by Mindy Klasky
“What?” I asked, and this time some of my fear came out as anger. “What is it? Is the Coven back? Are they ruining my collection because I wouldn’t share it with them?”
David shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “Nothing quite that simple.”
Simple! I wanted to shout. There was nothing simple about this! Someone had bespelled my cottage, my collection. Someone was attacking me, and I didn’t have the first idea who. Or why. Or how. I didn’t know anything at all.
“What, then?” I asked. “If it isn’t the Coven, what is it?” I heard the panic rising in my voice. I’d had a difficult enough time holding my own against my fellow witches last year. If David had the nerve to say now that that confrontation had been simple…. I was afraid I wouldn’t have the fortitude to face whatever he said next.
But David didn’t answer. My faithful warder didn’t give me a simple response, easy words that would still the pounding of my heart, that would make the metallic taste fade away at the back of my throat.
Instead, he shook his head and sat down at my kitchen table. The scrape of the metal-legged chair against my linoleum floor echoed the irritation in my brain. What was it? What was he not telling me? This must be something truly terrible, if he had to sit to tell me the news. I searched for a sign on his face, for any hint of meaning, but I could read nothing there. His smooth features formed a mask, like the blue cotton a surgeon hides behind before he tells exhausted, anxious loved ones that the worst has happened in the operating room.
That was it. David was going to say that my magic was killing me. He was going to tell me that I must stop practicing, that I had to give up all the arcane goods in my basement. He was going to explain that the collection was dangerous to me, that there was nothing to do but cut it out, destroy it, make one final brave effort to save my tragically shortened life.
“Do you have another glass?” he asked, looking meaningfully at the pitcher by Melissa’s hand.
Okay. Maybe he wasn’t going to give me dire medical-magical news.
Melissa, clearly unaware that I was halfway down the road to writing my last—and first—will and testament, shook herself back to life and poured, both for David and for Neko. My familiar, apparently taking his cue from David’s bemused approach, busied himself with excavating the darkest reaches of my refrigerator. So much for the bare-larder advantages of having Neko move out.
As if he could sense my blossoming disapproval, he moved quickly, pouncing on a brick of cheddar cheese and half a wheel of Gouda that I had hidden behind some ancient whole-wheat tortillas. “What?” he asked, when he caught my accusing glance. “You’re going to hold back food at a time like this?”
“A time like this?” I repeated dryly. “I don’t have the faintest idea what this time is like.” Of course, Neko refused to recognize the warning in my glare. Instead, he actually whistled as he placed the cheese on a plate, and then he began to ransack my cupboards for Triscuits and water biscuits.
“David!” I exclaimed, as my warder cut a substantial slice of cheddar and covered two crackers. “Stop!”
“What?” He shrugged. “You know that he’ll eat all of it, if we don’t help ourselves.”
“I’m not talking about cheese!” I looked at Melissa, waiting for her to back me up. She didn’t throw herself into my corner, though. Instead, she cocked her head to one side, studied the snacks arrayed before her, and helped herself to a handful of crackers. When I harrumphed my disbelief, she merely quirked one eyebrow, in that annoying way that she could, as if to say, “What do you want from me?”
I pounded the table hard enough that a dollop of mojito sloshed out of my glass. “What is happening to me, David? What’s going on in that basement?”
“Nothing,” he said, and then he crunched away.
I barely resisted the urge to sweep the cheese plate onto the floor. Instead, I pointed at the silk bag. “That doesn’t look like nothing to me!”
“Relax, Jane,” he said.
I’d heard that tone from him before. It was the Superior Warden tone. The I-Know-More-Than-You-Do tone. The You-Just-Don’t-Know-Very-Much-About-Being-A-Witch-Do-You tone.
And it drove me crazy every time he used it. It drove me to practice my spells a dozen more times before making them public, to work on feeling the vibrations in my crystals until I could sense them in the middle of a moonless night, to concentrate on my runes until I truly did understand the meaning of the marks incised in them, felt the designs with an inner chord, infinitely deeper, infinitely more detailed than strict memorization of their supposed symbolism would have created.
Er, not that I’d engaged in any actual witchcraft study for ages.
But that was how he’d always made me feel, when he’d used that tone in the past.
At least Melissa understood the tension that David’s patronizing words raised in me. Silently, she set the plate of Lemon Pillows on the kitchen table, centering them like a peace offering. Neko’s hand snaked out to grab four, but he caught my glare and returned two to the edge of the plate.
I forced myself to sit down next to David, making my body relax into the unyielding chair. If my warder wasn’t concerned, if the man charged with maintaining my physical and astral well-being wasn’t worried, then I wouldn’t be either. At least that’s what I told myself.
I sipped from my glass, but I couldn’t taste the lime or the rum, couldn’t remember the sharp bite of mint, even a moment later. I spread my fingers on the table in front of me, willing my tension to flow away. One steadying breath. Another. A third.
I met my warder, eye to eye and asked, “What is going on here?”
Despite my desperate question, he took his time to finish chewing. He swallowed. He cleared his throat with a sip of mojito. And then he said, in a deceptively mild tone, “Your runes crumbled because you stopped using them.”
