Sorcery and the Single Girl (19 page)

Money changed hands, and I cleared my throat, anxious to make my point before yet another customer could interrupt us. “It’s just that I feel like I’m lying,” I said, keeping my voice low enough that the Goths couldn’t hear me. Not that they’d be listening all that carefully. They seemed intent on breaking whatever law of physics said that two bodies couldn’t occupy the same point in space and time. I turned so I couldn’t be distracted by their acrobatics. “Lying to Neko
and
lying to Graeme.”

“‘Lying’ is a pretty strong word,” Melissa said. I could see she intended to fight me on this. I should have waited to bring it up. The whole long-term life plan thing must really be bothering her. And the fact that Neko’s current boyfriend was another stop on her long road of dating failure only heightened her resistance. I gritted my teeth. I was sorry about Jacques—I really was. And I was sorry about the octopus Dedicated, and sorry about every other bad date Melissa had ever suffered. But I didn’t think it was fair for her to put the kibosh on my own happiness.

I opened my mouth to tell her so, but the damned bakery door opened yet again. As Melissa served up four Cinnamon Blondes to go, I held back a pointed comment about the bakery’s constant patrons. When the harried young mother added the pasteboard box to her shopping bags, I almost offered to open her umbrella for her, to get her out of the shop and back into the rain. My fingers twitched, eager to turn the sign around on the door, change it from Walk On In to Walk On By.

Instead, I delved back into my argument, no, my
discussion
with Melissa. “It does feel like lying,” I insisted. She continued to look unmoved. “I’m hiding a pretty essential truth. How would you feel if I hadn’t told you about Graeme?”

“But you did tell me. You had to. I’m your best friend.”

My sigh of exasperation threatened to burst into an angry shout as yet another crowd of customers came in. There were four this time, and each wanted a complicated coffee drink, along with one of Melissa’s trademark sweets. As the inevitable clanging and banging began, I forced myself to stop thinking about the Friendship Test, to set aside my frustration with Melissa. Today just wasn’t the day.

Besides, I had plenty of other things to worry about. I glanced at her calendar again. October sixth. I had three and a half weeks left. Twenty-five days until Samhain. Until I was tested by the Coven. Of course, if I lost my books and Neko in the testing, then I’d hardly have to worry about divulging the secret identity of my boyfriend.

“There!” Melissa exclaimed, and I realized we were once again alone at the counter.

“What?” I looked over my shoulder.

“You were doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Zoning out. Going somewhere. Dropping out.”

I hunched my shoulders defensively. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You get this look in your eyes. Like you’re staring inside instead of outside.”

I forced myself to smile. “No great inside/outside going on here. I’m just trying to enjoy a great cup of tea.”

“You don’t even like Earl Grey that much. Listen, you’ve got to stop dwelling on things.”

She was one to talk. “I’m not dwelling!” I realized how loud my voice had gotten, and I glanced at the Goths. I was only marginally comforted by the fact that they were busy testing each other’s tattoos for secret Braille messages.

“You
are
dwelling. You’re stewing. Look. Keeping Graeme a secret from Neko is not that big of a deal. It’s not like you and that cat-freak are lovers or anything.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say!”

This time, the Goths did look over their shoulders, staring at me as if I was a madwoman in some bizarre zoo. The boy whispered something to the girl, and she nuzzled his neck. By apparent mutual agreement, they gathered up their leather jackets and braved the great outdoors, leaving behind cups, stirrers and a litter of extra sugar packets.

Melissa clicked her tongue. “Come on,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It’s just that you’ve become so distant. Sometimes I feel that if we didn’t have the Friendship Test, we wouldn’t have any friendship at all.”

“I’m not distant. I’ve been busy!”

Melissa cocked one eyebrow at me—a gesture that always made me jealous, because I couldn’t do it.

“I have been!” I said. “Nothing’s changed between us. It’s not like we’ve stopped being friends or anything. You’re exaggerating, to justify your stupid test.”

“All right,” she said, spreading out a hand towel on the glass-fronted refrigerated case. “Tell me what I’ve got inside here.”

“What?” Her question made no sense.

