by Mindy Klasky
But there was absolute silence from the court. Maybe they were taking time to review all of David’s concocted files. Maybe they were making inquiries, tracking down other—possibly real—offenses.
Perhaps he never should have planted the documents. If he’d been patient, Pitt surely would have exposed his true self, the way he had during David’s first week on the job. The double billing for the Atlanta centerstone had really happened; David hadn’t created it out of whole cloth. Pitt would eventually have been caught making more mistakes.
But how many years would that have taken? How many careers would have been destroyed in the meantime? Would Kyle have suffered? Other well-intentioned warders?
David had done what he had to do. And Hecate herself could not be too upset. The goddess had come to him in the salamanders’ lair. She’d given him the strength to pierce Apolline’s heart. She’d guided his hands to the Collar and the key.
Sunday evening, David dressed in khakis and a soft flannel shirt. He’d come to think of the clothes as “Jane” clothes, one of the outfits he’d worn as he taught her about crystals, as she learned that she could trust him. He fed Spot an early dinner, then made his way down to the lake just before sunset, carrying a woven basket of supplies.
The last glints of daylight melted across the glassy water, reflecting the oak tree and the osprey nest in its rose-colored sheen. He paused at the end of the beach, the toes of his shoes almost touching the water.
He wanted to make some offering, some gesture of appreciation to the sprite who had stood by him against Apolline. But Bourne was long gone now. The lake already felt different—less conscious, less aware. It had gone back to being a passive provider of life to fish and fowl, grass and reed.
The sun was barely visible over the horizon, a rind of orange glowing above the trees. The boundaries between the astral world and the mundane were thinnest now, stretched between day and night, between wakefulness and sleep, between known and unknown. Hurrying, because he dared not lose the crux of transitional power, he stripped off his clothes.
The evening air was cold against his flesh, but he’d learned at the Academy to overlook physical discomfort. He turned his concentration to the basket he’d brought down from the house.
Taking care, he lifted out a small handmade broom. It was made of birch twigs, bound with willow withes to a staff of ash. It had been a gift from Linda, the day he’d first been bonded to Haylee. It was time to consecrate the broom to better service.
With the confidence of familiarity, he walked to a point halfway up the beach. As he lowered the broom to the sand, a clear chime sounded in his head, the sound of the shortest bar on a xylophone being struck with a metal mallet. He swept from left to right, slow, even strokes that revealed a length of sun-bleached driftwood. Returning to the basket, he took out a candle made of jet-black wax. He set it in a hollow of the embedded wood, taking care that it was perfectly level.
After the candle was set, he walked a perfect arc ninety degrees to the south. A splash of lemon arced across his tongue, sour and bright. Once again, he swept the sand, revealing a stretch of gnarled driftwood. He produced another candle from the basket, burgundy this time, and balanced it on the bleached wood plinth.
Another curving walk. The taste of caramel, creamy and rich. More sand swept, a third driftwood marker, a deep violet candle placed.
He ended at the north. The prickle of sun-dried hay scratched against his face, down his arms, and across the backs of his thighs. He swept sand from the driftwood and placed the candle, burnt orange against white.
When the four cardinal points were set, he took the last thing from the basket—his Hecate’s Torch, strung on a band of shimmering black silk. He settled the ribbon around his neck, taking care to nestle the emblem over his heart. The metal was already the same temperature as his body.
Taking a deep breath, he found the precise center of the circle he’d created. He planted his feet in the sand and reached into the ether. It was comforting to find Rosefire waiting for him. He folded his fingers around the grip and pulled the sword through.
Sword in hand, Torch on heart, he turned to the eastern corner where he’d started his rite. Pointing at the candle’s wick, he intoned, “If Hecate wills it, may the Guardians of Air light my way.”
He was a warder, not a witch. He didn’t have the power to work spells, to master the primary elements of the universe. His role was to nurture and protect, and maybe, just maybe, to teach.
