Joy of Witchcraft (20 page)

I forced myself to think of my finest sample of amethyst, a single crystal almost as long as my thumb. The transparent purple was designed to raise spirits. I could use it to boost my hopefulness, now more than ever. I’d handled the amethyst countless times, tracing its facets with my fingers. I’d let it grow warm on my palm. Now, I concentrated on the crystal’s weight, on its physical presence against my flesh.

Once that memory was fixed, I stretched to see if I could detect a ghost of the stone in the ruins. I cast my thoughts past the stinking wood, beyond the tangles of melted electrical wiring. I concentrated on the corner of the basement that we’d converted into a vault.

Tugging on the rope of power Neko offered, I allowed his fractal mirrors to amplify my own energy. I leaned forward, as if cutting the distance by a foot might make all the difference.

And there, beneath the harpy’s wreckage, beneath the charred shingles, beneath burnt slabs that had once been kitchen counters, I felt the amethyst.

It gleamed like a tiny violet sun, bright and steady and confident.

I brushed against the other contents of the amethyst’s box, automatically noting my other crystal treasures. The chalcedony had survived, the malachite and amber. All the stones had made it through the fire.

That knowledge gave me the courage to search more broadly. I envisioned the wands I owned, rowan and ash and oak. I felt their weight in my memory, recalling how they had balanced in my hand as I channeled energy through them.

And I found them, safe and secure where they’d been stashed in the vault.

The wands, the runes, the collection of cast iron cauldrons. Bells and chalices and three different athames, their blades untouched by the flames.

And, of course, there were the books. I could still sense the jumble, the crazy piles toppling into each other, haphazard stacks from when David had cleared my neat, orderly shelves. But every volume had survived, parchment and paper, leather-bound or not.

“Sweet Hecate,” I breathed. As I spoke the words, I realized tears were streaming down my face. I was leaning on Neko, more heavily than I’d planned. My knees had somehow turned to water, and my heart was hammering in my chest.

But I was laughing, even as David stepped forward to close his hands over my forearms, offering up support I needed more than I dared admit. “It’s there,” I said. “It’s all still there.”

“And it will be tomorrow, when we can work out a way to retrieve it all safely.”

“No!” I cried. “We have to get it now!”

“And how do you propose doing that? Even if you could make your way across what used to be the living room, there aren’t any stairs to the basement. I’ll talk to the firefighters.”

“You can’t tell them—”

“I’ll talk to Rick.” Emma’s erstwhile boyfriend. Whether their relationship survived or not, he knew about witchcraft. He would understand the treasures we needed to salvage.

“Let’s go,” I said. “Now. Before—”

“You’re not going anywhere,” David said. “You offered up five Words of Display back at Blanton House. You can barely stand on your own two feet here.”

I wanted to protest, but I found myself biting back a yawn that threatened to sever my jaw from my face. Instead of arguing, I turned to Neko. “Thank you,” I said.

He offered up a little bow, apparently not caring if I was thanking him for calling me out to the farmhouse, for strengthening my exhausted powers as I reached out for the collection, or for simply being there when so much else was lost.

“Jane,” David said, and I heard the warning note in his voice.

