Single Witch's Survival Guide (21 page)

“Go ahead,” I said. “Thanks for all your hard work.”

As he scampered off, I was surprised to find myself stifling a yawn. David’s raised eyebrows might have been an off-hand question. How was I doing? Tough day at the office? How about that ninth inning?

But he wasn’t making any casual inquiry. He was gathering evidence about our new model of working. And I had promised I would accept his evaluation of our safety, safety that included my health. “Okay,” I conceded. “Working this way
does
involve a lot of power. You were right, and I was wrong.”

“I don’t want you to be wrong,” he said, and his voice was gentle enough to bring tears to my eyes. I must be even more exhausted than I’d thought.

I rubbed hard at the back of my neck, trying to release some of my tension. “You just want to be right?” I asked.

He rewarded me with a smile as he eased behind me. I leaned into his touch, letting his strong fingers find the pressure points along my spine. “That feels like heaven,” I said.

“Just another footnote in the warder’s handbook.” He kept his tone light, but I heard the subtext as if it were shouted through a bullhorn.
Warder. Witch. And nothing more.

I braced myself for the conversation I’d been avoiding. “About the southern point,” I started.

“Jonathan’s already drawn up the papers. He’s got three buyers, already interested.”

“How did you know I would agree to the sale?”

He shrugged. “We’ll need the money for the future. Even if your mother comes through with funds for this semester.” Those were practically the identical words I’d said to Melissa. Of course they were. David and I both wanted the magicarium to succeed.

“Thank you,” I said. The two words weren’t nearly enough.

He smiled and urged me toward the house with a gentle push. “Eat,” he said. “I’ll call Jonathan.”

In the kitchen, I barely managed to stand in front of the refrigerator long enough to find a piece of fruit. I stumbled upstairs to my bedroom and fell asleep in my sweaty clothes, too spent to pull on pajamas.

Wednesday dawned, and I immediately headed for the shower. Alas, my housemates had shared the same idea before I did; there was no hot water. In the kitchen, I had to rinse a bowl for my cereal. Even then, my breakfast was interrupted by the acrid stink of coffee baking dry on the heating element.

I hadn’t thought it would make a huge difference, having the familiars living in the basement. After all, they’d been around the house constantly before they moved in. But I’d underestimated the impact of their twenty-four-hour-a-day presence. I was seriously regretting my promise to Gran.

At least I didn’t feel as penned in when I met my students on the lawn outside the house. Hot, yes. Sweaty, yes. But there were no walls to feel like they were closing in.

Caleb watched over us while we worked. We didn’t make any progress, but we did succeed in exhausting ourselves to the point of punch-drunk silliness. At one point, Emma fumbled the words of our spell, and we all collapsed into hysterical giggles.

Thursday wasn’t any better. On the household front, I went to the linen closet for a hand towel, only to find that the cupboard was bare. Literally, bare. There wasn’t a towel or sheet to be found. Down in the basement, I solved the mystery—a half dozen loads of laundry were piled in front of the washing machine.

My exasperated cry startled Kopek, who acknowledged the pile with a sheepish expression. Hani started in with an explanation that involved an abortive attempt to hang sheets as temporary dividers between rooms, pending the completion of Caleb’s renovation work. I stormed upstairs, trying not to think about rusty nail holes ruining all of Neko’s recent expensive purchases.

Under Tony’s gaze, we tried our working again, but we never came close to succeeding. That evening, I tried to find a quiet corner to figure out what we were doing wrong. Hani and Raven were bickering in the living room, though, and Emma was cooking dinner for Rick in the kitchen. I retreated to the basement to collect a few books, working on the literature review I’d promised myself back in the bakery. Before I could find the most recent arrivals, Neko’s loud throat clearing alerted me to the fact that the room was occupied. I grabbed the closest book in the room and fled.

