Joy of Witchcraft by Mindy Klasky Page A

followed by the clamor of kids begging for enough sugar to wire all of DC for a year. “I’m sorry,” Melissa said.
    “Don’t be. Go. I’ll see you on Friday.”
    Melissa’s call served one valuable purpose: it broke the hopeless cycle of my searching in the vault. I wasn’t going to reach the materials I needed, not without help. I might as well backtrack and try a little mundane research. I headed upstairs.
    Tony had rearranged the living room furniture, dragging one of the heavy armchairs so he had a clear view of both the front and back doors. His unsheathed sword rested on the coffee table, in easy reach, and the largest butcher knife from our kitchen lay on the floor by his right foot. Neko sat next to the knife, leaning his head on Tony’s left knee. The warder’s fingers worked Neko’s nape, as if he could smooth away the horrors of the morning as easily as he could work out a muscle kink.
    “Did you find anything?” Neko asked, starting to stir, but I waved him back to his place.
    “Nothing useful. I’m going to check a few things upstairs.”
    “Pull the window shades up there,” Tony said.
    “You don’t think—”
    “I’m not taking any chances. Pull the shades.”
    I pulled the shades.
    I didn’t want to imagine what sort of enemy magic could get at me through a second story window. I collapsed onto my bed and picked up my tablet from my nightstand. My fingers flew over the surface, keying in search terms. Someone had written a song called “Two-Headed Dog” and half a dozen musicians had covered it. A Russian scientist had done freak transplant experiments, creating a two-headed puppy.
    Then I hit pay-dirt. Orthros. A two-headed dog. An ancient Greek monster, litter-mate of the three-headed Cerberus that guarded the gates of the underworld.
    I followed up on the entries, digging deeper into Greek mythology. Orthros was part of a family of monsters. He was owned by a giant who had three bodies; the dog was supposed to guard a special herd of red cattle. Heracles worked his labors and stole the cows, killing Orthros.
    Well, Heracles hadn’t quite gotten the job done, had he?
    There were references to The Iliad and images of Greek pottery, black lines incised on red clay.
    I tried to tell myself that myths were just that—stories passed down through the ages. They often had some seed of truth. Maybe some ancient cowherd had a bitch that whelped deformed puppies. Maybe a man stole cattle and had to explain how he was a good guy and not a common thief.
    But someone had taken those stories and turned them into reality. Someone had worked magic, building on the foundation of legend. Someone had launched a horror on the beach, a deadly threat greater than any dusty tale I could read about online. And someone had inured that monster against steel, against warder’s magic, honing its ability to strip away witches’ power.
    Suddenly, the front door of the farmhouse crashed open. I heard a shout, and then my name, bellowed from the landing: “Jane!”
    David took the stairs two at a time. I only had time to set aside my tablet, to stand beside the bed, and then he barreled into the room. His hands crushed me as he tested my arms, my shoulders, the back of my head, checking to see that I was there, that I was alive. His eyes were wild, and he said my name over and over as I clutched him, held him close, trying to tell him with the press of my body against his that I was fine, I was safe, I was his.
    When I could speak, when he could hear me, I managed, “I didn’t hear your car on the driveway.”
    “I used warder’s magic. As soon as I left the inquest, the instant I heard Tony’s message.”
    Of course. My carefully non-alarmist voicemail had been for naught.
    David led me over to the edge of the bed. He sat beside me and folded my hands between his. “Tell me what happened.”
    I did, starting with our lesson on the dock, the reaching for balance, for harmony in the animal world. I told