Sorcery and the Single Girl

by Mindy Klasky

  With good cause, I might add.

  Showing off my skills as a witch was not exactly at the top of any One Hundred Ways to Win the Man of Your Dreams list.

  Of course, providing a small demonstration wasn’t exactly forbidden, either.

  “What are you saying, Graeme?”

  His fingers clenched slightly, effortlessly, turning me around to face him. “I’m saying that I want to see you. I want to see what you can do. I told you about the women in my family, the powers that they’ve had. I want to see that power in you.”

  His blue eyes seemed silver in the shadows on the terrace. The lights were behind him, so that his face was carved in planes. I felt his urgency in his fingertips, sensed his earnestness in the heat that radiated from his chest.

  “It’s really not much to look at,” I said, trying to make a joke of my supernatural powers.

  “I want to look at it. I want to look at you.”

  Oh. My. God.

  The heat in his words would have made me do just about anything. A striptease, here on the back porch of the Kennedy Center? No problem! Bring him home to my bed, ignoring the inquiring looks of my familiar and his lover? Hop on in! Present him to my grandmother, my mother and my best friend, and tell them that he was the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with, come hell or high water? Absolutely!

  Oh. Wait. That last option wasn’t really on the table. Yet.

  “You want me to work a spell?”

  “Just something small.”

  “Now?”

  “Please.” He made the request sound like an offer.

  I licked my lips and looked out over the river. I’d spent so much time working with David, focusing on crystals and herbs, that I’d ignored the original aspect of my magic, the spells that I’d learned to work from the library in my basement.

  I thought back to the endless rows of books that I had cataloged, the pages and pages of magical words that I had examined, at least in passing. As the breeze picked up over the Potomac once again, I realized I had the perfect little working, ready at hand.

  “I shouldn’t do this sort of thing,” I said, suddenly embarrassed.

  “I won’t tell if you don’t tell.” Graeme’s white-toothed smile made me blush, as if he were promising to keep more secrets than my magic.

  “It’s just that I should have my familiar here. Or my warder.”

  He looked surprised. “I didn’t mean to suggest anything inappropriate. If you’re not allowed to use your powers without their permission…”

  He trailed off, probably driven into silence by the angry set of my lips. Of course I was allowed to use my powers! David Montrose was not the boss of me. And Neko? He might think that he could run my life, but I was his master. Mistress. Whatever.

  Neither David nor Neko could stop me from using my powers. At least with regard to something as minor as the spell I thought to work now. I mean, if I was going to try something major, like setting the centerstone, or something—well, of course, I’d expect my magical cohorts to be present for that.

  But a few words, chanted on the nighttime breeze? I wouldn’t ask permission to have a slice of cake for dessert. And I wasn’t going to turn to David and Neko for something equally mundane.

  I forced my frown into a smile. “No,” I said sweetly. “I certainly don’t need their permission. Watch this.”

  I did feel him watching. I felt his eyes as I turned back toward the river. I heard him catch his breath as I reached out for the essence of Water, the strength and power of the basic element that flowed past our marble perch. I imagined him stepping back in surprise as I raised my arms dramatically.

  And there he was, behind me, catching his jacket before it slipped to the ground. “Damn!” I said. How could I have forgotten I had his coat draped around my shoulders? Why hadn’t I realized what would happen as soon as I moved my arms? What sort of idiot witch was I? “I’m sorry,” I said, my concentration shattered.

  “No harm done at all.” I heard the laughter beneath his words, good-natured humor meant to carry me along. He wasn’t poking fun at me. He honestly meant for me to feel more comfortable. He held out the jacket as if it were a coronation robe. “Perhaps if you wear it properly?”

  I smiled and accepted the offer. And then, before I could lose my nerve, I turned back to the river and closed my eyes, the better to concentrate. I touched my forehead, offering up the power of my thoughts. I touched my throat, the power of my words. I touched my heart, the power of my belief. And I said:

  “Flowing water, flowing stream

  Capture moonlight in a beam

  Pass close to the quiet shore

  Open up a magic door

  Offer up your strength as heat

  Beat back chill, cold breeze defeat

  Let fast current turn to frost

  Heat us, now that summer’s lost.”

  I knew the spell was working even before I heard Graeme’s indrawn breath. A suddenly warm breeze skirled off the Potomac, brushing my face like a promise of things to come. When I looked out at the water, I could see a silver path condensing all the way from the marble porch to Roosevelt Island in the middle of the river.

  Anyone who happened to look down on the Potomac at that precise moment would have thought that the water was reflecting the moonlight. Reflecting with an odd precision perhaps, providing a cleaner line than expected, but reflecting, all the same.

  I knew that the silver was not reflected light, though. The silver was ice. Rime settled on the water as I drew forth the river’s warmth, as I created a silky summer breeze with magic.

  I turned to Graeme, a smile broad across my lips. “And that is a little spell.”

  He was struck dumb by my working. I could see the surprise, flat across his face. What had he expected? Thunder? Lightning? Flashes of eternal hellfire spawned by my witchy demonstration?

  “But…you…” He swallowed and tried again. “You stopped the flow of the entire river.”

