Girl's Guide to Witchcraft (3 page)

We walked back to the cottage, and I was pleased to see that our hard labor had withstood the test of time. If anything, the surfaces glinted more in the afternoon light. “Okay,” I said after taking a deep breath. “Time to do the actual moving in.”

“It should only take two trips.”

Melissa was much better at spatial relationships than I. That must have been a skill that she developed during all those years of choosing the right mixing bowl, of finding the correct Tupperware for leftovers. Back at my old apartment, she made us slide the Lincoln’s front seats up as far as they would go before she wedged in all of my possessions—first onto the car’s huge backseat, then into the trunk. There wasn’t all that much, actually. After all, I’d been a starving grad student for years, and my library job hadn’t paid a fortune, even before my salary was gutted by the board. Before the London Disaster, I’d spent most of my time hanging out at Scott’s apartment, watching his TV, eating off his plates, using his household appliances.

Mostly, I had clothes. Black clothes. Clothes that I could mix and match in an instant, with a generous apportionment of handmade jewelry to accessorize. My collection ran to necklaces and earrings, although I’d invested heavily in brooches when they were popular a couple of years back. Most of my holdings were cheap, scavenged at yard sales and art fairs, but a few were true treasures, garnered in museum shops and tiny galleries around town. What could I say? A girl has her weaknesses.

In the end, though, we had to run a third trip back to my old place. Neither Melissa nor I trusted Stupid Fish on a car seat with any other belongings.

Stupid Fish was the world’s oldest neon tetra. He’d been a college graduation gift from Scott. He’d lasted through English grad school, library school, even through London. When I found out about Scott and the British slut, I almost flushed Stupid Fish. But it was hardly the tetra’s fault that he’d been purchased by a jerk.

And so he lived on. Stupid Fish the Superannuated Tetra. Stupid Fish, who had a ten-gallon tank all to himself, because I wasn’t about to compound my mistakes by getting him any little fishy companions. Not at this late date.

We moved the tank by emptying out half the water. Melissa carried it to the car (she’d always been stronger than I). She’d even thought to bring a cookie sheet to cover the tank and keep the water from sloshing out as we drove across town for the last time. After she carried it into the house and set it on the counter in the kitchen, I added some spring water and watched Stupid Fish swim around. As ready as I was to be out of the fish business, I was pleased to see that he made the move without obvious trauma.

Before long, Melissa decided to head home. She lived above Cake Walk, the bakery that she owned, down by the canal that ran through Georgetown. Mornings started at an ungodly hour for her. I thanked her a million times for helping me with the move, and she shrugged it off, like best friends do.

She walked down the garden path, and I was alone in my new home.

I strolled from room to room, a little amazed by the amount of space that was mine. It was the height of luxury to have separate rooms—I had lived in studio apartments for all the years since I’d flown Gran’s nest. I made a cup of tea and sipped it while curled up on my hunter-green sofa.

I realized that I was exhausted. After all, I’d been up since dawn, packing up my old place, readying this one. It was time to go to bed, so that I could make it to work on time the next morning. Monday was a prime Jason day and I wanted to be rested.

I changed into my preferred sleepwear, a pair of men’s flannel pajamas cut off at the knees, so faded that I could barely make out their Black Watch plaid. Making one more tour of my home, I turned off all the lights before climbing into the featherbed and putting my glasses on the nightstand. I lay back on my pillow and closed my eyes, but before I could drift off to sleep, I remembered the chilly feeling that I’d encountered walking around the cottage in the past.

That was not the right thing to think of.

I told myself to relax. I told myself to give in to the bone-deep exhaustion in my arms and legs. I told myself to go through the multiplication table, to bore my brain to sleep.

Around six times seven is forty-two, I gave up. I put on my glasses and found the fuzzy bunny slippers that Gran had given me for my last birthday. I smiled at their floppy ears the way I always did. I walked into the bathroom, grateful that Melissa had latched the decorative shutters over the single window, keeping nighttime spooks from peering in at me. I filled my toothbrush cup with water and made myself swallow slowly, all the time looking in the mirror and telling myself how foolish I was being.

