Girl's Guide To Witchcraft Read online

  I wondered if our colonial fathers had ever considered using the asana, instead of placing people in public stocks for humiliating punishment. Taking a deep breath, I met Melissa's game smile. "I love this," she whispered to me. "I feel so strong when the energies shift to my head."

  Strong was not the word I would think of. Silly, maybe. Foolish. Completely and utterly out of balance.

  The yoga instructor was undaunted. "The pose is called Salamba Sarvangasana. It is extremely important that you do it properly. You must not turn your head to either side, or you risk serious neck injury. You can use a blanket if you'd like, folded once on top of your mat, but don't give yourself any more padding. You can hurt yourself badly with this posture."

  Okay, now I was getting a little afraid. There were more qualifications for contorting my body than there were for working magic. It sounded like the instructor was doing her best to keep from being sued. I imagined my legs, kicking up into the posture. I saw myself toppling sideways, knocking over Melissa to my right and sending her falling into the next three students. I envisioned myself in a hospital bed, tied to one of those strange triangular bars that looked like an oversized instrument from a giant child's music class. I saw the bandages wrapped around my head and neck, turning me into a classic mummy.

  I sat back on my heels.

  "Come on," Melissa whispered. "Just try it once. It's easier than it looks."

  "Easier for you," I muttered. But then, I stopped to think. Since my last yoga class, I had accomplished any number of new things. I had worked successful spells. I had begun a campaign to keep the Peabridge alive. I had faced Clara. I had even kept from chewing my fingernails—sure, my nail polish was chipped from use, but I had not gnawed it off since Roger had given me my manicure.

  No silly supported shoulder-stand was going to get the better of me.

  And I did it.

  I followed the instructor's words, and I did it. My legs moved into the air as if they had a power all their own. The pose felt out of balance, but I shifted my hands higher on my hips, providing a little more support for my lower back. I tucked my chin in closer to my chest, and I felt my spine stretch and relax, just like the instructor had said that it would.

  Melissa was right. It was easier than it looked. And the energies did shift to my head. I felt them, just as I had felt the power of my magic when I extinguished the fire in my kitchen. There was a distinct hum, a definite buzz as my body realigned itself.

  I should remember this, I told myself. I should draw on this when I'm working with David.

  The instructor had us hold the shoulder-stand for a few more minutes before she walked us through a supported headstand. Salamba Sirsasana, for those of us who wanted to add to our Sanskrit vocabularies. Not that I'd remember that name after I left the studio.

  We took up stations along the wall as the instructor assured us that many students needed the security of a vertical surface. In fact, she pointed to a patch of wall where the paint was a half-shade lighter than the rest, and she admitted that she had put her own foot through the wall not two weeks before.

  Maybe that should have intimidated me, but it had the opposite effect. If my instructor had not perfected the pose, then how could I expect my own attempt to be flawless? I might as well try.

  The headstand was harder than the shoulder-stand—it hurt. I felt as if the crown of my head was going to break open. But then the instructor reminded us to take as much weight as we could on our arms, to transfer our balance outward. People around me were falling down, and I got distracted more than once, but each time I was able to try again. I finally managed to hold the pose for a full minute, and then the in­structor decided it was time to move on to our closing sequence.

  As we stretched and balanced before settling into corpse pose, I could not keep a smile from my face. I had conquered the inverted poses.

  Okay, that might not have been a very yogic way of thinking about things—"conquering" was probably not the central metaphor that I should use when talking about peace, meditation and harmony between body and mind. But I knew what I meant.

  As I practiced my deep breathing and blanking my mind to conscious thoughts, the instructor walked around the room. She approached each student with lavender oil on her palms, making small adjustments to our necks and shoul­ders. When she lengthened my spine, she leaned close to my ear and whispered, "Excellent job today, Jane."

  Well, maybe she didn't. I'd never heard her compliment anyone like that during class. I'd never heard her make any purposeful noise to break up the meditative silence. But I could sense her approval in her fingers.

  "Really!" I said to Melissa as we walked away from the studio. "I could tell that's what she believed. For once, she didn't think that I was wasting my time there. She was proud of me."

