by Mindy Klasky
“Hush,” I said. “We’re not the Coven.” I looked at Clara, made sure that I had her attention. “Both of you, separately—I want you to try the light spell.”
Light. The easiest spell I knew. The one that had cost me the last of my power. The one that I had used to show Will who I was, what I was. The one I had used to convert myself from a witch into a woman.
Gran and Clara had worked it a dozen times over the past month, trying to harness its simple formula, trying to convert its basic order into something new. Now, they thinned their lips, nearly identical expressions reminding me that they, too, were tired, that they, too, wanted a way out of this mess.
They chanted together:
“Dark shies;
Light vies.
Clear eyes,
Fire rise.”
A tiny flame spread on Gran’s palm, ruby light so fragile that I might have imagined it. Nuri nestled closer to my grandmother, leaning her entire body against Gran’s frail form, and the light flickered brighter for a heartbeat, only to fade again.
Clara was only doing a little better. Her flame was emerald, filling her palm briefly when Majom leaned in to assist.
Reflexively, I reached out for their powers, tried to gather them close to myself. Nothing. I had no way to grasp what they had done.
“Okay,” I said. “Let it fade. Now, we’re going to do something different.” I gestured toward Clara’s familiar. “Go over there, Majom,” I said. “Sit beside Gran.” The boy looked at me quizzically, checking back with Clara to make sure that it was all right to move.
“Go ahead,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He cuddled next to Gran, who reflexively dropped a hand to his shock of white hair. I nodded and then said to Nuri, “And you, sit next to Clara.” The woman complied, although she twisted her head at an odd angle, as if she did not trust Gran to stay seated on the couch. Clara settled a commanding hand on Nuri’s shoulder, keeping a steady eye on me.
“All right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Now, Gran and Clara, put your free hands together. Cup them, there, between you.” They matched actions to my words. “We’re going to try it again. But this time, the familiars are going to reflect power across your grouping. You’re going to share. You’re going to build the flame together.”
I looked at David, silently asking him if he thought this would work. He tilted his head to one side, but he wasn’t predicting failure. Instead, he was admitting ignorance. He was saying that he had no idea what would come of my attempts.
I forced a shaky smile. They would try it. They would try it because they loved me. They would try it because they believed in me. They would try it because they wanted me to be happy, they wanted me to find my powers once again. My powers. And Neko.
“Together,” I said.
And they recited the simple spell once more.
“Dark shies;
Light vies.
Clear eyes,
Fire rise.”
Two lights blossomed on their palms, red and green, the visible symbol of their strength, however limited that might be. This time, though, the familiars shifted, vaguely uneasy with the new arrangement, utterly unaccustomed to the different balance I was forcing on them. I smiled encouragement, and Gran reflexively pulled Majom closer. Clara leaned against Nuri, as if she were sharing a secret with the woman.
And the light grew.
Crimson swirled into evergreen, like stars sprinkling across a miniature galaxy. The ball of combined fire pulsed like a double heartbeat, filling first Gran’s palm, then Clara’s. As the witches realized what they were doing, as they recognized their joined strength, the light grew brighter. The ball swelled, expanded, filling the space above their forearms. Hazel eyes met hazel eyes above the light, and something silent, something secret passed between the woman who had raised me and the woman who had given me birth.
Gran looked at me, astonishment stretching her mouth into an O. “It’s so bright!”
Clara laughed. My mother, the woman who lost herself in New Age frippery, distanced herself from true emotion, from all honest feelings, laughed.
Majom fed on their excitement, starting to bounce up and down on the couch. Nuri craned her neck, shrugging her shoulders in a way that released tension none of us had known she’d held.
David stepped forward, serious and dark against the brilliant play of light. “That’s enough,” he said. “Don’t tax yourself too much. Not this first time.”
Carefully, supporting each other, balancing their strength through each other’s familiars, Gran and Clara let the light die down. As the flames folded in on themselves, ruby chased emerald, swirling like a star fighting to be born.