When I set the cup back on the counter, I saw that one of the tiles was cobalt-blue, darker than all the others, as if it had been replaced some time in the past. I touched it, and to my surprise, it pivoted easily to reveal a cubbyhole. As I peered closer, I saw that there was a brass cup hook planted in the top of the space. And dangling from the hook was a key.

It wasn’t a large key, no longer than the one that worked my new deadbolt. But it was the strangest key I’d ever seen. It was forged out of black iron. Instead of little jagged zigzags of teeth, it had a sturdy black rectangle with an intricate shape cut out of the middle. I slipped it from the hook, and it was heavier in my palm than it should have been.

I could hear my blood pounding in my ears. Stop it, I said. There is nothing spooky or mysterious about this key. It must fit some door around the house. A lot of homes had hiding places, built before people trusted banks, before they poured their life savings into stocks and bonds.

Nevertheless, I turned on every light as I walked out to the living room. The cottage must have blazed in the middle of the Peabridge gardens like a centenarian’s birthday cake. I didn’t waste my time in the kitchen. Surely, I would have found a secret door when I cleaned that morning. The bedroom walls were bare, too, and there was nothing suspicious in my tiny closet. The bathroom, the hallway, the living room—all straightforward lath-and-plaster walls.

And then I saw it.

The basement door. The basement, which I was going to let live in peace, with its spiders and its mice and whatever else had scurried down there for shelter.

But there was the door, right off the living room. It had an iron lock. An iron lock that matched the key in my now-trembling hand. The clammy feeling washed over me again, nearly knocking me over with its force.

I found my purse on the coffee table and dug out my cell phone. I punched in a nine and a one. The phone whined in my hand, as if I’d brought it too close to a computer screen. The noise grated on my nerves, making me even more aware of the potential danger that lurked below. My left thumb hovered over the one again as I set the key in the lock. Filling my lungs and biting down on my lip, I turned the key and opened the door.

I fumbled for the light switch in the place I expected it to be, at the top of the stairs, but there wasn’t one. Gripping my cell phone closer and feeling more than a little foolish, I swept my fingers in front of my face, swiping blindly into the darkness, hoping to find a cord or chain for an overhead light. Nothing.

The phone glowed green, shedding just enough light from its picture panel that I could make out the stairs beneath my feet. When I moved to the next step, though, weird shadows ganged up on me, and I had to stifle a shout.

Light. I needed more light.

Swearing under my breath, I retreated to the kitchen. After I set the phone down on the counter, it only took a moment to pull my box of thunderstorm supplies from beneath the sink. During the spring and summer, Washington saw its share of major thunderstorms, and my old apartment had lost power at least once a month. I’d become an expert at arranging candles to maximize the reflection of light off a book (candles lasted longer than flashlight batteries), and I had invested in pure beeswax to reduce unsightly drips and splatters. I dug out a fat taper from beneath the cans of tuna (emergency dinner) and the water spray bottle (emergency air conditioner.) I found the Zippo lighter at the bottom of the box and returned to the basement stairs.

I was so nervous that it took me three tries to get the Zippo to catch. When I finally had the candle burning, I tossed the extinguished lighter over to the braided rug. Raising the flame in front of my face, I sheltered it from drafts with my 9-1-1-poised cell. I could hear the phone’s angry static, resonating down the basement stairs.

In for a penny, in for a pound,
I thought to myself. That, unfortunately, made me think of the
Merchant of Venice
’s pound of flesh, which of course turned my mind to blood, to my
own
blood pouring down the stairs.
Then,
all I could imagine was the fairy tale Bluebeard: the domineering pirate who gives his ladylove free rein throughout his castle, but demands only that she avoid the tower room, the one filled with blood.

I shook my head and raised the candle higher. Even though my voice quavered, I counted out loud as I moved down the steps. “One. Two. Three.”

