Joy of Witchcraft (26 page)

I nodded grimly and extended a finger toward the corner where the steely remains from David’s reappearance were swirling into nothingness. Now that I knew where to look, I couldn’t imagine not seeing the vortex before, not being aware of it every single moment I’d spent in Blanton House.

But for everyday magic, I never worried about the drop or two of magic left over at the end. There was always
some
dusting of power left behind, part of the ordinary cost of a working.

And I certainly didn’t keep my eyes open for magical signatures, for the unique appearance of anyone’s magic. No witch did. Signatures didn’t matter in standard witchcraft. Signatures hadn’t mattered until I developed my own brand of communal magic.

To Clara’s credit, she didn’t waste time chatting. Instead, she pushed up the sleeves of her chartreuse and neon pink caftan. She rolled her head once clockwise, once counter-clockwise. And she extended her senses toward the device.

I watched the emerald glow of her astral energy as she lobbed a gout of power toward the thing in the corner. She shuddered as her energy came in contact with the vortex’s outer strands.

David’s hand lashed out, ready to pull her back, but she shook off his attention. Catching the tip of her tongue between her teeth, she edged forward. I watched her pour out more of her power, purposely
feeding
the funnel.

I extended my own powers to taste the anomaly, to study how it worked. Growing fat with energy, the magical streamers reached farther into the room, centering on Clara. A pair of tentative strands stretched longer, thinner still, drifting toward my relatively minimal contribution of power.

With a terse nod, Clara reeled in her emerald stream. The tendrils responded, drawing back to their own center. Once again, I watched the device swirl away, chewing up the last fragments of energy left behind by Clara’s exploration. My own debris followed, spinning into nothingness.

Clara stepped back and dusted off her palms. “Well she finally built it.”

“Who’s
she
?”

“Maria Hernandez,” Clara said, as if she were stating the obvious.

“Who?”

“The Oak Canyon Coven Mother.”

I shook my head. “What did she build?”

“A NWTA,” Clara said.

As in so many conversations with my mother, I felt as if I’d entered somewhere in the middle. I tried to ease back a couple of steps. “I thought a NWTA was a living arrangement.”

“It is,” Clara agreed. “But it’s intended to mirror a magical system. A way for sisters to share energy, to provide power to witches with limited resources.”

“But how did Oak Canyon get involved?”

“I’m not sure. But it’s not just Maria I sense there. Teresa Alison Sidney had something to do with this as well. And half a dozen others. It must take a lot of power to make these.”

“
These
?” I seized on the plural.

“This one is part of a network. Can’t you feel it?” Clara stepped back to peer at the ceiling. “There’s one in the room above here.” One of the empty bedrooms. “And a third directly above that.”

Bree made a strangled noise. The third drain was in her own room.

Clara spread her hands in front of her. “There are dozens more, all through the house. Can’t you feel them?”

I edged a finger of awareness into the empty room upstairs. Now that I knew what to look for, I
could
make out the presence of a drain. I started to extend my search, but that action generated a handful of sparks for the funnel in this room. I snapped off my power immediately, unwilling to feed my enemies.

Bree, though, purposely extended her hands over the device. With a steady determination, she sifted her magic over the thing, sprinkling awareness like a gardener passing dirt through a sieve. After a long moment, she pulled back, letting the rich brown remnants of her search spin into nothingness.

She shook her head. “I can feel the energy of the witches who made it. But my Coven Mother isn’t there. Butte Coven isn’t involved.”

I turned to David. “These must have been placed here after we found the bugs.”

He nodded. “Your Display Word would have shown them.”

I finally understood why Teresa had bothered planting her obvious bugs in Blanton House. She’d counted on David and me growing over-confident after we found those devices. All the time her real goal had been planting the vortexes. And we’d waltzed into her trap.

“Then someone set these after we moved in…” I trailed off, because the answer was too obvious. Too terrifying. There was only one witch whose loyalty hadn’t yet been tested.

“Cassie,” David said.

Cassie had brought the NWTAs into Blanton House. She wasn’t just working for Pitt, releasing monsters in our rituals. She was working for the Coven Mothers, too.

