Girl's Guide to Witchcraft (4 page)

A half dozen responses crashed through my mind. “What do you know about shoes?” I started to ask. That got pushed aside by “What just happened?” And “Did I really see what I think I saw?” And “What are you doing in my basement?” And “How did you get in here?” And “Are you really a familiar?” Spluttering, I settled for “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Neko, darling.”

“Neko? Just Neko? How about a last name?” Or
was
that his last name? I realized I was gaping, and it wasn’t any more attractive here in my basement than it was when Melissa and I went out to Le Bar, and I couldn’t think of a reply when the guy making martinis flirted with me. Like
that
happened on a regular basis.

“Just Neko,” he said. He looked around the room and clicked his tongue in patent disapproval. “Oh, my! You
have
let things slip, haven’t you?”

My cheeks flushed, even though I didn’t have any reason to be ashamed of the basement. Once a librarian, always a librarian, I guess. The cascading books did make me feel vaguely uneasy. Like I’d been caught red-handed ducking out of work early, leaving part of my job undone.

Wait.

A statue of a cat had just transformed into a living, breathing man before my very eyes, and I was worried about shelving books according to the Dewey Decimal system? I shook my head. “Just a second,” I said. “Before you start to criticize me, let’s get a couple of things straight. First, I take it you’re a familiar?”

“And I take it you’re a witch.”

“No, I’m a librarian.”

“Who just happens to work spells. No need to be coy with me, girlfriend.”

“I didn’t work a spell! I just read some words in that book!”

Neko stalked around the book stand, viewing the volume from all angles. He wrinkled his nose, as if he could smell something unpleasant steaming up from the pages. He cocked his head when he’d completed his circuit. “And you just happened to have a beeswax taper in your hand when you read it? And sheer coincidence made you offer up the powers of your mind, your voice and your heart? Then trace the letters with your finger? You don’t read
everything
out loud, do you? Not very good librarian behavior, that.”

I looked at the candle, almost surprised to find that I still held it. “This is all some joke, right? Did Melissa put you up to this?”

“Who is Melissa?”

He truly sounded puzzled. So puzzled that I didn’t even bother asking about Evelyn. Or Gran. No one else would have had the time to pull together this prank. Even if they’d known I was moving into the cottage. Even if they’d known how to transform a cat into a man.

But if it wasn’t a prank…

I suddenly felt weak in my knees. Was he a madman? Was he dangerous? He didn’t
seem
likely to harm me, but what could I truly know? I didn’t think that I was actually going to faint—I’d
never
fainted—but sitting down suddenly seemed like a really good idea. And a shot of vodka was an even better one. My voice shook as I asked, “Can you come upstairs?”

“Can a drag queen sing?”

Well, could a drag queen sing? I have to admit I wasn’t an expert on the subject. I mean, I’d seen
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
—it was a campy staple at grad school. I was a big fan of Bugs Bunny, and it seemed like he spent half his time in a dress and lipstick.

But Neko was asking a rhetorical question. I didn’t need to give an actual reply. Instead, I turned around and walked upstairs, clutching the railing and trying not to feel too paranoid about the flamboyantly gay, black-clad, feline familiar stalking behind me.

In the kitchen, I finally blew out my candle and dropped it onto the tile counter. I opened up the freezer and fished out the bottle of Stoli that I’d stashed there after the last run from my old apartment. “Drink?” I asked, as I tried to remember where I’d put the glasses.

Neko made a small moue of distaste. Apparently Stoli wasn’t his alcohol of preference. Tough luck for him. I found the tumblers on my third try—second cabinet to the left of the sink.

“Do you have anything to eat?” he asked. “It’s been a while since my last meal.”

The clear bottle rattled against the glass as I poured. “Not much. I haven’t been to the grocery store yet.”

The grocery store. Here I was, standing in my kitchen in the middle of the night, discussing my larder with an apparition that I’d summoned to life through the power of an ancient spell book.

Yeah. Right.

I downed a large swallow of vodka and poured another. The Russian heat burned down my throat, and I resisted the urge to shake my head and gasp.

Anxious for something to keep my hands busy, anything, I picked up the candle. I tested the wick to make sure that it was cool, and I tossed it back into the emergency supplies box. It landed against one of the cans of tuna. Hmm…tuna? “I’ve got this.”

