Sorcery and the Single Girl (16 page)

I closed my eyes and imagined the heat diffusing, sinking back into the river. I let the ice break up as quickly as it had developed. When I stared out at the river again, ordinary moonlight flickered over ordinary current.

“That was incredible,” Graeme breathed.

“It was nothing,” I said, embarrassed by his attention.

“No,” he contradicted. “Truly. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with me.”

I don’t know what it was about those words, but he made me feel…intimate. As if I had shown him something substantially more personal than a mild weather-working spell. I felt my blush heating my face, far more effectively than any magical breeze I’d pulled forth from the river.

Before I could say anything else, Graeme was kissing me. His embrace held all the urgency of our encounter on the park bench, all the heat of that fast-banked desire. His fingers tangled in the hair at the base of my neck, and I opened my lips, eager to get the full taste of him, the full feel of him.

And something jangled against my thigh.

Startled, I leaped back.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Only my mobile.” His cell phone. Apparently set on “wake the dead” for its vibration mode. “There,” he said. “They’ve rung off.”

I laughed nervously, but neither of us wasted time returning to where we’d left off. His knee forced its way between mine, and his arms closed around me, keeping me balanced, or at least on my feet, even as his lips began doing extremely unsteadying things to the base of my throat.

And his phone jangled again.

“Dammit!” he swore, slamming his hand into his pocket to pull out the offending appliance. He glanced at the number on the display screen and muttered something I didn’t quite catch. “I’m sorry,” he said curtly. “I’m going to have to take this.”

He flipped the cell open and strode across the marble portico. The chilly natural breeze had returned from the river, blowing his words away from me so that I couldn’t have eavesdropped if I’d wanted to.

If
I’d wanted? Of course I’d wanted to.

I pulled his jacket closer and waited for him to finish his rather animated conversation. He ran his fingers through his hair twice. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, like a tiger preparing to pounce on some unsuspecting prey.

At last, he slammed the phone closed and turned to face me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. His eyes were flashing anger more than sorrow. I wondered who he’d been talking to, and I was glad—in a way—that I’d never know. He shoved the offending phone into his pocket with enough vehemence that I was afraid he’d rip out the seam. “I have to go.”

“Go?” I was so surprised that I repeated the word like a mynah bird.

He shrugged angrily. “I have some work to do.”

“Tonight?” I asked incredulously. “It’s Saturday. And it’s almost midnight.”

“Eleven-thirty,” he said, as if I’d really been asking the time.

“Whatever. Can’t it wait till morning?”

He shook his head grimly. “No.” And then he repeated, “I’m sorry.” He put out his hand, cupping my cheek as if he truly wanted to continue the, um, conversation that we’d begun before we were so electronically interrupted. “Let me get you a taxi home.”

I was so surprised that I let him lead me off the marble terrace. We passed through the now-darkened hallways of the Kennedy Center, moving among the last of the maintenance crews preparing the vast hall for its nighttime sleep. We walked out to the street, and Graeme managed to hail a cab instantly, applying the ancient masculine art of transportation management.

Just before he handed me into the backseat, he pulled me close for a kiss—a fiery kiss that almost made me moan like a silly heroine in a book. Then, he whispered against my ear, “I’ll make this up to you. I promise.”

And before I could say anything, he handed money to the driver and closed the door behind me. We pulled away from the curb, took the corner at a speed that would definitely not be deemed safe by the city’s finest, and then Graeme was gone.

I gave my address to the driver and sank back into the seat.

Acquisitions. That’s what his business card had said. What sort of acquisitions emergency happened at eleven-thirty on a Saturday night?

I tortured myself with scenarios until the driver pulled up outside my cottage. As I fit my key into the lock, my phone started ringing. I pushed my way into the living room, barely shoving the door closed behind me. Two rings. Three. I sprinted into the kitchen and grabbed the handset before the answering machine picked up.

