Sorcery and the Single Girl (7 page)

Coven Mother. Not that there was anything the least bit maternal about her.

Teresa Alison Sidney was the sum of all my nightmares from high school. I knew instinctively that she was one of the Popular Snobs; she’d
created
the cliques that the rest of us could only dream of joining.

She was tall, probably close to six feet, and slender, and she carried herself in a way that advertised the hours she spent at the gym. Her midnight hair fell straight around her face; its black depths gleamed blue in the dim light. It curled in a soft natural flip just above her shoulders, as if it had never heard of a breeze, or humidity, or any other summer challenge. I couldn’t read the color of her eyes in the darkened room, but I would have given my eyeteeth if they weren’t slate-gray.

She wore a perfectly tailored cashmere sweater—short sleeves in acknowledgment of the heat outside, but bloodred, as if we’d already moved the calendar forward to the heart of autumn. Her charcoal trousers must have had an invisible zipper on the side. They were impossibly slim and cut to exaggerate the length of her legs. She wore a single strand of pearls around her neck, and each earlobe was kissed by an unadorned milky sphere.

“Warder,” the Coven Mother said, and the title made David stand a little straighter. “You may join the other men in the front room.”

There was no question in her voice, no uncertainty. She was not asking David his preference or giving him any option. He was being ordered from my side, as certainly as if the Red Queen had shouted “Off with his head!”

Unable to stop myself, I reached toward him, brushing my fingers against his sleeve. He shook his head, once. “By your leave, Coven Mother,” he said, nodding deeply before stalking away from Teresa Alison Sidney.

Away from me.

I watched him open the door to my right. There was a momentary pause in the male banter within, and then the noise swelled louder, all greetings and laughter and casual bonhomie. I swallowed hard and reminded myself that at least Neko had been permitted to stay with me.

Teresa Alison Sidney’s smile was as perfectly manicured as the hand that she extended to me. Her fingers were cool in mine, sleek, as if she spent part of her life as a seal or a mermaid. “And you must be Jane Madison.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, Coven Mother.” I answered her perfect nightingale trill with a peacock screech. I knew that there was something else I should be saying, something else that I should do, but my mind was blank, numb. I wondered if I had lost some basic faculties when I crossed the silver pentagram into the room. Maybe some silent spell had stolen away my most basic social abilities.

I felt a jab in the small of my back and I took a half step forward. Even as I racked my brain for something to say there was another jab, a poke deeper into my spine. “Jane!”

The whisper broke my trance, and I half turned around. Neko was shoving the book toward me as if it were an infant needing a diaper change. I scowled, more embarrassed than ever by the awkward presentation of my gift. I should have wrapped it, no matter what David had said.

I turned back to Teresa Alison Sidney. “Coven Mother. I, um…I brought something for you. A small token of my respect.”

She turned her head to a perfect angle, her lips twisting into the smallest of smiles. I dared to glance at Neko, steeling myself to take the heavy book from his arms. I forced myself not to picture dropping it, not to imagine the pages splayed and torn on the inlaid parquet floor, in case dreaming had the power to make it so in this strange place of witchy energy.

As soon as my fingers touched the citrine binding, though, a wave of calm washed over me. There was peace in the crystal, confidence. I remembered the power that I had felt when I bound the book. I threw my shoulders back and displayed the volume for all to see.

And I was rewarded with a collective gasp of awe from all the women in the room.

Even Teresa Alison Sidney, even the perfect Junior League matron, even she was surprised by the riches that I held. “For you,” I said, as I extended my offering. “For you, Coven Mother.”

She looked at me for a long moment, blatantly scanning my face for my intention. I hoped that she could see my earnest desire to fit in among my witchy sisters, to find the collective support that I’d never known in high school, in college, in any social aspect of my life. I hoped that she could tell I wanted to join this clique more than I’d ever wanted to join one before.

She glanced down at the volume and completed a tiny nod of recognition. The title might not be stamped upon the cover, but she knew the treasure that she held. I couldn’t say whether she was able to divine the name by magic, or whether she had studied catalogs of valuable holdings in the past. She met my eyes, though, and said, “The
Illustrated History of Witches.
”

“I thought that you could make good use of it.”

