Single Witch's Survival Guide (2 page)

“Not tonight,” I said, squelching another flicker of annoyance at the unsubtle prod. If she truly believed I might be in the middle of a magical project, then why was she interrupting?

“Hmmm,” Clara said. “I take it my present hasn’t arrived yet.”

“Present?” I had no idea what she was talking about. I raised an eyebrow toward David, but he only shrugged.

“Your
birthday
present,” Clara said, as if that made perfect sense.

“Birthday?” I was starting to feel pretty stupid here.

“Your natal anniversary, Jeanette. The one you use as the basis for all of your astrological readings.”

I wanted to remind my mother that I didn’t
do
astrological readings. Spells, yes. Runes, sure. Drawing on the powers of plants and crystals, of the entire natural world, those were all parts of my magic. But I’d never given credence to the supposed magic of the stars, even though—maybe
because
—astrology was high on Clara’s personal list of witchy pursuits.

“Jane,” I corrected her again. “And, um, my birthday was in January.”

David was obviously following enough of our conversation to be amused. He reached for the wine bottle and added a bit to his glass. He filled mine as well—I wasn’t aware that I’d emptied it. I flashed him a grateful smile as Clara tsked. “Well, of
course
your birthday was in January. What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t know that?” What kind, indeed? “I’ve sent you a gift for this
coming
January. Two gifts, actually. To make up for missing this past year.”

I used my free hand to snag a few curls at my nape, tugging hard as a reminder to keep my temper. “You didn’t need to do that.”

“I know, Jeanette. But sometimes you find the perfect thing, and you just can’t help but send it along.”

I could hardly imagine what would count as “perfect” in Clara’s book, but the doorbell rang before I could select the words for an appropriate lie. Its chime was deep and sonorous, and I leaped to my feet as if I were late for church. “Whoops!” I said into the phone. “There’s someone at the door. I have to run.”

“Happy, happy birthday, Jeanette.” Clara sounded so satisfied, I actually forgot to correct her about my name. Instead, I hung up the phone and looked across at David.

“Expecting anyone?” I asked.

He scowled, all of his good humor about Clara evaporating. “Absolutely not.” He pushed himself back from the table with a muttered curse.

“Steak’s good at any temperature,” I reminded helpfully as I followed him down the hall. Spot padded beside me companionably, clearly not taking his job as watchdog very seriously.

David peered out the window in the top half of the door. Through the rippled glass, I could just distinguish a vague shape in the darkness. Two vague shapes, I corrected after David palmed on the porch light. He opened the door with a tight smile. “May I help you?”

A blast of humid summer air rolled over the threshold. The two women on our porch looked rather the worse for wear.

The taller one was dressed all in black, a peasant skirt with a handkerchief hem and a clingy top that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Her hair was dyed to match her attire—long waves that tumbled to her waist, with a single streak of purple flashing above her right eyebrow. Her makeup was pasted on to emphasize her cheekbones, and her lips were slicked with enough gloss to last me for an entire year. A half dozen silver rings twined around her fingers and thumbs, and a matching pendant glinted in the hollow between her ample breasts.

She looked like a refugee from a Seventies party, by way of a pagan convention. Despite all that vintage attire, though, she extended a smartphone toward us, obviously using the device to film our encounter. She backed up a half-step as I came to David’s side, and she nodded at the image on her screen before extending her free hand in the universal sign for stop. “Just a moment,” she said, still not taking her eyes from the camera. She gestured toward me impatiently. “You. Turn off the light behind you, the one in the hallway. It’s giving a silhouette effect, and I really want to get this greeting right.”

She spoke with the supreme confidence of Orson Welles or Alfred Hitchcock, obviously positive that she would be obeyed. In fact, her certainty was so complete that I found myself responding without thinking. My fingers were halfway to the light switch before I realized how absurd her demand was. David reacted more promptly than I; he extended a hand to block her filming.

Clearly annoyed, the woman clicked her tongue and touched something on the phone’s screen. Lowering the camera, she shook her head and struck an indignant pose, jutting hip and all.