“You’ve resolved the emergency faster than you thought, and you’re ready to make it up to me now?” I remembered to smile as I spoke, so that Graeme would know I was only kidding, that I wasn’t a screaming harpy, furious with a single change in plans.

“That was a very bad idea.”

David.

Not Graeme. David. A shiver rippled down my spine.

I kicked off my heels and sank onto one of the kitchen chairs. “Oh. It’s you.”

“Yes, it’s me.” I heard his frustration, loud and clear. “What the hell were you doing at the Kennedy Center?”

“You don’t have the right to spy on me like that!”

“I wasn’t spying. You were broadcasting your location to anyone with the faintest hint of magical ability. What were you doing, working a spell in public? Trying to impress your Mr. Poindexter?”

I flushed at my dating subterfuge, but I wasn’t about to tell David Graeme’s real name. Just the thought of sharing that confidence made me queasy. I swallowed my discomfort, letting it sharpen my words. “It wasn’t anything major. I’ve been able to work that one for months. It was no big deal.”

“Have you received any more e-mails, Jane? Any more ‘gifts’?”

I never should have sent him the herb-o-gram. He was becoming completely paranoid. Now, thinking back to that e-mail, I was ready to laugh it away. Someone was playing a joke on me, trying to make me nervous. It was probably just a Coven thing, like a sorority sister being “kidnapped” from her dorm room on rush night.

“No,” I answered David. “But if I had, you would be the first to know.”

“I wish I believed you, Jane. Look, this is not a joke. If you expect to be ready to deal with the Coven on Samhain, we have to work every chance we get. You can’t waste your energy on games.”

I rubbed my face with a hand that still smelled of Graeme’s cologne. Wistfulness actually stiffened my resolve. “David, I already told you, I’m not giving up my entire social life for the Coven. You and I are meeting, what? Tomorrow morning?”

“At seven.”

I could have sworn that I’d agreed to nine. I never would have let him bully me into seven o’clock on a Sunday morning. “That’s a little early, don’t you think?”

“You know if I had my way, we’d have been working tonight. And now you’ll be drained of power, in addition to short on sleep.”

“It wasn’t anything major!”

“Is that what Nate Poindexter said?” He drew out the name, as if it were a grammar-school taunt. Next thing I knew, I’d be sitting in a tree,
K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

“David, we have so been there. Done that. My personal life is my personal life.”

“And that worked out so well for you last year, didn’t it?”

“That’s a terrible thing to say!” I was truly surprised. David was often pushy. Overprotective. But he rarely said things specifically designed to hurt my feelings. To make me remember just how foolish I had been, how irresponsibly I’d acted.

Now, he sighed. “Just be careful, Jane.” A long silence stretched between us, as I tried to think of something to say, something that would tell him how much I had learned from the I.B., how different Graeme—er, Nate—was. “Just make sure you take care of yourself.”

“I’m doing that, David,” I said, suddenly certain that I had to end this phone call immediately. End it, or be sobbing into the phone. “You can be absolutely certain that I am doing that.”

I hung up without saying anything else. As I stepped out of the kitchen, I caught a flash of movement as the door to the basement slipped closed. Great. Neko had overheard every word.

I stomped off to my bedroom, making every effort to send the echo of my footsteps thundering into the basement. I slammed the door closed, finding a little relief in the way the entire door frame shook.

As I threw myself onto my bed, I realized I was still wearing Graeme’s jacket. I took it off and buried my face in the satin lining. I fell asleep breathing in his smell, telling myself that anyone could have a midnight occupational emergency. If it had been an omen, or a ruse, or a trick to break things off, then he would have demanded his coat back before sending me home. Right?

All night long, I dreamed of walking toward him, jacket extended, as my feet slipped and slid on a silvery strip of ice that never ended.

D
avid nodded slowly as I let the last filaments of my cleansing spell dissipate from the air around us. “How did that feel?”

