’ll make copies back at the home office and deliver one to you, post-haste. Did you have any questions, Miss Madison?”

  “Just one. Do you actually like your job, screwing with honest witches who only want to make the world a better place?”

  He blinked, as if my words did not compute in whatever feeble machine passed for his mind. “I don’t understand, Miss—”

  “Let me show you the path back to the house, Norville,” David said. He shot me a glance, clearly warning that the Court’s eternal blacklist might be only one more insult away.

  “I’ll find it myself, thank you.” Pitt looked like he didn’t want to spend a second alone with David, and he wasn’t all that fond of Spot either. I couldn’t say I blamed him, on either count.

  We watched Norville Pitt waddle across the beach. He swung his briefcase at his side, all the while slipping and sliding on the sand. I waited until he’d disappeared behind the treeline before I asked, “What do we do now?”

  David collapsed into one of the deck chairs. He buried his hands in the thick fur around Spot’s neck. “Good boy,” he murmured, as the dog’s tail took up a steady tattoo. It took ages for him to raise his gaze to me. “I’m sorry,” he said at last.

  “About what?”

  “About dragging you into all of this. If you had another warder, Pitt wouldn’t have gotten involved.”

  “If I had another warder, I’d never have gotten this far. I certainly wouldn’t still have the Osgood collection. And that has to be the real reason Pitt showed up.”

  “Jane—

  “I’m not listening,” I sang, stopping just short of putting my fingers in my ears. I waited until David slumped back into the chair. “Hey,” I said, reaching out with my foot to shove at his calf. “It’s not you. It’s me.”

  He managed a wan smile. “Great. What every man longs to hear.”

  “Seriously,” I said. “I’m sorry Pitt came after you like that. It wasn’t fair for him to use either of us to get at the other. But he did, and the Court did, and now we don’t have a lot of options. Let’s get back home so I can share the good news with my students.”

  I could tell he didn’t believe me. He still blamed himself. But he clasped my hand tightly the entire way back to the house. Spot stayed close every step of the way, on high canine alert.

  We found Raven and Emma lounging in the living room, tall glasses of iced tea sweating onto nearby coasters. Raven immediately raised her phone, pushing the button to activate the camera.

  “Forget it,” I snapped. And then, I told them about the Charter. I explained that my entire witchcraft collection was on the line, Neko included. Their reactions actually made me like them more than I thought possible—each sucked in her breath as if she’d taken a blow to the gut.

  “So that’s it,” I concluded. “We have until Samhain.”

  Emma’s voice was very soft. “That won’t be a doddle. What do you want us to do, then? What’s our Major Working?”

  I looked at David. Ordinarily, I would consult with him about something this important. We might spend days, weeks even, bandying about possibilities, considering pros and cons, measuring out costs and benefits.

  But now, we didn’t have the time. And I was the magistrix, after all.

  I looked at Emma, saw how she was fighting to be patient. I watched Raven’s fingers twitch as she started to reach for her phone out of habit. And then I said, “We’re going to restore the health of the lake here on the farm. We’re going to reverse the effects of the drought and make it thrive once again.”

  My students merely nodded. I wondered if they even knew enough to comprehend how substantial a working I had just announced.

  But David wasn’t a student. He understood before the words were out of my mouth. “Jane,” he said. And I watched him struggle for his next words. He obviously didn’t want to undermine me in front of Raven and Emma. He didn’t want to say that my suggestion was patently absurd—a weather working on that scale w
as more than any trained magistrix could manage, with dozens of enrolled students.

  I raised my chin. “There can’t be any question,” I said. “There can’t be any doubt that our working is sufficient. After we repair the lake, no one on the Court can possibly argue that we failed to do a Major Working. I won’t let them take away the Osgood collection.”

  CHAPTER 6

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I tried not to worry about the Major Working as I fortified myself with a sourdough waffle. And orange butter. And pure maple syrup—the type that came from real trees in frosty northern forests. I was deep in the middle of brunch with my grandmother and Clara, a tradition that Gran had instituted a few years back. She thought shared meals would bring all three of us closer together.

