Sorcery and the Single Girl (3 page)

I caught Melissa rolling her eyes, and I had to admit that I was getting annoyed with my familiar as well. “Yes?” I prompted.

“Teresa Alison Sidney called.”

I couldn’t keep from catching my breath.

“Who’s that?” Melissa asked.

Neko cocked his head, clearly asking if I wanted him to elaborate. I fortified myself by filling my lungs and said, “The head of the Washington Coven. The leader of the local witches.”

I hadn’t met Teresa Alison Sidney yet, but I’d heard her name often enough in the past ten months. She’d been invoked, like a saint or a sinner, every time I strayed from my studies with David Montrose, my warder. Teresa Alison Sidney and the Coven had the right to control all witchcraft in their territory. If I passed the Coven’s inspection, if I learned enough witchcraft to satisfy them, then I would be permitted to join their secret circle. I could keep all the arcana in my possession—spell books, crystals, runes.

And Neko. My familiar was part of the package. Part of the package I would lose if the Washington Coven deemed me unworthy of membership. I pictured Teresa Alison Sidney as a forbidding woman, wise, waiting—like Whistler’s Mother in modern dress. I knew that I’d have to meet her eventually, but I’d been perfectly content to put off that reckoning. Put it off until I’d learned more about my powers. Until I’d gained some confidence. Some courage.

Melissa, not being up on the witchcraft celebrity watch, failed to register the importance of the call.

“What did she say?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. After all, she might be calling for any number of reasons. She might…she might have realized she had a sudden need for colonial American recipes. Or she might…she might have been looking for advice on locally grown herbs and aromatics. Or she might…

I couldn’t really think of any
good
thing that she might.

“She wants to meet with you. Next Friday. At midnight.”

Despite the summer heat, gooseflesh rose on my arms. Midnight. The witching hour. “A—” I needed to clear my throat. “Alone?”

“She’ll have the entire Coven gathered,” Neko said helpfully.

That did nothing to ease the sudden fear that whispered down the back of my neck. I thought of Gran’s old-fashioned expression: someone had walked across my grave. “I mean,” I managed to say after thinking out each word, “do
I
have to show up alone?”

“Of course not.” Neko’s smile was sympathetic, and I could tell that he was trying to make his answer light. “I’ll be there. And David.”

My familiar and my warder. To help me work magic and to protect me. I didn’t really feel any safer, though.

“Is this it, then?” I folded my arms around my belly, suddenly wishing that I hadn’t downed the last couple of minty mojitos. I wanted to rock back and forth, find some comfort in acting like a rebellious toddler. “Are they going to test me?”

“Of
course
they’re going to test you,” Neko scoffed. His casual dismissal converted my apprehension into annoyance. “You’ve known that all along. No, this isn’t the time for the testing itself. They’ll wait for some big important day to do that. This meeting is just to lay the groundwork. To tell you the rules.”

I nodded. Neko’s words made sense. All except for…“Big important day? What sort of big important day?”

“You know. One of the Witches’ Sabbaths. Imbolc. Beltane. Lughnasa. Samhain.”

I’d read enough in my collection of witchy books that I recognized the names of the festivals. I was even able to translate Neko’s Gaelic pronunciation—“Sow-inn”—to actual spelling—“Samhain.” Halloween. But I’d never actually paid attention to the specific witching days, never worried about when they hit the “real world” calendar.

Real world.

This
was
my real world now. I was a witch.

And I was going to be tested by my Coven, judged to see if I truly belonged as a new member. I thought about the magical runes and crystals lying in my basement, probably grown dusty, since I’d neglected them for a month or more, while I played with my still-unsuccessful water spell.

Where did the time go? And how was I going to get ready for my first encounter with the Coven, with Teresa Alison Sidney? And what was I going to do once the Coven set an actual date for my testing?

Melissa might not have been privy to all of my witchcraft workings. She didn’t know the feelings that grew inside me as I practiced my craft. She’d never understand the tremble of power as I worked a spell, the satisfying
snick
of release when my magic hit its target.

But she knew
me.
She recognized my fear. “It will all be fine,” she said, topping off my glass and looking daggers at Neko, sending a sufficiently clear message that even he realized he should shut his mouth.

“But—” I said.

“You’ll practice,” she said.

“I don’t—”

“You will,” she affirmed.

