Single Witch's Survival Guide (11 page)

David’s lips curled into a wry smile. “Raven’s a piece of work, isn’t she?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” I laughed. “Say what you’re really thinking. She’s a scheming, manipulative—

But I cut off the rest of my thought. David would never say those words out loud, not about a witch. Not so long as he was still a warder sworn to Hecate’s Court.

“Hey,” I said, tightening my arms to bring him closer. “Are we okay?”

“Of course,” he answered. “Why wouldn’t we be? I can probably get more work done downstairs, anyway.”

He set about proving the fact that we were fine with a most reassuring kiss. I laughed in the back of my throat, and my hands slipped beneath his shirt. He let me feel the planes of his chest, but he stopped me when I reached for the buckle on his belt. With a knowing smile, I reached behind me, and closed the office door to guarantee our privacy.

CHAPTER 7

WITH ONE THING and another (ahem), I didn’t get to break the good news to Neko until the following morning. Everyone was gathered in the kitchen—my students, their warders, and their familiars. David had just poured himself a bracing cup of coffee when Neko sauntered in.

“Just the man I was looking for!” I said, as he crossed to the refrigerator.

Neko froze, his fingers clutching tight around a quart of cream. “I have receipts for everything. I swear!”

I’m sure he did. Not that my sobbing bank account would care. “That’s not what I was worried about. I’ve been thinking. It makes more sense for Raven and Emma to stay in the house than out in the garage apartment. We’re going to be working pretty intensely over the next four months, and we’ll make more headway if we’re all under one roof.”

If David hadn’t made a miracle catch, there would have been cream all over the kitchen floor. As it was, Neko nearly crushed me with his ecstatic embrace. “Really? I mean… You think…” He crushed me tighter. “You don’t know… It’s just… Jacques and I…” I was really starting to have trouble breathing. “Thank you,” he said.

And he didn’t even sniff at my rumpled T-shirt, my missing makeup, or my haphazard French braid.

That utter lack of snark made me realize how upset poor Neko had truly been. He didn’t even protest when I announced that he was responsible for managing the move of David’s office to the basement. He just nodded a dozen times and started issuing orders to Kopek and Hani, insisting that the team of familiars could get everything taken care of by the end of the day. It took him a full fifteen minutes before he asked, “What about the shopping? Do I have to take back everything I bought yesterday?”

I shook my head. “We’ll find a use for all of it. I’m sure.”

He yelped with glee.

In light of the major residential shift, I postponed classes until the following morning. That turned out to be a wise decision. It took until after noon for the familiars to carry all of David’s boxes to the basement. The warders pitched in during the afternoon. In short order, the new guest room was graced with a swiftly purchased bed, a chest of drawers salvaged from the barn, and an armoire from the flea market halfway down the road to Parkersville.

Late that afternoon, Emma stopped me in the hall. “Have you any flannels?”

Flannels. Um, those were washcloths, right? “Over there,” I said with a one-shouldered gesture.

“Ah! The airing cupboard.”

No, I wanted to say. The linen closet. That’s what any red-blooded American witch would have called it. Instead I asked, “How long did you live in England?”

“
Live
there?” She laughed. “Cheeky monkey! I never lived in England! I spent a fortnight, though, seven years ago. I was on a coach tour.”

She’d spent two lousy weeks on a bus, and now she sounded like an extra for Masterpiece Theater? I almost rolled my eyes at the absurdity. In fact, I might have said something I would truly regret, but I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Raven was recording our conversation with her camera.

“School meeting,” I said, before I’d even really decided to act. “In the kitchen. Now.”

As soon as Raven and Emma were sitting at the table, faces tight with identical wary expressions, I said, “The night you arrived, you asked about my policy on modern communication, and I never got a chance to answer. Here’s the policy: All photography, still or motion picture, is forbidden.”

Raven clutched at her chest as if I’d just delivered a direct shot to her heart. “You can’t do that!”

“I just did.” Even as I issued my edict, though, I thought about how Gran had handled similar life-or-death matters when I was a teenager. More often than I’d care to admit, I’d had the same rebellious look I now saw on Raven’s face. And once Gran had thought things through, she’d usually relented. Within reason.

