Magic and the Modern Girl (27 page)

“Wait until you see the whalebone,” I said.

“Whalebone?” he whispered, and I heard a hint of comic despair.

For just a moment, I considered showing him the costume’s remaining secrets, right then, right there, in the middle of my basement, surrounded by the instruments of my wayward astral power. Glancing around, though, I realized that the only convenient horizontal surface was the cracked black leather couch.

We could do better than that, surely.

I clutched Will’s fingers with my right hand and gathered up my skirts in my left. “Come on, modern man. I’ll show you what strong stuff our colonial foremothers were made of.”

Upstairs, Will tumbled beside me on my bed. I wished that I had enough magical stock to charm my clothes off my body, to undo the buttons and the clasps, to spirit my hoops and silk and lace across the room. I wanted to tweak my body, to work the contraceptive spell that I had mastered once before.

I twinged as I thought of that other magical working, though. I didn’t want to remember that mistake. I didn’t want to think about David. I didn’t want to think about magic, or the arcane world, or Hecate’s Court, or warders or familiars. I didn’t want to think about everything that might be lost to me forever.

Instead, I wanted to think about a real, human man—not just think, but I wanted to act. I fumbled in my nightstand drawer, digging out a tiny foil packet. The technology of man would work, where the magic of woman faltered.

For the record, Will figured out the mechanics of the costume in very short order.

14

I
woke up early.

I squinted at the clock and saw that it was not yet seven o’clock. I lay in bed with my comforter pulled up around my shoulders, lulled by the warm pocket between my sheets, by the perfect softness of my pillows. I could hear myself breathing—deep, quiet breaths that sent me back toward the grassy hill of sleep.

Until I remembered.

I froze, listening, double-checking that someone was breathing beside me. That
Will
was breathing beside me.

Nothing.

Already starting to swear inside my head, I rolled over, not even bothering to take the comforter with me, in a coy, seductive fashion.

Nothing. Zippo. Nada.

Oh, sure, the sheets were kicked around. The pillow bore an imprint; a head had clearly rested there during the night. My bedroom door was open, giving me a clear shot of the bathroom door—also open—and the basement door—closed, just the way I’d left it when Will and I returned from my little downstairs peep show into the wonders of witchcraft.

I could also see half the living room. Half the empty living room. Half the deserted, abandoned, dried-up, useless, stupidly trusting living room.

Wait. The living room wasn’t any of those things. I must have been thinking about something else.

I threw myself out of bed, barely bothering to tug on a pair of ratty sweatpants and a worn T-shirt. I slammed into the kitchen, fighting not to throw dishes onto the floor when I saw the remnants of our late-night supper, eaten between giggles and gossip, between secrets and sex. We’d devoured every last strand of spaghetti, but the kitchen still smelled of olive oil and the garlic that I had gleefully crushed into the single bowl that we’d shared. A green canister of Kraft parmesan cheese stood on the counter, a proud soldier saluting a simple, laid-back life that my familiar would never have embraced when he’d lived downstairs. Neko would have had fine hand-shaved parmesan, or gone without.

Gone without.

Now there was an idea I could have embraced.
Should
have embraced. What the hell had I been thinking? How had I believed that I could trust Will? How could I believe that he would be waiting for me in the morning, smiling and eager, ready to continue where we’d left off the night before? Why did I waste the last of my failing powers on proving something to him?

I’d made this mistake before. Made it more times than I cared to remember. Made it often enough that I should just cash in all my chips and move into a convent. Yeah, the praying and the singing and the worshiping stuff might get old, but at least I wouldn’t have anyone tempt me into making an absolute, aching idiot out of myself.

I realized that my head was pounding. Somewhere in the course of the evening, we’d finished off Neko’s wine, and we’d opened another bottle that I’d somehow kept secret beneath the sink. The alcohol, combined with the carb overload, made me feel sick to my stomach.

Coldly, mechanically, I salvaged a glass from a cabinet. I didn’t bother with ice cubes. Warm tap water was good enough for me. All that I deserved.

I glanced at the clock on the stove. I could call Melissa. She’d have the bakery open by now.

