Magic and the Modern Girl (33 page)

For the first time, I thought about what that meant. I was using the only model for witchcraft that I’d seen. David himself had learned through conventional means; he taught me the only way he’d seen witches taught, by the Coven. By a group of women who struggled and snapped like a pack of feral dogs, fighting to be the strongest witch in the gathering.

Sure, I had risen naturally in their ranks because of my own late, lamented, ingrained power. But Gran would never have that raw strength. Clara neither.

“If I could just get the two of them to work together…” I fought for words, trying to picture what I was describing, how it would feel. “If they shared their energy with each other…If they used their familiars to focus their own force outward,
toward
each other, rather than inward…”

The more I rambled, the more sense it made. When Nuri helped Gran, the pair was able to do precisely as much as Gran could handle. My grandmother was the limit; she was the cap. When her fragile body reached its full potential, the partnership was done. The same with Clara, actually—her cap was higher, but the limitation was the same.

If they worked together, though, if they reflected power off of each other…They each excelled in different ways. They each had different strengths. If Clara harvested some of Gran’s success, grew it on her own, bolstered it through Majom…

Magic wasn’t science, I had told them. Our arcane powers weren’t subject to the laws of physics. Two plus two could be greater than four, if we could only figure out the way to shatter addition.

“Gran!” I called. “Clara!” I took the steps to the basement so rapidly that I skipped half of them, relying on the handrail to keep from falling.

They looked up at me from the cracked leather couch. From Neko’s cracked leather couch. I tried not to think of how often I had seen him perched on the sofa, eager to help with a magical working. Nuri and Majom huddled on the floor, clearly disconsolate.

“Let’s try something new!” I said.

“Jane, dear, are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Gran. I think that I have an answer, though. I think that I’ve finally figured out what we’ve been doing wrong.”

“Dear, I don’t know that we’re doing anything
wrong
. I just think that I’m not strong enough to help out as much as you’d like. Even the Coven wasn’t able to do anything with me last year.” My heart twisted to see her disappointment, the grim lines beside her mouth.

“Hush,” I said. “We’re not the Coven.” I looked at Clara, made sure that I had her attention. “Both of you, separately—I want you to try the light spell.”

Light. The easiest spell I knew. The one that had cost me the last of my power. The one that I had used to show Will who I was, what I was. The one I had used to convert myself from a witch into a woman.

Gran and Clara had worked it a dozen times over the past month, trying to harness its simple formula, trying to convert its basic order into something new. Now, they thinned their lips, nearly identical expressions reminding me that they, too, were tired, that they, too, wanted a way out of this mess.

They chanted together:

“Dark shies;

Light vies.

Clear eyes,

Fire rise.”

A tiny flame spread on Gran’s palm, ruby light so fragile that I might have imagined it. Nuri nestled closer to my grandmother, leaning her entire body against Gran’s frail form, and the light flickered brighter for a heartbeat, only to fade again.

Clara was only doing a little better. Her flame was emerald, filling her palm briefly when Majom leaned in to assist.

Reflexively, I reached out for their powers, tried to gather them close to myself. Nothing. I had no way to grasp what they had done.

“Okay,” I said. “Let it fade. Now, we’re going to do something different.” I gestured toward Clara’s familiar. “Go over there, Majom,” I said. “Sit beside Gran.” The boy looked at me quizzically, checking back with Clara to make sure that it was all right to move.

“Go ahead,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He cuddled next to Gran, who reflexively dropped a hand to his shock of white hair. I nodded and then said to Nuri, “And you, sit next to Clara.” The woman complied, although she twisted her head at an odd angle, as if she did not trust Gran to stay seated on the couch. Clara settled a commanding hand on Nuri’s shoulder, keeping a steady eye on me.

“All right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Now, Gran and Clara, put your free hands together. Cup them, there, between you.” They matched actions to my words. “We’re going to try it again. But this time, the familiars are going to reflect power
across
your grouping. You’re going to share. You’re going to build the flame together.”

