Single Witch's Survival Guide (The Jane Madison Academy Series) Page 9

  “School meeting,” I said, before I’d even really decided to act. “In the kitchen. Now.”

  As soon as Raven and Emma were sitting at the table, faces tight with identical wary expressions, I said, “The night you arrived, you asked about my policy on modern communication, and I never got a chance to answer. Here’s the policy: All photography, still or motion picture, is forbidden.”

  Raven clutched at her chest as if I’d just delivered a direct shot to her heart. “You can’t do that!”

  “I just did.” Even as I issued my edict, though, I thought about how Gran had handled similar life-or-death matters when I was a teenager. More often than I’d care to admit, I’d had the same rebellious look I now saw on Raven’s face. And once Gran had thought things through, she’d usually relented. Within reason.

  I took a deep breath and held it for a count of five. I was the magistrix here. I was the one in control. I could afford to be a little generous. “Okay,” I said. “You can use your camera in your own room. You can film things outside the Academy—personal walks through the woods, on the streets in Parkersville. But don’t even think about bringing the camera to our workings. No disrupting magic classes with technology. And you aren’t allowed to film David, Neko, or me any time.”

  Raven’s face was as easily read as A Girl’s First Grimoire. Her first reaction was anger, but she swallowed that in a few seconds. Her second thought was snide, but she set that aside as well. Her third response was fear, obvious terror at interacting with the world without the mediation of a camera lens. And then she settled on acceptance. Nodding slowly, she made a great show of turning off her phone before she slipped it into her hip pocket.

  All the while, Emma watched with intense interest. Her reaction made me suspect that no one had ever successfully bridled Raven before. No one—at least in a witchy context—had ever told her what was what.

  “Thank you,” I said, trying to sound as if I’d known all along that Raven would comply. “Now, let’s finish getting both of you settled upstairs. The Jane Madison Academy begins in earnest first thing tomorrow morning.”

  * * *

  On Tuesday morning, breakfast was served at 7:30. Everyone was fully caffeinated and in the living room by eight. Familiars were present and accounted for. I gave warders the day off, inviting them to spend their time on other activities supporting the magicarium.

  David took that as his cue, and he announced a major project down at the barn. Caleb and Tony were drafted for some renovation work, something manly and mysterious that involved multiple trips into town to retrieve lumber and drywall, carpet and paint.

  My students and I settled down to the basics of witchcraft. We spent all day Tuesday focusing on lighting candles. I hadn’t purposely lapsed into the traditional Rota for educating witches. I just needed to make sure that my students were confident when it came to the basics. We were building a foundation for all our future work together, and I had to know they were absolutely, perfectly, one hundred percent rock solid.

  At least, that was the justification I built for myself.

  This was not the magicarium I had envisioned. From the first moment I’d thought of running a school for witches, I’d assumed I would do things my way. I’d take chances. I’d push boundaries.

  But the Rota was tried and true. With the Rota, I should be able to guarantee some Major Working. After that, I’d be out from under the Court’s thumb, and I could transform the Madison Academy back into the magicarium of my dreams.

  So, Tuesday was candles. Wednesday, we trained with our rowan wands, memorizing the feel of every whorl. When I woke up Thursday morning, I pictured myself spending the rest of the day perched on the edge of the living room couch, monitoring my students’ incremental discoveries about the wonders of an iron cauldron.

  I just couldn’t do it.

  Instead, I made sure our cereal bowls were stacked in the sink as the tall case clock chimed eight. Kopek, Hani, and Neko waited for us witches on the porch. I called for Spot, and the Lab led the way into the woods. My students were cheered to be free of the house, and we all laughed as we sauntered along the trail. I remembered all the turns correctly, and we arrived at a clover meadow without incident.

  The sky was burnished steel overhead. Neko and I made short work of spreading out an old quilt, placing the comforter at the edge of the trees so we could take advantage of the shade, even as we worked with the green, growing things that flourished in the clearing. Spot sniffed all four corners, and then he settled in the precise center of the fabric, completing three turns to trample the imaginary grasses of his canine memory.

