Joy of Witchcraft (12 page)

“Nothing. You already know he’s right, in some ways. I did trump up a case against him.”

“But that was a long time ago. And you didn’t have any other options!”

He held up a hand to stop my argument, a hand that I immediately wished was back on my feet. “I trumped up a case,” David slowly agreed. “Because I thought I needed to. Because I had to protect others. Because innocents were going to get hurt. I had my reasons, but he has his evidence. He’s going to rebut everything I say, and it won’t be pretty.”

It took me three tries before I could pretend the casual tone I needed. “What happens if the Court sides with him?”

“Worst case?”

I sat up, pulling my feet away from the calm strength of his fingers and bringing my knees to my chin. I kept my gaze steady as I said, “Worst case.”

“They’ll bust me as a warder. Strip my powers and break my bonds—with you, and Neko, and every law-abiding witch and warder sworn to Hecate. They’ll take back my sword and melt it down. They’ll break my ring and cast me out forever.”

“And if
that’s
not enough for Pitt?” My words were bitter. “If he still come after you with magic? What will the Court do then?”

David’s laugh didn’t yield a glimpse of humor. “If I’m cast out as a warder, I’ll be beyond the Court’s jurisdiction. They only handle matters between witches, warders, and familiars.”

“There has to be something! Some way to stop him!”

“In theory, there’s the Eastern Empire. But they’ve got a lot more to do than handle assault claims from a disgraced warder.”

I knew about the Eastern Empire. The Empire’s Night Court maintained a docket for vampires and shapeshifters, for griffins and sprites. I could well imagine they wouldn’t make time for a rejected warder, any more than they would for an ordinary human plaintiff.

I tried to ignore the yawning chasm that opened inside my mind, the spinning horror that threatened to steal away all my words. Instead, I pressed: “But whatever happens, Hecate’s Court won’t hurt
you
. They won’t put you in prison or… or worse.”

“They won’t have to, Jane. Breaking me as a warder would be worse than any prison they could build. I’d have to watch you with your new warder, whoever he is. I’d know exactly what I had. What I lost.”

I wanted to argue that David was wrong. That I would never work with another warder.

But I would, and we both knew it. If David were lost to me, I’d have to. I couldn’t lose my own magic, even if his was taken by the Court. I’d had a glimpse of that on the beach this afternoon, and the thought of living that way forever made my heart freeze.

So in the end, there wasn’t anything I could say to make it right. There wasn’t anything I could do.

Except I could slip my hand behind his neck and pull his lips close to mine. And after he’d given in to that pressure, I could take him by the hand and lead him up the stairs to the bedroom we shared. And if we worked a sort of witchcraft together, body pressed to body, it was nothing we couldn’t do after the Court finished its inquest. No matter what the outcome there.

