Sorcery and the Single Girl (13 page)

David shrugged and helped himself to a handful of nuts. Before I could pretend we had just been discussing something innocuous, the phone rang. I crossed the living room to answer it, taking a healthy swallow of my mojito along the way. “Hello?”

“Are there any policemen in the vicinity?”

“Oh!” Graeme.

Did David count? After all, he was my astral policeman. At least, he was my astral protector. I half turned toward the wall, as if David and Melissa might forget that I was present. I wondered if there was some way I could drop the name “Nate” into the conversation, without making Graeme think I’d gone nuts. Nothing came to mind. Realizing that approximately three centuries had passed since my startled exclamation, I painted a smile into my voice and said, “None in my current line of sight.”

“Perfect.” Graeme’s voice was as smooth as the rose petals in the bouquet on the coffee table. “I should come over to visit, then. We could continue the conversation we started in the park, before your jackbooted thug interrupted.”

“He wasn’t mine!” I heard the giggle behind my voice, and I wondered what I must sound like to David and Melissa. I lowered my voice into a more austere register, and offered a silent prayer that the two of them would start to talk to each other, to cover my conversation with their own noise. “You must be mistaken, sir,” I whispered.

“Sir?” Graeme repeated. “We’re going to be formal now, are we? And here, I thought we’d moved beyond that.”

I wanted to say something to assure him that his initial impressions were correct. I wanted to tell him that we had definitely moved, that we’d shifted light-years away from “sir.” That, in fact, I wanted to banish “sir” from our vocabulary forever.

But I couldn’t very well say that, could I? Not with an audience, suspiciously silent in the living room behind me? Damn Melissa! Why didn’t she start some conversation? Why didn’t she distract David—after all, she was the one who had extracted the promise of secrecy from me!

I settled for, “There’s a lot of territory to move through.” I winced. Had I ever sounded this stupid before? If only Neko were here, he’d be babbling about something behind me, keeping the conversation flowing, if only to hear the beauty of his own voice.

God, things
had
gotten bad, if I was actually wishing for Neko’s interference.

In the meantime, miraculously, Graeme was chuckling at my miserable attempt at humor. “I realized that after you spurned me—”

“I didn’t—” I started, before I realized there was absolutely no way for me to finish that line—no way that was fit for public eavesdropping consumption. “Really. I didn’t.”

Another chuckle. Great. He thought I was playing games. Annoyed with myself, annoyed with the situation, I said, “What did you realize?”

“You never told me what time the play is on Saturday.”

“Eight,” I said, thinking that answer was cryptic enough to protect me from prying ears. I gritted my teeth. He could have looked up the time on the theater’s Web site.

“I could have looked up the time on the theater’s Web site,” he said. What? Was he reading my mind now? Did he have some secret magical powers of his own that let him reach through the phone line and divine my every thought?

“But you didn’t because…”

“Because I wanted to hear your voice.” I felt a twinge inside me, a swooping shudder as he purred his response. If I’d begged for a more romantic answer, I couldn’t have found one. I wanted to slump against the wall, slide down to the floor with the phone still cradled against my shoulder, the perfect picture of the lovesick teenager I’d apparently become.

Speak,
I reminded myself.
Say something, before he thinks that you’ve hung up.
“That’s very kind of you to say,” I finally responded, and I winced before the words were out of my mouth. I thought Gran might have hotter conversations with eighty-year-old Uncle George. Next, I’d be putting on a fake Southern accent and telling Graeme that I’d always depended on the kindness of strangers.

“‘Kind’ wasn’t the emotion I was reaching for.” I could picture his lips as he spoke, his strong chin, those tourmaline eyes…. I sighed. It always came back to the eyes. “Come on, Jane. Am I really not going to see you until Saturday night? Can’t we have dinner together tomorrow?”

Was this really happening to me? Was the man of my dreams really begging me to dine with him? And what else did he have on the menu, besides food?

Of course, I couldn’t. David was lurking right behind me. I knew that the Coven was a command performance.

But Graeme wanted me. He really wanted me. That should count for something in the Broken Heart Recovery Sweepstakes, shouldn’t it?

“I’d love to,” I said. Then I added hurriedly, before he could misconstrue my response, “I’d love to, but I can’t.”

“Can’t,” he wheedled. “Or won’t?”