“All right,” I agreed, because it really was taking every last ounce of my determination to stay on my feet. Neko stepped forward, tucking his body close to my side. David’s arms settled around me, a comfortable, known weight. I closed my eyes, and I surrendered to being nothing.

~~~

Three days later, I stood in the Blanton House basement, beneath the section of the mansion that had served as Henry Blanton’s personal home. As an architect, the man had maintained countless valuable documents, including blueprints for moguls’ homes and the first skyscrapers ever erected in DC. He’d owned dozens of valuable paintings, a collection of Lalique jewels to adorn his mistress, and the first Faberge eggs imported into the United States. Blanton had been legendary for hoarding cash, enough to buy off the city’s chief inspector, along with all the Congressmen he needed to guarantee unfettered operation in DC.

And all those riches had been stored in a vault three stories beneath Blanton’s silk-hung bedroom.

The chamber wasn’t like the modern one David had overseen at the farmhouse. Rather, Blanton’s was constructed like a classic bank vault, with impenetrable metal plates set into the ceiling, floor, and walls. A trio of massive doors guarded the space, each equipped with its own massive wheel, with unbreachable tumblers forged out of solid Pennsylvania steel.

Blanton’s vault had room for the entire Osgood collection, with space to spare. Rick Hanson had come through for us, working his private brand of firefighter magic, getting us access to the farmhouse vault. By dark of night, he’d helped us spirit away the arcane goods that would have been impossible to explain to a mundane insurance adjuster.

Here at Blanton, the books were still a librarian’s nightmare. I’d completed some preliminary sorting, grouping volumes by topic, but there was no order within those tall stacks. Runes, though, went on one shelf, wands on another. A cache of silver flasks glinted beneath the old-fashioned overhead lights.

I was just shifting a massive beeswax candle when I heard the heavy tolling of the doorbell. The three bass notes told me I knew the person on the doorstep; David had set an impressive array of wards with specific allowances for our various allies.

I closed all three doors before I left the vault, spinning each heavy wheel. Having spared the Osgood collection from certain destruction at the farm, I wasn’t about to get lazy in the city.

Melissa White was waiting on the doorstep. My best friend was bundled against a late November gale, her throat swaddled in a bulky scarf that trailed down her heavy winter coat. A gust of wind threatened to steal away the pasteboard box she gripped in one mittened hand.

“Welcome wagon!” she exclaimed as I urged her over the threshold.

“Come in!” I waved her back toward the kitchen. “I know I’m supposed to say ‘you shouldn’t have,’ but I’m totally thrilled you did.”

“‘Sweets to the sweet’, you know.”

“Ugh,” I said. “
Hamlet
. And I don’t have to tell you the melancholy Dane was talking about funeral bouquets, not baked goods.”

She laughed as I slipped my finger under the golden sticker that closed the box. I couldn’t wait to see what she’d brought. “They’re Turkey Day Temptations. I figured you’re a close enough friend that I could assault you with day-olds.”

“Assault me all you want,” I said, reaching for a plate. I knew from past indulgence that the confections were addictive—spiced salty pumpkin seeds set in honey-based brittle. Each neat square had a decadent corner dipped into dark chocolate.

Melissa shook her head when I offered her some of her own fare. “I ate enough yesterday to last about five years. I still wish you guys had joined us for Thanksgiving.”

I finished chewing my first Temptation before I opened the fridge. This was our inaugural night of Mojito Therapy in my new home. As I excavated limes, mint, and soda water from the cavernous refrigerator, I said to Melissa, “I really appreciated the invitation. More than you can know.”

And I did. Each day of the past insane week had bled into the next, a constant series of meetings—insurance agents and fire inspectors and a stream of utility workers coming to Blanton House to turn on water, gas, and electricity. We’d outfitted rooms for all the witches, for their familiars and warders. We’d stocked three of the kitchens, leaving snacks and coffee in the other two. We’d turned two parlors into classrooms and cleared the largest basement space for group workings—for when we got back to those.

In short, we’d converted a luxury mansion into a school, in five short days.

I’d appreciated the invitation, but I’d pleaded exhaustion for Thanksgiving—both to Melissa and to Gran, who had invited us to join her and Uncle George, along with Clara and half the board of directors for Concert Opera Guild. David and I had treated ourselves to turkey sandwiches from a shop around the corner, splurging on kettle-cooked potato chips and a bottle of white burgundy that seemed to appear from some secret warder’s stash. Neko had spent the day with Tony, meeting his boyfriend’s family. He hadn’t come back in the middle of the night, so I had to believe things had gone well.

However unconventional, my Thanksgiving had turned out perfect, the only one I could have handled under the circumstances.

