Joy of Witchcraft (11 page)

When I could speak, when he could hear me, I managed, “I didn’t hear your car on the driveway.”

“I used warder’s magic. As soon as I left the inquest, the instant I heard Tony’s message.”

Of course. My carefully non-alarmist voicemail had been for naught.

David led me over to the edge of the bed. He sat beside me and folded my hands between his. “Tell me what happened.”

I did, starting with our lesson on the dock, the reaching for balance, for harmony in the animal world. I told him about the stag, and then the dog. Orthros. I explained what I’d found in my research so far.

David nodded, as if he were memorizing every word. When I finished, he said, “Again.”

I obliged, because I didn’t know what else to do. Our lesson, the stag, the dog, Greek legend.

“One more time.”

“David—”

“Please.”

Lesson. Stag. Dog. Orthros.

When he stood, it seemed as if we’d been sitting for hours. But I understood why he’d made me repeat myself, why he’d forced me to go over the horror again and again. By the time I finished the third repetition, the morning was something I’d read about in a book, a story that had happened to another person ages past. The beast had lost the power to terrify me. I could study it, question my knowledge, live with what I’d seen.

David stalked to the closet. His sword banged softly against the bed as he settled the scabbard around his waist.

“Where are you going?” I asked

“To the beach.”

“None of us saw—”

“You weren’t in any shape to see anything. Not after that thing attacked.”

“Let me go with you?”

Right. Well I had to ask, even though I’d been certain of his answer. I followed him downstairs and watched as he strode down the porch steps, hand firmly placed on the grip of his sword.

It seemed like he was gone for days. It was less than thirty minutes, according to the clock on the mantel. When I saw him crossing the field, no one could keep me from running out of the house—not Tony, not Neko, not the ghosts of a hundred Greek monsters.

David settled his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close as we returned to the house. His face was grave, and he kept his free hand on his sword until the door was locked behind us.

“What?” I asked, my curiosity echoed by Tony and Neko.

David reached into his pocket and pulled out a perfect snowy handkerchief. Unfolding the cotton with care, he peeled back three layers before he extended his palm.

Neko hissed at the item in David’s hand, taking a full step back before he could control himself. Tony started to swear under his breath, a steady stream of curses that linked words I’d never thought of combining.

I leaned close enough to realize that David held a tooth, a great curved incisor as long as my index finger. The surface was sickly white, grooved as if it had been eaten by acid. A rusty stain at the base showed where it had been attached to a massive canine jaw.

Tony was the first to speak. “Caleb must have knocked it out of the dog’s jaw when he hit the thing.” Except he added an adverb before knocked. And he had another word for dog. And thing.

David nodded. “Standing alone, it didn’t have enough magical force to disintegrate with the rest of the body.” He sounded clinical. Dispassionate. Anyone listening to him might think he was delivering a lecture to a bored audience, speaking from PowerPoint slides in an overheated, darkened auditorium, where the projector’s hum lulled the entire audience to sleep.

But I knew David better than that. I knew his perfect control masked an anger so hot he feared he might destroy everything around him—the house, Tony, Neko. Me—if he loosened his self-control even a micron.

Because, along with David, I sensed what the other men could not. Along with David, I recognized the faintest arcane residue on the tooth. I never would have suspected, if I hadn’t first felt in stolen documents, in records David had no business keeping. But I knew that shimmer, that taint.

The tooth, the orthros, had been sent by Norville Pitt.

David finally turned to me. “Well. It looks like the Jane Madison Academy will be shutting down for an unexpected break.”

“No!”

“Jane, you saw that monster on the beach. This time, the warders were able to fight back, and thank Hecate Luke had a knife. But you know as well as I do, that was a close call. We have no idea what Pitt will send next.”

“So you’re just going to give him what he wants?” I caught the look Neko shot my way, his blatant surprise that I’d take that tone of voice. I didn’t bother looking at Tony; I didn’t care what the other man thought. My voice ratcheted higher when I said to David, “You
know
he’s just doing this to distract you. To screw up your testimony at the inquest. Shutting down the magicarium would be rewarding him for everything he’s done.”

