Six Times a Charm

by Deanna Chase

  I didn’t have time to take a break for lunch, and my feet ached as I finally headed down the garden path to my cottage at the end of the day. My heart was soaring, though. Jason thought that I looked good in my costume. Even Harold’s bizarre attention had made me feel special.

  The front door was unlocked when I got home. I could see my laundry piled on one of the couches, panties tucked in discreetly beside jeans, some knit tops, a couple of pullovers and pajamas. My towels were fluffy and still warm. I ran a hand over the stack and excavated a couple of items, holding them up to make sure that nothing had been shrunk to Barbie size.

  Perfect. Neko had managed the laundry, without even a hint of the disaster that I now realized I’d been expecting.

  “Jane?” I heard his voice call from the kitchen. “Is that you? We were just waiting for you to get home.”

  “We?” I said, crossing to the kitchen door. Had David arrived already?

  No. Neko was seated at the table with a stranger, a stunning specimen of a human male. The visitor had the body of a diver, a well-muscled torso and chiseled arms that spoke of endless hours in a gym. His chestnut hair had perfect blond highlights, and his eyes glinted with a sea-blue that had to come from contact lenses. He stood as I entered, and his capped teeth nearly blinded me when he smiled. He was gorgeous. He was the cover of Men’s Health, and he was sitting here in my kitchen.

  “Neko was telling me all about your cottage. I hope you don’t mind that I came by for a cup of tea.”

  And with those two sentences, spoken with a delicate dollop of affectation, this Adonis let me know that he would never be attracted to me, or anyone else of my gender, witchcraft or no witchcraft. I shook his hand gamely and learned that his name was Roger and that he worked in the spa next door to the laundromat, and that he had helped Neko when the washing machine overflowed, and how had anyone thought that dish soap would be a good substitute for laundry detergent?

  Neko looked at me from his seat in the kitchen, and I could read the expression in his eyes without any magic at all. He wanted me to like his new friend. He wanted me to be pleased with the toy that he had brought home. And he wanted me to overlook his purposeful misuse of dish soap, consider it a minor amusement in the free-range life of my familiar. I was beginning to understand why most witches kept their assistants under lock and key. “Well, thank you Roger,” I said. “Thanks for helping poor Neko out.”

  Neko’s grin was bright enough to light up the entire house. “He did more than that! When we got back here, the phone was ringing. I was still fighting to get the key out of the lock, but Roger got to it in time.”

  With a flash of premonition that had nothing to do with my roaming familiar or the magical books gathering dust in my basement, I knew that all the wonder of my day was about to come crashing down around my shoulders. “Who was it?” I asked.

  “Your grandmother,” Roger said, confirming my suspicion. “She seemed really surprised that a man answered here, but she left a message. She said that you and Clara are supposed to meet at Cake Walk on Saturday morning at eleven. Your calendar was sitting there on the counter, so I could see you didn’t have anything else planned. It’s all set up, and she says she won’t take no for an answer.”

  Chapter 10

  “I’m sorry I’m late!” I was apologizing before the hostess had finished ushering me to our table. David Montrose stood as I arrived, and he placed his hands on the back of my chair in that strange gesture that conveys that a man is ready to assist a woman, but also feels possessive.

  Not that I was complaining. He was back to his dark suit look, with a blindingly white shirt, and a conservative silver-on-black tie. I glanced down at my own outfit and was grateful that Neko had talked me into the microfiber one-piece dress. And the chunky green glass necklace that played off my hair. And the narrow-heeled slingbacks that were killing my feet.

  “Actually,” David said, “you’re right on time.” He glanced at his watch. I had left mine behind, in deference to this dinner that was more than a regular everyday meal. But less than a date. A lesson? A new beginning?

  I surreptitiously took a deep breath and ordered my flip-flopping belly to settle down. Fortunately, the waiter chose that moment to scuttle up to the table. “Would Madame like a cocktail?”