But Hecate could lend him her strength. The witches’ sacred goddess could intercede on his behalf as she had in Apolline’s lair. Focusing on the silver emblem that lay upon his chest, he caught his breath and waited to see if Hecate still looked on him with favor.
The wick kindled.
As power rose through that quadrant of his circle, he turned to the south. Once again, he pointed and spoke, “If Hecate wills it, may the Guardians of Fire light my way.” The candle leaped to life and the southern arc was secure.
He repeated the process in the west and north. When he was through, he was centered in a circle of steely light. The shimmering haze softened his view of the beach, the dock, and the lake.
Drawing a deep breath, he sank to his knees in the precise center of the space, resting Rosefire on the smooth-swept sand before him. Only after he was settled, balanced in body and mind, did he extend his arms to either side. Palms up, head bowed, he offered his plea to Hecate.
A witch would have an incantation tried and true. He had nothing but the desire of his heart, the words he’d been thinking for days, for weeks, ever since Linda first proposed the notion of making a Samhain offering.
“Hear me, Hecate, though I am not worthy. I come before you as a warder, a man sworn to serve you, to act always as you will. In the past, I offered my sword in protection of your daughter, and I was found wanting.” He pictured Haylee, her shrewd eyes and cruel lips. “I beg forgiveness for my failures. I kneel before you, a hopeful penitent.”
He waited, in case Hecate chose to give him a sign. She could reject his plea without cause, forcing him to set aside his quest before he’d even begun.
But the candles continued to burn strong at the cardinal points. As near as he could tell, the air remained still outside his sheltering arc. No sand blew. No waves broke upon the beach.
Taking heart that he wasn’t dismissed out of hand, he braced himself to make his true request. He raised his head, then lifted Rosefire from the sand. He extended the blade before him, balanced on his open palms. The weight of the sword tugged at his wrists, pulling at his shoulders. But he braced himself and offered all he had to give.
“Look on me with favor, Goddess. Let me raise this sword in your honor. Let me protect the vulnerable and guide the lost. Let me teach the unknowing. I beg you, honored Hecate, to allow me the grace that is solely yours to grant. Blessed Goddess, bind me to a witch this Samhain night. Allow me to serve your daughter, Jane Madison, daughter of Sarah, daughter of Abigail, of no known Coven.”
As he completed his prayer, he pictured Jane as he’d seen her the night they met, her auburn hair sparking in the soft light of the cottage, her hazel eyes blazing with defiance. He remembered her sitting across from him at La Chaumiere, pushing to understand the shape of the new world she’d joined, the meaning of a sisterhood of witches. He felt the force of her fire-banishing spell, searing across the ether, and the sheer power as she bound healing strength to the first aventurine crystal she’d ever encountered.
She laughed. She wept. She was a witch enrobed in the all the power of her kind, strong and terrible and proud.
For an endless moment, there was nothing.
Then he was crushed by the goddess.
Magic flooded him, suffusing his body and capsizing his mind. For decades, he’d discerned individual strands of power—sights and scents, sounds and tastes and touch. Hecate was all those and more: A perfect light woven of all the colors of the rainbow, a symphony composed of every sou
nd he’d ever heard, a banquet of flavors filling his nose, wrapping his tongue, enrobing his throat. She covered his body; she became his flesh.
He was the goddess, and she was him, perfectly empty, perfectly full. She tested every crevice in his heart, every fold of his brain. She held him in an empty void, perfect and endless and unchanging. He could not measure time. He’d lost the anchor of his worldly body in space.
One moment, he was lost. Suspended. Gone.
The next, he was drawing breath—a jasmine-filled gasp that flooded his lungs and suffused his being.
Hecate spoke through that heavy cloud of sweetness. Her words formed in the air around him, vibrating through every bone in his body. “I hear you, child. Your heart is pure and your desire sound. Go forth, warder, and protect your witch. Be bound to Jane Madison, daughter of Sarah, daughter of Abigail, of no known Coven, until such time as she desires to walk alone. Serve her and guide her and teach her in all my ways. So mote it be.”