  She was right—at least in the literal sense. Ever since Clara had retreated to Sedona, we had relied on David to transport her to our monthly gatherings, using his warder’s magic. This morning had been no exception; he had spirited Clara from her perch by the Vortex, dropping her off at Teaism in Washington, D.C., a mere stone’s throw from the National Archives and a few other government buildings that all looked like Greek temples.

  Gran swallowed a hefty bite of French toast and reached across the bamboo table to pat my hand. “Well, dear, I think you were incredibly brave. I don’t know what I would have done, if that horrible man had showed up in my living room.”

  Despite my anxiety, I smiled. Gran made Norville Pitt sound like some sort of insect pest that could be taken care of by an exterminator. “I’m sure you would have come up with something.”

  “It’s not right,” Gran said. “If our David antagonized that man, there has to be a reason. The Court should be rewarding David, not antagonizing him like that.” She stared morosely at her side order of tea cured salmon. Or maybe she was studying her chicken sausage. It was hard to tell with the array of dishes on her side of the table. “If your mother and I had any real powers, we’d take a stand on his behalf. The three of us together, we could make the Court see reason.”

  “You do have powers,” I said loyally. Although, truth be told, my grandmother’s abilities were rather limited. Clara on the other hand… Her magic ebbed and flowed, but she usually managed to tap into her strong potential.

  As if on cue, my mother stopped pushing her fork around on her plate of scrambled tempeh. Kale, tomato, and cilantro gave the dish plenty of color, but Clara was eyeing Gran’s sausage with longing. “I think we should consult with Sister Moonsilver. See what the spirit world has to say about this Norville Pitt.”

  I forced my lips to curve into a smile as I tested my response inside my head before speaking aloud. I needed to sound like I thought my mother’s suggestion could possibly have merit. In some other world where astrology was actually real magic. “Sister Moonsilver isn’t really a psychic, Clara. Her only magical ability is using enough vague words to lure her patrons into completing her sentences.” She’s a fraud, I wanted to add, but Gran had long-since forbidden the F-word.

  Clara drew herself up very straight. “Sister Moonsilver correctly predicted my power animal. If she isn’t a psychic, how did she know I’d dream of a mountain lion the first night I slept in her tent?”

  Maybe because she fed you copious amounts of a very suspicious tea before you fell asleep. And because she never stopped talking about mountain lions, even while you were dreaming.

  But this was Mother Daughter Brunch. There was nothing to be gained by challenging Clara on some of her most closely held beliefs. Instead, I took a generous bite of apple gingerbread and watched the koi swim in the stone-lined pond that filled the center of the dining room. I had almost achieved perfect Zen peace when Gran launched a new, supposedly-safe topic of conversation. “Tell us, dear. How are your students settling in?”

  “Raven and Emma?” I took a sip of Golden Monkey tea as I considered my answer. “Fine, I guess. Things were a little chaotic when they showed up Friday night, but I think David and I covered pretty well.”

  Gran buttered a ginger scone and smeared it with marmalade. “I’m sure you’re getting excellent advice from Neko. This must be right up his alley, the social aspects of welcoming students to your magicarium.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “Actually,” I said to the oversize goldfish, “he’s barely talking to me.”

  Gran was shocked enough that she put down her scone without taking a bite. “What have you done now, Jane?”

  What had I done? Why did she assume I had done anything? Oh. Maybe because I had.

  “This all happened so fast! David and I never expected witches to appear on our doorstep, complete with warders and familiars!”

  “You never expected your mother to help you out, you mean.”

  Well, that was one way to look at it, even if Gran’s correction was tarter than I expected. I glanced at Clara, who was mercifully intent on adding thick slices of sausage to her tempeh. “That’s not what I meant at all,” I said.

  But Gran hadn’t lost sight of the real problem. She asked, “What did you do to Neko?”

  And so I told them both about asking my familiar to give up his apartment to Raven and Emma. They listened to my justifications without interrupting, even when my voice rose to a notably shriller register. “Under the circumstances,” I concluded defensively, “it was the best thing for everyone.”