  I cast a quick glance at David and hated myself for doing so. Would I like a drink? Of course. Make mine a double. But I had made a promise. If we were working tonight…. David nodded and took the lead. “I’ll have a martini,” he said.

  “Vodka gimlet,” I countered, and the waiter nodded before scurrying off toward the kitchen. “So,” I forced myself to say, confronting the alcoholic bull by the horns. “We’re not actually working tonight.”

  “Not in the sense that you mean. We’re getting to know each other better. You’re learning to trust me. To trust yourself and what you can be.”

  His smile was disarming. I looked around the restaurant and wondered how much time he had spent selecting the place. When Neko had told me that I was meeting David at La Chaumiere, I was excited, pleased enough that I momentarily forgave Roger for being my social secretary.

  La Chaumiere was a Georgetown staple; it had been around for more than thirty years. It was known for its fine French food and its fabulous service, but it was supposed to be relaxed, comfortable, almost like a country inn. I could imagine a warm hearth in the front room and lavish guest beds above, complete with fluffy down comforters and 400-count cotton sheets.

  Sheets. I blushed. This was a restaurant in the middle of Washington, D.C. I’d better get my mind out of the bedroom and back to work.

  Because whatever David Montrose said, this dinner was a sort of work for me. If I was going to believe him, if I was going to accept the strange new job I’d undertaken, then I’d better accept that everything about David was business. He was my mentor, my teacher. My warder.

  The waiter came back with our drinks, along with menus. “To new beginnings,” David said, lifting his glass. I touched mine to his and repeated the toast, feeling the words thrum down my spine like musical notes.

  New beginnings, I reminded myself. Like a new school year, the start of junior high. Like that terrible, awkward time, when you looked up in seventh-grade history class and realized that you were the only girl in the room, and that odd-shaped white thing on your desk must be one of those athletic cups that you’d heard about, and that if you wanted it off your desk you were going to have to be the one to touch it, and that all the boys were going to laugh at you, and then all the boys were laughing at you, and it was only the second day of class, and the teacher wasn’t even there yet, and, and, and….

  Oh. Maybe that was only my experience with new beginnings.

  I dove for my menu and started studying it as if it were the most fascinating thing written since George Chesterton’s private diaries. Not that I had personally found those diaries so fascinating, but Jason had, and so I’d honed my passion for them. Passion….

  Another sip of the gimlet. A grown-up’s mojito, if you really think about it. I resisted the urge to drain the glass. I could handle this. I was an adult.

  I looked at the first courses and saw that they had onion soup. French onion soup, by definition. One of my favorites. I considered ordering it, but then I heard Melissa whispering in the back of my head. Certain foods were not first date foods. French onion soup. Spaghetti. Pizza. Anything that had a tendency to become long and stringy and drippy and embarrassing.

  As I heard her admonitions, I wondered what Freud would say about them. It certainly sounded as if she were warning me off from more than luscious food-stuffs, trying to keep me from another whole range of messy activity. Spare me from the embarrassment, she would certainly say.

  But who was I, to argue with D.C.’s queen of First Dates? I sighed and decided to pass on the soup. Mesclun salad for me, with a classic vinaigrette. And while the pork loin sounded divine, it was served on a bed of tagliatelle. Tagliatelle. Worse,
actually, than spaghetti, because the long flat noodles could hold more buttery sauce, could splatter more mess on an unsuspecting diner. Dover sole, then. With rice.

  The waiter came back to take our order, and he attempted to complicate things. They had three specials for the night, and each sounded better than the last. But the tuna scaloppini was served with spinach (a definite no-no; it would get caught in my teeth.) The trout was a no-man’s-land of potential bones, evil slivers just waiting to stick in my throat and embarrass me into requiring Heimlich assistance at the table. And the roast lamb was served with cherry tomatoes (did I even need to think about where the seeds might fly?)

  I smiled at the waiter and ordered with Melissa-bred confidence. Mesclun and sole.

  “Very good, madame? And for you, monsieur?”

