Six Times a Charm

by Deanna Chase

  Next to the armoire was a huge couch—ancient black leather as cracked and battered as if the furniture had come through a storm. A half-dozen pamphlets were strewn across its cushions, and I wondered who had last read them. Who had—apparently—expected to return in short order.

  My cell phone chose that moment to beep its displeasure at having been kept on alert for so long. I bit off a shriek at the mechanical sound, combining the beginning of a scream with the middle of a gasp, and I ended up sounding like a hiccuping cow. Angry with myself, and more than a little embarrassed, I snapped the phone closed. As an eerie, static-free silence filled the room, I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder, to make sure there was still a clear path to the top of the stairs.

  Skirting the statue of the cat, I moved around to the front of the tall, tilted book stand. My hand reached out toward the book. No, I didn’t reach for it. I’m not stupid enough to reach out for an unknown book in an unknown library, with a creepy, glass-eyed cat statue staring at me like I might be the Invading Mouse Queen from Hell.

  But my hand just didn’t recognize the danger it was in. We were in. We, my hand and I.

  It reached out, and it turned back the cover, and it flipped past the first creamy, empty page. It brushed against the words spelled out on the title page, words that were dark and strong and printed in that pointy, ornate, gothic font that people use for tattoos that say DEATH or FEAR or some other life-non-affirming thing.

  Compendium Magicarum

  I had to squint to make out the second word. Magicarum? Magic?

  The clammy sensation that I’d always associated with the cottage chose that moment to trace my spine again, making my skin dance along my vertebrae. If anyone ever asks you, you should know that your hair really can stand on end. At least the short hairs at the base of your neck. And there’s no amount of rapid breathing that will make them lie down again. Not while you’re afraid. Not while you think that something might jump out at you from the shadows.

  I made myself laugh, even if the sound came out pretty shaky. Pretending to be defiant, I turned the page, expecting to see more information—the name of the author, or a statement of who had printed the book, something about its provenance.

  The next page, though, was filled with script. Carefully scribed Ye Olde English letters marched along, row after row. They made me think of monks sitting at long tables, holding quill pens and shivering as they reproduced countless bibles.

  No monk, though, would have written the words that were etched across the top of the page: On Awakyning and Bynding a Familiarus

  A familiarus. A familiar, surely.

  I had read about the Salem witch trials. I knew about those poor old women who were accused of speaking to the devil through black cats. (Yes. Black cats. Like the statue beside the book stand. That chill rippled down my spine again.)

  I told myself that I couldn’t run upstairs now. It wouldn’t do any good. Not now. Not since I knew about these things in my basement.

  I put the cell phone down beside the book. As I brushed my hair back from my face, my fingers felt clammy on my forehead. I cleared my throat and touched my voicebox, as if the chill would slow my beating heart. I spread my hand across my chest, willing myself to calm down.

  When that mental command did no good, I resorted to one of the things I did best—laughing at myself. Purposely making my voice creak like an old soothsayer’s, I ran my fingers beneath the words and read aloud:

  Awaken now, hunter, dark as the night.

  Bring me your power, your strong second sight.

  Hear that I call you and, willing, assist;

  Lend me your magic and all that you wist.

  There was a flash of darkness.

  Okay, I knew that didn’t make any sense. I knew that a “flash” was supposed to be light, that I was supposed to use the word to describe stars and glinting and color.

  But this was an explosion of darkness.

  My candle flame disappeared. The light from the stairs disappeared. The sight of my fingertips, pressed against the jet black word “wist” on the parchment page, the book itself, the table, the room—all of it just disappeared.

  And then, it jumped back into existence, except that everything was more than it had been before. Everything was sharper, clearer. I felt like someone in the projection booth of my life had just responded to an audience member’s drunken roar: “Focus!”

  This time, I didn’t try to swallow my scream, but I still didn’t manage a full Friday-the-Thirteenth Chainsaw Massacre shriek. More a startled exclamation: “What the hell?”

