by Mindy Klasky
Part of me was mortified, horrified, afraid to even look at Jason’s aghast face. But part of me reveled in his terror. He was remembering. He was thinking back to the fire in my kitchen. He was making himself see the magic that he had denied, the power that he had convinced himself was nothing.
Nothing.
He thought that I was nothing. He had been playing me from Day One. Plying me with marshmallows and Italian lunches.
I closed my eyes, but I could no longer control my rage. It spun me around, crashing my thoughts against each other. I needed to ground the force; I needed to store it away. Even thinking of dampening it, though, only made the magic surge higher. I panicked, and that adrenaline rush folded into the maelstrom.
My mind was moving faster than light now. Jason was frozen before me—naked, frightened. The anger, the rage, the sucking, spinning power --
“Neko!” I sent the call across space, across time. It echoed inside my skull, and yet I knew that I’d said nothing aloud. “Neko!” I called again. My familiar had been awakened under the light of a full moon; he could leave our books, leave the home we shared. He could come to me here, where I needed him. “Neko!”
“Oh, my,” he said, and under other circumstances, I might have laughed at the expression on his face as he studied the naked Jason. “I know they say that size doesn’t matter, but—”
“Help me!” I cried as the tremendous forces inside my body, inside my soul, began to rattle my teeth.
Neko glided to my side. He leaned in, barely stifling a yelp as he came into contact with my scarce-pent magic.
“No time for spells,” he muttered, and he grabbed one of the sheets from the cottage floor. “Here,” he said. “Bleed the power into this.” He took my hand, and I felt him pull off the worst of the heat, the core of the pressure. The power seeped into the fabric fibers, dissipating through the warp and weft. Then, there was a concussion, short and sharp as a car back-firing. The sheet flashed into brightness, every thread illuminated into instant brilliance, and then it simply disappeared.
“Again,” Neko said, and he sacrificed the wedding-ring quilt. That bulk siphoned off a little more of my rage, but there was still too much for me to control alone.
“Again.” The bed’s fitted sheet. “Again.” Pillows. “Again.” The towels in the bathroom. “Again.” The shower curtain. “Again.” Jason’s tangled clothes still strewn on the braided rug where I had flung them the night before.
“And again.” The rug itself.
Finally, I was able to breathe. I was able to look around the cottage. I was able to see Jason, freed also, trying to cover himself with trembling hands.
“Jane,” he croaked.
“No.”
I swept his keys off the nightstand before he could react, and I sailed out of the Blue Cottage, letting the door swing wide so that the freezing air shriveled the lying, cheating bastard I’d thought of as my Boyfriend.
Neko followed in my wake. He was silent as we thrashed along the wooded path, but I watched his eyes dart toward a flash of bird-wing here, a shimmer of insects there. I only paused when we stood on the edge of the lawn, looking at the Farm’s sturdy wrap-around porch.
“So,” Neko said. “I take it he wasn’t any good in bed?”
I burst into tears.
Neko folded his arms around me, and I buried my face against his black t-shirt. He let me cry, making a soft sound deep in his throat, which might have been a purr.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” I said, when I could finally speak. But even I couldn’t say if I was referring to sleeping with Jason, or to the magic disaster. Neko just made noises of agreement. “I didn’t know. And David told me, and I didn’t listen, and now he’s going to show up, and I’ll have to explain, and Leah will watch, and I’ll be an idiot in front of her again, like always.”
“Well,” Neko said reasonably. “She can’t watch if you aren’t here.”
“Just where am I supposed to go?”
Neko looked pointedly at the keys in my hand.
“But I can’t just take his car!”
“Why else did you grab them? Besides, it didn’t seem to bother you much, taking his clothes.”
“But David will—”
“Oh, he won’t be pleased. But taking the car isn’t going to make that any better or worse. It’s the magic he cares about. Not grand theft auto.”
“David’s going to kill me.”
“Give him some time to calm down, then. Drive home.”
“But won’t he just materialize inside the car?”
“He may be a warder, but he’s not a complete idiot. Would you try to pick out a few square feet of vehicle cruising down the highway? And attempt to materialize inside it?” I still felt dubious. “Go,” Neko insisted. “I’ll deal with him here. I’ll explain. You can talk to him later, when he’s had a chance to calm down.”
“And Jason? He’s going to be ranting like a madman. He’ll tell everyone I’m a witch.”
“Not that I’m sure your family would care…. Don’t worry. I’ll blur his memory of what happened. I’ll make sure he remembers why you were so upset, though. Knock a little shame into him.”
“Can you do that?”