  I frowned. I thought he would have missed that. “Only for a moment. I took too much water into the spell right at the start. As soon as I found the proper balance, I let the rest of it flow back.”

  “You let…” He stared at the silvery path in front of us. “That’s ice, isn’t it?”

  “Ice. Frost. Whatever you want to call it. It’s not that thick. It doesn’t go down to the bottom of the riverbed.”

  “But you can keep it there, now. While we’re talking?”

  I’d left a tendril of my powers attached to the frozen streak across the water. In fact, my warm breeze did continue to blow, harvesting the river’s power, draining the water’s heat for our personal convenience. I shrugged. “It doesn’t take much power to maintain. Casting the spell is the hard part.”

  “I see. I’d always thought…” He shook his head slowly. “But what do I know about magic, eh?”

  “I should probably let it go. I wouldn’t want to confuse any fish or anything.”

  “Oh! Yes! By all means!”

  I closed my eyes and imagined the heat diffusing, sinking back into the river. I let the ice break up as quickly as it had developed. When I stared out at the river again, ordinary moonlight flickered over ordinary current.

  “That was incredible,” Graeme breathed.

  “It was nothing,” I said, embarrassed by his attention.

  “No,” he contradicted. “Truly. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with me.”

  I don’t know what it was about those words, but he made me feel…intimate. As if I had shown him something substantially more personal than a mild weather-working spell. I felt my blush heating my face, far more effectively than any magical breeze I’d pulled forth from the river.

  Before I could say anything else, Graeme was kissing me. His embrace held all the urgency of our encounter on the park bench, all the heat of that fast-banked desire. His fingers tangled in the hair at the base of my neck, and I opened my lips, eager to get the full taste of
him, the full feel of him.

  And something jangled against my thigh.

  Startled, I leaped back.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “Only my mobile.” His cell phone. Apparently set on “wake the dead” for its vibration mode. “There,” he said. “They’ve rung off.”

  I laughed nervously, but neither of us wasted time returning to where we’d left off. His knee forced its way between mine, and his arms closed around me, keeping me balanced, or at least on my feet, even as his lips began doing extremely unsteadying things to the base of my throat.

  And his phone jangled again.

  “Dammit!” he swore, slamming his hand into his pocket to pull out the offending appliance. He glanced at the number on the display screen and muttered something I didn’t quite catch. “I’m sorry,” he said curtly. “I’m going to have to take this.”

  He flipped the cell open and strode across the marble portico. The chilly natural breeze had returned from the river, blowing his words away from me so that I couldn’t have eavesdropped if I’d wanted to.

  If I’d wanted? Of course I’d wanted to.

  I pulled his jacket closer and waited for him to finish his rather animated conversation. He ran his fingers through his hair twice. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, like a tiger preparing to pounce on some unsuspecting prey.

  At last, he slammed the phone closed and turned to face me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. His eyes were flashing anger more than sorrow. I wondered who he’d been talking to, and I was glad—in a way—that I’d never know. He shoved the offending phone into his pocket with enough vehemence that I was afraid he’d rip out the seam. “I have to go.”

  “Go?” I was so surprised that I repeated the word like a mynah bird.

  He shrugged angrily. “I have some work to do.”

  “Tonight?” I asked incredulously. “It’s Saturday. And it’s almost midnight.”

  “Eleven-thirty,” he said, as if I’d really been asking the time.

  “Whatever. Can’t it wait till morning?”

  He shook his head grimly. “No.” And then he repeated, “I’m sorry.” He put out his hand, cupping my cheek as if he truly wanted to continue the, um, conversation that we’d begun before we were so electronically interrupted. “Let me get you a taxi home.”

  I was so surprised that I let him lead me off the marble terrace. We passed through the now-darkened hallways of the Kennedy Center, moving among the last of the maintenance crews preparing the vast hall for its nighttime sleep. We walked out to the street, and Graeme managed to hail a cab instantly, applying the ancient masculine art of transportation management.

  Just before he handed me into the backseat, he pulled me close for a kiss—a fiery kiss that almost made me moan like a silly heroine in a book. Then, he whispered against my ear, “I’ll make this up to you. I promise.”

  And before I could say anything, he handed money to the driver and closed the door behind me. We pulled away from the curb, took the corner at a speed that would definitely not be deemed safe by the city’s finest, and then Graeme was gone.

  I gave my address to the driver and sank back into the seat.

  Acquisitions. That’s what his business card had said. What sort of acquisitions emergency happened at eleven-thirty on a Saturday night?

  I tortured myself with scenarios until the driver pulled up outside my cottage. As I fit my key into the lock, my phone started ringing. I pushed my way into the living room, barely shoving the door closed behind me. Two rings. Three. I sprinted into the kitchen and grabbed the handset before the answering machine picked up.

  “You’ve resolved the emergency faster than you thought, and you’re ready to make it up to me now?” I remembered to smile as I spoke, so that Graeme would know I was only kidding, that I wasn’t a screaming harpy, furious with a single change in plans.

  “That was a very bad idea.”

  David.

  Not Graeme. David. A shiver rippled down my spine.

