Single Witch's Survival Guide (26 page)

Alas, that was the last time we were gathered in relaxed household harmony.

With one successful communal working under our belts, I doubled our training efforts. I was pushing my students harder than I ever had before. I was pushing
myself
harder than I ever had before. I had never come close to a sustained outpouring of energy like the one I now demanded.

Every third day, David watched over us. Otherwise, I scarcely saw him. He was spending hours in the basement; his office light was on whenever I went downstairs to collect tools, to check books for half-remembered details about rare herbs, to compare the relative strengths of various crystals.

And he was traveling back and forth to Sedona. I caught whiffs of smudged sage from his clothes, along with the tang of juniper. He carried back desert dust on his shoes. I could smell the sharp scent of creosote on his pillow, even when he wasn’t there.

I gave up trying to reach my mother. This was the woman who had ignored me for twenty-five years. I could hardly command her attention now. Better to stop trying, and to invest my limited energy in my Mabon working.

So, my students and I took two days to explore Preparing the Earth, finding the most effective ways to channel the energy we raised. We wanted to make sure our power went to actual
healing
instead of dissipating into nothingness. We invested three full days on Protecting the Innocents, making sure no blameless bystanders—human or animal—suffered from a backlash of our working. I had trouble sleeping those nights, and my dreams were haunted by the cries of ospreys.

We finally got to Rainmaking, to the delicate process of harvesting water from air, by way of all our witchy tools. For two straight days, we witches stood beneath an etheric arch, generating mist and drizzle and a steady, driving rain. Our fingers and toes were shriveled every time we took a break for sustenance.

“All right,” I said, after we had built and dissipated a particularly vigorous thunderstorm. “Let’s take a quick break for dinner, then reconvene.”

I waved my hand for Caleb to remove his protective warding, and his sword sliced through the circle he’d cast hours before. I ignored the taut lines on his face as he handed out towels.

“Neko,” I said, as the others dragged themselves toward the porch, dry clothes, and the promise of supper. The autumn nights were already growing shorter. My familiar’s face was in shadow as the sun sank below the treeline. “I want to get started on incense as soon as everyone’s eaten. Could you make sure we have enough rosemary?”

“No.”

I was already concentrating on the other elements we needed—sandalwood and pine, dried oak leaves, and cinnamon. I blinked. “What?”

“I said, no.”

“You
can’t
say no. We’ve only got nine days left.”

Before he could answer, there was the sound of tires crunching on gravel. I looked to the driveway and could just make out Rick Hanson’s F-150 behind the glare of headlights. Suddenly, I understood how Gran had felt when I begged her to let me have some elementary school girlfriend spend the night, with said friend standing right in the middle of our living room. I shook my head and started over to tell Rick it wasn’t a good night, that he had to leave.

Neko put his hand on my arm. “Emma needs this. We
all
need a break.”

Before I could argue, Rick called out a friendly greeting. Neko immediately waltzed over to the driveway and looped his arm through the fireman’s.

“Aren’t
you
a sight for sore eyes! Emma’s in the kitchen. Come right in.” Neko kept the burly man between us as he crossed the lawn. I barely resisted the urge to buffet him with an arcane slap. Traitor. Neko didn’t give a damn about Emma’s love life. He was only focused on his own, on getting Tony to a remotely private corner of the crowded house.

I gritted my teeth and started to collect the discarded tools from our hard day’s labor. Crystals and runes and wands were strewn about the waterlogged grass. My legs felt unbearably heavy, as if I’d run a marathon, or somehow given in to Melissa’s pressure to spend an entire day doing yoga in some overheated studio.

Melissa. I’d been a bad friend for the past couple of weeks. I’d listened to her wedding complaints on voicemail, responded to her texts when I could slip in a few spare seconds, but I owed her a trip into town, a long night of Mojito Therapy and maid of honor consultation.

After Mabon. After the Madison Academy had completed its Major Working. After, after, after…

I dragged myself up the porch steps. Spot whined from his place on the glider. Poor dog. I’d barely spent any time with him during the past month. I absently patted his head before I reached for the door. With the familiarity of frequent use, I turned the knob and leaned in at the same time, letting the weight of my body push my way inside.

