by Mindy Klasky
The tooth, the orthros, had been sent by Norville Pitt.
CHAPTER 7
David finally turned to me. “Well. It looks like the Jane Madison Academy will be shutting down for an unexpected break.”
“No!”
“Jane, you saw that monster on the beach. This time, the warders were able to fight back, and thank Hecate Luke had a knife. But you know as well as I do, that was a close call. We have no idea what Pitt will send next.”
“So you’re just going to give him what he wants?” I caught the look Neko shot my way, his blatant surprise that I’d take that tone of voice. I didn’t bother looking at Tony; I didn’t care what the other man thought. My voice ratcheted higher when I said to David, “You know he’s just doing this to distract you. To screw up your testimony at the inquest. Shutting down the magicarium would be rewarding him for everything he’s done.”
Nothing. David wouldn’t even acknowledge the possibility that I was right.
I took a wild step toward Neko. “Can I borrow a pen?” I asked him, only to face down his elaborate shrug. He wanted no part of my argument with David. I held out my hand, as if I fully expected someone to produce a Bic from thin air. “I want to write a welcome note to Pitt so he feels right at home when he takes over everything we’ve worked so hard for. That’s the only polite thing to do.”
David met my sarcasm with a perfectly even tone. “I’m not doing this lightly.”
“You aren’t doing it at all! I’m the magistrix! I decide when the Academy shuts down!”
“You’re the magistrix, but I’m your warder. I’m still responsible for keeping you safe. You and every one of your students.”
“We are safe. The system worked. The warders banished the orthros.”
David shook his head. “You’re lucky. Not safe.”
The worst thing was, he was right. If Caleb hadn’t reached that branch, if Jeffrey hadn’t leaped into the fray, if Zach hadn’t distracted the orthros before it could rip out someone’s throat… If Luke hadn’t kept a titanium blade in his boot… My memory ripped back to the sound of that two-headed beast, the baying snarl that had turned my belly inside out and stripped away my powers.
Without luck, the orthros would have succeeded. And if he had, Norville Pitt might be pawing through my possessions even now. He and Teresa and every other witch within a five-hour radius.
Still… “He wants you to do this, David. He wants you to shut us down. You saw the parchment. The Court will disband the magicarium if there’s any break in classes. Pitt will waltz in here, and he won’t even have to spawn another monster. Don’t do that. Don’t let him win.”
David ran his free hand through his hair. The gesture seemed to remind him he was still holding that hideous tooth. He folded his handkerchief tight around the thing and shoved it deep inside his pants pocket.
After taking a breath on a five-count and exhaling just as slowly, he looked through the arch to the kitchen, to the door that led to the basement and all my arcane possessions. “You can hold your classes,” he finally said. “But don’t try to work with the natural world. Flora and fauna are strictly off the syllabus.”
I twisted my lips but I nodded. I wasn’t happy, not by a long shot. My students needed to work with a lot of flora and fauna. That was central to what we did as witches. But David wasn’t happy either. There was that annoying, grown-up word again: compromise.
And I had to admit his restriction was reasonable, at least for a while. My students and I had plenty to master without reaching out to plants and animals, without opening any more doors for Pitt’s potential beasts. We could learn how to recognize the unique signatures of our individual powers. We could work out how to balance those strands of magic. I’d hoped to vary everyone’s education, alternating training on group dynamics with focusing on herbs, on crystals, on the living, breathing world around us. But I could stick to the subjects David considered safe. For now.
“And you’ll hold all classes in the basement,” he said.
“That’s impossible!”
“Take it or leave it.”
Far too late, I realized I’d committed a strategic flaw. We shouldn’t be having this argument here, in front of Tony and Neko. David was digging in, taking a position more aggressively than he might have done if we were fighting alone.
Who was I kidding? David’s determination would be every bit as firm if we were alone.
