Girl's Guide To Witchcraft Read online

  He sported stockings and emerald breeches, with an em­broidered waistcoat and a close-fitting frock coat. A tricorn hat, currently tucked under his arm, completed the en­semble. He nodded earnestly as I approached and said, "That skirt is a lovely shade of brown."

  I glanced down at my costume, incredulous. When I looked up at Harold, I was surprised to see him blushing. I said, "Um, thank you?"

  He blinked and swallowed hard. His face was usually pale, but now it flushed nearly crimson. The strands of his hair were stringy across his scalp, and for just a moment I worried that he might suffer a heart attack right there on the Peabridge steps. He blurted out, "I really wanted to say that you look nice today, but I know that I'm not supposed to say that. You know, with harassment laws and every­thing."

  I glanced over my shoulder, just to make sure that he hadn't been put up to this by someone else. Was he making some sort of joke? Could he have seen me tearing around the corner from the cottage, frantic about being late, yet again? But no, he was smiling shyly when I looked back at him. "Thank you, Harold," I said again, palming the Pick-Me-Up to apply as soon as I got inside.

  "Are those new glasses you're wearing?"

  I pushed my old tortoiseshell frames higher on the bridge of my nose. "Um, no. They're the same ones I've always had."

  "Maybe you got your hair cut?"

  This was getting creepy. "Nope. Same old me. And, as always, I'm going to be late, so I really need to get inside."

  "Oh. Sure." Harold stepped back as I walked past him, but I heard him catch his breath. Almost like he was excited to see me.

  I flipped on the power button to the espresso machine as I crossed to my desk. Once there, I palmed on my computer and waited for it to run through its start-up routine. On my chair, I found a pink "While You Were Out" note, meticulously completed. Jane Madison's grandmother had phoned at 8:57 that morning, asking me to return her call. The message had been taken by HW. I glanced back at Harold and caught him staring at me across the library lobby. He started and shook his head, as if he were just waking up after some strange dream, but then he waggled his fingers at me with a goofy grin across his lips.

  It wouldn't have surprised me if he spouted verses about my beauty, caught up in some Forest of Arden fantasy where I was Rosalind. Or maybe I had just read As You Like It once too often. Utterly puzzled, I waved back. I waited until he headed downstairs to his maintenance closet before I returned to my desk.

  Seven reference questions, a dozen brewed lattes and three explanations of my costume later, I still hadn't called Gran back. I knew that I needed to talk to her. I needed to come to grips with Clara.

  Clara. I couldn't call her my "mother." I couldn't think about her as my mother, because my mother was a beautiful woman with flowing red hair and porcelain skin. She was surrounded by banks of clouds, and she sighed softly whenever she thought of losing me, of being torn from me in the terrible car crash that had taken her life.

  My "mother" was not a selfish woman who had ignored me for twenty-five years, only to come back and ruin my life just as I was finally getting things under control.

  Yeah, right. Totally under control. Every girl who agrees to private tutoring in witchcraft has her life under control.

  Private tutoring. Starting with dinner tonight. I fumbled in my desk and dug out a container of Advil, swallowing two and wishing my hangover headache would go away.

  The more I tried to avoid thinking about Gran and Clara, the more I worried about David, Neko and the collection of books on witchcraft in my basement. As much as I couldn't believe that I had let Neko fool me into working another spell, I was more amazed that I had agreed to have dinner with David. Maybe he had a point there, about not mixing alcohol and spellcraft.

  Friends don't let friends work magic drunk.

  What was the spell that Neko made me read? "Wrap my face in power hidden; Spark a love from man unbidden."

  Love from man unbidden? I glanced back at the front door, to the site of Harold's bizarre morning greeting. Harold, who had never shared two words with me.

  No.

  It couldn't be.

  I could not have cast a love spell on poor, helpless Harold Weems.

  My heart clenched tight inside my chest, and I sucked in my breath. I needed to get away from my desk. I needed to get out of the library. Now.

