by Mindy Klasky
David’s temptation to drown his annoyance in a thorough workout was almost overwhelming. But he didn’t dare give in. Because if he didn’t find an answer here in the Imperial Library, he might find himself with infinite time for exercise. He might never work in the Eastern Empire again.
Well, if the materials weren’t organized, he only had one choice. He had to read through the titles, shelf by shelf, book by book. And he might as well start in the corner farthest from the door.
An hour in, he was ready to give up. He’d found nothing remotely relevant to salvaging his career. But he didn’t have anything better to do with his day—not when he’d been disgraced in his profession, with his family, and with his best friend. So he kept on reading.
Two hours in, he wondered if any other imperial had actually used this library in the past decade.
Three hours in, he considered how long it would take someone to find his body if he died down there.
Four hours in, he hit pay-dirt.
Not the books he’d hoped to find—Imperial Employment for Dummies, or something along those lines. Instead, he discovered the Boston Coven’s tax records.
They were stacked haphazardly on a series of dusty shelves. Unlike the parchment-paged tomes scattered through the rest of the library, these records were all kept on cheap paper. It only took a moment for David to realize they were photocopies of handwritten documents that must be maintained in some mundane library.
At first, he brushed past them because the endless lines of addresses and tax receipts were useless in his quest for reinstatement. But he only got one shelf further along before he realized the tax records might answer a different question. Nothing in life was certain but death and taxes. Well, Abigail Somerset Windmere Carroll was long dead. But if she’d paid taxes, he might be able to trace her descendants. He might be able to prove Jane Madison was a legitimate witch. And Hecate might reward him for his labors.
He started in Salem. The photocopy was in bad shape; someone had obviously had a hard time getting foxed parchment pages to reproduce. “Somerset,” he muttered to himself, scanning down columns of names. “Somerset… Somerset… Somerset…”
And there, three lines from the bottom of a page, he found it. Abigail Somerset, spinster, the spidery writing said. There was an abbreviated inventory of her farmhouse—one bed, a good milk cow, six laying hens. A splash of water had ruined the opposing page so he couldn’t make out the precise number of shillings and pence she’d owed the Massachusetts taxing authorities.
But once he’d found his target, it was easy to follow her through the records. She’d rendered unto Massachusetts the things that were Massachusetts’s—namely, hard cold cash every year. And in 1683, there was a curious abbreviation: O.Salem, CNCT.
Old Salem, O’Rourke had told him. Connecticut—the location of Jane’s family farm.
The mundane tax records managed to do what Hecate’s Court had not, tracing the existence of a colonial woman from one residence to another. Muttering thanks to some long-dead clerk with a passion for complete records—along with whatever imperial had thought to add the tax rolls to the Eastern Empire collection—David scrambled along the shelves, looking for Connecticut records. It took him fifteen minutes amid a choking cloud of dust, but he finally located the book he needed. And there, written in a loopy scrawl that was nearly impossible to decipher, he found her: Abigail Windmere, widow.
She’d paid her taxes on the farm for four years, and then she was listed as Abigail Windmere Carroll. He squinted through page after page. Abigail’s name disappeared—her husband, Theophilus, was listed as the owner of the farm. But Theophilus gifted the property to his daughter, Priscilla, who owned it until she married Thomas Stark. Thomas, in his time, gifted the farm to his daughter, and so the records proceeded, generation after generation until the nineteenth century, when women were finally able to inherit property in their own names.
Ida McGill held the farm in 1917. She passed it to her daughter, Eleanor Marks, in 1940. And Eleanor passed it to her daughter, Sarah Smythe, in 1972.
He had it.
Jane Madison’s full lineage. She should be welcomed into the fold of true witches. Hecate should be pleased.
Maybe it was his imagination, but the dusty old library suddenly seemed to fill with the scent of jasmine. He took a deep breath, soothed by the now-familiar aroma. It only took him a moment to realize the scent wasn’t coincidence.
Jane was working another spell.
Closing his eyes, he let his warder’s consciousness follow the astral path back to her working. He couldn’t see her, not quite. But he received a clear impression of Neko standing by her side, leaning close to lend her physical and magical support. There was someone else in the room, a presence he’d sensed before. Melissa White, the baker friend.
Dark shies.
He felt her speak the first two words of a spell. It was one of the first a new witch would take on after mastering the Rota in her magicarium. Jane was lighting a candle, delighted and awed by the power that rose within her.
He should go to her. Protect her. Watch her expand the range of her magic. At the very least, he should chastise her for demonstrating her power before a mundane companion.
Climbing to his feet, he touched the astral bond between them, ready to reach for Jane, regardless of where she stood in physical space. The link was strong enough for him to follow. He took a calming breath and stretched his consciousness toward her.
Before he could make the leap across space, though, footsteps echoed in the stairwell outside the Old Library. David looked up, surprised that anyone else had bothered to come to the wreck of a room.
John Brule stood in the doorway.
34
Before David could pull Rosefire into the room, Brule held up his hands in a display of good faith.
“I wouldn’t advise that,” the salamander said. “You never know what’s going to attract the attention of the Night Court’s Director of Security. I hear he’s a cold-hearted bastard, even for a vampire.”