  “Onion soup, to start, and the pork with tagliatelle. And,” David turned to me, “if it’s all right with you, we’ll have a chocolate soufflé for dessert?”

  Chocolate soufflé. An item I’d never ordered in a restaurant, because I was too afraid of the “leave a minimum of forty-five minutes of preparation time” note on the menu. I ran through a list of Melissa’s potential objections—it wasn’t stringy, saucy, or explosive—and said, “That sounds lovely.”

  “And wine?”

  Without hesitating, David recited a bin number. The waiter nodded his approval and sidled off to the kitchen.

  Leaving David and me at our table.

  Alone.

  Where were Melissa’s Five Conversational Topics when I needed them? I started to raise my fingernails to my teeth, just for a quick gut-settling gnaw, but then I remembered where I was. I folded my hands in my lap instead, even managing to resist the urge to drain my gimlet.

  David smiled easily and passed me the bread basket. Selecting a slice of baguette was practically therapeutic as he said, “So? How was your day at work?”

  For just a moment, I thought that he was asking me about the library, that he was expressing an interest in colonial education, millinery of the eighteenth century, or crop rotation for gentleman farmers.

  Then, I realized his true intent. “It worked,” I said. I glanced around at the tables closest to us. No one seemed to be listening, but I still leaned closer to David and whispered, “The spell worked.”

  He nodded in silent encouragement, and I told him all about Harold’s unexpected attention, about the almost-laughable interest that he’d shown in my skirt. While that didn’t surprise David, my mentioning Jason did. And old Mr. Zimmer. And the three other men who had paid me a surfeit of attention that afternoon.

  The waiter interrupted to bring out a bottle of wine. David engaged in the entire tasting game, but he down-played each step. He looked at the cork, swirled the straw-colored liquid in his glass a few times and took a single, abstemious swallow. He nodded to the waiter, who filled my glass, completed David’s, then disappeared.

  I took a sip and smiled approvingly at the full taste of the pinot gris. Much cleaner than the oaky chardonnays that I’d had before. Simpler. More straightforward.

  Then we were back to my day as a witch. I gathered from the questions that David asked that it was unusual for a spell to have the strength of the one that I had cast. I shouldn’t have been able to bring all of those men into my snare. I shouldn’t have enchanted each and every one of them.

  Somewhere during the telling, the waiter brought our appetizers. I only wasted a moment looking at David’s soup with longing. Fortunately, the bright greens in my salad satisfied my taste buds. And I didn’t have worry about the gruyere strands that tested David’s cheese-sawing abilities. Not that the challenging soup made him look silly. It actually made him seem more…human. Less threatening. Just a regular guy eating a regular meal.

  “So,” I said, as we waited for our main courses.

  “So.”

  “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Warding? All my life.” I waited for him to elaborate. That took three bites of baguette, a sip of water, and another of wine. But at last, he said, “It’s not going to be easy for you to accept all this information at once. I’ll give you answers, but—for a while at least—you’re going to have to accept these things on faith.”

  “Try me.”

  He took a deep breath but was interrupted by the appearance of our entrees. The waiter put my plate down on the table and spun it a quarter turn, counter-clockwise, so that the fish was best displayed against its lemon and caper sauce. David’s pork was beautiful on its bed of treacherous, sauce-laden pasta.

  “Bon appetit,” David said, and he picked up his knife and fork. The knife and fork that he was using European-style, I noticed. He took a bite (sparing his suit from unsightly splashes of tomato and olive sauce) and chewed carefully before meeting my eyes. “Warding is…a family occupation. My father was a warder before me, and his father before him. I’m the oldest of three boys, and so I became a warder. My middle brother is a stockbroker, and my youngest is an experimental film maker, living in Toronto.”

  Well. That made the Montrose family seem downright ordinary.

  “There are about two dozen of us warders here in D.C. One for each witch in the metropolitan area.” And that made it all sound like a census survey. “We warders begin our training when we’re children. For simplification sake, you can think of us as students at a boarding school. We go to work with other warders, to learn from them.”