I blinked hard, half expecting her to disappear like the figment she seemed to be. She didn’t, though, so I turned my attention to her companion. The second woman was dressed almost like a normal person—khaki shorts, a matching shirt. She looked a bit like she was going on safari, and I wondered if she had a pith helmet slung across her back.

In the meantime, Camera Girl was looking David up and down, her eyes flashing appreciatively. Without making a conscious decision to act, I settled a proprietary hand on David’s biceps. Camera Girl smiled knowingly as she raised her gaze to mine and asked, “Jane Madison?”

“Um, yes,” I replied, even as David stiffened. He didn’t like strangers talking to me. Especially strangers who knew my name when I—when
we
—didn’t have the first idea who they were.

“And this is the Jane Madison Academy?”

My throat went dry. “Yes,” I said, without any conviction at all.

She extended her hand. “I’m Raven Willowsong. And this is my sister, Emma.”

“Emma Newton,” the blond woman said, apparently discovering her voice. Her very formal, very British voice, completely out of keeping with her sister’s flat midwestern tones.

David still blocked the doorway. He obviously didn’t trust these women.

And Emma, at least, was sensitive enough to recognize that. “Oh bother,” she said. “This is a bit of a sticky wicket, isn’t it? We should have been here hours ago, but we missed a turning in D.C. and the roadworks were awful getting out of town. A crash on the motorway held us up for ages.”

I followed her vague gesture toward the driveway. A burgundy minivan was clearly visible in the light of the full moon. Its engine ticked as it cooled down.

I waited for David to say something, but he was taking his time, studying our visitors. His gaze was less obvious than Raven’s camera had been, but I was certain he was recording every detail: The necklace—a pentacle, I could see now—that nestled perilously close to Raven’s cleavage. The earrings that pierced her lobes—matching figurines of cats. The collection of silver rings that decorated each of her fingers and one thumb, moonstones competing with images of the sun, the green man, stars, and the moon. By contrast, Emma wore only a watch. A gold one, with a Burberry band.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “No one told us you were arriving.”

“But Clara said—” Raven at least had the good sense to cut off her words at my sharp intake of breath.

Of course.

I should have put two and two together faster. My mother was responsible for this. “What exactly did Clara say?” I asked warily.

Raven recited, “We’re perfect for the Madison Academy. She said our auras make us an exact match for the classes you’re going to teach.”

“And you believed her?” My voice ratcheted up an octave. I couldn’t help myself. Even if these women were witches, even if they had some actually affinity for magic, I could hardly welcome them into my not-quite-existent magicarium if they were naive enough to believe Clara’s claptrap about auras.

Emma cleared her throat before she said, “This
is
a clanger. But Clara Smythe said we’d fit right in here. She even offered to pay tuition for our first year of classes.”

So, that was my birthday present. Two new students, with tuition all paid up. Except, in classic Clara fashion, she hadn’t actually sent along the money. She probably never would. I started to issue a tart explanation, but Emma cut me off.

“I can see you weren’t expecting us, and I’m truly sorry about that. But you have to understand. We’re desperate. We’ve nowhere else to go.”

She made the statement without any melodrama, but I could taste the anguish behind her proper British accent. There was need there, and fear, all marinated in confusion.

And, in a flash, I understood. Emma’s magical powers, and Raven’s, too, had not come easily. Magic had brought the women no joy. Emma’s face was grave as she confirmed, “We both have powers. Skills, anyway. Some … affinity for witchcraft.”

“But why come all the way out here? There have to be covens in Sedona. Or wherever you two are from.”

“Sedona,” Emma confirmed, nodding. The name of the southwestern city sounded strange on her tongue.

“The Oak Canyon Coven has jurisdiction there.” David’s voice was low, challenging. He might have been willing to give me the lead in speaking to these women, but he wasn’t about to stand down entirely.

Emma’s face clouded, but Raven threw up her arms in exasperation. “Oak Canyon didn’t have the first idea what to do with us.”

“Why not?” No one could have mistaken David’s inquiry for a casual conversational gambit. Cold steel sliced beneath his question.

