by Mindy Klasky
When we had finally run out of excuses to sit around the Mexican restaurant, Will paid the bill. I reached for my purse, like any self-respecting woman of the twenty-first century, but he waved off my offer of payment. “You’ll get the next one,” he said with a smile, and a slow fire rose beneath my belly, as I imagined another perfect evening with this man who was so very easy to spend time with. Not that this evening was over yet….
The early September night was heavy as Will walked me back to the Peabridge. We left the busy commercial district quickly, picking our way along quiet residential side streets. Will took my hand as we walked. His fingers were strong and firm; I could imagine the tight creativity curled inside them. I could picture him making firm lines on some architectural drawing. On another walk, in another time, I would have stammered when I felt his touch, but everything seemed simple about this companionship, everything was comfortable. Everything was right.
Until I saw the black Lexus parked directly in front of the Peabridge.
There were a lot of black luxury sedans in Georgetown. Many of them had onyx leather that whispered of old money. Some even had walnut trim that glinted under streetlamps. But none of them had my warder, folded into the front seat, sitting perfectly still in a white shirt that glowed faintly in the ambient light.
“Damn,” I said, suddenly fighting to draw a complete breath.
Will stopped with me, smiling easily into the night. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve got a visitor.” I slipped my hand from Will’s, suddenly feeling like a sixteen-year-old caught out after curfew.
“Who’s that?” Will asked, the faintest note of concern dusting his words.
Even as my mind scrambled for a lie, David opened his car door. As he unfolded himself from the front seat, Neko glided forward from the shadows of the garden wall, looking for all the world like a cat returning from a midnight hunting expedition.
I wondered if Ariel had come home. Or, worse. If she hadn’t.
“Will Becker,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I’d like to introduce David Montrose and, um, Neko. They’re…business associates.” The men all shook hands, and there was a sudden tension in the air, a jagged energy of unease that I hadn’t felt all evening. I sloped my hands down my side, reaching for the pockets of my jeans, but the angle was all wrong, and I felt stupid with my arms akimbo. I started to raise my right hand to my lips, to chew on my well-shaped fingernails, but I stopped myself just in time.
David completed a thorough appraisal of Will and nodded his head minutely. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to interrupt your evening, Jane. We’ve got a bookkeeping problem.”
Bookkeeping. As in, the keeping of the books in my basement. I understood exactly what David was saying, even if I wanted to ignore his message. I could also read the set to his shoulders, his dangerous politeness as he prepared to argue with me. I was going to have to deal with my warder; there was no way that I could simply send him away, return to my evening of carefree dating.
I turned to Will and shrugged helplessly. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m really going to have to take care of this.”
He frowned. “You’re all right, though?”
“Yeah,” I said, and I sighed. “I’m fine.”
For just a moment, I worried about what he would say, how he would take his leave. There was a part of me that wanted to send David and Neko off to the cottage, order them around the corner of the library so that I could capture the kiss I was dying to take from Will.
There was another part of me, though, that didn’t want to start down that road. There was no way to follow that one kiss to its logical destination, to the end point that I’d realized—sometime between the garlic shrimp and the coffee—that I definitely wanted to reach. I wasn’t going to go any further with Will, though. Not tonight. Not with my warder prowling like a frustrated lion in the zoo.
And Will seemed to sense my indecision. He stepped between David and me, turning his back to my warder with a grace that belied his alleged incompetence in the yoga studio. He settled one hand against my throat and then leaned in to kiss my cheek. “Call me tomorrow,” he whispered, and then he stepped back.
“Nice meeting you,” he said evenly to David, nodding.
My warder nodded back, apparently out of reflex. I stared after Will’s back as he walked to the corner. I longed for him to turn back, to sneak another glance at me before he turned away, but he did not look in our direction again.
I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, and then centered myself with a long, slow exhale.
“It took you long enough,” I said, forcing myself to meet David’s eyes.
“I was away for the weekend.”
“And you couldn’t check messages?” My tone was sharp, mixed from my frustration at letting Will walk away and my worry about Ariel.
“I didn’t,” he said evenly.
“And what’s your excuse?” I said, turning to Neko.
He shrugged, shoulders slim and elegant in his tight black T-shirt. “I didn’t realize that I needed one. You weren’t working magic, so I wasn’t bound to come.”
His insouciance angered me.
Here, I’d been worrying about Ariel. I’d been trying to track down my anima. I’d been chasing after her, trying to corner her, trying to bring her home. Trying to find out what had happened to my power.
And Neko had been enjoying some party-hearty weekend with Jacques, free from responsibility, free from any care in the world, safe from my witchy summons.
“You managed to find time to choose colors with Gran,” I accused.
He shrugged. “A boy’s got to do what a boy’s got to do.”
Something about his devil-may-care flamboyance set me off, touched a match to my scarce-restrained frustration, about Ariel, about watching Will walk away. I spoke before I even thought about the impact of my words. “I’m not sure I want to do this anymore.”
