Magic and the Modern Girl (15 page)

“Just like Mount Vernon,” I confirmed.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll just take a moment to study it. While you change.”

“That would be great,” I said, trying not to let my gratitude color my words too much.

I darted inside and made short work of stripping off my colonial finery. Truth be told, I wasn’t the least bit sorry to be out of the heavy dress. I could not imagine how my eighteenth-century foremothers had managed August heat and heavy skirts, without the comfort of central air-conditioning.

I was just going to have to wear street clothes for the afternoon. Evelyn would not be pleased, but she could hardly expect me to spend the day parading around like the Milk Queen of Georgetown. I opened my closet and grabbed the first outfit that came to hand—black slacks and a silk blouse, cut to show off my minimal, coffee-free décolletage. The outfit used to be one of my favorites, but it had been a long time since I’d worn street clothes to the office. I slipped on a pair of kitten heels and started to cross the living room, ready to head out to lunch with my visiting architect.

As I walked by the stairs to the basement, though, I felt a twinge of guilt. Ariel. I should at least check on her, make sure that she was having no trouble working through my collection of crystals. It was so strange to have an anima to do my bidding. This must be what it was like to have a maid, or a cook—someone to take care of all those details of daily life that I just couldn’t be bothered to do.

I flipped on the overhead light before I descended the stairs. It was quiet in the basement, absolutely silent. “Ariel?” I called.

Nothing.

“Ariel? Are you okay?”

Nothing.

Nothing at all. I spun around my stark basement, eyes automatically darting to the nooks and crannies where a full-sized woman-spirit-magic-creature-thing could hide. Couch—bare leather, not a hint of occupation. Wardrobe—door ajar, ditto. Trunk—lid leaning against the wall, ditto yet again.

I tugged at my slacks, as if straightening the fabric could restore order to my life. With a sickening swoop in my belly, I realized that I was going to have to reach out to David and Neko again—easygoing colonial architect and lunch date be damned.

My anima had utterly and completely disappeared.

8

A
s it turned out, I didn’t reach David until the next day, when I called to leave my ninth voice mail message. My relief at finally talking to him was almost drowned out by my rage at his inaccessibility. When I demanded to know what he’d been doing, he merely said, “Working.” He refused to elaborate.

I explained what had happened, told him that Ariel had gone missing. I didn’t bother to say that I’d needed to make excuses to Will, babbling that I couldn’t go to lunch, that I’d only just remembered an important library meeting, complete with an imaginary board of trustees, so that he wouldn’t think I was blowing him off for nothing.

“Something must have gone wrong with the spell,” David said, stating the obvious.

“You knew something was wrong that night, didn’t you?”

He started to reply but then caught himself, hesitating just long enough that I was certain he was crafting an evasive response. For a split second, I thought about offering to drive up to his place, to talk to him in person. But then I realized that the absolute last thing I wanted to do was stand in that kitchen, to sit stiffly in that perfect living room. And there wasn’t a chance in hell that I’d be walking up those farmhouse stairs for anything else, anytime, ever. Better to soldier on over the phone.

“I saw it in your eyes,” I insisted. “After I worked the spell.”

He sighed. “I should have been able to feel her. To feel the anima.”

“What?” I was so surprised that he was admitting something, I couldn’t structure a coherent response. David was saying the same thing that I was. He should have felt Ariel after the working, the same way that I should have felt Neko.

“You know that I can feel you,” he continued to explain. “I can feel your magic. I know when you’re working a spell.” I made a wordless sound of agreement. I’d chafed often enough under his warder ability. “I should be able to feel the results of your spell, as well. Especially an anima that you created, an embodiment of your essential magic.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.” I could picture him running his hand through his hair. He’d completed the action in front of me often enough. “It’s almost as if a bond was cut. A tie was severed.”

I thought about the spell I had worked, the way that I had thought of David. I remembered the embarrassment of reliving those moments in his kitchen, the shame as I realized he was pushing me back, setting us—whatever “us” we were—aside. I had pushed David away from my thoughts as I awakened Ariel. I had skewed my magic to keep him from being part of my working.