  “The best thing for you, perhaps,” Clara said. She’d given up on the tempeh completely, and was scraping her fork against the now-empty plate that had once held two plump chicken sausages.

  Gran added, “But it certainly sounds as if Neko might have felt blindsided.”

  “I didn’t—” But there was no use finishing the sentence. “You both know if I had to choose between Neko and my students, I’d choose Neko in a heartbeat! I never wanted to hurt his feelings.” I shifted my mug from hand to hand. “Between the three of us—and seriously! This goes no further!—I’m not even sure I like my students. Emma’s love of all things British wears thin after about a minute, and Raven… She can be a bit much to take.”

  Of course, Gran was ready with an immediate answer. “I see one possible solution. Have Raven and Emma live in the main house, with you and David.”

  “Didn’t you hear me? I want to spend less time with them. Not more.”

  Gran patted my hand. “Sometimes, we don’t understand what we really need.”

  “There isn’t room! We only have one guest room.”

  Clara said helpfully, “You can always move things around. In fact, I’ve been worried about the feng shui in David’s office. The energy is terrible in there right now.” She launched into a detailed explanation of polarity and the cardinal directions. I was totally lost by the time she got to the Blue Dragon and the Red Phoenix.

  Clara’s interior decorating plans aside, it wasn’t actually impossible to bring my students into the house. And David’s office was the logical room to commandeer. It was upstairs, and it was about the same size as the existing guest room. All we’d have to do was move in a bed, and a dresser. A nightstand. Maybe a small desk.

  But it was David’s office. I’d already gotten into trouble making one person move for my magicarium housing. As Clara finally ran down, I said, “It wouldn’t be fair to David.”

  Gran turned her head to the side, looking exactly like a curious bird. “But it was fair to make Neko move?” She had a point, of course. She was Gran. She always had a point.

  “I’ve already paid for my mistake with Neko.” I held up one hand to forestall a protest from Clara and Gran, my familiar’s two greatest fans. “I mean literally paid—I gave him my credit card, so he could outfit all the new rooms.”

  “Ouch,” Clara said, immediately recognizing the cost of my quest for absolution.

  “Ouch, indeed. Speaking of which,” I braced myself with another sip of tea, “we could really use the tuition money you promised.”

  Clara smiled serenely. “I’ll have it for you shortly. The new moon is July 8.” />
  “The new moon?” I asked, puzzled. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I have a new ritual I’m trying out. I’m going to fill my cauldron with rainwater and put a pure silver coin in the very center. I’ll light a green candle and a white candle just as the first rays of moonlight strike the water, and I’ll say, ‘Silver, silver come to me, fill my purse now, three times three.’ I’ll send you the tuition money as soon as the spell works.”

  I swallowed my immediate words of criticism. I’d never actually tried a money spell. They ran too close to the Shadowed Path. Usually someone needed to lose money if another person was going to find it.

  Nevertheless, Clara looked at me expectantly. I managed a tight smile before I said, “We were really hoping for something a little more … immediate.”

  “Well, Jeanette, I don’t see any way that ‘immediate’ is going to happen. I’ve just bought new robes for the Oak Canyon Coven.”

  I bridled when Clara called me the wrong name, a clear sign she had stopped listening to me, stopped paying attention to who I really was. Gran jumped in before I could say something I’d regret. “So, dear. Tell me a little more about the magicarium. Are you teaching your students how to work the way the three of us do? All unified? All together?”

  Good old Gran. She was determined to remind me that I shared a common heritage with both her and Clara. I was so amused by her blatant deflection that I almost didn’t mind admitting, “I tried that yesterday. But we couldn’t find the balance. Couldn’t even raise a gust of wind.”

  Gran frowned, but her loyalty was undiluted. “I’m sure that with a little practice…”

  “We don’t have time for that,” I said. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about since Norville Pitt left. If I only have four months to complete a massive weather working, I’m going to have to use traditional teaching methods to get us ready.”