Nothing. David wouldn’t even acknowledge the possibility that I was right.

I took a wild step toward Neko. “Can I borrow a pen?” I asked him, only to face down his elaborate shrug. He wanted no part of my argument with David. I held out my hand, as if I fully expected someone to produce a Bic from thin air. “I want to write a welcome note to Pitt so he feels right at home when he takes over everything we’ve worked so hard for. That’s the only polite thing to do.”

David met my sarcasm with a perfectly even tone. “I’m not doing this lightly.”

“You aren’t doing it at all!
I’m
the magistrix!
I
decide when the Academy shuts down!”

“You’re the magistrix, but I’m your warder. I’m still responsible for keeping you safe. You and every one of your students.”

“We
are
safe. The system worked. The warders banished the orthros.”

David shook his head. “You’re lucky. Not safe.”

The worst thing was, he was right. If Caleb hadn’t reached that branch, if Jeffrey hadn’t leaped into the fray, if Zach hadn’t distracted the orthros before it could rip out someone’s throat… If Luke hadn’t kept a titanium blade in his boot… My memory ripped back to the sound of that two-headed beast, the baying snarl that had turned my belly inside out and stripped away my powers.

Without luck, the orthros would have succeeded. And if he had, Norville Pitt might be pawing through my possessions even now. He and Teresa and every other witch within a five-hour radius.

Still… “He
wants
you to do this, David. He
wants
you to shut us down. You saw the parchment. The Court will disband the magicarium if there’s any break in classes. Pitt will waltz in here, and he won’t even have to spawn another monster. Don’t do that. Don’t let him win.”

David ran his free hand through his hair. The gesture seemed to remind him he was still holding that hideous tooth. He folded his handkerchief tight around the thing and shoved it deep inside his pants pocket.

After taking a breath on a five-count and exhaling just as slowly, he looked through the arch to the kitchen, to the door that led to the basement and all my arcane possessions. “You can hold your classes,” he finally said. “But don’t try to work with the natural world. Flora and fauna are strictly off the syllabus.”

I twisted my lips but I nodded. I wasn’t happy, not by a long shot. My students needed to work with a lot of flora and fauna. That was central to what we did as witches. But David wasn’t happy either. There was that annoying, grown-up word again: compromise.

And I had to admit his restriction was reasonable, at least for a while. My students and I had plenty to master without reaching out to plants and animals, without opening any more doors for Pitt’s potential beasts. We could learn how to recognize the unique signatures of our individual powers. We could work out how to balance those strands of magic. I’d hoped to vary everyone’s education, alternating training on group dynamics with focusing on herbs, on crystals, on the living, breathing world around us. But I could stick to the subjects David considered safe. For now.

“And you’ll hold all classes in the basement,” he said.

“That’s impossible!”

“Take it or leave it.”

Far too late, I realized I’d committed a strategic flaw. We shouldn’t be having this argument here, in front of Tony and Neko. David was digging in, taking a position more aggressively than he might have done if we were fighting alone.

Who was I kidding? David’s determination would be every bit as firm if we were alone.

“I’m not running some sort of factory here,” I said. “We need time outside. We need to ground our powers in the natural world around us—even if we’re just focusing on group dynamics, on how to work together. We’re witches, not widget manufacturers!”

David shook his head. “I’ve set protections on this house, on the dorm and the barn. With the help of the other warders, we can bolster those safeguards. But we can’t keep the entire farm safe. Not now. Not when we don’t know the full scale of what Pitt is trying to do. We have to assume he’s working with someone else, while the inquest is in session.”

“I can’t work under these conditions.”

“It’s these conditions or no conditions. Hold class in the basement or the magicarium shuts down.”

I wanted to tell him he was being absurd. I wanted to say we witches would be perfectly safe under the late autumn sky, that we could work our magic in the fields, in the woods.

But in reality I didn’t know if he
was
being absurd. We hadn’t been safe that afternoon. And from the uneasy way Tony eyed the butcher knife by his foot, we weren’t safe yet.