The goddess’s declaration ended in a flash of sound, a crash of light, a brilliant, chaotic overwhelming of every sense he had, of every sense he could imagine. The earth trembled and the air shook, and his carefully constructed circle buckled and swayed and came crashing down around him in a perfect rain of power that soaked into the sand. The candles leaped skyward, transforming into torches, their wicks annihilating their perfect columns of wax. Sand rose up to the heavens, only to drift back to earth, covering the driftwood markers as if they’d never been exposed.
David was a naked man, kneeling on a beach, holding a sword that threatened to pull his arms from his sockets.
He staggered to his feet. Water lapped against the beach, soft ripples sinking into the sand. A fish jumped, somewhere out on the open water. A quartet of bats flew overhead, swooping high above the lake for a buffet of mosquitos and gnats.
He’d done it. He’d offered all he had to give to the only goddess he’d ever served, and she’d found him worthy. He was bonded with Jane Madison.
With a grateful sigh, he banished Rosefire to its astral sheath. Despite the trembling in his arms, he felt invigorated, wholly alive in a way he hadn’t been for years, maybe forever. He took one step, then another and another, still feeling the remnants of power through the soles of his feet.
He didn’t need to retrieve his candles; they’d been consumed by his rite. There was only the basket, with his broom and his clothes. He stepped into his trousers and pulled on his shirt, each gesture feeling like a tiny offering to Hecate, a show of gratitude for the energy that suffused his body. He slipped on his shoes and headed back to the house.
The woods were more alive than he’d ever known before. Maybe this was what it was like for Bourne, this hyper-awareness of every animal that crossed his path, every plant that spread roots beneath his feet. He could see them all in the darkness, limned with an ethereal glow. He could hear them, down to the whisper of breeze against the ridges of a fallen pine cone, swirling and echoing in the night. So much life, so much power—it was nearly more than his warder brain could process.
That was the only explanation for why he didn’t see the man lurking on his porch until he stood on the bottom step.
48
Norville Pitt was framed by the door. His eyeglasses caught the moonlight, smudged fingerprints obscuring his eyes like pools of stagnant water. On this Samhain night, he wore what passed for casual attire—a plasticized track suit of dingy beige, with rusty racing stripes bleeding down his legs. His forehead shone as he stepped forward, moving to the edge of the porch.
David had known this moment would come. Truth be told, he’d longed for it. He’d wanted to stare into Pitt’s eyes when the man realized his career was sunk. He’d wanted to hear that wheezing intake of breath as first one email then another and another and another came to light, quoted by the court, forwarded by the witches Pitt only claimed to serve. He’d wanted to watch Pitt die just a little, shriveling up in anguished rage as he realized he was through terrorizing the clerk’s office.
But he hadn’t anticipated Pitt looming over him in the moonlight. Rather than crane his neck, David took two measured steps back. It felt awkward to clutch the basket, but he wasn’t going to give the toad the satisfaction of summoning his sword, or taking any other action that reflected the slightest hint of concern.
Truth be told, though, he was concerned. Because Pitt should have been here a full week earlier. He should have come during daylight, frantic, broken. Something was very, very wrong.
Pitt reached into the pocket of his crinkling track suit and pulled out a thumb drive. David barely cut off an astonished gasp. There was no way the man had reconstructed the device David had destroyed, no way he had mended the bent memory chip, restoring it to its metal bed and plastic shell.
With an awkward twist of his wrist, Pitt flipped the drive to David, who caught it automatically. “What’s this?” David asked, not bothering to study the anonymous bit of plastic.
“A little light reading material,” Pitt said. “Oh. Wait. I think you’ve read this crap before.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” David said. But he had to admit his words were not convincing. They sounded frayed. Torn. As if all the power and glory of Hecate by the lake had evaporated into the cool night air.
