CHAPTER 30
FOR THE REST of the day, I was ridiculously happy. A lot of things suddenly made sense in my life. Burdens that I hadn’t even realized I carried were suddenly lifted, and for the first time in ages, I found myself able to fill my lungs completely, to walk with my head high and my spirits light.
I thought about calling Melissa—it was only fair that she should hear from me on the good days, as well as the bad. Arriving home, though, I remembered that she was out on yet another First Date. The woman’s persistence was remarkable, even if her choices were flawed.
Neko was waiting for me in the living room, stretched out on the couch, soaking up the last beam of afternoon sunlight. “Did you bring the candy?”
“Candy?” I looked behind me, as if some explanation for the strange request might lurk on the doorstep.
“Ghosts? Goblins? Snack-size Snickers bars? Tonight is Halloween.”
Halloween. How had I forgotten that? Somehow, all of the autumn days had run together—I could have sworn that it was still September, and I had just moved in to my cottage. I shrugged. “There aren’t that many trick-or-treaters here in Georgetown anyway. And I can’t imagine any of them will come back here in the Library gardens.”
“I wanted cream caramels,” Neko pouted.
“Too bad they don’t make sardine taffy,” I said, collapsing on the couch, then shifting to ease my whalebone stays.
“That would be heaven,” Neko sighed. He stretched and got to his feet. “Should I make some mojitos?”
“For just the two of us?”
“You’d make them if Melissa were the only one here.”
“That’s different. She and I always have mojito therapy.” I shrugged. “Besides, I don’t feel like mojitos. I’m going down to the basement.” All afternoon, I’d been trying to figure out some magic I could work, something that would be completely selfless, completely dedicated to the peace, harmony and well-being of another. Something to atone for my love spell and to offer up thanks for all the good news in the library.
Neko’s face twitched with interest, and if he’d been an actual cat, I think his tail would have quivered in expectation. “What were you thinking of?”
“A spell. An incantation. Whatever. I have all this positive energy, and I should use it. I’m just going to change out of this stuff—” I gestured at my colonial costume “– and I’ll meet you downstairs.
Neko was waiting for me when I showed up, feeling fresh and clean in jeans and a bulky sweater. He sidled up to the shelves in the furthest corner of the basement, where I’d placed the most repugnant books in the collection. “What are you thinking of? Another love spell?”
“No!” That sounded too sharp, and I forced myself to lower my voice. “No more love spells. No more love. At least for a while.”
Neko curled up on the cracked leather couch to watch me. “What, then?”
“I want to do something to thank them. Gran, Clara, and Melissa. Something to let them know that I appreciate their being here last night, the stories that they told me.”
Neko arched his back and settled into a more comfortable position. “You could brew an elixir of joy. Add a drop or two to a hot beverage, and the drinker feels happy for no good reason.”
I turned a doubtful glance toward the spice chest, occupying place of pride beneath the reading stand. “What’s in it?”
“You’d have to check the potion book for the precise amounts. It has a rainwater base, and you add a bit of bluebird wing. Some dried apple blossoms, a pinch of powdered dove’s blood… You pour the whole thing over toad’s skin, to filter out any lingering negativity, and then you drink it out of a silver thimble.”
“Toad’s skin?”
“If you don’t believe me, you can read it in the potion book!”
“No, no, I believe you.” And I did. For all his vanity, his narcissism, his absolute belief that the world rotated around him and only him, Neko had not led me astray about a single aspect of witchcraft.
“What then?” he asked.
“I promised Gran.” I thought back to that early September day. Was it only seven weeks ago? “The day that Evelyn told me I’d be living here in the cottage. Gran called at work and made me promise not to lick any toads.”
“What sort of fool would lick a toad?” Neko sounded scandalized.
“My point exactly. I promised, without considering the consequences. I think that drinking a potion poured over the skin of a toad might violate the spirit of my promise, though, if not the actual words.”
“You have got to be kidding.”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “I’ll talk to Gran. Take back my promise. But not tonight.”
Neko cocked his head to one side. “Would she ever know? I mean, I don’t think that the elixir of joy is what she had in mind.”
“A promise is a promise.” I shrugged. “We’ve always trusted each other. Besides, I’m pretty sure that she would know. When I was a kid, she could always tell when I was lying.”
A smooth baritone spoke from the base of the stairs. “Now that sounds like a witchy power, if ever there was one.”
I started at the first words, but I placed David Montrose’s voice before I turned around. “I don’t think that I invited you in,” I said, but I wasn’t truly surprised.