“Fine,” I said grudgingly.

“Fine?” David pushed.

“Fine, I’ll hold classes indoors. For now.”

“Until I decide it’s safe for you to work outside.”

“Until we decide together!” I lashed out, and I was rewarded with a weary nod. I decided to push my luck. “And we don’t have to stay in the basement. We can work here, in the living room. In the barn or the dormitory even. We just have to stay behind your existing wards. For now.”

He shook his head, but the faintest hint of a smile curled his lips. “You drive a hard bargain, Jane Madison.”

“I have a magicarium to run.”

“Yes,” he said. “You do.” I thought it might be a century before he freed me from his storm-dark gaze. When he finally turned to Tony, he held out his right hand. “Thank you,” he said. His glance cut to the side to include Neko in his gratitude.

Tony’s shoulders rolled in half a shrug before he shook David’s hand. “You’d have done the same for Raven.”

“Go on, then. Get back to the barn, both of you.”

“I’ll check the dormitory first,” Tony said, even as Neko clutched his arm. “We’ll keep a guard posted there twenty-four hours a day.”

“Let me know if you need help.”

Tony reached for his sword and shoved the blade home in its sheath. Then he stooped to retrieve the knife he’d kept at his feet. He offered it to David with exaggerated care, grip-first. He glanced at me, but he spoke to my warder. “Be careful.”

“We will,” David said, and he put a lot more confidence behind the words than I could have done.

Neko led the way to the door, but not by much. The two men stayed close as they stepped onto the porch, as they crossed to the dormitory. Jeffrey rose to greet them when they were still a dozen paces from the door, and all three huddled together in serious conversation.

I closed the door and turned around to find David standing too close.

But he wasn’t too close, not really. Not when he twined his fingers between mine, when he guided me over to sit beside him on the couch. He pulled my legs up, swinging them around to cross his lap. I leaned back against the arm of the sofa and let his fingers find the tension points in the arch of my right foot, in my ankle, in my toes.

“Shouldn’t I be doing that for
you
?” I asked, when the bliss of released stress faded enough for me to form words. “You were the one trapped at the inquest all day.”

He shrugged. “It was fine.”

I gave him a questioning look, but it became apparent he wasn’t going to elaborate. It was up to me to press for details. “What happened?”

“Inquest proceedings are confidential.”

“I’m your witch!”

“Ah,” he said. “
That
clarification makes all the difference.”

I started to kick at his thigh, undoing all his hard work, but he merely trapped my toes against his belly, reaching across for my left foot. I decided to give in, rather than fight to prove my point. “Okay,” I said. “I know you can’t tell me exactly what happened. But do you think the Court listened? Were they persuaded by the arguments against Pitt?”

He let his head loll against the back of the couch. “No one made any arguments today, not really. Each side made its opening statements. They spent the whole time saying what they’re going to say during the rest of the process.”

“And?” I asked, sending out the narrowest tendril on the magical wavelength between us. I wasn’t trying to pressure him into telling me more than he could, more than he should. But I wanted to remind him I was there to support him. I was his witch, and I’d always be with him, no matter what process and procedure was mandated by Hecate’s Court.

“And the next month will be hell. You and I put together a strong case against Pitt. We handed over the evidence, literally tied up with a bow. But Pitt’s not a fool. He never has been. His entire strategy is to play rope-a-dope, to look like he’s incompetent, unattractive, not worth the time or effort or energy to deal with. But there’s a serpent close beneath the surface, cold-blooded, sharp-toothed, and hungry.”

I nodded. That was the man I’d seen. The man I despised. “You’re going back tomorrow?”

He shook his head, a vicious gesture that let me glimpse a little more of his true frustration. “They won’t let me hear the other witnesses. They don’t want to corrupt my testimony. I’m banned from the courtroom until they call me back—probably in a few weeks.”

I studied David’s face. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“About a million things. I’ve taken oaths, Jane.”

“What aren’t you telling me about Pitt? About his strategy?”