The Library, the Witch, and the Warder

by Mindy Klasky

  Not that he had time to think about that.

  Her still-bare toes curled on the wooden floor. Neko jumped to attention. “Would you like me to get your slippers?”

  David automatically followed the familiar’s gaze to the back of the couch. He could just make out the curve of plush bunny ears flopping over abandoned footwear.

  “No. Thank you,” the witch replied, her voice was frosty as her feet looked.

  Neko barely noticed. Instead, he said, “You don’t have any cream.” He managed to make the oversight sound like a mortal sin.

  “I drink mine black,” the witch said tersely.

  At least the water was finally coming to a boil. David watched Jane Madison make the tea, obviously trying to use routine to mask her apprehension. She lined up three mugs from the shelf above the sink, crowing with victory when she found a teaspoon and a saucer to hold the used teabags.

  He glanced at the slightly battered box of tea. Oolong wasn’t his first choice. That would be gin—sharp and clear, the bite of juniper slicing through the bemused fog that threatened to overwhelm his brain. But his job was to make sure the Osgood collection remained safe and secure, so no gin tonight. Just tea brewed strong enough to hold a spoon upright.

  Following the witch’s vague gesture, he collected his mug and stalked to the metal table against the far wall. His fingers closed tightly over the cup’s ceramic handle as he waited for her to meet his eyes. With a conscious effort, he forced his voice to be civil. “Thank you, Miss Madison,” he said.

  “My pleasure.” She bit off her own words, sounding as stiff as he did. Her formality gave way to nerves again as she took a quick sip of tea. He winced as he imagined her tongue burning on the near-boiling liquid. She mastered any visible response before she set her cup on the table. Taking a deep breath, she said, “All right, then. You’re a Hecate’s Warder. What is that? Some sort of cop?”

  He started to protest the casual language but settled for a tight-jawed nod. “I enforce the Covenants.”

  “The Covenants?” She sounded as if she’d never heard the word before. “Let me guess. The witches form a Coven? And their laws are the Covenants?”

  He gave another nod, still trying to measure how much of her innocence was an act. If he believed Neko, she truly had no idea what she’d done. As if to prove the familiar right, she asked, “You do realize I’m not a witch, right?”

  “You worked a spell.” His steady voice left her no room to argue. “You have the power. You found the key, and you opened the book. You read from the page.”

  “Anyone could have done that.”

  “If you didn’t have the power, the key would have stayed hidden."

  The simple logic of that statement smothered her reply—for less than a minute. “Even if I have some power, I’m not a witch.” She counted off her explanations on her fingers. “One: I don’t wear a pointy hat. Two: I only use a broom for sweeping. Three: I’ve never even owned a cauldron.”

  She thought this was a joke. Some sort of game. A story she’d no doubt share with her girlfriends over sweet pink drinks, complete with ironic paper umbrellas.

  He barely suppressed his fury. Sure, witchcraft sounded like fun and games to most mundanes. But one fact remained: Jane Madison had unveiled the Osgood collection. And now the entire hoard was his responsibility, thanks to his bond to the Compendium.

  He could already imagine Norville Pitt’s jealousy, writhing like the steam above his cup of oolong.

  Even as he pictured his enraged boss, he heard Linda Hudson’s earnest command, repeated just that evening: Offer yourself to Hecate by Samhain.

  He had to prove to the goddess he was worthy of her service. He was trained to help the needy, to guide the lost. But the woman hunched over her tea in this out-of-the-way Georgetown cottage was the furthest thing from a daughter of Hecate he could imagine. He was wasting his time here, with only six weeks left to save his career.

  Yielding to a sudden surge of frustrated anger, he spat out: “You lit the pure beeswax taper, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t—”

  “And you touched your brow, your throat, and your heart?”

  “Yes, but I—”

  “And you traced the words in the spellbook with your finger?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And you read the spell aloud?”

  “Yes—”

  “And you awakened a familiar.” He pointed to Neko. “That familiar. On the night of a full moon.”