I wouldn’t have started counting, if I’d known there were thirteen steps. Like I needed any more harbingers of bad luck.

The air in the basement was cold, and I thought about running back to my bedroom for a sweater. I was honest enough, though, to admit that I’d never make it back downstairs if I gave myself that chance to escape. Instead, I held the candle out toward the walls and looked around.

And then I laughed aloud.

I was staring at books. Rows and rows of books. They filled their mahogany shelves. They leaned against each other like plastic drink stirrers in a trendy martini bar. They were tossed onto the floor as if some temperamental undergrad had grown tired of studying for finals. I finally dared to take a deep breath, and I was comforted by the rich, familiar scent of leather.

Pleased at the treasure trove despite my now-laughable fears, I took another step into the basement room. My slippered feet settled onto something soft and yielding, and I looked down at the most luxurious rug I’d ever seen in my life. I don’t know anything about carpets, but this one glinted in the candlelight with a soft sheen that whispered silk. The pattern was a riot of crimson and indigo; intricate twists and turns were woven into the design to tease my eyes into thinking that I could make out meaningful shapes.

A wooden reading stand occupied the center of the room. It was made out of the same dark wood as the bookshelves, finished with the same soft gleam. The surface was slanted toward me, and I was reminded of those high-end architects’ desks that, although seeming to be the ultimate in elegance and sophistication, I’d always feared would lead to a strained neck, a backache and a checkbook full of buyer’s remorse.

A single book rested on the stand. Its leather cover was stained and weathered; its pages rippled between the covers, sheets heavier than ordinary paper. Parchment, then. I looked for a title on the spine, but there was none.

My search took me to the side of the stand, and I discovered a statue crouching beside the high table. It looked like one of those Egyptian cats with its tail curled around its front paws, a guardian from a mummy’s tomb, but it was huge. The thing came up to my waist, and as I took a step back, the cat’s eyes seemed to stare out at me, somber and unblinking. They were made of glass or plastic or something, and they glittered as they reflected my candle. I resisted the urge to put my hand on its head.

I was afraid that it might be warm to the touch.

Instead, I looked around the rest of the room. In addition to a couple thousand haphazardly strewn books, there was a large humpbacked chest in the far corner. It looked like a steamer trunk, with peeling leather and a broken padlock that made me think of the
Titanic.

And there, against the far wall, was an armoire. One door stood open, revealing a tangle of clothes—velvet and satin and a twisting length of feather boa. Both the trunk and the armoire were made of the same mahogany wood as the shelves and book stand. They were all bare of any decoration, any initials, any design that might hint at who had owned them or left them there.

Next to the armoire was a huge couch—ancient black leather as cracked and battered as if the furniture had come through a storm. A half dozen pamphlets were strewn across its cushions, and I wondered who had last read them. Who had—apparently—expected to return in short order.

My cell phone chose that moment to beep its displeasure at having been kept on alert for so long. I bit off a shriek at the mechanical sound, combining the beginning of a scream with the middle of a gasp, and I ended up sounding like a hiccuping cow. Angry with myself, and more than a little embarrassed, I snapped the phone closed. As an eerie, static-free silence filled the room, I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder to make sure there was still a clear path to the top of the stairs.

Skirting the statue of the cat, I moved around to the front of the tall, tilted book stand. My hand reached out toward the book. No,
I
didn’t reach for it. I’m not stupid enough to reach out for an unknown book in an unknown library with a creepy, glass-eyed cat statue staring at me like I might be the Invading Mouse Queen from Hell.

But my hand just didn’t recognize the danger it was in. We were in. We, my hand and I.

It reached out, and it turned back the cover, and it flipped past the first creamy, empty page. It brushed against the words spelled out on the title page, words that were dark and strong and printed in that pointy, ornate, gothic font that people use for tattoos that say
Death
or
Fear
or some other life-nonaffirming thing:
Compendium Magicarum.

I had to squint to make out the second word.
Magicarum? Magic?

