Joy of Witchcraft (22 page)

I wasn’t used to ordering warders and familiars about—not my own and certainly not other witches’. But I’d watched Teresa Alison Sidney conduct a coven meeting, so I knew how the game was played. I hit the necessary tone of command. I was the magistrix of the Jane Madison Academy, and I would not be crossed by anyone.

Of course, all four men checked with their witches before they acceded to my demand. Even then, they walked stiffly, one shade shy of outright rebellion. David followed, sweeping the double doors closed before things could get out of hand. He locked it with a warder’s trick. I pretended not to worry as he turned back to me and my astonished students.

“We’ll convene downstairs,” I said. A mental nudge set Neko to lead the way, down the hall and through the kitchen, around the butler’s pantry and down the stairs.

I’d spent the morning preparing for this confrontation. With Neko’s reluctant help, I’d erected an altar in the center of the large basement room. We’d relied on wood this time, oak instead of marble, the better to separate this working from the disastrous one that had released the satyr at the farmhouse. I’d decorated it with pertinent symbols—a stylized figurine of Hecate carved out of yew, a palm-sized iron cauldron from the Osgood collection, a thick candle that breathed out the comforting scent of beeswax. A carved rowan box sat on the corner.

But that wasn’t all that was on the altar. I’d also included a knot of piñon, the wood fragrant with sticky resin. At my telephoned request, Clara had brought it that morning, handing it over without a hint of her usual dramatics. I’d added one of my favorite wands, a slender length of ash.

The ritual was designed to harken back to Oak Canyon Coven traditions, to my students’ home teachings. I’d traced a large pentagram of salt on the floor, centering the figure on my altar. A circle looped around the star, a line of salt that linked up the five tips of the figure, leaving open a single arc, a single passage in and out of the protected space.

“Join me, sisters,” I said, and I crossed the room. I waited for David to take up a protective stance. His sword was bared now, flickering with silent promise. He’d argued about this, said Pitt’s traitor was too dangerous for me to confront on my own. He’s wanted me to bring in Clara and Gran, to have some astral reinforcements.

I’d told him, though, that they were too green to help. Neither my mother nor my grandmother had the power to fight off a monster. I could doom myself trying to rescue one of them.

No, we were better off isolating the potential traitors from the support of their warders, from the bolstering strength of their familiars. Raven and Emma would have only themselves to rely on, while I—the strongest witch in the Eastern Empire—had my familiar and my warder to assist me. And if they were innocent—as I prayed to Hecate they were—they could be my allies when I tested the newer students.

Setting my jaw, I plunged my hand into the rowan box and came up with a fistful of salt. Only after my witches had crossed the edge of my circle did I sprinkle the white grains, closing the gap and sealing us in.

I was breathing hard as Neko took his place beside me. I sensed his mistrust—not of me, per se, but of the action I was taking. Nevertheless, I intoned, “Well met, sisters.”

And we
were
met well. Raven had deposited her coffee cup on the stairs, automatically fishing out her cell phone and leaving it behind. We’d come a long way from the testing that had marked our original relationship, her near-constant efforts to undermine me as her magistrix.

It was Emma, though, who answered first. “What’s this all about, then? This is quite a bloody welcome home.”

Raven settled her hands on her hips. “She thinks one of us summoned the harpy. The satyr and the orthros too. One of us is a traitor.” She raised her chin, an action that automatically thrust her bosom toward me. “Or is it both of us you’re looking at?”

Adrenaline thundered in my ears as I met her accusing gaze. “I’m testing everyone. You’re the first two back from break.”

“Jolly good,” Emma said.

But Raven wasn’t anywhere near as accommodating. “That piñon on the altar is from Oak Canyon. What do you have planned for us?” Well, she always had been attuned to the natural world, to green, growing things. Under any other circumstance, I’d praise her sensitivity, her ability to recognize wood from her original home. Now, I just felt nervous. Because if I’d misunderstood everything that had happened up till now… If I’d misestimated the devotion of my most senior students…

Instead of answering Raven’s belligerent question, I stepped up to the altar. Staring directly at my statuette of Hecate, I touched my fingers to my forehead, my throat, and my heart. When I picked up the ash wand, the wood hummed with a residual power, a ripple of activated energy from the last time I’d used it. That frisson of potential was heightened when I palmed the piñon knot. I offered it toward each of the five points of my pentagram, and then I nestled it in the heart of the iron cauldron.

