Magic and the Modern Girl

by Mindy Klasky

  Great. Paper records of purchases made decades ago. And Evelyn wondered why we ran out of space. “I’ll get right on it.”

  So, this was the glory of management. Kit got to spend her day working with patrons, answering questions, and I ended up with dust-reddened eyes, with vision blurred by peering at endless invoices. I would have loved the chance to brew a cup of coffee or two, even the old-fashioned coffees I used to make, with time-consuming foamed milk and patron-confusing choices like macchiatos and cappuccinos. How nostalgic I could become for the words con panna.

  If I was going to waste an afternoon sorting meaningless material, I’d rather be doing it in my own basement, at home. Maybe I could find the courage to open my books, try to read from them before the writing faded away, attempt to force my way back to magic or destroy every last volume trying. At least then I’d know where I stood. Then, I’d know that the books would never trouble me again.

  Once again, I was going to meet with Gran and Clara after work. I was going to try—once again—to lead them through a bout of spellcasting. Try—once again—to figure out a way to bolster their powers. Try—once again—to shape our little witchy community into something that could support me, that could feed my powers back to me. My frustration made a headache pound to life behind my eyes.

  I sighed. Life as Will’s mundane girlfriend, even a girlfriend surrounded by dusty decades-old invoices, was sounding better and better.

  Around four o’clock, Kit appeared in the doorway of the storeroom, bearing a cup of coffee and a trio of Bunny Bites like a peace offering. Or some upscale prison meal. “I saved the last three Bites for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, smiling wanly.

  Kit waited while I fortified myself with one. She declined my offer of another. Settling on the edge of my work-table, she took off her tricorn hat and began turning it from corner to corner to corner. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I’ve made a decision.”

  “About?” I took a sip of coffee and leaned back in my chair, rubbing at my neck to ease a kink.

  “Grad school.”

  “Wonderful!” I said. I managed to sound enthusiastic, even though my first thought was a wail of despair. My intern was going to abandon me now? She was going to leave me to the tender mercies of Evelyn and a pack of preschoolers? “Who’s the lucky winner? Brown or Harvard?”

  “Maryland.”

  I blinked. “Excuse me?” Not that there was anything wrong with the University of Maryland. It was just a mile or two outside of D.C.; it sprawled across a huge campus. But with 35,000 students, it dwarfed Harvard or Brown. And I certainly hadn’t heard anything phenomenal about its public policy programs, certainly not anything special enough to lead a full scholarship Ivy League student to change her mind.

  “Maryland. Library school. I can apply by February and start classes over the summer.”

  “But you’re going into public policy! You’re going to build the schools of tomorrow! You’re going to save children from themselves, and create the communities of our future.”

  Kit smiled wryly. “I know that’s what I said I wanted to do. But I really like what I’m doing here—the programs we run, knowing our individual patrons. I don’t want to discuss policy, in big, broad terms. I’d rather implement a specific reading program for teenage boys, something that will bring them in and keep them here.”

  “Kit…” I wasn’t sure how to respond. I understood exactly what she was saying. I, too, had chosen to be a librarian because I liked to work with people. I liked solving problems on a human scale. But Kit could go anywhere. She could do anything. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m obviously not thrilled about the whole public policy thing, right? I mean, what sort of enthusiastic grad student puts two Ivy League schools on hold for months while she decides what she wants to be when she grows up? I’ve decided. I know what I’m going to be. A librarian.”

  I grinned. “I’m happy for you.”

  “I need your help, though.” She leaned in close, as if Evelyn had surveillance equipment in the now-bared sprinkler heads. “I need to figure out a way to keep working here. I know that the library doesn’t have any money to pay me full-time, long-term. But maybe I could write a grant or something? Something that I wouldn’t even have to tell Evelyn about, until after it’s a done deal.”

  I remembered my own attempts at grant writing and how poorly they’d been received by our boss. “I wouldn’t recommend that.”

  “What should I do, then? I probably won’t get a scholarship if I go to library school. I’m going to need to work full-time.”

  I sighed. “Let me think about it. Maybe Mr. Potter can help us come up with something.”

  Kit grinned. “Thanks. For now, though, we’ll keep it a secret?”

  “Mum’s the word.”

  She turned to leave, but then stopped. “Have you picked up your messages this afternoon?”

  “No.” I gestured to the stacks of paper around me. “I didn’t want to give myself any excuse not to finish this.”

  “Well, your phone rang all morning. And that David guy started leaving messages at the circulation desk, right around noon. He’s been calling back every hour on the hour.”

  I sighed, even as my heart skipped toward concern. “Thanks. I’ll call him back.”

  A phone hung on the wall of the storage room. I punched 9 to get an outside line and then added David’s number. He answered halfway through the first ring. “Montrose.”

  “It’s me. Look, I’ve got a job here, and you can’t just treat the circulation desk like they’re your private answering service.”

  “Neko’s gone.”

  “What?” My knees melted. My body sagged against the wall, and I would have fallen without its support.

  “She took him. She claimed him.”

  “Who?”

  “Ariel.”

