Single Witch's Survival Guide (27 page)

“What are you talking about? We only have nine days until the Major Working!”

“Perfect, dear. Take the weekend to get everyone settled, and you’ll still have a full week to practice.” She waited, while I gulped in disbelief. What had happened to my promise? To all her words of advice? Why was she telling me to do exactly the opposite of everything she’d required in the past?

“Was there anything else, dear? Uncle George and I were just getting ready for bed.”

“No,” I said. “Um, good night.”

Because, really? What else was there to say?

I thought about going downstairs and telling everyone the new plan, right then and there. But I couldn’t face the chaos. Couldn’t face David. Morning would be soon enough to break the news.

Of course, I couldn’t fall asleep. Around two in the morning, I gave up any pretense of a restful night, and I crept downstairs, making my way past a snoring Kopek on the living room couch. I wrote a note and taped it to the refrigerator door: “Effective tomorrow, please return to your original assigned quarters at the Madison Academy. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience.”

I climbed back upstairs and settled into bed, finally falling asleep as the sky blushed pink. I must have been exhausted, because I barely heard the commotion as everyone complied with my note. There were occasional bumps and a few loud curses, but each time I woke I was able to turn over, pull the sheet up to my shoulder, and submerge back into sleep.

* * *

When I finally came back to full consciousness, the house’s silence felt like a quilt, heavy and soft and comforting. I opened the bedroom door and looked down the hallway.

Both guest room doors stood open wide. The beds inside were neatly made. The nightstands were empty; in fact, every horizontal surface was bare. The bathroom was clean as well—no extra towels, no shampoo, or soap, or a forest of toothbrushes.

I moved down to the living room. The armchairs were back to their usual places. The television remote was centered on the dry, unstained coffee table. The dining room was immaculate as well, and the kitchen looked like it had never been used. If not for my note glaring from the refrigerator door, I might believe the magicarium had never existed.

I took a deep breath and headed for the basement.

The framing for unfinished bedrooms remained, but each of the familiars had removed his cot from his alcove. Personal belongings were absent from my shelves of magical paraphernalia. A snowbank of laundry billowed beside the washing machine, but there was no other sign of human habitation.

I forced myself to cross to David’s office. I knew the light was on; I’d seen it leaking from beneath the closed door the moment I came down the stairs. I caught my breath and raised my hand to knock.

And I couldn’t do it.

I knew he was in there. I could sense it, with every fiber of my witchy being. And I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. I’d known that when he was pounding on the bedroom door the night before. A tiny part of me had known it, the first second I’d seen the dagger glinting in his hand. I’d startled him. His reaction had been sheer instinct, a warder’s reflexes responding to the crash of my plate and drinking glass.

My horror wasn’t from his weapon. It was from the madness—the map and the photos and the terrifying umbilical cords of string. I had recoiled from the life-size portrait of insanity.

The door opened.

David had slept and showered, probably eaten a square meal or two as well. As if to convince me he was a level-headed professional, he wore an open-necked white dress shirt tucked into neatly pressed trousers. I wondered fleetingly if he’d retrieved the charcoal suit from Sedona, or if he’d actually gone clothes shopping on a Saturday morning. His black wingtips were polished.

The instant I saw him, my heart launched into overdrive. Adrenaline kicked my kidneys, and I caught my breath against the punch. I glanced from him to the wall, hoping, praying that the map would be gone.

It wasn’t, though. If anything, there were more pictures, more documents. Additional lines of strings linked ideas, ran from the dripping ink of words to images.

David stepped aside, moving with the door to give me the maximum amount of space to enter the office. Spot rose from an impromptu bed in front of the desk, immediately crossing the room and pressing his broad head under my palm. He escorted me to one of the chairs before sitting at my side like a guardian statue.

David waited until I was safely seated before he moved behind his desk. He walked slowly, gracefully, twisting just enough to be certain I could see both his hands the entire time.

“May I explain?” he asked. His voice was quiet. Calm. The tone I’d heard a thousand times, as he deferred to my power as his witch.

I nodded.

