by Deanna Chase
“So it’s not likely.”
“Not likely.” He shook his head and went back to his pork loin. He finished twirling the last strand of his tagliatelle as if we’d been discussing something as ordinary as pumpkins in fall. As he placed the bite in his mouth, a tiny dollop of sauce fell on his lapel. I was prepared to ignore it, but he noticed it himself and mopped it up with his napkin. He gave me a wry smile, and my heart twisted inside my chest.
So, that was how it was done. You mop up the mess and move on. I consoled myself with the fact that my sole had been excellent. Before I could dwell on eating matters, I asked the question that had been percolating for days now: “So, the books. How did they get to be in the Peabridge’s cottage? I mean, isn’t that a strange coincidence, that I just happen to be a witch and my employer just happens to have a secret stash of spellbooks?”
David leaned back as the waiter came to take our plates away. When questioned, he ordered an espresso, and I—distractedly—asked for tea. The answer to my question was further delayed by the entire service ritual that accompanied that beverage—the waiter brought the little tea chest, I got to choose between a dozen flavors, and there was much shuffling of china and silverware.
Finally, David leaned forward in his chair and grappled with his answer. “The books are part of an extraordinarily valuable collection. They—and Neko, too—were brought together by Hannah Osgood. She led the Eastern Coven in the first two decades of the 1900s.”
“But she didn’t live in the Peabridge house. I would know her name.”
“No.” David shook his head. “She lived up near the Palisades.”
“Then how did the books get into the cottage?”
David sighed. “Hannah had seven daughters, six of whom actually had considerable power, all but the youngest, Emily. Hannah had compiled her library for her girls.”
“What happened?”
“The Spanish flu. It tore through Washington in 1918. Hannah lost her husband first. And then her daughters, one by one. She tried to save them with spells, with crystals, but she fell ill herself.”
“Poor thing,” I whispered, feeling a ripple of pity.
“Hannah recovered her physical strength, but her spirit was broken. She renounced her witchcraft. She ordered away her warder, refused any assistance from the Coven. And when she died, all her books were missing.”
“But she’d brought them to Emily’s house,” I said, nodding as I realized what had happened. “Emily Osgood became Emily Peabridge.” I recognized the name from records kept in Evelyn’s office, records that tracked the mansion’s former owners.
David nodded and spread his hands wide. “It seems that she hid them away when it became apparent that her line would not survive. She’d come to despise the books, to hate the witchcraft that could not save her family. The Coven has been searching for years, but no one ever thought the books would turn up on Emily’s land. No one ever imagined they’d be stored completely outside the reach of known witches.”
“But why me? Why now? I mean, how did I end up living in the same cottage where those books just happened to be stored?”
David shrugged. “Magic reaches out to magic. Like magnets, jumping across space to be joined together. The books sensed your powers and influenced the world around you. Your dormant powers sensed the books.”
“That’s ridiculous! Evelyn let me live in the cottage because the Peabridge couldn’t pay my salary.”
David did not take offense at my agitated tone. Instead, he turned his hands, palm up. “I can’t explain it. This isn’t science. It isn’t actions and reactions, like the world you’ve always known. If Evelyn hadn’t let you live in the cottage, the books would have gotten you there another way. You might have found some colonial reference to a valuable collection in the basement. You might have chased a cat in there one day, while you were strolling through the gardens on your lunch break. In a pinch, you might have had a dream that pointed out the location. Magic calls to magic.”
The thought was enough to drive me to silence. At least until the chocolate soufflé arrived.
The dessert was impressive—it towered above the walls of its shiny porcelain serving dish. The waiter maneuvered it toward our table with a satisfyingly controlled sense of urgency. I’d seen enough of Melissa’s baking endeavors to appreciate the pillowy sweet, and I actually sighed as the waiter punctured the elevated crust to release a whiff of chocolate-scented steam. He poured a steady stream of vanilla sauce into the resulting crater before serving generous bowls of the treat.
One spoonful, and I thought that I would swoon.
David caught my eye and grinned. “Good?”
“Heaven.”
By unspoken agreement, we were through with the witchcraft instruction part of the evening. As we finished our dessert and I sipped the last of my tea, we discussed other things—the traditional Halloween parade that would take place through Georgetown at the end of October, the questionable quality of the first autumn apples at the Safeway up the street. We could have been friends, out to dinner after months of separation, catching up on the mundane details of our very busy professional lives.
It wasn’t until David held my coat for me that we returned to the true root of our relationship. He kept the collar low enough that it was easy for me to slip my arms into the sleeves. As he settled the woolen shoulders over my own, he smoothed them into place with a comforting familiarity. “We’re agreed, then? You’ll continue meeting with me to learn more about your powers?”
“Of course.” I realized that I’d already assumed we were going to work together. We started to walk back toward the Peabridge and home. I was so full and relaxed that I scarcely acknowledged the pain in my toes from my ill-fitting shoes. “But what sorts of things are you going to teach me? I mean, what can you tell me that Neko can’t?”
David’s lips pursed. “Neko is your familiar. He can magnify your powers. To some extent, he can even focus them. But he can’t channel them in the first place. There are many skills that you can learn besides reading spells.”