Even as I closed my eyes, trying to will away my confusion, the chaos my magical mis-working had created, David said, “You know the parameters of magic, Jane. You offered up your thoughts, your voice, your spirit. Were those all true offerings? Were you absolutely focused on your working?”

“Of course!”

But I hadn’t been. I’d been distracted by my warder. My attention had wandered, to our indiscretion, and then to the stupid play that Melissa had told me about, to the damned poster. Empower The Arts. Well that was just stupid. “Of course,” I repeated, but I was a little less certain.

“I don’t know what to say, then. Have you tried to summon her?”

I had. I’d tried thinking her name, in the loudest silent voice I could manage. I’d tried ordering her to come home. I’d tried commanding her to serve as my spirit, as she was intended to do, from the moment I’d poured rune dust into my palm. And I’d been met with complete and utter silence. “Of course I’ve tried to summon her. There’s nothing there. Nothing at all.”

“What about Neko?”

“What
about
Neko? I can’t feel him, either. And he doesn’t even have the decency to keep voice mail on his phone. What sort of idiot doesn’t have voice mail?”

“You can’t feel him?” David asked, ignoring my question. For the first time, he sounded truly concerned. He might finally be through playing the dispassionate instructor, the cold analyst.

“I told you that, in the first dozen messages I left for you.”

“You didn’t leave a dozen messages.”

“Might as well have,” I muttered. But complaining wasn’t going to get me any closer to a solution. I tried to clarify, “I can feel that I
used
to feel him, if that makes any sense. I can feel that we used to be able to talk to each other, that I used to be able to reach out to him. But there isn’t anything there now. I don’t have any power!” The more I explained what was happening to me, the more frustrated I became, until my voice cracked on the last word. I cleared my throat and said, “You said creating the anima would make it all better. You have to do something!”

David paused for so long that I wondered if the phone had cut off. When he finally replied, his voice was grave. “There isn’t anything I can do. Not until we find Ariel.”

“Then look for her!”

“I will. I have contacts, obviously. I’ll let you know what turns up.”

“That’s all?”

He sighed, and I could picture him running his hand through his hair in familiar exasperation. “I don’t know what else I can do, Jane. I’ll reach out again to Neko. I’ll let him know what’s going on.”

“And in the meantime? I’m just supposed to go to work and act like nothing’s wrong?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

And that’s what it came down to. I didn’t have a better idea. I had no ideas at all.

So, for four straight days, I went in to work. An entire week of being a librarian, of sitting at my desk, of mentoring Kit and answering questions, and pretending that I was a totally ordinary woman, leading a totally ordinary life.

On Wednesday, I called Melissa to book mojito therapy for Friday night, but she begged off, reminding me, “Rob and I are going to
The Tempest
.”

“Don’t even mention that play to me.”

“Still no word, huh?” I’d told Melissa everything on Tuesday evening, over platefuls of Key Lime Locks and Cinnamon Smiles. It was a miracle that she didn’t need to roll me out the Cake Walk door.

“Nothing.”

“There’s an all-afternoon yoga session at the studio on Saturday. Way of the Warrior. You’ll find it really restful.”

“I’d find it really maddening, but thanks anyway.”

Friday night, I sat by the phone, waiting for it to ring. I actually used my cell to call my land-line twice, to make sure that the connection was working. How could everyone abandon me at the same time? No Neko. No David. And definitely no Will.

Not that Will had any real reason to call me. I’d given him my number when I made up my lie about the library board meeting, but he’d probably read through my storytelling. He probably felt utterly and completely snubbed, and I’d never hear from him again.

I went to bed at eight o’clock, pulling the pillow over my head to block out the last of the summer sunlight that peeked in my window.

I was sound asleep by nine o’clock, buried in one of those foggy, dream-bound places, where you can’t move, can’t see, can’t talk. I came to the surface slowly, opening my eyes to peer at my clock. The green numbers glowed patiently, but it took a long time for me to realize that it was still Friday night, that I’d only been asleep for an hour. It took me even longer to realize that I had been awakened by someone pounding on my front door.