“Yeah. It’s a Friday afternoon, and you’ve been standing here for over an hour. If you’ve paid any attention to me, to what’s important to me, you’ll have an idea of what I’ve got in the case.”

I didn’t have the slightest idea what was underneath the towel. “That’s ridiculous,” I said.

“Come on. Don’t stall. You usually notice right off the bat.”

“I’ve usually heard you talking about it, all week long.”

“That’s my point, exactly.”

Oh.

I closed my eyes, trying to remember what I’d seen when I’d walked into the bakery. Nothing. I didn’t have any image in my mind, no thoughts at all.

I thought about nudging behind the towel with my witchcraft. I should be able to do
something.
Maybe a mirror spell, working off of the chrome finish on the sides of the refrigerated case…

I glanced at Melissa’s set jaw, and I realized that using my powers would only make things worse. Well, I knew her repertoire. I could make a guess—an educated one. Like best friends make.

“Hazelnut Claires de la Lune, Latin Lemon Merengues and Savory Basil Crèmes.”

“Wrong, wrong and wrong!” Melissa shook her finger at me with each incorrect guess. She was really angry. Really, truly hurt. And when she pulled back the towel, I began to understand why.

Devil’s Nips—rum-drenched chocolate truffles.

Lime Stars—miniature key lime tarts, built on star-shaped pastry.

Mint Pillows—mint-infused meringue floating on a bed of homemade chocolate pudding.

Rum, lime and mint. The ingredients of mojitos, our bonding cocktail of choice.

Melissa’s voice shook as she said, “The rum would have kept, but the limes were drying out. The oil in their rinds only last so long. And the mint was absolutely on its last legs.”

“Oh, Melissa,” I said, suddenly realizing how much I had missed our evenings together. How long had it been? Over three weeks.

And then, before I could justify everything I’d been doing, before I could explain about Haylee and Renaissance art and the Kennedy Center and the centerstone—if I even
could
explain about the centerstone—the door to the bakery opened yet again.

This time, it was a mother with two adorable children, both under the age of five. Both barely able to see the baked riches spread out on the counter and in the glass case. Both afflicted with a terrible case of indecision, as they weighed the relative merits of Lemon Bears versus Chocolate Dreams, with the Mint Pillows thrown in for good, guilty measure.

I waited for the mother to chivy them along, but she seemed in no hurry. I waited for Melissa to make some excuse, so that she could at least turn back to me, at least acknowledge my awkward discomfort. I waited for the children to make up their minds—this wasn’t the last time the two kids were ever going to eat!

And when another minute ticked by, and another, and another, I realized that I couldn’t wait anymore. I couldn’t stand there as if nothing was wrong. I couldn’t hang out, and try to come up with an apology that would mean something.

I felt trapped. And that made me angry.

I shoved my tea mug back on the counter, and I gathered up my soggy umbrella. Melissa flashed me a “wait” look, but I only shrugged. What good would it do for me to wait? What could I really say, to justify myself? Why should I
have
to justify myself, when I had so many other things going on? And how the hell was Melissa worried about her long-term savings when she had so many customers that a friend couldn’t get a word in edgewise?

When I got to the door, I turned back, but Melissa was smiling down at the indecisive little girl. The Devil’s Nips glared at me from the refrigerated case, like baleful eyes witnessing my departure.

I stomped out onto the cobblestones, my feet slipping in the sodden remains of a pile of leaves. I cursed and forced myself to walk a little more gingerly. I had been right to leave. I needed a friend who had time to listen to
me.
Time to help. Not someone who sublimated her passive-aggressiveness into freaking baked goods.

I ducked into the lobby of the giant Barnes & Noble store on the corner. While my umbrella dripped onto my shoes, I reached deep in my purse, digging until I found my cell phone. I punched in Graeme’s number, taking a perverse pleasure that I remembered the digits, that I didn’t need to rely on the phone’s memory. I didn’t have any idea what time it was in London, but this was an emergency. I needed to hear his voice.

One ring. Two. Three. Four.

His answering machine. I swore under my breath and hung up. No reason to leave him a message. No reason to tell him I’d just had a fight with my best friend. A fight that she wasn’t even fighting.

Before I flipped the phone closed, I got another idea. I scrolled back through recent calls I had placed. Sure enough, the number was still there, from when I had called to confirm our earlier meeting.

