Hex at a House Party

by Gretchen Galway

  But why an irritable recluse like Helen chose to live in a crowded city, I had no idea. It made no sense either that she would want to connect me, a younger witch she barely tolerated, with an old school friend. And even more incredible that she would communicate with the Protectorate, an organization she disapproved of, just to get me to a party.

  “They think this old friend of yours committed a crime,” I said. It was probably confidential information, which was why I assumed Helen knew about it already.

  “Crystal was always morally flexible,” Helen said. “It made her interesting.”

  “What did she do?” I asked. “Do you know?”

  “Why assume she’s guilty?”

  I sat on a barstool at her raised breakfast counter. A row of ceramic canisters in various sizes were scattered along the back edge. I wondered if I would be like Helen someday, a grouchy recluse, hoarding herbs in jars. It made me uneasy to think I might be headed that direction.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Innocent until proven guilty.”

  Helen stood across from me in the kitchen, chose one of the canisters, and popped the cork. “Eh, she’s probably done whatever they think she did.” She sniffed the canister, made a face, set it down, then chose another. “Tea? I think this one is safe.”

  Until I knew what Helen wanted from me, it would be safest to decline, so I shook my head. “You really don’t know what they’re accusing her of?”

  “I was hoping you would tell me.” Her eyes fixed on mine, and for a split second my vision faltered as if I were staring through swirling mist.

  I put my hand on my beaded necklace and sent out a blunting spell to shield myself from her magical probing. Like a pickpocket, Helen didn’t respect boundaries.

  “He said it was something financial. Nothing dangerous to worry about,” I said, getting to my feet. “And cut that out. If I don’t want to tell you something, I won’t.”

  “Since when is money not dangerous?” She opened a third jar and took out a small object about the size of a baby carrot that reeked of rotting flesh. “It’s only the root of all evil.”

  “Speaking of roots,” I said, grimacing as I took a step back. “What’s that thing in your hand? I can smell it from here.”

  “You don’t like it? It’s great for bringing your focus to the present.” She rolled it between her fingers under her nose, inhaling deeply. “The stench makes it impossible to think about anything else.”

  I put my hand on my beads and imagined a bubble of fresh air around me, strengthening my protective spell. “I’m thinking about how you’re trying not to tell me why you want me to go to Mendocino for the Protectorate.”

  Frowning, she put the nasty thing back in the jar. “I don’t want you to go for them. I want you to go for me.” She twisted a lid on the jar and turned away to wash her hands at the sink. With her back to me, she said, “I just want to know what she did to get Raynor’s attention. I just… want to know.”

  Helen always said the mark of a good witch was insatiable curiosity, but I had the feeling there was more to this than that. Had Crystal Hawk been a good friend, and Helen was too embarrassed to admit she actually cared about somebody?

  I sat on the barstool again. “If they find evidence and arrest her—”

  “They’ll never make it public.” Helen turned around to face me again. “The Protectorate punishes their own in secret. I’ll never find out what she did even if they send her to Death Valley for the rest of her life.”

  One of the worst punishments for a Protectorate witch was to be imprisoned in a desert like the Mojave in southeastern California—no water, no power, no hope. Maybe she really did care about her old classmate and was worried about her meeting that fate.

  “I’m surprised you need me to spy for you,” I said. “You said you’d figured out how to spy on Protectorate business, even with Raynor there.”

  She pursed her lips and scowled at the floor. “Not always,” she muttered.

  I felt a pang of disappointment. So she hadn’t bested Raynor after all. “Then how did you know about the party?”

  “He told me, all right? He wanted my help; I wanted information. It was an exchange. What do you think pays the property taxes—lavender sachets? A woman needs to eat.”

  I frowned. Just like Raynor, Helen was trying to manipulate me—without telling me the whole story. As a child, my father had made me help him steal, and I hadn’t understood how bad it was until I was older. Only recently had I lived as an independent adult who could act for herself.

  As curious as I was about the party, the thought of doing what both Raynor and Helen wanted made me feel like a powerless child again. “I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to go,” I said.

  “You owe me,” she snapped. Then she stood up taller, her voice dropping. “You promised me an object that you’re no longer able to acquire. I hereby swear I will only accept as equal payment a full accounting of your observations at Hawk Ranch over the upcoming week.”

  I went still, feeling the power of her declaration sink into the roots of my hair.

  She was right; I owed her. When the Protectorate had imprisoned me that summer, she’d helped me escape in exchange for a vial of wellspring water acquired with the torc, which I no longer had. If she insisted, I’d have to go.

  But my ego still didn’t like it, and wanted to bargain. “How about I get you some wellspring water instead this winter?” I asked. “It’s already October, so you shouldn’t have to wait too long—”

  “I don’t want it. It would attract too many fae, too much trouble.” She pointed a finger at me and said, irritably, “What I want is the dirt on Crystal Ferrero Hawk. Whatever you can find. All of it.”

  I heard a deep bitterness in her voice. Helen liked to say all good witches valued knowledge above magic, but this went deeper. This was personal.

  “She isn’t an old friend,” I said slowly. “She’s an old enemy.”