  Emma sank cross-legged on the edge of the blanket. Her assumed British identity mercifully subsumed in silence, she studied her surroundings in detail. I suspected she was stabilizing her power, drawing on Kopek. In any case, her familiar sat close by; his knee just touched hers.

  Perfect. Maybe this would work even better than I’d hoped.

  But no. Raven was putting on her usual show. Sprawled across a corner of the blanket, she wore her typical black attire. Today’s outfit included a gauzy top knotted high against her rib-cage, providing a perfect frame for the sweetheart bra beneath. Her shorts were even more microscopic than normal. Shifting position, she draped one leg across Hani’s still form. He lay on his belly and rested his chin on his hands, as if he were studying every blade of grass at the edge of our blanket.

  At least Raven’s phone was out of sight.

  I glanced at Neko before I launched into the day’s lesson. “According to the Rota, we should begin our study of herblore with cultivated plants. We should study each one individually, memorize each in isolation. Here on the farm, we have a chance to explore nature in a more primal form. We can study the balance of the greenery around us, the way things grow together and apart.”

  Herblore was more an art than a science. It could never completely be taught; a witch either had the ability or she did not. I was a decent herbalist, but I’d never be the best. It was time to discover where my students fell on the spectrum. I had to learn how much remedial work we’d have to do at our painful Rota pace.

  “Close your eyes,” I told them. “Take a few deep breaths. See what plants you can identify solely through your sense of smell.”

  Raven inhaled noisily, mimicking a wine connoisseur slurping up a rich burgundy. Her ribcage filled so completely I thought her bra might snap open. When she exhaled, I imagined I could see her spine through the dimple of her navel. She repeated the process a half dozen times, each breath hooking her leg more tightly around Hani’s body. I blushed at her frank sexuality; I felt like I was intruding on some private moment with her familiar. No wonder Raven had worked her way through so many Oak Canyon warders. If this was the way she executed her magic, no man was safe in a hundred-mile radius.

  Emma, at least, was less ostentatious, settling for placing her palm on Kopek’s shoulder. “Honeysuckle,” she said after a moment.

  “Good. What else?”

  Another half dozen breaths for each of them. “Wild chives?” Emma proposed.

  “Yes. And?” She started to chew on her lower lip. “Raven?” I prompted.

  “Red clover.” Her voice was distant and soft, as if she were reciting a barely remembered dream. “White clover.”

  “Excellent. Anything else?”

  “Bee balm. Lupine. Wild senna. Milkweed. Big bluestem and little bluestem. And wild rye. I don’t know if its Canadian or Virginia.” She opened her eyes and sat up, stretching so thoroughly I thought she might give Neko a proper lesson in feline behavior.

  Wow. If she had that sort of sensitivity to plants, then I’d put up with her acrobatic postures any day of the week. I only knew half the things she’d named because I’d researched likely candidates online the night before.

  “Excellent,” I said, as if I’d planned that pause all along. I eased back into my intended lesson. “The field is a mix of many plants. Some are common; they have no ma
gical powers. But others can be incorporated into rituals. What do you know about the magical properties of the specific ones around us? Emma? What magical uses do we have for honeysuckle?”

  The shrub in question grew in a large bank to our right, spilling over the remnants of a tree trunk that must have fallen years before. “It helps with memory, I think. With clarity of thought.” She sounded tentative, her English accent thinned almost to nonexistence. “Maybe it increases psychic ability?”

  “Anything else?”

  She looked at Kopek, as if he might be harboring some secret store of information. The man shrugged so despondently that I wanted to cut some of the sweet flowers and drape him in their comforting scent. Emma patted her familiar’s knee in a gesture of reassurance and said, “Sorry. I own a copy of Grayson’s Encyclopedia of Herblore, back in Sedona, but I haven’t looked at it in a long time.”