“That will have to do,” Neko said, but he smiled as he craned his neck, examining the cartoon fish on the squat can’s label.

I dug out my can opener, secretly pleased that I remembered which drawer held the tool. As I cranked the handle, Neko leaned closer. He wove his head back and forth as I worked the opener, and I thought that I heard a gurgle deep in his throat. Or was that a purr?

I pressed the detached lid back into the can and started to drain the packing water into the sink. “No!” Neko cried, and I jumped back. “What are you doing?”

“Um, draining the tuna?”

“That’s the best part!”

I looked at him as if he were truly crazy, but he was dancing back and forth beside me. I wondered how long it had been since he’d eaten, how long he’d been frozen as a statue in my basement. Could it be decades? Centuries? How much did he know about canned tuna, anyway? And packing water? What exactly was going on here?

I put the can down on the counter and reached for a fork. Before I could hand him the utensil, Neko pounced on the food. I looked away, disgusted by his slurping directly from the can. Before I could say anything, there was a pounding knock at the door.

Neko glanced up. “You’d better get that.”

“Who could it be?” I shot a look at my watch. “It’s three-twenty in the morning.”

“It’ll be the warder.”

“The warder?” I couldn’t tell if my voice broke because of the strange word, or because Neko had already emptied the contents of the can. “Be careful!” I said, as he started to lick the lid. “You’ll cut yourself!”

“Warder,” Neko repeated, reluctantly setting the container on the counter. It was clean enough that I could set it out for recycling. The knocking resumed. “They don’t like to be kept waiting. If you’re lucky, you’ll get one of the luscious ones.”

I glanced down at my flannel pj’s and my bunny-shod feet. No time to dress for this meeting, “luscious warder” or not. I settled for kicking off my slippers and grabbing my Polarfleece blanket from the back of the couch. I draped the throw around my shoulders and pulled it close at my neck. I was sure that some glamorous movie star could have pulled off the look, but I felt like a barefoot little girl playing dress-up.

The pounding resumed, and I hollered, “I’m coming!”

I crossed to the door and waited for Neko to come stand beside me. After all, he seemed to have some idea who was out there. The amazing cat-man, though, only hovered in the kitchen doorway. He scratched at his jaw and said, “He’ll only get angrier if you make him wait.”

Clutching my blanket close, I threw the deadbolt and opened the door.

The man who swept in looked like he had escaped from a movie set. He was tall—he had a good foot on me. His dark hair swooped to silver on his temples, and he wore it a little long. He was clean-shaven, not even wearing the sideburns that Ashton Kutcher had made all the rage. His eyes were probably brown, but it was hard to tell because his pupils were enlarged from the nighttime dark. He wore a well-tailored suit of charcoal-gray, cut to accentuate his height, and his white dress shirt was open at the neck. The tendons on either side of his throat strained like metal cables.

He filled his lungs, and Neko took a mincing step back into the kitchen. The newcomer whirled toward me. If he’d been wearing a cape, it would have swirled out behind him. “What the devil do you think you’re doing? Awakening a familiar on the night of a full moon?”

“What the devil?” I actually laughed out loud. It wasn’t that the words were actually so funny. It was just that I’d never heard anyone use them before. Not in real life, in real anger. They sounded too high-flown, too Mr. Rochester or Heathcliff or someone like that.

My amusement probably wasn’t the response he expected. I think that I was supposed to fall to my knees, cowering in terror. This guy was accustomed to people—to witches?—being afraid of him. “What the devil?” I repeated, and I closed the door behind him.

“What is your name?” he demanded.

“You’re the one pushing your way into my house,” I said, trying to ignore the fact that my feet were getting cold on the hardwood floor. “Don’t you think you should tell me yours first?”

He glanced at Neko, who gave a slight shrug. Even if my, um, familiar wanted to provide this stranger with information, he couldn’t. The warder eyed me evenly and said, “I am David Montrose.”

“Jane Madison,” I said, extending my hand. As soon as I said it, I wished that I hadn’t given him my last name. If we’d been in a bar, I would have just said, “Jane.” He shook my hand, but he seemed a bit surprised. Seizing the moment, I pushed my glasses back up on the bridge of my nose. “What are you doing here at three-thirty in the morning?”