  I glanced at the clock on my computer and saw that it was not even 10:30 a.m. I couldn't go home yet. I couldn't even really take a break.

  I did the next best thing. After collecting my purse from its locked desk drawer, I gesticulated wildly to get Evelyn's attention. When she nodded across the lobby, I half walked, half ran to the restroom at the back of the Peabridge. I slammed closed the door to one of the stalls and thumbed on my cell phone.

  Melissa took four rings to answer, and then her voice was as heavy as her Mocha Mud Bars. I suspected that things were busy at Cake Walk that morning, and if she felt anywhere near as terrible as I did after our night of mojito therapy... I got right to the point: "The spell worked."

  "What?"

  I hissed into the phone, even though I knew that the other stalls were empty. "The spell. The one I did last night. It worked."

  "What are you talking about?"

  I told her all about Harold, about his questions. When she told me that I must be imagining things, I thought about my first coffee patron of the day, Mr. Zimmer. The sour octogenarian had been coming to the Peabridge for decades. He never ordered coffee; he disapproved of our launching the espresso bar in the lobby. But he had asked for one that morning, and he had left me a two-dollar tip. By the time I finished recounting the details, my voice had squealed into Mickey Mouse's supersonic range. I raised my free hand to my mouth and started tearing at a ragged cuticle with teeth that were close to chattering.

  "Okay," Melissa said, and I could hear her cash register chiming in the background. "So what are you going to do about it?"

  "I'm going to wring that man's neck when I get back home."

  "That man Neko? Or that man David?"

  As soon as she said David's name, I thought of the strange moment that had passed between us, the instant where I had thought of him as a very kissable best friend. A best friend who was taking me to dinner that night. "Neko," I said im­mediately.

  "Sounds like a plan. As for your so-called problem, I don't think you need to worry. Let the men bask in the glory of your smile. Let them be the ones to drag around after you for a change. You deserve it, after everything you've gone through in the past year."

  "It's just so strange. I've never been the pretty girl at the party before."

  "You're always the pretty girl, Jane. Sometimes you just forget to use all your assets. Look, I've got to go. I have a batch of cupcakes coming out of the oven in about two minutes, and three regulars just walked in."

  I let her go, even though I wanted to pump her for more information about my so-called assets. Emerging from the stall, I took a moment to stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. My skirt was a lovely shade of brown. Yeah. Right. The costume made me look like Old Mother Hubbard. At least I didn't have a poor dog waiting for me at home. Just a cat-man, who I was going to skin at the first available op­portunity. A love spell! What was he thinking?

  I sighed and dug around in my purse. Maybe I could do something to repair the damage of a short night of sleep and too many mint-tinged drinks.

  In the bottom of the bag, I found a banana clip that I hadn't used for months. I rubbed purse dust from it and twisted my hair off my neck. It took me three tries to get the clip in at the right angle, but when I covered it all with the mobcap, I was actually surprised at the difference it made. I'd gone from looking like someone's overworked scullery maid, to looking—just a hint of a shadow of a sug­gestion—like a long-necked country-fresh milkmaid.

  Encouraged by the transformation, I scrambled some more in my purse and found an ancient eyeliner. The green-blue tinge made my eyes look deeper; I added a b
it more at the outer corners to give the appearance of a wide­awake librarian. A daub of Pick-Me-Up Pink completed the transformation, at least as much as I was able to do in the confines of the Peabridge restroom. I took a steadying breath and headed back to my desk.

  Where I found my Imaginary Boyfriend sitting in a chair. My Imaginary Boyfriend. And me, with a beauty enhanc­ing spell firmly in place. My heart started pounding so hard that I could barely breathe.

  He stood as I approached, grinning and extending his hand for a friendly, professional handshake. A handshake that might have lingered for a moment longer than strictly nec­essary. I thought. I hoped. "Evelyn said that you'd be back in a moment," he said.

  "Evelyn was right," I answered sunnily, but I fought the urge to wrinkle up my nose. What a stupid thing to say.

