Magic and the Modern Girl (39 page)

I longed to ask her what she had done. Half a dozen times, I reached out to her, gathered my thoughts to question her, to learn. But then I would remember that my spell had worked, that my anima had been reduced to rune dust on the White House lawn.

Not that anyone would ever find evidence of her there.

The Washington Post
was screaming headlines about the prankster who had broken into the White House grounds for Halloween. Details weren’t being released; there was a lot of talk about mission secrecy and national security. Rumors were already flying that the entire thing had been a training exercise, that the jets had been scrambled to test their ability to respond in a real emergency.

Of course, Ariel’s handiwork remained behind—the Empower The Arts slogan was etched deep in the grass (at least until an official White House gardener could tear up the lawn and replace the damaged part with sod.) The Artistic Avenger was front page and center again; experts were calling her a terrorist, comparing her to PETA, to the Environmental Liberation Front, to worse.

In other words, official Washington was stumbling on, as if nothing much had happened.

By the time I’d gathered all the news, it was well past noon. I’d stumbled back to my bedroom, oddly hungover from the night before. I’d taken my time hanging up my bright orange dress. It seemed wasteful to leave it bunched on the floor, even if I’d never wear it again. I hung it next to David’s jacket in my closet, taking time to twitch the skirt into place.

I stood beneath a stinging shower, chasing away a myriad of aches and pains that had blossomed while I slept. I scrubbed at my feet, making sure that no remnant of presidential earth remained between my toes.

I knew that I should eat. I knew that I should complete the process of grounding myself, of returning my awareness to the mundane plane. The thought of food, though, turned my belly.

I needed to talk to Will.

Every time I pictured myself standing on the White House lawn, every time I remembered David stepping toward me, gaze bound to mine, arms lifting from his sides, every time I replayed everything that had happened the night before, I knew that I needed to talk to Will.

I’d reverted to my old self, phoning him at his office when I knew he would be home. I’d left him a message, certain that he checked his voice mail several times a day. I’d asked him to come by in the evening. After dinner. So that we could talk.

I tried not to imagine the unease I knew those words would bring.

I spent the rest of the day in the basement. All of my books were normal; I could read them without destroying their pages. My crystals hummed with energy, drawing me into an hour of dazed contemplation as I basked in their vibrating concert. Alas, the runes remained a lost cause; I’d need to procure new ones. I made a little ceremony out of dumping the dust from the ruined tiles, scattering them around the dead flower beds outside my front door.

At eight o’clock, I put the kettle on, telling myself that I’d have a cup of tea, even if I couldn’t eat. I was waiting for the water to boil, sitting at the table, fiddling with matchbooks and candles, when there was finally a knock at the door.

Will had his own key, but he’d chosen not to use it.

“Hey there,” he said, ducking past me to enter the living room. The moonlight was bright behind him—only my magic told me that we were actually one day past full.

“I was just making a cup of tea,” I said. “Want one?”

“Sure.”

I led the way into the kitchen, painfully aware that I hadn’t waited for him to kiss me. I stood in front of my cupboard as if it held all the secrets of the universe. “Is mint okay?”

“Yeah.”

There were things I was supposed to say. I was supposed to ask him how his day had been. I was supposed to tell him what I’d done with mine. I was supposed to chat, lightly, easily, the way we’d talked for months.

I couldn’t think of a single complete sentence.

I didn’t bother with a teapot; I just poured water directly into our mugs, dropping in separate, lonely tea bags. Will was sitting at the table when I turned around. Silent. Waiting.

He picked up his mug obediently, raised it to his lips. The steam immediately fogged his glasses, and he sat back as if he’d been slapped. “I’m sorry!” I said, jumping up for a hand towel.

He waved me off, pushing away the traitorous mug of tea. He wiped his lenses clean with a handkerchief, then settled them back on his face, crooked as always. “I’m not going to like this conversation very much, am I?”

“Will…” I’d had all afternoon to think, and I still didn’t know what to say.

“Something happened last night, didn’t it? Something magic?”

I nodded. He deserved more than that, though. He deserved the truth.

