Six Times a Charm

by Deanna Chase

  Montrose stared at me in obvious surprise. I don’t think that anyone had ever told him where he should go and when he should do it. I confirmed my suspicion when I caught Neko staring at me, a look of theatrical horror widening his eyes.

  “Neko?” I asked. “Do you know how to put on the tea kettle?” He nodded, apparently unable to find his voice. “Good. The tea is in the pantry. Top right shelf.” I turned toward my room, pleased at having taken control of the situation. Then, I remembered. “No. Not right. Left.” Back to my room. “Wait! Second shelf from the top.”

  “I’ll find the tea,” Neko said, as if he were more afraid to deal with a crazed homeowner who had lost her teabags than he was to confront Hecate’s Warder. Whatever the hell that meant.

  Back in my bedroom, I shut my door carefully, making sure that the latch snicked all the way closed. When I was reasonably certain that the cavalry wasn’t going to come barging in, I tore off my flannel pajamas. My shorts and t-shirt from earlier in the day were crumpled on the floor, but there was no way I was going to confront Montrose—or anyone else—in those stinky things. I flung open my closet door and reached for the first hanger.

  A black silk blouse. French cuffs. No way that I was going to find cufflinks at this late hour.

  Next up was a knit dress, more or less unwrinkled after its transport on the back seat of Gran’s car. I slipped it off its hanger and shook it out, cringing at the loud noise when it snapped in mid-air. I fumbled for a bra, swore when the straps twisted into a knot, and bit the inside of my cheek when the hooks tangled on the wrong eyelets.

  This was ridiculous. I’d been dressing myself for how many years? I just needed to slow down. Take my time. Forget that I’d turned a giant cat statue into a man and summoned some sort of cosmic cop to my doorstep. Easy.

  I tugged the dress over my head and decided that I wasn’t going to fight pantyhose and shoes, cold toes or not. With any luck, Montrose would be out of the house before he noticed the oversight.

  Fat chance. When I walked into the kitchen, Neko immediately stared at my feet. “Would you like me to get your slippers?” he asked, glancing at the bunny ears that were just visible behind the couch.

  “No. Thank you.” I made my reply frosty. At least, he had managed to find the teabags. And the sugar.

  “You don’t have any cream,” he said, and he made it sound like a mortal sin.

  “I drink mine black.” I hoped to convey the fact that I wasn’t running an all-night diner. Neko looked wounded. Montrose was not amused.

  The water was just coming to a boil, so I used the routine of making tea to cover my apprehension. I rescued three mugs from the shelf above the sink and found a teaspoon and saucer to hold our used teabags. I poured boiling water into the mugs. I gestured to the tin table in the kitchen and waved the men to their seats.

  Only when oolong steam was rising to moisten my cheeks did I meet Montrose’s eyes. His fingers closed tightly over the handle of his mug, and I could hear the tension as he forced his voice to be civil. “Thank you, Miss Madison,” he said.

  “My pleasure.” His “Miss Madison” made me more formal than usual. Off my game again, I sipped from my mug and burned my tongue. I put the tea on the table and took a deep breath. “All right, then. You’re a Warder. What is that? Some sort of cop?”

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

  “The Covenants?” I wished that Melissa were with me; she could whistle her Twilight Zone theme. “Let me guess. The witches form a Coven? And their laws are the Covenants?” Another nod. “You do realize that I’m not a witch, right?”

  “You worked a spell.” He kept his voice perfectly steady, and even I couldn’t argue with his logic. “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.”

  Oh.

  I tried again. “Even if I do have some power, I’m not a witch.” I counted off my explanations on my fingers. “One: I don’t wear a pointy hat. Two: I use a broom only for sweeping. Three: I’ve never even owned a cauldron.” Ha ha ha.

  Montrose was not amused. “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 yet you still say you didn’t work a spell. You awakened a familiar.” He shook his head and pointed to Neko. “That familiar. On the night of the full moon.”

  Neko froze, halfway through testing his tea with the tip of his tongue. He cast a fearful look at Montrose. I was already beginning to feel protective of the black-clad guy. After all, he hadn’t asked to be awakened by me.

  I said, “So what’s the deal with the full moon? I mean, how does it change things?”

  Montrose sighed. “Any familiar awakened on the night of a full moon has freedom to roam.” I stared at him. He said, “Neko can go anywhere. He doesn’t have to stay in the same room as your Compendium. He isn’t bound to you the way that a normal familiar is bound.”

  So much for feeling protective. I turned on Neko. “Were you going to say anything to me about this?”

  “Probably not.” He shrugged and pursed his lips into an air kiss. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

  I turned back to Montrose, feeling more than a little betrayed. “Look,” I said. “Why don’t we cut to the chase? Just for the sake of argument, I’ll say that I worked a spell. You’re the police, and I broke the rules. Do I pay a fine? Have to 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.” My relief actually felt something like a laugh. “I can promise you that I’m not going to work any more magic. Ever. This is all too weird. It’s not like I planned any of this, you know.”

  “No spells, then.”