“I’m not running some sort of factory here,” I said. “We need time outside. We need to ground our powers in the natural world around us—even if we’re just focusing on group dynamics, on how to work together. We’re witches, not widget manufacturers!”
David shook his head. “I’ve set protections on this house, on the dorm and the barn. With the help of the other warders, we can bolster those safeguards. But we can’t keep the entire farm safe. Not now. Not when we don’t know the full scale of what Pitt is trying to do. We have to assume he’s working with someone else, while the inquest is in session.”
“I can’t work under these conditions.”
“It’s these conditions or no conditions. Hold class in the basement or the magicarium shuts down.”
I wanted to tell him he was being absurd. I wanted to say we witches would be perfectly safe under the late autumn sky, that we could work our magic in the fields, in the woods.
But in reality I didn’t know if he was being absurd. We hadn’t been safe that afternoon. And from the uneasy way Tony eyed the butcher knife by his foot, we weren’t safe yet.
“Fine,” I said grudgingly.
“Fine?” David pushed.
“Fine, I’ll hold classes indoors. For now.”
“Until I decide it’s safe for you to work outside.”
“Until we decide together!” I lashed out, and I was rewarded with a weary nod. I decided to push my luck. “And we don’t have to stay in the basement. We can work here, in the living room. In the barn or the dormitory even. We just have to stay behind your existing wards. For now.”
He shook his head, but the faintest hint of a smile curled his lips. “You drive a hard bargain, Jane Madison.”
“I have a magicarium to run.”
“Yes,” he said. “You do.” I thought it might be a century before he freed me from his storm-dark gaze. When he finally turned to Tony, he held out his right hand. “Thank you,” he said. His glance cut to the side to include Neko in his gratitude.
Tony’s shoulders rolled in half a shrug before he shook David’s hand. “You’d have done the same for Raven.”
“Go on, then. Get back to the barn, both of you.”
“I’ll check the dormitory first,” Tony said, even as Neko clutched his arm. “We’ll keep a guard posted there twenty-four hours a day.”
“Let me know if you need help.”
Tony reached for his sword and shoved the blade home in its sheath. Then he stooped to retrieve the knife he’d kept at his feet. He offered it to David with exaggerated care, grip-first. He glanced at me, but he spoke to my warder. “Be careful.”
“We will,” David said, and he put a lot more confidence behind the words than I could have done.
Neko led the way to the door, but not by much. The two men stayed close as they stepped onto the porch, as they crossed to the dormitory. Jeffrey rose to greet them when they were still a dozen paces from the door, and all three huddled together in serious conversation.
I closed the door and turned around to find David standing too close.
But he wasn’t too close, not really. Not when he twined his fingers between mine, when he guided me over to sit beside him on the couch. He pulled my legs up, swinging them around to cross his lap. I leaned back against the arm of the sofa and let his fingers find the tension points in the arch of my right foot, in my ankle, in my toes.
“Shouldn’t I be doing that for you?” I asked, when the bliss of released stress faded enough for me to form words. “You were the one trapped at the inquest
all day.”
He shrugged. “It was fine.”
I gave him a questioning look, but it became apparent he wasn’t going to elaborate. It was up to me to press for details. “What happened?”
“Inquest proceedings are confidential.”
“I’m your witch!”
“Ah,” he said. “That clarification makes all the difference.”
I started to kick at his thigh, undoing all his hard work, but he merely trapped my toes against his belly, reaching across for my left foot. I decided to give in, rather than fight to prove my point. “Okay,” I said. “I know you can’t tell me exactly what happened. But do you think the Court listened? Were they persuaded by the arguments against Pitt?”
He let his head loll against the back of the couch. “No one made any arguments today, not really. Each side made its opening statements. They spent the whole time saying what they’re going to say during the rest of the process.”
“And?” I asked, sending out the narrowest tendril on the magical wavelength between us. I wasn’t trying to pressure him into telling me more than he could, more than he should. But I wanted to remind him I was there to support him. I was his witch, and I’d always be with him, no matter what process and procedure was mandated by Hecate’s Court.