I took a deep breath and held it for a count of five. I was the magistrix here. I was the one in control. I could afford to be a little generous. “Okay,” I said. “You can use your camera in your own room. You can film things outside the Academy—personal walks through the woods, on the streets in Parkersville. But don’t even think about bringing the camera to our workings. No disrupting magic classes with technology. And you aren’t allowed to film David, Neko, or me any time.”

Raven’s face was as easily read as
A Girl’s First Grimoire.
Her first reaction was anger, but she swallowed that in a few seconds. Her second thought was snide, but she set that aside as well. Her third response was fear, obvious terror at interacting with the world without the mediation of a camera lens. And then she settled on acceptance. Nodding slowly, she made a great show of turning off her phone before she slipped it into her hip pocket.

All the while, Emma watched with intense interest. Her reaction made me suspect that no one had ever successfully bridled Raven before. No one—at least in a witchy context—had ever told her what was what.

“Thank you,” I said, trying to sound as if I’d known all along that Raven would comply. “Now, let’s finish getting both of you settled upstairs. The Jane Madison Academy begins in earnest first thing tomorrow morning.”

* * *

On Tuesday morning, breakfast was served at 7:30. Everyone was fully caffeinated and in the living room by eight. Familiars were present and accounted for. I gave warders the day off, inviting them to spend their time on other activities supporting the magicarium.

David took that as his cue, and he announced a major project down at the barn. Caleb and Tony were drafted for some renovation work, something manly and mysterious that involved multiple trips into town to retrieve lumber and drywall, carpet and paint.

My students and I settled down to the basics of witchcraft. We spent all day Tuesday focusing on lighting candles. I hadn’t purposely lapsed into the traditional Rota for educating witches. I just needed to make sure that my students were confident when it came to the basics. We were building a foundation for all our future work together, and I had to know they were absolutely, perfectly, one hundred percent rock solid.

At least, that was the justification I built for myself.

This was not the magicarium I had envisioned. From the first moment I’d thought of running a school for witches, I’d assumed I would do things
my
way. I’d take chances. I’d push boundaries.

But the Rota was tried and true. With the Rota, I should be able to guarantee
some
Major Working. After that, I’d be out from under the Court’s thumb, and I could transform the Madison Academy back into the magicarium of my dreams.

So, Tuesday was candles. Wednesday, we trained with our rowan wands, memorizing the feel of every whorl. When I woke up Thursday morning, I pictured myself spending the rest of the day perched on the edge of the living room couch, monitoring my students’ incremental discoveries about the wonders of an iron cauldron.

I just couldn’t do it.

Instead, I made sure our cereal bowls were stacked in the sink as the tall case clock chimed eight. Kopek, Hani, and Neko waited for us witches on the porch. I called for Spot, and the Lab led the way into the woods. My students were cheered to be free of the house, and we all laughed as we sauntered along the trail. I remembered all the turns correctly, and we arrived at a clover meadow without incident.

The sky was burnished steel overhead. Neko and I made short work of spreading out an old quilt, placing the comforter at the edge of the trees so we could take advantage of the shade, even as we worked with the green, growing things that flourished in the clearing. Spot sniffed all four corners, and then he settled in the precise center of the fabric, completing three turns to trample the imaginary grasses of his canine memory.

Emma sank cross-legged on the edge of the blanket. Her assumed British identity mercifully subsumed in silence, she studied her surroundings in detail. I suspected she was stabilizing her power, drawing on Kopek. In any case, her familiar sat close by; his knee just touched hers.

Perfect. Maybe this would work even better than I’d hoped.

But no. Raven was putting on her usual show. Sprawled across a corner of the blanket, she wore her typical black attire. Today’s outfit included a gauzy top knotted high against her rib-cage, providing a perfect frame for the sweetheart bra beneath. Her shorts were even more microscopic than normal. Shifting position, she draped one leg across Hani’s still form. He lay on his belly and rested his chin on his hands, as if he were studying every blade of grass at the edge of our blanket.

At least Raven’s phone was out of sight.