I literally stumbled over Kopek in the upstairs hallway. “Sorry,” he said, pulling in his legs, so I could get by. “I was just looking for a place to read.” He held up a battered paperback. I sighed and closed my bedroom door behind me. For the rest of the night, I felt like I was hiding in my own home. That feeling of claustrophobia wasn’t helped by my being awakened at least half a dozen times. It seemed like there was always someone going up the stairs, down the stairs, in or out of a room and slamming doors.

And that brought us around to David’s watch again. And we repeated the entire cycle. For two entire weeks.

All right, not fourteen straight days. I gave everyone time off on Saturdays and Sundays. Otherwise, we might have killed each other. Even then, the sniping got pretty bad in the house. By the end of each weekend, everyone felt the need for a little alone time. There just weren’t enough rooms, nowhere near enough spaces to escape the constant pressure of witchcraft relationships, and family relationships, and romantic relationships, and every other possible interaction.

By our third Friday, I decided we were only going to work until noon. All three of us witches were drained. The familiars were showing stress as well—I’d caught Neko snarking at Hani twice, rolling his eyes at the gelled ridge of the redhead’s hair and mocking the turned-up collar of Hani’s polo shirt.

David was warding us, with his usual perfect attention to detail. In an effort to focus more deeply, I’d skipped breakfast that morning, allowing myself only a single cup of honey chamomile tea.

Now, flanked by my students, I stared at the equipment between us, at all the accoutrements displayed in perfect balance. Silver bowl. Flask of rainwater. Mugwort leaves. Rowan wand. Rosemary sprig. Closing my eyes, I allowed myself to envision each item against a velvet backdrop in my head. I knew these tools completely. My palms knew their weight to within a fraction of a gram. My fingertips understood the cool touch of silver, the prickle of rosemary, the smooth warmth of my wand.

I held that knowledge inside me and let it swell with a dozen steady breaths. I settled the fingertips of my right hand on Emma’s palm. I reached out to Raven, on my left. I glanced at our familiars, carefully placed across the circle from each partner witch in a hopeless, helpless effort to bolster our strength.

My students were ready. I breathed with them, another dozen breaths. Deep. Even. Centering.

I opened myself to Neko, to his familiar energy emanating from his seat at Emma’s side. He leaned against her, and I could sense him homing in on the steady power of her breathing. Hani was next to me, doing the exact same thing. At some point I had become accustomed to the bantam familiar’s psychic presence; I now knew the balance of his energy without giving it a conscious thought. The same was true of Kopek—I didn’t need to
think
about how he mirrored Raven’s strengths for this working.

“Power of silver, gathering light…”

Part of my mind was aware that there was danger in speaking the first line of our incantation aloud. We were supposed to say it together; it was supposed to add to our joined power, creating more energy through a sort of feedback loop. All too many times, the spoken word had shattered our rapport. All too often, the spell had torn us all apart.

But not this time.

“Fresh new-cut greenery, bitter and bright…”

Energy grew inside us, between us. The power was set alight by a tiny thrum of surprise—we’d never completed the second line of the spell before. We’d never reached that level of bonding.

“Purest rainwater, collected at night,

Wand of pure rowan, commanding all might.

Make strong, keep clean,

Save this witch from threat unseen.”

In another world, in another lifetime, I would have laughed aloud. The magic was spinning around us, gathering us in a circle and whirling us about as if we played an arcane game of crack-the-whip. As in that children’s game, the motion only brought us closer, only bonded us each more tightly to the other, and I could not laugh because I was drawn in by the wonder.

I pulled from Hani, and I felt an answering tug from Neko, from Kopek. I offered my power to Raven, to Emma, and I felt each of the witches accept my gift, making a present of her own distinct force. I didn’t have to think about their energy; it was simply
there
. My students’ power had become an extension of my own.

I’d kept my eyes closed as I chanted the spell, but now it did not matter if I opened them. Now, the power between us was strong enough that nothing as ordinary as vision could ever tear it apart.

I reached toward the rainwater flask, but it was Emma’s fingers that closed around the bottle. I started to steady the silver bowl, but it was Raven’s palm that kept the vessel even. Water poured out, and I was the liquid, swirling against the cold silver, taking on the heat of a witch’s hand.