  That made more sense, fitting what I knew about Helen. She wasn’t a caring woman looking after the happiness of an old classmate; she was an angry witch out for vengeance.

  Helen walked around the counter and came over to me, only stopping when her nose was within several inches from mine. “She was a bully,” she growled.

  It was hard to imagine Helen had ever been a young, vulnerable girl. “Somebody bullied you?” I asked.

  “I’d learned a spell that wasn’t, strictly speaking, allowed for students to use. Unfortunately, Crystal caught me using it and took my favorite velvet bag.” Her eyes sparkled and her voice shook with remembered injustice. “My grandmother had given it to me for my twelfth birthday. She’d woven her own hair into the drawstring. It was very powerful.”

  Having been in countless schools in my own childhood, I could relate to the many facets of girl cruelty. “That’s terrible.”

  “I had to let her keep it because she had a secret of mine.” Helen slapped her hand on the counter. “Now it’s my turn to have one of hers.”

  Chapter Seven

  Two days later, Birdie and I were in my Jeep, heading north on 101 to the Mendocino coast. My phone said the drive would take about three and a half hours. Birdie had been talking for the past two of them.

  “I just can’t believe I’m going on a witch retreat,” she said—again—touching up her lipstick in the passenger mirror. Her long brown hair hung in loose, highlighted waves around her shoulders. She usually wore it pulled back, and I didn’t remember the blond streaks.

  Belatedly, I asked, “Did you do something to your hair?”

  “I went to the salon last night. I’m not about to go on my first magic sleepover with bad hair.”

  “Looks great.” My own hair was a mess, but I didn’t care. “Just so you know, nobody will be posting any pictures online. Witches live a lot longer when the nonmag world doesn’t know about us. Old families like the Hawks will be especially discreet. There won’t be anything on social media about this party.”<
br />
  She put down her lipstick, obviously disappointed.

  “People have eyes, though,” I added. “You’ll make a good impression.”

  Smiling, she put on another swipe of lipstick. “Too bad we couldn’t bring Random. Dogs love the beach.”

  “Seth will take good care of him.” I’d been trying to train Random to be a guard dog and not just be my hungry, affectionate friend, but so far, I’d failed. If Seth broke into my house while I was gone and stole the treasures I kept in an old file cabinet, Random would probably help him. “I don’t know why, but Random loves him.”

  “I’m tempted to rub up against him myself,” Birdie said. “And don’t say you’re not.” She began digging through her bulky purse.

  I knew better than to argue. Birdie showed the warning signs of being a matchmaker. Not just with Seth and me, but everyone. “Put your hand on the beads I gave you,” I said. “You can practice on the road.”

  I’d given her a necklace with five large redwood beads I’d carved myself, and was teaching her how to sense active magic, more urgent now that she would be in the presence of several witches I didn’t know or trust. In spite of the resentment my old partner Darius must have for me, I was grateful he would be there too. He might let me get hexed, but he’d look out for Birdie. Darius Ironford took his Protectorate vows seriously.

  Holding the wheel with one hand, I used my mouth to pull the beaded bracelet that hid my power from other witches off my left wrist. It also covered the black mark on my skin—a thin arc that looked like a man-made tattoo—that I’d acquired six weeks ago. The man who’d died in the fight with me had had similar marks, one for each year of his life, and somehow the magic had rebounded on me. I didn’t know yet if I too would start getting new ink every birthday.

  “There.” I dropped my shielding bracelet in a cup holder and took the wheel with both hands. “I’m going to do a spell or two. See if you can feel it.”

  She let out a squeal and slapped her hand on her chest. “Ready.”

  The traffic on 101 was much lighter than it had been back in Santa Rosa, but there were still enough vehicles to manipulate. A white Corolla with Oregon plates was going fifty in the left lane, which made it my civic duty to inspire him to put his foot down on the gas, pass a truck struggling with an incline on our right, and move out of our way.

  My Jeep hadn’t been designed for the autobahn, but it could go seventy on the freeway, even up an incline. Soon I was glancing at the Oregonian in my rearview mirror.

  With the next irritation, I took the opposite approach. It was a full-size, lifted pickup that was coming up fast behind me, weaving between cars without signaling. Normally I would have moved over to the right lane, but it was blocked by another row of semis, and I was going as fast as I could go. When it loomed up behind me and began riding my tail with only a handbreadth between us, I sent a spell of peace, love, and tranquility. I could see the guy’s eyes go wide, his mouth fall open, and his head tilt gently to the side as he absorbed the wonders of the universe.

  The space between us soon expanded.

  Grinning, I passed the trucks and moved into the right lane to save my strength. Manipulating traffic took more energy than I wanted to spend right now.

  I glanced at Birdie. “Did you feel it?”

  Laughing, she punched the air. “Yes! I can do it! I am so doing magic!”

  Her joy was contagious, and I laughed with her. “Can you tell what I did?”

  She craned her neck around to look behind us. “It felt nice.” Frowning, she touched her necklace. “You seemed angry but then you sent out this… this pleasure wave. As if you loved the guy.”

