Sorcery and the Single Girl (25 page)

“Yes! If that’s the way you felt, you should have told me. I’d still make my own decision—”

“Why am I not surprised by that?” he interrupted.

“I’d
still
make my own decision,” I reiterated, “but at least I’d have all the facts in front of me.”

“Well, now you do.” He sounded like a stubborn little boy.

“And thanks for giving me plenty of time to think about them.” I whined like a birthday girl, piqued that I hadn’t received a rose on my slice of cake. I always could match him in stubbornness.

“Children, children,” Neko chided helpfully from the backseat. “It’s time to move along. The clock just rang half past eleven.”

What clock? I wanted to snap, annoyed as much by my familiar’s interruption as by his usage of the British phrase “half past.” Graeme would have said half past. If he’d been with us.

But David didn’t question Neko. He reached down and turned the ignition key, shoving the Lexus into gear.

I stared at the silver ring reflecting balefully on my finger. “I have to wear it now,” I said, almost apologetically. “If you’d told me before…If I could have explained to Haylee…But if I just show up without it tonight, it would be like a slap in her face.”

David didn’t say anything. He just maneuvered the car down the rest of the long driveway. I stared out my window.

Haylee and David. Well, that explained why he’d been so set against our friendship from the get-go.

But it didn’t explain Haylee staying silent on the topic. It didn’t explain her never mentioning that she
knew
David, much less that they had worked together, in the intense intimacy of warder and witch. She should have said something to me. Should have filled me in a long time ago. Anger jangled my nerves, making my fingers feel as if I’d brushed them across a bed of nails.

My belly did a sick little flop as David braked to a halt.

“David?” I asked, before he had a chance to unbuckle his seat belt. “What happens if I fail?”

He shook his head, looking in his rearview mirror. Stress torqued his voice into an exasperated sigh. “You know all this. The Coven will take possession of Hannah Osgood’s books. The books and the crystals and all the other paraphernalia. Neko.”

I shook my head impatiently. “No, I mean, when? Will I just blink, and they’ll all be gone?” I couldn’t look in the backseat, couldn’t force myself to catch my familiar’s eyes in the midnight gloom. “Will Neko turn back to a statue instantly?”

Predictably, Neko growled, but his aggression tapered off to a high-pitched whine.

“Don’t think about that,” David said. “You’re not going to fail. You’ll be fine.”

I might have believed him if his face hadn’t been carved into stoic wooden planes. My fingers mechanically followed his as he undid his seat belt, as he pushed open his door.

It took us almost fifteen minutes to walk to the site. Neko carried the cotton bag of herbs and the silver flask of rainwater, holding both close to his chest. A breeze had picked up, sending ripples down my spine to match the flossy clouds that scudded across the face of the moon. I was glad I’d put on a sweater.

David took the lead, glancing warily to the left and right. Neko stuck close by my side. I wasn’t sure if he was seeking comfort from me, or offering. It didn’t really matter.

We crested a slight hill, and then we could see the foundation spread out below us. It looked white in the moonlight, bleached, like driftwood abandoned on a beach. Or bone.

I forced my mind away from that thought.

The foundation was a simple rectangle, edges knife-sharp from the wooden forms that had contained the concrete pour. When I took a deep breath, I could still smell the faintest tang of charcoal, aftermath of the warders preparing the site. My witchy senses tingled with the magic potential below me.

The magic potential, and the magic actual.

As we approached, two dozen shadows loomed out of the darkness. I started to clutch at David’s arm, to call out a warning, but then I realized that each black shape represented a witch, a woman clad in a hooded cloak that covered her from head to toe. As if listening to a silent command, they ranged themselves around the foundation, close but not touching the soon-to-be sacred space.

Other shapes moved behind them—larger shadows, bulkier ones. I swallowed hard and reminded myself that each witch was protected by her warder. Each woman’s personal guardian stood behind her, prepared to use whatever means were necessary to protect the magic working—the magic workers—on this eerie night of change and shifting potential.

David stopped when we were still several paces from the foundation. I started to direct a questioning look at him—I feared my voice would be too loud if I actually spoke—but then I saw a shimmer of silver light in front of us.

Silver light. Like the circle that had protected my first Coven meeting up at the house. I looked for a warder knight, for a liquid sword of symbolic and actual warding. I found more than I had bargained for.