Now, I put Melissa to work muddling mint leaves, while I started to juice half a dozen limes. I’d only sliced each fruit in half when the doorbell rang again—those same three sonorous notes. Someone else known to me was waiting on the steps. Someone deemed safe by David.

Wiping my hands on a towel, I headed back to the front door. Gran and Clara huddled on the front step, leaning against each other. Gran held the world’s largest casserole dish in her gloved hands, and Clara balanced two canvas grocery store bags.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, ushering them in to keep from losing all the heat in the house.

“Half the fun of Thanksgiving is leftovers,” Gran declared.

“So we brought the party to you,” Clara added.

I wasn’t getting choked up. No, my eyes were only watering because of the cold outside. Or maybe I’d rubbed a little mint in them by accident. “Melissa’s here,” I said. “Come back to the kitchen.”

But Gran was glued to the hardwood floor in the foyer, gaping up at the heavy crown molding above the stairs. “This place is
stunning
, dear.”

Clara’s bags rustled as she set them on the floor, only to throw her head back like a silent screen diva, pasting the back of her hand to her forehead. “This is it, Jeanette! The perfect setting for the NWTA.”

I’d say one thing for my mother—she was tenacious. Her plans for a crazy commune weren’t going to fade away easily. “I’m not so sure, Clara. There isn’t really a nucleus here. And only two tentacles—one long hallway in the attic, and another in the basement.”

She clicked her tongue. “Oh no! You have it all backwards. The nucleus is the
common
space, the connected rooms at the top and the bottom. The tentacles are each individual bedroom, those private spaces where a witch can keep her secrets.”

A shiver ratcheted down my spine.

Gran fussed at me. “Are you all right, dear? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Not a ghost. A harpy. A harpy and an orthros and a satyr.

The past week had been full of hard work, physical labor to prepare Blanton House. But I hadn’t needed to worry about my anonymous rogue student. Come Monday, my respite would be over. I’d be back in the thick of things, waiting for Pitt’s inquest to pluck David from my side, parsing every last word uttered by my students as I tried to identify the traitor, all the while racing to beat whatever impossible new goals the Court mandated in their efforts to disband the Academy.

I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have a choice.

I forced myself to take a calming breath. “I’m fine,” I said, but I knew my protest wasn’t believable. “It was just the thought of tentacles wrapping around me—”

“There you are!” That was Melissa’s voice behind me, cheerful and oblivious. “Mrs. Smythe! Clara! I didn’t know you were coming over.”

Gran shook her head. “And we didn’t know you were here, dear.” She kissed Melissa on the cheek. “We just wanted to see Jane’s new home. We figured we’d bring by some Thanksgiving leftovers—”

“Here,” Melissa said. “Let me take that.” She collected the casserole dish from my grandmother, and I felt like an ungrateful fool for leaving her to hold it for so long. “Come back to the kitchen,” Melissa said. “I just made a fresh pitcher of mojitos.”

Well, that was why my best friend was in the hospitality business and I worked the witchcraft shift. She knew how to be nice to people. Even people with whacked out ideas about a nucleus and tentacles…

I followed everyone into the kitchen and set about stowing away an entire Thanksgiving feast into the refrigerator. I could only imagine how much Gran had cooked if this was what she’d set aside for me. I jockeyed things around, making room for the massive container of turkey, for the sweet potatoes and the mashed potatoes, for the corn pudding and green beans almandine, the oyster dressing and the sage dressing, whole berry cranberry sauce and an entire can’s worth of the ridged jelly stuff, half a pumpkin pie, half an apple pie, and four ramekins that looked like they held homemade butterscotch pudding. Only then did I realize there was still a tote bag left on the counter.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Gran’s eyes gleamed with pride. “I told you I wanted to knit a little something for the wedding.”

My first reaction was to wince. Hoping she hadn’t noticed, I purposely amped up the excitement in my tone. “I can’t wait!” Melissa gave me a strange look, so I brought it down about three notches. “I can’t believe you had time to do this.”

Gran reached into the bag, her chest swelling with pride. She pulled out three clumps of knitting, each more tangled than the last. I couldn’t make out a top or a bottom for any of the pieces. I couldn’t even figure out which was the front and which was the back. Each masterpiece, though, was made out of heavy acrylic yarn, a shade that might charitably be called Slaughterhouse Scarlet.

As I administered an emergency gulp of mojito, my grandmother spread her handiwork out on the marble countertop. “Wow,” I finally managed. “These are…amazing.”

Gran beamed.

“Um, why don’t you tell me about them?” There it was—my librarian training, swooping to the rescue. In my last office job, my boss had required me to lead book groups for toddlers. I’d read the kids a story and ask them to draw illustrations. When I couldn’t figure out if I was looking at the Mayflower or a garden flower, I’d use the exact same line on them.