“Haylee?” I said when she answered on the second ring. “It’s Jane. I know it’s short notice, but I was wondering if you were free to join me for dinner tonight?”

W
ell, at least the rain had stopped falling.

Not that I could be certain, locked away in my basement, kept company by no one but my warder and my familiar. David had insisted that we extinguish the overhead lights for our all-day Saturday session—we needed to distance ourselves from the modern world and focus on ancient power. Blah, blah, blah.

We’d already burned through one set of six tapers, tall dripless candles that had been brand-new when we started. I had just replaced them in the matched silver candlesticks that were part of my collection of witchy books, magic wands and other artifacts. Part of the collection that would be forfeit to the Coven if I failed to set the centerstone.

Let’s face it—I enjoyed a romantic candlelit dinner as much as the next girl, but this was a little ridiculous. There was nothing romantic about trying to read by candlelight. In fact, in the past several hours, I had gained a healthy respect for Abraham Lincoln. I wouldn’t have lasted one week, doing school homework by firelight. Our former president supposedly made it through
years,
studying in his log cabin.

That was then. This was now. My fingers itched to turn on the Sylvania 60-watts above our head.

“You need to concentrate,” David said.

“You’ve been saying that for hours,” I groused. Neko winced and shifted a little farther away from me, as if he didn’t want to be caught in the backlash of my warder’s anger.

“You’ve needed to do it for hours.” David sighed and pushed back from the table. “This isn’t just some theoretical study, you know. That jasper egg was real. That e-mail was a threat. You need to know how to defend yourself magically.”

“I know,” I said automatically. I wasn’t going to tell him about the three other e-mail messages I’d received, all with similar pictures and messages. I knew that self-defense was important. I needed to learn how to protect myself from ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties. And things that go bump in the night.

But really. How many consecutive hours could one girl spend studying?

My stomach rumbled, and I cringed with embarrassment. My lunchtime peanut butter and jelly sandwich seemed a long time ago. Even
if
I had eaten a huge dinner with Haylee the night before.

She had agreed to meet me for supper, and after a bit of back and forth, we’d decided to get together in the city. Between the rain and my nonconfrontation with Melissa, I was feeling deeply in need of comfort food, so we descended on Café La Ruche, a French bistro just off Georgetown’s main street. I started with French onion soup and moved on to spicy lamb sausages, all served with fresh, crusty baguettes. There was no need to observe First Date Rules of dining decorum—it wasn’t like I needed to worry about looking foolish as I struggled with strands of melted cheese from the soup. Or at least, I didn’t worry very much.

Haylee and I weren’t through talking when we finished our main courses, so we ordered dessert (chocolate mousse for her, a homemade apple dumpling for me, complete with caramel sauce and fresh whipped cream.) I actually found myself quite pleased with my ability to smother my sorrows in a blanket of fat.

I’d told Haylee about my spat with Melissa, and she’d confirmed that my bakery-obsessed friend was out of her mind. There was no need to expand a business that was so busy the owner couldn’t find five minutes to converse with a friend.

Haylee had asked me about how things were going with Graeme. I told her that he was out of town, and that I was going a bit insane waiting for him to get back. She’d laughed knowingly. Sympathetically. No,
empathetically,
as if she knew how hard it was to wait for a loved one to return.

And there was something else.

Haylee taught me a new spell.

It had started as a joke. We’d wanted to linger at our table, long after ordinary customers would have paid their tabs and left. When the waiter came by to refill our mugs of tea for the fourth time, Haylee had touched his wrist with one of her long, perfectly manicured fingers, cupping her Torch with her other hand and muttering a few words under her breath. “We’ll call you if we need you,” she said.

I watched as he blinked, confused and unbalanced for just a moment. When he stepped back from our table, he stumbled, as if he’d been sleeping on his feet. Haylee repeated her touch and the hastily spoken spell when the hostess stopped by to see if we needed anything, and again when the manager drifted over to see why we were lingering for hours. Each person who approached us left with a dazed look and an inability to remember that we were sitting at the table.