Three steps to my right, suddenly visible against the inky darkness in a way that made me certain magic was afoot, was the tallest woman I had ever seen. She was clad in a silver robe that was held closed at her neck by a shimmering Hecate’s Torch. Her hands were rigid in front of her, clutching the hilt of a broadsword. She stared over my head, past me,
through
me, gazing into the endless nighttime darkness. Without David saying a word, I knew I was looking at a member of Hecate’s Council, at one of the elite arbiters of witchy justice.

David bowed low before her, with Neko and I following half a heartbeat behind. “Lady of the North!” he proclaimed, as if he were the chamberlain at Cinderella’s ball. “Lady of Water! We welcome your protection on this Samhain night. We ask that you watch all that transpires here and find Jane Madison worthy of inclusion in the Washington Coven. We ask that you protect our workings and bless them in the name of our mother Hecate. We ask that you guide us and keep us, illuminating the night before us with the power of your Torch.”

The woman took her time inclining her head, looking for all the world as if she had come to life from some magical silver coin. “Welcome, Warder Montrose. I hear your entreaty and agree to guard the workings of this night, as watcher of Water in Hecate’s Council.”

We bowed again, almost perfectly synchronized, and then Neko and I followed David one quarter of the way around the circle, crossing to the western edge of the foundation slab. A man stood there—clearly the equal to the Amazon warrior we had just left. He was a full head taller than I, and his arms looked as big around as my thighs. He wore a cloak, too, and his brooch glinted balefully under the moonlight.

David repeated his salute, directing his address to the Lord of Earth. The councilman accepted our bows, agreed to protect us, agreed to watch over the magic we were about to undertake, agreed as watcher of Earth in Hecate’s Council.

The southern edge had another woman, Lady of Air, and the eastern edge was guarded by the Lord of Fire. He actually stepped back after agreeing to watch, and he swept his sword in a perfect arc, slicing open a doorway in the glowing silver ring. The hairs on my arms tingled as I stepped through, and I caught Neko swiping at his face, as if he were batting away the finest filaments of a spider’s web.

David stepped onto the concrete foundation, keeping his back rigid as a soldier’s when he turned to offer me a hand. Neko scrambled up under his own power, darting his eyes around the circle of witches, warders and watchers as we glided to the precise center of the foundation.

I swallowed nervously. This was it. Now or never. A dozen other clichés clattered inside my skull, like the slogans on overwrought inspirational posters.

There was a ripple across from me, and one of the witches stepped up to the foundation edge. She raised two hands to her cowl, paused for a single dramatic heartbeat before casting back her hood.

Teresa Alison Sidney. Coven Mother. The woman I most needed to please before the night was done.

“Greetings, Jane Madison.” Her voice was low and resonant, saturated with absolute confidence. She was a witch who would never need sodalite. “The Coven welcomes you this Samhain night.”

I bowed my head, trying to remember everything I’d read about ritual, about Samhain. All the appropriate witchy words had flown out of my head, though, and I had to settle for mundane ones. “Thank you.” I cleared my throat, and repeated, “Thank you, Coven Mother.”

“You see before you the centerstone of our safehold. You hold within you the power to set that stone. Do your working, Jane Madison, that all of us might see your worthiness to join our ranks, to be our sister, to enter into the heart of the Washington Coven.”

Taking one step back, she returned to the circle she shared with the other witches. She raised her right hand, as if she were going to bless me, and all of a sudden, I could hear a clock chiming the change of hours.

It was the clock in the Coven Mother’s living room, the clock that had initiated the other meetings I’d attended. I did not know what magic Teresa Alison Sidney harnessed to bring the sound to us in our moonlit field; I was not certain how my ears made out the complicated notes across the distance. But I heard the tolling of the hours as I had on that first night, the deep insistent bass of the chimes filling my bones, resonating every magical fiber in my body.

The witches around me felt it, too. I saw them stand straighter. They raised their hands to their own cowls. They lifted their faces to the moon.

And as the twelfth note echoed across the field, as Samhain dawned in the darkness, each woman in the circle cast back her hood.

Despite myself, I looked for Haylee. I was still unsettled by David’s admission, newly uncertain about the woman’s intentions. But she remained the closest thing to a friend that I had in the entire magical circle. Without conscious thought on my part, I rubbed the fingers of my left hand over her ring, tracing the unblemished silver as if it held all the answers, as if it could make everything right.

