by Mindy Klasky
“Jane,” David said, and he might have been greeting me at some formal party.
The dog started to whine deep in his throat, as if he wanted to go to his master, but knew that he was forbidden from approaching the work area. “Stay, Spot,” David said, enforcing the verbal command with a firm hand gesture.
“Spot?” I asked. My laugh sounded a little giddy, somehow relieved. I looked from the jet-black animal to his inscrutable master.
David shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“I know the way that feels.” Now, why had I said that? What had seemed like a good idea at what time? And why was I admitting any of that to my warder, who could be one of the bossiest, most controlling men on the planet?
He swallowed, and I could just make out the pulse beating at the base of his throat. “What are you doing here, Jane?”
Busted. I hadn’t expected him to ask me so directly. Or so soon.
And what was I going to answer? That I’d made a promise to Gran? That I had woken up filled with insatiable curiosity? That the spells I’d been working had made me twitch for the time we used to spend training together?
“Can’t a witch visit her warder when the spirit grips her?”
“Not usually. No.” I looked at him, sudden panic sprinting across my brain. Had I really bucked some long-standing witch-and-warder rule? He sighed and amended, “At least, not usually. Most witches summon their warders to them.”
“I’m not most witches.”
“So I noticed.” The dryness in his voice ratcheted up the heat beneath the oak tree. Once again, I felt the tingle in my fingertips, the spark of energy that had been growing since I’d worked my dish-washing spell a week before. I couldn’t tell if he read something in my face, but he suddenly seemed to remember his manners. “Do you want something to drink?”
“A glass of water would be great.”
For just a second, I thought that he was going to leave me standing there, set Spot to guard me while he went into the house. But he waved the dog to his side as he stalked away, making for a side door that I quickly learned opened onto the kitchen. He gestured for me to enter first, and the black lab followed behind me, his nails clicking softly on the Mexican tile floor.
As my eyes adjusted to the lack of full sunlight, I saw just how wrong my made-up vision of David’s home had been. My warder wasn’t living in dust and shadows. Instead, he was living in the heart of a Crate and Barrel catalog.
The farmhouse kitchen was huge and airy, flooded with sunlight that streamed through tall windows. Through a doorway, I glimpsed a dining room, and beyond it a living room with a single austere couch, matched by two chairs that seemed comfortable enough to settle into for a rainy afternoon of book reading. There were a couple of wooden end tables and a lamp or two. Everything looked neat. Calm. Ordinary.
The kitchen was picture-perfect, as well, in the same well laid-out, highly functioning way. Somehow, I’d never pictured David as a cook, but now I could clearly see him standing over his Viking stove, anodized aluminum pans heavy in his strong hands as he whipped up some sustaining dish.
Unerringly, he went to the cupboard beside the sink and retrieved two simple clear glasses. Ice cubes clanked against each other as he excavated them from the freezer, and he tossed one to Spot, who caught it in midair. He poured water from a sleek filtered pitcher in the fridge.
As he handed my glass to me, I blushed unexpectedly. I had to be reacting to the precise perfection of his movements. If I had served a guest in my own kitchen, I would have searched for a clean glass for at least a minute, and then I would have needed to crack a stubborn ice-cube tray. My kitchen faucet had never even seen a filter, and the water ran warm in the middle of the summer.
“Your home is beautiful,” I said, trying to distract myself.
“It’s been in my family for decades.”
“I was surprised to find you out here,” I said, desperately attempting to make this conversation a normal one, between two ordinary people, not between a witch and her warder. “I expected you to live in the city.”
“There are too many eyes in the city.”
“What do you mean?”
He flexed his hands, as if he could pull the right words from the air around him. “As a warder, I lead a rather unconventional life, wouldn’t you say? I keep strange hours. I can come and go from here in the blink of an eye. No one notices when I translocate from here.”
I thought of him, appearing on my doorstep in full Mr. Rochester ire. I’d never asked him about his strange arrivals. “How do you do that?”
He started to answer, then thought better of his words. “We warders have to keep some of our tricks secret.” The words stung. I heard the rebuke behind them, the wall that he erected between us. There’d been a time when he would have answered any question I posed about magic, when he had believed that my arcane education was more important than any trivial matter of personal privacy. Before I’d walked away from spellcraft. Before I’d set him aside for nearly half a year.
I could order him to tell me. Demand, as witch to warder.
But I wasn’t going to do that. Not today. Not when I was trying to reach out, to rebuild the surprisingly fragile bond that we had shared.
“But your Lexus? It doesn’t fit into this life at all.”
“It’s in the garage.” He nodded toward the window, and I could see the detached building, door shuttered like the entrance to a secret cave. “I usually use the truck when I’m out here.”
“And the wood?” I thought again about the streamlined action I had watched, the perfect ballet of exercise and practicality. “Do you usually split wood in the summer?”
“I split wood when I have time. I go through two cords every winter. And the exercise is good, when I’m not busy with anything else. When I’m tired of sitting at a desk.”