“Such as?”
An older couple brushed past us on the sidewalk, and David waited until they were out of earshot before he answered. “You can read auras. You can tell who a person is, what they believe before you’ve ever met them. That man, who just walked by. He is on the Board of Directors of the Shakespeare Fund, and he’s worrying about whether they’ll raise enough money to underwrite seven productions next year, or only six.”
The Shakespeare scholar in me hoped it would be seven. The new-hatched witch asked, “You could tell all that, just by walking by him?”
“My sleeve brushed his. Physical contact helps.”
“So, are you a witch, too?”
He shook his head. “I don’t have inherent powers, nothing as strong as witchcraft. Reading auras lets me function as a warder. The Coven gives me the power so that I can best serve. They work a spell.”
Auras. Coven. Warders. I shivered. David was talking about power. A lot of power. Power that I wasn’t certain I wanted to have. I thought of Harold, hanging around my desk like an overeager puppy. But then I thought of Jason, looking me in the eye and smiling broadly as I recommended the reference source of his dreams.
Before I knew it, we were standing at my garden gate. I glanced down the path and saw that lights were on in the cottage. Neko was waiting up for me. Neko, and possibly Roger.
I turned back to David. “Thank you,” I said. “For everything. I had a lovely time tonight.”
Before I realized what was happening, he closed the distance between us. His arms came around me, pulling me in toward his chest. His lips on mine were chilled from the night air, but they thawed instantly. His fingers moved into my hair as he pulled my head closer to his, and I tasted chocolate soufflé and vanilla sauce and the deep rich coffee that had ended his meal.
It was a kiss like you read about in books. It was a kiss like the ones on movie screens, the ones that
make you sink deeper into your stadium seating and lean your head back and sigh. It was a kiss that my body melted into, that made my hands grip his arms and clutch him close.
And then, it ended. He stepped back and straightened his arms. The autumn air swirled between us.
He looked down, avoiding my eyes, but then he seemed to remember some silent promise he had made. He looked directly into my face. “That was wrong,” he whispered. He cleared his throat, and said again, loud enough to make both of us start. “Wrong.”
“No! I mean—I wanted—” And then I fell silent, my cheeks flaming as I remembered just how much I had wanted his kiss the other night. Had that desire been in my aura? Had he read my thoughts as clearly as words on a page?
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “I’m your warder.”
“So what does that mean?” I was trying to make the best of this, but my legs were trembling so hard that I was having trouble standing.
“I shouldn’t have blurred the boundaries. You’re my witch. I’m your warder. We’re going to work at being friends. It is too complicated for us to do anything more. Not while you’re still coming into your powers. Not while you’re still learning.”
Of all the patronizing, controlling, master-of-the-universe, pig-headed –
But maybe he was right. I didn’t know the first thing about being a witch. Okay. I knew the first thing—I could read spells in a spellbook. But I didn’t know the second. And I didn’t even know what might be on the list for third.
“Were you reading me just now?” I asked. “Reading my aura?”
“No!” He sounded shocked. “The Coven sent me to be your warder. A warder can’t read a witch unless she invites him to.” My relief was almost a physical thing. I glanced toward the cottage, just in time to see a dark shape jump back behind the curtains. Neko.
“Friends?” David asked, and he took another step back as if to clarify his stance.
“Friends,” I said, managing a nod that felt almost jaunty.
“Get some rest, then. We’ll continue with your training. And be kind to poor Harold Weems.”
My lips still tingled as I worked my key in the front door lock.
Chapter 11
It took a half dozen calls to Melissa to finish dissecting the night before. In between her providing baked goods to customers and my providing reference information to patrons, we worked the entire rainbow of emotions from red anger (over Roger having the gall to make an appointment for me with Clara) to orange speculation (over what, exactly, David’s kiss meant) to yellow caution (over the need to take small, precise steps as I learned more about the actual boundaries of all this witchcraft stuff) to green jealousy (over David’s ability to eat both onion soup and tagliatelle without committing sartorial disaster) to blue sorrow (over that kiss, again, and whether there’d ever be another, and whether I wanted there to be another, and why my years with Scott had left me such an emotional mess) to, finally, violet intrigue (over the powers that I could harness, once I’d done a bit more study).
All in all, it was a very busy morning, made more so by the fact that Harold Weems stopped by my desk on three separate occasions. The first time, he was carrying a small vase filled with yellow mums, a spray of brightly colored dried leaves, and a curling frond of fern. “I thought that these would look nice on your desk,” he’d said, and he blushed crimson.
“Thank you, Harold.” For the first time, a twinge of guilt nibbled at the back of my mind. “They’re lovely.”
An hour later, he’d come by to bring me my mail—the mail that I had thus far managed to pick up from the library’s shipping room every single day of my employment—and an hour after that, he’d stopped by to ask if I’d serve up a cup of coffee for him to sip on his break. At least I was able to give him a staff discount on the coffee.