Just before the light popped out of existence, I heard a chime, deep inside my own psyche. A solitary drop of crimson power slipped into the well of my abilities, followed almost immediately by a precious sliver of green. My strange commune of witches and familiars, of relatives and friends, was feeding my damaged power at last.
Reflexively, I reached out to share the good news with Neko, only to be reminded brutally of his absence. Watching my mother and grandmother, watching their familiars, watching my warder all celebrating the new vision of witchcraft that we had used, that we had created, I felt nothing but the chill of loss.
We still needed to find Ariel. We still needed to fight to get Neko back.
17
We spent two weeks looking for Neko. Two weeks of combing the city, tracking down reports—no matter how vague—of the Artistic Avenger. Two weeks of driving by landmarks, looking for the next public display of Ariel’s fanaticism.
David even took it upon himself to check with the Washington Coven. I volunteered to go with him, to see if I could extract any information from that bitchy sisterhood, but he shook his head ruefully, saying that he’d probably get further without my tagging along. Given the way I’d thrown their invitation back in their collective face the year before, he was probably right.
The loss of Neko cut deep; I ached every time I thought of him stranded, alone, tied to whatever calculating magic Ariel had accumulated since I’d last seen her. I forced myself to call Jacques every morning, to let him know that nothing had changed, that we were still looking, still trying, still hoping.
I came to hate my anima.
Nearly every night, I worked with Gran and Clara, attempting to bolster my own powers. Our new technique, the communal sharing of powers, wasn’t perfect. Gran needed to adjust to Majom’s childishness, to his inability to sit still and his constant exploration of anything new around him. Clara needed to accept Nuri’s oddness, her awkwardness as she provided her familiar services. Gran tired quickly, requiring everyone to shift the way they shared energies, the way they exchanged information.
As I watched the four of them learn to work together, though, I was proud. Every night, I saw my little community grow stronger, learn to trust each other more on the magical frontier. Each successful working dripped additional power into my depleted well.
One night, a week after Gran and Clara first worked the light spell together, I dared to open up one of my books—the old classic, On Awakyning and Bynding a Familiarus. I selected it in a fit of hopeless nostalgia, remembering how I had read my first spell from its pages, awakening Neko to my service.
Sure enough, the parchment stayed stable. No words ran off the page. No ink faded as my eyes pored over the words. I read until after midnight, hoping to find something I could use, something that would draw Neko back to me. For the first time since Ariel had fled, I was able to use my collection, to research everything I could find about animas.
But there was nothing.
From that night onward, though, I tried to find Neko with the limited powers I had regained. I would touch the link between us, send a thought down the well-worn channel that had bound us together for so many months. Each night, after Gran and Clara left, taking their familiars with them, I would light a taper and settle down on
the cracked leather couch. I stared into the flame, trying to remember how I had felt when Neko was beside me every day.
Annoyed.
Okay, I tried not to remember that. I tried to remember how he had bolstered my powers, how he had bettered my witchcraft.
Occasionally, I’d get a tantalizing hint of him. I’d see him—or something that my astral senses insisted could be him—huddling in an enclosed space. Try as I might, I couldn’t break through, though, couldn’t get to the core of my vision.
I wondered if Neko even knew where he was, if he could tell me, if I ever did manage to reach him directly. He was accustomed to roaming so freely; I had controlled him the way that I would have wanted to be controlled if our relationship had been reversed.
Ariel wasn’t likely to be such a fan of the Golden Rule. Her binding Neko would surely have brought him under new restraints. She could keep him in a literal closet. She could even return him to his statue form when she was not actively working magic. She could do whatever she saw fit to do. She was his witch.
And I was her witch. The irony did not escape me. I was supposed to be able to manage her, restrict her, use her to my own best advantage.
And I would, if I could only find her again.