They couldn’t take that away from us. Ever. At least that’s what I prayed to Hecate.

~~~

Tuesday morning, I broke the news to my students about our new training regimen. We certainly made a crowd, with all the witches, warders, and familiars crammed into the farmhouse’s living room. But I presented the notion of working inside as a temporary thing. I didn’t explicitly say we were staying indoors because of the orthros, but I did mention our safety—as a group and as individuals.

No one complained. But that might have been because it was pouring outside, a slow, soaking rain that no doubt nurtured the land. Another few degrees, though, and the driveway would turn into an ice rink.

I felt grim, bleak. That might have been because I’d spent most of the night tossing and turning. Or, to be more accurate, trying to quell the impulse to toss and turn, so I didn’t keep David awake. So I didn’t have to tell him what I was thinking. What I was planning. What I knew I had to do.

But first off, I had students to teach. And so we all contented ourselves with our caffeine sources of choice. For our first day of indoor classes, I figured I’d keep things simple. I asked each of my students to work her own spell, apply easy magic to conjure up a ball of light.

The exercise served a number of purposes. First and foremost, it relaxed my witches, restoring their confidence that they could, in fact, work magic in my presence without murderous monsters springing out of the woodwork. Beyond that, though, it gave us a chance to get to know each other, to determine the color of each woman’s magic, the
feel
of her powers.

Deferring to my second-semester students’ seniority, I asked Emma to start. She barely took the time to stretch her hand toward Kopek, to harness her familiar’s reflective assistance before she caught a quick breath and opened her palm, displaying a perfect sphere of silver light. The globe was about the size of a tennis ball, and it hovered above her fingertips. I reached toward it with my own witchy awareness, and I could sense her unique astral signature, the cool feeling of water that plunged to unknown depths.

I gave everyone a chance to sample Emma’s light, to understand what she had done and to examine her magic so they’d be able to recognize it again. After each witch nodded her understanding, I gestured for Raven to go next.

I wasn’t surprised when she was a bit more dramatic with her working. She opened her palm with the force of a dancer displaying “jazz hands,” simultaneously snagging a booster of power from her familiar, Hani. The ball of light she created pulsed in time with her breathing, growing to the size of an orange before shrinking back to a tight, smooth marble. The sphere glowed a deep shade of purple, matching the stripe Raven had refreshed in her hair some time after our working on the beach. Reaching for its energy signature, I recognized the sinewy muscle that was unique to Raven Willowsong, the feeling of a snake’s smooth, taut body.

Alex Warner leaned forward next, volunteering to be our next guinea pig. Her hair was cut blunt at the level of her chin and dyed as black as charcoal. She sported half a dozen piercings in each ear and tattoos wrapped around both her arms, writhing masses of multi-colored feathers and scales. A metal tongue stud tapped against her teeth as she tossed a quick glance to Garth, her warder. He nodded once, his bullet head seeming to free her to participate in the group exercise. I got the idea they didn’t spend a lot of time focusing on touchy-feely communications exercises.

Alex’s familiar, Seta, shifted closer, offering up support to her witch. With her broad-set little eyes and her high forehead, I was willing to bet Seta had begun life as a pit bull. That determination likely served her well with her rebellious witch.

For now, Alex didn’t rely on her familiar. Instead, she unfolded her fingers with a defiant flare, as if she dared us to question the value of her working. Her light was indigo, a blue so deep it almost looked black. When I touched her sphere with my powers, I recognized the sensation, but it took me several long breaths to put a name to the feeling. Feathers, but not the fluffy touch of down. Rather, Alex’s magic felt like the sharp edge of a raptor’s wing, stiff enough to support a predator in flight.

Bree took the challenge next, showing us a russet glow and the feel of sun-warmed granite. Skyler offered up a cobalt sphere, a tight ball of energy that was tinged with silver, like the ice of her magical signature.

I hadn’t consciously saved Cassie for last. But as we all turned to her, I realized that I felt protective of my final student. Freckles stood out on her pale face, and she gripped Tupa’s shoulder as if she might fall over without his support. I realized that the tip of her braid was damp; she’d chewed on it in her nervousness while she waited to exhibit her skills. I caught my breath, willing her to succeed in the working.

At first, she uncurled her fingers only to display an empty palm. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, and I wanted to comfort her. I wanted to assure her that no satyr would get in this house, no stag was going to burst through the door, followed by a ravening two-headed beast.

I held my tongue, though. I needed Cassie to concentrate. I needed her to find her own balance.

She dug her fingers into Tupa’s clavicle, tight enough that the familiar winced. A sphere of light finally coalesced, a tangerine glow that glared bright, then faded almost to nothingness before quickening to a creamy, orange glow. I reached for it with my lightest arcane touch, only to find a dense fog, the vague and shapeless manifestation of Cassie’s astral signature.

“Excellent,” I said, and Cassie let her light fade. A sheen of perspiration coated her freckles, as if she’d just worked a massive feat of strength or weathered some agonizing pain in silence.

Glancing at the clock on the mantel, I was surprised to see it was well past noon. The grey light outside gave no hint that we’d spent more than three hours at our magical work. But the clock—and the tight expression on David’s face—let me know I’d pushed my students as much as I reasonably could.

I took a few moments to praise their work, and I suggested they study what they’d learned, focus on each other’s unique magical signatures. When I freed them to return to their dormitory, they reacted like students anywhere, chattering about the day’s lessons, shrieking at the cold touch of the rain, laughing at an unexpected gust of wind.

I let David fix me a restorative bowl of chicken noodle soup before I brought up the matter that had kept me awake most of the night. We were both scraping the bottoms of our bowls when I said, “I need to go out this afternoon.” Something about my tone alerted him. His eyes became as hard as the walnut table between us. “I need more information on the orthros,” I said.

“I’ll help you find the appropriate books downstairs.”

“Books aren’t enough,” I said. “I need to know if there’ve been other appearances of that thing. I need to know if satyrs have been summoned in the past, by other witches, working alone or in unison. Other magicaria. Other covens.”

“No.”

The finality in his tone would have stopped me years ago, would have ended my mission before it began. But I knew that the Osgood collection, as large as it was, had its limitations. It couldn’t match the experience of a community that had worked magic together for centuries. It couldn’t equal the information I could glean from a single conversation with the Washington Coven Mother.

David prodded my stubborn silence. “Teresa Alison Sidney isn’t your friend. She wants to ruin you. She wants you to fail.”

“I’m not an idiot!” My tone was all the sharper because I wondered if I
was
an idiot for even considering walking into my enemy’s lair. “But I need to find out what she knows. I need to understand the past, so I can protect the Academy now.”

“If you’re on her territory, I can’t be certain I can protect you.”

I heard how much that admission cost him. He didn’t want to imagine a future where he might fail. But I had to go. I pushed my chair back from the table.

“Let’s do it now,” I said. “Before dark.”

But first, I headed down to the basement. I could not approach the Coven Mother empty-handed. I needed to bring her a gift. Something worth trading for the key that might save my magicarium from complete destruction. Something that would hurt me to lose, hurt me almost as much as it hurt my warder to escort me into a known danger that he didn’t have a prayer of controlling.