Except, I didn’t move.

Plucked out of my fatigued haze, I looked down. No, I’d turned the knob all the way to the right. The door just wouldn’t budge. I pushed a little harder. Nothing. I swore and put my shoulder into it. Nada.

I folded my fingers into a fist and pounded with the meat of my hand. My gesture was met with an explosion of laughter on the other side, and the door finally burst open.

Emma’s cheeks were as bright as an Empire apple. Rick was roaring, apparently oblivious to her embarrassment. He seemed rather proud, in fact, of her bee-stung lips. Emma clutched her blouse closed, and I realized she and her boyfriend had managed to cruise past first base in the short time since he’d entered the house.

“Get a room!” Hani shouted to the happy couple from the living room.

“Close the door,” Kopek added in a mournful voice. “You’ll let in all the mosquitoes.”

I muttered a retort as I pushed my way into the foyer. Of course we’d let in all the mosquitoes. And every last one would find me. That’s what mosquitoes were born to do.

Amid a chorus of good-natured teasing, Emma and Rick disappeared upstairs. Hani crowed toward the kitchen, “Hope you don’t need anything from your room, Raven! You’re stuck with us rejects in here!”

A quick glance confirmed that Neko and Tony were nowhere in sight. They must have commandeered the familiars’ dormitory, forcing everyone else into the confines of the dining room. Maybe that’s why I felt like I was caught in a frat house on a Saturday night.

As if to make that point, Caleb leaned forward and cranked up the volume on the television set. I wondered if his warder services included a guarantee that no one would ever overhear his witch in a compromising situation. According to the 200-decibel bellowing that echoed through the living room, some Diamondback had just made the third out in the bottom of the first inning, leaving the bases loaded.

As the T.V. roared to commercial, Caleb swore and snatched up a beer, one of those fancy Czech things that had caused so much grief when the warders moved in. The bottle had a complicated swing-top clasp, and by the time he managed to release the wire brace an arc of beer was splashed across David’s antique coffee table.

Caleb hollered for Raven to bring him a rag. She shouted back, then sauntered into the room with a sponge. She was filming as she walked, clearly working on some artsy angle for the picture.

With no magic at play, I could hardly censure her for the camera. Instead, I plowed through the wall of sound toward the kitchen. A glass of ice water, that’s what I needed. And maybe an apple. A handful of walnuts.

I fixed a small plate and carried my supper upstairs. But I could still hear the baseball game; it echoed through the floorboards. Alas, that noise wasn’t actually enough to drown out the sounds from the bedroom next door. Emma’s headboard was hitting the wall with frightening regularity. From the accompanying exclamations, my student definitely did not believe in the Victorian admonition to “lie back and think of England.”

I snarled and picked up my plate and glass. There was one place in this house where I could steal a single, silent moment to eat my long-overdue meal. One place no one else would dare to venture. I stomped down the steps and through the living room. I threw myself down the basement stairs, moving fast enough that I could be sure not to confront Neko and Tony. I tumbled into David’s office.

And I came up short.

Because David wasn’t in Sedona that night.

His back was to the door as I charged in. He was standing in front of the gigantic map, the one dotted with precise pushpin markers of covens and magicaria.

But now, the map was scattered with photographs as well. Images of Norville Pitt were sprayed across the surface—Pitt with women in golden robes, with men in formal attire. Pitt with gatherings of witches and warders. Pitt with a collection of carved wooden creatures, familiars who had not yet been awakened.

Court documents hung behind some of the photos—ribbons and grommets gleaming in the harsh overhead light. String stretched between the compositions—red and blue and green and yellow, linking image to image, paper to paper. Across it all was jagged writing, a disjointed scrawl. Some of the letters had been scratched into the map, over and over and over again. Words were slashed through, underlined with ink that had run down the wall.

I was looking at the obsessive creation of a serial killer from every bad movie and television show that had ever been aired.