Of course, I couldn’t work on witchcraft every waking moment. Will came by the cottage every night, even though he was busy with his own projects, his architectural plans. Sometimes we were too exhausted to talk; we settled for spooning underneath the comforter in my bedroom, falling asleep in companionable silence. We shared quick breakfasts, snatches of daytime conversation over the phone. I got used to e-mailing him three or four times a day. The little time we had together was easy, comfortable.
One night, when Gran had declared herself too tired to attempt any magical workings at all, Will and I went on a double date with Melissa and Rob. We ended up at a wood oven pizzeria, gorging on individual pies. Melissa and I gave Rob an inordinately hard time for putting pineapple on his pizza. Will and I traded slices—one of my pepperoni and goat cheese for one of his black olive and pesto.
Melissa and I went to the bathroom together, and I started crying while I was making lipstick fish mouths at myself in the mirror.
“What’s wrong?” She ran a paper towel under the faucet and passed it to me. I tried to dab underneath my eyes.
“It’s perfect.”
“And you always cry when things are perfect.”
I sniffed inelegantly—snorted actually—grateful that Will was nowhere close enough to hear. “I always thought that we’d do this. That we’d get together with our boyfriends. That we’d just have fun.”
“And?”
“And I never realized how much I would love it.”
“I don’t understand you at all, Jane Madison.”
“I should be working with Gran and Clara. I should be trying to find Neko and Ariel. Instead, I’m here with you and the guys.”
There. I’d said it out loud.
“You’re doing all that you can do.” I started to protest, and she shook her head. “Jane, listen to me. You’re not a bad person, if you decide to walk away from the witchcraft. You’re allowed to give it back. It’s not like someone has a gun to your head.”
“Ariel—”
“You’ll find her. I know you will. And you’ll restore Neko. And then you’ll make the biggest decision of your life. But I’ll be there for you, no matter what you do decide.”
I managed a wavery smile. “Even if we never double date again?”
“Even if. But I’ve got to tell you—Will’s a lot of fun. He’s a good man, Jane.”
“I know.”
And he was. The best I’d ever dated. Even if he would never, ever understand the secret part of me, the inner part of me, the witch.
My growing bond with Gran and Clara stressed the importance of community, the importance of sharing. Half a dozen times, I caught myself starting to tell Will about a spell that they had worked, about a moment when the familiars mirrored something so precisely, so perfectly, that it seemed as if all of us had created something entirely new. Entirely fresh. Entirely different.
Entirely beyond his realm of understanding.
He always listened. He always expressed enthusiasm or concern or quiet, steady support—whatever I needed most at the moment. But I knew that he did not truly get it. He couldn’t. He’d never felt magic sparking through him, never known the heady thrum of that energy, the steady being of magic filling him, carrying him away.
But Melissa was right. I could make the decision later.
As if running a witches’ commune and balancing the first true reciprocated love of my life wasn’t enough, I had Gran to worry about. She had decided to scuttle all of her wedding plans.
Clara argued with her. I argued with her. Even Nuri squawked a rebuke.
Gran insisted that it was unseemly. That we couldn’t throw the party of the century if Neko had—God forbid—died. And we wouldn’t throw the party with him missing.
“Gran,” I argued in the fifteenth round of our debate. “He isn’t dead. I’d know it. Or David would.”
“We’ll wait till he comes back, then.”
I forced myself to keep a gentle tone. “He might never come back, Gran. You can’t put your life on hold for him.” Words of wisdom I’d do well to listen to myself. I hurried on to the one true weapon I had in my arsenal. “What will Uncle George think? This is his wedding, too.”
In the end, we compromised. Gran’s long years of service with Concert Opera let her cancel her reservation at the performance hall without any penalty. We decided that the Peabridge auditorium would do just as well for the ceremony; the reference room—already equipped with substantial tables and plenty of chairs—would be fine for the reception.