“I’ve got my power back,” I said. “All of it. And then some.”

Swallowing hard, he said, “Tell me what happened.”

And so I did. At least, I tried to. I told him about David spiriting us away. I told him about appearing on the White House lawn. I told him about fighting with Ariel, about working with Gran and Clara, about finding a new balance for power, a new way of being in the magical world.

I could tell that he didn’t really get it. He didn’t really understand. Each individual word made sense, but he would never grasp the wonder in my voice, never understand my longing, my aching amazement as I spoke of the power that had flowed through me.

He tried. He asked questions. He expressed concern about Gran, about Clara. He said that he was happy that Neko was back, that my familiar was safe and sound and appeared not to have suffered any lasting harm.

“And?” he said when I was finished.

“And what?”

“And what are you not telling me?”

I shrugged. There wasn’t any easy way. There weren’t any easy words. “It’s not enough for me to tell you about all this after it happens. I need someone who can share it with me. Be there with me.”

“Be with you in the middle of the White House lawn?” he said wryly.

I shook my head, recognizing the question for what it was, a delicate deflection of pain. “I’m sorry, Will. I need more. I need someone who can be there in the magic, who can work with me, weaving power with power.”

“I love you, Jane!” That was the first time he’d said the words. They lay in the room between us, stark. Raw. Edges all the sharper because they were true.

“And I love you, too,” I said. That was true, as well. “But, Will, I can’t share my magic with you. Having it separate, having it apart, makes me feel like I’m lying. Like I’m cheating.”

“Are you?” I couldn’t blame him for the anger inside his question. I couldn’t be surprised when he asked what I’d been bracing for all along. “Have you slept with David since we met?”

I closed my eyes, then forced myself to open them, to meet his challenge. “No. Not since we met.”

He heard the full accounting. He heard the truth. He heard what I didn’t tell him, what I hadn’t thought he needed to know.

He stared at me, and I watched the rigid anger slowly crumble in his jaw. I watched his shoulders slump. I watched him recognize reality. Absorb it. Accept it. He even managed a cracked half laugh. “It’s really
not
me. It’s you.”

My heart swelled with love for him. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. And then I reached across the table with both hands. I touched his eyeglass frames, adjusted them to sit evenly on his face. “I’m really, truly sorry.”

He pulled away, as I had known he would. He pushed his chair back from the table. He jumped to his feet, shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

“Call me,” I said.

“Yeah, I will.”

“I mean it,” I said. “When you’re ready. When you want to talk.”

“Right.”

I didn’t follow him to the door. It would have felt too much as if I was chasing him out of my cottage, out of my life. He didn’t slam the door. He shut it gently, carefully. I waited until I was certain that he wasn’t coming back and then I stalked into the living room. I put my back against the oaken door and slid down slowly, letting it catch me as I started to cry.

It took a long time to get all of the tears out. These weren’t mojito therapy tears that could be laughed away with a best friend. These weren’t child tears that could be wiped dry by a caring mother, a dedicated grandmother.

These were tears of frustration, of anger, of failure. I hadn’t lied to Will. I did love him. I wanted to be with him. I wanted to bring him into my crazy, magic, mixed-up life.

But I couldn’t. And I wanted something else, something more, something I still wasn’t certain I could ever really have.

I stood up. I made myself walk into my bathroom. I washed my face, combed my hair. I stopped in my bedroom and collected David’s jacket. I snagged my key chain from the bowl beside the phone.

There was no need to tell Gran that I was taking her Lincoln. If she needed to drive anywhere, she could always rely on her husband.

As soon as I left the city behind, the night time roads were dark. The interstate had overhead lights, but the county roads were lit only by moonlight. Only by moonlight and the Lincoln’s high beams as I sped toward the Pennsylvania border.

This time, I found the final turnoff on the first try. A little bit of magic, a little bit of memory—the side road glinted in the night like a beacon. The grass was still high, waving in a midnight breeze.