And my warder completed the image. David’s hair stood on end. He had one shirtsleeve rolled up, but the other was ragged and torn. His hands trembled as he tried to shove a pushpin through a massive stack of papers. Even from the doorway, I could hear him muttering, a terrifying word salad about Pitt and money and witches and time.

My fingers turned to sand. My glass crashed to the floor, splashing water from one end of the office to the other. My plate followed, shattering into jagged shards.

David whirled to face me, his hand automatically dipping for the leather sheath he kept strapped to his ankle. When he straightened, he held a silver dagger pointed directly at my heart.

The knife clattered to the ground as I turned and fled. I took the steps to the bedroom two at a time, ignoring David’s frantic cries for me to stop.

CHAPTER 16

I CROUCHED ON the edge of the king-size bed, folding my arms around my belly and reminding myself to breathe, breathe, breathe.

“Open the door, Jane.” David’s voice was low, urgent.

“Leave me alone.”

“We need to talk.”

“There isn’t anything to say.”

“Dammit, Jane!” His fist thudded against the door. He wasn’t trying to break it down; he could have done that easily enough if he’d wanted to.

“Go away!”

Another door opened. Emma’s. “Hey, buddy.” That was Rick, wrapping an audible smile around the voice of a professional hero.

“We’re fine here,” David said.

“Of course you are.” I could picture Rick’s easy-going manner as he slid himself between David and the door. “If she doesn’t want to talk, buddy, leave her alone.”

“Jane—”

“Come on, man.” I could picture Rick settling a hand on David’s arm, and David pulling away. Angry footsteps faded down the hallway.

There was a trio of quick knocks, Rick’s knuckles against the door. “You okay in there?”

I tried to keep my voice steady. “I’m fine.”

A long pause, while I imagined Rick weighing his obligations to me, to David, to the witch who undoubtedly awaited his return to her bed. Ultimately, Emma won, and he stepped away. Her door clicked closed.

I went back to reminding myself to breathe.

The T.V. suddenly clicked off in the living room. A door slammed. I heard low voices, then nothing at all.

I fumbled for my phone, ready to spill out all my angst to Melissa. As if she had anticipated my call, there was a text waiting. “New plan. Aunt Martha. Leaving reception in hot air balloon.”

There were a million things wrong with those words. Melissa was afraid of heights. A hot air balloon couldn’t fly safely at night. And what were the guests supposed to do, stand around and wave like all the Munchkins in Oz, seeing off Dorothy and the Wizard?

I knew I was supposed to call Melissa, to commiserate with her on this latest example of horrifically bad taste. But what could I possibly say? She had a man who loved her. A normal man. A sane man. A man who wasn’t an obsessed warder with a silver dagger strapped to his ankle in the supposed safety of his own home.

I couldn’t call Melissa.

But there was someone else I’d cried to when things went wrong—in elementary school, in high school, in college. Someone who understood me, who always listened. I punched in the number and waited while the phone rang three times.

“Gran!” I exclaimed as soon as she picked up.

“What’s wrong, dear?” She never was one to beat around the bush.

“David…” I started. But what could I tell her? My warder had gone crazy in the basement? I tried another tack. “Norville Pitt…” But I couldn’t tell her that, either. Even now, even when I’d seen what David had done with the documents, I didn’t want anyone to know that he had stolen from the Court. I shifted to a third thing, a safe thing, a thing no one could blame me for saying. “Everyone’s in the house! It’s too crowded. And loud. It’s crazy.” I babbled on, trying to explain about the television and the beer on the coffee table and Raven filming again and Emma’s bed banging against the wall, and there was water all over the floor, and I’d broken my plate, and Clara wouldn’t tell me what was happening in Sedona and David, and David, and David, and Mabon was only nine days away, and everything was falling apart around me.

And when I finally wound down, gasping for breath, I heard silence. No grandmaternal words of wisdom. No wry comments on the morals of youth today. No shrewd observations about the expectations of institutions of higher learning when she was a girl.

“Gran?” I finally asked, my voice barely more than a whisper.

“Send them all out of the house.”

“What?” I practically shouted my question.

“Put your students back above the garage. Send the familiars to the greenhouse and the warders to the barn.”