  No. It wasn’t possible. Sure, David had told me weeks ago that Neko was vulnerable, that he was up for grabs, since my own powers had virtually disappeared. But Ariel? Neko? I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.

  “There are rules!” I heard the shout behind my words. “She’s not even a witch! She can’t do this! You’ve got to stop her!”

  “You’re not listening to me, Jane. She already has. She registered her bond to him with Hecate’s Court. It was just a matter of time. Anyone with power could bind him.”

  “But she doesn’t have power! Everything she has belongs to me!”

  Everything. Including Neko. Including my familiar, the creature who had guided me along all of my witchy stumblings, who had taken my force and reflected it back to me hundreds of times over the past two years.

  Neko, who was accustomed to roaming the city streets, to traveling wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Our bond had been created under the light of the full moon; he had been entitled to that roaming. But his ties to Ariel would be different. He would be restrained. He would be restricted, like an ordinary familiar, bound to an ordinary witch. He would be miserable.

  “What can we do, David?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Those were the most frightening words in the world. David always knew. David always told me. He always had a plan and a path, a way for us to get through anything that happened.

  “I’m leaving work now,” I said. Evelyn’s management exercise be damned. Neko’s disappearance was more important.

  “I’ll meet you at the cottage.”

  Gran and Clara were already in the living room when I burst through the front door. The entire contents of my jewelry box were spilled across the coffee table, and Majom was picking through the detritus, separating my necklaces and earrings and bracelets with the dedicated intensity of a heart surgeon making his final stitches. Nuri sat on one of the couches, cocking her head as the mid-October light glinted off my treasures.

  “Hello, dear. We decided to make ourselves at home.” Gran saluted me with a mug of tea.

  “You
need more honey,” Clara announced. “You really shouldn’t get the stuff from the grocery store, though. Those little plastic bears are cute, but fresh lavender blossom honey from free-range bees will enhance your dream recollection.”

  I wanted to point out that all bees were free range; that was the entire idea of having insect pollinators flying around. It wasn’t worth the battle, though. I didn’t have the time.

  “David will be here in a moment,” I announced. “Neko is gone. Ariel has him.”

  It took a moment for them to register what I’d said, but then Nuri cried out, a horrible, grating shriek of loss. Majom scurried across the living room and buried his face in Clara’s skirts. Gran was the first to recover. “What can we do?”

  I had never seen her look so stricken.

  Sure, I’d seen her sick. I’d seen her fight off walking pneumonia for weeks. I’d seen her in a hospital bed, with oxygen, scaring the life out of me as she drew each rattling breath as if it might be her last.

  But I’d never seen her afraid. I’d never seen her totally at a loss for direction.

  Before I could try to figure out an answer, David walked through the front door. I whirled to face him. “What else can you tell us? What else have you found out?”

  He shook his head. “There isn’t much to say. Familiars are registered with Hecate’s Court. It happens automatically, when a witch bonds with them.” He cast a quick look toward Nuri and Majom, clinging to their witches. I crossed my arms over my chest and tried not to feel like the odd woman out. I longed to feel Neko by my side.

  “The connection was registered some time during the night. There isn’t any background information, there’s no enforcement body. The Court just receives notice of the binding, so that they can hold a witch accountable if anything goes wrong down the line.”

  “And if I want to say that Neko is still bound to me?”

  “Then you contact the Court. Using your powers.”

  My nonexistent powers. Or at least the ones I had no access to. His words felt like a slap in the face. Automatically, I reached out to gauge the current depth of my arcane ability. The same handful of precious drops sat there, the last gift that Ariel had given me when I confronted her on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Nothing else that we had done, nothing else that I had taught Gran and Clara, had made the slightest bit of difference.

  Clara spoke. “Maybe we could do something, instead. Maybe I could reach out on Jeanette’s behalf?” I was ready to scream at her, to remind her for the thousandth time that I had changed my name after she’d abandoned me.

  David’s voice cut through my rage, though, freezing it with his simple denial. “It doesn’t work that way, Clara. You can’t argue for anyone else.”

  “It’s not fair!” I protested, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I felt sick, as if I had swallowed a frozen, greasy stone.

  David was silent for a moment, and then he gestured toward Gran and Clara. “Why don’t you four go downstairs. Keep working on the summoning spell you tried on Sunday—you can practice it together. Jane and I have to talk.” Obediently, they all trooped to the basement.

  I wanted to call out to them. I wanted to make them come back.

  But that was ridiculous. I knew what David was going to ask me. I knew what he was going to make me say. I knew that he was going to force me to answer the question he’d asked at the Lincoln Memorial; he wanted to know what had happened when I’d made Ariel, what had gone wrong. While I didn’t want to tell him, I couldn’t imagine admitting the inner workings of my smutty little mind in front of my own mother and grandmother.

  I sank onto the couch and clutched my brocade skirts in my fists. I was so accustomed to my Peabridge attire that I automatically shifted the hoops out of my way.

  David sat on the other couch, but he leaned forward, every line of his body expressing the urgency of his question. “I’ve let you avoid talking about this. But we’re out of time. What happened when you created Ariel?”