  “That’s all right.” As a librarian, I had long ago learned there was more value in knowing how to find specific information than in brute-force memorization. “Grayson’s is a great resource. There’s a copy in the basement, along with three other key texts—Snyder’s Herbs Through the Ages, Hunter’s The Herbal World and You, and Watson’s Herbalist’s Handbook. With those three, you can look up just about everything you’ll ever need.”

  Raven nodded as I named each of the books and then she asked, “Do you have Sallon’s Compleat Hedgewitch?”

  I didn’t bother to disguise my pleased surprise that she knew the obscure title. “Yes! There are only a handful of copies still in existence, but mine has the original hand-tinted plates, tipped in.” I was bragging, but I couldn’t help it. I was proud of my collection.

  Thinking about the Hedgewitch, though, sent a sharp pang through my heart. It was one of the treasures the Court would take if I could not deliver a Major Working by Samhain.

  I grabbed onto my emotions quickly. That rueful twist in my chest was only telling me to incorporate more herblore in our project. Herbs formed a natural inroad for combating climate change. I just wasn’t sure of the specifics of how we’d use them. Yet.

  I was getting ahead of myself. “Raven, what else do you know about honeysuckle?”

  “You can place it around a green candle to enhance spells for prosperity. It’s an herb of devotion and fidelity. If you dream while wearing a sachet over your heart, you’ll see your one true love. The flower is associated with Mercury, and it’s grounded in the element of Earth.”

  I gaped. She was good at this. Really, really good. I’d spent the past week misled by all her games—the sex-kitten ploys, the wannabe film-maker, and the Goth pagan play-acting. But it wasn’t fair to reduce her to any of those roles. I attempted a quick recovery. “Let’s go through the other herbs. What was next? Chives?”

  We spent the rest of the morning going over the properties of every plant in the field. Emma did her best to recall facts, but it was Raven who had all the information at her fingertips. She recited details effortlessly—not only culinary and healing properties, but magical uses as well. Her vast store of data included the elements most associated with every plant, along with planetary associations. I didn’t put a lot of stock in that last tidbit—astrology remained more my mother’s witchy area of supposed expertise than my own—but the rest of Raven’s knowledge pretty much floored me.

  It was almost time to head back to the house for lunch, but first I sent my students out to collect samples of milkweed. As they prowled through the meadow, Neko leaned close. “You are going to wrap things up early today, aren’t you?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Fourth of July? Marching bands? Sparklers and Roman candles and boom?” He added jazz hands to emphasize his point.

  Of course I knew it was Independence Day, but I had a deadline. Norville Pitt had left me no time for frivolities like Souza marches and parades.

  Neko read my mind in his usual uncanny way. “Your students can’t work nonstop until Samhain. You’ll get more out of them if they don’t burn out in their first full week of classes.”

  He was right, of course. The Fourth of July would have been a holiday at any other magicarium. “Fine,” I said, abashed. “We’ll head back now. Let me guess—you and Jacques are going down to D.C. for fireworks on the Mall?”

  “Of course not!”

  I squinted at him in disbelief. “But you love fireworks! And Parkersville canceled theirs, because of the fire ban.”

  Neko sighed as if he were talking to a very young child. Or a very stupid witch. Same difference. “The Parkersville Fire Department is hosting an ice cream social. I thought you and David would treat us all!”

  My first response was to pity the fire department. They couldn’t have any idea what they were up against—Neko had a nearly insatiable appetite for ice cream.

  Oh well. Maybe David could make a sizable donation to the fireman’s Widow and Orphans Fund in recompense.

  When Emma and Raven returned with the milkweed, I congratulated them on their harvest and explained that we would carry the plants back to the house. We’d take a few days to drain all the milky sap into a silver ewer. Once it was harvested, we could mix it with rainwater collected on the night of a full moon, and the resulting potion would both calm the intractable and cultivate patience in the rashest soul.

  I could have used a little calming tincture myself, especially when I saw how thrilled my students were about getting the afternoon off. They were positively overjoyed at getting Friday free as well. But their excitement didn’t hold a candle to Neko’s enthusiasm as he pranced off to the garage. I could only imagine the Independence Day outfits he and Jacques would throw together on such relatively short notice.

