by Mindy Klasky
Every last item, including Neko. He was part of the Osgood collection. When Teresa had stolen everything in Blanton House, she would come for my familiar. She would come for my friend.
My witches’ power was stretched to the breaking point. Our familiars were drained.
But there was other magic in the world.
There were warders. Warders who bore their own magic. Warders who worked by their own rules, folding space, raising cordons, binding and releasing weapons.
How many times had I skated past David’s astral strength, confident that it was offered to my benefit, for my protection, never caring more for what it did? How many times had I accepted a mysteriously found parking space, a full pantry to ground me after workings, a charm against rain or wind or cold?
David had been my first teacher, my only teacher. I had learned the shape of his powers by instinct, absorbing them at the same time I learned about my own.
Now he crouched beside me where Ethan had tossed him, head lowered to one knee as he reeled from the other warder’s final blow. His lungs worked like bellows. He moaned, long and low, despair drawing out a single note into a dirge.
I settled my hand on his shoulder, fingertips reaching for the pulse in his neck. “Trust me,” I thought, pushing the words deep, past his fury with Ethan, past his hurt, his exhaustion, his shame.
I pulled back a little of my power from the web I held with my students. Teresa’s dome responded by bulging out, by expanding to capture another yard of earth.
Emma panicked; I felt her concentration shatter, and the cool silver of her powers began to leak out of our web. Everyone else did their best to dam the flow, and I took advantage of the shift to pull back another skein of gold.
In my mind, I shaped my magic into a vessel, a stemmed cup that shimmered in reflected light. Still counting out David’s racing pulse, I extended my powers, pushing past our warder-witch bond.
At first, he resisted. His reflexes were trained to clamp down, to shut me out, to cut off any intruder. I shifted my hand on his shoulder, though, moving my palm to rest against the vulnerable side of his neck.
He fought back for a moment, warrior’s body and mind refusing to yield. But then he relaxed beside me, issuing a conscious instruction to his clenched jaw, to his fisted fingers. I flashed a single burst of gratitude, and then I pushed deeper, past the dissipating walls of his conscious decisions, beyond the actions that made him the man I loved.
There. At the heart of his awareness. At the core of his being. The sphere was the size of my fist, the size of a human heart. It was steel grey and covered in spikes.
This was the heart of David’s power. This was the steely authority I’d recognized the first night he came to my doorstep, borne on the wings of a storm, drawn by my reckless use of magic. This was his warder’s energy, the steady stream of logic that he applied, sorting through threats, separating real from perceived. This was the masculine magic David had focused on Norville Pitt, on maps and pins and strings, as he fought to save me, fought to save Hecate’s Court, even when it didn’t want to be saved.
I clutched my astral goblet, and touched gold to steel. I collected a trickle of pure warder’s magic.
Discordant music jangled, an arpeggio played on the black keys of a piano, mysterious in its haunting familiarity. David poured off more of his power, filling my cup. I spun out the energy by reflex, twining gold and steel together into a single, solid thread.
Neko waited at the edge of my awareness. I passed the strand to him, bracing as he stumbled. He was startled by the weight, by the texture. Warder’s magic might be manipulated like witch’s magic, it might be gathered and spun and woven, but there was no disguising its masculine base, its solid, man-made core, so different from a witch’s natural force.
Neko recovered faster than I thought he could. He braced himself and cast the gilded steel to Hani. Of course, a distant part of my mind calculated. He knows Hani best, knows him through Tony, through the time he’s spent with his lover.
Hani nodded as he caught the astral stream. He hefted it in one hand before tossing it all the way across the circle, to Seta. David’s steel began to seep into the net we’d already fashioned. It became a rib, a support for everything we’d already built. Seta handed off the energy to Nuri, and another brace was formed.
By then, Raven was reaching out for Tony. She rested his hand on her hip, the better to balance both of them. She tossed her hair and closed her eyes; I could only imagine the images she was receiving from Hani, the instructions Neko must be feeding all the familiars across their private, silent network.