David relinquished his grip on his sword, but he edged around the table, putting the large plane of polished wood between himself and Brule. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“You and I should talk. I tried reaching out to your shifter friend, but he’s gone off the grid.”
A twinge of worry tugged at David’s conscience, but he ordered himself to pay attention to the disaster at hand. “What makes you think we have anything to say to each other?”
“I’m afraid you and the alpha misunderstood what happened in the garage.”
“We understood exactly what happened. You lured us there under false pretenses. And you did your best to kill us when you thought we couldn’t fight back.”
Brule sighed. “That’s not what happened. Not that I have any way of proving myself to you.”
David thought about his last conversation with Connor, when the shifter insisted Brule was innocent. David hadn’t believed Connor that night, but maybe he owed it to his friend to listen to the salamander now. He asked, “What do you think happened down there?”
Brule’s lips pursed in a Gallic pout. “I left the door open for you and your shifter friends. I placed the Collar as close to you as I could. I did my best to draw the attention of the nest from your wolves.”
“And the gasoline? The fire?”
“Bad luck all the way around. Ms. Fournier used the Congress for her own purposes. I had no idea she intended a fire circle.”
The secretive fire-lizards had rituals David had never heard of. Reluctantly, he asked, “What’s a fire circle?”
“It’s the prerogative of a Salamander Queen. The fire brings a certain…ecstasy. It gives us—le mot…le mot—joy. No. Euphoria.”
David remembered the lizards writhing in the flames, their faces transformed into something beyond their physical form. “Why give it then?”
The salamander shrugged. “It was a reward. Many among our people op
posed our taking the Collar. They said we should kill the wolves who stole our karstag and be done with the entire matter. Ms. Fournier felt differently, and she offered the fire circle out of gratitude to her followers who obeyed.”
“You had no idea she’d planned that? No idea wolves would be caught inside the flames?”
Brule stared directly into his eyes. “I had absolutely no idea.”
David didn’t want to believe the fire-lizard. He didn’t want to think that everything had gone wrong in some sort of arcane accident. Apolline just happened to reward her followers that night. Caught in a cosmic jest, half a dozen wolves were hospitalized. Connor was toppled as alpha. David was fired from the court.
David had been terminated because of charges brought by the Empire Bureau of Investigation. “Who called the EBI?” he asked.
Brule spread his hands in a gesture of innocence. “I cannot say. Perhaps that was a random patrol.”
“Not if they had a griffin on hand to open that door. A griffin and enough agents to subdue two dozen wolves.”
Brule’s eyes narrowed. “Peut être. But there was something else that night. Some water creature. Perhaps it drew the Bureau’s attention.”
David’s protest was wordless. So far, no one had asked him about Bourne. He hadn’t needed to lie.
Brule went on as if he’d stayed silent. “Don’t forget—my people suffered too.”
“Not a single salamander was arrested!”
“We lost our only meeting place in the district.”
“Except for Apolline’s mansion,” David said. He fired his words with bitterness, remembering the heat of the salamander queen’s firepit against his eyelids.
Brule merely said, “Our meeting place is gone.” When David stayed silent, the fire-lizard clicked his tongue once, a gesture of patent dismissal. “I did not come here to argue over which of us has suffered more.”
“Why did you come here? How the hell did you even know where I was?”
“I tracked you through your Torch,” the salamander said simply. “Your insignia is attuned to you. It gives off a…spark.”
Reminded of his loss, Davis was suddenly exhausted. He was tired of standing on guard, constantly poised to pull Rosefire from the ether. “What do you want, Brule?”
“I want you to know I’m still your ally. I want you to trust me if we ever meet again. I want to exchange the Collar for the karstag so my people can go back to their own quiet lives.”
Quiet lives. Right. Quiet like a forest fire.
But David said, “I suspect the karstag’s off the table now. Connor meant to give it back at the new moon, but he’s not the Washington alpha anymore.”
Brule’s left eyebrow twitched in irritation. “Whoever leads the pack won’t be a fool. An even exchange, Collar for karstag. That should end this mess.”
“Why should any wolf believe you?”
“They won’t believe me. They’ll believe you.”
“And why should I believe you?”
“Because I’m giving you this.” Before David could react, the salamander reached into his pocket. As Rosefire flickered on the edge of the ether, Brule withdrew his hand, unfolding his fingers to offer up his bare palm.
No. Not bare. Centered on his hand, glimmering blue under the fluorescent lights, was a graceful twist of silver. Hecate’s Torch.
Brule placed the Torch on the reading table, then backed off several paces. “Go ahead,” he said. “Take it.”
The metal emblem called to David. He could taste it at the back of his throat—the rich splash of brandy he’d savored for the first time when the Academy granted him the symbol of his graduation. He wanted it. He longed for it. But he had to ask, “Why are you giving it back?”
Brule shrugged. “Call it a gesture of good will.”
The Torch spoke of honor and power, of possibility and potential. It reminded him of all the hope he’d had when he graduated from the Academy. He’d worked warder’s magic with his fingers closed around its silver whorls. The Torch had calmed him, centered him, made him the best warder he could be.