We canceled the band and the caterers. A taped collection of Pavarotti arias would do as well as the dozen live performers Gran had contemplated. We’d make do with deli trays from the local grocery store. In a moment of Neko-worthy inspiration, we realized that we could sell off the pounds and pounds of orange Jordan almonds during the weeks leading up to Halloween, marketing them to library patrons from the Peabridge’s coffee bar as “Halloween Treats.” They went like hotcakes—I liked to think that we were providing the hot autumn hostess gift in Georgetown that year.
In her newly abstemious mood, Gran decided that a floor-length veil was overkill; in fact, she ditched her entire white wedding gown completely. She had a lovely gabardine suit, its graceful evergreen skirt and jacket perfect for presiding over Concert Opera board meetings—or an autumn evening wedding. The hairdressers, with their sweeping updos, were deemed unnecessary, as well. Besides, Clara had never agreed to wear anything other than a gauze skirt and a peasant blouse, her hair neatly brushed for the occasion.
Melissa was still on board with the wedding cake, but plans for the marzipan monstrosity were set aside. In Neko’s honor, we went with plain white cake, covered in lots and lots of buttercream. We laid in a couple of cases of champagne, for toasts.
Even the matchbooks weren’t a total loss. We decided to hand them out with the votive candles, little gifts for everyone who attended. Individualized opera CDs mercifully became a thing of the past.
The funny thing was, no one really noticed how much the plans were scaled back. Gran was disappointed at first, giving up the party of her dreams, but she truly believed that she was doing the right thing, in support of Neko, wherever he was. Uncle George was actually relieved—I could see smiles take over from the vague air of puzzlement that he’d been sporting for the past several weeks.
The only thing that survived the wedding purge wholly intact was my dress. Orange and silver, now in commemoration of Neko. As I pulled it on over my head, I had to admit that he’d done a stunning job with the alterations. The neckline still plunged, but it no longer gapped in an embarrassing way. The butt-bow would always be a bit much, but what sort of maid of honor would I be, in a dress that I could conceive of wear
ing anywhere else?
The sash and bow glittered in the moonlight as I walked from my cottage to the Peabridge. It was Halloween night. Samhain. The importance of the Witches’ Sabbath seemed emphasized by the full moon that sat heavy in the sky overhead. Once in a blue moon…
I knew from my colonial research that a blue moon was a farmer’s term, a reference to a second full moon in a month. They only coincided rarely with Halloween—five or six times a century—and the night of Gran’s wedding, in a streak of witchy luck. Not that any of the guests would know or care.
Will and Rob had agreed to serve as ushers, helping the guests to their seats in the Peabridge auditorium. The notion of “friend of the bride” and “friend of the groom” was meaningless when the bride and groom had been dating for two and a half decades. People ended up sitting with friends and enjoying themselves. We’d planned on starting at eight o’clock, a quiet evening wedding, but people arrived late, victims of Halloween and the riotous street celebration that took over the core of Georgetown’s commercial streets.
My library assistant, Kit, served as wedding coordinator for the evening. She made sure that the key participants were ready on time, that all the men’s suits were tugged into alignment, that all the women had rubbed traces of lipstick off their teeth. Relying on the Peabridge’s new sound system (a recent gift from Mr. Potter—fitting, even though he had not known how it would be used when he made the donation), Kit played Handel’s “Ombra mai fu” for the processional.
With Mr. Potter serving as best man and as my escort, I walked down the auditorium aisle, holding a nosegay of sweetheart roses that matched Gran’s own simple bouquet. Mr. Potter whispered a kiss against my cheek at the foot of the aisle, and then we both turned to watch Gran enter.
David walked beside her, offering his arm with all the formal gravity of a warder. He shortened his stride to match her own, managing to balance concern for her welfare with the recognition that this was her evening, her moment to be the center of attention for all the assembled guests. When he brought her to my side, he completed a short, formal bow. Unplanned, Gran raised her fingers to his cheek, thanking him as if he were a Boy Scout who had helped her across a particularly busy street. Flaunting custom, he whispered back up the aisle, taking a seat near the back of the auditorium.