  I hadn’t expected her to be able to judge the tone of what I’d done. I patted her knee to show her I was impressed. “Great job! But you should know the feel of the magic doesn’t always tell you the intent of the witch. With enough power, that kind of spell can hurt people. Theoretically, you can make a person so happy they don’t want to bother living anymore.”

  She lowered her hand from the necklace, looking sick. “Killing with kindness.”

  “It costs too much, which is a good thing for witches and people everywhere.”

  “Costs?”

  “The cost of doing the magic. Making somebody else that happy would drain you of your own resources.” I pulled my bracelet out of the cup holder. “You’d die before your victim. It’s a good thing we’ve got limits on magic. We’re only human.”

  “Human,” she said thoughtfully. “We are, right?”

  “Absolutely.” Using my teeth, I pulled my bracelet back on my left wrist and took the next exit.

  We still had a long, winding drive through the coastal mountain range on a two-lane road before we reached the coast. Most of that would be through a sparsely inhabited forest along a river—perfect for fairies. I needed to give driving my full attention.

  “You’re not using magic anymore,” Birdie said.

  I took off my sunglasses, which would make the forest shadows too dark for me to see into. “I am. You just can’t feel it.” The weather would change as we neared the coast, getting colder, foggier, windier. Wood sprite habitat. Near Silverpool, they enjoyed distracting drivers. I didn’t know if the local fae would be similarly dangerous.

  Birdie began telling me a story about a dream she’d had the night before that involved pistachio ice cream, being late for her math final in high school, and forgetting to wear pants to her old job at the hardware store where a quail was driving the forklift, when I asked her to stop talking until we reached the coast.

  “Just in case,” I said. “I need to concentrate.”

  She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry. Got it.”

  Fifteen minutes later, deep in the forest, I was glad I’d been careful. There were more fae than I’d expected for late morning, mostly the small fairies that loved redwood sorrel and kept low to the ground. They were singing in high, breathy voices that matched the sound of the wind through the tree branches.

  Birdie’s oblivious expression told me that she, like every witch I’d met except for Raynor, couldn’t hear or see them.

  I turned on the radio to drown them out. Fairy song was seductive, and unlike witches, they paid no price to use magic because they were magic.

  It took almost an hour before we reached the coast, and both of us breathed a sigh of relief after the miles of short turns to see the Pacific stretch out ahead of us.

  “Are you wearing any silver or gold?” I asked.

  “You told me I should. It’s a gold chain from my mom,” she said. “And I’ve got silver earrings and an anklet. Should I take them off?”

  “No, I just wanted to make sure you’re wearing something metal. The redwood beads are a wilder, more unpredictable magic. Metal is a good backup.”

  “Then why not do everything in metal?” she asked. “Silver’s not very expensive.”

  “The Protectorate does use metal and stone for everything,” I said. “But… it doesn’t… speak to me the same way. I like the wildness of hearth magic. It’s as if… it tastes right. You know?”

  “No, but I totally want to,” Birdie said.

  Her support made me smile. I’d never had a friend who shared my interest in the unpopular, abandoned arts. “Most modern witches think the domestic magic is silly and old-fashioned. It’s like making your own clothes out of homespun wool instead of buying designer clothes online.”

  “These witches we’re about to see,” she began. “They’re more the designer-clothes type?”

  “I expect so. Literally and figuratively.” I turned north on Highway 1. “We’ll be there soon. How about that oak leaf? Did you shove it in your bra?”

  She patted her chest. “Two leaves, one in each cup. Just in case. It’s scratchy though. Is it really going to protect me?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  Chapter Eight

  Twenty minutes later we saw a cluster of buildings ahead of us on the left. A
large old house and several other structures were perched on a grassy bluff above the wild, rocky shoreline.

  It was noon, but the sun was filtered through heavy fog, giving the world a misty, timeless feel. If I hadn’t had my lights on, I would’ve missed the small sign marking the private road to Hawk Ranch.

  After a slow, intimidating journey along the edge of the bluff, I drove inland through coastal prairie, then parked in front of the two-story converted farmhouse that looked like the main dwelling. To the right were two other old structures, maybe a carriage house, garage, or barn. Up the hill, away from the cliff’s edge, was a small, modern cottage with a deck and wood chairs to enjoy the view.

  I turned off the engine and checked my bracelets, my necklace, the thrum of latent power deep inside me. Everything seemed fine, but I was tense.

  The property was beautiful and appealing, and its commercial history of taking paid guests was obvious. But already I could feel something about it was missing, something I couldn’t put my finger on.

  Not enough cars? There was a green Hyundai sedan in the small lot in front of the farmhouse, and other cars could’ve been inside one of the outbuildings. One of them was probably a garage.

  No people? At first it seemed deserted, but just as I was looking for signs of life, a white-haired woman walked out from the garden, holding a basket of cut flowers.

  I recognized a bunch of black-eyed Susans and purple Mexican sage and automatically scanned through my memories for what sinister purposes they might be used but couldn’t think of any.

  The woman set down her basket and headed over to us. She wore a turquoise-blue fisherman’s sweater, tight dark jeans, and knee-high leather boots—casual yet classy. Her platinum hair was long and straight, streaked with black lowlights, and pulled into a high bun.