“And the next month will be hell. You and I put together a strong case against Pitt. We handed over the evidence, literally tied up with a bow. But Pitt’s not a fool. He never has been. His entire strategy is to play rope-a-dope, to look like he’s incompetent, unattractive, not worth the time or effort or energy to deal with. But there’s a serpent close beneath the surface, cold-blooded, sharp-toothed, and hungry.”
I nodded. That was the man I’d seen. The man I despised. “You’re going back tomorrow?”
He shook his head, a vicious gesture that let me glimpse a little more of his true frustration. “They won’t let me hear the other witnesses. They don’t want to corrupt my testimony. I’m banned from the courtroom until they call me back—probably in a few weeks.”
I studied David’s face. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“About a million things. I’ve taken oaths, Jane.”
“What aren’t you telling me about Pitt? About his strategy?”
“Nothing. You already know he’s right, in some ways. I did trump up a case against him.”
“But that was a long time ago. And you didn’t have any other options!”
He held up a hand to stop my argument, a hand that I immediately wished was back on my feet. “I trumped up a case,” David slowly agreed. “Because I thought I needed to. Because I had to protect others. Because innocents were going to get hurt. I had my reasons, but he has his evidence. He’s going to rebut everything I say, and it won’t be pretty.”
It took me three tries before I could pretend the casual tone I needed. “What happens if the Court sides with him?”
“Worst case?”
I sat up, pulling my feet away from the calm strength of his fingers and bringing my knees to my chin. I kept my gaze steady as I said, “Worst case.”
“They’ll bust me as a warder. Strip my powers and break my bonds—with you, and Neko, and every law-abiding witch and warder sworn to Hecate. They’ll take back my sword and melt it down. They’ll break my ring and cast me out forever.”
“And if that’s not enough for Pitt?” My words were bitter. “If he still come after you with magic? What will the Court do then?”
David’s laugh didn’t yield a glimpse of humor. “If I’m cast out as a warder, I’ll be beyond the Court’s jurisdiction. They only handle matters between witches, warders, and familiars.”
“There has to be something! Some way to stop him!”
“In theory, there’s the Eastern Empire. But they’ve got a lot more to do than handle assault claims from a disgraced warder.”
I knew about the Eastern Empire. The Empire’s Night Court maintained a docket for vampires and shapeshifters, for griffins and sprites. I could well imagine they wouldn’t make time for a rejected warder, any more than they would for an ordinary human plaintiff.
I tried to ignore the yawning chasm that opened inside my mind, the spinning horror that threatened to steal away all my words. Instead, I pressed: “But whatever happens, Hecate’s Court won’t hurt you. They won’t put you in prison or… or worse.”
“They won’t have to, Jane. Breaking me as a warder would be worse than any prison they could build. I’d have to watch you with your new warder, whoever he is. I’d know exactly what I had. What I lost.”
I wanted to argue that David was wrong. That I would never work with another warder.
But I would, and we both knew it. If David were lost to me, I’d have to. I couldn’t lose my own magic, even if his was taken by the Court. I’d had a glimpse of that on the beach this afternoon, and the thought of living that way forever made my heart freeze.
So in the end, there wasn’t anything I could say to make it right. There wasn’t anything I could do.
Except I could slip my hand behind his neck and pull his lips close to mine. And after he’d given in to that pressure, I could take him by the hand and lead him up the stairs to the bedroom we shared. And if we worked a sort of witchcraft together, body pressed to body, it was nothing we couldn’t do after the Court finished its inquest. No matter what the outcome there.
They couldn’t take that away from us. Ever. At least that’s what I prayed to Hecate.
~~~
Tuesday morning, I broke the news to my students about our new training regimen. We certainly made a crowd, with all the witches, warders, and familiars crammed into the farmhouse’s living room. But I presented the notion of working inside as a temporary thing. I didn’t explicitly say we were staying indoors because of the orthros, but I did mention our safety—as a group and as individuals.