Within a minute, Hani offered up a bronze bar accompanied by the a crash of thunder, both manifestations of the jagged energy I’d come to know as Tony’s. This time, he threw his finding to Majom, an easy under-handed pass. The boy laughed and lobbed it to Perd.
Caleb’s power entered the mix, a sleek pewter thread spun out with the crackle of a warming fire. Luke’s was next, the easy coil of well-worked leather bound up with the cry of a hunting eagle. Garth was last of all, an uneven onyx strand. It broke once, twice, three times before it held, along with an acid chord on an electric guitar.
But those mishaps didn’t matter. As we witches harvested our warders’ energy, we fed it into our mix, bolstering our own innate power. Our web tightened. Our net sank over Teresa’s dome, weighted down with warder’s magic.
The Coven Mother managed one last push, one desperate effort to cast us off. But we renewed our power ten-fold, siphoning off warder’s magic as if we’d worked with it for decades.
Leaving my right hand on David’s throat, I raised my left, commanding the attention of every one of my allies. I counted off—one, two, three. And then I clenched my fingers into a tight fist. In that same instant, we all hauled back on our powers, tightening our net around the dome.
With a thunderous crack, the cordon shattered, exposing nine startled witches, nine panicked familiars, and nine hopeless, helpless enemy warders.
CHAPTER 20
For one lingering moment, I thought I’d been struck deaf.
Then, there was an explosion of sound. Teresa’s witches gathered close around her, tugging at their familiars as if they were trying to rescue wayward children. Nine warders, Ethan included, circled around, clutching their weapons.
But it was hard to be intimidated by men who were afraid to set their feet flat upon the ground.
The warders could sense the magic that had been used against them, the different strands of steel and bronze, of pewter and leather and onyx. Even if they could not work out what my witches had done, how we’d cast our spell, they knew they’d been bested by a terrifying opponent, by their own breed of magic turned against them in ways they’d never seen before.
My own students gathered beside me. I heard Gran muttering to Clara, insisting she was all right, that she didn’t need to sit down, that she was perfectly fit to stand on her own two feet. Bree took a quick inventory like a battlefield general, tallying up our injuries.
Emma stared at our assembled enemies, her face slack with disbelief. “Maria Hernandez,” she whispered, not bothering to fake an English accent. I followed her gaze to one of Teresa’s allies, a tall woman with angular cheekbones, with sweat-slicked black hair that fell straight down her back.
The name brought a scoff from Raven. Clara raised her voice across the safehold. “Why, Maria?”
The other woman sighed, expelling a weariness that seemed embedded in her bones. “The NWTA.” She narrowed her eyes at me, a look that would have been a glare if she’d retained an ounce of strength. “I lost three good witches to that one. My nucleus was breaking up. If I didn’t do something, I’d be left with nothing. Weak witches. Gutless followers. Tentacles alone.”
Raven snorted in disgust. Maria’s face hardened to stone, but she didn’t try to explain further.
I used the heavy silence to look at Teresa’s other allies. I recognized a couple of them from the
case David had built against Pitt. Julie Harton, the Kansas City Coven Mother who had bribed Pitt for her title. Margery Shoreham, the Dallas Coven Mother who had paid off the conniving Pitt when he threatened to disclose her willingness to purchase a truckload of sham spellbooks.
Cassie, my former student. Her freckled face was stunned as she leaned against Zach. Tupa crouched between them, pressing against their knees.
“Why?” I asked her. “What did I ever do to you?”
“Nothing,” she said. The single word was dull as sandstone.
“But why would you do this?” I gestured toward the centerstone, toward the jumble of objects stolen from the vault. I waved toward Zach’s broken arm. “Why would you work for Pitt and Teresa?”
Cassie’s hand fell to Tupa’s head, and I wasn’t sure she was aware of her action as she stroked his tight curls. She spoke to the ground beneath her feet. “Pitt said I had to.” Her whisper was soft enough that I had to step closer to make out her words. “Otherwise he’d take away Zach. He’d take away my warder.”
