CHAPTER 15
CHAOS.
Complete and utter chaos.
The piercing whistle continued as I stumbled into my living room, frantically wrapping my new blouse around my still-damp bra. The door to the basement was gaping open, and Neko was standing beside Roger, crowding the way to the kitchen. I plunged past them, terrified about what I would find.
Smoke billowed out of the oven in greasy black clouds. The uninterrupted shrieking was the smoke detector, letting me know that my house was on fire. And Jason was standing on the far side of the kitchen, looking like a deer trapped in someone’s headlights.
When I moved into the cottage, I had told myself to get a fire extinguisher. Melissa had suggested it on that first day, but we’d forgotten when we were at Target, buying all of our cleaning supplies. She’d already told me the brand to get, the one that would be useful on grease fires. The one that could have saved me now, if I’d remembered.
I could barely think, with the smoke detector’s constant shrieking.
I grabbed for a dish towel, taking a hurried moment to wrap the cloth around my hand. Reaching for the oven door, I tried to open it quickly. The motion felt silly, helpless, like the softball throw that had made me the laughingstock of third grade gym class. Steeling myself (and filling my lungs with too much greasy smoke) I tugged the door open. And then I realized my mistake.
Oxygen feeds a fire.
I grabbed for the mojito pitcher, full of water and flowers. Before I could throw the entire thing into the oven’s maw, Neko knocked the container to the floor, sending the flowers flying. “Not on a grease fire!” He managed to convey the same horror he might have expressed if I had proposed wearing white shoes after Labor Day.
He was right. “Smother it!” I exclaimed, finally remembering my one summer at Girl Scout camp. Drop and roll. Well, I didn’t have a fireproof, outdoor sleeping bag at the ready, but I recalled the principle. “Roger!” He was closest to the couch in the living room. “The throw!”
He somehow figured out what I was saying, even above the penetrating scream of the smoke detector. Damn that thing! It should have some sort of wall switch, so that I could turn it off and deal with an actual emergency without going deaf in the process.
Roger tossed me the blanket—his overhand throw was more girlish than my own. I wasted a few moments shaking it out, hoping it would cover more area. Then, I hurtled it toward the oven.
In theory, that should have worked. The blanket should have smothered the flames and cut off the oxygen that was feeding them. Everything should have been fine, and I should have earned my Fire Safety merit badge.
Except the blanket had been made out of something flammable.
The greedy flames crackled as they grabbed hold of the material; for one short moment, the fire was actually louder than the smoke detector. Then, the flames began to work their way down the throw, onto the linoleum floor, where the ends of the blanket trailed after my imperfect toss.
“Jane!” Neko’s voice rang out, sharp and clear over the shrieking detector. I turned to him in panic, wondering just how long we had before the floor caught along with the walls. This cottage was ancient; it had to be as dry as kindling. And Jason was still on the other side of the oven, still frozen into place.
Neko called my name again, and this time he sounded strangely calm. My excitable familiar might have been summoning me to a discussion on the merits of beige over ecru, for all the emotion in his voice. I realized that he held a book in his hands. Elemental Magick.
It was open to a page in the middle. A page that I was willing to bet Neko had not chosen at random.
I crossed to him.
He leaned in toward my side, putting his mouth right beside my ear. He held the book in front of us, and his fingers rested lightly beneath the words. “Take a breath,” he said, and I did. “Now exhale. Again. Exhale. Calm yourself. Take another breath. Deeper. Exhale. One more time.”
He sounded perfectly centered, perfectly calm, as if we did this exercise every single day. In a flash, I was reminded of Melissa’s yoga teacher, the woman whose constant droning about breathing and holding postures and reaching for the quiet inside us made me fall asleep in corpse pose.
“Very good,” Neko said, and now I could listen to him and hold his words separate from the screech of the smoke detector, apart from the crackle of the flames that wanted to take over my kitchen. “Now, take your right index finger and touch your head to offer up your pure thoughts. Touch your throat to offer up your pure speech. Touch your heart to offer up your pure belief.” I did as he said, and each time my finger landed against my flesh, something thrummed deep inside my mind. I felt as if I were in the middle of a child’s game, suspended on a string stretched between two tin cans. Power vibrated around me, through me, in me.
“Now,” Neko said. “Read the words.” I started to argue. There were strangers around us, people who did not know about my powers. “No,” he said, his voice still given over to that eerie calm. “Read. The rest will follow. Read.”
And so I read.
Good and evil, loss and gain
Flame is savior, flame is bane
On a bitter winter night
Fire might preserve a wight
Flames unbound can lead to ruin
Lives destroyed, possessions strewn.
Learn the power of the fire,
Note its strength within the pyre.
Tame the flames by calling other
Powers of the world to smother
Balance water, air, and earth
Push back fire, salvage worth.
For a moment, nothing happened. After all, it couldn’t be so simple. Who was I to think that I could control one of the four elemental forces of the universe? Me—Jane Madison? A librarian who couldn’t even make a single date work out? A witch who didn’t know the first thing about her powers?
