Single Witch's Survival Guide (25 page)

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 exercise, 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.

David cast our circle that morning. I felt the familiar surge of his warder’s power every time we tested the boundary with flame. I could relax into that safety; I could draw from it. And there was a part of me that reveled in the knowledge that I was keeping David from his secret study. Every minute David spent protecting us was one I denied him from spending with the Court’s papers.

That reality wasn’t lost on him. At the end of the day, David saw us witches back to the house. He handed Raven and Emma over to their attentive warders, and he checked on the welfare of all the familiars. Then, he excused himself from our supper, and he headed downstairs. Once again, I was asleep before he came to bed.

In the morning, I realized I’d actually seen more of David when he lived in the barn. That didn’t matter, though. I couldn’t cut back on our course schedule now. The magicarium and the Mabon working had to come before everything else.

Wednesday was the last of the elements: Earth. Barley and Corn. Amber. Garnet. Inguz. We witches eased our bodies between individual grains of dirt. With the mid-day sun beating down upon us, we buried ourselves up to our knees. It took all our concentration to shake ourselves free, siphoning off our carefully invested power so we released our bodies without destroying the rattling stalks in the nearby cornfield, without undermining the porch where Caleb once again kept anxious watch as Tony guarded us.

And then we took four more days to repeat all those lessons—Air, Water, Fire, Earth. Practice, practice, practice, drumming our knowledge indelibly into our minds and hearts.

The following Monday, we rested. Not because I discovered any sense of mercy. Not because the Academy’s need was any less urgent. Rather, because Emma came scratching against my bedroom door in the grey light before dawn. Her voice quavered like an old 78 record.

“Raven needs to sleep.”

“We’re all tired,” I said as I heard David roll over in bed behind me.

“This is more than feeling manky! She was sleep-walking last night. She got to the front door twice before Tony stopped her!”

That got my attention. “Where was she going?”

“How do I know?” Emma was anguished. “She did this when we were children. Before we understood our powers. Before we learned to manage them.”

I was still calculating my reply when Tony loomed out of the darkness. “Raven will
not
work today.”

David smothered a curse as he pulled himself out of bed. He came to stand behind me, his bare chest against my back. He rested one hand on the doorframe, automatically staking a claim in the conversation.

By then, Caleb had stumbled out of his bedroom. His Diamondbacks T-shirt was rumpled, as if he he’d slept in it for months. He scratched at his rough beard, and I was surprised to realize he’d stopped shaving at some point in the past week. He planted his feet and said, “Emma needs rest, too.”

It had been two months since my students had arrived at the farmhouse. Two months since David had faced Tony at swordpoint, and I’d used the Word of Power to protect everyone. To
control
everyone. I’d learned from that experience and from the intervening time. I could yield on this relatively little thing and still maintain power over the magicarium. Perhaps we’d all be better off in the long run.

“Fine,” I said. “But we’ll be back at it tomorrow morning.”

I closed the door and leaned against it. I could hear a whispered conversation between Caleb and Emma before both bedroom doors closed. My students and their warders were going to catch up on desperately needed sleep, and that seemed like a brilliant plan to me.

But David was pulling on his pants.

“Where are you going?”

“I was supposed to help your mother in Sedona tomorrow night. With the shifted schedule, you’ll need me here. I’ll go out there today.”

“What does Clara have you doing?”

He just looked at me. I already knew the answer:
Ask Clara.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll call her now.” I’d wake her up. And she’d be even less coherent about her magical plans than usual. So first I tried, “This can’t wait till after Mabon?”

He shook his head. “Sorry.” He cupped my jaw with his hand, and I heard honest regret in his voice.

“Come back to bed.” I closed my fingers around his wrist. “For just a while.”

He broke my hold by moving his hand to the back of my neck. “I can’t.”

“Can’t?” I asked as he stepped away. “Or won’t?” My heart pounded as I waited for his answer.

“I need to go. I’ll be back before tomorrow morning.” He didn’t even try a perfunctory kiss.

I grabbed the phone before our bedroom door had closed. My first call went to Clara’s voice mail. I hung up, waited for the line to disconnect, and tried again. Voice mail. On the third try, she picked up.

“What sort of ritual are you working out there?”

“Jeanette,” she mumbled. “I was dreaming about you.”

“Why do you need David to ward you?”

“In my dream, you stood by the road with a sign. It said, ‘Will cast spells for cake.’ Are you that hungry, Jeanette?”

“
Jane
,” I said, trying to correct her. “Wake up, Clara. I really need to know this. What are you working on with David?”

“Cake…” She sounded like she was half-way back to dreamland. “In Rocher’s
Dream Quests
, cake means sharing your workload. You can’t do everything yourself, Jeanette.”

I was
trying
to share my workload with my students. And my warder. I had a copy of Rocher’s
Dream Quests
somewhere in the basement. It was part of a set that included
Animal Divination
and
Cloud Scrying
. I put about as much stock in
Rocher
as I did in the Vortex.

“Clara!” I put real steel into my voice, trying to force my mother to wake up. “Can’t your working wait until after Mabon?”

“No, Jeanette. The cake will be stale by then.”

“What are you talking about? Clara? Mother?”

But I heard a doorbell ring in the background. “I have to go, Jeanette. Someone’s at the door. Sweet dreams.”

And she hung up before I could tell her it was
David
at the door, that he’d used his warder’s magic to leave me and travel to her. I glared at the phone long after she was gone.

After that frustrating phone call, it was impossible to get back to sleep. I finally gave in to the inevitable and stumbled down to the kitchen. Of course, the only thing that sounded good to me was cake. Preferably chocolate. With lots of extra frosting. I settled for almond meal biscuits, left over from Raven’s cleanse. No amount of butter could transform them into something edible.

The next day, we were back in the academic saddle. David warded our working as if he’d never gone to Sedona. I shifted our arcane focus from the four elements to the specific building blocks of our ritual.

As we had done for our disastrous Lughnasadh ceremony, each of us witches would commence our Major Working with lighting a candle. For Mabon, they would be traditional autumn colors—gold and brown, yellow and orange. I procured the beeswax candles from my extensive stash, and we spent four entire days working with them, learning to sense their power with our astral forces, without the least resort to mundane senses like vision and touch.

Once again, this was more than a simple study of witchy tools. I urged my students to focus on the wholeness of candles in the magical process—how they interacted with our warders’ protective walls, how they drew from the elements, how they fed back heat and light and power, drying out nearby herbs, scorching crystals.

Over and over, we lit the candles, separately and then together. We joined our powers, Raven and Emma, then Raven and me, then Emma and me. Finally, at the end of our fourth day, we found the perfect balance, all three of us witches braiding our power together, pouring it into a quartet of flames.

Power spun between us like a web, joining us together, supporting us. I took strength from the violet of Raven’s astral force; I smoothed it with the silver power that Emma poured into the working. I poured my own golden energy into the mix, and I basked in the accompanying leap of the candle flames.

This was what I had imagined when I created the Academy. The unity, the harmony—everything I’d found lacking in the Washington Coven’s traditional workings. I saw wonder spread across my students’ faces.

Tony and Caleb leaped forward the instant David let his warding circle die down. For the first time, though, since we’d begun to work in earnest, my students didn’t collapse against their warders. Rather, they stood tall and strong, proud of what they’d done. What
we
had done. Hani and Kopek basked in the warders’ praise. We all ate dinner together that night, nine of us, gathered around the dining room table.