by Mindy Klasky
So much for David’s panacea.
I shook my head, as if I’d just been momentarily distracted. Bride’s prerogative and all that. “I’m sorry, Gran. What ‘little something’ were you talking about?”
She wiped her fingers off on her napkin and reached for her handbag. “Just a little something I came across in a knitting magazine.”
“I didn’t know you knit!”
“I haven’t done it in years,” Gran said, producing a sheaf of papers. “But Uncle George’s hair is awfully thin on top… I couldn’t bear the idea of him shivering through another winter so I knitted him a hat. And I had yarn left over, so I made him a matching scarf, even though I needed to buy more yarn to finish it. And then I started in on gloves to use up the extra, but I miscalculated and only had enough for one. So I bought more yarn and made mittens too. And, well, I’ve been having so much fun!” I wondered how much money she’d spent on yarn. She unfolded the magazine pages and passed them across the table with a proud smile.
A hat, scarf, gloves, mittens—we probably wouldn’t need any of that stuff in September. Gran could choose whatever colors she wanted, and I could pretend to be thrilled. I’d never have to wear the resulting horror.
But Gran was proudly passing me a pattern for a… Well, a… For something that… “I’m sorry, Gran. What is that?”
“Why it’s a cummerbund, dear. See? There are little knotted buttons at the back; they slip into the holes just so. I found the perfect yarn—it has an amazing sheen. When it knits up, it practically sparkles. You’ll have to let me know, as soon as you settle on colors for the wedding.” As a terrifying afterthought, she added, “I think I’ll stick with clear crystals on the edges. Anything else might look a little tacky.”
Tacky. That was one word for it. My mind immediately supplied a few others: Horrific, godawful, atrocious.
I was still floundering for an appropriate response when Clara said, “How wonderful! What a shame, though, that Jane and Melissa won’t have anything to match. But there are only so many things one woman can knit!”
“Nonsense!” Gran said. “There’s plenty of time between now and Mabon.”
“I don’t want you working too hard, Gran,” I rushed to assure her. “The last thing you need is for your arthritis to flare up.”
“My doctor says knitting is good for my bones! Keeps ’em moving, anyway. And counting the pattern keeps my mind sharp.” She stared over my shoulder, as if she were studying the knitting library of the gods. “I do believe I’ve seen patterns for some knitted jewelry that could be stupendous. A choker for each of you girls. And matching bracelets. No rings of course, that wouldn’t work. Not for a wedding.”
“No,” I sad weakly. “Not for a wedding.”
Gran clapped her hands together. “This will be perfect! I can’t wait!”
The waitress chose that moment to return, and I could have kissed her for sparing me the need to summon a more credible level of enthusiasm. “Can I box that up for you?” she asked, looking at our half-empty plates.
“Oh no!” Gran exclaimed. “We’re still eating!”
At least, she was. I couldn’t imagine touching food again for a week. That was fine, because Gran kept me busy, peppering me with more questions about the wedding.
No, I hadn’t looked at bridesmaid dresses yet. I’d only seen Melissa in a dress a handful of times in all the years I’d known her. She was much more of an overalls sort of girl. At least I knew I wouldn’t curse her with a bow on her behind. (No. I didn’t say that last bit to Gran. But I thought it very loudly.)
I hadn’t looked at invitations either. I knew I should send out save-the-date cards, because autumn was a busy time for most people, with kids starting school and adults getting back to work after summer vacations. But designing invitations raised a whole raft of difficult questions. Would I include Uncle George’s name along with Gran’s? Clara’s? (No. I didn’t say that last bit to anyone. I was only brave enough to think it to myself, to ask the questions about who I was, who was family, what it meant to be abandoned by my mother for decades.)