But then, I saw a shimmer in the air. It was a curtain surrounding the flames. I sensed the pure essence of water, knew it with my witchy senses. It looked like a waterfall made up of the finest droplets possible, suspended in the middle of my kitchen. I poured my thoughts into the curtain, summoning up all of the tingling power that I’d ever felt and transferring it into the wall of water.
I was terrified by the whoosh as the fire consumed the sheer liquid conjuring, but that sound was immediately dampened by a sudden heaviness in the air. The weight of the atmosphere in my kitchen had doubled, trebled. It felt like the pressure was dropping before a hurricane; I was crushed beneath the airless weight of a ferocious weather system, the kind that made old bones ache and migraines blossom. Its pressure smothered the remaining flames, beating them out as if they were trapped beneath an invisible flame-retardant blanket.
Sparkling dust coalesced from the heavy air. It fell like gritty snow, sifting down on the already-cooling remnants of the fire. I imagined pulverized earth, volcanic stone exploded into the tiniest fragments imaginable. The dust drifted down in silence, catching the light in the room, sparkling like a million diamond shards. It ensured that no whisper of flame survived.
The fire was out.
But the smoke detector was still shrieking. I grabbed one of the kitchen chairs and dragged it across the room, so that I could step up and retrieve the battery. Neko moved like my shadow, and I put a hand on his shoulder to steady myself before I climbed onto the seat. It took three tugs to get the plastic case off, before I could reach the nine-volt battery. My fingers slipped twice, but I finally wrenched the power source free.
The silence was so sudden that I wondered if I’d been struck deaf. But no, I heard Jason’s slacks rustle as he finally stepped forward. I heard Roger, breathing deeply as he tugged his tight T-shirt down over the six-pack abs that had been on display after whatever basement romp the fire had interrupted.
And I heard Neko whisper, “Okay, Jane. We’re all done here.” Then he stepped back and raised his voice for everyone to hear. “What are we going to do with you, Jane? Thr
ee-alarms are fine for a chili cookoff, but they really put a crimp in a boy’s love life.”
I was still standing on the chair. My knees were turning to jelly, though, and it seemed as if I hadn’t filled my lungs since Neko had told me to take those cleansing breaths. I reached out for his shoulder, but he stepped away, gesturing toward Jason.
And my Imaginary Boyfriend finally moved to my side. “What the hell is going on here?” He sounded more frightened than angry. I leaned on him a little more heavily than strictly necessary as I stepped down, but he didn’t get the idea. He didn’t sweep me off my feet and carry me into the next room, lay me down on the couch and fan my flushed face with fathomless concern.
Instead, he stared at my stove as if it had been possessed. Then, he turned those disbelieving eyes on me.
Before I could muster a response, Neko stepped forward. He cocked his head to one side, executing one of his perfect single-eyebrow arches. I knew that he was evaluating Jason’s every move, measuring out every drop of manliness my Imaginary Boyfriend had to offer. When Neko presented his hand to Jason, he kept his wrist just lax enough that there could be no mistaking his intentions. Or, rather, his preferences. “I’m Neko,” he said. “And you must be Jason. Charmed.” My familiar turned to me and grinned. “Yummy.”
Jason shook the offered hand, but he looked at me in confusion. He blinked hard, and I was reminded of a child waking up from a too-long nap. He started three different questions before he settled on, “What just happened here?”
I worked a spell in front of you. Just a little something I’ve been working on in my spare time. Witchcraft, you know. It’s all the rage in library circles these days.
I sighed and said, “I don’t know. It must have taken longer for the blanket to smother the fire than I thought it would.”
“But you stood there.” Jason pointed to the spot that Neko and I had occupied. “I watched you. You read from that book, and the fire went out.”
“I must have panicked.” The explanation sounded lame, even to me. “While I was waiting for the blanket to work. I’d been reading about the fire spell before you got here; my subconscious must have grabbed at straws.”
“Something happened when you read those words. I couldn’t see clearly; it was like there was some silvery curtain or something. But the fire died down.”
“Silvery curtain?” I looked at Neko, desperate for help, but he only gave an elaborate shrug. “It must have been something in the blanket. Some strange chemical reaction when it came in contact with the flames.”
Jason shook his head, but he didn’t really have an option, other than to accept my explanation. After all, it wasn’t like any ordinary, every day, red-blooded male was going to believe in magic. He let himself become distracted enough to nod toward Neko. “And where did he come from?”
“Downstairs?” I said, and realized that it sounded like I was asking a question. “Downstairs,” I repeated firmly.
“With your cat?”
“Um, there is no cat. There’s only Neko.”
“Only!” Neko repeated, and he sounded scandalized.
“Well, Neko and Roger,” I amended, gesturing toward the sculpted stylist, who was now fully clothed. “Neko’s my, um, tenant. He lives in the basement. Roger is his friend.”
“And you said you had a cat because?”
Because I didn’t want you distracted by the thought of the passionate man-man love being made one floor below us, I thought. I didn’t say that, though. I just sort of shrugged. Roger stepped forward and saved the day. “So, that old blanket trick really works? I thought it was just something they told you about in Scouts.”
And when had he ever been a Scout? Nevertheless, I could have kissed the man, deflecting attention like that. “Apparently so.”