I was so bad at this. Here, I’d been all concerned about protecting my conversation with Graeme from David. Now, I needed to figure out a way to beg off dinner with Graeme, without cluing him in to the whole Coven thing. I mean, it was one thing for him to know I was a witch. It was another for him to learn exactly when the Coven was meeting and why.

It could be dangerous for the other witches. That was why we all had warders, right? To keep us safe from random madmen, and people who just hated witches for no cause? Not that Graeme was mad. Or a witch-hater. Definitely not a witch-hater, if our dates and my flowers were anything to judge by.

“Can’t,” I said firmly.

He sighed, and then was silent for several heartbeats. When he spoke, his voice was so low that I had to hold my breath to hear him. “I don’t know that I’ve ever anticipated a play, then, quite as much as I do this
Romeo and Juliet.
”

“‘’Tis twenty years till then,’” I said, quoting one of Juliet’s lines in the balcony scene. I gritted my teeth as soon as the words left my mouth. Melissa was almost certain to get the reference. Would David?

“‘Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast.’” Graeme didn’t miss a beat providing Romeo’s rejoinder. “‘Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest.’”

All right. Even if I was about to face the third degree from the world’s most suspicious warder, it was worth it. Graeme seemed to have the entire balcony scene committed to memory—and he knew how to use it to best advantage.

“I’ll see you on Saturday,” I said softly. I hung up the phone, but left my fingers on the receiver, as if I could still sense Graeme there. I closed my eyes and let his whispered words linger, like bold wine on the back of my tongue.

“We haven’t disappeared, you know.”

David. And his tone was the height of warder haughtiness.

“I didn’t think I’d be that lucky,” I said, before I dared to turn around. “That was—” I cleared my throat “—Nate.”

I was startled to see the jasper egg displayed on a handkerchief in the palm of David’s hand. He looked so stern that I didn’t bother spinning out another lie about my long-lost high school love. Instead, I cast a surprised look at Melissa. “So, I guess you decided you didn’t want it after all?”

She frowned. “David sensed it. I mean, he knew I had it in my pocket.”

I turned my attention to David and was startled to see the grimace on his face. “What?” I asked. “What is it?”

“Couldn’t you feel it? Couldn’t you sense the spell?”

“Spell? It’s just a crappy souvenir. They sell them in one of the import stores down on M Street for tourists to bring home to their kids. My parents went to Washington, D.C., and all they brought me was this lousy egg.”

“It’s
jasper.
” He almost hissed the word.

“I figured out that much. I was going to add it to my crystals, but it didn’t seem right somehow.”

“There’s a reason for that. Jasper guards against witches. It has an affinity for keeping them at bay. For limiting their power. Your power.” He extended the carved egg toward me, and I had to take a step back. Was that magic, emanating from the rock? Or was it my own apprehension?

“It felt rough to me,” I said. “Prickly.”

“Then you’re stronger than the spell. Apparently much stronger. How did you say it got here?”

“I assumed Neko left it. He often leaves, um, things on the front porch.” No reason to go into the decimation of the local mouse and vole population.

David shook his head grimly. “Neko would not get anywhere near this thing. Not voluntarily.”

Melissa chimed in before I could say anything else. “Then who did leave it? Did they mean to hurt Jane?”

“I don’t think so.” David finally folded the handkerchief around the stone. I could breathe easier the moment it was out of my sight. “I suspect that they meant this to be a warning.”

“A warning?” I repeated.

“Someone wants to put you on notice. They know that you’re a witch, and they’re watching you.”

I rubbed the prickles from my arms. The egg had to be connected to the Coven in some way. No one had bothered leaving me jasper threats before Teresa Alison Sidney came into my life.

David interrupted my speculation. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me who that was on the phone?”

“I told you. It was Nate. He’s not connected to the Coven.” My words came out sharper than I’d intended. The jasper had unnerved me more than I cared to admit. I raised my hands, palms out, silently pleading for peace. “Look, it was nothing. Nothing you need to worry about, I promise.” David still looked suspicious. “Please, can’t we just forget about the phone call? The phone call, and the Coven, and everything else? At least until tomorrow?”

His gaze traveled from my exposed palms to my face. He looked into my eyes for long enough that I grew uncomfortable. What was Melissa going to think? She was standing right here, watching us have this bizarre conversation, this non-lover’s quarrel.

I don’t know what David read in my expression, but he finally exhaled, like a man resigning himself to a life without sex.

