Free Joy of Witchcraft by Mindy Klasky

make out the roofline of the barn over the hill. I could imagine the warders and familiars just starting to stir on a lazy Sunday morning.
    But signs of danger were clear, because I knew where to look. Spot stood on the top step of the porch, a low whine rising in his throat. The newspaper leaned against the door where I’d placed it when I left for brunch. Inside, the kitchen was a mess; our dinner dishes from the previous night were still stacked in the sink.
    David always washed up, first thing in the morning, as his coffee brewed. He settled at the center island to read the paper, cover to cover. He never failed to let Spot out, waiting for the Lab to do his business, then welcoming the lumbering animal back to the kitchen with a teeth-cleaning bone.
    Neko flung open the basement door as I tallied up the evidence. “Hurry,” he said.
    A corner of my mind screamed that I’d been here before. This wasn’t the vague disconnect of déjà vu. It was the bellowing the brute force of learned terror that told me I needed to turn on my heel, get out of the house, leave the farm forever and head back to my safe and quiet life as a librarian. I’d be safe in a world without Neko and witchcraft and warders.
    Because I had done this before. I’d flipped on the basement lights. I’d walked down the stairs, stepping wide on the fourth one to avoid its groaning creak. I’d opened the door to David’s basement office, and I’d seen insanity, the physical manifestation of pure obsession as my warder fought to control a bureaucracy bigger and stronger and more determined than even he could be.
    Only a few months ago, I thought I’d lost him—as my warder and as the man I loved.
    We’d made it through that. We’d survived. But I was terrified I didn’t have the strength to face David’s compulsions again. Not to face them and win.
    I startled when I felt smooth velvet beneath my palm. Spot had followed me into the house. Now, he leaned his head against my thigh, and he woofed a breath of canine concern. I glanced back at Neko, only to catch the same look of worry on his face.
    Spot and Neko. David. They needed me. I licked my lips and went downstairs.
    Empty shelves gaped on the basement walls, stretches of polished wood that had been filled with orderly volumes only two nights before. A quick survey showed that many of my artifacts were missing as well—a case of crystals here, a stash of wands there. All the runes were gone.
    Furtive noises came from David’s former office, from the vault. Sweat slicked my palms, but I forced myself to cross to the doorway.
    I barely recognized the room. We’d wanted to maximize the storage space, so we’d abandoned classifying the books by subject matter. Instead, they were organized by height, miniatures grouped together, duodecimos on shelves below, giant elephant folios protected on the lowest ranks. We’d talked about adding double-sided bookshelves in the center of the room, but that would have created a challenge in navigating the small space.
    Navigation wasn’t a concern now. It was downright impossible.
    David had stacked boxes against the shelves, filling every cubic inch of space. Some of the containers were small—bankers boxes with neat labels, the ones that had held his warder’s papers in his office. Others, though, were cavernous, left over from the appliances we’d recently purchased to outfit the garage apartment and the kitchenette in the barn. The vault looked like a playroom for children with very indulgent parents, children who reveled in a make-believe fort made entirely of cardboard.
    David was leaning over a box that had formerly held an oven, lining up the twenty-three volumes of Hoskin’s Crystals, Stones, and Lapidary Magic Around the World .
    “Hey,” I said softly. “I thought you’d agreed to take it easy until your ribs heal.”
    I braced for his response. I told myself I could stand anything—madness, obsession, rage at being interrupted. But