I was up in the air about colors, too. Traditional Mabon hues reflected the harvest—red and orange and yellow, the colors of changing leaves. But my favorite color was purple; I’d loved it since I was a little girl. Every time I thought of combining purple with the standard Mabon shades, I had twitchy flashbacks to my days as a bridesmaid for Gran. Orange and purple might be worse than orange and silver. (What sort of idiot do you think I am? Of course, I didn’t say that.)
Ring-bearer, flower girls, ushers, readers… I hadn’t focused on any of those.
Gran leaned across the table, pushing aside her ravaged plate, with its lone surviving strawberry weeping in a pool of blueberry syrup. “Jane, dear, you know you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I know Melissa’s family put ridiculous pressure on her for her wedding. We certainly don’t mean to do the same thing to you. Even if it means forgetting about knitting the cummerbunds, I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”
Ah, the temptation…
But I told Gran the truth. Almost all of it, anyway. “I’m not Melissa. And you’re not insane like her family, like Rob’s. I want a traditional wedding. I’m having fun thinking about all of this. But it all seems so far away. And with the new semester officially starting last Friday… All my energy has been devoted to that. Now that classes are under way, I’ll have a little more time. I learned a lot about how to teach with Emma and Raven.”
Clara swelled with pride. She was the one who had sent my first students to me, even though I hadn’t expected them, even though I hadn’t been prepared. “How are those two?”
“Fine,” I said. “Better than fine, actually. Emma’s still dating Rick Hanson, that firefighter she met over the summer. And Raven…” I trailed off, trying to come up with something positive about the flashy witch.
“I just knew they were what you needed! I follow your horoscope every day, you know. And when I read, ‘Now is the time to try something new. You’re stronger than you think you are,’ I knew it was a sign to send you students.”
It couldn’t have been a sign to start a weight-lifting class at the local gym? Before I could patch together an appropriately snark-free response, my phone rang with the special tone I’d set for Neko. I scrambled for it, relieved to escape the current conversation. “Hey,” I said. “What’s up?”
“You need to come home,” Neko said.
My throat turned into a desert. “Is the satyr back?” I didn’t care if any mundanes heard me. They’d never believe I was talking about a real satyr.
“No,” Neko said hurriedly. “It’s David.”
“What about him?”
“He’s moving things. Into the vault. Into his old office.”
I heard Neko’s warning, loud and clear in what he didn’t say. David had used that office when we were first under attack by Pitt. At the time, I hadn’t understood the depth of hatred between the men. I hadn’t seen the warning signs that David was obsessed with his old enemy, spending hour after hour in his office, tracking transactions and plotting out data. I’d almost been too late at discovering David’s compulsions. He’d almost gone mad.
“What things, Neko?” My voice was tight.
“The entire Osgood collection. And he won’t let anyone help.”
I winced, picturing the deep purple bruises on his torso. He shouldn’t be moving books. He shouldn’t be out of bed. “Tell him to wait until I get there. Make him stop, Neko.”
“I’ll do my best. Just hurry.”
Gran and Clara were already waving me toward the restaurant’s door by the time I hung up the phone. It was my turn to pay for brunch, but that didn’t matter. They were witches. They understood that our warder needed me. And I might already be too late.
CHAPTER 5
Hecate must have had a soft spot for me. That’s the only way I could explain how I drove from Bethesda to the farmhouse in under an h
our without getting a traffic ticket.
Gravel flew as I braked to a stop in the driveway. Clambering out of the car, I was struck by how deceptive sights could be. The garage dormitory looked absolutely peaceful, its cheery curtains safe and secure behind double-paned glass. I could barely make out the roofline of the barn over the hill. I could imagine the warders and familiars just starting to stir on a lazy Sunday morning.
But signs of danger were clear, because I knew where to look. Spot stood on the top step of the porch, a low whine rising in his throat. The newspaper leaned against the door where I’d placed it when I left for brunch. Inside, the kitchen was a mess; our dinner dishes from the previous night were still stacked in the sink.
