Single Witch's Survival Guide (22 page)

I couldn’t translate all of it. I couldn’t know what it felt to be them, to be tied that closely to any other human being. But I could see ways to use the bond between them. I could strengthen it, splice it to include a third witchy power. I could rewrite the organization they had used all their lives and classify their secrets to make all of us stronger, better witches.

The next time. When we advanced to the next stage of our working.

When I sat back in my chair, Spot came over for a pat on the head. (All right, he probably came over for a bite of one of my crackers, but I wasn’t that much of a sucker.) He rested his chin on my lap and sighed deeply when I found the perfect scritching spot behind his right ear. I missed having the lumbering beast up here at the house. The kitchen looked bare without his bed in the corner. I could hardly take the Lab back from David, though. That wouldn’t be fair.

I sipped my lemonade and started to daydream about my next working with Raven and Emma. We could move beyond purification to a working that actually changed a state. Kindling candles, maybe, or even summoning rainclouds. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine how it would feel to be suspended in the element of air.

Which made it all the more jarring to hear a knock at the back door. I looked at David, and he looked at me, but neither of us was expecting any visitors. He shrugged and worked the deadbolt before opening the door.

“Ah,” came a voice I never wanted to hear again. Spot stiffened by my side, and I felt the growl deep in his throat, more than heard it. “I would have come earlier, if I’d known you were serving lunch.”

As my stomach tightened, David said something impossible: “Please. Come in.”

And Norville Pitt strode into the kitchen.

CHAPTER 13

MY PULSE SKYROCKETED. Why had David let Norville Pitt into our house? We were surrounded by magical protections—every door and window was guarded against astral and mundane intruders. Without an explicit invitation, Pitt could never have stepped over the threshold.

Even now, Spot interposed himself between me and the door. His hackles were raised, and his lips curled back from his teeth. David issued a curt hand gesture, but it took a repetition before Spot slunk to the floor.

The Head Clerk seemed oblivious to the canine threat. He still looked like a refugee from a television show:
What Not to Wear: Coven Edition
. This time, his slacks were blue serge, worn thin across his ample thighs. His white short-sleeve shirt was dingy, and his pocket protector was askew. His right shoelace was knotted multiple times.

“Ah,” Pitt exclaimed, in that voice that reminded me of light crude oil spreading over a peaceful bay. “Don’t mind if I do.” He collected a plate from the center island and started to fill it with remnants from our recuperative meal—a bunch of grapes, a handful of Triscuits, a fistful of Marcona almonds.

I cast a frantic look at David. What was he thinking of, letting his enemy stride into our midst? Was blood going to be shed on our kitchen floor?

David’s face was utterly opaque, though. A casual observer might even think he just
happened
to cross the room on that particular line, just
happened
to to take up a watchful position that kept him an identical distance between Pitt and me. If David had a plan, he wasn’t sharing it with me.

And that meant I had to take the lead. I had to pretend like this visit was absolutely ordinary. I cleared my throat and said by way of greeting, “Mr. Pitt.” I prayed he wouldn’t notice the slight quaver in my voice.

In fact, the wheezing clerk scarcely acknowledged my greeting at all. Instead, he oozed over to the kitchen table and extended a sweaty hand toward Raven. “Norville Pitt,” he said, using his free hand to smooth back his greasy hair. “No relation to Brad.”

Did the guy really only have the one pick-up line? My student, to her credit, merely shook the offered hand. “Raven Willowsong,” she said. But for the first time since I’d met her, she didn’t accompany her words with a single seductive gesture—no roll of the hips, no toss of the hair, not even a smile.

Emma submitted to the social nicety as well, offering up her own name in a flat midwestern accent. All three familiars stared in watchful silence, obviously aware—perhaps even grateful—that the Court did not consider them worth speaking to.

David poured a glass of lemonade and passed it to Pitt. I didn’t get it. David hated this guy. He was obsessed with bringing him down. Why was he acting like this visit was a present from Hecate herself? “What brings you here, Norville? We weren’t expecting you until Samhain.”

Pitt drank down half the glass before responding. “Mabon,” he said, with a toothy smile.