  And those three words changed everything. One moment, I was alone in my basement, surrounded by an impossible collection of books, holding a wavering beeswax candle and trembling in my bunny slippers. The next, I had company.

  The statue beside me awakened.

  At first, it moved like any other waist-high cat you might choose to imagine. It uncurled its tail from around its paws and stood up from its seated position. It shook its head back and forth. It stretched its front paws forward, digging its claws into the crimson and indigo Turkish carpet and extracting them one by one. It opened its mouth in a gaping yawn, showing me the ridged roof of its palate and its hand-long fangs, sharper than the knives I’d thrown into the kitchen drawers upstairs.

  Before I could speak or move or even think of retrieving my cell phone, the cat tucked its head toward its chest and bunched all four feet together. It arched its back like a Halloween symbol, a rigid curve of spiky fur.

  But when it came out of the arch, it was no longer a cat.

  I found myself looking into a man’s eyes. In the candlelight, I couldn’t decipher their color—they might have been green or amber or hazel. They were slightly almond-shaped, complementing strong, angular cheekbones that I would have given my own eyeteeth to possess. His hair was jet black and very short, standing on end as if it had been gelled. He wore the most close-fitting black t-shirt I’d ever seen and a pair of black jeans that were stretched so tight across his crotch that I glanced away immediately. His shoes were sleek leather, vaguely European.

  He surveyed me from head to toe, taking a long moment to linger over my bunny slippers. He took his time licking his lips before he settled his right hand on his hip and shook his head. When he spoke, he sounded positively disdainful. “Girlfriend,” he said. “We have got to get you some better shoes.”

  Chapter 4

  A half dozen responses crashed through my mind. “What do you know about shoes?” I started to ask. That got pushed aside by “What just happened?” And “Did I really see what I think I saw?” And “What are you doing in my basement?” And “How did you get in here?” And “Are you really a familiar?” Spluttering, I settled for: “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Neko, darling.”

  “Neko? Just Neko? How about a last name?” Or was that his last name? I realized I was gaping, and it wasn’t any more attractive here in my basement than it was when Melissa and I went out to Le Bar, and I couldn’t think of a reply when the guy making martinis flirted with me. Like that happened on a regular basis.

  “Just Neko,” he said. He looked around the room and clicked his tongue in patent disapproval. “Oh, my! You have let things slip, haven’t you?”

  My cheeks flushed, even though I didn’t have any reason to be ashamed of the basement. Once a librarian, always a librarian, I guess. The cascading books did make me feel vaguely uneasy. Like I’d been caught red-handed ducking out of work early, leaving part of my job undone.

  Wait.

  A statue of a cat had just transformed into a living, breathing man before my very eyes, and I was worried about shelving books according to the Dewey Decimal System? I shook my head. “Just a second,” I said. “Before you start to criticize me, let’s get a couple of things straight. First, I take it you’re a familiar?”

  “And I take it you’re a witch.”

  “No, I’m a librarian.”

&
nbsp; “Who just happens to work spells. No need to be coy with me, girlfriend.”

  “I didn’t work a spell! I just read some words in that book!”

  Neko stalked around the book stand, viewing the volume from all angles. He wrinkled his nose, as if he could smell something unpleasant steaming up from the pages. He cocked his head when he’d completed his circuit. “And you just happened to have a beeswax taper in your hand when you read it? And sheer coincidence made you offer up the powers of your mind, your voice, and your heart? Then trace the letters with your finger? You don’t read everything out loud, do you? Not very good librarian behavior, that.”

  I looked at the candle, almost surprised to find that I still held it. “This is all some joke, right? Did Melissa put you up to this?”

  “Who is Melissa?”

  He truly sounded puzzled. So puzzled that I didn’t even bother asking about Evelyn. Or Gran. No one else would have had the time to pull together this prank. Even if they’d known I was moving into the cottage. Even if they’d known how to transform a cat into a man.

  But if it wasn’t a prank….