  Jason smiled again, though, easy and confident as ever. "You know what?" he asked, and continued before I could say anything. "Those costumes are starting to grow on me. At first, I thought they looked silly, but the more I see of them, the more I think they're a good idea." I caught his eyes straying to the lace that edged my bodice.

  My bodice. My Imaginary Boyfriend was staring at my bodice.

  Maybe I wasn't going to murder Neko tonight, after all. Maybe I was going to buy him a nice salmon steak instead, a reward for a well-worked spell.

  Jason cleared his throat, and I remembered that I was a librarian first and foremost, long before I was a witch. "I'm looking for some information," he said, "and I know it should be easy to find, but I'm just having no luck. I need to know how far Chesterton could ride in an average day on horseback, and then how fast he could make it back to North Carolina when he first heard that George Junior had typhus."

  "Not a problem," I said. "Have you looked in Graumman's study on colonial transportation?"

  "Graumman?"

  I smiled and led my Imaginary Boyfriend into the stacks.

  The day flew by. After I helped Jason, there were three more patrons who had obscure questions, interesting research problems that kept me busy for the better part of the afternoon. Twice I came back to my desk to find Harold standing too close. I received another call from Gran, but I really was too busy to answer, and I let it go to voice mail.

  I didn't have time to take a break for lunch, and my feet ached as I finally headed down the garden path to my cottage at the end of the day. My heart was soaring, though. Jason thought that I looked good in my costume. Even Harold's bizarre attention had made me feel special.

  The front door was unlocked when I got home. I could see my laundry piled on one of the couches: panties tucked in discreetly beside jeans, some knit tops, a couple of pullovers and pajamas. My towels were fluffy and still warm. I ran a hand over the stack and excavated a couple of items, holding them up to make sure that nothing had been shrunk to Barbie size.

  Perfect. Neko had managed the laundry, without even a hint of the disaster that I now realized I'd been expecting.

  "Jane?" I heard his voice call from the kitchen. "Is that you? We were just waiting for you to get home."

  "We?" I said, crossing to the kitchen door. Had David arrived already?

  No. Neko was seated at the table with a stranger, a stunning specimen of a human male. The visitor had the body of a diver—a well-muscled torso and chiseled arms that spoke of endless hours in a gym. His chestnut hair had perfect blond highlights, and his eyes glinted with a sea-blue that had to come from contact lenses. He stood as I entered, and his capped teeth nearly blinded me when he smiled. He was gorgeous. He was the cover of Men's Health, and he was sitting here in my kitchen.

  "Neko was telling me all about your cottage. I hope you don't mind that I came by for a cup of tea."

  And with those two sentences, spoken with a delicate dollop of affectation, this Adonis let me know that he would never be attracted to me, or anyone else of my gender, witchcraft or no witchcraft. I shook his hand gamely and learned that his name was Roger, and that he worked in the spa next door to the Laundromat, and that he had helped Neko when the washing machine overflowed, and how had anyone thought that dish soap would be a good substitute for laundry detergent?

  Neko looked at me from his seat in the kitchen, and I could read the expression in his eyes without any magic at all. He wanted me to like his new friend. He wanted me to be pleased with the toy that he had brought home. And he wanted me to overlook his purposeful misuse of dish soap, consider it a minor amusement in the free-range life of my familiar. I was beginning to understand why most witches kept their assistants under lock and key. "Well, thank you, Roger," I said. "Thanks for helping poor Neko out."

  Neko's grin was bright enough to light up the entire house. "He did more than that! When we got back here, the phone was ringing. I was still fighting to get the key out of the lock, but Roger got to it in time."

  With a flash of premonition that had nothing to do with my roaming familiar or the magical books gathering dust in my basement, I knew that all the wonder of my day was about to come crashing down around my shoulders. "Who was it?" I asked.

  "Your grandmother," Roger said, confirming my suspi­cion. "She seemed really surprised that a man answered here, but she left a message. She said that you and Clara are supposed to meet at Cake Walk on Saturday morning at eleven. Your calendar was sitting there on the counter, so I could see you didn't have anything else planned. It's all set up, and she says she won't take no for an answer."