“I’ve never—”

“No time like the present,” she berated. “Or, more accurately, the future. You’ll work with Neko and with David. You’ll learn everything you need to know. And when you need a bit of support and reassurance, you’ll swing by Cake Walk so that I can feed you and remind you of everything you
do
know.”

She was so certain. So determined. There was no way that I could argue with her. She was my best friend, and she knew what was right.

I shrugged and stretched against the back of the couch, shoving my hands into my pockets to help ease the panic-kinks in my spine. My fingers brushed against the card that I had hidden away, the silver-edged message from Graeme Henderson. Acquisitions.

I felt the message like a gentle electric thrum, like the tension of static charge when you rub a balloon against a wool rug and then make your hair stand on end.

Friendship Test. Melissa was my best friend, and she would get me through my meeting with the Coven. Melissa, and Neko, and David.

A girl could hardly ask for a better support group.

Melissa plucked the remote from Neko’s hand. “Oh well. We can hardly leave Victor Laszlo standing in the lurch, can we?” We watched the end of
Casablanca
without any further conversation, waiting until the final screen to shout out Rick’s famous last words, all together, in mojito-lubricated unison: “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

As I recited the line, my fingers drifted back to the card in my pocket.
Graeme,
I thought. And I let my mind wander over that British accent, that sly wink, and the beautiful…friendship that might await me when I phoned the number on the card. The possibility was almost enough to make me forget about my meeting with Teresa Alison Sidney and the Coven.

Almost.

But not quite.

I
sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the phone. This was stupid. I’d made phone calls before. Thousands of them. Why should this one be any different? Why should it make my pulse pound? Make my tongue swell up? Make tremors march up and down my arms, like tiny electric soldiers trying to kick me into action?

Or maybe I was just hung over from mojito therapy the night before.

I wiped my hands against my jeans and reached out one more time for the small white business card. Graeme Henderson. Acquisitions.

This wasn’t fair. I shouldn’t have to make the phone call. He should have asked me for
my
phone number.
He
should have taken the risk.

But he had. He’d left his card, putting it right on the counter. He had made the first move.

So, really, it was like he had already asked me out, and all I had to do was pick up the phone and say yes. Right?

I palmed the card and leaned back against my headboard, hugging my pillow to my chest. Had I ever been the one to make the first move? Well, there had been that time in eighth grade, when I’d asked Adam Lehrer to the Sadie Hawkins dance. But that was hardly a date. I mean, there had been a dozen of us kids, all going to the dance together. We’d stood on separate sides of the gym and told nervous jokes with our friends, waiting until two hours had gone by before anyone was brave enough to take to the dance floor, and that was only because they played “Macarena,” and we could pretend we didn’t know each other while we flailed about on the basketball court.

No. I wasn’t being fair to myself. I
had
asked Adam Lehrer to the dance. So what was I worried about? This should be old hat, right?

Of course, Adam Lehrer and I had been thirteen years old. And Adam had been a freakish six feet tall, even though he didn’t weigh more than one hundred and thirty pounds. He wasn’t about to say no to any girl who gave him the time of day. And I never actually
phoned
him for a date; I’d passed him a note in homeroom, asking him to check one box if his answer was yes, and another if his answer was no.

I was being ridiculous. I was a grown woman. I was a professional librarian. I was experienced, confident, capable. I was a
witch,
for heaven’s sake.

I wasn’t going to let one silly invention—the telephone—get in the way of my finding eternal happiness with the most gorgeous man I’d met since the I.B.

The Itinerant Bellyache. I’d pursued him, and look where that had gotten me. I’d even asked him up to Gran’s farm, invited him to my family reunion, so that my humiliation could be placed on full display for everyone I knew and loved.

Wait. I’d asked the I.B., but only after he had invited me to lunch. He had asked me out first. He took the lead, and the relationship ended up in the toilet. There. The powers of the universe were clearly sending me a message. They were obviously demanding that I change my ways. Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it, and all that jazz.

I grabbed the phone and punched in the number before I could talk myself out of acting.

One ring.

I nearly hung up.

Two rings.

I caught my breath.

Three rings.

I started to compose a message for his answering machine, thought better of it, decided that I’d just throw away the card, that the universe was clearly reversing its original message. Now it was shrieking: Run! Run! Flee before it’s too late!

Four—

“Henderson.”

“Madison,” I said, before I could stop myself.

I was such an idiot! He didn’t even know my name. He was going to think that I was mocking him, just for answering his phone with a crisp, businesslike precision. “Jane Madison here,” I clarified, before he could hang up. “We met yesterday. At Cake Walk.”

