Willem recoils as if I’ve said something revolting. “She what?”
I nod. “A girl.”
“Like a pigtails girl?” He shakes his head to clear it. “Why would she want a child—”
“No, you idiot.” I stare at him. “She’s a girl. A female. I don’t know how old she is.” I rake my hand through my shaggy hair. “Twenty or twenty-five. Thirty. I don’t know. But she’s young and seems far too smiley to be a familiar . . .”
“Sounds dreadful.”
I shoot him another withering look. “The girl doesn’t think magic is real. That we’re all just pretending.”
Willem’s expression turns sour. “How did your aunt manage that?”
“She put an ad in the paper that was spelled to only have an appropriate candidate be able to read it. Clearly she has the proper ancestry in her blood somewhere, but that’s all I know.” I think about the smiling girl and the freckles again. “She’s not right for the job. I need her gone.”
He shrugs, lifting one shoulder casually, and scans the lobby. “So curse her with a quick tablet and take her out. What do you feel like eating for lunch. Sushi?”
Curse her.
Defixiones—curses—are the bread and butter of our work, but somehow cursing an innocent like her seems . . . wrong. Most curses inflict negative things upon the recipient. I imagine her smile dimming because she’s been cursed and bad things start happening to her. For some reason, I think about her lonely expression, and something inside me aches. “I’m not going to curse her.”
“Do you need me to do it?” He pauses, adjusting one of the buttons on the front of his blazer. “I’m thinking maybe shawarma if not sushi. Preference?”
“You’re not cursing her, either.” I grit my teeth as we walk toward the hotel lobby doors. “She doesn’t deserve it. And shawarma.”
“Excellent,” Willem says, and I’m not sure if he’s referring to the cursing business or the food. “And she’s just some chit off the street. Why do you care?”
Because she has freckles. “Because my aunt would never forgive me.”
* * *
I TURN OVER Willem’s suggestions for the rest of the afternoon as I sit in roundtable meeting after roundtable meeting. They should be interesting—this particular one is discussing the merits of a curse tablet created by a 3D printer—but I can’t concentrate on anything but my aunt and her new familiar.
Just curse her and be done with it. Why can’t I? I’ve cursed others for less. I’ve cursed strangers. I’ve cursed people I know. I’ve cursed family members. I even cursed my own parents back in the day. For our bloodline, a defixiones tablet is the answer to everything. Curses are what we do. We can cast minor spells and do divinations, but curses are the lifeblood of any true warlock. Someone has slighted you? Pull out a stylus and a sheet of lead and write something unpleasant on the tablet. Maybe you want your neighbor’s hair to fall out. Maybe you want his garden infested with bees, or you want the dry cleaner to lose his favorite shirt. You write down your curse on a tablet, hide the tablet so no one can break the curse, and wait for the magic to unfold. Curses can be small things—hell, they used to be nothing but small things, petty grievances needing an outlet—but over the last hundred years or so, things have gotten vicious. Maybe it was the world wars that changed everything, and people became far less interested in being polite. Maybe it’s the internet that’s making everyone aggressive behind anonymity. Maybe it’s global fucking warming. Who knows.
Whatever the reason, a curse is not just a curse anymore. At least, not most of the time. My kind aren’t hired to make a farmer’s hens stop laying eggs or to make Cousin Jimmy’s beautiful head of hair suddenly fall out. Corporations have gotten involved, and now most casting requires constant phone calls and PowerPoints and projections. It involves watching the stock market and surveillance and Zoom meetings. So many damn Zoom meetings. Warlocks and witches have gone from individual, petty curses to corporate espionage.
Cursing someone isn’t just part of the job. It’s an art.
I’ve done this sort of thing so often that I already know exactly what I’d cast. I wouldn’t even have to think twice. One tablet to make her have something bad happen. Not to her. Perhaps a family member in need of an immediate visit, or a spate of bad luck. A car breaking down and the part impossible to find. Something that would require her to abandon the job. Then I’d use a second curse tablet to dull the memory of it and make her forget that she ever met Aunt Drusilla. She’d remember nothing but vague details, and Aunt Dru would have to go through the Society of Familiars to get an actual familiar that truly believes in magic. Since I don’t have an apprentice of my own, I’d be draining myself and out of commission for a week at the very least, but what’s a week to an immortal? I’d just have to schedule accordingly.
It would be easy, too. I have the supplies in the basement of my brownstone. I could have the tablets ready and buried in my aunt’s backyard, maybe under her favorite rosebush, before she even knew what was happening. And the girl would have no idea—because she didn’t believe in that sort of thing. She wouldn’t know to hunt down a tablet. She would simply think it a string of bad luck . . .
And maybe that’s why I balk at it. She’s a babe in the woods. She’d be completely unaware of what happened, and it doesn’t feel right. I think about Soren. I think about Zephyr First Technologies, and a sick knot forms in my stomach. Furious with myself, I push the thought away. I really hope I’m not developing a conscience after several hundred years of the dark arts. That would be annoying.
My phone buzzes with an incoming text toward the end of the day’s meetings. There’s another full day of discussions planned for tomorrow—new spells, new uses, and an intriguing seminar on magic and social media by one warlock’s teenaged son. But I find myself unable to concentrate. I don’t want to be here.
I can’t work until the situation with my aunt and her apprentice is resolved.
The text on my phone is a perfect excuse. It’s one of my Silicon Valley contacts, panicking because his rival’s stock has gone through the roof. He needs an emergency consultation . . . and probably a few choice curses that will turn things in his company’s favor. “Work calls, gentlemen,” I say as I get to my feet, interrupting the panel. I gesture at my phone. “I’m afraid I have to leave early.”
No one looks disappointed. Of course not. They don’t like me, and I don’t like them. I give a polite surface-only smile to the gathered warlocks and ignore Willem’s knowing smirk.
After all, no one needs to know that I can work remotely from my aunt’s house as well as from my own personal lab. I gather up my coat and my portfolio and head for the street to get a taxi to the airport.
5
REGGIE
NICK: I don’t know about your job, but mine is definitely looking up.
My roomie (former roomie) ends the text with an eggplant emoji and a crotch shot from the gym. I make a gagging sound in my throat at the sausage filling my screen and immediately text him back.
REGGIE: Dude, do not send me that stuff! Don’t be that creep taking shots of your clients like that!
NICK: Does it help if I point out that it’s Sergeant Hotness? And that he’s the one that sent me that pic? I didn’t take it.
REGGIE: That does change things a bit. So you two are talking?
NICK: More like sexting. But we can talk too .
I make a face, tucking my phone into my back jeans pocket. I adore Nick and would jump into traffic for him, but the man loves to overshare like there’s no tomorrow. I sure didn’t need that photo, and I especially didn’t need the up-close view it gave me, showing the blatant outline of a dick in thin gym shorts. I’m happy for Nick, though. I’m glad things are going so swimmingly for him.