Single Witch's Survival Guide (3 page)

I was helpless to do anything. Even in his fury, David had juxtaposed his body between Raven and me. He was protecting me, keeping me safe. He was my warder first and foremost.

But Raven was a witch as well. Raven had a warder, too.

In the scuffle on the porch, none of us had heard the side door of the burgundy minivan slide open. But we couldn’t ignore the sudden sword in our midst, gleaming like silver in the liquid moonlight. It carved out a perfect arc of protection for the wide-eyed, panting Raven.

The man who held the weapon planted his feet in a determined warrior’s stance. His chest heaved beneath his white T-shirt as his baritone challenge rang out: “Halt! This witch is under my protection. Draw back or I will slay you all, in the name of Hecate and all her daughters!”

CHAPTER 2

THE WARDER’S CHALLENGE echoed off the light blue paint on the porch ceiling.

Rage bloomed on David’s face, a stark fury that would have made me cringe if it were directed at me. It wasn’t directed at me, though. Instead, it was focused on the other warder. On the other warder and on himself.

I could read David’s thoughts as clearly as if he spoke aloud: He never should have allowed himself to be caught without a weapon. He never should have ignored the possibility of a warder in the minivan. He never should have let me slip into danger.

But the other warder wasn’t wasting time with useless emotions like anger. Instead, his entire body vibrated with
focus
. He watched David and me and Spot as well, clearly evaluating the threat all three of us represented. I caught the barest flicker of energy he spared for his witch, for Raven. He was attuned to her, angled toward her just enough that he could assess the full extent of her injury.

And Raven milked the attention for all it was worth. She rolled her hips with the ease of a bellydancer, tossing her wild hair over her shoulder. I could measure the precise instant she remembered that her wrist was supposed to be injured because she slipped the contested phone into her cleavage and folded her fingers around her purported bruise.

Emma caught the motion as well. The blond woman’s face tightened in frustration. Disappointment, too. But mostly, I read resignation across her features, heard it in the exasperated gasp she barely swallowed.

This was clearly not the first time Raven’s games had precipitated chaos. Raven’s performance was forcing her warder to escalate his role; even now, the man was shifting his balance. David had no choice but to react, to brace himself for a true fight.

But I could bring the curtain down. Now. Without injury to anyone involved.

Carefully, precisely, I took a step back, toward the front door of the house. My motion brought my right heel to rest on a marble slab embedded in the porch, the centerstone for our home. As my foot made contact, a shimmer of energy rippled up my spine. I was tied into the power I had invested in the marble every time I entered the house, every time I brushed my fingers against the doorjamb and muttered a quick spell of protection. The astral energy spread beneath me like a moonlit pond.

Raven’s warder was moving now, using his sword to sweep clear the space in front of him. David glided forward to grab the only available shield—an impossibly flimsy rattan table. Spot’s hindquarters tightened; he was ready to launch at the invader whenever he was given the command.

Raven added sound to her own performance, keening as if her arm were broken. Her wails only grew louder when Emma barked out orders for her sister to step back, to show her wrist, to calm down. Raven’s warder shifted his weight, moving from a defensive posture to one of attack.

The marble shimmered beneath me, humming with its reservoir of magical potential. I brushed my fingertips against my forehead and offered up the power of my mind. I touched my throat to commit the power of my speech. I settled my hand against my chest for a single instant to summon the power of my heart. The magical sequence awoke energy deep inside me, and I drew a steadying breath against the sudden, yawning core of astral force.

My surge of power provoked an automatic response in Raven. She raised both arms high above her head, apparently forgetting that her wrist was supposed to be horribly injured. Potential surged within her, and shimmering waves crashed against my own magic. Without thinking, I drained the reservoir of the marble centerstone, absorbing its prodigious strength into my own. Acting to preserve my home, my life, I shouted the single word of a stasis spell: “
Hold
!”

One syllable, crackling with all the power at my command. One syllable, and there was a bolt of nothingness, a flash like a photographic negative of the world around us. One syllable, and we slipped outside the stream of the universe around us, shimmering and shivering and disappearing to the physical eye.