“Have I failed you yet?”
Gratitude swelled in my chest, and I wiped my eyes with the backs of my hands. “Thanks, Neko.” He walked me over to the Volvo and watched me climb in on the driver’s side. “I owe you one.” I jammed the key into the ignition.
“Just remember you said that, after you get home.” He closed my door and knocked twice on the roof before stepping back to let me drive away.
It was Sunday morning; there was no traffic on the rural Connecticut roads. By the time I got to the highway, I was reliving every moment that I’d ever spent with the bastard Jason, every time that I’d looked at him in the Peabridge, helped him find a book, ordered a rare pamphlet for his studies. I remembered every word we’d ever exchanged through the long, long months when he was only my Imaginary Boyfriend. I remembered speaking the grimoire spell, and the short six weeks when I’d thought that there was something real between us. Something more than my being a tool. A research slave. And a cheap thrill besides.
I remembered the way that he’d touched me the night before. I wanted to take a shower, the hottest one that I could stand. I wanted to stand under water that made my eyes smart and my skin turn pink. I wanted to scream.
But instead, I drove.
I drove until I reached the Beltway. I drove until I turned off for D.C. I drove until I’d threaded my way into Georgetown. I drove until I reached the No Parking Any Time Towing Enforced 24 Hours zone, three blocks from the Peabridge. I left the engine running, and I locked the keys in the car. I hoped with all my heart that it would be out of gas by the time that it was towed.
I was still reciting angry imprecations to myself as I passed through the garden gate. I was halfway down the path to my front door when a man stepped out of the shadows. For one heart-stopping instant, I thought it was David, already arrived to chastise me.
I was mistaken. But my actual visitor was nearly as bad. Harold. Harold Weems. My would-be knight in colonial frock coat. As if I needed to see him now. As if I needed to be reminded that everything I did went wrong, that every idea I’d ever had became warped and twisted and ruined.
He slid to a stop in front of me, trying to catch his breath and suck in his belly, all the time smoothing back his pitiful strands of hair. “Jane, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Harold,” I said, my voice nearly a whisper.
“I was closing up the Library a few minutes ago. I always take a look back here, just to make sure everything’s okay, that you’re okay—”
“I’m fine, Harold,” I said again, through gritted teeth.
“No.” He shook his head. “I mean, you might be fine, but your house…. Your front door was open. I’ve already checked inside. Everything seems fine. Perfect. Of course, since it’s
your home, how could it be anything less than perfect?”
Oh, great. My front door. I must have plucked Neko to Connecticut just as he was entering or leaving. Wasn’t that my perfect luck.
Harold rattled on. “I’m really glad that I could be here for you, Jane. I’m really glad I could help you out. Let me just go inside with you now. Maybe make you a drink?”
And I just couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t stand there, in my sweater that stank of bonfire smoke. I couldn’t bear my belly aching, my legs sore from exercise I never should have had the night before.
I planted my feet and looked Harold directly in the eye. “I don’t need you to help me, Harold. I don’t need you to ‘take a look’ at my house. I don’t need you to make me a drink. I don’t need you in my life, Harold. I release you. Go play with your computers or read your books or whatever it is that you really want to do, but leave. Leave. Me. Alone.”
I felt a ping in the air between us.
Harold was shocked. His gentle eyes squinted closed, as if I’d slapped him. He swallowed hard, started to say something, stopped, and swallowed again.
But I couldn’t bear to hear what he would say. I couldn’t bear to think about what I’d done to him. I was hurt, angry, and confused, and I’d just lashed out at another person—at a spellbound person—for no good reason. I should have found a way to release him from my witchcraft without destroying him in the process.
Disgusted with myself, I pushed past him into the cottage. I closed and locked the door behind me.
Inside, the house did indeed look fine. Sunlight streamed in the front windows. Yesterday’s mail was centered on the coffee table. A wineglass glinted in the drying rack on the kitchen counter. My bed was neatly made, the comforter perfectly centered and the pillows fluffed to perfection.
My bed.
I shouldn’t be able to see my bed from the front door. My bedroom was supposed to be locked.
All of a sudden, I remembered my frantic departure on Friday morning, my multiple attempts to gather all of my belongings. Neko had asked about my hair. I’d stormed back into my room, grabbed a scrunchie.
I had left my bedroom door unlocked.
“Stupid Fish!” I cried, running into the room. I searched the ten-gallon tank, looking for the familiar tetra flash, the ripple of Stupid Fish’s tail as he circled endlessly. But the tank was quiet, dim, lifeless.
Empty.