Now, wait. Why had I thought of
that
image? I should have just noted that he sighed, and left the modifiers to a tamer part of my brain, a part that hadn’t recently been stirred by champagne and flowers and limousine rides around town.

“Fine,” he said. “But we’re going to need something more substantial than almonds and olives, if we’re going to make another pitcher of mojitos.”

David was going to drink the night away with Melissa and me? What
had
gotten into him? Was the jasper that much of a threat?

I couldn’t bring myself to ask, though. Instead, I shrugged and included Melissa in my question. “Chinese?”

“Mu shu pork,” she said, and I could tell she was trying to pretend that none of the other strange stuff had happened.

“Beef with broccoli,” David added.

“Hunan chicken for me,” I said. “And we might as well order the salt-and-pepper shrimp, or we’ll never hear the end of it when Neko gets home.”

By the time the delivery arrived, we were well on our way through the next pitcher of mojitos, and Graeme, Shakespeare, and prickly jasper souvenirs all seemed very far away.

W
e were gathered around my kitchen table—David, Neko and me. I had brought the mortar and pestle up from the basement and set them in the middle of some yellowish, greenish flowers. The leaves that surrounded the bedraggled blossoms were shaped a little like oak leaves. Their tops were smooth and dark green, but their bottoms were covered with a cottony fuzz.

Mugwort.

I’d walked by the plant for months, completely ignoring it as it grew waist high in the summer heat. The gardens behind the Peabridge included mugwort because it was used by colonial women as a cure for all sorts of problems—bad periods, unwanted pregnancies, stomach and liver parasites, pretty much anything that didn’t respond to other medicine.

David had decided to feature it in an impromptu training session, filling the time before we headed out to the Coven. He was droning on in his best professorial mode. “You’ll want to dry all the mugwort you can get hold of. It protects against bookworms—silverfish—that might try to eat their way through the collection downstairs. You’ll use it a lot working with the Coven—it’s one of the best herbs for cleaning magical implements.”

“I make a big vat of mugwort tea and then do the dishes? Like I’m camping?”

I knew that he hated my being flippant about magic, but I was bored. We’d been at this training session ever since I came home from a full day’s work at the library. Neither Neko nor I was at our best—too much MSG in last night’s Chinese food accounted for my headache. I could only imagine the escapades that my familiar had engaged in the night before. David, of course, was thoroughly unruffled. He’d already drilled me on vervain (a defense against metal weapons), rosemary (protection against the evil eye), and radish (defense against scorpions). Yes. Radish. Scorpions.

I tried to remind myself that a warder’s job was to protect his witch. It was only natural that my herbal training would focus on vegetation that would assist him in that duty. Nevertheless, I’d spent the entire evening listening to Simon and Garfunkel inside my head, repeating “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme” over and over and over. If I heard about a cambric shirt one more time, I’d scream.

Neko took the opportunity of my minor rebellion to shudder delicately. “I am
so
not going camping,” he said. I laughed out loud. The notion of my familiar’s carefully gelled hair and immaculately groomed fingernails roughing it far from a mirror was so outrageous that even David had to smile.

“You shouldn’t cross camping off your list so quickly,” David said. “You’d be amazed at what you can find growing in the woods. Besides, mugwort makes a fine mosquito repellant.”

Now he told me. “And there are so many mosquitoes inside the house right now,” I said grumpily.

“I could open the door,” Neko volunteered. “It wouldn’t take long for them to track
you
down.” With friends like that, who needed enemies—astral or not? I made a mental note to forget tuna on my next three grocery runs.

“Seriously,” I said to David. “Why are we spending so much time on herbs? Doesn’t it make sense for me to focus on crystals? Or stonework? Something that will help with setting the centerstone?”

“I can’t think of anything that will help you more. You already have an affinity for Earth—for stone. We established that when you helped your grandmother months ago, using the aventurine to heal her pneumonia. You’ve only added to that knowledge in the months that have passed. Frankly, the easiest thing about setting the centerstone will be handling the marble itself.”

Marble. Of course. A stone known for strength, for protection.

I flexed my fingers. “I don’t know about that. I’m not really in great shape. I don’t spend my time moving large quarry blocks around the house.”

“You won’t do the actual lifting. We warders will help with that. Part of the ritual will involve introducing you to all of the warders. If you pass the Coven’s test, then all of us will know you as a witch to be protected, a Daughter of Hecate whom we are sworn to defend.”