I looked at David, silently asking him if he thought this would work. He tilted his head to one side, but he wasn’t predicting failure. Instead, he was admitting ignorance. He was saying that he had no idea what would come of my attempts.

I forced a shaky smile. They would try it. They would try it because they loved me. They would try it because they believed in me. They would try it because they wanted me to be happy, they wanted me to find my powers once again. My powers. And Neko.

“Together,” I said.

And they recited the simple spell once more.

“Dark shies;

Light vies.

Clear eyes,

Fire rise.”

Two lights blossomed on their palms, red and green, the visible symbol of their strength, however limited that might be. This time, though, the familiars shifted, vaguely uneasy with the new arrangement, utterly unaccustomed to the different balance I was forcing on them. I smiled encouragement, and Gran reflexively pulled Majom closer. Clara leaned against Nuri, as if she were sharing a secret with the woman.

And the light grew.

Crimson swirled into evergreen, like stars sprinkling across a miniature galaxy. The ball of combined fire pulsed like a double heartbeat, filling first Gran’s palm, then Clara’s. As the witches realized what they were doing, as they recognized their joined strength, the light grew brighter. The ball swelled, expanded, filling the space above their forearms. Hazel eyes met hazel eyes above the light, and something silent, something secret passed between the woman who had raised me and the woman who had given me birth.

Gran looked at me, astonishment stretching her mouth into an O. “It’s so bright!”

Clara laughed. My mother, the woman who lost herself in New Age frippery, distanced herself from true emotion, from all honest feelings, laughed.

Majom fed on their excitement, starting to bounce up and down on the couch. Nuri craned her neck, shrugging her shoulders in a way that released tension none of us had known she’d held.

David stepped forward, serious and dark against the brilliant play of light. “That’s enough,” he said. “Don’t tax yourself too much. Not this first time.”

Carefully, supporting each other, balancing their strength through each other’s familiars, Gran and Clara let the light die down. As the flames folded in on themselves, ruby chased emerald, swirling like a star fighting to be born.

Just before the light popped out of existence, I heard a chime, deep inside my own psyche. A solitary drop of crimson power slipped into the well of my abilities, followed almost immediately by a precious sliver of green. My strange commune of witches and familiars, of relatives and friends, was feeding my damaged power at last.

Reflexively, I reached out to share the good news with Neko, only to be reminded brutally of his absence. Watching my mother and grandmother, watching their familiars, watching my warder all celebrating the new vision of witchcraft that we had used, that we had
created
, I felt nothing but the chill of loss.

We still needed to find Ariel. We still needed to fight to get Neko back.

17

W
e spent two weeks looking for Neko. Two weeks of combing the city, tracking down reports—no matter how vague—of the Artistic Avenger. Two weeks of driving by landmarks, looking for the next public display of Ariel’s fanaticism.

David even took it upon himself to check with the Washington Coven. I volunteered to go with him, to see if I could extract any information from that bitchy sisterhood, but he shook his head ruefully, saying that he’d probably get further without my tagging along. Given the way I’d thrown their invitation back in their collective face the year before, he was probably right.

The loss of Neko cut deep; I ached every time I thought of him stranded, alone, tied to whatever calculating magic Ariel had accumulated since I’d last seen her. I forced myself to call Jacques every morning, to let him know that nothing had changed, that we were still looking, still trying, still hoping.

I came to hate my anima.

Nearly every night, I worked with Gran and Clara, attempting to bolster my own powers. Our new technique, the communal sharing of powers, wasn’t perfect. Gran needed to adjust to Majom’s childishness, to his inability to sit still and his constant exploration of anything new around him. Clara needed to accept Nuri’s oddness, her awkwardness as she provided her familiar services. Gran tired quickly, requiring everyone to shift the way they shared energies, the way they exchanged information.