“I’ve got a very busy afternoon,” I said to the poor guy, trying to head off more hours of witch-inspired attention as I handed him his cup and a cardboard sleeve. I extemporized: “I’m working on a special project for Evelyn.”
“What project?” he asked, perfectly reasonably.
“Umm….” I glanced back at my desk. I obviously wasn’t a practiced liar, if I prepared so poorly. A flash of inspiration hit, though, as I remembered walking home with David the night before. “Foundations! I need to research foundations! Ones that might fund the Peabridge.” That was it. Just like Mr. Shakespeare, who was trying to decide whether to fund another show. If I could find a handy donor or two, the library could be in the black, and I might shed my colonial garb.
“Well, good luck,” Harold said. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
“Mm-hmmm.” I muttered noncommittally, and I crossed back to my desk. I’d have to research the collection in my basement to see if there was some sort of counter-spell I could administer. I mean, poor Harold was getting more social skills exercise than he’d had in months, but it was only going to add up to heartbreak.
I glanced toward the second table in the reading room, the one where Jason would sit all afternoon. I could only hope that my spell had worked as strongly on him. My stomach did a somersault, and my fingers curled into fists. Jason, thoroughly bespelled. What a thought….
After all, nothing was going to happen with David. He had flat out said that it was inappropriate for him to have kissed me. And I had a lot more invested in my Imaginary Boyfriend than in my brand new warder—months of getting to know Jason, letting him see the true me as I assisted him with his reference work. I’d spent the time to build a solid base because I didn’t want anyone—myself included—to question if he was only my rebound relationship, after Scott.
I was no fool. I knew all about rebound. I had carefully measured every twinge of interest that I’d ever had for Jason Templeton, making sure that it was true, pure, legitimate. Not some figment of my Scott-tortured mind.
And Jason was real. Jason was my future.
But that future might not arrive if the Peabridge was forced to shut down, despite my cut salary, my charming colonial clothes, and the latte bar that perfumed the lobby. Foundation money. That really wasn’t a bad idea.
Rolling up my proverbial sleeves (my overdress fit too tightly around my forearms to permit the literal action), I dug into Google, refining set after set of search results to track down potential donors. This was the type of research project I loved—one lead ran into another, and I was swept along with the pleasure of learning new things. I was interrupted a few times by patrons, but my enthusiasm did not flag. My printer started to hum as I churned out pages from likely prospects. Some even included grant applications online.
It was mid-afternoon by the time I’d finished by information gathering. The stack on my desk was impressive, if I did say so myself. I glanced toward Evelyn’s office and contemplated telling her about what I’d done, but I figured that it was still such a long shot that there was no reason to raise her hopes. I slipped the materials into a white Tyvek envelope; I’d follow up tomorrow, when I was fresh.
Of course, the rest of my library work had hardly disappeared while I was doing my independent study. I glanced at the massive carts beside the circulation desk. We’d had a number of patrons in for the morning—it seemed as if each person who had walked through the door had carried his own weight in books, returning them to our collection.
Well, no time like the present to get started on reshelving. Besides, Jason would arrive at any moment. He should see me busily working, not waiting for him like some lovesick puppy. Squaring my shoulders, I wrestled one of the heavy wooden carts toward the back of the stacks.
I’ve never been a big fan of shelving. It is actually a lot of work—it’s amazing how many books are on the very bottom row of the collection, or the very top, and how many neighboring books can slip sideways during a one-month check-out span. Inevitably, I end up breaking fingernails (when mine are long enough to break; maybe there’s a reason that I routinely chew them to the quick
.)
Today’s job was made more challenging by the fact that I had inadvertently chosen the Death Sled. The Sled was our oldest shelving cart. One wheel locked intermittently to the right, periodically pitching the entire cart to the side with a lurch strong enough to pull a poor librarian’s arms from their sockets. When using the Sled, I’d been known to grunt like Maria Sharapova at Wimbledon.
But today, I was determined to keep those grunts to myself. I strongly suspected that Harold was lurking nearby, ready to leap forward with a helping hand if he sensed my slightest need. And right now, I didn’t want to see the man. Not until I’d figured out some way to recall my spell. Or, at the very least, dilute it.
I finished shelving all the books on the right side of the cart. The last two were destined for bottom shelves in the collection. I knelt down to place the first one, and then I stretched to the next rank of shelves to shove the other one in place. My heel, though, caught the hem of my petticoat, and I heard the fabric start to rip. Swearing a most uncolonial oath, I tried to hop forward, to free my foot. Unfortunately, that only succeeded in throwing my weight against the Death Sled, where one of my long, ruffled sleeves snagged a corner. True to its name, the book cart chose that moment to leap forward at an impossible angle.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a patron standing in the path of the Sled. I threw my hip against the cart, hard, using my full body weight to yank my sleeve free and set the Sled off course. That fine football tactic, though, only upset my fragile, hem-bound balance. As I tumbled to the floor, my mob cap went flying, and my glasses were knocked askew. The Death Sled, weighted on only one side because of my industrious—if unbalanced—shelving, teetered precariously for the longest minute in the history of library science before it crashed to the ground, sending treatises, essays, and bound manuscripts flying.