Maybe it was the ring that distracted me. Maybe it was a sudden gust of chilly October wind. Maybe it was the sound of the cotton bag of herbs, settling gently on the concrete at Neko’s feet, or the tiny clank of the silver flask of rainwater.

But it took me a moment to realize that not only had the witches bared their faces, but their warders had revealed themselves as well. In my peripheral vision, I could see each man standing behind his witch, each protector, stalwart and solid. There were two dozen witches. Two dozen warders.

But only one face penetrated the sudden fog before my eyes. Haylee’s warder. Standing tall, directly behind her. Left hand firm on the hilt of his magical sword.

Graeme Henderson.

I
took three steps toward him, before I realized I was moving. My face betrayed me, breaking into a smile by force of habit before my brain could freeze it, shut it down, force it into stony disbelief.

Absurdly, the first thing I could say was, “Fancy dress party.”

Graeme inclined his head, the moonlight turning his blond hair to silver. He grinned bashfully, like a child caught lying about playing in a backyard pond. “As fancy as they come.”

There was a rustle among the witches, a shift as every woman looked from me to Graeme to Haylee. And back to me. I felt the weight of all their eyes, the force of recognition as they realized some unscripted drama was unfolding, some unexpected spice for the trickster night of Samhain.

I clutched at David’s Torch through my sweater, willing myself to breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Think of something to say. Anything at all.

I could not look at Graeme. Could not face his perfect smile, could not listen to the purr of his seductive accent. How many Fridays had he lurked outside of Cake Walk before he had approached me? How long had he waited to acquire a gullible witch, along with a few squares of Almond Lust? How many times had he teased me, trying to schedule dates that he
knew
conflicted with my Coven activities? Had he ever read a single one of Shakespeare’s plays? Or had he merely used some warder’s power to memorize the texts, to somehow protect his witch, advance her interests by applying clever quotations?

I felt sick to my stomach.

Avoiding his pale, pale eyes, I wasted a dozen heartbeats staring at the silver ring on my hand. What had Haylee said the night before? “I’ve been thinking of you, ever since you first came to the Coven.”

She’d been thinking of me. Hating me. Manipulating me—from the very first moment we’d met. And she’d wanted me to know that tonight. Had given me the ring specifically so that her manipulation would unravel me now. She wanted to destroy me, ruin all that I had worked for. She wanted me to look on her gift and know that I had been betrayed, that I would never fit into her Coven, never belong. She wanted me to fail.

I tugged at the silver band, ignoring the pain as it caught against my knuckle. I ripped it off and tossed it toward her feet. It landed in the grass, and I hoped she would never find it, not even by the light of day. “You knew!” I said. “You’ve known all along!”

“What? That you were sleeping with my warder?” The anger in her voice sparked across the void between us.

Neko squeaked behind me. “Nate Poindexter is a warder?”

David glared him to silence before he said, “Haylee.”

I had thought that David was commanding in the past. He had frightened me when he appeared on my doorstep on the proverbial dark and stormy night. He had intimidated me when I reported to study sessions too hungover or too tired to work effectively. But if he had ever directed that precise and deadly tone against me, I would have fallen to my knees in terror.

Haylee blanched.

Haylee blanched, and Graeme swooped to her side, making a show of settling his left hand on the hilt of his sword. How had I never realized he was left-handed? How many other details had I missed in the weeks I’d spent with him?

David did not spare the other warder a glance. “Your fight is with me, Haylee. You had no reason to bring Jane into this.”

“I had every reason,” she countered, and the tremolo in her voice might have been caused by the icy wind. “She doesn’t belong here. She’s an upstart and a rebel and she has no business joining the Coven.”

At last, Teresa Alison Sidney broke out of her immobility. “Haylee, what have you done?”

My so-called friend dared to look away from David. “Teri! You know it isn’t right! You know that I was supposed to set the centerstone!”

“The strongest witch among the Coven sisters sets the centerstone,” Teresa Alison Sidney said. “That has been the way of all witches, since the first safehold was built.”

“You promised!” Haylee’s wail was like a knife scraping sideways on a pottery plate.