Using the wand to point toward the fragrant wood, I began to chant a spell. My concentrated force grew with each rhyming line.

“Mother Hecate, wise and strong

To yourself I do belong.

Keep me safe, all danger bar,

Destroy all threats, both near and far.

As you shelter me ’neath your veil

My love for you will never fail.”

As I spoke the last word, I pushed my energy through the amplifying ash. As expected, the energy snagged on the potential in the piñon, and the knot burst into flame. I gathered all of its power—heat and light together—and I wove my own native magic through that force, mixing my pure golden light with the orange-yellow glow of the burning pine.

Before Raven or Emma had a chance to react, I flung the mixed energy to the very limits of the protective circle I’d drawn in salt. At the same time, I called on Neko’s augmenting power, turning his familiar’s magic into a sort of spotlight that caught on every particle of power.

The effect was to encase Raven and Emma in a shimmering force field, layer after layer of tiny particles. The piñon’s resin sank into their lungs. It coated their skin, their hair, every fiber of their beings, pulsing in time with their blood.

And because I’d charged the piñon with protecting me, those particles began to vibrate in time with my own magic, echoing my quest and amplifying my concerns. Wrapped in cocoons woven by me, Raven and Emma could not move, could not possibly break free. They were completely at my mercy.

I picked up the statuette of Hecate and folded my fingers around her soft curves. Walking to the eastern-most point of my circle, I traced the symbol for infinity above the salt border. As I closed the second loop, I chanted, “I call thee, watchers of the east, to guide me through the darkness and ensure my safety and the safety of my magicarium.” I took three long steps, until I stood at the southern point. There, I traced another sign for infinity and repeated my summons: “I call thee, watchers of the south, to guide me through the darkness and ensure my safety and the safety of my magicarium.” I repeated the invocation at the west and the north.

Returning to the altar, I passed the image of Hecate through the last of the smoke rising from the piñon. Clutching the statue with both hands, I chanted:

“In our midst some evil hides,

Reaching out from many sides.

Send away the one who lies,

Banish them and cut all ties.

Keeping close those who mean well

Forever more with us they’ll dwell.”

I picked up the ash wand and drew on the infinite power of the goddess, proclaiming, “So mote it be!”

When I touched the tip of the wand to Hecate’s brow, there was a flash of darkness, a heartbeat of nothingness when the entire world fell away. I had no body. I could not see my students, could not smell the redolent pine in the iron cauldron. I could not hear my own heart pounding or my lungs gasping for breath.

And then I blinked hard, and the darkness fell away. I was a woman, standing in my basement. I was a witch, staring at an altar. I was a magistrix, gazing at my students, who were looking back in calm silence, still on their feet, untouched by Hecate, unharmed by my spell.

Raven and Emma were safe. They were good. They were not the ones who’d brought Pitt into our midst.

David lowered his sword by a handbreadth. Neko stared at me reproachfully, as if he’d always known my first students would pass with flying colors.

“Holy crap,” Emma said, her voice flat with Midwestern vowels, her British affectation totally forgotten. “The other witches are going to have a heart attack when you do this to them.”

