The cat, Gabriel, was her aunt's familiar—an embodied spirit in animal form whose duty was to serve, attend, and in some cases, guard a witch. She glanced at her own familiar, Beelzebub, an ermine weasel whose coat was currently winter white except for wee spots of black on his tail and paws. The snowy fur covered a massive potbelly that made him look more like a plump rabbit than a sleek, almost feline weasel. He was at that moment,
as at most moments, sound asleep.
She sighed. Beezle was the only animal who was willing to be her familiar.
Cats like Gabriel were proud, arrogant animals; they absolutely refused to be associated with a witch who couldn't control her magic. Owls were too wise to ally themselves with someone as inept as Joy. And toads, well, they took one look at her, croaked, and hopped away.
Plump old Beezle wheezed in his sleep. Joy watched his black-tipped paws twitch and reminded herself that at least she had a familiar, even if he was only a weasel. As if sensing her thoughts, he cracked open one lazy brown eye and peered at her as if calmly waiting for the next disaster. She reached out to scratch his plush belly and promptly knocked over a pot of cold rose hip tea.
Gabriel hissed and sprang out of the path of the spilled tea. Beezle didn't move that fast. Beezle seldom moved at all. The tea pooled like the tide around him. He blinked twice, looked at the tea seeping onto his white fur, and gave her a look not unlike the MacLean's before he shook himself, sending a sprinkling of tea in every direction. He waddled over to a dry spot and plopped back down with a soft thud, then rolled over, paws in the air, plump white and pink belly up, and stared at the ceiling. Joy wondered if animals could count. Beezle opened his mouth and let out a loud wheeze, then a snore.
Count in their sleep, she amended, drumming her fingers on the table.
"Whatever am I to do with you?" the MacLean finally spoke, having taken enough time to count to a hundred twice. Her aunt's stance was stern, but her voice held the patience that arose from what was almost a mother's love.
That love made the situation even worse for Joy. She truly wanted to hone her magic skills for her patient aunt as well as for her own pride's sake, and she was miserable because she couldn't get it right. She absently drew one finger through the dust on the table, then looked at her aunt and mentor. "Can one word truly make such a difference?"
"Every single word is of the utmost importance. An incantation must be exact. Part of the power comes from the voice." The MacLean took a deep breath and clasped her hands behind her. "The rest takes practice. Concentration!" She paced around the circular room, her strong voice echoing off the stone walls like bagpipes in the
Highlands
. With the suddenness of a wink, she stopped and looked down at Joy. "Now pay attention. Watch me."
Standing to Joy's left, she raised her elegant hands high in the air, allowing the fine gold threads in her embroidered silk robe to catch the candlelight and glimmer like a twinkling of fairy dust. Joy caught her breath. Standing as she was, tall and golden with the
sky as a backdrop through the tower window, her aunt looked like a goddess. Her long straight hair, which hung in a gleaming satin drape past her hips to the backs of her knees, was the color of hammered gold. Her skin was as flawless as pure cream and appeared ageless in the muted glow of the candlelight. The MacLean's robe was white—not the stark white of cotton or the ivory white of lamb's wool but the same shimmering white that the stars shone, that lightning sparked, that diamonds glittered and the sun glowed.
A breath of cold Scottish wind whistled through the tower room, making the candle flames flicker. The sharp smell of hot tallow mingled with the scent of
rain and the brine of the roiling seas that rode the whisper of wind through the room. Shadows danced a jagged jig up the granite walls, and the sound of waves crashing against the sharp coastal rocks below echoed upward, blending with the mournful call of gulls that roosted in the tower eaves. Then, with the suddenness of a lightning flash, all was still . . . silent.
The MacLean's deep voice called out, "Come!"
Magic quaked through the air—a live, animated thing, powerful, controlled, swarming toward the wall where heavy old leather-bound books stood on an oaken shelf. A huge brown book, cracked and tattered, slowly, inch by smooth inch, slid off the shelf, turned in midair, then floated to the MacLean. It hovered near her, waiting, until she slowly lowered one arm. The book followed her movement, lighting on the table as if it were a feather instead of a three-thousand-page volume.
Joy plopped her chin into her hand and sighed. "You make it look so easy."
"'Tis easy. One must simply concentrate." Her aunt replaced the book on its shelf and turned to Joy. "Now you try it."
With pure Scots stubbornness in her dark green eyes, Joy took a deep breath, closed those eyes, and with all the drama a twenty-one-year-old witch could muster, she flung her hands up into the air. Her bracelets flew across the tower room like soaring gulls. At the first clatter of metal hitting stone, she winced, then eased open one green eye.
"Forget the bracelets! Concentrate . . . concentrate."
She tried to concentrate, but nothing happened. She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter.
"Picture the book moving, Joyous. Use your mind's eye."
She remembered the way her aunt had made the magic only minutes before. She threw her shoulders back and raised her determined chin, sending a thick cascade of wild and wavy mink-brown hair tumbling down to sway near the backs of her thighs. She opened her eyes and reached up higher. Taking one deep, cleansing breath for luck, she commanded, "Come!"