David inclined his head up the stairs. “Warder’s rights, remember? In any case, you shouldn’t leave your front door unlocked, if you don’t want visitors. Especially on Halloween. Who can say how many ghosts and goblins might take up residence here?”
Had I left the door unlocked? I looked upstairs, trying to remember whether I had automatically flipped the deadbolt when I came home. Turning back, I caught the tail end of some silent communication between David and Neko. My familiar stood and stretched. “I’ll go check on it,” he said.
“You don’t have to,” I responded quickly.
“No,” he said to me, but his eyes stayed on David’s. “I wanted to, um, get a drink of water.” And he was gone, before I could beg him to stay.
I took a deep breath before I turned to face David directly. “So,” I said.
“So,” he repeated. He was dressed in clothes that I’d come to think of as “mine”, comfortable khakis, a soft-as-flannel shirt. Clothes that I knew he’d chosen to make himself more attractive to me.
“Just how much trouble am I in, for Connecticut?”
He studied my face for several heartbeats. “If you’d stuck around till I arrived? You’d still be unable to use your powers. I would have locked your witchcraft down so tightly, you wouldn’t be able to watch The Wizard of Oz.”
“But now?” I asked warily?
“Now, I’ve had a chance to calm down. Neko explained everything to me.”
“Everything?” I felt myself blushing.
“Enough.”
“I suppose you’re here to gloat over the mess I made of things.”
“Mess? It seems to me that everything has worked out pretty well.”
I shrugged. “If you don’t count lying, cheating, and deception.” My words were more petulant than I actually felt.
“Who did you lie to?”
“Harold?” I said the man’s name louder than I’d intended. “Jason. Mr. Potter.” I had a truly terrifying thought. “You! Oh my god, you, too. That was why you kissed me that night. That’s why you changed your clothes, why you became something that you weren’t. You were caught up in the love spell too! Be free, dammit! Just leave me alone!”
I waited for the ping, the snap, the breaking of the bond that I had felt with Harold.
Nothing.
“Jane, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” He sounded amused. Tolerant. Not angry, like a man who had suddenly been released from a spell that had held him against his will. Not bemused, like a man still caught up in my magic.
I crossed to the couch and collapsed in the pool of my comfortable sweater. “That first spell I did, the grimoire spell. It worked, but it ma
de too many men fall in love with me.”
David came to stand in front of me. He crossed his arms on his chest and shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
“The way the spells work.”
“I think I’ve got a pretty good idea. I haven’t sat around doing nothing for the past two months. You’ve been a good guide to all this witchcraft stuff, and Neko helped out a lot.”
“Well, neither of us taught you enough about the grimoire spell.”
I heard something behind his words. Laughter, I was pretty sure, but something else. Something grave. Respect? Pity? I gritted my teeth. “No time like the present, then. What about it? Did I change the balance of the universe as we know it? Have I set the world of Faerie upside down, releasing petty spirit vengeance on all the world?”
“Nothing quite so dramatic as that.” David sat down beside me. He took a deep breath and met my eyes guilelessly. “The grimoire spell only works on the first man you see after you work it.”
“The first man—” I thought back to that night, to Melissa standing in the kitchen, Melissa and…. “Neko!”
“No.” David shook his head in brief annoyance. “Neko doesn’t count. For purposes of magic, he’s a part of you.”
I felt my face turn crimson, but I said, “You, then.”
“No. Warders are immune to their witch’s workings.”
“Then the first man was … Harold.”
“Precisely.”
“But the others? Jason, finally realizing I was alive? Mr. Zimmer, ordering coffee? Mr. Potter, talking to me at Gran’s, and at the Gala, and making his donation to the Peabridge?”
“Just Harold. The spell bonds to the first man. The others weren’t caught up in your magic.”
I repeated his words inside my head. I couldn’t believe him. Each of those men had been free to act? Free to do whatever he wanted?
“But why?” I finally asked. “Why would everything change now, all at once?”
David gestured smoothly. “Look at yourself.” I stared down at my jeans, raised my fingers to my hair. “You’re the one who’s different, Jane.”
“I’m not! I’m the same person I’ve always been!”
“Are you, really?” His voice was soothing, even as his next words plunged me into doubt. “You’ve cut your hair. You grew out your nails. You put on makeup every morning and touch it up during the day. You’re wearing contact lenses.”
Everything he said was true, but I found my heart beating faster to hear a man say the words. A man who had been attracted to me, spell or no spell.
Of course, he was also a man who had set me aside, like a shirt that didn’t fit.