He only betrayed his nerves with a quick hitch in his breath, and then he nodded toward the wall behind him. “It’s all there. Pitt’s job, since he first took the title of Clerk.” David pointed to a red pin in the center of the country, in Kansas City. “He was a warder for an elderly witch in the Kansas City Coven. She died, and he went unclaimed, so he was transferred to the Court. His first responsibility was completing filings for his old coven. Over five years, he became responsible for the entire Central District.”

My eyes scanned a scattering of pins. A couple of the photos were old Polaroids. Others were printed on cardboard stock, the type with rounded corners that came from old film development labs.

“After that, he was detailed to the Western District,” David continued, gesturing toward the southwest states. Oak Canyon Coven flashed its red pin. California, with its cluster of markers near Los Angeles and San Francisco. Oregon. Washington. There were more documents on that part of the board, Charters and other contracts scattered among copious receipts.

David indicated the other half of the map. “He was promoted to the Eastern District, first to the Atlanta Region, then to Boston. He became Chief Clerk of the Eastern District ten years ago.”

Two years before David’s run-in. The right side of the map was thick with photos, with papers and string. Threads looped back and forth between coven markers, joining together magicaria and those yellow and green pins. There were dozens of photographs. Most of them seemed to be digital. Several were printed multiple times, in greater and greater detail until they disappeared in seas of pixellation.

I put my hand on Spot’s head and asked, “What are the green pins?”

David looked so grateful, I almost cried. I was listening to him. I was trying to let this all make sense. “They’re banks where he has accounts. A couple are under his own name, but most are aliases.”

“And the yellow?”

“Caches of magical supplies.” He pointed to one pin, somewhere near Milwaukee. “Crystals here.” Another, near South Bend. “Runes.” A third, just outside Washington, D.C. “A collection of rowan wands—enough to corner the market.”

“Then you figured it out?” I asked. “You’ve proven Pitt broke the law?”

David sighed. “Not yet. It’s almost there. So close I can…” He trailed off. “I can track days when he met with prominent witches. Meals he ate with specific warders. And there are records of funds coming in, going out. But I can’t trace a single transaction from start to finish. I can’t prove anything.”

I swallowed hard. It still sounded like a madman’s nightmare. I couldn’t believe that one file-pusher could be involved in so many transactions, that a single arcane bureaucrat could have his fingers in so many pies. Corruption on the scale David implied
had
to have been noticed by others.

I kept my voice even. “Show me an example. Show me what you have.”

He leaped toward the map. I saw the instant he remembered to restrain himself, to pull back, to mimic absolute control. “Here,” he said, and while he’d mastered the eagerness in his body, he could not siphon it from his voice. “The first record I could find. The Kansas City coven built a new safehold in 1995. They purchased a centerstone from an ancient coven in Romania, and Pitt handled the transaction. The coven paid $72,000 for the centerstone.”

He pointed to a receipt. The total amount was underlined in dripping ink. Red string linked the document to a green pin in Wichita, Kansas.

“This bank account was opened in Pitt’s name the day after Lughnasadh, with a deposit of $72,000. There are four separate withdrawals in equal amounts, following Mabon, Samhain, and Yule. The last was the day before Imbolc, the following year.”

“A reasonable time for the safehold to be built.”

He nodded. “But there are other payments coming in to the account. One thousand here. Fifteen hundred there. A third payment of seven hundred dollars. Each time, they’re listed as cash. They were transferred to a second account, one in Omaha, right before the final Imbolc installment.” He pointed to a blue thread between the two green pins.

“Interest on the centerstone payments?”

He shook his head. “Too much money.”

“You said the centerstone was coming from Romania. Was he gaming the exchange rate?”

“Again, that’s too much cash.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t going to come up with any solution David hadn’t already considered. He’d been at this for weeks. “Did my Charter help? When you traced the aura?”

“Not much,” he admitted, pointing toward the right side of the map. “All the documents have traces of Pitt.” I could just glimpse my Charter, hanging from its grommet on a blue push-pin. Its yellow ribbon was partially crushed by a photograph.