  “Like an apprentice.” That was a system familiar to me. In colonial America, there were still apprentices and journeymen and masters, all learning their trades.

  “Exactly.”

  “But what do you do when you’re not watching me? I mean, what did you do before I worked that first spell?”

  A dark memory flickered across David’s face, and he took a sip of wine before answering. “I warded another witch until last year.”

  “What happened last year?” I asked softly, imagining some terrible magical battle, a beautiful young witch fighting desperately for her life. I pictured David struggling to rescue her from an evil sorcerer, grimacing in pain as he absorbed one magical assault after another.

  “I was fired.”

  “What?” I was so surprised that I practically shouted the question.

  “I was fired. My witch decided that I was too conservative. Too restrictive.”

  “Fancy that,” I said before I could stop myself, and I was rewarded with a glare. I hurriedly asked another question, before he could match words to his expression. “So you were just sitting there…where? Waiting? Collecting astral unemployment?”

  David grimaced at the word “astral”. “Let’s just say I was on assignment.”

  “On assignment?”

  “A detail.”

  “Doing what?” His evasiveness triggered every librarian instinct in my blood. I wanted to get to the bottom of this.

  “I was working for the Court of Hecate, all right?” I was reviewing valuable documents, storing them in proper places so that future generations can access the wisdom contained therein.”

  I stared at him in surprise. “You were a file clerk!”

  “I—”

  “There’s nothing to be ashamed of.” I cut him off, even though I wanted to laugh. My proud, domineering warder had been filing papers for the past year, alphabetizing page after page. Or scroll after scroll. Whatever.

  As if he could read my mind, he said, “There was more to it than that. I provided physical protection for the Court’s meeting places. I searched for lost and stolen artifacts. And I remained on call to any witch in the Coven who needed my assistance.”

  “Did you train them, then, the other witches? Like you’ll train me? “

  “No. Most of you are trained by your Caller.”

  You. I was a witch. The words still sounded impossible inside my own skull. I swallowed hard and forced out a whisper. “What’s a Caller?”

  “An older witch. One who senses strength in a new generation. One who calls
you to your new powers.”

  “So it’s not hereditary?” My thoughts flashed to the topic I’d been avoiding all night, to Clara, who I was now supposed to meet on Saturday at Cake Walk, curse Roger and his willingness to poke his nose into my bare-paged calendar.

  “Usually, it is. Hereditary in the mother’s line. But it doesn’t always pass, not even from a strong witch to a first daughter. A Caller senses the seeds of power and encourages it in a young girl.” He looked me directly in the eye. “Is your mother a witch?”

  I started to say, “My mother’s dead,” because that was the way I had answered questions about Clara my entire life. But she wasn’t dead. She was alive and well and ready to see me after a quarter century. Was that why she’d finally come back? Did she want to tell me that she was a witch? That I was? “I don’t know,” I finally said. “I haven’t seen her since I was four years old. My grandmother raised me.”

  David nodded. “And is she a witch?”

  “Gran!” I laughed out loud at the thought. “Absolutely not.” David just looked at me. “She’s a little old lady. She drinks Earl Grey tea. She sits on the board for the concert opera. She’s my grandmother, for God’s sake.”

  “Precisely.” He reached out and rested his fingers on my wrist. As with the night before, I was surprised by how smooth his fingertips felt, how much warmth flowed from him against my pulse point. “She’s your grandmother. And you came by your power from somewhere.”

  I pulled away from him and disguised my discomfort by stuffing my mouth with sole and rice. This was just too strange, I thought as I chewed. Too bizarre. Gran was not a witch. She couldn’t be. I would have suspected something all these years. I swallowed. “Is there any other way?” I asked, and my voice sounded impossibly small.

  David nodded, and I thought that the glint in his eyes just might be sympathy. “There is. Sometimes, the witchcraft skips generations. Every once in a while—in a very, very rare while—it appears spontaneously. But there hasn’t been a wild witch in the Eastern Coven since Salem, since 1692.”