  "She's always proud of you," Melissa said, shrugging. "You're the only person who thinks you should be perfect the first time you try anything."

  "I don't think I should be perfect!" I met Melissa's smirk, and I corrected myself. "I don't always think I should be perfect. I should just be more flexible than I am. I should be able to stretch more."

  "And you do. Over time."

  I started to argue, purely out of habit, but I realized that Melissa was right. Yoga was getting easier. Even Downward-Facing Dog—I had enjoyed the stretch instead of feeling like my calf muscles were about to tear loose from my bones. Or tendons. Or ligaments. Or whatever my muscles attached to.

  I was spared needing to reply because we'd reached M Street, the main drag of Georgetown. We were supposed to meet Neko on the corner. He was going to join us for mojito therapy.

  Roger had gone out of town for his sister's big-deal thir­tieth birthday party, and Neko was sulking because he hadn't been invited. I didn't think that my familiar truly wanted to wander the wilds of West Virginia, attending long-scheduled family events as the ho-mo-sex-you-al companion of a hometown boy, but I hadn't said anything. I understood that Neko had wanted to be invited, even if he didn't actually attend. I just didn't think it would do any good to tell him how miserable he would likely be. Or to point out that he'd only known Roger for a couple of weeks. Or to mention that he was squandering his ability to roam free from our book collection if he only used it to moon after Roger. I bit my tongue.

  We found him on the corner, leaning against a streetlight. He sighed as we approached, the deepest sigh I'd ever heard from someone who wasn't a teenage girl. Anyone passing on the street might have thought that the poor man had just learned that he was suffering from some terminal disease. "Hey, Neko!" Melissa said. We'd already decided that our best strategy was to ignore his despondency.

  Another sigh, even deeper. Entire wind farms could be fueled if he went on like this. "Hello."

  This wasn't going to be easy. Melissa tried, though. "You should have seen Jane in yoga class! She mastered the inverted poses."

  He gave me a wan smile that might have broken my heart if I'd thought for a second that he was truly suffer­ing. "Wonderful."

  We moved down the sidewalk, avoiding the early revelers who were starting their big nights out in Georgetown's trendy restaurants and bars. Amateurs, Melissa called them. People who wanted to see and be seen.

  Passing by the plateglass windows of Sephora, I was amazed by the number of women buying cosmetics on a Saturday evening. Hard to believe, but I'd never been inside the place. I knew that it was a high-end cosmetics emporium; I'd seen the ads and walked by the classy black-and-white storefront. But when I was with Scott, it seemed silly to spend all that time and effort making myself beau­tiful for my own fiance. And since he'd dumped me, I hadn't had any reason to splurge.

  I shrugged and said. "Can you imagine spending hours shopping for makeup?"

  Neko sighed. "Roger could spend hours shopping for makeup." He made life as a spendthrift sound downright noble.

  Melissa started to retort—I knew that she would say that she had never spent more than five minutes at the
drugstore selecting a lipstick. And I suspected that Neko would bite back with something unkind. I was desperate to avoid sniping between the two of them, so I said, "Well, I want to see what they've got."

  I grabbed both Neko and Melissa by their hands and plunged inside, only to be stopped by the first display. TARTE, said large letters. I picked up a bottle of Clean Slate and read the ingredients. "Here, Melissa. This should sound familiar—avocado oil, rosemary, hibiscus oil."

  "I wouldn't know whether to cook with it or put it on my face."

  "Roger uses hibiscus oil." Wistfully, Neko picked up the makeup base and read the rest of the label, barely sum­moning the strength to return it to the counter.

  "But Roger isn't here now," I said, deciding to take a firm hand with my lovelorn familiar. I wasn't totally heartless, though. I knew that I'd have to do something to distract him. "I'm going to have to rely on you to help me."

  "Me?" Neko perked up at that, but then he remembered that he was supposed to be drowning in the slough of despond.

  "You."

  "What are you looking for?" Melissa sounded incredulous, and I tried to flash her a warning look over Neko's bowed head.