The house sat quietly in its clearing. No lights were on. The porch looked deserted, its glider abandoned. I listened to the Lincoln’s engine, ticking its way to coolness. I forced myself to open my door, to climb out of the car.

I hugged David’s jacket to me as I took a deep breath of the cold country air. The smell of wood smoke was heavy; I could see a faint stream curling from the chimney. I smiled, wondering how much exertion had gone into the split wood that fed the fire.

A shadow whispered toward me from the porch. I’d been wrong. The glider had not been abandoned. It had held Spot, the black lab whose sleek body almost disappeared in the night. The dog shoved his head against my arm, levering his nose against my side until I reached down to pet him. His tail moved like a scythe, and a faint whine rose in the back of his throat. I said, “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

My voice was a lot shakier than I expected it to be.

The dog led me around the back of the house, to the kitchen door. He butted his head against my arm again, clearly telling me to knock. I wanted to resist. I wanted to run back to Gran’s car. I wanted to flee back to the known and the safe, to my cottage, to the Peabridge, to everything I understood.

I raised my hand and knocked.

David was waiting for me.

Of course, he was waiting for me. I’d driven a full-sized automobile down his driveway, headlights blazing. I’d crunched on the walkway from the front of the house to the back.

I was his witch.

“Hello,” he said, and the greeting was so ordinary, so common, it stole my breath away.

“Hello,” I said. I held out his jacket. “I wanted to bring this back to you.”

He took it and stepped aside so that I could move into the kitchen. The only lights gleamed from under the cabinets; the entire room looked as if it had been sleeping peacefully until I’d arrived. Two goblets glinted on the center island, flanking a tall green bottle. David had already poured. He passed one of the glasses to me, asking unnecessarily, “Wine?”

I nodded. The crimson liquid smelled spicy, rich.

Spot whined, and David pointed toward the dog-bed in the corner of the room. He backed up the gesture with an authoritative flash of his hand, a silent command. The dog’s nails clicked on the tile floor as he complied, and the lab sighed as if he’d completed one of Hercules’s labors when he sank onto the plaid padding.

I followed David into the picture-perfect living room. He draped his jacket over the back of one chair. I forced myself to sit on the couch and was relieved—terrified—when he sat beside me. I swallowed wine noisily. Flames crackled in the fireplace in front of us.

He watched me over the rim of his own goblet, matched my motion as I set my glass on the wooden coffee table in front of us. I looked around the room, studying its perfect precision, its spartan, designer-certified shelves. “There’s a problem,” I said.

“Yes?” I could smell his shampoo on his hair. I remembered the sight of him, still wet from his shower, wrapped in the gray towel that had revealed far more than it had hidden.

I forced myself to take a steadying breath. “I don’t think there’s enough space on the shelves.”

He looked over his shoulder, studying the shelves in question. When he turned back to me, he settled closer. I wanted to push away, to restore the distance between us, but there was nowhere else to go. I felt like I had risked everything on that single sentence; I had dealt every card in my deck, and I had nothing left to play. I couldn’t breathe while I waited for him to reply.

“Enough space?” he asked.

“For all the books in my basement.” My answer quivered.

“And why would we need to fit all of your books on these shelves?” He sounded amused. Tolerant. Patient.

I forced myself to deliver my answer, forced my words past the distraction of his body so close to mine. “I’ll have to take them with me when I move out of the cottage. When Kit takes my job. She’ll need the place to live, since I’m sure Evelyn won’t be any more generous with her salary than she was with mine.”

“You can’t move out here.” My heart stuttered. David went on. “What about your grandmother? She needs you nearby.”

That answer was easy. “She’s got Uncle George. Besides, Nuri can summon us if anything happens.”

“And Clara?” There was a clear smile behind his words now.

“She’s going back to Sedona. Anyway, I think she and I just might get along better with some space between us. A lot of space.”

“And Melissa?” He shrugged like he was trying to solve one of the central problems of the universe. “It’ll be a lot harder to have mojito therapy all the way out here.”

I thought of my best friend, sweetheart roses clutched to her chest. “Somehow, I think mojito therapy is going to be a lot rarer from here on out.”