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flaws, I dared to say, “Earth. Citrine.”
    David merely nodded as I walked over to the large box that held my crystals. I tried to brush dust off the lid without his noticing, and then I shifted the nested trays inside. I knew that I had three good examples of citrine. I liked its clear golden hue, and I was drawn to the steady warmth the stone emanated.
    There! The three specimens that I remembered. One was small but expertly cut. Another was almost absurdly large, but a whisper of a flaw shimmered in its depths, black and jagged. The third, though, was perfect—large enough to be set in a ring, or to serve as an eye-catching center of a necklace. The stone covered the nail on my little finger.
    I lifted it from its velvet-inlaid tray and turned it to catch the light. I could picture it centered above a book, spreading its crystalline power over the bound pages. Generosity, citrine said. Prosperity. Those were its ancient properties, its traditional symbolism. What could be more perfect as an offering to my new magical leader?
    I turned to David and said, “Okay. Show me. Show me how to bind a book.”

4
     
    D avid looked at me critically, as if he thought I was not sincere in my enthusiasm for this latest chapter in my witchy education. I shrugged and said, “Seriously. Tell me how to start. I want to do this.”
    Still, he didn’t respond. I squirmed a little under his attention, barely resisting the urge to raise my fingernails to my teeth, to gnaw away the edge of my nervousness. Fortunately, my Code Red nail polish saved me. It had taken me months to grow my nails long enough to warrant the expense of Lancôme. I wasn’t going to suffer a setback just because David chose to play the part of inscrutable warder.
    “All right,” he said at last, and I wondered what sort of test I’d passed in his mind. “First things first. You need to choose a book. The binding that you create, the ‘gift wrap,’ will depend on the subject that you’re covering.”
    I looked around my basement sanctuary. I could still remember shelving each of the books, creating order from the chaos, applying all of my librarian skills for good instead of for evil. I had been working to heal a broken heart that day—those four days, actually—and I still took pride in what I had achieved.
    At the same time that I’d moved the books around physically, I had created a database, listing each one by title and subject matter, so that I could find them readily in a pinch. I was tempted to use my laptop now, to fire it up and browse through my records until I found the right gift.
    Neko, though, threw the brakes on that train of thought. “Here’s a good one! Teresa Alison Sidney should love this!”
    I took the volume that he offered, a hefty book bound in crimson leather. Ornate gold letters were stamped on the cover: On the Care and Feeding of Familiars. The book was relatively new—it was printed rather than handwritten, and the pages were made out of heavy, rag-cotton paper instead of parchment. There was a simple table of contents at the front of the book, outlining chapters on Binding a Familiar to a Home, and Forcing a Familiar to Do Your Will in All Things, and Punishing a Willful Familiar.
    Neko cocked his head at an appealing angle, looking up through his eyelashes with all the seductive aplomb of George Clooney accepting an Academy Award. He flashed me a brilliant smile, managing to convey that my happiness and satisfaction with his choice were the sole factors that motivated him to continue breathing.
    “I don’t think so,” I said. “There’s too much valuable information in that book for me to give it away. Besides,” I said when Neko collapsed into a pouting heap, “I am certain that Teresa Alison Sidney’s familiar would be too well mannered for her to ever need a book like that.”
    Neko grumbled and returned the crimson book to its shelf.
    As I watched him scan the rest of my collection, working on some new