  Neko froze, halfway through testing his tea with the tip of his tongue. He obviously had no problem reading a warder’s temper.

  But Jane Madison only shifted on her chair before she asked, “So what’s the deal with the full moon? How does it change things?”

  David sighed. He tried not to sound as if he were responding to the class idiot.

  He failed.

  Completely.

  “Any familiar awakened on the night of a full moon has freedom to roam.” The witch merely stared at him. Giving up on quoting the Covenants, he said, “Neko can go anywhere. He isn’t tethered to your physical space. He isn’t bound the way a normal familiar is bound.”

  She whirled on Neko. “Were you going to say anything about that?”

  The familiar shrugged. “Probably not.” He might have wanted to please his witch by making tea, but he definitely wasn’t cowed by her inherent power.

  She turned back to David, looking chagrined. “Why don’t we cut to the chase? Just for the sake of argument, I’ll say I worked a spell. You’re the police, and I broke the rules. Do I pay a fine? Show up at witch court?”

  “You have to stop using your powers. Until you’ve trained with someone who knows the consequences of working magic.”

  “Well, that’s easy enough.” She relaxed into her chair as if a weight had suddenly evaporated from her shoulders. “I can promise you I’m not working any more magic. Ever. This is all too weird. It’s not like I planned any of this, you know.”

  He felt his own cool balm of relief. He wouldn’t be bound forever to this unpredictable woman. He didn’t have to pretend she was his ticket back to the court’s good graces. “No spells, then.”

  She nodded fervently. “No spells.”

  “I’ll be monitoring you,” he warned.

  He should do a hell of a lot more than that. A good warder would report the find to the court.

  But if David told Pitt about the collection, that toad would take over every last artifact. The Compendium. Neko. Jane Madison. And he’d use an impressionable witch—and every relic in the basement—to advance his own glory.

  That impressionable witch’s chin jutted with defiance. “You go ahead and do whatever you have to do.”

  She wasn’t as brave as she sounded. He saw the bobble in her throat as she swallowed. He could read nerves in the quick glance she cast toward Neko. She had questions, a lot of them.

  But before she could decide to trust David, her throat tensed. She barely swallowed a yawn. He resisted the urge to glance toward his watch. It had to be four in the morning. Maybe later.

  Late enough, anyway, that she wouldn’t try to work more magic that night. In fact, she might be intimidated enough to avoid the basement altogether. He could take some time, maybe talk to Linda. He could figure out what to do with the treasures downstairs, how to protect them. How to keep Pitt from getting anywhere near them.

  With a faint twist to his warder’s powers, he expanded his link to the Compendium. There were the kettledrums again, crashing against his powers. And beside them was an entire orchestra—woodwinds and strings and brass, all woven together in a single intricate whole. With one strong bond to the Compendium, it was terrifyingly easy to bond to the rest of the collection.

  Now he’d know if the witch did anything with the tools in her basement—if she shifted a single rowan wand.

  He set his mug on the table with a decisive gesture and rose to his feet. Wanting to put a little fear
of Hecate in her, he said, “Of course, you’re responsible for whatever your familiar does—for all actions he takes.”

  “Of course,” she said, making a valiant attempt at sounding like she faced down warders every day of her life.

  If she’d been a trained witch, she would have known she could simply order David off her property. A simple, direct command would sever his drumbeat link to the Compendium—and the rest of the Osgood collection—forever.

  Instead, she glared at Neko and said, “I won’t be working any magic, so he’ll have nothing to do.”

  The familiar responded with a perfectly arched who, me? eyebrow.

  Which reminded David… He pointed to the kitchen counter and said, “And one more thing, Miss Madison. That.”

  “The aquarium?”

  “The fish.”

  “What about Stupid Fish?”

  “Keep an eye on it.” He looked at Neko, who became utterly obsessed with picking a bit of lint from his spotless sleeve. “You never know what bad things might happen when you’re not paying attention.”

  It took her a moment to catch on. She shook her her head and vowed, “I’ll pay attention.”