How did it feel? Like I was hefting the Capitol dome onto my shoulders. Like I was balancing the Washington Monument on my forehead, staggering to keep my footing. Like I was trying to drain the entire reflecting Pool with a single bat of an eyelash.

“Fine,” I said, managing a smile that I hoped did not look too fake. I let my fingers touch Neko’s shoulder, and if he realized that I was stabilizing myself there, he didn’t let on. “I think I’m getting the hang of this.”

There was no way I was going to admit to my warder that his lesson had exhausted me. After all, what witch wanted to say she couldn’t do something? Even something as apparently complicated as melding the edges of a centerstone, relying on herbal washes to blend together tiny striations in the rock’s surface?

And I especially wasn’t going to admit any weakness when I thought of what I was working toward. Membership in the Coven was one thing—one thing that had become increasingly important to me over the past month. I couldn’t wait to take my permanent place with the women in Teresa Alison Sidney’s circle.

But passing the Coven’s test was more important than just my witchy social life. I needed to get into the Coven so that I could do something about Gran and Clara. And I needed to make sure that my books were not forfeit to the group, that Neko could not be claimed by a witch who might not indulge his…idiosyncrasies as much as I did.

Sometimes, I wondered if the Coven was worth all this. But then I remembered what I’d read, what David had taught me. The Coven was the center, the core. It helped its members, protected them against mundane authority. It was the very reason witchcraft had persisted through the ages, through the centuries of suspicion and persecution. The Coven was safety. The Coven was power. As a librarian and a student of colonial America, I could appreciate that the Coven was necessary.

Besides, I wouldn’t have been so tired if David had given me a single day off in the past week. Ever since our midnight conversation about Graeme/Nate, he had insisted that we practice, making up lost time preparing for Samhain and the centerstone working. He’d even gone so far as to commandeer one of my lunch hours from the Peabridge.

I wasn’t certain if he really wanted me to work on witchcraft that hard, or if he was trying to make it impossible for me to see Graeme/Nate. Just the thought of confronting him made me shiver with apprehension. In fact, he
had
kept me from seeing Graeme, even if that hadn’t been his actual intent. I’d been reduced to a half-dozen flirtatious phone conversations as I tried to stifle unwanted yawns. I certainly didn’t want to fall asleep on a date. Not with Graeme. Not with the man I was increasingly thinking of as my “boyfriend,” even if we hadn’t actually been in the same room for seven days.

I shook my head, dragging my thoughts back to my living room and witchcraft and herb-lore. I felt like I’d spent the entire morning lugging around a gigantic chunk of marble, lifting it like a free weight under the direction of the world’s most sadistic personal trainer. (Neko assumed that role with more relish than I thought strictly appropriate. At one point, he had crouched in front of me and chanted, “
Channel
your energy.
Commit
yourselfs! You’re not as weak as you think you are!” The effect was diminished by his setting his hand against his hip like Richard Simmons’s even more fey younger brother.)

In another reality—in the witchy one, the one that mattered to me more and more as we neared Samhain—I had enrobed my spectral powers around the energy of the marble, cloaking the stone with my unique astral signature. On that plane, no amount of taunting by my familiar or my warder could move me along. I succeeded on the basis of my own power, on the hard and fast limitations of my own strength.

When I washed the marble with a bath of radish tea, the stone
changed.
I didn’t expect any scientist to be able to note the difference, but I could sense the transformation. I could tell that a bearer of poison (a scorpion, a liar, whatever) could not move past the invisible barrier I had created.

I sank back onto the hunter-green couch and sighed deeply, exhaling every pent breath that had haunted my lungs since David had arrived at the crack of dawn. I’d been expecting him, of course, and I had made a point to be ready when he arrived—pear oolong tea brewed, my hair pulled back into a serviceable ponytail, my T-shirt and jeans a testimony to my willingness to work.