Raven re-jutted a hip and tossed her mane over her shoulder. The gesture made her skin-tight shirt ride up high on her belly, and she looked like the cover model for every terrible urban fantasy novel ever written (and a few really good ones, too). I wondered how long I’d be in traction if I attempted the same pose. She pouted as she said, “The Oak Canyon Coven isn’t open to new ideas.”

David might have been blind, for all the attention he paid to Raven’s posturing. “Susan Parsons is usually quite reasonable.”

“We don’t know any Susan Parsons,” Raven snapped, raising her chin defiantly.

Emma responded more calmly. “The Oak Canyon Coven Mother is Maria Hernandez.” Her precise British enunciation left no doubt that she understood she had just been tested.

So. David had not quite believed that these women were from Sedona. Maria’s name, though, was apparently correct, because he released a tiny fraction of his tension. A casual viewer would not see a change in his jaw or his stance, but I knew.

“Maria Hernandez has always welcomed new witches in the past,” David said evenly. Certainly, he would know. He’d attended Coven meetings with my mother, supporting the more conventional aspects of her witchcraft.

Raven apparently took my warder’s statement as a challenge. She raised her camera and started filming again, launching a somber narration: “Maria Hernandez has strict rules for her witches. All electronic devices are banned from gatherings of the Oak Canyon Coven. What is the Madison Academy’s policy on modern communication?”

Modern communication? I hadn’t exactly put the finishing touches on my student handbook. I knew I wasn’t happy with a camera shoved in my face, though. And I certainly didn’t like the way Raven swooped forward to press her point.

“You
do
realize,” she insisted, “that modern witches need to find a balance with contemporary electronics, don’t you?”

“I—” I stammered, but I wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence. Of course I believed in balance—essential fairness and equity were central to my powers. But those powers were based on the natural world. How did a camera fit in?

“Ms. Madison,” Raven continued, sounding precisely like she was interviewing me for some gotcha reality show. “My sister and I were under the impression that the Madison Academy is on the leading edge of magicaria. We were assured that our instruction would be provided by witches who understand exactly what it means to live in the real world. The
modern
world.”

“It will be!” I said. “It is!” My heart pounded as I fought to reassure her, and myself as well. I started to run my fingers through my hair, but I stopped, fully aware that the gesture would make me seem weak to Raven’s viewers. A trickle of sweat slipped down my spine.

Raven pounced on my weakness. “Where are those instructors, Ms. Madison?”

“They…” I trailed off, resisting the urge to turn to David. I didn’t want to admit I was the only instructor, at least for now.

The quaver in my voice only poured new energy into Raven’s inquisition. She thrust her camera closer with a vehemence that actually made me take a step back. “Our viewers are waiting, Ms. Madison. We
are
on the grounds of the Jane Madison Academy, aren’t we?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“What was that? Speak up for the camera!”

I was still trying to summon a coherent answer when David interrupted, closing his fingers over the phone and twisting sharply. Raven yelped as if he had flung boiling water on her bare flesh. At the same time, she clutched the device to her chest, cradling it against her pentacle pendant. Her motion was violent, rough enough that she had to take a couple of steps back to steady herself. Her left heel teetered on the edge of the wooden stairs, and her head snapped back.

I started to cry out, but David took the necessary action, grabbing her arm tightly and hauling her forward so that both her feet were firmly on the porch. His gesture was harsh, but it was brutally effective.

Even so, Raven cried out in a mixture of surprise and pain. She yanked her arm free, swearing loudly and succinctly, even as she thrust the camera toward her sister. “Record that, Emma! I’m going to have bruises in the morning, and I want everyone to know where they came from.”

David growled deep in his throat, snatching the smartphone out of Raven’s hand before Emma could decide whether to join the recording party. I was certain he was going to fling it to the floorboards and grind it into electronic dust beneath his heel. Raven must have thought so, too, because she screamed. Her wail was high and wordless, a banshee’s screech that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. She launched herself at David, clawing at his hands and face, clearly desperate to regain her phone.

Emma shouted her sister’s name. Spot chimed in, hulking close to the floorboards and voicing a low, constant growl. His lips were pulled back over his teeth, and his eyes followed Raven as if she were a particularly toothsome rabbit.