With a few sharp commands, David deployed the other warders. In seconds, Clara, Bree, and I were surrounded by a protective phalanx. Neko and Perd huddled close.

Like a trained army, we made our way out of the parlor. We took the stairs to the basement, and we marched to the last townhouse that comprised Blanton House. We surged up to the kitchen, into the foyer, up to the bedrooms on the second floor.

With each step, I recognized more facts about my enemy. Of course Cassie had set up residence in the fifth townhouse; it was the farthest from the rooms I shared with David. She could work mostly unobserved at this distance.

I found an energy drain in the basement corner of the fifth building, and another in the parlor. But there was none on the second floor. Cassie hadn’t allowed her own power to be harvested.

Her bedroom door was open.

My heart galloped as we approached. I realized I was already picturing Cassie standing in a ray of lamplight, her braids picked out by the golden glow, her freckles highlighted on her pale cheeks. Even with everything I’d learned, I still thought of her as an innocent, as a child playing at being a witch.

“Zach?” she called as a floorboard squeaked. “Is that you?”

“No,” I said, even as David led the charge into her room.

She gasped in shock, a strangled sound that was half a scream. Her wide eyes darted from David’s sword—once again out of its sheath—to me, to the pair of silent warders who brought up the rear of our entourage. She edged into a corner, putting the upright of her four-poster bed between us.

Licking her lips, she darted her gaze toward the tall-boy dresser on the far wall. I wondered what magical tools she’d stowed there. I could see her fingers twitching to use them.

I stepped forward and raised my hands above my head, pointing at the traitor in our midst. “Cassandra Finch, I hereby summon you in the name of Hecate to answer charges of corruption against the magicarium known as the Jane Madison Academy.”

“I—” Her first attempt at a reply was strident, but she immediately softened her tone. Her lips trembled as she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I loaded steel into my voice. “You have betrayed your sisters, Cassandra Finch. You have caused physical and emotional pain to the students of the Jane Madison Academy. You have sabotaged our workings. You have destroyed property, and you have threatened the destruction of the unique magical resource that is the Osgood collection.”

She was crying now. Her fingers opened and closed in front of her, like a child trying to gather lost toys. “You’re wrong, Magistrix. There must be some mistake.”

Clara made a soft sound at the back of her throat, her face softening as Cassie cowered behind the bed. The emotion wasn’t lost on Cassie. My erstwhile student pleaded, “Please, Clara. You worked with us while we tried to light the candle. You know me. You know my powers. I would never do anything to hurt the magicarium.”

“Address your words to me, Witch.” I snapped out the command, as much to remind Clara of what was at stake as to discipline the traitor. “Tell me how you worked with Norville Pitt to destroy your sisters. Tell me how you worked with Teresa Alison Sidney.”

“Please,” Cassie sobbed. “Clara… Bree…” She turned her attention to the only other witch in the room. “We all worked together. You saw everything that happened.
Zach
was hurt when that…thing attacked us on the beach.
Zach’s
arm was broken.
Zach
was injured, not Luke or David, not any of the others.”

Bree was made of sterner stuff than Clara. She shook her head and said, “Crocodile tears, Cass.” Before the traitor could wail a protest, Bree scuffed her toe against the floor. “Damn. Not even crocodile tears. You’re not really crying.”

And Bree was right. Cassie’s cheeks were dry, no matter how hard her breath caught in her throat. The last shred of my doubt was destroyed. I was prepared to use my magistrix power to its utmost, to place Cassie under bond until Hecate’s Court could hear the charges against her. I stiffened my wrists, the better to cascade my power as a net, as golden bonds to restrain Cassie until David’s more mundane tools could complete the job. I took a single step back, to keep the angle right, to focus my power. I filled my lungs.

And a flash of darkness filled the corner.

My mind understood what was happening before my eyes could translate the scene. Cassie’s words had not been idle; she had not merely been pleading her case. Each repetition of Zach’s name had been a summons, a cry of witch to warder.

He’d used his own magical powers to travel into the room from across the hall, or wherever he’d been in Blanton House. He had his good arm wrapped around Tupa’s neck, dragging the familiar even as he materialized next to Cassie. Tupa bleated in surprise when he saw everyone arrayed against his mistress; he reached out his tiny hands to offer aid to his witch.