“Especially one,” Raven said, not bothering with her usual suggestive defiance. “Because someone is going to end up standing outside the circle.”

~~~

I couldn’t test each of my students the instant they returned from their Thanksgiving holiday. The protection spell I’d worked for Raven and Emma had required a huge amount of energy—more than I’d originally predicted. As soon as I’d wrapped up the working David had forced me into the kitchen, where he’d liberally administered turkey leftovers. Between exhaustion from our sleepless night, post-spell fatigue, and tryptophan, I nearly fell asleep at the kitchen table.

In fact, three days passed before David gave his approval for me to test another student. During the interim I protested, loudly and often, but he insisted that the risk of a traitor in our midst was less than the risk of my burning out my powers. Ordinarily, I would have appealed to Neko to help me out, but he wasn’t in the mood to side with me. He was too busy spending time with Tony, making it perfectly clear that
he
had never mistrusted the warder, that
he’d
had nothing to do with the piñon spell in the basement.

It wasn’t like David or Neko were the ones who had to change lesson plans. I worked hard to restructure all my magicarium classes. I certainly wasn’t going to work on group exercises like the candle-lighting spell, not until I’d finally found out who had betrayed us. Even if I had Raven and Emma solidly in my corner, I didn’t trust the three of us to be strong enough against an enemy who had outsmarted us so many times already.

Blanton House was too beautiful to burn to the ground. And I was pretty sure Teresa would hold me to our bargain—demanding David’s services, even if the mansion was suddenly wiped off the face of the earth.

And so, I waited until Wednesday before I tested my first new student. We’d spent the day working on building rapport with each other’s familiars. No overt spells were involved; instead, we concentrated on constructing communication bridges. I was surprised to find that I automatically changed my approach depending on the familiar I worked with. For Neko, of course, I could rely on the true bond between us; he
knew
my powers and managed always to be precisely where I needed him, astrally speaking.

With Hani, though, I reflexively took a more physical approach, leaning toward the brash man, increasing our physical proximity, even reaching out to touch him when I needed to draw him in. When I worked with Kopek, I unconsciously changed the pitch of my words. He was crestfallen so much of the time that I always felt I had to cheer him up. I manipulated the tone of my voice when I spoke to him, reaching out, bringing him into the circle of my working.

Once I became aware of the differences, I truly focused on them, and I encouraged my students to do the same. Some familiars needed visual stimulation—a hand woven through the air, a foot swinging rhythmically from a high stool. Others concentrated on sound—a hum deep in a witch’s chest, a finger tapping against a table. Still others were deeply affected by mood, by the perceived emotions behind every request to communicate.

It was a fascinating discovery, something I longed to delve into in much more detail. But even as I put us through our paces, I constantly had a refrain running through my head: I needed to find the traitor. I needed to mark the witch. She’d rested quiet for three days, how much longer would she be patient? What was she going to destroy next? I needed to find the traitor…

Over and over again, I reviewed my plan. And on Wednesday evening, I dismissed class after a long session in the large basement room, telling everyone to brush up on energy spells for the next day. As my students headed away, I sought out David’s eyes. He nodded once, a tight, controlled gesture, and then he looked up the stairs, toward the ground floor of the middle townhouse.

The door opened at the top of those stairs. Caleb and Tony came down, one behind the other. Each was dressed in black. They carried ceremonial swords, gleaming replacements for the one Caleb had broken while battling the orthros, for the one Tony had lost in the harpy’s fire. At David’s instruction, they moved to block the exits through the basement corridors.

“Alex,” I called, even as Raven and Emma fell in by my side. “Could you hold up a minute?”

She stopped in her tracks, immediately wary. Seta, her familiar, dropped back too.

Turning slowly, Alex settled her weight evenly on the balls of her feet. The spikes in her dyed black hair seemed to stiffen as she stared me down, and the overhead light glinted dully off the tight steel hoops strung through the cartilage of her ears. Her charcoal-limned eyes were wary as she said, “Magistrix?”

“I just have a few questions for you,” I said, purposely keeping my voice light.

For a moment, I thought she didn’t react at all, but then I heard a door slam somewhere above us. Feet pounded on the stairs, missing more than a few. Heavy boots stomped across the floor above us, and someone tugged on the locked door at the top of the stairs.

Garth—because it had to be Alex’s warder—didn’t waste time pounding on the door or demanding to be allowed entrance. Instead, those same heavy boots clomped overhead again. I wondered if the warders had had the foresight to lock all five of the front doors, and the back ones too. It didn’t matter. Eventually Garth would get into one of the other townhouses, and he’d make his way through the basement level to save his witch.