“I’m coming!” I called as I shuffled across the living-room floor.

The racket didn’t make sense. Neko or David would have just come into the cottage; they both had full rights to disrupt my privacy, by the nature of our arcane commitment. I couldn’t imagine Ariel making so much noise, even if she had decided to come home.

My heart pounded as I thought of Gran—I hadn’t seen her in nearly a week. What if her excitement about the wedding had proven too much for her aged heart? What if she had collapsed at home, giving in to the lungs that had been weakened by pneumonia two autumns ago? What if she was lying in an emergency room even now, if police had been dispatched to bring me running, to let me kneel beside her bed, grab her hand, listen to her dying words?

I flung the door open and saw Melissa standing on my doorstep.

“Oh,” I said, letting the door frame bear my weight as relief crashed against me. “It’s you.”

“Yes, it’s me! Who did you think it was?”

“I thought that Gran—I mean, I thought that you weren’t Neko. Or David. I mean…” I rubbed at my face, muzzier than I should have been.

“Were you asleep?” Melissa sounded shocked.

“Yeah,” I admitted, looking down at my nightshirt and feeling vaguely ashamed. As if in surprise, Melissa sneezed. “Bless you,” I said. “Come on in. Every mosquito in D.C. is going to attack me if we leave the door open.”

Melissa closed the door behind her, and I led the way across the living room. “Jane!” she said, her voice raw with urgency. By now, my mind was working a little better. Melissa was supposed to be on her date with Rob Peterson. It must have self-destructed in a truly spectacular way, for her to report the disaster in person. “Jane!” she repeated, as I flipped on the kitchen light. “I found her! I found Ariel!”

“You what?” The words didn’t make any sense. Melissa wasn’t supposed to be looking for Ariel. Melissa was my mundane friend. She was ordinary. She was normal. She didn’t have any confusing witchcraft flowing through her blood. I told her my arcane problems, over and over and over again, but she didn’t have the ability to fix them. Still, any port in a storm. “Where?”

“Duke Ellington High School.”

“Duke—She was at the
play?
”

Melissa nodded, her smile so wide I thought she might burst out laughing. “On stage, front and center.”

“What happened?” I grabbed for a chair and sat down heavily. I was still having trouble waking up; the world felt blurry, smeared.

“Well, you know it was opening night tonight, right?”

“Not really,” I said.

“That’s why we went,” Melissa said, with a certain exasperation. “Rob’s on the board for the D.C. Arts Council.” She blushed. “He was the one who brought the poster into the shop in the first place. That’s why I knew about the show, when I asked him out.”

Rob was the one I could blame for all this. If he hadn’t brought the poster to Melissa, she never would have mentioned it. I wouldn’t have noticed the actor who looked like David, and I never would have strayed from my magical summoning when I created Ariel. Great. Just great.

Melissa tumbled on, apparently oblivious to the fact that there was any blame to spread around. “Well, we were sitting there watching the opening scene. You know, the shipwreck, with all the shouting and confusion?”

I nodded. I hadn’t seen the play in years, but the first scene was one of those classic Shakespeare moments—a shipwreck! Live! On stage! I could only imagine what an Elizabethan audience must have felt. Certainly they would have been more enthralled than my impatient twenty-first-century self.

“Well, that’s when it happened.”

“When
what
happened?”

“When the play was interrupted. Miranda was talking about how the only thing she could remember from her childhood were the women who used to take care of her. It was weird—the language of the production was all updated, so she sounded like a whiny suburban reject from
High School Musical
. I half expected her to break into a song about how Prospero had never understood her.”

“But what
happened?
”

“All of a sudden, in the middle of one of Miranda’s lines, this woman walked on stage.”

“This woman?”

“Your Ariel.”

“What?”

“She looked just like you described her. She was really tall—like she could be a model or something. Her skin was so white it glowed in the theater. All I could think of was marble. And her hair was black. It almost disappeared in the stage lights.”

My heart pounded as Melissa completed her recitation. Tall, thin, pale. Black hair. “What was she wearing?”