“Excuse me?” I injected myself back into the conversation. I knew what Mabon was, of course—the next sabbat in the witch’s calendar, less than a month away. Mabon continued the celebration of the autumn harvest that we had launched with Lughnasadh.

“Congratulations, Ms. Madison.” Pitt put his glass down on the center island so he could pump my hand.

“For what?” I barely resisted the urge to wipe my palm clean against my shorts.

“The Madison Academy is now a Class Two institution.”

“A Class Two…” I trailed off, uncertain of the significance of Pitt’s words.

But David figured things out before I did. “The Court is getting involved again?” He chose his words carefully, but I could practically hear him shout “interfering” instead of the far more mild “getting involved.”

Pitt’s smile turned my stomach. “The Court has a
very
special interest in the Jane Madison Academy. We couldn’t help but notice that you completed a working this morning that registered thirteen point two.”

I understood the individual words, but I had no idea what he was talking about. “Thirteen point two?”

Pitt nodded eagerly. “On the Circe scale.”

I glanced over at Neko, who offered the slightest of shrugs. David didn’t recognize the phrase either, from his narrowed eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know the Circe scale.”

Pitt tutted quietly. “Now, you won’t want to say
that
when your magicarium is being evaluated officially.”

Yeah. There were a whole lot of things I wouldn’t want to say under those circumstances.

David spared me the need to push for a clarification. “What has the Court devised this time, Norville?” His tone walked the narrowest of lines between curiosity and contempt.

“Why, the Circe scale is the latest metric for magicaria. It allows us to measure the combined power of all magic workers—students, instructors, and Affiliated Institutions—in a given magicarium. Your initial Circe rating, the one calculated before you signed your Charter, was one point seven five.”

“One point seven five,” I echoed. “But we hadn’t completed any workings when I signed the Charter.”

“Precisely,” Pitt agreed.

“Then how could you complete a rating?”

“Our initial assessment was based on your personal accomplishments, Miss Madison. You should be quite flattered to be included in this pilot program.”

“How many schools are in the pilot program?” David asked.

Pitt met his narrowed eyes with a slimy smile. I wasn’t surprised when the Clerk said, “One.”

David’s fingers curled into fists. I took a step forward, silently reminding him that he had to keep a grip on his temper. “What changed, then?” I asked. “Between the initial rating and today?”

“The working you completed this morning, of course. With this morning’s score of thirteen point two, the Madison Academy is now a Class Two institution.”

“That’s ridiculous!” I protested. “There were only two students added to the mix! We don’t have any
Affiliated Institutions
. You’re metric can’t have changed that much, just from the addition of two witches!”

Pitt clicked his tongue and shook his head. “The Court isn’t concerned with the absolute number of witches, Miss Madison. We focus on
power
.”

They certainly did. The brunt of their
power
was goading me more with every second that passed. I tried another tack. “We completed our working this morning in preparation for your inspection on Samhain. You can’t penalize us just because we’re getting better.”

“Oh, Miss Madison.” Pitt pushed his Coke-bottle glasses up his shiny nose. “It has never been our intent to penalize
you
.” There was just enough emphasis on the last word to expose Pitt’s ongoing conflict with David. If he regretted showing his cards so blatantly, though, he recovered quickly. “It’s certainly not a penalty to be ranked a Class Two.”

“What do we get out of it, then?” I snapped.

Pitt twisted his wrist and somehow produced a familiar sheaf of papers. It was the Charter for the Madison Academy, the document I’d first seen down on the dock. Now, though, a puffy gold ribbon was attached to the first page with a copper grommet. The festoon looked like it belonged to a kindergarten student who was voted “Most Improved” at Field Day. It bore the words “Class Two” in a flowery script.

Pitt cleared his throat and turned to a page at the back of the Charter. “Class Two institutions shall have all the rights and appurtenances pertaining to the foregoing Class One institution, including any right, title, and interest of the Magistrix in and to adjacent territories, magicaria, and unaffiliated bands of students.”

The legalese made my head spin. “Doesn’t that mean a Class Two is the same as a Class One?”