I was as surprised as David and Neko—maybe even more so. But as soon as I said it, I knew that was the truth. If I weren’t a witch, I would be a free woman. I could spend a Friday night sacked out at home, catching up on well-warranted sleep. I could listen to my best friend’s story of her perfect date without feeling guilty that I’d pulled her away from the man of her apparent dreams, forced her into a fruitless hunt for a disappearing magical creature. I could create solid presentations for the Peabridge without spending half my time listening for my phone to ring, for my astral colleagues to join in on the hunt.
I could invite Will Becker into my home.
That was the heart of it. I’d shared more with Will in one evening than I had with any man since…. Than any man ever. And yet, I hadn’t told him the full truth. I hadn’t told him about the real me. I hadn’t told him I was a witch. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I wasn’t sure I could. Every other man who’d found out about my powers had left me. Left me, or turned traitor on me.
Maybe losing my powers wasn’t the end of the world. Maybe I was ready to go back to what I’d been, to how I’d lived for all those years before I discovered the books in the Peabridge basement. Maybe I was ready to be normal.
“You don’t mean that.” David’s voice was gentler than I expected. Softer. Kinder.
It was the voice I’d heard in his kitchen. The voice he’d used when he’d told me we’d made a mistake. The voice that had embarrassed me and angered me and made me realize that I didn’t have the first clue about who he was, who I was, who we were together. For one moment, I thought about challenging him, about forcing him to talk about what had happened in his home, in his bedroom. I glanced at Neko, though, and I knew that I couldn’t do that. Not now. Not with an audience. Not with the memory of my nearly perfect evening with Will so fresh in my mind.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to say the words that frightened me. “I think I do.”
Neko arched his back. “Don’t we get a vote, Jane?”
“You cast yours!” I protested. “You
both voted by not answering my calls. You voted by not being there when I tried to track down Ariel!” Every word I said made me angrier. I’d felt like a social reject, calling David and Neko, over and over, the girl who could never get a date. Their refusal to pick up their phones was like the confirmation of every hopeless crush I’d ever had.
“And you!” I went on, actually putting the flat of my palm against Neko’s shoulder and shoving. “What the hell do you think you’re doing with Gran? Wedding planner? Don’t you think I should have a vote in that?”
“If you called your grandmother once in a while, you’d know that I was helping her! I was trying to reach out to you, Jane! I was trying to tell you I was still around, that I was there for you, even if you couldn’t tug my familiar leash.” He was really angry at me.
“You make it sound like it’s my fault! I didn’t mean to lose my powers. I thought that they’d get stronger when I poured them into Ariel.”
“It may not be your fault, but I’m the one who suffers if you just give up. Me, and Jacques, too! If I’m transferred to another witch, what happens to us? What happens to him?”
“You’re not being fair! I tried to reach you. I called a dozen times! You were just too busy with your stupid love life!” I couldn’t keep the words from tumbling out of my mouth. Without my bidding, my mind flashed back to Will, to our perfect dinner, our effortless conversation. That wasn’t my love life, I told myself. That was my life life. That was my future. That was what I could be, if I weren’t constantly mired in perpetual drama, in the bizarre world of witchcraft.
Neko stared at me with unblinking eyes, his ravenous black pupils making him more catlike than ever. “Yes,” he said, and disdain dripped from the single word. “This is all about my stupid love life.” He turned to David, who had watched our exchange in dangerous silence. “Will you be working tonight? Do you need me?”
David shook his head. “Go.” I started to protest, but he cut me off, even more abruptly than Neko had. “She doesn’t have the power to work. I’ll call you if we need you.”
Neko started to stalk away, but before he reached the edge of the Peabridge property, he stopped. His hand glided into the pocket of his sleek leather slacks, and then he pounced back to me. “Here,” he said, thrusting something into my hand.
I took it automatically. “What?”
“Breath mints,” he said, with a breeziness that was so false I almost choked on his tone.
“I don’t—”
“Yes,” he said. “You do. After garlic shrimp, you most certainly do.”
And then my familiar was gone, stalking into the shadows of the hot September night. I stared after him, waiting for him to turn around, to laugh, to admit that he was merely joking, that he was tweaking me, yet again, with his endlessly wry sense of humor.
No such luck.
“Shall we?” David finally asked, with deceptive mildness.
“Shall we what?” I said, barely biting back my frustration.
“Shall we head downstairs to your basement? See what we can figure out about this missing anima of yours.”
I started to protest. I started to say that I had no desire to touch the books. That I couldn’t open them, couldn’t read them, not without wreaking even greater havoc on my collection. Besides, I’d been serious. I really wasn’t sure I wanted to be a witch anymore.
But David wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was stubborn. Driven. Bullheaded. I’d come up against his determination before, and I’d always yielded. Besides, he could read the books down there, even if I couldn’t. He might be able to find a way out of this mess yet.
Silently, I turned from the darkness and headed toward my cottage.
David opened the front door, working the lock with some remnant of the warder’s magic that he continued to hold as his right—his obligation—to keep me safe. I glanced down at my fingers, curled into a loose fist, hiding the mints that Neko had given me. I knew that David had heard my familiar’s snarky comment, and I felt my cheeks flush. “Do you want a cup of tea?” I asked, saying the first thing that came to mind as I scrambled for a way to escape David’s nearness.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll get started downstairs.”