There was a knock at my door.
I should have expected it. By the time I crossed into the living room, I knew who would be there. Not the fire department, dispatched to save the day. Not Dan Savage, ready to research another exciting Savage Love sexual advice column with the plethora of men in my kitchen.
“David!” I said, as my warder swept into my living room. I tried to make it sound like I was surprised to see him, even as I worked to convey a hidden message, a mental telegraph. I wanted to tell him to get out of my house and let me get my dream date back on track. I settled for the more direct use of speech: “I was just about to finish cooking dinner for my guest.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” David said, barely playing along enough to sound civil. He strode directly into my kitchen.
I took a deep breath and began the unavoidable introductions. “David, I don’t think that you’ve met Roger, Neko’s friend.” The men exchanged somewhat wary handshakes. “And this is Jason Templeton.” I sighed and gestured toward my Imaginary Boyfriend. “Jason, this is David Montrose. He’s the, um, mentor I mentioned earlier. The one who is guiding my independent study.”
Jason glanced at Elemental Magick as he offered his hand. The book now looked perfectly harmless, resting on the countertop where Neko had placed it after our fire-dowsing. “David,” he said, offering his hand.
“Professor.” David shook, but his voice was flat. It barely warmed when he turned to me. “Jane, we need to talk.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“No.”
“Look,” I said, and I must have recovered from the shock of everything, because I could feel anger shortening my breath. “This has not been my dream night, okay? First, I almost burned the pear tart because the oven runs hot. Then, I came close to poisoning Jason with peanut soup. As you can see, the oven caught fire while I was preheating the broiler. I do not have time to talk to you, David. Not tonight.”
If I had not known better, I would have said that a smile tugged at David’s lips as I cataloged my catastrophes. He managed to sound sincere, though, when he said, “There are just a couple of details that we need to work out. Tonight. There are some problems that have come up with your … independent study, and I would hate for the administration to get involved.” As if to emphasize his words, he laid a protective hand on my elbow.
Jason stepped forward, glancing at that hand, and then at my face. “Look, Jane. Maybe I should head home.”
I shrugged off David’s grasp in annoyance. “But we haven’t eaten!”
Neko looked at the lamb chops on the counter. “I wouldn’t trust the oven,” he said helpfully. “But I’ve heard that lamb tartare is considered a delicacy in some parts of the world.”
Jason looked repulsed, either by the notion of eating raw lamb, or the thought of spending another minute with me. “You probably should get someone to check that oven. We’ll do this again, though. Sometime soon.”
“But I baked a pear tart!”
Jason glanced at it with barely masked horror, as if he believed it might fly from the countertop and attempt to choke him. “And I’m sure it’s wonderful. Look, you can bring it into the library tomorrow. I’m sure you could sell slices to go with lattes. It would give a real colonial feel to the library.”
“Jason—” By now, he had edged around David and made his way past Neko and Roger. His hand settled on the door latch. I crossed the living room, trying to pretend like I was the perfect hostess, like this sort of thing happened all the time, and didn’t we all just love the quirkiness of it?
“Thanks for everything, Jane. The… Well, the glass of wine was great.”
“Yeah,” I said, miserable. “Thank you for the flowers.”
I resisted the urge to look at the trampled blossoms, spread across my kitchen floor. I’d like to think that Jason would have kissed me goodnight if we hadn’t had a full audience watching from the kitchen, but somehow, I don’t think he would have. I closed the door and leaned my head against it. One deep breath was not enough. Nor two. Nor three.
I was going to have to face them all some time. I steeled myself and turned around.
David was just slipping his wallet into
his back pocket, and Neko was palming several bills. “Right,” my familiar whispered, but I think that he intended me to hear. “Roger and I will have a ‘late supper’. At Bistro Bis. On Capitol Hill.” He winked and put his hand on Roger’s shoulder.
They slipped past me, closing the door quietly behind them. I came to stand beside David, surveying the wreckage in my kitchen. “Well,” he finally said. “At least you weren’t frivolous about using your magic this time.”
“I’d pretty much run out of other options.” Even though I was exhausted, even though I was embarrassed, even though I wanted to sob about the mess I’d made of my perfect date, I somehow found myself smiling.
The entire thing was absurd. Magic on a first date. My gay familiar making loud thumps from the downstairs. My culinary talents stretched to their maximum extension.
At least I didn’t have to pretend for the rest of the night. David already knew I wasn’t perfect. He already knew that I wasn’t the ideal girlfriend. He already knew that I made mistakes—and plenty of them. I could relax around him.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“I’ll take you out to dinner. We’ll get something safe. Something cooked in someone else’s kitchen.”
I started to protest, but then I looked around. My kitchen looked as if the Battle of Agincourt had been fought across its tiled floor. The mess from making dinner had sifted into the debris from extinguishing the fire. I should clean it up as best I could and then tumble into bed.
Before I could say anything, though, I realized that I was exhausted. The adrenaline from working my spell had pumped away, and I was left with a bone-weariness that could only be partially ascribed to ruining my date with Jason. I looked into David’s guileless face, recognized his offer for the kindness that it was. “Thank you,” I said. “I’d like that. Very much.”