But I realized that I didn’t want to call my best friend. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to repeat tales of my hopeful, naive stupidity. Besides, Melissa’s boyfriend, the cherubic Rob Peterson, was likely sitting right beside her. She’d have to counsel me in front of him, or code her answers into something that would make me feel even more ridiculous than I already did.

I collapsed onto one of my ladder-back chairs and crossed my arms on the kitchen table. There was a time when I would have cried. There was a time when I would have taken weeks out of my life, mourning the relationship that I’d thought I had, teasing myself by dissecting and resecting what I thought had been a romance.

Now, though, I was more mature. More restrained. More accustomed to my own fallibility, and the certain disaster of the men I chose to bring into my life.

I was resigned. I could take a shower. I could head over to the Peabridge, even though it was a Saturday. There was plenty of work to be done, however boring it might be. Shelf-reads. Filing. Updating the catalog. I could pull on my colonial costume, dash some blush across my cheekbones, slap some lipstick on my smile and pretend as if nothing had happened, as if nothing was wrong.

And if that weasel dared set foot inside the library, if he dared come into the Peabridge with his requests for federalist gardens or mock wooden paneling…I’d sic Evelyn on him. That’s what I’d do. I’d tell him that he was on his own, as far as our collection was concerned, but that he was welcome to talk to my boss about his research needs. I wouldn’t even offer up Kit. Kit was too good for a traitor like Will.

I pushed away from the table and threw my shoulders back. I actually dusted my palms against each other, like I was casting off physical detritus from the destruction of my so-called love life.

I needed to do something to prove to myself that I was serious, to pound into my poor little brain the truth—the absolute truth—that I was done with Will, done with men, done with the notion of romance altogether. I needed cleansing, a spiritual release that would let my mind, and body, too, know that everything was going to be different now, everything was going to be new.

Yoga.

That’s what had gotten me into this mess in the first place. Melissa and her stupid special class. The smooth-talking instructor and her ridiculous Eagle Pose.

But I wasn’t a total loser. I’d accomplished other yoga poses before. I could do them again.

In fact, it was morning. The sun had risen. I could do a sun salutation with the best of them. I could prove—to myself and to anyone else I chose to tell—that I greeted the day with a perfect balance of peace and harmony, of joyous acceptance of my place in the universe.
Namaste
, and all that crap.

I hurried into the living room, the only space in my little cottage large enough for a full-fledged announcement of my yogic freedom. I pushed one of the hunter-green couches toward the wall, and then I hefted the coffee table on top, freeing up the entire oval rag rug in the center of the room. My yoga mat was buried somewhere in my closet. No reason to dig for it, when I was on such a roll.

I started out on all fours, arching my back into Cat Pose, then sinking it toward the floor in Cow. I concentrated on my breathing, turning my anger and frustration into smooth, measured inhales and exhales.

From Cow, I stood and centered myself for sun salutations. I was pretty sure that I could remember the sequence—the instructor had coached me through it often enough at that torture chamber of a yoga studio.

Mountain, standing straight and tall, hands in prayer position as I took three deep breaths. Hands up, sweeping over my head as I arched my back, then folded down to put my head against my knees. Well, as close to my knees as I could get, after a late night and too much wine. Lunge and another inhale as I stepped back with one foot, and Plank as I settled into the new pose. A trembling push-up as I launched into Stick, then released the pose into Upward-Facing Dog.

And then, my old friend, Downward-Facing Dog. The yoga instructor insisted, every time I struggled with the pose, that it was relaxing. Rejuvenating. Refreshing.

I knew better. It was uncomfortable. Ungraceful. Unsustainable.

I forced myself into the triangle form, pushing my butt into the air as I stretched forward with my palms and fought to lengthen my calves so that my heels could touch the rug. Relaxing, my ass.

Which would really, rather comically, have been the point, if my front door had not swung open at just that moment.

I toppled sideways onto the rug, bending at the knees to break my fall. I could already feel my cheeks flushing as I scrambled around to face the doorway. There were a limited number of people who would just enter the cottage without knocking—David, and Neko, maybe Melissa in a pinch.