“What?” His words didn’t make any sense.
“Your crystals clouded because there wasn’t any magic to keep them clear. The text in your books faded because you don’t need them any longer, because the magic is unnecessary. Dead.”
“Dead?” I swallowed hard. “What do you mean?”
All of a sudden, I thought about how I’d used my powers in the past. I’d wasted them. What had I been thinking, working a love spell or two? Worrying about the sorority sisters of the Coven? I’d turned away from making a real difference in the world; I hadn’t even tried to use my powers for good instead of for evil. Why hadn’t I worked on changing the world in permanent ways, in ways that would last long after I slipped this mortal coil?
“To be or not to be,” I almost said out loud. Hamlet’s soliloquy went on, “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.”
Melissa would certainly get the allusion, and David might, as well. But melodrama wasn’t going to solve the problem of the day. Instead, I needed to get to the heart of the matter. Why had I given up the chance to use some really cool magical tools, just because a laptop crash had cost me a catalog of my collection? What had I been doing for the past six months?
When David didn’t immediately answer my question, I looked at the silk bag of dust and repeated, “Dead?”
He shook his head. “Maybe that’s too strong. I should have said ‘Dying.’”
Great. Like that made it all better.
“But I love my powers!” I found myself saying. Melissa had the good grace not to contradict me, although Neko managed a delicate snort into yet another Lemon Pillow. When had he stolen that from the serving plate? “I do!” I nearly shrieked.
“Not enough to have kept them in proper form,” David said, ignoring the edge in my voice that sounded suspiciously close to hysteria.
“I don’t understand,” I protested. “Magic isn’t like yoga. It’s not like I’m going to lose my powers just because I don’t work out every day.” Even as I protested, I wondered where I’d come up with that argument.
One quick glance at my beloved best friend showed that she didn’t think I knew the first thing about yoga, much less about my magic abilities.
And, truth be told, what did I really know about my powers? I mean, I’d learned to use the tools in my basement. David had been a harsh taskmaster as I studied for my confrontation with the Coven, and he’d forced me to become an expert at crystals and spells, herbs and potions.
But the whys and wherefores of being a witch? The actual history of magic? Functioning as a witch separate and apart from her Coven?
We hadn’t had the luxury to study all of that last autumn. I’d been scrambling too hard to learn enough of the basics, enough that I could keep my familiar, my newfound, new-loved life as a witch. And after I’d finished my dealings with the Coven, issued my little Declaration of Magical Independence, I’d hardly been interested in learning more. The laptop crash had only cemented my lassitude in my mind.
As if saluting my spring and summer of indolence, David helped himself to his own Lemon Pillow, and then he leaned back in my kitchen chair, acting like he didn’t have a care in the world. Which, if I truly was no longer a witch, and he truly was no longer my warder, might very well be the case.
“These,” he said to Melissa, gesturing to the plate of pastries, “are excellent.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I use lemon rind, along with a little fresh lemon juice, when I beat the cream cheese for the filling—”
“Excuse me!” I interjected. Neko jumped at the harshness of my tone. Melissa and David turned to me in surprise. “I am in the middle of a witchcraft emergency! I don’t care about the recipe for Lemon Pillows! I don’t care about baking or yoga or any of the rest of this. Help me!”
“Jane, you don’t know what you’re in the middle of,” David said maddeningly, and then he took another bite of Pillow. “Besides, witchcraft is actually a lot more like yoga than you might think. Discipline is the key to both.”
I flashed a glance at Melissa, but she managed to look innocent as she sipped her mojito. I toyed with the idea that this was all some elaborate game she and David had devised, some grand ruse to get me to go to the animal yoga class without any additional sulking.
But Melissa had already won that battle. And she’d had no way of reaching David for the past five months. And David didn’t joke. Especially not about magic. And the tools in my basement were being destroyed.
“So,” I said, forcing myself to play along until I understood the rules of the game. “I just have to master the magical version of Downward-Facing Dog, and everything will be all right? Stretch those hamstrings, and my runes will be back in no time?”
David sighed. “The runes are gone. You can acquire another set, of course. They’ll stay stable for a while—a year or two, anyway—even if you never practice magic again. But if you don’t go back to using your power regularly, any new runes attuned to you will crumble, as well.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense! Those jade runes sat in my basement for years, for decades before I ever used them! Why would a few months of sitting around make them disintegrate now?”
David grimaced and helped himself to some cheddar. The slice that he cut was large enough that Neko whined in dissatisfaction, but my warder did not seem at all concerned. “Your magical tools were put into stasis by Hannah Osgood when she hid them downstairs. Once you found the materials, once you started using them, you broke the seal. Power could leak out.”
His matter-of-fact explanation angered me, broke some sort of seal in me. Frustration seeped into my words. “Then why didn’t they all just crumble to dust two years ago? Why didn’t the books erase themselves when we were working together last year?”
“That’s just it. We were working.”