He crossed the living room with the ease of a man comfortable in his own home. I stared as he palmed on the light switch, listened as he loped down the steps. I felt more uncomfortable than he, walking around my own cottage, heading into my own kitchen.
I put on the kettle and rummaged around in the cabinets for my teapot and mugs. I automatically set aside the peppermint tea that sat at the front of the cupboard; David didn’t care for mint. Too bad, I thought, popping one of Neko’s parting gifts into my mouth.
I hunted around for the lemon chamomile, finally finding it at the back of the shelf. I fished out two bags and added them to the pot. Excavating a tray, I put a couple of spoons beside the mugs, adding some brightly colored cocktail napkins that I’d scavenged from some gift basket too long ago to remember the specifics. All in all, I kept myself incredibly busy for a woman whose life appeared to be on the edge of some massive transition.
As I waited for the water to boil, I looked around the kitchen. I could still remember how it had appeared when Melissa and I entered the cottage for the first time. The spiderwebs had hosted spiderwebs of their own; dust had been thick on every horizontal surface. We had cleaned and scrubbed like madwomen, and I’d repaid her with a plain hamburger, loads of fries and an endless debt of friendship. Everything had been normal then. I’d been happy, content with my friends and my job and my life.
The kettle whistled, and I poured out the boiling water with smooth, automatic motions. It had taken me forever to learn where I stored things in the kitchen; for months, I’d opened the wrong cupboards, searched in the wrong cabinets. Somewhere along the way, though, this place had come to be home. I could pour myself a drink by moonlight. I could grab emergency Oreos from the very back of the second shelf, even in the midst of an on-phone crisis. I could locate every one of my serving dishes, my mismatched pieces of silverware, my chipped but serviceable plates.
The Peabridge cottage was my home.
The Peabridge cottage, complete with its books, its crystals and its witchy accouterments. Complete with the warder who waited for me downstairs. What the hell was I going to say to him? How was I going to carry on a conversation, alone, with David Montrose? Especially a conversation about leaving my powers behind forever?
I chewed the remnant of my breath mint and took a deep breath before heading toward the basement.
David took the tray from me when I got to the bottom step. He had already starting browsing through the books, stacking ones with likely titles on the bookstand. He’d be a valuable addition to a research library, I thought. Despite myself, I smiled wryly.
“What?” he said, lifting a questioning eyebrow to ask if I wanted him to pour.
I shrugged, and he raised the teapot. The grassy fragrance of chamomile washed over the basement. “Nothing,” I said. “I was just thinking about the books. About how much knowledge is in them.”
We drank our tea in uncomfortable silence. Uncomfortable on my part, anyway. I kept wanting to ask him questions. I wanted to know what he was thinking. What had changed his mind? Why he had been content to sleep with me, but then decided that we’d been wrong?
Was I that lousy in bed?
“Do you really want to give it up?” he asked, as if we’d been chatting away for the past five minutes.
“I’m not sure. I think so. I don’t know if I can.”
“It’s not an easy life, being a witch. You know that. But you don’t have to do it alone.”
“It sure seems like I do. I tried to reach you and Neko for two days.” There. That was apparently what had me upset. I wouldn’t have been sure, if tears hadn’t broken into my voice on the final word.
David sipped from his mug before answering. When he did speak, it felt as if he was plucking individual wo
rds from a tree, searching out the perfect ones that were ripe. “I unplugged my phone. I didn’t want to call you, just because I thought it was a good idea. I wanted to give you space, time alone. I hadn’t thought through the loss of your power. I assumed that you could reach me, that you could call me as your warder if you really, truly needed me.”
“I did need you!”
“I know. I was wrong.”
The simplicity of his confession stunned me. He wasn’t trying to make excuses. He wasn’t trying to shift the burden. He wasn’t trying to make me doubt myself, question what was what, who was who. He was accepting responsibility.
All of my arguments fled, tumbling into the dark basement corners like dust bunnies fleeing under the sofa.
He stared at me, his gaze painfully direct through the swirling chamomile steam. “We need to find her, Jane. We need to get Ariel back. Once you have your powers restored, then you can make a decision, an informed decision, about what you want to do. Whether you want to be a witch.”
“I don’t know what else I can do to track her down.”
“Whether you want to be one or not, you’re still a witch for now, Jane. Witches are meant to work in covens.”
“No,” I said flatly. “I won’t go back to the Washington Coven.” The thought of approaching that clique of gossiping manipulators made my stomach turn. They were exactly why I wanted out of this magic business; they were the sort of knotted complication that I could avoid completely if I lived as a normal human woman.
“Do you have a better idea?” David said.
I thought of all the better ideas I’d had. I had thought I would be a librarian. I had thought I would be Will’s girlfriend. I had thought I would be Gran’s granddaughter. I had thought I would squabble with Clara forever, begrudging her the poor decisions that she’d made in her youth. I had thought I would live a totally normal life, in a totally normal city, with totally normal friends.
Without a warder to confuse me with a simple six-word question.
I shook my head. “Not yet. But I will. Give me a little more time, and I will.”