  “Just make sure that you do,” he said before he stalked across the living room and out the front door.

  He’d barely turned his collar up against the steady breeze, sole remnant of the night’s storms, when his phone buzzed again in his pocket. The vibration made him remember the two calls he’d missed while he was teaching Witchcraft 101.

  He swore when he saw the name splashed across the glass screen: Connor Hold.

  A nightingale twittered inside his skull, the sound that he’d associated with Connor forever. No wolf-shifter should be calling tonight, though, not with the full moon risen four hours earlier.

  His pulse echoed in his ears as he answered the still-buzzing phone. “Montrose.”

  “Help…” The word was stretched, somewhere between a growl and a whine, full of pain and something else. “Me…” David barely made out the last word, drowned as it was by fear.

  No.

  Terror.

  He shoved his phone into his pocket and reached toward Seymour House.

  5

  Thirty years earlier.

  * * *

  “Hurry!” Con shouted. “Last one there’s a mangy hound pup.”

  Davey wasn’t about to be a mangy hound pup. He pushed past his best friend, slamming a sharp elbow into Con’s ribs to make sure he won the race. Con’s fingers closed around his ankle, but Davey shook free, taking the steps to the attic two at a time. He automatically ducked behind the junk stored up there—Con’s old crib and a bunch of boxes marked “Baby Clothes—Boy” and “Baby Clothes—Girl.”

  “Come on,” he whined, as Con dove into the blanket fort. “Let me see!” When Con didn’t move fast enough, Davey pounded him on the back. “I helped take it! Let me see the Collar!”

  Davey had helped. He’d raided his father’s emergency supplies for matches, the wooden kind you scraped against a zipper to light. Together, they’d built a tepee fire, just like they’d learned in Webelos. They’d torn up a circle of grass at the end of the backyard farthest from the house. In the center, they’d piled a bunch of dead leaves and pine cones and some cotton balls Con had stolen from his mother’s drawer in the bathroom.

  After that, Con chickened out, so Davey lit the match. The first one broke. The second one blew out before he could kneel beside the kindling. But the third one caught the cotton balls, and the fire spread to the leaves and pine cones. Both boys had added kindling then, and Davey put three big branches on top.

  They’d run into the garage and waited for the shifters’ guards to notice the fire. It hadn’t taken long before a bunch of men were shouting and swearing, using words Davey had never heard before.

  Looking through the garage window, Davey could see the big branches had caught. So had the fence. At least, the boards closest to the tepee had, six or seven of them, sending up huge clouds of black smoke as paint bubbled from the bottom to the top.

  With all the guards fighting the fire, the boys ran into the house, just like they’d planned all along. Con had ordered Davey to stand watch outside Mr. Hold’s study. Only shifters were allowed in there. The whole time Davey stood in the hallway, he wondered if he could really smell smoke inside the house. What if the fence burned all the way up to the back door? What if the roof caught on fire?

  But he’d been imagining things. The fire wasn’t that big. And now the boys were safely crouched inside their blanket fort in the attic, panting hard as they stared at their prize. Light from the bare bulb overhead filtered through the blanket above them. “You can look,” Con warned. “But you can’t touch.”

  Davey nodded. He knew the rules. The Collar belonged to the Washington Pack. Davey was a warder, so he wasn’t allowed to touch the Collar, not ever. He wasn’t even supposed to know it existed.

  He leaned close enough to see some sort of weird writing on the necklace’s iron links. Con touched the closest one. “That’s from the Boston Pack,” he said, all proud, like he knew every pack in the world.

  “Sure,” Davey said, shoving Con’s shoulder. “Like you can tell one group of werewolves from another.”

  Con glared. “I’m not a werewolf!”

  “Full moon, shining bright,” Davey taunted. “Shift a man for just one night.”

  “Take it back!” Con shouted. “I’m a real shifter, and you know it!”