I’ll even admit to a certain sadistic pleasure as I threw open the door to the basement, slamming on the overhead light and calling out in a dulcet alto, “Neeeeko! David’s here to see us!” I pretended not to hear Jacques grunting Gallic obscenities, and I ignored Neko’s scowl as he climbed the stairs, pawing sleep from his eyes. I couldn’t believe that Jacques tolerated the strangeness of Neko’s life—the odd basement room, the lack of a traditional job. And yet the Frenchman seemed more devoted than ever. Could it be love?

I couldn’t worry about my studies’ effect on Neko’s love life. After all, I was working on being the perfect witch. I was
not
going to listen to David go on and on about my own romance. I was not going to hear another lecture about jasper or herbs or any other threat to my witchy abilities. I was determined not to give David any excuse to criticize me.

Even if I
had
used a beginner’s spell to banish my fatigue. Three times in the past week. Even if I
was
only pretending to be bright and perky and inquisitive on a Sunday morning when I would have much preferred to have crawled back under my comforter to sleep uninterrupted, dreaming of the incredible man who had kissed me an entire week before.

“Excellent, Jane,” David said, and his praise jolted me back to the present, wiping a smile from the corners of my lips. “I have to admit that you’ve made major strides this week.”

Pride burned off my pleasure at his compliment. “I’m not an idiot, you know.”

He raised his hands, palms out, offering up a peaceful apology. “Why don’t you just take my compliment at face value?” he asked reasonably, settling back on the couch. “So. I’d suggest that you take it easy this afternoon. You might be surprised by the power drain from this morning. I suggest that you read a book, take a nap. Eat a light supper and get a good night’s sleep.”

Neko nodded helpfully. “At least the museum café should have a light supper. They serve a lot of salmon. Will you bring me some salmon?”

“Crap!” I had completely forgotten I was supposed to meet Haylee James at the National Gallery of Art. Where had the week gone? Oh, that’s right. I’d spent it with my warder and my familiar.

I glanced at my watch. It was twelve-thirty now. If I ate a quick lunch, I could still jump in the shower, dry my hair, throw on something elegantly casual and meet Haylee by two.

David shook his head.

“What?” I said.

“What do you and Nate have on the social calendar?”

“If you
must
know, I’m meeting Haylee James at the National Gallery of Art for a tour of their Renaissance collection.”

“Haylee!” I don’t think he would have been more surprised if I’d said I was meeting the president of France. He recovered quickly, though. “What could you possibly have in common with Haylee?”

“Aside from the fact that she’s a witch? And part of Teresa Alison Sidney’s Coven? And the only friend I have in the entire astral world?” I let the words drip with more sarcasm than a sixteen-year-old could muster when challenging her parents’ most unfair edicts on curfew.

David didn’t rise to my bait. His voice was deadly calm as he said, “Haylee James is not your friend.”

“How can you say that? You’ve never even seen us together!”

“I know Haylee. And I know you. Friendship would be the last thing on Haylee’s mind if she’s making plans with you.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say!” And the more I thought about it, the worse it was. Was David saying I wasn’t good enough to be friends with a witch as accomplished as Haylee? Or was he saying that she was too popular, too close to our Coven Mother to waste her time being friends with me? The options were opposing sides of the same coin, and I liked neither heads nor tails.

David grimaced. “Let’s just leave it that Haylee has said far more terrible things about me in the past. Said and done.”

“Aww,” I said, irrationally stung. First, David was trying to keep me from seeing Graeme/Nate. Now, he was interfering with my hard-earned friendship. I mimicked the most annoying baby tone I could contrive. “Did Haywee huwt your widdle feewings?”

I heard Neko’s jaw drop.

I had never challenged David so directly. He reacted to my ridicule instantly—his face snapped closed, and his jaw tightened like an iron brand. “Do
not
come to me when you have problems with Haylee James,” he said, and his voice was so low that I had to lean forward to make out his words. “Do
not
expect me to clean up the mess you are making.”

“Fine,” I said. He didn’t know that she was the only witch who talked to me at Coven gatherings. She was the only one of my so-called sisters who bothered to give me the time of day. He didn’t know, because he abandoned me every time we entered Teresa Alison Sidney’s home.