The clammy sensation that I’d always associated with the cottage chose that moment to trace my spine again, making my skin dance along my vertebrae. If anyone ever asks you, you should know that your hair really
can
stand on end. At least the short hairs at the base of your neck. And there’s no amount of rapid breathing that will make them lie down again. Not while you’re afraid. Not while you think that something might jump out at you from the shadows.

I made myself laugh, even if the sound came out pretty shaky. Pretending to be defiant, I turned the page, expecting to see more information—the name of the author, or a statement of who had printed the book, something about its provenance.

The next page, though, was filled with script. Carefully scribed Ye Olde English letters marched along, row after row. They made me think of monks sitting at long tables, holding quill pens and shivering as they reproduced countless Bibles.

No monk, however, would have written the words that were etched across the top of the page:
On Awakyning and Bynding a Familiarus.

A familiarus. A familiar,
surely.

I had read about the Salem witch trials. I knew about those poor old women who were accused of speaking to the devil through black cats. (Yes. Black cats. Like the statue beside the book stand. That chill rippled down my spine again.)

I told myself that I couldn’t run upstairs now. It wouldn’t do any good. Not now. Not since I knew about these things in my basement.

I put the cell phone down beside the book. As I brushed my hair back from my face, my fingers felt clammy on my forehead. I cleared my throat and touched my voice box, as if the chill would slow my beating heart. I spread my hand across my chest, willing myself to calm down.

When that mental command did no good, I resorted to one of the things I did best—laughing at myself. Purposely making my voice creak like an old soothsayer’s, I ran my fingers beneath the words and read aloud:

There was a flash of darkness.

Okay, I knew that didn’t make any sense. I knew that a “flash” was supposed to be light, that I was supposed to use the word to describe stars and glinting and color.

But this was an explosion of darkness.

My candle flame disappeared. The light from the stairs disappeared. The sight of my fingertips, pressed against the jet-black word
wist
on the parchment page, the book itself, the table, the room—all of it just disappeared.

And then, it jumped back into existence, except that everything was
more
than it had been before. Everything was sharper, clearer. I felt like someone in the projection booth of my life had just responded to an audience member’s drunken roar: “Focus!”

This time, I didn’t try to swallow my scream, but I still didn’t manage a full
Friday the 13
^th
/Texas Chainsaw Massacre
shriek. More a startled exclamation: “What the hell?”

And those three words changed everything. One moment, I was alone in my basement, surrounded by an impossible collection of books, holding a wavering beeswax candle and trembling in my bunny slippers. The next, I had company.

The statue beside me awakened.

At first, it moved like any other waist-high cat you might choose to imagine. It uncurled its tail from around its paws and stood up from its seated position. It shook its head back and forth. It stretched its front paws forward, digging its claws into the crimson-and-indigo Turkish carpet and extracting them one by one. It opened its mouth in a gaping yawn, showing me the ridged roof of its palate and its hand-long fangs, sharper than the knives I’d thrown into the kitchen drawers upstairs.

Before I could speak or move or even think of retrieving my cell phone, the cat tucked its head toward its chest and bunched all four feet together. It arched its back like a Halloween symbol, a rigid curve of spiky fur.

But when it came out of the arch, it was no longer a cat.

I found myself looking into a man’s eyes. In the candlelight, I couldn’t decipher their color—they might have been green or amber or hazel. They were slightly almond-shaped, complementing strong, angular cheekbones that I would have given my own eyeteeth to possess. His hair was jet-black and very short, standing on end as if it had been gelled. He wore the most close-fitting black T-shirt I’d ever seen and a pair of black jeans that were stretched so tight across his crotch that I glanced away immediately. His shoes were sleek leather, vaguely European.

He surveyed me from head to toe, taking a long moment to linger over my bunny slippers. He took his time licking his lips before he settled his right hand on his hip and shook his head. When he spoke, he could have been making a guest appearance on
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Girl.
Whatever.

“Girlfriend,” he said. “We have
got
to get you some better shoes.”