And Will. Apparently.

Will, who glanced at the shifted couch and the coffee table, and my very un-Zen rag rug. “So, let me guess. You were the ringer in that yoga class we took.”

“You came back!”

He displayed a grocery bag. “I went to get breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” I sounded like I was learning a new language from Berlitz.

“I wasn’t sure what you’d want, so I got a lot more than I should have. I thought I couldn’t go wrong with bagels—sesame, pumpernickel, egg and everything. Which is your favorite?”

“Sesame,” I said weakly.

“I didn’t know if you were a cream cheese person or butter.”

“Butter,” I whispered, and then I found my true voice. “Why didn’t you leave me a note?”

“A note?”

“Saying that you’d gone. Saying that you’d be back.”

“I didn’t think—” He cut himself off. Understanding washed over his face, as visible as the tide rising on a dry and sandy beach. “I didn’t think,” he repeated, sounding miserable as he shrugged his shoulders. “I thought I’d be back before you got up. I didn’t realize that I’d have to go to a different place to get jelly. And to get anything other than orange juice.”

“Orange juice?” I asked, trying to keep from shaking my head, to keep from physically acknowledging the wall of relief that soared in front of me. I scrambled to my feet.

He still sounded like his favorite puppy had run away from home. “I didn’t know if you liked orange juice. I stopped to get apple, too. And grapefruit.”

A smile played at the corner of my lips. “Apple’s the best.”

“And I got dessert-from-breakfast, too. A cinnamon pull-apart.”

It wouldn’t be as good as anything that Melissa made, but I certainly wasn’t going to disillusion him now. “Dessert-from-breakfast is the best meal of the day.” I led him into the kitchen, started reaching for plates and silverware as he unpacked his bounty onto the kitchen table.

“You really thought I’d left?” He sounded wounded.

“I just—”

“And the first thing you did was yoga?”

Well, when he said it that way, it sounded totally and completely absurd to me, too. I tried to explain once, twice and a third time, but then I gave up and settled into our breakfast feast. After we finished eating, he helped me move the coffee table and the couch back into place in the living room. His kiss tasted like orange juice when he offered to help me make the bed. We didn’t get very far in that enterprise.

Saturday bled into Sunday, which shifted into Monday morning. When Will left for his own apartment and work, I found myself suddenly lonely, wandering from bedroom to living room to kitchen and back again, without any mission, without any conscious thought.

I was more tired than I cared to admit to myself, and my fatigue only increased as the day wore on with its routine, mundane library details. I spent the better part of the afternoon reaching toward the aching gap in my powers. I kept nudging them, like a child testing a loose tooth, hopeful that they’d somehow start to regenerate. I was thrilled that I’d managed to get through to Will, that I’d managed to share my witchy history with him, but I was terrified that my kindling those blue flames would be the last spell I’d ever work.

By evening, I was a nervous wreck.

When Clara stepped over the threshold, Majom immediately scampered into the kitchen. I could hear him opening and closing drawers, as if he were searching for the secret to the universe, and I almost called out to ask him to save some for me, if he found it. Nuri swooped into the room behind everyone else. She perched on the arm of one of the sofas, watching all of us with tight, nervous turns of her head.

“Well, dear,” my grandmother said, kissing my cheek. “You look lovely this evening.”

“Thanks, Gran,” I said, adding a faint blush to however I was looking. I’d gotten home from work and changed into my favorite pair of comfortable jeans. I had pulled on a lightweight black mock turtleneck; the evening was actually cool enough outside that my breath had been visible as I came home from the library. My hair was pulled back into an easy ponytail.

There was a certain desperation in my practical work clothes, but I wasn’t ready to admit that to Gran and Clara. No reason to put more pressure on them. So what if helping to create Nuri and Majom had not added to my stock of power? Who cared if the thawing spell had been a bust? No one had said that the effect of creating my own witchy community would be immediate. Bringing Gran, Clara and their familiars into my makeshift plan might still work; there just might be a delay to the effect. My relatives might just need to cement their powers a little more, to grow as witches in my loosely structured commune.