Then reality jolted the world back into being.

Everyone on the porch was frozen in place—the new witches and Raven’s warder and David and Spot, too. Everyone was locked into position but me.

My ears rang. My throat was scraped raw on the single word I’d shouted. Every inch of my body felt compressed and pounded, but now was not the time to hesitate, not the time to think. I couldn’t give anyone else a chance to recover, to devise any counterspell. Instead, I stepped forward and held out my hand toward David. “Give me that thing.”

He glared, but he was not yet able to move of his own accord, even to speak the angry words that so obviously pushed against the back of his teeth. Pretending confidence, I set my hand on one leg of the table, pushing a little of my energy through the rattan. The tendril of power was enough to release my warder, to let him resume his protective stance beside me. I extended freedom to Spot as well, confident that the animal would follow David’s immediate hand signal to lie down.

As my warder recovered, I returned the furniture to its place beside the glider. I told myself I was simply restoring order, but the truth was, I didn’t want to look at David’s face. I didn’t want to face the censure I was certain to find in his eyes.

My Word of Power had been extreme, completely immobilizing so many people, removing all of their volition. And the spell had cost me. My arm actually trembled with the effort of setting down the lightweight table. I caught a quick breath against the back of my throat. The roof of my mouth was tingling. I was light-headed, and it seemed like the entire porch was swaying in a strong wind. I could barely keep my balance.

If our unexpected visitors didn’t do me in, David might, now that he knew how much my spell had cost me.

But all that energy would be wasted if I didn’t press my advantage now. “You,” I said, pointing to the new warder. “I’ll release you if you pledge to sheath your sword.” I pulled back my control over his vocal cords.

He glared at me, refusing to respond. Exasperated, I snapped, “Raven!” I allowed her to speak.

The other witch swallowed hard and licked her lips, fighting to say something, anything. I wondered if she’d ever heard a Word of Power before. Perhaps my spell had inadvertently shattered something within her own magic, some fragile ability she’d been mustering just as I cast.

Concerned for her well-being, I further loosened the hold around her face and throat. “Tony,” she said after swallowing hard a few times. The name was scarcely louder than a whisper.

Her warder forced a reply past his set teeth. “You have my word.”

I inclined my head in acceptance of his pledge. Anything more, and I was afraid my knees might actually buckle. Bracing myself, I pulled on the strands of my magic, freeing up another tendril that had bound the warder. I let him return his sword to its sheath, but then I immediately locked down the weapon.

Perhaps foolishly, I had hoped that unraveling the warder’s bonds would restore some energy to me. Alas, breaking my spell only drained me further. The energy I had invested in my Word of Power was cast adrift into the universe, shredded into the muggy summer night without any hope of retrieval.

At least Raven’s warder seemed blind to my exhaustion. He did not test my limits, either on the physical or the astral plane. Rather, he merely swore under his breath as I allowed him to move out of his fighting crouch, to stand upright. There. More of my power floated away, cast off into the darkness.

I stiffened my spine, thoroughly chagrined. I had no choice, though, but to make things look normal. I had to seem in control.

I let Tony use his newly-recovered freedom of motion to take a full stride closer to Raven, but I drew the line when he settled his hands on his hips. Who knew what other weapons—astral or mundane—he might have at his disposal? I knew David kept a silver dagger in a sheath at his ankle. I had to believe other warders maintained similar stealthy arsenals.

Wondering how much longer I could hide my physical distress, I tested my voice inside my head. It was almost steady. Almost calm. I gulped a deep breath and then turned to the woman who had started all this madness. “Raven,” I said, simultaneously relaxing the magical bonds around her arms. I locked my knees to keep from swaying as more of my power drifted away. “Give me your phone.”

“I—” she started to argue.

“Now!” I extended my hand and waited, praying to Hecate that she responded quickly.

As it was, she wasted a moment looking from me to Tony and back again. Finally, though, she fished the device out of her too-tight T-shirt. She slapped it onto my palm hard enough to sting, and I forced myself not to react as I shoved the damned thing into the pocket of my shorts.