“Oh yes,” he said, and I could hear him smile as he spoke. Yes. Hear him. Those perfect lips, curving around those flawless teeth. The British dentists’ union should stage a protest—whoever maligned them in popular American media had clearly never met Graeme Henderson. He said, “The Lust girl.”

“Er, yes,” I said, and made a face I meant to be funny. I scowled when I realized that he couldn’t see me, and then I felt even more stupid. My not-so-becoming flush was rising to my cheeks once again. No wonder I had sent Adam Lehrer a note in eighth grade—that communication was a thousand times easier than this one, even if I
had
needed to debate the size and shape of the boxes for him to check. Fortunately, Melissa had convinced me that heart-shaped boxes were Not Cool. “I wanted to follow up with you,” I said to Graeme, clutching at straws to move this conversation forward. “To find out if the people at your dinner party enjoyed the dessert.”

I was
not
going to say the word “lust.” Wild horses couldn’t make me say it.

“It was everything I’d been told it would be,” he said. And then he lowered his voice and whispered, “And more.”

Now he was definitely toying with me. He probably left his card on counters all across America. He lured poor unsuspecting shopgirls into thinking he was some harmless football-player frat boy from the Midwest, and then he dropped his sleek Acquisitions card, trolling to see just how many of them—of
us
—were foolish enough to phone him. He probably had this whole call scripted. He already knew what he was going to say, how he was going to lure me into making more of a fool out of myself.

“Well good, then,” I heard myself say in a tiny voice that might have traveled all the way from Mars. “Um, goodbye.”

“Just a moment,” he said, and my heart pounded so hard that I needed to open my mouth to take a breath. “Don’t be so hasty.” Hasty. Did Americans ever say
hasty?
It was a British word. Like naughty. I jerked my thoughts back from
that
precipice.

“I’m truly glad that you rang me up,” he said. “I wanted to speak with you longer in your shop, but I was late to meet my friends.”

“Actually, the bakery isn’t mine.”

“Oh?”

“It belongs to my best friend. I just cover for her sometimes. I work at the Peabridge Library, just a few blocks away. I’m a librarian.” I heard the unwanted note of defensiveness creep into my voice. I’d learned to judge a lot about people from the way they responded to my job title. About fifty percent made “Marian the Librarian” jokes, apparently deluded into believing that they were the first people in the entire history of librarianship to make
The Music Man
connection. Another twenty-five percent immediately asked how long it had taken me to learn the Dewey Decimal System. I no longer had a civil answer for either group.

“Ah…‘My library was dukedom enough.’”

“Prospero!” I shouted.
“The Tempest.”

“Quite,” he said, and now his amusement seemed warm, friendly, including me in a select club—the cognoscenti, the literati, the something else extravagant that ended with-ti.

I started to make an excuse. “It’s just that—”

He was already providing his own explanation, verbally waving off the quotation. “You know. The tedium of a classical education.”

“I specialize in that tedium,” I said, and then I grimaced. Tedium was not a word I wanted him to associate with me, in any way, shape, or form.

“So,” he said, when the silence had stretched out just a little too long. “Is there a place where we could meet to exchange quips about the Bard? I can find out more about why a librarian offers up biscuits to the public during her spare time, and we could share a cup of coffee?”

I thought rapidly. “How about Bistro Francais? It’s on M Street, in the center of Georgetown.”

“Excellent.” I could imagine him writing down the restaurant name in impeccable British penmanship. He didn’t strike me as a BlackBerry sort of guy. He’d use a fountain pen, write on rich, creamy calendar pages. “There’s one small hitch, though. My office is demanding beastly hours just now. Could we make this dessert coffee? Say on Wednesday night?”

Alarms went off inside my head. Office. Beastly hours. I’d heard excuses like that before. Excuses from a married pig of a man.

But, a little voice protested, struggling to be heard over the blaring alarms. Late hours are fine. Late hours are when a married man goes home to his wife and family. Beware the man who
keeps
you from his evenings and weekends and holidays.

“Wednesday night?” I said, and tried to sound as if I was paging through my very busy social calendar.

“Would half past nine be too late?”

Nine-thirty. We could chat for an hour or so, and I’d still be able to get home, get to bed, wake up on time for work. “That would be perfect,” I said, fighting to balance my enthusiasm against my jaded disillusionment. Damn the I.B.! I refused to let the Incontinent Bogeyman interfere with my current plans.