  I nodded, relieved at how easy this was going to be. “No spells.” As soon as it was daylight, I would toss out every one of my beeswax tapers. I’d risk being without power in a dozen thunderstorms before I’d relive a night as strange as this one. And I’d figure out how to get rid of my…familiar in the full light of day.

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

  “You go ahead and do whatever you have to do.” I tried to keep my words defiant.

  Actually, I had about a million questions. How could he monitor me? How had he found me in the first place? How had he known that I’d transformed Neko? And how could he honestly expect me to believe that witchcraft existed in the middle of Washington, D.C., in the twenty-first century?

  Before I could even decide whether to ask my questions, my jaws tensed with a gigantic yawn that I barely managed to catch against the back of my throat. I cheated a glance at my wrist and saw that it was almost four o’clock. That thought made me even more exhausted, and the next yawn escaped. I remembered to cover my mouth, though. Gran would have been proud.

  Montrose must have thought that I was sending him a message. He set his mug down on the table with a decisive gesture and rose to his feet. “Of course, you’re responsible for whatever your familiar does—for all actions that he takes.”

  “Of course,” I said, trying to sound as if I negotiated magical responsibilities every day of my life. “I won’t be working any magic, so he’ll have nothing to do.” I glared at Neko, who managed a perfectly arched “who, me?” eyebrow.

  “And one more thing, Miss Madison,” Montrose said. I cocked my head to one side, still surprised by how odd my name sounded with his formal diction. “That.” He pointe
d to the counter.

  “The aquarium?”

  “The fish.”

  “What about Stupid Fish?”

  “Keep an eye on it.” Montrose looked at Neko, who became completely 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.”

  Bad things. I glanced at the basement door and thought of the dozens of books down there, the countless spells that might result in any number of disasters. I shuddered and shook my head. “I’ll pay attention,” I vowed, silently promising never to set foot in the basement again.

  “Just make sure that you do,” Montrose said, and then he disappeared into the night.

  Chapter 5

  “Oh my god!” Melissa said. “What did you do?” She held up a finger before I could answer, turning to the counter behind her and picking up the pot of Toffee Kiss coffee. She filled a large paper cup and slipped on a finger-preserving corrugated sleeve before handing it to a ginger-haired man who looked like he was only just waking up, despite the fact that it was after six in the evening. He paid her with exact change and took the cup. No words were exchanged. Ah, the joys of being a regular. And Cake Walk had more coffee regulars than the Peabridge Library could ever hope to attract.

  When I had Melissa’s undivided attention again, I shrugged. “Montrose left. I locked the door after him and went back to sleep.”

  “I don’t believe that you’re being so blasé about all this! I would have totally freaked! I mean, you worked a spell from an ancient magic book!”

  “What am I supposed to do? Run out into the street screaming, ‘I’m a witch! I’m a witch!’? It’s not like I can call the cops and report myself. They’d lock me up for observation. I’d wonder if I hadn’t imagined everything, if not for Neko.”

  “He’s still there, then?”

  “Asleep on the couch. At least he was this morning—curled up in a sunbeam. He barely stirred when I left for work.”

  “I can’t believe you just left him there!”

  “What else was I going to do? Sit and stare at him all day? I needed to get to work. The last thing I’d need now is to be fired. I’d lose my paycheck and my house.”

  “But Montrose said that with the full moon—”

  “I know!” I’d been worried about my familiar’s dire potential all day. Melissa looked startled by my sharp tone, and I forced myself to repeat a bit less forcefully, “I know. But I couldn’t figure out anything else to do with him. And, I have to say, he just doesn’t seem dangerous.”

  Melissa snorted. “And what about Stupid Fish?”

  “What else could I do? I hauled the aquarium into my room. It’s sitting on the floor.”

  “Poor thing!”

  “He’s a fish,” I said dryly. “I’ll get some sort of table for him tonight. I guess I should consider myself lucky that the bedroom door locks. Otherwise, there’s no telling what Neko might do for a snack.”

  “Why didn’t you just whip up another spell? Conjure up a table to put the aquarium on.”

  “It’s not like I’m a sudden expert on this stuff! And I’m not getting anywhere near that book again.” I remembered that strange flash of darkness, the sudden power that had risen from nowhere. “I mean, I have no idea how I did what I did, but I’m not going to play around with it. Even if I hadn’t promised Montrose—”

  My words were interrupted by a pair of women who walked through the door. “What’s left?” one of them asked, already reaching into her purse.

  “One Lemon Grenade.” Melissa pointed toward the pastry, sitting lonely beneath a glass dome. “Two Ginger-Butterscotch Dreams.” The giant cookies leaned against each other on a hand-thrown pottery plate. “One Fusion Swirl.” Raspberry jam glistened in a caramel blondie. “And half a dozen Bunny Bites.”

  The miniature carrot cakes were my favorite. They were a lot of work, especially when Melissa took the time to pipe miniature orange carrots on top of the cream cheese frosting. I had the women pegged as Dream girls, though, and I wasn’t disappointed. They paid up, promised to be back the next day, and headed out the door.

  Melissa passed me one of the Bites. The frosting melted over my tongue, and I closed my eyes in near-ecstasy.