  “I don’t know,” Davey said, because it drove his friend crazy. “I think you’re just a regular boy who got bit by a real shifter. Now you’re stuck as a stupid werewolf, and you can only change when the moon is full.” He chanted the taunt he’d heard shifters use with each other: “Poor little Connor, feels the moon’s pull, can’t shift at other times, powers are null.”

  “I can shift any time I want to!” Con stretched his right hand toward Davey, turning his fingers into razor-sharp claws.

  Davey dove away. “Sheesh,” he said, when he knew he was safely out of range. “I was only joking.”

  “It was a stupid joke,” Con said, but he shifted his hand back. “No one wants to be a werewolf. Not when they can be a shifter like me.” With his restored index finger, he touched the Collar again, a different link this time. “That one’s from the Carolina Pack. And the twisted one is from the Southern Front.”

  Davey couldn’t help himself. He had to touch the Collar. He had to see if he could feel the difference between the packs of shifters.

  His finger froze against the metal.

  But it wasn’t freezing. It was burning. It was burning like he’d shoved his hand into the fire they’d set in the back yard. Like he was stirring a pot of boiling oil with his fingers. Like a volcano was erupting and he was catching the lava in his palm, except he couldn’t drop it, couldn’t spill it, couldn’t get away.

  He screamed as loud as he could, as long as he could. He stood up, dropping the blanket as he tried to throw the Collar across the attic. He called on Hecate the way his father had told him he should, whenever he was in danger. “Blessed Hecate!” he cried, and his voice shook because he was crying, because it hurt so much.

  He called on Hecate, but she didn’t come to save him.

  His father did.

  George Montrose popped into the middle of the attic. One second, there was empty space at the top of the stairs, no boxes, no old furniture, just room for someone to straighten up and look around. The next, there was a full-grown man, a warder who shimmered into place through the ether.

  Dad wore a black suit and a white shirt and the silver tie that said he’d been working at the court that morning. That’s why Davey had come to Con’s house in the first place, because Jimmy was taking his nap, and Mom said her ankles were swollen and her back hurt and couldn’t she just have one single minute of quiet. Davey had gone to Con’s house so he wouldn’t get into trouble.

  But he was in trouble now. The Collar was still
fused to his hand, to fingers that didn’t hurt anymore, that couldn’t even tell if they were frozen or on fire. And Dad was clutching his sword, Deathrose, in both of his hands. The weapon flickered in the attic light, cold steel rippling like it was alive.

  Dad was going to kill him. Right then, right there, even if Con saw everything.

  “I didn’t mean—” Davey started to say, but before he could get the words out, feet pounded on the attic stairs.

  Not feet.

  Paws.

  Davey barely knew he was flying through the air before he crashed against Con’s old crib. The wood splintered into a thousand pieces, but Davey didn’t care, because he was lying flat on his back, the ruined railing digging into his shoulder blades as a wolf stood on his chest.

  “Dad!” Con shouted, but Davey barely heard him. Instead, he was holding his breath, trying not to choke on the smell of raw meat. Mr. Hold—because the snarling wolf had to be Con’s father—shifted his paws on Davey’s chest, gouging holes with claws that felt like steak knives. Davey opened his mouth to say something, anything, but he started to gag when hot spit dripped off the wolf’s teeth and splashed against the back of his throat.

  He snapped his lips closed. He scrunched his eyes shut. He wished he could block his nose and ears, that he could shift the heavy weight crushing his heart beneath his ribs.

  “Dad,” Con begged again, but his voice was softer now. It came from a lot farther away.

  Then there was a whoosh of air, and a smell like the bleach Mom used when she washed clothes. Davey opened his eyes, because he had to see what was happening. He had to know what new magic Mr. Hold was using.

  But it wasn’t Mr. Hold. Dad stood above him, feet planted by Davey’s head. His arms were held out straight, angling Deathrose between Mr. Hold and Davey’s face. The sword’s sharp edges gave off the smell of bleach, wave after wave, rising and falling like the sword was breathing in the dusty attic.

  “Yield!” Dad said, the single word a command that echoed in Davey’s bones.