Sorcery and the Single Girl by Mindy Klasky Page B

forward to working with you. Maybe we could get together for coffee sometime. I do a lot of business with galleries in Georgetown—I’m an interior decorator.”
    I smiled at the vague invitation. Haylee wasn’t actually so bad. She was reaching out to me. She was being sociable. She was welcoming me into the heart of the Coven, assuming that I would join the sisterhood, rather than betting against me. She was being a friend.
    And if I had any doubt as to the goodwill behind her words, Haylee smiled winningly. “You know that you can ask me for help. With anything. ”
    “Thank you,” I said, and my response was made almost fervent by David’s appearance in the doorway. I was scarcely aware of his steps across the room; I could barely watch him say his farewells. All I knew was that he settled his hand on my arm. I found myself stammering goodbye to Haylee, babbling something to a calm, collected Teresa Alison Sidney. I cut off yet another yawn as I glared at Neko, forcing him to come and stand by my side.
    And then, finally, David guided me out the front door of that strange and mysterious house.
    The pentagram across the threshold had faded away. As we walked into the wall of humid, late-summer air, I could sense the power that had once been housed in the doorway. Its living, electric thrill was gone, though. The man with the sword had departed as well, and I could not say that I was sorry to miss his shadowy threat.
    I was suddenly so tired I could barely move.
    I was so tired I did not bother to reprimand Neko as he hissed at another familiar, a birdlike man who hovered by his own mistress’s car door, waiting for her to get settled before her warder turned his key in the ignition. I was so tired I didn’t notice Neko opening the back door of David’s car, ushering me onto the long, leather seat, making sure that my legs were inside before he closed the door and sat up front.
    David was silent as he drove us home, retracing the tree-lined roads until we drove over the Key Bridge, working our way through Georgetown’s cobbled streets. He again applied some warder’s trick to find a parking space directly in front of the Peabridge. As David helped me to sit up, helped me to maneuver out the car door, onto the curb, onto the flagstone garden path, Neko skipped ahead.
    My familiar opened our cottage door with his own key. He hovered in the living room, suddenly solicitous, but David shook his head. “I’ll help her,” he said. “Go to sleep.” Neko shrugged before heading down to his basement lair.
    “I’m fine,” I said, but a yawn betrayed me, and I sounded like a cross child.
    “It can be exhausting, entering a safehold for the first time.”
    “You could have warned me.”
    “No,” he said seriously. “I couldn’t. I wasn’t allowed to. You needed to meet the Coven on your own. Those are the ancient ways.”
    He led me toward my moon-washed bedroom. I remembered the first time he had done this, the first night that I had ever stretched my powers beyond their natural strength. As if David had a cat’s night vision, he removed my fused glass necklace, eased my earrings from my lobes. He loosened my hair from its precarious chignon.
    In the past ten months, he’d had occasion to put me to bed a dozen times. He never took advantage of the situation, never brushed against me in a way that conveyed anything more than strictly professional interest.
    Not that I wanted him to. He was my warder, not my boyfriend.
    But I couldn’t keep from leaning against him, couldn’t help but turn my face toward his as he helped me out of my dress.
    If he’d kissed me, I wouldn’t complain. Hadn’t complained, in fact, in the past, the one time he had kissed me. The one time he’d made my belly swoop lower with a sudden, gasping desire. The one time I’d tasted honest, magical potential on his lips.
    What was I thinking?
    He was my warder. And given my disastrous luck with men, I’d ruin everything if I ever