And if I failed…I knew the answer to that one, so I decided not to bring it up again. Instead, I focused on something I could learn, something I could control. I forced my voice to be light as I said, “So the marble isn’t a problem, and setting it in place is trivial.”

“So we might as well have some ice cream and take the rest of the night off,” Neko proposed, only to face a glower from David.

I shook my head, shushing Neko as I recognized the method in my warder’s madness. “So I might as well learn ways to strengthen the marble. To add to its inherent properties. All of the herbs that we talked about today will help protect the Coven, if I use them in conjunction with the marble.”

“Precisely,” David said, giving me one of his rare smiles.

“Scorpions?” Neko interrupted my moment of protégé bliss.

David gave me a quick look, but I could only shrug. Why
was
I concerned about scorpions? The Washington Coven’s territory didn’t exactly extend to the southwest.

David’s expectant gaze grew more wooden, and I forced myself to venture an answer. “Because poisons can hide anywhere? Because a scorpion isn’t necessarily a literal arthropod, but anything that lies in wait, ready to jump and poison.”

“Exactly!” David’s smile was as warm as a cup of mugwort tea, and nowhere near as bitter. I preened and shot my familiar a self-satisfied smile of my own. That pleasure was dissipated, though, when David glanced at his watch. “We should get moving,” he said, “if we’re going to get to Teresa Alison Sidney’s on time.”

I glanced out the window, where darkness had just fallen on the garden. “Isn’t the Coven gathering at midnight?”

“Not tonight. Today isn’t a formal working. Just an…organizational meeting. No need for the full ritual. And no need to stay up past midnight on a school night. The meeting starts at nine.”

I glanced down at my clothes, wondering what I should wear.

“What are you looking at?” David asked.

“I’m just going to go change—”

“No.”

I started to protest, to tell him that it would only take a minute, but I recognized implacable when I saw it on his face. “Let me just grab some earrings, at least.”

He scowled but waved his hand. Neko started to follow me out of the kitchen. “Not you,” David said to my familiar.

“I’m just going to help!”

“With your help, she’ll try on half her closet, just to match the jewelry. ‘Help’ by cleaning up here.”

Neko growled, but he stayed behind.

In my bedroom, I made short work of changing tops, forfeiting my casual T-shirt for a gauzy blouse. They were both black. I was pretty sure David wouldn’t notice.

Then I turned to my dresser, where my favorite necklaces were tangled with my most frequently worn earrings. I immediately passed over the turquoise—too ethnic for the Coven crowd. The jet beads were too fussy. Gold hoops were just plain boring.

And then my eyes fell on my sodalite set. The deep blue stones were veined with white. The earrings were fashioned into miniature wands, elongated rods set in protective silver. The short necklace consisted of polished beads; it was just long enough to go around my throat.

Sodalite was known to enhance self-esteem. It gave its wearer confidence, the ability to think clearly and speak well. I couldn’t imagine a better crutch as I went to face the Coven. I fastened the necklace around my throat, threaded the earrings through my lobes and returned to the kitchen.

David was not quite tapping his foot, but his impatience was evident. And he
did
notice the change in clothes. I’d been a fool to think that he’d overlook it—even if he was a guy. At least he didn’t say anything out loud; he just let me read the disapproval across his face.

Meekly, I chivied Neko in front of us as we left the cottage. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the sleek Lexus sitting curbside, directly in front of the Peabridge. Warders didn’t exactly have their own magic, but they could weave reality to meet their astral needs. Most of the time.

As we drove out to Teresa Alison Sidney’s home, I tried to pay attention. David had explained during our afternoon session that the new safehold would be built on the Coven Mother’s property. The home that I had visited had not been constructed specifically for witches; it had not been set on foundations poured to line up with the cardinal directions, aligned with the four essential elements.

The new safehold would be built on a plain between the current house and a creek. It would be the height of witchy luxury, harnessing the natural world to strengthen the workings of all the witches within its confines. The centerstone would be the core of those spells, the heart of the safehold’s magic. It was important that I understood all the power that flowed there, all the ways that the land moved around the witches’ chosen gathering place.