Which wasn’t a problem until we tried to pay our bill. I attempted to catch the waiter’s eye, with no luck whatsoever. I waved to the hostess. I actually reached out to touch the manager’s sleeve. At that last gesture, Haylee had laughed. “Don’t worry,” she’d said. “You can’t reach them.”

And we’d left—like high school kids skipping out on a meal of burgers and fries. I’d felt totally guilty but also strangely thrilled by the power. In fact, my fingers tingled when Haylee accidentally brushed against them, our hands meeting in mid-air after I tried to flag down the manager. “How long will they be like that?” I’d asked, before we parted ways by Haylee’s Mini Cooper.

“Until I release the spell. I’ll do it before I go to sleep tonight.” I frowned, uncomfortable with the notion of shoplifting an evening’s food and drink. Haylee’s laugh was clear as the rain-freshened air. “Don’t worry, silly. They’ll be good as new in the morning.”

I waved as she drove off, but then I sneaked back into the restaurant to leave some cash on our table. There’d been no need to sneak, though. No one noticed me at all, and our dishes were still sitting on the abandoned tabletop. I had sighed and told myself that someone would be able to notice the money in the morning.

“There,” David said, jerking me back to the present. “You were doing it again.”

Wasn’t that exactly what Melissa had said the day before? “I was not.” I sounded like a stubborn toddler, and I waited for David to dig in with a suitably immature “Was, too.” Neko seemed to anticipate something equally sophisticated; his entire face tightened as if he’d received too many Botox injections.

Our brilliant banter was interrupted by a deep vibration, a thrum that shook the entire basement room. I glanced up nervously. “It must be raining again. Thunder.”

Neko shook his head sharply, and I was reminded of a real cat’s predatory concentration. He climbed to his feet and paced behind my chair, taking a couple of tight, controlled steps in each direction.

And then, I realized that the “thunder” had not stopped. The low growl continued, barely at the edge of my hearing. It sounded as if the entire house was humming, as if the stone foundation beneath the cottage was vibrating. The note was deep enough that I wasn’t certain I could hear it with my ears, but my body had no doubt. I felt it in my bones.

And it was getting closer.

Or larger. Or louder. Or more ominous. Something.

I glanced at David, hoping he was ready to laugh off the vibrating threat. My warder, though, offered no hint of comfort.

Instead, he stood on the other side of the table. His feet were planted solidly on the ornate silk carpet; he looked as if he had coalesced from its swirling design. His hands hung loose at his sides, his fingers extended downward. I tried to tell myself that if we were in real danger, if something truly threatened us from the astral plane, he would clench his fingers into fists.

But then I realized that I’d never seen David make a fist. He channeled energy when he worked as a warder. He guided flows of power. He needed his hands relaxed, available to direct anything that came his way. Even when he had encountered the sword-wielding guard at the safehold, he had kept his body loose. Alert, but loose. Like he was now.

The noise—if it really was a noise—grew stronger. I could feel it now with my entire body, feel it the same way that my eyes saw, that my ears heard. It was oppressive and large, like a wave of power rolling over the house.

But it wasn’t a wave. It didn’t rise and fall back. It didn’t ebb and flow.

It only grew stronger. Steadier. Pushing like a crowbar against a padlock hasp.

This was magic. Magic I had never seen before. Magic I could not measure, could not predict. I tried not to picture it as a wall of carved jasper, blood-red stone cut through with jagged black lines.

“Neko,” I said, gesturing sharply. He quivered, but he obeyed, coming to stand by my left side. I settled my fingertips on his shoulder, leaning against him and immediately feeling the familiar augmentation as he bolstered my powers, as the lens of his inherent abilities mirrored my strength back on itself, focusing my magic desires, my goals.

I tried to distract the vibrating force, to change its direction, break its concentration. There wasn’t anything to touch, but I raised my hands in front of me, splaying my fingers wide.

I could feel the pressure of the malevolent force, sense it with my body and my mind. I imagined my fingers pushing against it, forcing into a doughy solid. Not stone. Not jasper. Anything but jasper.

There was a familiarity about the energy, a vaguely discernible
recognition
that let me move into even closer contact. I melded with the wall of power more closely than I would have thought possible. It felt like a physical thing, an object I could push against, that I could move.