At the same time, I slipped my bonds from Emma. After all,
she
had not done anything wrong. As soon as she was able, she darted a glance to the foot of the stairs. When I followed her gaze, I almost swore.

Three men stood there.

They were frozen, watching me warily, as if they half-expected me to burst into flame. Or maybe turn them into newts.

No wonder the Word of Power had drained me so dramatically. I had snagged even more people than I expected in the clutch of my command.

I resisted the urge to shake my head as I realized how truly dangerous my position had been. Three of Raven’s allies had stood at the foot of the steps—and I hadn’t been consciously aware of their presence. David had been, I was sure. That was his job. That was the way his mind always worked.

But I had been so wrapped up in Raven’s little drama that I had not even registered the additional newcomers. I was certain to hear about that little oversight as soon as David and I were alone. And, truth be told, he’d be right when he read me the Riot Act.

At least it wasn’t hard to figure out the trio’s roles in our little tableau. The bluff blond guy who looked like a farmhand and wore a Diamondbacks baseball cap had to be Emma’s warder. The slumping one in the grey track outfit appeared to be her familiar; at least, he had his hand on Baseball Boy’s shoulder, as if he were lending a base for magical support. That left the last man, the one with the spray of freckles across his face and a crest of over-gelled red hair, to be Raven’s familiar.

No weapons in sight on any of them. No shimmer of magical power arrested by my own spell.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t see any reason to tip the odds, to make it four against one by setting all of them free at once. I settled for clearing my throat, masking another quick survey of my fitness. I could still speak without showing the strain, at least to those who didn’t know me well. I had to admit, I was gratified by how quickly I got everyone’s full attention.

“We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot here,” I said. “Let me clarify a few policies for the Madison Academy.” Policies. As if I’d already formulated anything quite that grandiose for my fledgling magicarium. I put steel into my voice. “Rule number one. No recording anyone without explicit permission.”

Raven obviously wanted to protest. At least, she wanted to wriggle seductively and toss her hair in disbelief at my unfairness. At the barest minimum, she wanted to roll her eyes like the world’s most exasperated teenager. But she wasn’t a complete idiot. Her lips pursed around the words, but she said, “Fine. No recording.”

“Rule number two.” I continued, tightening my focus. I needed to wrap this up now, or I was going to lose all face by falling flat on my own. “Warders introduce themselves before they set foot on the property of my safehold.”

Tony barely inclined his head, accepting my demand. “Anthony Morella,” he said, his tone flat. “Warder to Raven Willowsong.”

“Welcome, Anthony. In Hecate’s name, be welcome in my house.”

“In Hecate’s name, I thank thee,” he responded to the old formula, even though he looked as if he’d rather drink pure vinegar.

That left me scrambling for rule number three. Or, rather, scrambling to determine if I
needed
a rule number three. Yet. A single glance at Raven and Tony made me pretty sure I’d be needing rules three, four, five, and six, possibly by midnight.

But I also had to make the Madison Academy a welcoming place for promising new witches. And strangers or not, Raven and Emma had been sent by my mother.

Clara might drive me mad. She might infuriate me with her blasé attitude and her crazy take on the occult. But in her heart, she knew me, the magical me, the witch I’d become over the past three years. We had successfully worked spells together, under pressure, with all the odds against us. If Clara said Raven and Emma should be students at the Madison Academy, I had to believe she was right.

“Enough,” I said, including everyone with the gesture that dispersed the last ripples of control from my Word of Power. “We can discuss other Academy rules later, after some dinner. Let’s go inside, where it’s cool.”

Our visitors sorted themselves out quickly. Tony leaped to Raven’s side and made a show of studying her wrist as the red-headed familiar looked on in purse-lipped concern.

“Caleb Weston,” Emma’s warder introduced himself as he stepped onto the porch. I welcomed him in Hecate’s name, then nodded as the familiars offered up their own greetings. The man in grey was Kopek. The red-haired man was Hani.