~~~

In the end, I settled on bringing her an ash wand, one that was inlaid with oak. Ash was known for its feminine power, its ability to aid in communication and to promote curiosity. Oak was the most masculine of woods, supporting bravery and leadership, among many other traits. The ash and oak wand was a symbol of the relationship between a witch and her warder, an acknowledgment that the female gained power from the male.

Regardless of the specific woods the wand was made of, it was gorgeous, a carefully polished masterpiece of intarsia. As I wrapped the gift in velvet, its potential vibrated through my fingertips. I nearly set it aside, opting for a lesser treasure.

But no. I needed Teresa. I needed her encyclopedic knowledge, her memory. And one wand was little enough to pay if I kept my witches safe for the rest of the school term.

David, of course, insisted on driving me. The trip seemed to take hours, the time stretched out by the ribbons of tension that wound around us in the car. But to be fair, he didn’t try to change my mind. Not when we passed the wards at the outer limits of Teresa’s property, the ones that first alerted her to our approach. Not when we were corralled by the safeguards that emanated from her front door, the ones that confined us to our car until she chose to release us. Not when Teresa banished David to the front room, pointedly telling him to close the door so we witches could talk in private.

He looked to me for permission before he left. I nodded my approval, letting him scrape up some semblance of dignity. At least he was responding to
his
witch’s command, not to the order of a known enemy.

Teresa’s eyes flared with obvious greed as she unwrapped her gift. My palms itched when she stroked the smooth wood; I folded my fingers so I wouldn’t accidentally snatch it back. I tried to take comfort in the fact that she handled it with reverence, treating it like the treasure it was.

“And to what do I owe the pleasure?” she finally asked, nestling the wand in its velvet. She centered the gift—the bribe—on the center island and waited for my response.

“I need information.”

She set her expertly manicured hands on her hips. “About?”

“Monsters. Myths. You saw the satyr on Samhain. Three days later, my students and I were attacked by a two-headed dog.”

“An orthros?”

She
sounded
shocked. But tendrils of suspicion wrapped around my arms. How did she know the animal’s name? I’d needed to conduct research to identify the beast. Did she really know her Greek myths that well?