  "A new image. A new me. I've got fingernails for the first time in my adult life. I remembered to put on Pick-Me-Up-Pink lipstick every morning last week. I have to do something to brighten up my colonial wardrobe. And there's certainly a lot to choose from here."

  When I'd started cranking out my explanation, I had no idea what I would say. I didn't even know what half the things were in the store; I'd certainly never applied them to my body before. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why I shouldn't go on a shopping spree. After all, my brilliant foundation idea looked like it was going to be a bust. I wasn't likely to shed my Martha Washington look anytime soon. I might as well do all I could to freshen up my appearance. Especially if I ever hoped to regain Jason's attention, after the Great Indoor Barbecue Fiasco.

  "Come on, Neko," I said. "What would you suggest?"

  "Mojitos. Extra rum."

  “I’m serious!”

  "So am I," he said mournfully.

  "We'll make the mojitos," I promised. "But first you have to help me choose some makeup."

  Nothing. I was having flashbacks to the babysitting I had done when I was twelve, to my desperate attempts to get an overtired five-year-old to pay attention to dinner and get ready for bed.

  Melissa wasn't helping. She had wandered down the counter, studying the rest of the Tarte line. I watched her pick up a palette of eye shadow and flip it over so that she could read the price tag. It must have been pretty steep; she practically slammed it back into its Lucite holder.

  Well, fine then. I wasn't going to waste the rest of my evening trying to orchestrate fun for the whole gang ."Okay," I said. "I'm just going to buy this eyeliner, and then we can go." I chose the purple one. Purple has always been one of my favorite colors—that must go back to my Barbie dream-girl days.

  "You're not going to buy the plum!" Neko could not have sounded more scandalized if I had suggested stripping bare and performing a bump and grind under the chic store's pinlights. A dozen heads swiveled in our direction.

  "Um, no," I said, blushing a color only a shade lighter than the offending eyeliner. "I just meant that I would buy this brand."

  Neko took the pencil from my hand and eased it back into its container. "Step away from the plum. It would bring out all the red in your face. You need something green. But not too green. You don't want to lean toward sallow. Green-blue. Like Roger's eyes..."

  And for a moment there, I'd thought we were making progress. Melissa rolled her own eyes. "Look," she said. "I'm heading down to the bakery. I'll make the mojitos. Come down when you're finished here."

  I nodded, not quite ready to give up on revivifying Neko. I was certain that we'd be fine for the rest of the weekend if I could just make him forget his vacationing love for five straight minutes. Consecutive minutes. Whatever. "Go on," I said to Melissa. "Just don't forget to—"

  "Add extra lime. I know."

  I gave her a finger wave as she ducked out the door. She actually shook her head when she got out to the street, as if she were clearing away a physical residue of froufrou girliness. I thought of a Labrador retriever puppy shaking off rain­ drops.

  "Green-blue," I prompted Neko. "Help me find some­thing."

  "It doesn't really matter."

  "All right then." I strode over to the Cargo display. "I'll go with this Casablanca palette. Mmm. Caramel lip gloss."

  "Caramel?" Neko's shriek actually stopped a transaction at the cash register. He swept over to me and covered my hand with his own. "If you get the caramel, you will ab­solutely look like a corpse. It will bleach every hint of color that you have in your cheeks."

  I bit back a smile as Neko led me down the row. "Here," he said. "You need something more pink. A little sheer. No glitter."

  His hands moved as if he were dealing blackjack. Before I knew it, I was holding foundation and blush, pressed powder and loose. He passed me a pair of eyeliners and a tube of mascara. Seven lipsticks—they were all just too luscious to pass up he assured me—and three different bottles of nail polish.

  With each category of cosmetic, Neko became more of the man I knew and—well, not quite loved—but expected. He offered bitter criticisms of some products. "Can you imagine who buys that? She'd have to have the skin of an elephant and the coloring of a 300-year-old witch. Oh. Present company excepted." I bit my tongue and kept from pointing out that I had a few years left before I hit the three-century mark.