David sounded utterly uncaring, as if he had no interest in the endless hours we’d spent together, in the countless magical details that he’d taught me. The dispassion in his voice made my heart beat faster. My cheeks flushed, and I wanted to tell him that he should speak more respectfully, that he should sound as if he meant what he was saying.
But that was stupid. He was just telling the truth. Cold, historic facts. We had been working together. Intensely. For over a year. And then we hadn’t been.
“I don’t get it,” I said, and I was surprised by just how miserable I sounded. Even Neko cocked his head to one side, as if he recognized a hidden story beneath my words.
“You’re not trying, Jane.” There. That was my old warder talking—remonstrating with me when all I wanted was a sympathetic ally. I started to protest, but David raised a hand, palm outward. The gesture might have connoted peacemaking in another context, but now it felt combative. Absolute. Controlling. “You don’t want to understand what I’m saying.”
He reached for the crumbled runes and tossed the silk bag up and down, like a tennis player reminding himself of the weight of a ball before an important serve. “When we worked together, your magic kept the goods charged. The power within you spread to everything in the basement, kept it…fresh. Active. Once you decided to abandon your witchcraft, the tools deteriorated. The destruction was expedited because of how much power you had, how strong the charge was that jolted them out of quiescence. Your magic was strong, and Hannah’s items immediately became accustomed to a very high base level of power around them.”
“But I haven’t abandoned my magic!” I protested.
David looked at Neko, and his silent glance wrote volumes. What sort of witch let her familiar move out of the house? The only words David said, though, were, “You haven’t seemed to need me very much lately.”
“I thought you’d be pleased by that,” I groused. “Have a little time away.”
His eyes flashed like quicksilver as he stared me down. For the first time in ages, I remembered that he was a warrior. A fighter. A man trained to get what he wanted by whatever means necessary.
But in the past, he’d always wanted to protect me. I had a sudden, sickening feeling that everything had changed. When he spoke, his voice was so low that I had to lean forward to tease apart his words. “I was your warder. I never asked for time away.”
Was. I heard the warning in that word, in that tense. Something had gone wrong. Very, very wrong. Still, I stumbled ahead. “You may not have asked for it, but I’m sure you managed to use it, all the same.”
Neko winced. He’d never become accustomed to the sparring that seemed normal to me where David was concerned. At David’s impassive stare, I felt forced to add, “What have you been doing, anyway? Taking the Arcane Grand Tour? Whiling away the hours on the Witchy Riviera?”
Even as I needled him, I thought back to when we had first met, when David had first commandeered my sanity and my rogue witch powers. Then, he had told me about his life when he wasn’t serving as my warder, when he was working to redeem himself for past sins before the sisterhood of witches. “The Court of Hecate,” I said, and I could read the truth in the iron line that stiffened his jaw. “They busted you back to a file clerk!”
“I was never a file clerk!” he protested.
But he had been. He’d been responsible for organizing papers. Or scrolls. Or whatever. And he’d hated it.
“Why didn’t you come here?” I asked. “Why didn’t you come get me?”
“What was I going to do, Jane? Beg you to use your powers? Plead to serve as your warder?”
I heard the questions that he didn’t ask. Why hadn’t I summoned him? Why had I been content to let my powers go unused for so long? Why hadn’t I thought—even once—to reach out to the warder who had stood by me, through physical and emotional battles, for well over a year?
“I’ve been busy,” I said, even though no one had asked me to explain myself. “Work has been crazy, with the program I’m putting together on the James River plantations. I’m mentoring an intern. I’ve been trying to be a good librarian. And a good daughter—Clara can exhaust anyone, you know. And a good granddaughter, too. Gran isn’t as healthy as she wa
s—even though my crystals got her through pneumonia a couple of years ago, that illness really took a toll.”
I heard the crazed note behind my words, the pressure I was putting on myself to explain. To justify. To make excuses.
I should apologize, but I didn’t know how. I couldn’t make myself say the words. But when David didn’t bother to respond, I forced myself to take a deep breath. “All right, then,” I said, and I made myself meet his eyes. “What do I do now? How do I make this right?”
Melissa and Neko might have disappeared from my kitchen, drifted away as thoroughly as the ink lines in my books, for all the attention that David gave them. Instead, he stared at me, pierced me with his gaze. I longed to reach for my chilled glass, to ease the sudden ache in my throat with a tangy sip of mint and lime. I was frightened. That must have been it. He frightened me, and so I said, “I’m your witch. You’re my warder. You have to help me. Now.”
I had never ordered him to do anything before.
Oh, I’d asked for his help countless times. I’d whined. I’d protested his requirements. But I had never stated our relationship as a bald fact, never mandated his compliance with such an air of authority. I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, and then he said, “Work a spell.”
“That’s it?”
“Not just any spell,” he said, cutting short the laugh that bubbled up in my throat. His tone was sharp. Brutal. Like the ceremonial sword that I’d seen him carry in my defense the year before. Goose bumps rose on my arms. “Something special. Something strong. Something that pulls and twists your powers, that makes you use everything you have at your disposal, all of your abilities.”
He sounded like he would enjoy watching me drained of my power. “Like what?” I asked.
“Jane, there are some things you’re just going to have to learn for yourself.”