The suburbs of northern Virginia felt wilder than Georgetown, as if we had driven back to antebellum times, or earlier. I tried to center myself for our meeting, becoming consciously aware of the streams that we drove over, the folds of fertile land that spread out between country homes. The air was heavy and moist, promising a thunderstorm before morning.

By the time we arrived at Teresa Alison Sidney’s, I was nearly in a trance. I don’t know if I was reacting to a day full of library work followed by an evening of instruction or to the calming power of my sodalite jewelry, but I emerged from the Lexus feeling peaceful. Powerful. In control.

At least until I ventured past the man with the giant sword.

I had enough presence of mind to realize that this man was different from the one I’d seen on my other visit to the Coven. Somehow, that thought took away all of my poise, drained off all of my confidence. Every single woman inside had a magical warder. Every single woman knew more about the witchy sisterhood than I did. Every single woman was better trained than I.

With a sound that might have been a whimper, Neko moved closer to my side. David contrived to ignore both of us as he led the way past the guardian, completing the pentagram ritual at the doorway with a rigid formality.

Then, I was back with the Coven.

This time, David did not even wait to present himself to Teresa Alison Sidney. Instead, he moved immediately to the front room, opening the door and closing it behind himself before I realized that I was abandoned. Neko glanced around nervously, and if he’d still sported his feline tail, I knew it would have been lashing back and forth in anxiety.

I raised my chin, though, and stepped into the sprawling living room.

“Ah,” Teresa Alison Sidney said, looking up from a trio of women. “Jane is finally here.”

I started to protest. David had told me to arrive at nine, and it was not yet nine o’clock. I started to explain that it was a long way from my cottage to the safehold, that I didn’t even live in Virginia.

Instead, I raised my fingers to my sodalite and took a deep, centering breath. What did it matter? I couldn’t change things and arrive any earlier than I had. I met Teresa Alison Sidney’s eyes and said, “Yes, Coven Mother.”

It was just as well that I didn’t waste any time arguing. As Teresa Alison Sidney gave me a frosty nod, the tall-case clock began to chime. As before, its deep, sonorous notes ensnared the witches. Even though no one moved, each woman appeared to stand more still in her place. Each seemed to listen to some distant memory, to gather together a force and energy that was based in the echoing chimes themselves.

When the clock died away, we went through the same ritual that we had done before. The Coven Mother traced a pentagram in the air, and each witch intoned, invoking protection against any who would betray us, any who would harm us, any who would wrong us. I totally nailed the “so mote it be’s,” blending with the group as if I’d been working this magic for a lifetime. I traced my own pentagram in front of my face when we were through chanting, and energy thrummed around me as the protective circle sealed us off from the greater world.

Teresa Alison Sidney took a deep breath, as if she were feeding from the eldritch power we had raised. Taking a moment to look at each of us, she finally nodded toward the couches. “Sit, sisters. Let us do the work of the Coven with fairness and with speed. Let us listen to our sisters with compassion and understanding. Let us join our powers together to gain strength from each, to lend strength to all.”

“So mote it be,” the witches whispered as they followed the Coven Mother’s lead. I moved a little more slowly than the others; they apparently had regular, expected seats around the room. For a moment, I felt like a child playing musical chairs—I was the odd man out. But then, Neko nudged my elbow and directed me toward a Chippendale chair that looked as if it had been dragged in from the dining room.

I wasn’t sure whether I should edge all the way back on the slick, upholstered seat, or whether I should remain at attention, pretending I was at a job interview. I brushed my fingers against my sodalite beads and settled for ramrod posture, but I let my spine touch the wooden back of the chair. Neko folded himself at my feet.

Glancing to my left to see if the nearest witch had observed my discomfort, I was surprised to discover Haylee James sitting there. Her Hecate’s Torch glittered at the base of her throat, silent reminder of her membership in the Coven.

My initial reaction was to bristle—after all, she was the one who had set me my specific task, the one who had demanded that I set the centerstone for the new safehold. She was the person who had criticized Gran and Clara’s powers, to my face. But she was also the first witch to reach out to me in friendship. I could still picture her right hand cupped around her Torch as she settled her left fingertips against my wrist, friendly, inclusive. Before I could smile at the memory, Teresa Alison Sidney called the meeting to order.

“Sisters, let us begin. Billie, why don’t you start with your Treasurer’s Report.”

Treasurer’s Report. Followed rapidly by the Building Fund Report, the Party Fund Report, and the Security Budget Report.