“The
Coven
chose,” Teresa Alison Sidney insisted. “You agreed, as one of the sisters. All of you chose to test Jane first. When, er,
if
she fails, you’ll be allowed to try. You, and anyone else who thinks she has the strength.”

Haylee spluttered, and I realized I should be angry as well, furious that the Coven Mother considered my efforts likely to fail.

But I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t feeling much of anything. I was still reeling at the extent of Haylee’s betrayal.

Without asking, I suddenly knew she was the one who had arranged Graeme’s limousine for our tour of the Washington monuments. She had phoned him that night at the Kennedy Center, after I had worked my weather spell. After he had spied on my spell-casting technique, I realized. What had she gleaned from his report on my ability to manipulate the Potomac?

She had ordered him away from me that night, kept us apart. Because she could. Because she was a witch, and she could command her warder. Command him far more completely than she had ever succeeded in commanding David.

Had she sent him to London, then, to keep him even farther away? Had Graeme even
traveled
to London? I’d only contacted him on his cell phone. Perhaps he’d been sitting in his Arlington living room the entire time, just pretending to be in England.

And about that Arlington living room, about the night that Haylee had driven me to Virginia?

I closed my eyes, and I could see the look of surprise on Graeme’s face when he’d opened his front door. I had thought that surprise was at seeing
me
on his doorstep, but I’d been mistaken. He had not expected Haylee to lead me to his lair.

And yet, he’d adapted almost immediately. They had played out their scene like flawless actors. They had even chatted about his decor—interior design that Haylee had almost certainly done. He’d said he was keeping that stained glass lamp for a friend. A friend. I had no doubt the lamp belonged to Haylee.

And I had fallen for it. Fallen for him. I had let them fool me completely, let Graeme drive me home, take me to bed. And
Haylee
had let Graeme take me to bed then, too, because she had a larger plan.

The jasper necklace.

Graeme must have planted the jasper necklace—and stolen my book on crystals as well. While I slept the dissipated sleep of the sexually exhausted, he had wrapped the beads with thyme and oregano, harnessed the ancient protections against witches. Haylee would know them, of course. She would have mastered herbal knowledge as she chaired the Coven’s Gardening Committee.

Graeme had pretended concern, but he’d left before David and Neko arrived—left at my own benighted urging, before they could recognize him. Graeme was the reason Neko had sensed the Coven around my book stand. Who knew what other arcane knowledge Graeme had uncovered in my basement? What other magical information he had taken from me, passed on to the true woman in his life.

To his witch. The witch that wanted to best me now, wanted me to fail at setting the centerstone so that she could show her own strength.

I clutched the sodalite around my neck, using its energy to focus the vision unfolding inside my mind. I stared into Graeme’s pale, pale eyes, and I felt a now-familiar shiver up and down my spine. A shiver I had first felt in Cake Walk, when Graeme recited his “nursery rhyme.” “Keep our secret, silent be. Speak to no man, not of me.” His warder’s spell. His harnessed magic that had prompted me to live by Melissa’s mundane Friendship Test, that had asserted itself with shivering force each time I even considered revealing my acquaintance with Graeme to any man. To David. To Neko.

Protected by my bespelled silence, Graeme could easily have left the jasper egg on my doorstep as well. He could have sent the threatening e-mails, taking all the time he needed to compose Still Lifes with Jasper and Herbs, to photograph them and insert them into his anonymous electronic threats.

All so that I’d be frightened. Intimidated. So that I’d back down and leave the centerstone to Haylee. Or, at the very least, bungle the job so badly that she could step in and save the day—using my own knowledge against me.

I wanted to blame them. I wanted to appeal to the Coven, to have my so-called sisters rise up in my defense. I wanted my warder and my familiar to stand beside me, before the other witches, the other warders, the watchers of Hecate’s Council, so that everyone would know that I had been wronged.

And yet a voice gnawed at the back of my brain. I had made this bed. I had accepted Melissa’s juvenile Friendship Test. I had kept my relationship with Graeme secret, held it too close, treasured it too highly. I had let Graeme steal me away, package me up for Haylee to destroy. I’d been suckered by a smooth accent and a brilliant line, never even dreaming of harnessing my magical abilities to protect myself.

Grasping my sodalite, I could picture Graeme extracting his business card from his money clip. The silver clip. The clip formed in the shape of Hecate’s Torch. Graeme had dared to reveal his alliance with the Coven on the first day we’d met, but I had been too ignorant to recognize the message.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to meet his eyes. “Acquisitions, Graeme?”