  He was on a roll. "Orange? Who needs orange lipstick? There isn't a woman alive who would look good in orange lipstick." My favorite was when he checked out the sample of glittery body powder. He shook the powder puff against its ornate cardboard box with an expert flick of his wrist before he highlighted his collar bones with the faintest hint of gold sparkles. "Stunning!" he pronounced himself.

  "Enough!" I said, figuring that we had done sufficient retail therapy. "I can't buy all this stuff."

  "Why not?"

  "Fifty dollars is my limit. I'm just a working librarian, remember?" The Peabridge might be paying my rent, but I didn't have a stash of hundred-dollar bills for all Neko's treasures.

  "There are ways," he countered, waggling his eyebrows in a manner that suggested something utterly unethical. Or at least immoral.

  I was afraid to ask if he meant shoplifting or peddling my own pitiful body to pay for the wares. "David Montrose would have you turned back into a cat statue faster than you can blink if he even heard you make that suggestion."

  I watched him contemplate retorts. One even bubbled to his lips. But he thought better of his words and settled for a shrug. "Well, you have to get the eyeliner. And the nail polish. The stuff you have on is working wonders. You really need it to remind yourself not to gnaw."

  He made me sound like a rabbit, but I decided not to take offense. Instead, I said, "And we'll add the blush. I'll get lipstick another day—stay with Pick-Me-Up-Pink for a bit longer."

  He gazed wistfully at the products we were abandoning. "Can't we just add the foundation?"

  "Nope."

  "The Tarte Clean Slate?"

  "You are incorrigible! It would cost half my budget. No."

  He pouted. "I can't be held responsible for the damage if you don't take my advice."

  "No one is holding you responsible for anything. And there won't be any damage. Besides, if I spend all my money here, I won't be able to get my hair cut."

  "You're getting your hair cut?" I might have told him I was giving him a pony for his birthday. He clasped his hands and held them close to his chest. "You're having Roger cut it, aren't you! Tell me that you are! Tell me that you'll let him do it! Please, please, please!"

  "Yes!" I said, laughing.

  "Then I forgive you for getting my hopes up here." He fondled the mascara and bid it farewell with one last sigh.

&nbs
p; We paid a small fortune for my three new cosmetics, and I let the salesgirl put my loot into a cute bag. Neko prattled on about the choices that we'd made, debating the consid­erable merits of blue-green over green-blue. At least he'd recovered from his heartbreak.

  Melissa greeted us at the back door to Cake Walk. She already had the drinks made, and she was sipping from her own well-iced glass. We followed her upstairs to the Snuggery, her name for the cozy one-room apartment on the townhouses second floor. She raised her eyebrows at Neko's streaming commentary about her throw pillows, her coffee table, her breakfast nook and the color of her walls. I shrugged when she gave me a questioning look, but we both knew that it was better to ignore his transition from moping and lovesick to hyper and designer-obsessed.

  "So," she said, when we were gathered on her couch and matching love seat. "When am I going to see you work some of your magic, Jane?"

  I wriggled deeper into the pillows and sipped from the mojito she had just passed me. "Not tonight. I promised David I wouldn't combine alcohol and magic."

  "You've had one sip."

  I looked at Neko. He shrugged elaborately. "My lips are sealed," he said, taking great care to lock them with an in­visible key.

  "Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't have a lot of skills yet. If you want to fall in love with me at first sight, then great, I've got that covered. Or if you want to set your kitchen on fire—I know how to handle that."

  "It doesn't have to be anything big."

  "Neko?" I asked, uncertain of what I should try.

  "How about that candle?" He gestured to the three-wick monster that Melissa had centered on her coffee table. I knew that she lit it for a few minutes each night, using it to calm her thoughts before she went to bed.

  "I don't know the spell for lighting it." I tried to hide the exasperation in my voice.

  "Well, I do, silly. That's my job, remember?"

  I stuck my tongue out at him. Of course I knew that was his job, but I wasn't exactly sure how all this worked. He grinned and moved closer to me, pressing his leg up against mine in a comforting way. When he spoke again, his voice was soft, quiet enough that Melissa would not be able to make out his words. "I'll tell you the spell. You just repeat after me. This is a fire spell, in the same family as the one you did on Thursday. Do you remember how to start it?"