  I suddenly felt weak in my knees. Was he a madman? Was he dangerous? He didn’t seem likely to harm me, but what could I truly know? I didn’t think that I was actually going to faint—I’d never fainted—but sitting down suddenly seemed like a really good idea. And a shot of vodka was an even better one. My voice shook as I asked, “Can you come upstairs?”

  “Can a drag queen sing?”

  Well, could a drag queen sing? I have to admit I wasn’t an expert on the subject. I mean, I’d seen “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar”—it was a campy staple at grad school. I was a big fan of Bugs Bunny, and it seemed like he spent half his time in a dress and lipstick.

  But Neko was asking a rhetorical question. I didn’t need to give an actual reply. Instead, I turned around and walked upstairs, clutching the railing and trying not to feel too paranoid about the flamboyantly-gay, black-clad, feline familiar stalking behind me.

  In the kitchen, I finally blew out my candle and dropped it onto the tile counter. I opened up the freezer and fished out the bottle of Stoli that I’d stashed there after the last run from my old apartment. “Drink?” I asked, as I tried to remember where I’d put the glasses.

  Neko made a small moue of distaste. Apparently Stoli wasn’t his alcohol of preference. Tough luck for him. I found the tumblers on my third try—second cabinet to the left of the sink.

  “Do you have anything to eat?” he asked. “It’s been a while since my last meal.”

  The clear bottle rattled against the glass as I poured. “Not much. I haven’t been to the grocery store yet.”

  The grocery store. Here I was, standing in my kitchen in the middle of the night, discussing my larder with an apparition that I’d summoned to life through the power of an ancient spellbook.

  Yeah. Right.

  I downed a large swallow of vodka and poured another. The Russian heat burned down my throat, and I resisted the urge to shake my head and gasp.

  Anxious for something to keep my hands busy, anything, I picked up the candle. I tested the wick to make sure that it was cool, and I tossed it back into the emergency supplies box. It landed against one of the cans of tuna. Hmmm… tuna? “I’ve got this.”

  “That will have to do,” Neko said, but he smiled as he craned his neck, examining the cartoon fish on the squat can’s label.

  I dug out my can opener, secretly pleased that I remembered which drawer held the tool. As I cranked the handle, Neko leaned closer. He wove his head back and forth as I worked the opener, and I thought that I heard a gurgle deep in his throat. Or was that a purr?

  I pressed the detached lid back into the can and started to drain the packing water into the sink. “No!” Neko cried, and I jumped back. “What are you doing?”

  “Um, draining the tuna?”

  “That’s the best part!”

  I looked at him as if he were truly crazy, but he was dancing back and forth beside me. I wondered how long it had been since he’d eaten, how long he’d been frozen as a statue in my basement. Could it be decades? Centuries? How much did he know about canned tuna, anyway? And packing water? What exactly was going on here?

  I put the can down on the counter and reached for a fork. Before I could hand him the utensil, Neko pounced on the food. I looked away, disgusted by his slurping directly from the can. Before I could say anything, there was a pounding knock at the door.

  Neko glanced up. “You’d better get that.”

  “Who could it be?” I shot a look at my watch. “It’s three twenty in the morning.”

  “It’ll be the warder.”

  “The warder?” I couldn’t tell if my voice broke because of the strange word, or because Neko had already emptied the contents of the can. “Be careful!” I said, as he started to lick the lid. “You’ll cut yourself!”

  “Warder,” Neko repeated, reluctantly setting the container on the counter. It was clean enough that I could set it out for recycling. The knocking resumed. “They don’t like to be kept waiting. If you’re lucky, you’ll get one of the luscious ones.”

  I glanced down at my flannel pj’s and my bunny-shod feet. No time to dress for this meeting, “luscious warder” or not. I settled for kicking off my slippers and grabbing my Polarfleece blanket from the back of the nearest green couch. I draped the throw around my shoulders and pulled it close at my neck. I was sure that some glamorous movie star could have pulled off the look, but I felt like a barefoot little girl playing dress up.