No one complained. But that might have been because it was pouring outside, a slow, soaking rain that no doubt nurtured the land. Another few degrees, though, and the driveway would turn into an ice rink.
I felt grim, bleak. That might have been because I’d spent most of the night tossing and turning. Or, to be more accurate, trying to quell the impulse to toss and turn, so I didn’t keep David awake. So I didn’t have to tell him what I was thinking. What I was planning. What I knew I had to do.
But first off, I had students to teach. And so we all contented ourselves with our caffeine sources of choice. For our first day of indoor classes, I figured I’d keep things simple. I asked each of my students to work her own spell, apply easy magic to conjure up a ball of light.
The exercise served a number of purposes. First and foremost, it relaxed my witches, restoring their confidence that they could, in fact, work magic in my presence without murderous monsters springing out of the woodwork. Beyond that, though, it gave us a chance to get to know each other, to determine the color of each woman’s magic, the feel of her powers.
Deferring to my second-semester students’ seniority, I asked Emma to start. She barely took the time to stretch her hand toward Kopek, to harness her familiar’s reflective assistance before she caught a quick breath and opened her palm, displaying a perfect sphere of silver light. The globe was about the size of a tennis ball, and it hovered above her fingertips. I reached toward it with my own witchy awareness, and I could sense her unique astral signature, the cool feeling of water that plunged to unknown depths.
I gave everyone a chance to sample Emma’s light, to understand what she had done and to examine her magic so they’d be able to recognize it again. After each witch nodded her understanding, I gestured for Raven to go next.
I wasn’t surprised when she was a bit more dramatic with her working. She opened her palm with the force of a dancer displaying “jazz hands,” simultaneously snagging a booster of power from her familiar, Hani. The ball of light she created pulsed in time with her breathing, growing to the size of an orange before shrinking back to a tight, smooth marble. The sphere
glowed a deep shade of purple, matching the stripe Raven had refreshed in her hair some time after our working on the beach. Reaching for its energy signature, I recognized the sinewy muscle that was unique to Raven Willowsong, the feeling of a snake’s smooth, taut body.
Alex Warner leaned forward next, volunteering to be our next guinea pig. Her hair was cut blunt at the level of her chin and dyed as black as charcoal. She sported half a dozen piercings in each ear and tattoos wrapped around both her arms, writhing masses of multi-colored feathers and scales. A metal tongue stud tapped against her teeth as she tossed a quick glance to Garth, her warder. He nodded once, his bullet head seeming to free her to participate in the group exercise. I got the idea they didn’t spend a lot of time focusing on touchy-feely communications exercises.
Alex’s familiar, Seta, shifted closer, offering up support to her witch. With her broad-set little eyes and her high forehead, I was willing to bet Seta had begun life as a pit bull. That determination likely served her well with her rebellious witch.
For now, Alex didn’t rely on her familiar. Instead, she unfolded her fingers with a defiant flare, as if she dared us to question the value of her working. Her light was indigo, a blue so deep it almost looked black. When I touched her sphere with my powers, I recognized the sensation, but it took me several long breaths to put a name to the feeling. Feathers, but not the fluffy touch of down. Rather, Alex’s magic felt like the sharp edge of a raptor’s wing, stiff enough to support a predator in flight.
Bree took the challenge next, showing us a russet glow and the feel of sun-warmed granite. Skyler offered up a cobalt sphere, a tight ball of energy that was tinged with silver, like the ice of her magical signature.
I hadn’t consciously saved Cassie for last. But as we all turned to her, I realized that I felt protective of my final student. Freckles stood out on her pale face, and she gripped Tupa’s shoulder as if she might fall over without his support. I realized that the tip of her braid was damp; she’d chewed on it in her nervousness while she waited to exhibit her skills. I caught my breath, willing her to succeed in the working.