“But you get a
ribbon
. And specially trained Class Two examiners, of course. It’s such a shame—not
one
of our Class Two Watchers is available on your previously scheduled date of Samhain.”

What a coincidence. “And I can’t hold off and test later in the year? After Samhain? Yule, maybe?”

Pitt laugh sounded like a leaf blower. “With a new program like this, the Court has to insist on completing all testing as early as possible. That’s best for everyone, you know.”

Best, how? How, exactly, was anything about this ridiculous situation best for me?
But I could already imagine the made-up, jargon-filled explanation Pitt would throw my way if I protested. I was actually surprised when he said, “You
could
file an appeal.”

“And how do I do that?”

His smile revealed a row of shark-like teeth. “You simply complete a Notice of Appeal of Charter Review, and file it with the Court. Along with mandatory character references, of course.”

“Character references?”

“Seven people who can testify to your magic abilities and your good standing within the community.”

Gran and Clara. David and Neko. Raven. Emma. Who would I use as a seventh?

Pitt cleared his throat. “That’s seven people, of course, for every discipline you’re testing for.” He flipped through the Charter. “For the Madison Academy, that will include herblore and crystals. Runes. Spellcraft. General magical principles. Academic inquiry. Am I forgetting anything?” He pawed the paperwork. “Oh, of course, elemental magic, and advanced craft. So, fifty-six references. Of course, none can be related to you, or a current student of yours.”

With anyone else, I’d assume they were joking. But I was pretty sure Norville Pitt wouldn’t recognize a joke if it rose up from the center island and kissed him on his pursed, liver-colored lips. And still Pitt wasn’t quite done grinding my dreams to dust. “Your appeal will have to be notarized and filed in triplicate one month before your scheduled test.”

“One month before—”

He looked at his cheap Timex, as if it had some special calendaring function. “Ah, yes. That would be yesterday.”

“That’s not fair!”

“I wouldn’t be too upset, Miss Madison. Appeals take at least three months to get on the Court’s docket. Of course, you’d need to pursue certification in the meantime. We can’t fall behind on our testing schedule, now can we?”

I could rant. I could rave. I could tell Pitt to take his bureaucratic claptrap, fold it three ways, and….

But I was the magistrix of the Madison Academy. I had a reputation to uphold. Besides, I had to make sure David didn’t do anything foolish. He’d been suspiciously silent as I explored the parameters of the Court’s trap, and I didn’t completely trust him not to extract some sort of revenge on Pitt, right there, in the middle of our kitchen.

Determined to avert
that
disaster, I threw back my shoulders and extended a hand, as if I’d just concluded a successful business meeting. I looked Pitt in his piggy little eyes and said, “Thank you very much for taking the time to look in on our operations.”

“No trouble.” He pumped my hand and flushed with obvious pleasure. “No trouble at all. Always glad to be of service.”

“David?” I asked pointedly. “Could you show Mr. Pitt out?”

My warder nodded, as if the departure had been his own idea. But first, he extended his hand. “I’ll take the Charter.”

Pitt showed his teeth and passed the document to me. “Keep an eye on that, Miss Madison. You wouldn’t want it to get
misfiled
, would you?”

I took the scroll, with its gaudy yellow ribbon. If David were insulted by Pitt’s remonstrance, he gave no visible indication.

Pitt turned to my students. He bowed first toward Emma, then made a deeper obeisance toward Raven. As if by reflex, she crossed her arms over her low-cut blouse. “Ladies,” Pitt said, and the simple word somehow sounded obscene slipping off his lips.

“Norville,” David said, bristling. He set a firm hand on Pitt’s elbow and escorted the Clerk to the back door. Pitt started to reach for another clump of grapes, but Spot rose from the floor with a possessive snarl, apparently tested beyond his even Labrador retriever temper. I dropped the Charter and clutched at the dog’s collar, while David hustled the intruder out the door. I didn’t release Spot until the deadbolt was thrown home.

Raven and Emma looked appalled. Emma pushed her plate away, as if she’d lost all appetite for any restorative meal. Raven plucked at her blouse, attempting to hide more completely behind its limited offerings. I unlocked my knees and reached blindly for the chair that Neko nudged toward me.