  My palms were suddenly slick with sweat. I closed my eyes, as if that would make it easier for me to recite what I’d done. I could picture the three of us, huddled in my basement. I could remember Neko—Neko!—leaning close to my side. I took a deep breath past a pang of loss so sharp that I thought I would cry.

  “I had all the elements at hand,” I said, remembering how the magic had felt. “I’d already mixed the earth and water, breathed the air.” I could remember the tension, the awkward sexual energy that had arced between David and me. Now, sitting in my living room, he nodded, as if he remembered it, too. “I said the spell. I said the words out loud.”

  I struggled for a way to explain. I fought for a way to tell him what had happened. I longed for my old powers, for my witchy abilities, because I was certain that I could have reached out to his mind, transmitted my utter mortification without needing to reduce it to words. But I had no powers. I had no familiar. I was no longer a witch. “I thought about you,” I whispered. “About us.”

  He caught his breath, but I held up a hand, begging him not to interrupt me, because I’d never find the courage to go on if I stopped there. “I thought about you, and a stupid poster that Melissa had in the bakery. An actor, who looked like you, who was playing Prospero. The poster had a slogan, Empower The Arts. It all got tangled in the power of naming. I didn’t understand what I was doing. I broke the connection to the anima. I twisted it. I did something wrong, because I couldn’t stay focused. I got lost, thinking about you. About…what happened.”

  I dashed tears off my cheeks as I wrapped up lamely. “I didn’t know how broken she was, in those first few hours. I didn’t understand just how far I’d let her slip, just how far my concentration had strayed. I was supposed to give her the mission to rebuild my strength, but it got all mixed up. She ended up with Ariel’s mission, Prospero’s goals, from the play. From the actor in the play. I don’t know how to make any of it right. I don’t know how to change any of it. I don’t know how to get Neko back!”

  I was crying honestly, then, ripping sobs that gasped out my confusion and frustration of the past two months, my terror of what I’d done to my familiar. David started to move toward me, reached a hand across the chasm between our seats, but then he pulled back. I wanted him to touch me, I wanted him to soothe me with his voice, with his fingers.

  But at the same time I knew that his decision was right, that I had made another choice. I wanted Will and him; I wanted to be a woman and a witch. I wanted the world I’d known forever, and the magic I’d known for two short years. I wanted everything, and nothing at all.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, hiding my face in my hands.

  “It’s my fault as much as yours.”

  “No,” I said. “I was the witch. I was the one who was supposed to hold the magic.”

  “And I was the one who was supposed to keep you safe.”

  It didn’t matter. We could both be wrong. We weren’t any closer to a way out of the mess.

  “So when you work with your grandmother, with your mother?” he asked at last. “Is it the same problem? Am I blocking your thoughts there?”

  “It’s not you,” I protested automatically. I thought for a moment, and then I answered his question more thoroughly. “No. The problem there is something different. I only know how to teach them the way that I was taught, the way that you taught me. I know how to push them, how to drive them, how to force them to take on more power. But they don’t have enough power on their own—even if they used every scrap that’s there.”

  For the first time, I thought about what that meant. I was using the only model for witchcraft that I’d seen. David himself had learned through conventional means; he taught me the only way he’d seen witches taught, by the Coven. By a group of women who struggled and snapped like a pack of feral dogs, fighting to be the strongest witch in the gathering.

  Sure, I had risen naturally in their ranks because of my own late, lamented, ingrained power.
But Gran would never have that raw strength. Clara neither.

  “If I could just get the two of them to work together…” I fought for words, trying to picture what I was describing, how it would feel. “If they shared their energy with each other…If they used their familiars to focus their own force outward, toward each other, rather than inward…”

  The more I rambled, the more sense it made. When Nuri helped Gran, the pair was able to do precisely as much as Gran could handle. My grandmother was the limit; she was the cap. When her fragile body reached its full potential, the partnership was done. The same with Clara, actually—her cap was higher, but the limitation was the same.

  If they worked together, though, if they reflected power off of each other…They each excelled in different ways. They each had different strengths. If Clara harvested some of Gran’s success, grew it on her own, bolstered it through Majom…

  Magic wasn’t science, I had told them. Our arcane powers weren’t subject to the laws of physics. Two plus two could be greater than four, if we could only figure out the way to shatter addition.

  “Gran!” I called. “Clara!” I took the steps to the basement so rapidly that I skipped half of them, relying on the handrail to keep from falling.

  They looked up at me from the cracked leather couch. From Neko’s cracked leather couch. I tried not to think of how often I had seen him perched on the sofa, eager to help with a magical working. Nuri and Majom huddled on the floor, clearly disconsolate.

  “Let’s try something new!” I said.

  “Jane, dear, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Gran. I think that I have an answer, though. I think that I’ve finally figured out what we’ve been doing wrong.”

  “Dear, I don’t know that we’re doing anything wrong. I just think that I’m not strong enough to help out as much as you’d like. Even the Coven wasn’t able to do anything with me last year.” My heart twisted to see her disappointment, the grim lines beside her mouth.