“I can indeed.” She set her hands upon the green moroccan leather. “Citrine,” she breathed. She closed her eyes and inhaled through her aquiline nose, drinking in the power of my binding.

Now, standing in this magnificent space, surrounded by a showroom of furniture and a gaggle of perfect women, I wasn’t sure that I had made the right decision when I wrapped the crystal’s power around the book. Maybe I should have been orderly. Maybe I should have been uniform. Maybe I should have followed the letter of the occult law, tamping down every single spark of individuality and creativity in my witchy soul as I bound the citrine to the
History.

But I hadn’t. And it was too late to make any changes now.

Teresa Alison Sidney looked at me with an expression that spoke volumes. I read her surprise at the binding I had chosen. She had clearly expected something more traditional—something more submissive, more humble. But I also read a flare of greed on her face—pleasure at the physical gift I’d given, certainly, but speculation about more. Speculation about the collection that nestled secure in my basement, even speculation about Neko. Somewhere, in the organized chaos of my citrine binding, Teresa Alison Sidney read her first taste of what I could bring to the Coven.

Or what they could take, if I failed to pass the admission test the Coven Mother set for me.

Teresa Alison Sidney said, “Thank you, Daughter of Hecate. Your offering to me, and to the Coven, through me, is most valued.”

I bowed my head in reply, trying to imitate the precise angle that had symbolized David’s proud humility. “Thank you, Coven Mother.”

She pulled the book in closer to her side, balancing its substantial weight against her hip. Before it could become too heavy, though, or before—heavens forfend—it could crease her perfect trousers, a shadow glided up to her side. “Connie,” she said, not even bothering to look at the newcomer. “Put this in the library.”

Connie ignored the dismissive note of command, taking the volume as if it were a valuable crystal vase. She darted a glance at me and then licked her lips in quick agitation. Like me, she was dressed all in black, and she seemed to disappear in the room’s dim light, even when I looked directly at her. Her gaze skipped around, avoiding direct contact with any of the witches, and her nose twitched like a rabbit.

I felt Neko stifle a move toward her, and suddenly I understood. Connie was a familiar.

Just as Neko betrayed his feline roots, Connie expressed her own animal past—a rabbit, I realized, or I knew absolutely nothing about witchcraft. I darted my own quick glance around the room, and I saw that several of the women, several of the witches, had shadowy companions lurking silently by their sides. The familiars seemed to fade away in the room’s darkness, almost becoming invisible beside their witches.

As Connie carried off my gift, Teresa Alison Sidney treated me to a slow smile. “Again,” she said. “My thanks.”

And then, a clock began to chime. All eyes in the room swung toward the corner, to the ornate tall-case clock. Witches and familiars, we all listened to the well-known Westminster sequence booming from the magnificent timepiece. After the song was done, there was a pause, long enough for me to measure the sudden, heightened tension, long enough for me to clench my fingers into fists. The tolling of the hours began—deep, sonorous tones. One…two…three…each note resonated through my body, winding me tighter, raising my expectations.

I realized that all of the women were responding to the clock in the same way, even Teresa Alison Sidney. Each of us clenched a little more as the clock counted off the hours, and when the twelfth note struck, every one of us was staring at the Coven Mother. Every one of us was waiting.

And Teresa Alison Sidney did not disappoint. “Welcome, sisters,” she proclaimed, and her voice was even more resonant than it had been before—deeper, coated with more power. She traced a pentagram in the air. Everywhere her finger passed, a silver streak persisted. “Our midnight Coven is met.”

The assembled witches repeated, “Our midnight Coven is met.”

Teresa Alison Sidney raised her voice and intoned, “Let any who would betray us discover the true power of the Coven.”

The witches took a step closer to their Mother and to me, and chanted all together, “So mote it be.”

Teresa Alison Sidney lifted both hands into the air. “Let any who would harm us receive the true wrath of Hecate.”

The witches took another step, and said in unison, “So mote it be.”