“Who’s that?” I asked, peering at the snapshot. “Is that Washington’s Coven Mother?”

David nodded. “Teresa Alison Sidney, herself.”

I suppressed a shudder of distaste. Teresa Alison Sidney was one of the strongest witches on the eastern seaboard. She had done her level best to get me to join her coven, but I’d rebelled against their cliquish ways. Their cliquish ways, and a hurtful prank that had been played on me by Teresa’s sworn sister in witchcraft, Haylee James. The same Haylee James who had been responsible for sending David to the Court in the first place.

“Let me see that,” I said.

David unpinned the photograph. I could see him tamping down his natural energy as he passed it over; he was still doing his best not to frighten me. The image in my hand, though, was almost as disturbing as anything David had ever done.

Teresa Alison Sidney was dressed in her usual flawless clothes—a sheath dress of scarlet silk. Her hair was sculpted in a perfect bob, and she wore her trademark string of pearls. Next to her, Norville Pitt looked like more of a troll than ever. His slacks sported a greasy stain, and his eyeglasses were askew.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“What?”

“If Pitt has all these powerful friends, why does he still look like that? Even if he couldn’t get anyone to work a glamour for him, he could dress better. Drop the pocket protector at least.”

“It’s camouflage. No one thinks the guy is capable of anything. No would ever suspect him of directing the most powerful witches in the world.”

I studied the photograph more closely. His hand looked like a claw, where he and Teresa Alison Sidney both held a multiple-page document. “What are they doing with my Charter?”

David shook his head. “That picture is from nine years ago, from the hundredth anniversary of the Washington Coven’s magicarium. They had a huge celebration. The renewal had been in doubt, because the Court had shut down the three preceding schools that came up for re-certification.”

I pointed at the document in the photo. “Look at the grommet. It’s made out of copper. Just like mine.”

David peered more closely. Then, he turned back to his map. “Yours
is
copper.” He scanned the board. “I don’t see another one like it.” He pulled my Charter from its pin, and then he passed me the paperwork that had lurked behind Teresa’s photo.

As soon as the documents touched my hand, I felt
something
. I knew Teresa’s magical signature; I had worked rituals within her coven. I wasn’t surprised to find her presence in her own documents. But I was astonished to sense her magic in my Charter.

No. Not in my
Charter
. In its grommet.

“What?” David asked. “What do you see?”

I didn’t have words, though. I couldn’t explain the twists of magic. I could see them,
feel
them, but I wasn’t certain what they meant. The more I tried to tell him, the more jumbled my thoughts became, until I couldn’t be sure I was seeing anything at all. I didn’t know what any of it meant, how any of it could be used.

David extended his hand to me.

His eyes were steady on my face. He knew I would remember that hand had held a dagger. That hand had shoved pins into the map, had stabbed at photographs and documents, had scribbled words and twisted thread and constructed a landscape of madness.

But he was asking me to balance years of trust against a single crazed moment.

My fingers were cold against the blazing heat of his palm. The instant our flesh connected, I felt the leap of his warder’s magic. He pulled my tangled thoughts about the grommets, sensed them,
knew
them. And in the instant he read my tenuous understanding, he leaped to full comprehension on his own.

Teresa Alison Sidney had paid Norville Pitt two separate bribes. Cold cash, each time, wired to a secret account. The first had been to preserve the Washington Magicarium, to secure its operation when other ancient schools were being shut down. The second had been to destroy
my
magicarium, to gain access to the Osgood collection once and for all.

The bribes had been sealed with magical agreements. Teresa and Pitt had each bound the other to perfect silence by way of arcane oaths, sworn over copper rings. Those copper rings had then been literally pressed into service as grommets, binding the Charters of each institution.

David stepped away as soon as I had the image of the complete transactions. He whirled back to the map, no longer restraining his eagerness. He plucked a contract from a pin in Minneapolis. After hovering over the wall for a moment, his fingers twitched, landing on papers in Dallas. He used his arcane senses to double-check the connection, then stacked the documents on his desk before diving back into the mess.