Emma was the one who understood that water. Her powers were innately linked to it. The element spoke to her; it
was
her. Through my link with Emma, I became one with the water.

Together, all three of us added the mugwort. The herb began to infuse the second the fresh green leaves slipped beneath the liquid’s surface. My physical eyes could not measure the change, but my arcane senses filled with a tingling force.

Raven was the one attuned to mugwort. With every cell of her being, she sensed the bitter flavor leaching into the collected rain. She tracked the acerbic strength of the ancient herb.

I was the one who actually reached for the rowan wand. My palm closed around the smooth wood. My fingers tightened so I could stir the mixture—once, twice, three times. With each pass, the mugwort offered up more of its protective strength.

Nestling the wand on a snow-white cloth, I filled my lungs with the invisible power of our solution. The energy sparked inside me, clean and safe. Closing my eyes, I gathered together the thrumming force. I collected strength from Hani, bolstered it with reflections from Neko and Kopek.

My action bound all of us closer together, witches and familiars. An invisible web tightened around all six of us. Each twitch of power from the elements of our working ratcheted the bonds closer, uniting us until we shimmered with a single, indomitable light.

One of us, all of us, reached for the rosemary. All of us, one of us, dipped the spiked branch into the water. I, we, offered the rosemary to the east, to the elemental home of air. We, I, shook the branch three times, shedding a cascade of drops, releasing a lyrical glissando.

South was next, then west, then north. Each time the rosemary dipped into the water, it harvested the perfect power of the mugwort, the flawless force of rain. Those drops were shed in an unbroken span of cleansing, of virtue, of purity. Wherever the water passed, an arc of light remained. Gold, violet, silver—all merged into a single metallic glory. I caught my breath at the beauty, and I laughed at the ozone tang that sizzled against the back of my throat.

Emma was laughing too, and Raven. Our familiars looked on, willing partners, silenced by our ongoing draw of their energy. Beyond the circle, beyond the pure working, I was aware of David, conscious of his warding strength, his watchful gaze.

If we had been completing a real working, it would be time to move to the next step. We would have prepared the earth for the gift of rain. We would have proceeded to build the next module of our next spell, merging our powers on an even deeper level, finding the true apex of our joined strength.

But we needed more practice before we could do that. We needed to build our endurance. Even now, my fingers tingled so hard that I could not truly tell where my flesh ended, where the outside world began. I drew a breath, and I could not fill my lungs, could not truly sate my body’s need for air.

I pulled back on my bond with Hani. I felt him shift, just a little, but enough that I lost the mirrored link to Neko. Kopek fell away, too, and I was bound only to the witches. Raven rolled her shoulders, twisting the link between us, and Emma sighed deeply, like a woman emerging from deepest sleep.

I dropped my arms to my sides, and the magic faded away.

“That was incredible,” Emma whispered.

Raven nodded. “What made it different this time?”

I forced a smile, trying to act as if I’d always known we would succeed. “Practice makes perfect.”

They laughed, but I saw Emma catch a yawn against the back of her throat. I hazarded a quick glance toward David. He looked attentive, but not worried. I’d managed our strength well. We were all fatigued, exhausted even, but none of us had pushed ourselves anywhere near a point of danger.

He raised his ceremonial sword and sliced through the circle he had cast for our protection. Chanting together, we witches dispersed the final remnants of our arcane energy. We matched our words, spoke at the same time, but there was none of the wild power left.

As soon as we were through, David said, “Let’s go. Lunch for all of you. And
no
magic for the rest of the day.”

I let him bully us into the kitchen, and I accepted the cheese and crackers he placed before me. The familiars talked quietly among themselves, with long pauses between spoken words. I suspected they were commenting on the experience in their own magical way, with the silent communication of their kind.

Under David’s watchful eye, I made small talk with Raven and Emma. For the first time ever, I saw traces of their twin language. No words; they no longer verbalized with their private, unique tongue. But there were tiny gestures. Hints sent through glances. A constant exchange of information, attunement,
focus
.