David always washed up, first thing in the morning, as his coffee brewed. He settled at the center island to read the paper, cover to cover. He never failed to let Spot out, waiting for the Lab to do his business, then welcoming the lumbering animal back to the kitchen with a teeth-cleaning bone.
Neko flung open the basement door as I tallied up the evidence. “Hurry,” he said.
A corner of my mind screamed that I’d been here before. This wasn’t the vague disconnect of déjà vu. It was the bellowing the brute force of learned terror that told me I needed to turn on my heel, get out of the house, leave the farm forever and head back to my safe and quiet life as a librarian. I’d be safe in a world without Neko and witchcraft and warders.
Because I had done this before. I’d flipped on the basement lights. I’d walked down the stairs, stepping wide on the fourth one to avoid its groaning creak. I’d opened the door to David’s basement office, and I’d seen insanity, the physical manifestation of pure obsession as my warder fought to control a bureaucracy bigger and stronger and more determined than even he could be.
Only a few months ago, I thought I’d lost him—as my warder and as the man I loved.
We’d made it through that. We’d survived. But I was terrified I didn’t have the strength to face David’s compulsions again. Not to face them and win.
I startled when I felt smooth velvet beneath my palm. Spot had followed me into the house. Now, he leaned his head against my thigh, and he woofed a breath of canine concern. I glanced back at Neko, only to catch the same look of worry on his face.
Spot and Neko. David. They needed me. I licked my lips and went downstairs.
Empty shelves gaped on the basement walls, stretches of polished wood that had been filled with orderly volumes only two nights before. A quick survey showed that many of my artifacts were missing as well—a case of crystals here, a stash of wands there. All the runes were gone.
Furtive noises came from David’s former office, from the vault. Sweat slicked my palms, but I forced myself to cross to the doorway.
I barely recognized the room. We’d wanted to maximize the storage space, so we’d abandoned classifying the books by subject matter. Instead, they were organized by height, miniatures grouped together, duodecimos on shelves below, giant elephant folios protected on the lowest ranks. We’d talked about adding double-sided bookshelves in the center of the room, but that would have created a challenge in navigating the small space.
Navigation wasn’t a concern now. It was downright impossible.
David had stacked boxes against the shelves, filling every cubic inch of space. Some of the containers were small—bankers boxes with neat labels, the ones that had held his warder’s papers in his office. Others, though, were cavernous, left over from the appliances we’d recently purchased to outfit the garage apartment and the kitchenette in the barn. The vault looked like a playroom for children with very indulgent parents, children who reveled in a make-believe fort made entirely of cardboard.
David was leaning over a box that had formerly held an oven, lining up the twenty-three volumes of Hoskin’s Crystals, Stones, and Lapidary Magic Around the World.
“Hey,” I said softly. “I thought you’d agreed to take it easy until your ribs heal.”
I braced for his response. I told myself I could stand anything—madness, obsession, rage at being interrupted. But I still wasn’t prepared for what I saw on his face. I hadn’t expected to see shame.
Shame, or remorse, or abject apology—the specifics were lost in the hollows beneath his eyes, in the resigned twist of his lips.
“What?” I asked, moving into the room. Spot shifted with me, and Neko too, but I cast a look at my familiar, a quick shake of my head. He clicked his tongue to get the dog’s attention, and they both retreated to the main basement room. “What are you doing here, David?”
He braced his arms on the edge of the box. “I need to protect these things,” he said. “The books, the crystals, the runes, all of it.”
“They’re safe,” I said. “The whole house is safe.”
He shook his head. “I failed you on Samhain. I couldn’t stop the satyr, couldn’t keep Teresa Alison Sidney from claiming her benefaction. I didn’t keep you safe.”
“No one could have kept me safe. You saw the other warders. They did their best, too. Some things are stronger than we are.”
He shook his head. “That’s not good enough. That’s not who I am.”
“It’s exactly who you are! You’re not a god, David Montrose. You don’t get to change natural law, to upend the supernatural, just because you want to.”