As I watched the four of them learn to work together, though, I was proud. Every night, I saw my little community grow stronger, learn to trust each other more on the magical frontier. Each successful working dripped additional power into my depleted well.

One night, a week after Gran and Clara first worked the light spell together, I dared to open up one of my books—the old classic,
On Awakyning and Bynding a Familiarus.
I selected it in a fit of hopeless nostalgia, remembering how I had read my first spell from its pages, awakening Neko to my service.

Sure enough, the parchment stayed stable. No words ran off the page. No ink faded as my eyes pored over the words. I read until after midnight, hoping to find something I could use, something that would draw Neko back to me. For the first time since Ariel had fled, I was able to use my collection, to research everything I could find about animas.

But there was nothing.

From that night onward, though, I tried to find Neko with the limited powers I had regained. I would touch the link between us, send a thought down the well-worn channel that had bound us together for so many months. Each night, after Gran and Clara left, taking their familiars with them, I would light a taper and settle down on the cracked leather couch. I stared into the flame, trying to remember how I had felt when Neko was beside me every day.

Annoyed.

Okay, I tried not to remember that. I tried to remember how he had bolstered my powers, how he had bettered my witchcraft.

Occasionally, I’d get a tantalizing hint of him. I’d see him—or something that my astral senses insisted
could
be him—huddling in an enclosed space. Try as I might, I couldn’t break through, though, couldn’t get to the core of my vision.

I wondered if Neko even knew where he was, if he could tell me, if I ever did manage to reach him directly. He was accustomed to roaming so freely; I had controlled him the way that I would have wanted to be controlled if our relationship had been reversed.

Ariel wasn’t likely to be such a fan of the Golden Rule. Her binding Neko would surely have brought him under new restraints. She could keep him in a literal closet. She could even return him to his statue form when she was not actively working magic. She could do whatever she saw fit to do. She was his witch.

And I was
her
witch. The irony did not escape me. I was supposed to be able to manage her, restrict her, use her to my own best advantage.

And I would, if I could only find her again.

Of course, I couldn’t work on witchcraft every waking moment. Will came by the cottage every night, even though he was busy with his own projects, his architectural plans. Sometimes we were too exhausted to talk; we settled for spooning underneath the comforter in my bedroom, falling asleep in companionable silence. We shared quick breakfasts, snatches of daytime conversation over the phone. I got used to e-mailing him three or four times a day. The little time we had together was easy, comfortable.

One night, when Gran had declared herself too tired to attempt any magical workings at all, Will and I went on a double date with Melissa and Rob. We ended up at a wood oven pizzeria, gorging on individual pies. Melissa and I gave Rob an inordinately hard time for putting pineapple on his pizza. Will and I traded slices—one of my pepperoni and goat cheese for one of his black olive and pesto.

Melissa and I went to the bathroom together, and I started crying while I was making lipstick fish mouths at myself in the mirror.

“What’s wrong?” She ran a paper towel under the faucet and passed it to me. I tried to dab underneath my eyes.

“It’s perfect.”

“And you always cry when things are perfect.”

I sniffed inelegantly—snorted actually—grateful that Will was nowhere close enough to hear. “I always thought that we’d do this. That we’d get together with our boyfriends. That we’d just have fun.”

“And?”

“And I never realized how much I would love it.”

“I don’t understand you at all, Jane Madison.”

“I should be working with Gran and Clara. I should be trying to find Neko and Ariel. Instead, I’m here with you and the guys.”

There. I’d said it out loud.

“You’re doing all that you can do.” I started to protest, and she shook her head. “Jane, listen to me. You’re not a bad person, if you decide to walk away from the witchcraft. You’re allowed to give it back. It’s not like someone has a gun to your head.”

“Ariel—”

“You’ll find her. I know you will. And you’ll restore Neko. And then you’ll make the biggest decision of your life. But I’ll be there for you, no matter what you do decide.”

I managed a wavery smile. “Even if we never double date again?”