  So what if I was a witch? So what if I had managed to work a spell? So what if the books in my basement might contain secrets to the entire universe, if I only took the time to investigate them, to explore them, and put them in order?

  I chewed and swallowed, reminding myself that I didn’t need to do anything with the witchcraft collection. I wasn’t going to let it interfere with my life ever again. It was a one-time mistake, like the Brazilian wax that Scott had coaxed me into trying, or having my eyebrows threaded. I wasn’t going to go there. Not ever again. Anything else would be just too strange. And there was no time like the present to get life back to normal (whatever that meant, with a familiar napping on my couch.)

  I took a deep breath and forced a bright smile as I very purposefully changed the topic of conversation. “So?” I said. “Enough about the Wicked Ways of Witchcraft. Tell me about your date!”

  Melissa was determined to find The Man by the time that she turned thirty. Although she hadn’t met him yet, she knew that the Man was educated. He was sensitive and caring and not intimidated by her running her own business. He was independent enough to give her breathing room, but reliable enough that he’d show up when he said he would. He had to be physically stronger than she was, and taller, and he had to have all his own teeth and hair. Too preppy was out, too grungy, too punk. Basically, she was looking for an impossible fiction, created by magazines and beach reading and endless, repetitious conversations with girlfriends.

  But Melissa structured her search. She auditioned one new candidate every two weeks, rotating her stock from various resources: Dedicated Metropolitan Singles (an organization devoted to conducting volunteer activities with teams comprised of equal numbers of men and women); Washington Today personal ads (the magazine was read by lawyers, lobbyists, and other upwardly trending intellectuals); FranticDate.com (not really the name of the website, but I could never remember what it was actually called); and Independents—recommendations from friends, relatives, and anyone else who thought they should have a say in her love life.

  “This one was a Dedicated, wasn’t he?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, popping a Bunny Bite into her own mouth. The guy must have been a disaster. Melissa never ate her own wares. “Dedicated to his mother.”

  “We’re talking a Norman Bates type thing?”

  “Just about. He phoned Mumsy when he picked me up, ostensibly to make sure that she’d gotten home from her card game all right. And then, he called her during dinner. And she phoned him while he was walking me home.”

  “But what was he like? I mean, couldn’t you work with him on the phone thing?”

  “Oh, the calls were only the beginning.” She checked her watch to make sure that it was 6:30 before she walked around the counter. When she reached the door, she flipped the hand-lettered “Walk on In” sign to “Walk on By” and turned off the outside light. She flipped another switch, and the four two-tops at the front of the shop disappeared in shadows.

  I picked up a towel, well-accustomed to the routine. I didn’t pay for my Bunny Bites, but I washed plates, coffee carafes, and whatever else was left around at the end of the day. As Melissa filled the sink with hot, soapy water, she shook her head. “I tried to compliment him on his tie, and he told me that his mother had brought it back from Singapore. I asked him what had made him sign up with Dedicated Metro, and he said that his mother’s garden club was a sponsor.”

  “Sounds like a real winner.” I shook my head and started drying the Dreams plate.

  “I’m telling you, I was through all Five Conversational Topics, and we hadn’t even finished our appetizers.”

  Despite all her practice, Melissa got nervous about dates. She was always afraid that s
he would say the wrong thing, or—worse—say nothing. So before each and every encounter, she drew up a list of Five Conversational Topics. She wrote them down on a piece of paper and committed them to memory. She tried to use them sparingly, exploiting the complete depths of each subject before going on to the next. Typically, they were masterpieces of open-ended questioning, and I’d never known her to go through all five. Two, usually. Three, if she was with a guy who was really hard to draw out. Four, if he was the shyest man in the world—most of her Four nights had been FranticDate guys.

  But Five? And with the appetizer plates still on the table?

  “What did you do?”

  “I yielded to the inevitable.”

  “And that was?”

  She shrugged and pulled the plug in the sink. We watched the water swirl away, and the slurping sound at the end seemed a comment on our love lives. “I asked him what his mother thought made an ideal woman.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “Oh yes, I did.” Her jaw was grim as she dried her hands on a towel.

  “But what if he’d realized you were being sarcastic?”

  “What was the worst that would happen? He’d refuse to see me again?”

  “And what did he say? What was his mother’s ideal?”

  Melissa shook her head. “A woman who could cook and clean and manage a household’s finances, all the while popping out babies as if the Pill had never been invented.” She put coffee into the brewing baskets, getting ready for the next morning’s rush. “That last bit was my editorial. He didn’t actually mention the Pill.”

  “What did you talk about after that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” I was fascinated by this tale of dating disaster. It was like a giant bruise, and I couldn’t keep from poking it.

  “I decided not to waste any more topics. Five’s my limit.” She shrugged. “Even dessert was the pits—molten chocolate cakes. I make better stuff in my sleep.”

  I started to challenge that harsh judgment. After all, molten chocolate cakes were molten chocolate cakes. They couldn’t be all bad, even if the date had been a complete disaster. Loyalty made me shake my head, though, and I clicked my tongue in disapproval. “Another wasted night.”