  Back in the kitchen, I tossed a couple of dog biscuits to Spot. I was too hot to think about lunch, though. Instead, I decided to take a long, cool shower. Ice cream would make the perfect dinner.

  * * *

  We barely squeezed into the burgundy minivan for the short ride into town. It would have been a tight fit under any circumstances—three witches, their warders, and their familiars. But when one familiar insisted on dressing like the Statue of Liberty (complete with a six-inch tiara, and a foot-long torch), and he dragged along his French-swearing boyfriend who was dressed like Uncle Sam (yep, top hat, swallowtail coat, spats, and a full fake beard), the trip became downright unpleasant.

  At least Tony sat behind the wheel. I wasn’t surprised to discover that the pugnacious warder had a lead foot. I was grateful, in fact.

  When we arrived in Parkersville, alas, the streets were filled with enough mundane citizens that Tony couldn’t employ his warder’s skills to make a parking space appear. He made two valiant attempts at parallel parking on Main Street, but the minivan wasn’t as mini as the laws of physics required, at least for those tight spaces.

  Muttering under his breath, Tony pulled into a loading zone across the street from the police station.

  “You’ll get a ticket,” I warned, before we could all tumble out of purgatory.

  “We’ve got out-of-state plates. And it’s a holiday.”

  And you really don’t want to screw up another try at parallel parking, I almost said. But I was only the magistrix, not the parking police. And Lady Liberty’s torch was gouging a hole in my side.

  I shrugged and led the way to the ice cream social. Not surprisingly, Parkersville Fire Station Number One (and, um, only) was packed. Neko immediately picked up a bowl and cut through the crowd, homing in on the whipped cream like a heat-seeking missile. Jacques squawked and clapped his hat to his head, trying to follow suit.

  The rest of our party split up. I chose one of the shortest lines—there just weren’t enough people who understood the decadent glory that was coffee ice cream. The rugged fireman scooping out the heavenly stuff apparently agreed; he loaded three scoops into my bowl and was going for a fourth when I held up a hand in laughing protest.

  Hot fudge ladled from an aluminum vat. A sprinkle of salted peanuts. A
single maraschino cherry. No whipped cream for me—Neko had surely taken any portion that was rightly mine. Just as I added a spoon, David came up to my side.

  “What flavor did you get?” I asked.

  “Praline pecan.”

  “You hate praline pecan!”

  “I seem to remember some bewitching woman who says coffee and praline pecan make the perfect combination.”

  I laughed. By the time we escaped into the open air, I needed to apply some emergency confection management, rapidly spooning up melting ice cream before it cascaded over the side of my bowl. When I had vanquished the immediate danger, I glanced back over my shoulder.

  “Shouldn’t we wait for the others?”

  “Raven and Tony already left with Hani in tow—she wanted to film the locals. Neko isn’t going to budge until the last molecule of whipped cream is gone. And Emma seems just about as stubborn.”

  I followed his gaze past the long line of customers waiting for their chance at dairy carnage. My student witch was standing off to one side, chatting with the handsome fireman who had been so generous with my coffee ice cream. Even as I watched, he laughed at something she said and shifted closer, brushing his fingertips against her arm. A quick glance confirmed that Caleb was keeping watch from a discreet distance, a dejected-looking Kopek at his side. Emma was chaperoned, whether she wanted to be or not.

  I could empathize with my fellow witch. I turned back to David, a smile on my lips. “Time for us to escape,” I said.

  He led the way past laughing crowds. Some people held bowls of ice cream while others indulged in hot dogs or burgers fresh from the Rotary’s grill. Norman Rockwell couldn’t have painted a better Independence Day.

  We ducked around the corner of the building and headed toward the relative seclusion of the car wash, which was shut down for the night. There was a bench there, meant for customers waiting for their cars. I took a seat and automatically shifted to make room for David before attending to another looming ice cream disaster.