Cassie grabbed onto those fingers, clutching them like a woman drowning in a well. Zach shifted his weight, pulling his casted arm around to offer some semblance of protection. He pulled witch and familiar closer to his chest, and then he nodded his head, triggering his warder’s magic.

All three blinked out of existence.

David roared in frustration, leaping into the corner. Luke followed on his heels, immediately kneeling and spreading his palms to the floor. Caleb circled behind us witches, edgy and dangerous, even though no direct threat remained.

Luke started a steady stream of curses, each phrase more colorful than the last as he expanded the circle of his awareness. He ended with a speculation on Zach’s heritage, a hell of a lot more exotic than the Greek monsters Cassie had summoned into our midst. Bree finally stepped forward, gentling her warder with a firm hand on his shoulder.

Heartsick, I led everyone downstairs. We crossed through the basement to the first townhouse, and we gathered in the parlor, collapsing onto the formal couches and chairs. Before I could figure out what to say, Tony strode into the room, his lips set in a grim line. “They’re gone.”

Skyler. He meant Skyler and Siga and Jeffrey had departed.

I closed my eyes as David filled him in on all that had happened. Somewhere along the way, Alex and Garth came in. Neko must have reached out to Seta, summoning the group. Emma and Raven arrived too, their familiars in tow.

It didn’t matter that they missed the beginning of the story. They heard the end. They knew Cassie had betrayed us. That she was gone. Safe beyond our reach.

Raven recovered first. “So? What do we do now?” she asked.

Before I could fashion an answer, the tall case clock began its slow toll of midnight. At the same time, chimes sounded in the foyer—the doorbell, in a five-note pattern. Someone who didn’t belong inside the magicarium. Someone who David hadn’t cleared as a friend.

Sick with dread, I followed my warder into the hall. No good guest arrived this late at night. As the entire magicarium gathered behind us, David raised his bare sword and nodded for Neko to open the door.

Ethan Beck stood on the doorstep. Teresa Alison Sidney’s warder was immaculate in a navy pinstripe suit. A heavy sword hung low on his hips, suspended from a well-worn leather belt that somehow contrived to look normal. If Ethan was surprised by his armed reception, he gave no sign. Instead, he directed his gaze to David.

“David Montrose,” he said. “By your bonds as a warder of Hecate, I summon you to fulfill your oath. Teresa Alison Sidney requires your attendance.”

“No!” I cried, clutching David’s arm. “You can’t go now!”

David’s fingers were firm on mine. “I have no choice.”

I turned to Ethan, already knowing my pleas were futile. “Let me talk to Teresa. Let me explain.”

He didn’t even bother to shake his head. “Your warder is bound, Magistrix.” Of course he granted me my title. He was reminding me that Teresa had made possible the very continuation of the Jane Madison Academy. David had seen to that when he’d struck his obscene bargain.

One day—that was the deal David had brokered. Twenty-four hours.

We needed to track down Cassie. We needed to fight Teresa and Maria Hernandez, all the other Coven Mothers who had planted the NWTAs. I needed to testify before the inquest.

“All will be well,” he’d said before he knelt in front of Teresa, his back to the harpy-spawned flames.

He’d lied.

Now David said to Ethan, “Let me change clothes, and we can be on our way.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Of course it wasn’t necessary. Ethan was dressed as if he’d stepped off the runway in Milan. David looked like he’d been cleaning gutters—he wore faded jeans and a black T-shirt, the better for handling his sword in close quarters. The contrast worked to Ethan’s undisputed advantage. Without a visible sign of resignation, David reached for the buckle on his sword belt, ready to leave it behind.

“You can keep your weapon,” Ethan said.

David froze. I looked from his startled face to Ethan’s. All of us—the man on my porch and every last person crowding into the foyer behind me—knew Teresa Alison Sidney had been stealing power from my magicarium. She was our sworn enemy, had been from the moment I’d refused to join her prestigious coven.

It made no sense that David would be allowed to keep his weapon.