  The pounding resumed, and I hollered, “I’m coming!”

  I crossed to the door and waited for Neko to come stand beside me. After all, he seemed to have some idea who was out there. The amazing cat-man, though, only hovered in the kitchen doorway. He scratched at his jaw and said, “He’ll only get angrier if you make him wait.”

  Clutching my blanket close, I threw the deadbolt and opened the door.

  The man who swept in looked like he had escaped from a movie set. He was tall—he had a good foot on me. His dark hair swooped to silver on his temples, and he wore it a little long. He was clean-shaven, not even wearing the sideburns that Ashton Kutcher had made all the rage. His eyes were probably brown, but it was hard to tell because his pupils were enlarged from the night-time dark. He wore a well-tailored suit of charcoal grey, cut to accentuate his height, and his white dress shirt was open at the neck. The tendons on either side of his throat strained like metal cables.

  He filled his lungs, and Neko took a mincing step back into the kitchen. The newcomer whirled toward me. If he’d been wearing a cape, it would have swirled out behind him. “What the devil do you think you’re doing? Awakening a familiar on the night of a full moon?”

  “What the devil?” I actually laughed out loud. It wasn’t that the words were actually so funny. It was just that I’d never heard anyone use them before. Not in real life, in real anger. They sounded too high-flown, too Mr. Rochester or Heathcliff or someone like that.

  My amusement probably wasn’t the response he expected. I think that I was supposed to fall to my knees, cowering in terror. This guy was accustomed to people—to witches?—being afraid of him. “What the devil?” I repeated, and I closed the door behind him.

  “What is your name?” he demanded.

  “You’re the one pushing your way into my house,” I said, trying to ignore the fact that my feet were getting cold on the hardwood floor. “Don’t you think you should tell me yours first?”

  He glanced at Neko, who gave a slight shrug. Even if my, um, familiar wanted to provide this stranger with information, he couldn’t. The warder eyed me evenly and said, “I am David Montrose.”

  “Jane Madison,” I said, extending my hand. As soon as I said it, I wished that I hadn’t given him my last name. If we’d been in a bar, I would have just said, “Jane.” He shook my hand, but he seemed a bit surprised. Seizing the moment, I pushed my glasses b
ack up on the bridge of my nose. “What are you doing here at three thirty in the morning?”

  “I’m one of Hecate’s Warders.” The words meant nothing to me. “I was summoned by your unlicensed working tonight.”

  “My unlicensed working…. You mean reading from that book downstairs?”

  “The spellbook?” He said, and even if he meant it to be a statement, it actually came out like a question. “The Compendium?” He must have heard his tentative tone, because he cleared his throat and said, “You worked a spell without first registering with the coven.” There. Now he sounded like the big bad wolf, and I had no doubt that he could huff, or puff, or blow my house down, or whatever else warders did when bad witches forgot to register and awakened familiars on the night of a full moon.

  “Look,” I said. “I don’t know what this is all about.” I looked over at Neko, who obligingly nodded his head in agreement.

  “She really doesn’t,” he said to Montrose. “The poor thing doesn’t know much of anything at all. Just look at those glasses—can you believe how wrong they are for her face?”

  “Thanks.” I scowled at him, but he only turned his palms toward me—a universal gesture for “what else do you want from me?”

  “You expect me to believe that?” Montrose’s words remained aggressive, but his tone wavered again. I thought he was beginning to realize that I wasn’t some dark, mysterious pirate sailing the witchcraft seas. I was a totally lost amateur, hoping that my Sunfish sailboat didn’t drift too far past the pier.

  “I don’t expect you to believe anything!” I said. “Look. I’ll tell you what happened, but I’m not going to get down on my knees and beg your forgiveness. I didn’t do anything wrong.” Montrose opened his mouth, clearly planning to quote section and verse from some volume on witchcraft infractions, but I went on before he could interrupt. “Go on. Go sit in the kitchen. I’m putting on some real clothes, and I’ll meet you in there.”