The book quivered, moved about two inches, then stopped.
"Concentrate!"
"Come!" Joy spread her fingers wide, bit her lip, and slowly pulled her hands back toward her, mentally picturing the book drifting toward her, then hovering in the air.
The book slid forward on the shelf, just reaching the edge.
"Come!" Joy shouted in a voice as deep as
Fingal's Cave
. She opened her eyes, determined to move that book, then snapped her fingers for good measure.
Luckily she saw it coming and ducked. "Oh, my goodness!"
The book flew past her as if carried on a whirlwind; then the next book and the next book, then another and another, sucked from the shelf with the pulling strength of the sea tide. With a horrendous crack the bookshelf
ripped from the stone walls. It flew around the room, spinning and arcing, turning and turning, faster and faster. A dented tin pail spun off to Joy's left, then clanged against the floor. A broom sped to the right; three stools twirled like dancers, then tumbled end over end to bang against a pitcher, shattering it into a thousand pieces.
Furniture crashed against the walls, splintering, cracking. Candles levitated up . . . up . . . up . . . The wind howled through the room, huffing and puffing and whirling. Instinctively Joy wrapped her arms around her head and hunched over. The teapot just missed her. From somewhere she heard a cat shriek, the patter of paws running. A coal bucket sent lumps of black coal flying through the room like rocks at a stoning. Then she heard a regal-sounding grunt—the MacLean.
"Oh, rats!" Joy clamped her hand over her mouth as a hundred gray rats scurried into the tower room, slithering down the walls, leaping from broken furniture, running amok.
Slowly the wind died down, growing softer until it was but a whisper, and after a long moment the air was still. The only sound in the room was that of the rats' scurrying feet.
Joy heard a choked cough behind her. She straightened up and turned around.
Waving away the coal dust, a black-faced MacLean extricated herself from beneath what had once been a two-hundred-year-old throne chair. She cast a malevolent look at the rats running willy-nilly through the disaster-struck room and snapped her elegant black-smudged fingers, sending up a small cloud of coal dust. The rats disappeared.
The once-white Gabriel, outnumbered by the rats, let loose another screech and scurried in a black ball across the room and under the MacLean's filthy gown where the hemline quivered for a long moment and a little dusting of soot sprinkled onto the wood-plank floor. The only sound in the room was Beezle's wheezing. Sprawled on his back, he lay on the table, paws up, belly slowly rising with each wheeze.
He'd slept through the whole thing.
One tense but despairing stare from her aunt and Joy felt the weight of the world.
"I'm sorry," She whispered, turning her guilty green eyes toward her aunt.
"I cannot let you loose on the world, Joyous. I cannot." The MacLean dusted off her hands and surveyed the destruction. "I cannot in good conscience let you live in
England
all alone for two years."
Her aunt looked thoughtful for a brief moment while she tapped a coal-blackened finger against her lips.
"Of course, letting you live there might be just what the English deserve after
Culloden Moor
. . . ”
She glanced around the cluttered room with a scowl of disgust, then shook her head. "No, no. The English are already burdened by a lunatic king and a regent who would rather play than rule."
"But—"
"No." The MacLean raised her hand to silence Joy. "I know you mean well, but all the good intentions in the world cannot control . . . this." She waved a hand at the mess in the room, shook her head, and went on, "You need protection, my dear. Someone to watch over you."
With that she raised her sooty hands in the air, snapped her fingers, and
zap!
the room was back in perfect order— chairs upright and in position, stools and table and teapot all in their proper places; the pitcher in one piece, the broom and pail standing against the north wall, and all of the books lined up on the shelves like stiff English soldiers. The MacLean, suddenly spotless, was once again a vision of pure white and glimmering gold perfection.
Joy knew what her aunt was really saying: that Joyous Fiona MacQuarrie needed someone around to clean up after her, someone to undo the havoc her cockeyed magic wreaked. But Joy had lived with her aunt for fifteen years, and now she wanted a chance to live alone, to answer to no one but herself.
When she was alone, maybe she could learn to control her powers. Maybe she wouldn't feel so tense and nervous because there'd be no one to let down but herself. She was deeply hurt by her uncanny ability to always disappoint the people she most wanted to please. She stood there, defeated, guilty, unhappy, feeling despair spread through her. She hurt; she had failed, and now none of her hopes would be fulfilled.
With her aunt leaving for a council position in
North America
, Joy was to be alone at last, a prospect she had anticipated eagerly.
Duart
Castle
had been leased to a group of
Glasgow
doctors who planned to use it to house the battered and mind-shattered soldiers returning from war with Napoleon's
France
.
Joy was to go to her maternal grandmother's cottage in
Surrey
and live in relative obscurity for two years. She was sure she could learn her skills by then. She was positive. She just needed to convince the MacLean. Besides, her aunt would be gone and never know if she made a mistake or two. And there was one other argument in her favor "If protection is what I need, how about a familiar?"
A loud feline scream cut through the air. Gabriel whipped out from under the MacLean's hem and scurried underneath a chest. He cowered in the dark, a pair of darting, wary blue eyes the only clue to his hiding place.