“Let any who would wrong us know no end of earthly grief and loss.”

The Coven surrounded the two of us. Neko poked me between my shoulder blades, and I joined in the chant. “So mote it be.”

Teresa Alison Sidney looked pleased that I had found my voice, but she did not interrupt the ritual. “Hecate’s Daughters, we gather this evening to celebrate our sisterhood. We gather in a circle. We gather in a pentagram of power.”

Each of the witches stepped back, until they ringed the Coven Mother, Neko and me. Then, each woman traced her own circle in the air, followed by a personal star. I joined in, only a little behind the others. Neko leaned against my side as I moved my arm, and I felt him mirror back my magic, helping me find a steady flow as all my would-be sisters watched.

I wished that someone had given me a cue book before the stroke of midnight, so that I would know what was coming next.

The Coven Mother looked around our group, smiling benignly. “We are all sisters in the Coven. Let any who would speak to Hecate’s Daughters do so now.”

A woman stepped forward immediately. Clearly, her movement was expected; it was probably on the same page of the program as the pentagram tracing I had just missed. This witch was as poised as every other one in the room, as picture-perfect for the Junior League yearbook. Her chestnut hair was cut very short, covering her head like a spiky cap. Her eyebrows were plucked into surprised arches. Her face was tanned, golden, as if she had spent the better part of the summer lying out on a beach. Her lips gleamed in the dim room, and I wondered if she used gloss, or if she had just licked them.

“I would speak to my sisters, Coven Mother.”

Teresa Alison Sidney smiled at the woman, and I immediately realized that the expression was different from every other one I’d seen inside this house. This smile was real. It was true. It was the sort of smile that I might share with Melissa—that I
would
share with Melissa, if I ever got a chance to tell her about this entire bizarre night.

“Yes, Haylee,” the Coven Mother said. “Speak to your sisters.”

Whatever friendly smile Haylee shared with Teresa Alison Sidney, she cast a harsher look at me. It wasn’t angry, per se. It wasn’t rude. It was
sharp.
Like a knife, cutting through to some essential core, Haylee cast a look at me, and then she said, “Coven Mother, there is a new witch among us. A sister who asks to join our circle.”

“The circle is open to all of Hecate’s Daughters.”

“All of Hecate’s Daughters must prove themselves to the Coven,” Haylee said. She relished these words, thrived on them. I thought of my brief, unsuccessful experience rushing a sorority in college. Haylee was the membership chairman, pledge coordinator and social secretary, all rolled into one.

I pasted a smile on my face, trying desperately to remember that I was long out of college. I didn’t need to worry about the silly social games of a bunch of party-hearty girls.

Neko brushed against my arm, though, and I realized that I
did
need to worry about these women. Like it or not, I was a witch, just like they were. I was a witch, and I needed my Coven. I needed the protection they could offer against arcane challenges. I needed the education they could provide, the wisdom gathered here in generations. But most of all, I needed their acceptance, their imprimatur, which would allow me to continue owning the treasures in my basement—the books and tools and Neko.

Teresa Alison Sidney was acknowledging Haylee’s words. “It is true. Each of Hecate’s Daughters must prove herself.”

“The sisters have met, Coven Mother. We have determined a test for Jane Madison. We have decided what she must do to join our ranks.”

Great. Now I was going to hear it. I could only hope that my initiation would be as easy as drinking a pitcher of hideous blue cocktails. Or wearing a toga for a week, pretending to be the slave for any of my so-called sisters. Or calling all the cute boys and asking them out to a party on behalf of the juniors and seniors.

Suddenly I remembered Neko’s admonishment the week before, when he first told me that Teresa Alison Sidney had phoned. My initiation wasn’t going to be over in a mere week. It wasn’t going to cost me a handful of sleepless nights, a few hungover days. The witches would wait for a major festival. A major celebration.

I racked my brain, trying to calculate the next major event in the witch-bound year. We’d already celebrated Beltane; Ostara was long past.

Samhain.

Halloween. The traditional marking of the new year for witches, a celebration of change, of transition.