I started to get up from the couch, too embarrassed to continue the conversation. David reached out and grabbed my wrist. “We men are really dumb creatures, you know. We can be led anywhere by our … senses.” I knew that he was going to identify another leader, and I was glad that he hadn’t specified body parts. I was already mortified by this conversation.
“Jane,” he said, and he removed his fingers from my wrist, only to cup my jaw with his palm. “You’ve grown. You’ve changed. You like yourself more, and the men in your life can see that. You have confidence. You’re at ease—and that draws us like flies to honey.”
And suddenly, I understood what he was saying. I saw the path that he was leading me toward, the direction he was taking me.
I liked being the woman who remembered to put on lipstick, the woman who wore a green evening gown to the Gala. I liked being the woman who organized hundreds of books, cataloging them like a true professional.
I liked myself.
I sat up straighter. “And you? If self-love and independence are symbolized by wardrobe shifts, what are you doing in those clothes?”
He glanced down and shrugged. “I’ve grown, too. I’ve changed. I’m not the same warder who was fired by my last witch. I’ve decided that I can let myself be comfortable. If I’m going to succeed as a warder, as your warder, I’m going to succeed on my ability to guide you. To protect you. No one’s going to care if I wear stiff, formal clothes or magical robes inscribed with symbols.” I turned my head to one side, still skeptical. “I like myself this way.”
And that admission actually made me laugh out loud. “That, I understand.”
He joined me in laughter, amusement that trailed off easily as he looked around the basement. “I like what you’ve done to the place.”
“Really?”
He got up to study the nearest bookshelf, walked down to the next one, and eventually traced his way around the entire room. He nodded when he found the spice chest, took note of the tackle box full of crystals, made a mental inventory of the little cauldrons and other witchy supplies stored on their respective shelves.
“A place for everything, and everything in its place,” he pronounced at last.
“It just feels … right like this. I hadn’t realized how much the disorganization was bothering me.”
“So now it seems like you’re really ready to study. Ready to learn.”
“What about the Coven? What are the chances that they’ll challenge me for this? For Hannah Osgood’s collection?””
David shrugged. “High. They’ll say that you aren’t skilled, that you aren’t trained, that you don’t know what to do with everything you have.”
Indignation rose in my chest and I opened my mouth to protest.
“They’ll say that. But they probably won’t succeed. For one thing, they could never come up with a list of everything that’s here. They’d have to, to convince the Court that the books belong to them.”
I thought about the laptop computer secure beneath my bed, and the backup drive I’d left in my desk at the Peabridge that very morning. “But they’ll definitely try?” I said, and my voice was suddenly very small.
“They’ll definitely try,” David confirmed. “But that will take a long time. And in the end, I don’t think that they’ll be successful. In the meantime, that you can learn more about using your powers.”
I caught my breath, suddenly realizing just how much I wanted to do that. “And you? You’ll teach me?”
“Jane, I told you before, I’m not supposed to be a teacher. I’m a warder.”
“Then, you’ll … ward me? Be my guide? Keep me safe?”
He looked at me for a long time. I remembered how I’d been drawn to him when we first met. I remembered how I’d worried about eating in front of him. But then, I recalled how I’d relaxed with him, how he’d helped me through my early spells, how he’d tucked me into bed with tender hands—hands that had no secret mission, no ulterior motive.
Men. I’d never understand them. In fact, I was ready to take a break from them. From my romantic interest in them, at least. I needed to spend some time figuring out who I was. I needed more nights like the one just past, gathered together with my grandmother and my mother, with my best friend. I needed to know more about Jane Madison before I tried to convert her into Jane Randall, Jane Templeton, or Jane Anyone Else.
“Please,” I said to David. “As warder to witch. Say you’ll help me.”
He nodded gravely. “As warder to witch.”
I reached out to hug him and felt him tense beneath my hands. I turned my face away from his, though, and he relaxed. His ease spread to me, and I took a deep breath. A clean breath. A new breath for the new me.
“But first,” I said. “Would you like a cup of tea?” He followed me upstairs to the kitchen, where Neko had already put on the kettle, set out the teapot, arranged the mugs, and added a huge pitcher of cream.
My familiar looked up as we gathered around the table. He turned his head to one side, looking first at me, then at David. “Trick or treat?” he said at last.
“Treat,” David and I said at the same time.
It wasn’t going to be easy, I was certain. Figuring out the new me, helping the Peabridge grow, preparing for my confrontation with the
Coven…. None of it would be easy. But it was definitely going to be a treat.