He shrugged. “It seemed appropriate at the time.”

A flood of shame and rage and embarrassment turned my mouth to copper. I finally dared to glance around the circle, to see how the Coven was reacting. Some of the women were still shocked to silence by everything that had been revealed—they darted furtive glances between Haylee and me, between Graeme and David. Some of the women were actually smiling, as if they had purchased tickets for a show and were enjoying the main event. And a few had moved to Haylee’s side, surrounding her with a coterie of female support.

The Popular Snobs banded together, of course. They supported one another against any threat to their social status, any possible upset of their social prestige.

The warders took their cue from their witches. Most managed a neutral watchful gaze without betraying any actual emotion. But a few cast admiring glances toward Graeme. I could imagine their locker-room chatter. “Way to go, man!” “You totally had her fooled!” “Score!”

And I realized I had lived this story before.

I’d been thirteen years old, attending my first boy-girl dance, celebrating some bar mitzvah at a downtown hotel. Brett Lindquist had asked me to dance. Brett Lindquist—the coolest boy in the entire school. I said yes before I could chicken out. Brett led me out on the dance floor and lurched from side to side, showing off the seventh-grade equivalent of killer moves.

And then I saw the other boys. One called out, “Way to go, Brett!” and another whistled. A third boy sauntered across the dance floor, not even pretending to boogie. He sidled up to Brett and said, “Okay, man. You win. We never thought you’d actually ask
that
one!” A flash of money changed hands, the boy made an oinking sound in my general direction, and Brett strutted off mid-lurch.

I’d run out of the ballroom and up the stairs, into a tiny phone booth. By the time Gran pulled into the circular driveway in front of the hotel, I was crying too hard to explain what had happened. I was only able to tell her about my humiliation after a restorative bowl of chocolate mint ice cream, complete with Hershey’s syrup, canned whipped cream, and—the grandmotherly coup de grâce—a maraschino cherry.

Gran had marched over to her calendar and torn off the page for the entire month of September. She’d crumpled her careful handwriting, the immaculate peacock-blue script: Jane’s First Dance Party. She’d tossed it in the garbage, and we’d never spoken about Brett Lindquist again.

Peacock-blue.

Like the peacock in the painting at the National Gallery of Art—the painting that Haylee had shown me, had explained to me. I had thought we were sharing something special there, building a bond. All the time, she’d been exploiting me, searching for signs of weakness, for ways to keep me from succeeding at my magical task. For ways of cementing her best-friend bonds to the Coven Mother.

And, as if I’d been struck by another wave, I realized that Haylee had charmed me as well. The tingle I had mistaken for excitement when she spoke to me at Coven meetings, the jangle in my fingers, my entire arm, when Haylee brushed against me as she worked her magic. Her Dark Magic. Her unsanctioned magic. Haylee had made me compliant. She had made me accept what she did. She had made me stupid, even as I had thought she was acting out of friendship, out of a desire to school a fellow witch.

But Haylee hadn’t known everything. Clara had taught me more. Clara had told me about peacocks in
Eastern
art. She’d said that peacocks could counteract venom. They could face down snakes. Traitors.

I closed my eyes and took a centering breath, clutching at my deep blue sodalite beads for confidence. I focused on the image of Gran and Clara sitting across the brunch table from me. Sharing dessert with me. Sharing stories of their lives, their love, their hopes for me. Even when the Coven had slighted them.

I owed it to my mother and grandmother to finish this matter with the Coven. I needed to set the centerstone. Set the centerstone, and complete my working, and not let Haylee or Graeme defeat me. All this flashed through me in under a minute.

I exhaled slowly, and when I opened my eyes, I was surprised to see my breath fog on the air. “All right, David,” I said, forcing my warder to look away from our betrayers. “Neko.” My familiar edged closer. “It’s time.”

The centerstone sat in the middle of the foundation. It was perfectly round, about two feet across, solid marble. Tiny crystals sparkled in the flawless white. Despite everything—my anger, my embarrassment, my growing physical exhaustion—I could see that the centerstone was beautiful. “‘By yond marble heaven,’” I whispered, quoting from
Othello,
“‘In the due reverence of a sacred vow, I here engage my words.’”