I’m not quite sure what Graeme and I said to each other then, but I must have made perfectly normal “signing off” noises, because I was suddenly staring at a dead phone and a silver-lined card.

A dead phone, a silver-lined card, and the prospect of my first date since the Ill-bred Bête-Noire had poisoned my love life. I clutched my pillow to my face and squealed, trying to release some of the thrumming, paralyzing energy that rolled over me.

I had done it! I had made the phone call! I pounded my heels against my bed, inordinately pleased with my social bravery.

“Jane? Are you all right in there?”

Neko.

I sat up and placed the phone back on my nightstand, taking care to slip Graeme’s card between my mattress and box spring. “I’m fine,” I said. “Come in.”

My door opened, and Neko poked his head around the corner. His gaze automatically darted toward my closet, to the small metal table that had hosted an aquarium until last October. The glance was so rapid that I would have missed it, if I hadn’t been waiting. When Neko spoke, he’d carefully trained his face to impassivity. “David is waiting for you. He’s in the basement.”

My trusty warder.

He must have found out that Teresa Alison Sidney had summoned me. Neko would have kept him apprised of such a development, even if David’s position as warder didn’t grant him access to the information through other channels. I was a bit surprised that he hadn’t awakened me at dawn, slave driver that he was.

“Thanks,” I said to Neko, pausing only long enough to twitch my bedspread back into place. I glanced at the edge, envisioning my treasured card tucked safely away. I was pleased to see that nothing looked out of place. After all, a Friendship Test was a Friendship Test, and Melissa had asked me not to tell Neko about Graeme. Who was I to go back on my word? Besides, the prickly feeling at the back of my neck made me suspect that Neko would do
something
to ruin things with Graeme, if I gave him half a chance. My familiar and my love life were not a good mix.

Well, I thought, as I descended the stairs to the basement, time enough to think about my mysterious Englishman later. Now, I had to work. At least it was cool downstairs.

David was waiting for me by the book stand. “Good morning,” he said. Somehow, he managed to convey that the morning had mostly fled toward noon, and that he assumed I had been lollygagging around—lollygagging!—rather than producing anything worthwhile in the witchcraft sense of the word.

For the most part, David and I had settled into an easy relationship, a surprisingly straightforward give-and-take. Technically, David was my protector; his job was to keep me from hurting myself when I worked my magic or—more ominously—from being hurt by someone else. David, though, did far more. He had assumed the role of teacher, guiding me through using my powers, helping me learn more about the strange new world I’d discovered less than a year before.

When I got too stubborn, though, or David got too short-tempered, he threatened to stop teaching me. He told me that I needed to go to the Coven, to get an official instructor, a magical expert who could work with a witch as strong willed as I. Each time David threatened, however, we managed to make peace. I didn’t like the idea of sharing my magical development with a stranger. I was proud of what I’d accomplished, but also embarrassed by the little things I hadn’t quite managed to master. I should have had better control over my spell-working by now.

“Good morning,” I said, doing my best to match his serious tone.

And then we engaged in the Greeting Ballet. We’d done this now countless times, every time David came to teach me, and it never became more graceful. If he were a friend of mine, I’d throw my arms around him and give him a quick hug. If he were a certain type of casual acquaintance (like Neko’s main squeeze, Jacques), we would peck each other on both cheeks. If he were a work colleague, I’d extend my hand for a quick, hearty shake.

But he was all of those things. And none of them. And so we treated each other with proverbial kid gloves, stumbling into an awkward embrace that left both of us off balance. I tried to plant a quick kiss on his cheek and ended up grazing the air by his chin. He looked startled, and he pulled away, which caused
me
to pull away, backing into Neko.

As my familiar caught my elbow he shot me one of his wry, arched-eyebrow grins, and I bit back the first retort that came to mind. The last thing I needed was for Neko to make smart comebacks about my relationship with David. My awkward, undefined relationship with David. I brushed my hands through my hair and turned back to my warder. “Good morning,” I said again, as if I could erase the entire embarrassing sequence from his memory and my own.

I crossed the room and collapsed onto the black leather couch. Neko’s hot sweaty man-sex couch. No. I wasn’t going to think about that.

David shoved his hands into his khaki pockets and jutted his almost-kissed chin toward the bookshelves. As I’d expected, he said, “I’m here to help you prepare for your Friday meeting with Teresa Alison Sidney.”