At a desk. Where he’d been working as a clerk for Hecate’s Court, wherever that was located. What did it matter? He could apparently commute anywhere with the power of his warder’s thoughts. Had commuted to my cottage, on a regular enough basis, before I’d decided to stop being a witch.
I swallowed, making more noise in my throat than I’d intended.
David’s voice was in perfect equilibrium as he asked, “And to what do I owe this visit?”
“Gran,” I said, and the single word echoed strangely in the kitchen. I sipped some water and remembered to keep my voice down. “Gran made me promise.”
He sighed and leaned back against the counter. “Promise what?”
“Promise that I’d talk to you. Promise that I’d try to make things right between us.”
There. Faster than a blink, but I was certain that I’d seen him flinch.
“There’s nothing wrong between us.” Spot stood up from his guard spot at the center of the kitchen floor, a soft whine coming from deep in his ebony throat. David flashed a hand signal to the animal, waiting just a moment before the dog settled back onto his haunches. Then, my warder cleared his throat and repeated, “There’s nothing wrong.”
“But there is,” I said. “I’ve been working spells. Little ones. Just enough to…prime the pump, as you said.”
“And?” he asked when I stopped.
“And it’s strange! It’s different from how it used to be, from before I took a break. I feel what I’m doing. It’s like an energy, a force field.” I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to figure out words for what I’d been sensing all week long. “My fingers tingle, and my heart jumps faster than it should. If I didn’t think that I’d sound like some matron in a Regency romance, I’d say that I’m getting palpitations.” I blinked and stared at him, like a patient waiting for a diagnosis from her trusted doctor.
David’s lips twisted into a tight smile. “I doubt that anyone would ever say you’re a matron, in any romance whatsoever.”
I tugged at the skirt of my dress, suddenly aware of the heat outside, of the wood chips that dusted the fro
nt of David’s shirt, of the dampness at his temples that darkened the familiar silver glints. “I wasn’t fishing for compliments.”
“And I wasn’t biting a lure.” He set his glass down on the polished granite counter. “Jane, you’re feeling the strength of your magic. I keep telling you, but you don’t listen to me. You have a lot of power. A lot of magical energy. You can bottle it up, contain it, but if you start to let it seep out—like you’ve been doing to recharge your collection—you’re going to feel the pressure. There’s nothing that you’ve felt in the past week that was wrong or bad or dangerous.”
“How can you be sure?” Even as I asked the question, I knew the answer. He was my warder. He could feel my witchy powers. He knew when I used them. He felt everything I did with my magic.
I couldn’t meet his eyes. There was something incredibly intimate about my realization. It was as if he’d found my high-school diary, read about the silly crushes I’d had on utterly unattainable football quarterbacks. No. This was more than that. It was as if he’d read about the silly crushes I’d had on him.
I looked around the kitchen, at the precise placement of every last detail. I saw the dish towel, folded into perfect thirds over the handle on the oven door. I saw the morning newspaper, squared up, reassembled into its hot-off-the-presses precision, even though I was willing to bet my best prefogged rhodosite crystal that he’d completed the crossword puzzle inside. In ink.
I glanced out the window at the chopping block, and I imagined the countless hours that he’d spent splitting wood. The controlled physical grace of the maneuver. The inevitable bodily exhaustion.
“David—” I started to explain that I had never meant to hurt him. I’d never meant to alienate him. I’d never meant to cut him out of my life, when I left my witchcraft sitting by the side of the road.
“Jane,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “Don’t go there.”
And for once, my warder refused to meet my eyes.
I was so accustomed to his challenging stare, to the unforgiving truth of his chocolate-brown gaze. But David had suddenly become fascinated with the rim of his glass, with the melded ice cubes that clanked against the sides. Before I could say anything, before I could try to find the path back to what was right and normal between us, he said, “This isn’t right. You shouldn’t have come out here. Let me take a quick shower, and I’ll drive you home.”
“I can drive myself home.”
“I’m your warder. Chauffeuring is part of the job.” He smiled tightly. “I’ll only be a minute.” He walked past me to get to the hallway, to the stairs that led to the farmhouse’s second floor. I stepped to the left, and he matched my movement, then we both shifted to the right. I laughed nervously as he shook his head and edged past me. “Make yourself at home,” he said from the foot of the stairs.
I listened to the steps creak, and then I heard the water begin to run above my head.
He was my warder. He knew everything about me. He certainly should have known better than to leave me free to explore his house. “Stay,” I said to Spot, as I hurried out the kitchen door. I wasn’t about to pass up what might be my only chance to see how David Montrose truly lived.
The stairs seemed louder under my feet than when David had trod on them. At the top landing, I could see one closed door—clearly the master bedroom suite. Another room was laid out as a guestroom, queen-sized bed covered by a simple navy comforter, a white dresser left bare, except for a simple arrangement of crimson blown-glass bowls.
The third room was an office. An office that showed the only hint that a real human being lived in the house. An office that was half-filled by an enormous desk, a horizontal surface that seemed ready to buckle under the combined weight of a gigantic plasma computer monitor and several reams of paper.
I recognized the Torch on most of those pages, even across the room. Hecate’s Torch, the symbol of witches everywhere. Its art deco lines swooped in simple authority, announcing to the world that the papers dealt with witchcraft.