Zach’s good hand closed on her shoulder. In that gesture, I saw the entire story, the one Cassie wasn’t brave enough to tell. She’d fallen in love with her warder, against tradition, against the rules of Hecate’s Court. She’d been too afraid to take a stand; they’d been too afraid together.
And Pitt had somehow learned about their indiscretion. He’d preyed on their fear. He’d forced one little action—applying to the Academy, no doubt. And then he’d demanded more. The satyr, whose brutal attack had only confirmed that Cassie was wrong for what she’d done, corrupt for loving her warder.
I couldn’t help but look at David. He had also tried to follow the Court’s strictures when we’d first met. He’d kissed me once, then pushed me away, told me that we could not follow through on our attraction. But we’d built on our bond, built on our trust. And we’d decided—together—that some things were worth defying authority. Love was worth taking a stand.
I shook my head as Cassie huddled in misery. “And Teresa?” I asked. “How did you come to work for her?”
“She found out what I did for Pitt. She sensed him when she helped you banish the satyr. He told her about me.”
Cassie had caved to one blackmailer. It must have been easier to succumb to another. After all, Teresa hadn’t threatened any witch’s life. She’d only gone after things.
I turned to the Washington Coven Mother. “And you? What was Pitt holding over you?”
Teresa stared me down with chilly pride. “Nothing.”
“But you joined forces with him a year ago. You did your best to keep the Court from issuing the Academy’s charter.”
“Yes,” she said, the single word perfectly toneless.
“You worked with Pitt to set impossible goals for my magicarium.”
“Yes.” She could have been testifying before the Court, for the bareness of her answers, for her refusal to explain, to justify.
“You conspired with Pitt to bring us down with monsters.”
“No!” Teresa’s sudden shout was full of anger. “I had nothing to do with the monsters. I told Pitt he went too far. The satyr, the orthros, the harpy—they were designed to maim, to kill. That might have been Pitt’s plan, but I never wanted that. Never.”
“What did you want?”
Teresa gaped at me, her face slack with astonishment. “You have to ask? After all these years? I wanted my property. I wanted the Osgood collection returned to me.”
“You never had it!”
“The Osgood collection was squarely located in my territory for over a century. It should have belonged to my witches. It should have enriched my coven. But you stole it away the instant it was uncovered.”
“The collection called me, Teresa. It summoned me to that cottage in Georgetown. It taught me to awaken Neko. Territory isn’t ownership. You have no claim. You never did. You’re just a liar and a fraud and a thief.”
Her eyes narrowed, and I saw her brace to deliver her killing blow. “Call me whatever you want, Jane Madison. But you are outcast from Hecate forever. And you’ve destroyed every single witch you let work with you tonight.”
But I had always told the truth. To Neko, when he appeared on this goddess-forsaken patch of lawn. To my students, through my trusted warder. The women and men who stood with me had known precisely what they paid to bring down Teresa Alison Sidney.
“We are not banished from Hecate,” I said. “We are banished from the Court of Hecate. We are cast out from covens and magicaria, from institutions of magic so corrupt that we could never bear to stay within them.”
As I spoke, I sent out a tendril to Neko, confirming that he’d regained some strength after our battle, that he could offer me a basic familiar’s service. He shifted in the crowd behind me, just enough for me I could feel his arm brush against mine.
I reached out to David, too, tugging on our witch-warder bond to show him what I meant to do. I didn’t ask his permission, didn’t need his consent. But I was grateful, all the same, when he gave me the sparest nod.
Turning my attention back to Teresa, I saw a flicker of fear cross her face. She wasn’t an idiot. Far from it—she was the shrewdest adversary I’d faced since I’d become a witch. She knew my momentary lapse in speech could not be an accident. She knew I was planning something.