I glanced at Neko, making sure he was close enough for me to draw on. His almond eyes were huge in his face, and his cheeks were pale. He stared at me steadily, without blinking. It seemed that he had stopped breathing.

David, too, was completely still. Watchful. Ready. Waiting to see what I could do with my powers. Waiting for me to save us from whatever this strange attack might be.

I took three breaths to calm myself. I touched my forehead, to offer up the strength of my thoughts. I touched my throat, to offer up the power of my astral voice. I touched my heart, to offer up the devotion of my spirit. I took a deep breath, and I declaimed the words Haylee had whispered in the restaurant the night before:

 

Looking, thinking, sensing—be

Elsewhere, somewhere, someplace. Free

Your mind from what you see here,

Let your thoughts be empty, all clear.

Turn away.

Turn away.

Turn away.

 

There was a flash of darkness.

It was the same flare of power I’d experienced countless times in the past, but it seemed all the more dramatic for our surroundings. For just an instant, everything in the basement—the basement itself—disappeared. The six newlit candles were sucked into darkness, even the orange afterglows of their wicks extinguished into nothingness.

There was darkness, but more than that. There was a complete and utter lack of sensation. My entire body ceased to be. I could not hear the sharp panting of my breath, feel the drumbeat of my heart. I could not smell the nervous perspiration that pricked beneath my arms, could not feel Neko’s shoulder, could not see David’s rigid warder body, interposed against the vibrating threat.

And then sensation flooded back, rushing in with a purity and a power that made me stagger. The candles guttered as if a tornado had passed overhead. My ears were filled with the sound of my own heart, galloping as if I’d just stumbled across the finish line of the Marine Corps Marathon. I tasted salt at the back of my throat, and I realized that I’d bitten my tongue.

The vibration was gone.

The oppressive force had dissipated, shattered into a million shards. I could sense their remnants, glimpse them from the edges of my witchy senses, like fog drifting away after sunrise. I struggled to gather up a handful, to study the ghostly remains, to figure out who had attacked us and why.

Before I could succeed, though, David stumbled and fell to his knees. He gripped his head with both hands and rocked back and forth. Even before I ran to his side, I could see he was trembling, shaking like a man caught in a fever.

“Oh my God,” I said. “Neko! Turn on the lights!”

I blinked as the overhead bulbs burst on. David flinched and buried his face in his hands, moaning like the wind around an abandoned castle’s towers. I gripped his wrists, held them tightly, willing strength and power and calm into my warder. Neko crouched beside us, glancing rapidly from my face to David’s.

“David!” I said, desperately hoping he retained enough reason to answer me. “What should I do? How can I help you?”

“Wait. A. Minute.” With a superhuman effort, he stiffened his fingers, raised them from his face. He let me move his hands into my lap, cradling them gently. His lips were gray; all the color had drained from his flesh, leaving terrifying, bruised-looking pools beneath his eyes. If I hadn’t known better, I would have bet good money that he’d been ill for weeks, that he’d been recovering from the worst of the flu, bronchitis and pneumonia combined.

“Let’s get you upstairs,” I said matter-of-factly, needing to do something, anything, to set things to rights. “Neko, put his right arm around your shoulder.”

I wouldn’t have sounded so calm if I had realized what a task I proposed. One witch with no upper-body strength and a familiar who spent more time at a hair salon than at the gym were nearly outmatched by a fit, well-muscled warder. The diet books always said that muscle weighed more than fat, and David seemed determined to prove the rule.

I don’t think we induced more than half a dozen bruises by knocking him against the stair railing on our way up. And his head was certainly already aching when Neko let it bang, hard, against the door frame. And he honestly wasn’t any paler than he had been by the time we dropped him on the sofa, wrestled his shoes off, and manhandled his feet up onto the couch.

“Run downstairs and blow out the candles,” I said to Neko. “I’m just going to get a damp towel from the kitchen.”

By the time I returned with the towel in one hand and a glass of water in the other, David had pulled himself up into something resembling a sitting position. He winced as he leaned back against the sofa’s arm, but I had to admit he looked better than he had in the awkward position Neko and I had managed. He took the glass of water and swallowed with painful-looking bobs of his throat, but he batted my hand away when I tried to wipe the towel across his face.