  I kicked off my heels and sank onto one of the kitchen chairs. “Oh. It’s you.”

  “Yes, it’s me.” I heard his frustration, loud and clear. “What the hell were you doing at the Kennedy Center?”

  “You don’t have the right to spy on me like that!”

  “I wasn’t spying. You were broadcasting your location to anyone with the faintest hint of magical ability. What were you doing, working a spell in public? Trying to impress your Mr. Poindexter?”

  I flushed at my dating subterfuge, but I wasn’t about to tell David Graeme’s real name. Just the thought of sharing that confidence made me queasy. I swallowed my discomfort, letting it sharpen my words. “It wasn’t anything major. I’ve been able to work that one for months. It was no big deal.”

  “Have you received any more e-mails, Jane? Any more ‘gifts’?”

  I never should have sent him the herb-o-gram. He was becoming completely paranoid. Now, thinking back to that e-mail, I was ready to laugh it away. Someone was playing a joke on me, trying to make me nervous. It was probably just a Coven thing, like a sorority sister being “kidnapped” from her dorm room on rush night.

  “No,” I answered David. “But if I had, you would be the first to know.”

  “I wish I believed you, Jane. Look, this is not a joke. If you expect to be ready to deal with the Coven on Samhain, we have to work every chance we get. You can’t waste your energy on games.”

  I rubbed my face with a hand that still smelled of Graeme’s cologne. Wistfulness actually stiffened my resolve. “David, I already told you, I’m not giving up my entire social life for the Coven. You and I are meeting, what? Tomorrow morning?”

  “At seven.”

  I could have sworn that I’d agreed to nine. I never would have let him bully me into seven o’clock on a Sunday morning. “That’s a little early, don’t you think?”

  “You know if I had my way, we’d have been working tonight. And now you’ll be drained of power, in addition to short on sleep.”

  “It wasn’t anything major!”

  “Is that what Nate Poindexter said?” He drew out the name, as if it were a grammar-school taunt. Next thing I knew, I’d be sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

  “David, we have so been there. Done that. My personal life is my personal life.”

  “And that worked out so well for you last year, didn’t it?”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say!” I was truly surprised. David was often pushy. Overprotective. But he rarely said things specifically designed to hurt my feelings. To make me remember just how foolish I had been, how irresponsibly I’d acted.

  Now, he sighed. “Just be careful, Jane.” A long silence stretched between us, as I tried to think of something to say, something that would tell him how much I had learned from the I.B., how different Graeme—er, Nate—was. “Just make sure you take care of yourself.”

  “I’m doing that, David,” I said, suddenly certain that I had to end this phone call immediately. End it, or be sobbing into the phone. “You can be absolutely certain that I am doing that.”

  I hung up without saying anything else. As I stepped out of the kitchen, I caught a flash of movement as the door to the basement slipped closed. Great. Neko had overheard every word.

  I stomped off to my bedroom, making every effort to send the echo of my footsteps thundering into the basement. I slammed the door closed, finding a little relief in the way the entire door frame shook.

  As I threw myself onto my bed, I realized I was still wearing Graeme’s jacket. I took it off and buried my face in the satin lining. I fell asleep breathing in his smell, telling myself that anyone could have a midnight occupational emergency. If it had been an omen, or a ruse, or a trick to break things off, then he would have demanded his coat back before sending me home. Right?

  All night long, I dreamed of walking toward him, jacket extended, as my feet slipped and slid on a silvery strip of ice that never ended.

  1
5

  David nodded slowly as I let the last filaments of my cleansing spell dissipate from the air around us. “How did that feel?”

  How did it feel? Like I was hefting the Capitol dome onto my shoulders. Like I was balancing the Washington Monument on my forehead, staggering to keep my footing. Like I was trying to drain the entire reflecting Pool with a single bat of an eyelash.

  “Fine,” I said, managing a smile that I hoped did not look too fake. I let my fingers touch Neko’s shoulder, and if he realized that I was stabilizing myself there, he didn’t let on. “I think I’m getting the hang of this.”

  There was no way I was going to admit to my warder that his lesson had exhausted me. After all, what witch wanted to say she couldn’t do something? Even something as apparently complicated as melding the edges of a centerstone, relying on herbal washes to blend together tiny striations in the rock’s surface?

  And I especially wasn’t going to admit any weakness when I thought of what I was working toward. Membership in the Coven was one thing—one thing that had become increasingly important to me over the past month. I couldn’t wait to take my permanent place with the women in Teresa Alison Sidney’s circle.

  But passing the Coven’s test was more important than just my witchy social life. I needed to get into the Coven so that I could do something about Gran and Clara. And I needed to make sure that my books were not forfeit to the group, that Neko could not be claimed by a witch who might not indulge his…idiosyncrasies as much as I did.

  Sometimes, I wondered if the Coven was worth all this. But then I remembered what I’d read, what David had taught me. The Coven was the center, the core. It helped its members, protected them against mundane authority. It was the very reason witchcraft had persisted through the ages, through the centuries of suspicion and persecution. The Coven was safety. The Coven was power. As a librarian and a student of colonial America, I could appreciate that the Coven was necessary.