“You could have been killed!”
I started to interrupt him, but I bit back my protest. This all made sense, in some crazy way. This vault was something he had built, something he had mastered. He could control it, control its contents. And Teresa hadn’t discovered it. She hadn’t plundered our treasures. Now David was intent on making everything a treasure. He’d gather together my entire collection; he’d watch over it in the only way he could.
I wanted to make him stop. He couldn’t swaddle me or my possessions in cotton. He couldn’t keep the world from reaching me, keep me from reaching the world.
But I held my tongue. Because part of being a witch was knowing what my warder needed. And part of being a woman was knowing what my man needed, my partner, the one I was going to live my life with forever. So, instead of protesting that he was locking the proverbial barn after the horse had fled, I took another tack.
“All right,” I said.
“All right?” He didn’t understand. He didn’t have faith in my acceptance.
“We’ll move the collection. As much of it as we can fit in here. It would be better if we had time for custom-built shelves, but we can make do with the boxes for now. Maybe we should bring down the coffee table from the living room. We can stack books under it and on top. The end tables from the living room, too.”
David straightened. “There’s a ‘but’ there. What aren’t you telling me?”
He knew me too well. “But you aren’t doing any more of the work.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Neko? Head over to the barn, please. Tell Caleb and Tony we need their help.”
“I don’t want strangers doing this,” David said.
“They’re not strangers. They stood by us at the Mabon working. And we can trust them now.”
It was hard for him to give in.
But this time I knew I was right. I said, “I’m not asking you to trust strangers. I understand that you don’t know the new students, you don’t trust their warders. But Caleb and Tony are safe.” I looked back at my hesitating familiar. “Neko,” I said, and I bolstered my command with a nudge along the magical bond between us. He nodded at last and headed for the stairs, snapping his fingers for Spot to come along.
I took advantage of the privacy to skirt the giant cardboard box. Settling my hand on David’s chest, I spread my fingers to feel the steady beat of his heart. “Thank you,” I said.
He looked away, but I pressed my free palm against the hard line of his jaw, forcing his gaze back to me. “I mean it,” I said. “Thank you for protecting me. Thank you for keeping me safe.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did, thou
gh. I’m here, aren’t I? We’re here together.”
It took a long moment, but he finally shifted his stance, edging away from the box. As his frantic energy waned, the jangle of madness easing away, and I slipped my arms down his torso. I took care to skim over the bruises I knew had to be throbbing. I nestled my head against his chest, and I sighed when I felt his fingers slip through my hair. We stood there until Neko returned with the warders.
~~~
By the time Monday morning rolled around, it actually felt like a relief to face the first day of class with my new students. There was nothing like concrete magical workings to force away all my lingering concerns—about Pitt somehow bringing a magical beast into the center of our opening ritual, about Teresa trying to cut me off before I even got started, about David’s mania to secure every last remnant of the Osgood collection in the basement vault.
I woke about an hour before sunrise. After showering and dressing, I met David in the kitchen and fortified myself with a simple breakfast of steel-cut oatmeal and hot tea. I swallowed the last of my pear oolong and reached out to straighten his tie. “You know I’d go to the inquest if I could.”
“You’d just waste your day sitting on a bench in the hallway.”
I growled and was rewarded with Spot raising his head from his bed in the corner. As David told the dog to lie back down, I said, “Confidential proceedings. I get it.” And I quoted, “The Court shall preserve the privacy of the accused by conducting all inquiries in a secured facility, closed to all but testifying witnesses.”
David nodded. His fingers closed around my waist. “I’m the one who shouldn’t be leaving you.”
“I have six warders at my beck and call.”
“But—”
I shook my head. “And every one of them is armed with a sword. I’m not postponing class. You saw the parchment from Hecate’s Court. We have to stay in session continuously, or we’ll break our charter.” I settled my palm over his heart. “We’ll be fine. Just tell me there’s no way Pitt is getting off.”