But she seemed to have forgotten that I was the witch who had set her centerstone. I had poured my magic into the core of her safehold, relying on herbcraft and runes, on ancient knowledge and newly fashioned spells. I had longed for acceptance from Teresa, from the entire Washington Coven. I had been willing to invest anything to belong.
Almost anything. Not the Osgood collection. And not, in the end, my dignity.
I spun out a cord of energy, a golden rope long enough to encircle the centerstone. Before Teresa could measure my intention, before she could react, I tightened the cord, cinching it close about the marble.
“Teresa Alison Sidney, you accuse me of taking what you wish was yours. But you’re the one who has taken. You stole my power and the power of my students. You plundered the Osgood collection. But your thieving vortexes weren’t the first time you took what didn’t belong to you. You harvested my magic under false pretenses the night you had me set your cornerstone.”
As I uttered the last syllable—stone—I cinched my energy tighter, tugging with all the frustration of three long years, with the sorrow of a social outcast, with the shame of a woman betrayed. I drove my energy through the golden strands, reaching out to the spells I’d set inside the centerstone, to the magic that I’d used to secure the heart of the Washington Coven. Clutching at the power that suffused the marble, I broke it into countless shards.
Too late, Teresa cried out. But I had already used the backlash of my golden rope, spreading the power into a shimmering blanket. I gathered up my ancient rowan and ash wand, my bag of jade runes, a stack of leather-bound books that threatened to tumble to the dusty ground beneath the centerstone that was no more.
And when all the pilfered items were safe within my arms, I sent out one last lick of power, blazing toward the shrunken mouth of Teresa’s swirling vortex. The stolen power of that whirlwind belonged to me. It broke apart the instant it sensed a command from its proper source.
As sparks flew across the clearing, David’s hands settled on my shoulders. I leaned back into his competent, confident touch, and I let him carry me away from Teresa Alison Sidney and the Coven Mothers, and their broken familiars and warders, and everything they had done in their failed attempt to destroy me.
~~~
I blinked hard as I materialized back to physical existence.
I expected to find myself in the parlor at Blanton House, or maybe the basement, surrounded by my students and their supporters. But instead, we’d all emerged in an antiseptic hallway. A mottled linoleum floor stretched for miles beneath fluorescent lights. Portraits lined the walls, austere men and women in somber black robes.
“The Night Court of the Eastern Empire?” I asked David, squelching a chill. I’d spent too much time that day in a different courthouse, called before a judicial body that had betrayed me. But the Eastern Empire was separate from Hecate’s Court. It was where David and I had come to find evidence of Pitt’s crimes, to find records of his monsters terrorizing other supernatural creatures.
David nodded, but his answer was directed to everyone. “We’re outcast now. Beyond the reach of Hecate’s Court. We’re fair game for any supernatural creature that wants our powers, our possessions. The best thing to do is file an Affidavit of Citizenship with the Empire.”
I trusted him. I’d always trust him. But I had to ask, “Why? What does that do?”
“It transfers your allegiance from the world of witchcraft to the wider world of supernatural creatures. All supernatural creatures.”
“Oh,” Clara breathed. “Are there fairies?”
I rolled my eyes. Everyone knew there was no such thing as fairies.
“Yes,” David said, raising a murmur among the others. “Fairies, gnomes, boggarts.”
“Next you’ll be saying there are vampires out there,” Alex scoffed. Her eyeliner had run down her cheeks in the course of our battle, and she looked like a prisoner behind streaky black bars.
But I knew the truth. I’d seen vampires a year ago, when I’d first met the Night Court’s clerk. “There are vampires,” I said.
David rubbed a hand over his face. “You can read entire encyclopedias about the citizens of the Eastern Empire. And the bottom line is, joining the Empire means you might be sued by any of them. But not joining means any witch in the world can use Hecate’s Court against you. From this day forward, you can’t appear before Hecate’s Court, ever. You’ll forfeit any case brought against you there. But if you complete an Affidavit of Independence, any witch who wants to take action against you has to do it here. In the Night Court of the Eastern Empire.”