“I’m one of Hecate’s warders.” The words meant nothing to me. “I was summoned by your unlicensed working tonight.”

“My unlicensed working…You mean reading from that book downstairs?”

“The spell book?” he said, and even if he meant it to be a statement, it actually came out like a question. “The
Compendium?
” He must have heard his tentative tone, because he cleared his throat and said, “You worked a spell without first registering with the Coven.” There. Now he sounded like the big bad wolf, and I had no doubt that he could huff, and puff, and blow my house down, or whatever else warders did when bad witches forgot to register and awakened familiars on the night of a full moon.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t know what this is all about.” I looked over at Neko, who obligingly nodded his head in agreement.

“She really doesn’t,” he said to Montrose. “The poor thing doesn’t know much of anything at all. Just look at those glasses—can you believe how wrong they are for her face?”

“Thanks.” I scowled at him, but he only turned his palms toward me—a universal gesture for “what else do you want from me?”

“You expect me to believe that?” Montrose’s words remained aggressive, but his tone wavered again. I thought he was beginning to realize that I wasn’t some dark, mysterious pirate sailing the witchcraft seas. I was a totally lost amateur, hoping that my Sunfish sailboat didn’t drift too far past the pier.

“I don’t expect you to believe anything!” I said. “Look. I’ll tell you what happened, but I’m not going to get down on my knees and beg your forgiveness. I didn’t do anything wrong.” Montrose opened his mouth, clearly planning to quote section and verse from some volume on witchcraft infractions, but I went on before he could interrupt. “Go on. Go sit in the kitchen. I’m putting on some real clothes, and I’ll meet you in there.”

Montrose stared at me in obvious surprise. I don’t think that anyone had ever told him where he should go and when he should do it. I confirmed my suspicion when I caught Neko staring at me, a look of theatrical horror widening his eyes.

“Neko?” I asked. “Do you know how to put on the teakettle?” He nodded, apparently unable to find his voice. “Good. The tea is in the pantry. Top right shelf.” I turned toward my room, pleased at having taken control of the situation. Then, I remembered. “No. Not right. Left.” Back to my room. “Wait! Second shelf from the top.”

“I’ll find the tea,” Neko said, as if he were more afraid to deal with a crazed homeowner who had lost her tea bags than he was to confront Hecate’s warder. Whatever the hell that meant.

Back in my bedroom, I shut my door carefully, making sure that the latch snicked all the way closed. When I was reasonably certain that the cavalry wasn’t going to come barging in, I tore off my flannel pajamas. My shorts and T-shirt from earlier in the day were crumpled on the floor, but there was no way I was going to confront Montrose—or anyone else—in those stinky things. I flung open my closet door and reached for the first hanger.

A black silk blouse. French cuffs. No way that I was going to find cufflinks at this late hour.

Next up was a knit dress, more or less unwrinkled after its transport on the backseat of Gran’s car. I slipped it off its hanger and shook it out, cringing at the loud noise when it snapped in midair. I fumbled for a bra, swore when the straps twisted into a knot, and bit the inside of my cheek when the hooks tangled on the wrong eyelets.

This was ridiculous. I’d been dressing myself for how many years? I just needed to slow down. Take my time. Forget that I’d turned a giant cat statue into a man and summoned some sort of cosmic cop to my doorstep. Easy.

I tugged the dress over my head and decided that I wasn’t going to fight panty hose and shoes, cold toes or not. With any luck, Montrose would be out of the house before he noticed the oversight.

Fat chance. When I walked into the kitchen, Neko immediately stared at my feet. “Would you like me to get your slippers?” he asked, glancing at the bunny ears that were just visible behind the couch.

“No. Thank you.” I made my reply frosty. At least, he had managed to find the tea bags. And the sugar.

“You don’t have any cream,” he said, and he made it sound like a mortal sin.

“I drink mine black.” I hoped to convey the fact that I wasn’t running an all-night diner. Neko looked wounded. Montrose was not amused.

The water was just coming to a boil, so I used the routine of making tea to cover my apprehension. I rescued three mugs from the shelf above the sink and found a teaspoon and saucer to hold our used tea bags. I poured boiling water into the mugs. I gestured to the tin table in the kitchen and waved the men to their seats.