“Fine,” he repeated. He waited a long moment, as if he thought I would take back my word, but then he shrugged. “And so we’re done for the day.”

I showed him to the door without making any attempt to smooth things over.

Okay. So, there was no time to dry my hair. But if I hurried, I could still take a shower. And I could eat the Triscuits as I hailed a cab to the museum. The soda? I was better off without it anyway.

But I got my soda later that afternoon.

Haylee and I had wandered through the Renaissance painting sections of the museum. I was astonished by the collection—I hadn’t been to the National Gallery in over a decade. In fact, the last time I’d been there, I’d been on a school trip. The boys had stared at statues of naked babes, and the girls had made unkind comments about the dimensions of Rubens’s models. I remembered standing in the rotunda, looking up at the statue of winged Mercury and wondering why no one ever sent
me
any secret message.

Well, I was long on secrets now.

“So?” Haylee asked, as we sipped Coca-Cola over tiny ice cubes in the museum café. We had poured our beverages from little glass bottles—the nostalgia component seemed almost enough to justify the four-dollar cost. A steady stream of museum visitors filed by the gelato bar, and I reminded myself that I did not need a cup of straccitella to make it through the day. “What did you think?”

“I think I have a lot to learn,” I said. “I never realized how much information is…embedded in the world around me.”

There were hints to our witchy powers buried everywhere in the museum. The marble columns that sheltered the artwork were only the first harbingers of magic, creating a protective arch around the space, around the temple of humankind’s learning and accomplishments. I could sense further power in the flow of the Mercury fountain—in the round pool that centered the power of the museum’s protective dome.

And the artwork! Sure, I’d put in my time learning to parse symbolism in paintings. I’d suffered through Art 101 in college, mastering basic vocabulary and belaboring the meaning of the open window behind Mona Lisa’s shoulder. I’d served my sentence with Monet’s water lilies and Dali’s melting clocks.

But the paintings that Haylee had just shown me…I’d had no idea how much information was being conveyed in each and every brushstroke. “Just that peacock alone,” I said. “I could spend days working out what the artist meant.”

I was thinking of a round painting, one that had been created in Italy during the Renaissance and attributed to Fra Filippo Lippi. It was intended to be a presentation of the gifts of the Magi, the three wise kings adoring the Christ child. In the center of the panel, though, at the heart of the swirling imagery, a peacock stood on the roof of the manger.

I smiled at Haylee over my Coca-Cola. “I just can’t get over how wrong I was. I don’t know where I came up with the idea that the peacock was a vain bird, that it was silly because it showed off its tail.” There was more, something I couldn’t quite remember about the peacock. Something that lurked in the back of my mind, in my cluttered closet of academic knowledge.

“Oh, those stories
are
told. But that’s because people are afraid of beauty.” She said the words simply, as if she weren’t aware of the effect her gamine hair and her high cheekbones had on half the men who walked by while we drank our soda. No, those men weren’t
afraid
of beauty. They were attracted to it. Attracted to Haylee. She toyed with her Hecate’s Torch, fingering the charm on its silver chain. My fingers tingled as if I was the one touching the token.

“People are afraid of the things that they don’t understand,” I said. “The things that they can’t control.”

Haylee’s lips set in a grim line, and I had to lean closer to catch her words as she said, “That’s why we witches get such bad press. Oh, we’re amusing and fun at Halloween, when people can show us with warts on our noses and cobwebs in our hair. But ask about us at any other time of year, and you’re likely to hear about the evil eye. Spells. Charms. And witches burned at the stake for all the evil things we do.”

Well. I hadn’t expected the conversation to take quite so grim a turn. I cleared my throat and said, “The evil things we’re
alleged
to do.” I smiled, so that she’d know I wasn’t chiding her. So that she’d know I was her friend. Or trying to be one.

She fiddled with the wrapper from her straw. “Alleged.”