  "I'm sorry I'm late!" I was apologizing before the hostess had finished ushering me to our table. David Montrose stood as I arrived, and he placed his hands on the back of my chair in that strange gesture that conveys that a man is ready to assist a woman, but also feels possessive.

  Not that I was complaining. He was back to his dark suit look, with a blindingly white shirt, and a conservative silver-on-black tie. I glanced down at my own outfit and was grateful that Neko had talked me into the microfiber one-piece dress. And the chunky green glass necklace that played off my hair. And the narrow-heeled slingbacks that were killing my feet.

  "Actually," David said, "you're right on time." He glanced at his watch. I had left mine behind, in deference to this dinner that was more than a regular everyday meal. But less than a date. A lesson? A new beginning?

  I surreptitiously took a deep breath and ordered my flipflopping belly to settle down. Fortunately, the waiter chose that moment to scuttle up to the table. "Would madame like a cocktail?"

  I cast a quick glance at David and hated myself for doing so. Would I like a drink? Of course. Make mine a double. But I had made a promise. If we were working tonight... David nodded and took the lead. "I'll have a martini," he said.

  "Vodka gimlet," I countered, and the waiter nodded before scurrying off toward the kitchen. "So," I forced myself to say, confronting the alcoholic bull by the horns. "We're not actually working tonight."

  "Not in the sense that you mean. We're getting to know each other better. You're learning to trust me. To trust yourself and what you can be."

  His smile was disarming. I looked around the restaurant and wondered how much time he had spent selecting the place. When Neko had told me that I was meeting David at La Chaumiere, I was excited, pleased enough that I mo­mentarily forgave Roger for being my social secretary.

  La Chaumiere was a Georgetown staple; it had been around for more than thirty years. It was known for its fine French food and its fabulous service, but it was supposed to be relaxed, comfortable, almost like a country inn. I could imagine a warm hearth in the front room and lavish guest beds above, complete with fluffy down comforters and 400-count cotton sheets.

  Sheets. I blushed. This was a restaurant in the middle of Washington, DC. I'd better get my mind out of the bedroom and back to work.

  Because whatever David Montrose said, this dinner was sort of work for me. If I was going to believe him, if I was going to accept the strange new job I'd undertaken, then I'd better accept that everything about David was business. He was my mentor, my teacher.
My warder.

  The waiter came back with our drinks, along with menus. "To new beginnings," David said, lifting his glass. I touched mine to his and repeated the toast, feeling the words thrum down my spine like musical notes.

  New beginnings, I reminded myself. Like a new school year, the start of junior high. Like that terrible, awkward time when you looked up in seventh-grade history class and realized that you were the only girl in the room, and that odd-shaped white thing on your desk must be one of those athletic cups that you'd heard about, and that if you wanted it off your desk you were going to have to be the one to touch it, and that all the boys were going to laugh at you, and then all the boys were laughing at you, and it was only the second day of class, and the teacher wasn't even there yet, and, and, and...

  Oh. Maybe that was only my experience with new be­ginnings.

  I dove for my menu and started studying it as if it were the most fascinating thing written since George Chester­ton's private diaries. Not that I had personally found those diaries so fascinating, but Jason had, and so I'd honed my passion for them. Passion...

  Another sip of the gimlet. A grown-up's mojito, if you really think about it. I resisted the urge to drain the glass. I could handle this. I was an adult.

  I looked at the first courses and saw that they had onion soup. French onion soup, by definition. One of my favorites. I considered ordering it, but then I heard Melissa whispering in the back of my head. Certain foods were not first-date foods. French onion soup. Spaghetti. Pizza. Anything that had a tendency to become long and stringy and drippy and embar­rassing.

  As I heard her admonitions, I wondered what Freud would say about them. It certainly sounded as if she were warning me off from more than luscious foodstuffs, trying to keep me from another whole range of messy activity. Spare me from the embarrassment, she would certainly say.