I glanced at Neko before I launched into the day’s lesson. “According to the Rota, we should begin our study of herblore with cultivated plants. We should study each one individually, memorize each in isolation. Here on the farm, we have a chance to explore nature in a more primal form. We can study the balance of the greenery around us, the way things grow together and apart.”

Herblore was more an art than a science. It could never completely be taught; a witch either had the ability or she did not. I was a decent herbalist, but I’d never be the best. It was time to discover where my students fell on the spectrum. I had to learn how much remedial work we’d have to do at our painful Rota pace.

“Close your eyes,” I told them. “Take a few deep breaths. See what plants you can identify solely through your sense of smell.”

Raven inhaled noisily, mimicking a wine connoisseur slurping up a rich burgundy. Her ribcage filled so completely I thought her bra might snap open. When she exhaled, I imagined I could see her spine through the dimple of her navel. She repeated the process a half dozen times, each breath hooking her leg more tightly around Hani’s body. I blushed at her frank sexuality; I felt like I was intruding on some private moment with her familiar. No wonder Raven had worked her way through so many Oak Canyon warders. If this was the way she executed her magic, no man was safe in a hundred-mile radius.

Emma, at least, was less ostentatious, settling for placing her palm on Kopek’s shoulder. “Honeysuckle,” she said after a moment.

“Good. What else?”

Another half dozen breaths for each of them. “Wild chives?” Emma proposed.

“Yes. And?” She started to chew on her lower lip. “Raven?” I prompted.

“Red clover.” Her voice was distant and soft, as if she were reciting a barely remembered dream. “White clover.”

“Excellent. Anything else?”

“Bee balm. Lupine. Wild senna. Milkweed. Big bluestem and little bluestem. And wild rye. I don’t know if its Canadian or Virginia.” She opened her eyes and sat up, stretching so thoroughly I thought she might give Neko a proper lesson in feline behavior.

Wow. If she had that sort of sensitivity to plants, then I’d put up with her acrobatic postures any day of the week. I only knew half the things she’d named because I’d researched likely candidates online the night before.

“Excellent,” I said, as if I’d planned that pause all along. I eased back into my intended lesson. “The field is a mix of many plants. Some are common; they have no magical powers. But others can be incorporated into rituals. What do you know about the magical properties of the specific ones around us? Emma? What magical uses do we have for honeysuckle?”

The shrub in question grew in a large bank to our right, spilling over the remnants of a tree trunk that must have fallen years before. “It helps with memory, I think. With clarity of thought.” She sounded tentative, her English accent thinned almost to nonexistence. “Maybe it increases psychic ability?”

“Anything else?”

She looked at Kopek, as if he might be harboring some secret store of information. The man shrugged so despondently that I wanted to cut some of the sweet flowers and drape him in their comforting scent. Emma patted her familiar’s knee in a gesture of reassurance and said, “Sorry. I own a copy of Grayson’s
Encyclopedia of Herblore
, back in Sedona, but I haven’t looked at it in a long time.”

“That’s all right.” As a librarian, I had long ago learned there was more value in knowing how to find specific information than in brute-force memorization. “Grayson’s is a great resource. There’s a copy in the basement, along with three other key texts—Snyder’s
Herbs Through the Ages
, Hunter’s
The Herbal World and You
, and Watson’s
Herbalist’s Handbook
. With those three, you can look up just about everything you’ll ever need.”

Raven nodded as I named each of the books and then she asked, “Do you have Sallon’s
Compleat Hedgewitch
?”

I didn’t bother to disguise my pleased surprise that she knew the obscure title. “Yes! There are only a handful of copies still in existence, but mine has the original hand-tinted plates, tipped in.” I was bragging, but I couldn’t help it. I was proud of my collection.

Thinking about the
Hedgewitch
, though, sent a sharp pang through my heart. It was one of the treasures the Court would take if I could not deliver a Major Working by Samhain.

I grabbed onto my emotions quickly. That rueful twist in my chest was only telling me to incorporate more herblore in our project. Herbs formed a natural inroad for combating climate change. I just wasn’t sure of the specifics of how we’d use them. Yet.