I heard a whuffling noise behind me, and I wasn’t surprised to find that Spot had followed me up the stairs. His nails clicked as he shadowed me over to the desk, and he leaned close against my side as I picked up the first document.
“The party of the first part doth give, bequeath and bequest to the party of the second part…”
Great. An arcane deed.
I picked up another paper, from another pile. “Comes now respondent, who demurs before this august body…”
Another pile. “I, Roberta Inglewood, being of sound mind and body…”
There were hundreds of papers on the desk. I glanced toward the closet, where an ancient steamer trunk hulked, more documents cascading from its sides. So many pages. So much to sort through, to organize. Of course, I could sense the lines of magical power, jumping between papers. I could see connections, recognize materials that belonged together, envision the order that should control everything in the office.
Spot whined as I stepped toward the tangled mess, and I obliged him by stopping. I set my fingers on his broad black head, trying to soothe him. The motion reminded me of my own calming ritual, before I worked my spells. I took deep breaths and offered up the power of my thoughts, my speech, my spirit.
The magic potential gathered inside of me, shimmering like dust on butterfly wings. As I breathed in a fourth time, my lungs trembled; I felt like I was sitting at the top of a Ferris wheel, poised in that inevitable moment before the car swoops down into its disorienting arc. I stretched my hands over the piles of papers, toward the mess in the trunk.
I could feel the individual strains of magic in the papers. I could sense the separate witches who had drafted the pages, who had set quills to paper. I could measure the energy, the power; I could feel what belonged where.
The knowledge came to me so firmly, so thoroughly, that I didn’t even need a spell to manipulate the pages. I didn’t need a charm. The magical energy came from the materials themselves; they were endowed with the force of Hecate’s Court.
Spot moved in front of me, his whine now constant at the back of his throat. I touched his head again, but I couldn’t feel his fur past the tingling in my fingers. I raised my hands high, relishing the rustle of my sundress against my body, of the crisp cotton halter sliding against my neck.
I spread my fingers wide, and I reached out for the first piece of paper with my mind. Clearly, it belonged there with the other documents written by one Susan Albright, a witch of some renown from the Boston family of Albrights. I knew that. I could see it. I could feel it, with the zip of power that sparked through me.
Spot barked once, a short sharp sound, made even louder because the house was utterly silent.
Utterly silent. Not even the sound of a shower running behind a closed door.
And then, before I could move the papers, I heard David. “Jane,” he said. “No.” His voice was low, even. He coiled his urgency into those two words.
Urgency, yes. But meaningless drivel. The power had risen in me. I needed to use it. I needed to ground the energy, the thrum, the drive. I needed to channel my powers into the Court’s documents.
“No,” David said again, and then he moved between me and the desk. I felt his presence like a stone cast into the pool of my magic. He rippled out toward me, a liquid presence, soothing, smoothing. I was barely aware of the gray bath sheet that was tucked around his waist, gray the same color as the faded ink on a stack of astral deeds.
Still, I jangled with the energy I had gathered. “I need to,” I said, and my words caught against the back of my throat in a harsh whisper.
“You can’t. There is magic in those documents. Power that is not rightly yours. Witchery that the Court would punish you for taking.” The papers called to me, though, tugged at me, echoing and amplifying my own considerable magic, increasing the longer I delayed. I tried to step around David. “Jane,” he said. “I can’t let you do it.”
I closed my eyes, and
I could see the golden arcs of power that I had raised. I knew them, recognized them as the basic web of magic that I wove before I worked any spell. But the strands were thicker than I expected, brighter than I’d had any reason to predict. The palpitations that I’d felt earlier in the week came back, so strong that I swayed in sudden dizziness. My magical energy surged higher, bounced off the skeins of power spun out from the papers. I needed to plant my powers somewhere, needed to sink them into something.
“Jane,” David said, and his voice was so urgent that I was forced to look at him. “They’ll destroy you. The Court would never let you work alone, without a Coven to control you. Not if they knew you had touched all of this, manipulated all these records.” He set his hands on my shoulders. “Stop.”
And I understood what he was saying. I knew that he was right. I knew that I only stood to hurt myself—and him.
But I didn’t know how to tamp down the magic that was still rising in me. I didn’t know how to bleed off the energy, how to bring it back to a level that I could control. “David,” I said, and his name was filled with all of my fear, all of my frustration.
He moved his hands down to my arms, setting off a storm of magical sparks. “Stop,” he said again.
My jangling madness responded to the grip of his fingers, spinning out, beyond my control. He absorbed the first glinting needles as if they were nothing. After all, he’d been caught in the midst of my spells for two years. He knew me. He protected me. He kept me safe.
Before I was fully aware of what I was doing, I stepped into the circle of his arms. His chest was broad against my sundress; I felt the heat of his body, smelled the woodsy soap from his shower. He folded his arms around me, pulling me closer, absorbing the energy that I could not control.
I was astonished by how much strength I had summoned, by how much witchery pulsed through my body. He took it, though, absorbed it all.