He needed it like air.
He spoke through set teeth: “What do you want in exchange?”
“I already told you,” Brule said. “Your trust.”
David could give that, for now. Until he learned more, until he understood the long game the salamanders played.
The instant his fingers curled around his Torch, he felt whole again, balanced. He swayed like a drunken man, swallowing the rush of brandy down his throat.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice gone husky.
For answer, the salamander bowed from the waist. “Until we meet again,” he said.
“Until—”
But Brule flickered out the door before David could finish his reply. Even with his Torch as anchor, he couldn’t hear the salamander’s feet on the stairs outside the Old Library. Apolline’s wily ambassador could be going anywhere, doing anything.
But in that moment, steadied by the ballast of his Torch, David couldn’t bring himself to care.
35
For one full day, David merely reveled in the return of his Torch. He used it as a focal point to extend his consciousness, testing the perimeter of the farm. He plumbed the depths of the lake, confirming all the work Bourne had done and verifying that the sprite was no longer on—or even near—the premises. He shored up all his protective spells on the old logging road at the south end of the property, and he reinforced the charms on the gate that faced the main road.
He worked his fighting forms. He practiced warder’s magic, driving into town and fashioning impossible parking spaces for the Lexus on crowded Main Street. He practiced reaching to new destinations, places he only knew through the descriptions of other warders. He drilled himself on nurturing magic, the calming and strengthening spells he could offer a witch. He practiced clearing his mind, becoming a blank slate dedicated to the service of Hecate.
By Friday afternoon, he was going stir-crazy. He set off to find Connor, determined to help the shifter make things right with his pack. He drove to the Den and parked his car on the concrete pad outside the rough cabin that was the only structure on the property. Torch in hand, he explored the landscape, extending his senses in hopes of crossing the former alpha’s trail. Three separate times, he sensed that Connor had been nearby, recently enough that a nightingale sang loud inside David’s skull. But the wolf knew the land far better than he did. If Connor didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t be found.
Defeated, David returned home.
Saturday morning, David woke to a knock at the farmhouse door. A uniformed courier handed over an envelope, requiring him to sign a receipt. He took the package into the kitchen and opened it as his coffee brewed, finding a stack of legal documents. Empire vs. Warder David Montrose read the caption, along with an official case number and the name of Judge Robert DuBois.
It was time to find a lawyer. He pulled out his phone and started placing calls. Half the imperials he spoke to got spooked when they learned salamanders were involved. Three more already represented wolves. Both an ifrit and a gargoyle told him the best they could do was argue for him to serve his sentences concurrently.
Finally, he reached Keiko Matsuhara, a fox spirit who agreed to review his arguments. He scanned the court’s official documentation and emailed it to the kitsune, trying not to feel defeated before he even heard her legal opinion.
He spent Saturday afternoon doing mundane chores around the house, organizing files in his office, cleaning out the garage, and discarding stale food from the pantry. He understood exactly what he was doing—trying to control his home because he couldn’t control anything else in his life.
Near dusk, he took Spot for a run, stretching an easy three miles into five. As he ran, he thought.
Three weeks remained before Samhain. Hecate would never care that he’d helped a sprite, that he’d stood by his imperial shifter friends against the salamander threat,
even that he’d protected the borders of his farm against evil. The goddess would judge him on how well he’d served her witches.
On how he’d helped Jane Madison.
Even now, his warder’s senses were attuned to her magic, to the scent of jasmine swirling around a green bar of light. Jane was thinking about magic. She was leaning on her familiar for strength.
Night fell, and he considered stretching out his run, adding a loop that would tack on a couple more. Spot was flagging, though, favoring his front right paw. David fed the dog before he stumbled into his shower.
There was no time like the present to act on his new resolve. He chose clothes he thought Jane would like, jeans and a plaid shirt she’d find non-threatening.
He made himself a decent dinner—grilled pork chops and a baked potato with an entire forest of broccoli. Linda would be thrilled he was eating right, for once. He told himself he was building strength for a warder’s duties.
Soon, midnight approached.
Jane was still awake.
Determined to acquit himself well before his goddess, David folded his fingers around his Torch and reached for the Peabridge cottage. Taking a deep breath, he knocked on the door, only to be met by silence.
Jane was definitely inside. The blanket of jasmine settled over his thoughts told him she was in the basement, surrounded by the Osgood collection with Neko beside her. She hunched over a tray of crystals, all of her concentration devoted to the stones’ magical vibrations.
Without a conscious effort on his part, the front door’s lock shifted beneath his hand. Warder’s prerogative.
The living room was just as he remembered it—a pair of hunter green couches around a carefully braided rug. Sure enough, Jane’s voice floated up from the basement, too soft for him to make out words, but he could tell she was asking a question. Neko answered quickly, his voice warm and reassuring.
David wasn’t ready to see her yet, and he didn’t want to interrupt the rapport she’d built with her familiar. Instead, he headed to the kitchen and made himself a cup of chamomile tea. Only then, steaming mug in hand, did he make his way down to the basement.