“Ah, ah, ah!” Pitt scolded, wagging his finger as if he were disciplining a dog that had soiled the rug. “Hecate doesn’t take much to liars. Especially on the very night of Samhain.”
Cold sweat slicked David’s palms. He buried the thumb drive in his basket. “What do you want, Pitt?”
“I want you to stand before the court and tell them you were responsible for sending that pack of utter lies. I want you stripped of your Torch and your sword. I want you drummed out of the warder corps forever.”
David’s throat was too dry for him to swallow. He could hear Spot barking inside the house. He knew he should call out a command, get the dog to stop, but he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to voice even that single syllable.
“But none of that is going to happen,” Pitt said. “Not yet.”
“I don’t know what lies you’re talking about,” David finally managed. “I haven’t sent anything to the court. My computer is clean—a fact I’ll happily show to anyone who cares to look.”
“Now David, I am truly disappointed in you. All these months—years—you’ve worked for me, and you still don’t understand the importance of details. I didn’t say you had files on your computer. You’re not a total idiot. I’m certain you created a new account, that you saved your data somewhere in the cloud. Maybe on a drive like the one you just placed in your pocket.”
Pitt couldn’t know. David had left no trace. Not on his computer. Not anywhere.
He stayed silent, rather than give anything away.
Pitt laughed. “If you could see your face now… I don’t need a thumb drive with evidence. I collected all the proof I needed as you typed your vicious lies. I captured every single keystroke, transmitted directly from your keyboard. You really should work on the typos, son. They’re hell on your overall productivity.”
Pitt was bluffing. Telling his own lies. Pitt tracked his keystrokes at the office, but he’d never had access to the farmhouse. There was no way he could know what David had typed in the privacy of his own home.
But as David started to deny everything, his boss planted his feet, linking his fingers behind his back like a schoolboy quoting from some ancient text. “Memorandum dated March 27, for the purchase of a silver athame intended for use by the Washington Coven in rites conducted by Teresa Alison Sidney—”
David had typed the words himself. He’d made up the purchase, cited the Washington Coven Mother in his attempt to bring down Pitt. Nevertheless, he spluttered, “Those emails have already been sent. The judges already know—”
“It didn’t take a genius to block the court’s incoming emails from unknown sources. Enhancements to judicial efficiency—you should appreciat
e that. Your eager beaver Hopp was only too happy to implement the change.”
Kyle, used against him. David was doomed. Lost. Destroyed.
“What do you want?” he asked, each word sharper against his throat than the business edge of Rosefire.
Pitt gloated. “Nothing, for now. I’m not going to do anything tonight. I’m going to wait until the time is right, and then I’ll use my information. Until then, you can keep doing whatever you want to do. Pledge your right arm in the service of a witch, if you can find one foolish or desperate enough to accept you. But be fully aware that some day, when you least expect it, when all seems well and you’re coasting along like you don’t have a single care in the world… I’ll be waiting. I’ll be waiting, and I’ll be ready—to share every word of your disgusting lies to Hecate’s Court. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
Pitt threw back his head and laughed, once again distorting pure beams of moonlight on his eyeglasses. David resisted the urge to leap up the stairs, to close his fingers around the man’s neck and rid himself of all his problems once and for all. Before he could think of a reply, impotent words to raise in defense, Pitt disappeared, reaching somewhere only he could know.
David should admit his failings to the court now. Subject himself to their justice. Beg for mercy and hope that somehow, in maybe a decade or two, he’d be allowed to clean toilets in the basement of the office building.
But when he finally climbed the steps of the farmhouse, he caught a whiff of the jasmine scent that had enveloped him on the beach. Hecate had stood by him in his ritual. She was a goddess; she knew all he’d ever done, all he’d ever thought of doing. She’d accepted him as her warder, despite his lying about Pitt.
He bowed his head, fighting to push down a swirl of emotions—anger with himself, shame for what he’d done, anxious, desperate hope. “Give me some sign, Hecate. Show me your will. Tell me if you’ll accept my service, knowing all you know.”
