The door opened without a knock, and today’s first patient glided in like a summer storm. Marcia Blackthorne, local witch, solstice attendee, and enthusiastic incense burner, usually wore her power like a perfume—expensive, heady, and a little cloying. She was tall, in her late thirties, and had cheekbones you could slice bread on. Today, she chose a red dress that swished dramatically without tangling in her heels, rolled her dark hair into a chignon held with two silver pins shaped like crescent moons, and lined her eyes with glitter eyeliner.
This must be serious, because Marcia hated asking for help.
“Cora,” she said. Or rather, her mouth said it while refusing to cooperate with the rest of her face. Her expression didn’t shift. Not in the “I have a resting witch face” kind of way, but more like “my muscles have staged a coup.” Her forehead didn’t crinkle. Her eyebrows didn’t move. Her upper lip hovered in a perpetual suggestion of a smile, and her cheeks were fixed at a perma-plump that would have made an influencer weep. “Are you aware you have a gathering of ghosts upstairs?”
“It’s an ongoing situation.”
My gaze skimmed past the flawless surface and noted what the untrained eye would miss—tiny bloom-like bruises at the corners of her eyes and faint purpling dotted like a constellation around the temples. A botched enchantment… with needlework.
“And the nakedness?” she asked.
Ugh, they were still at it? Damn ghosts had stamina. “Also an ongoing situation.”
She lowered herself with practiced grace onto the opposite chair and sighed. The large black purse perched on her lap shuddered.
Interesting.
“You look… immobile,” I said, deploying my professional voice.
Her eyes flicked, the only thing capable of movement. “Do not mock me, Undertaker,” she tried, but it came out in a gentle monotone.
Oh dear.“I’m not,” I lied smoothly. “What brings you in today, apart from a life lesson in restraint?”
She pressed a protective hand to the purse as it twitched. “I need help. I tried making sure he would love me forever, because I saw him eyeballing Sasha, and she’s a man-stealing whore.”
Awesome. Why were we still blaming women for men’s wandering hands in this day and age? And look at the result. Love magic and facial paralysis.
The flamingo bobbed in agreement as the air-con clicked on, while Barbie smiled up at the ceiling, an unknowingly appointed lifeguard.
I clicked my pen. “Let’s start at the beginning. When did you do it?”
“Yesterday,” she said primly, or attempted to. Her mouth gave me prim-adjacent. “And before you ask, yes, I know better. Yes, I’ve attended your tedious lectures about consent magic. But the heart wants what it wants.”
“The heart wants what it wants until it realizes it’s hungry and under-hydrated,” I said. “I take it ‘he’ is your partner?”
“Pete,” she said, with a softening in her eyes that told me the rest. “We are soulmates. He just needs to not have his head turned by floozy witches.”
I did not offer the advice tumbling around my tongue—that if someone was truly your soul mate, you could fill a room with the most beautiful naked people on Earth, and their gaze wouldn’t stray. I was furious with Hudson for a thousand different reasonable things—control issues, secrets, the way he arranged his socks by mood and his obsession with aliens—but I didn’t worry he might look at another woman like he looked at me. Jealousy still rears its ugly head. That was part of human nature. But deep down, I knew he would never stray.
I tapped the pen against my pad. “It will wear off in a few weeks, assuming the agent you used wasn’t permanent.”
Marcia blinked. It was the only dramatic gesture available to her. “I assure you, it won’t wear off without intervention, and I’m tapped out at the bottom of my power. I need your help.”
“Clarify,” I said. “Is this an aesthetic situation?” I circled the general area of her head. “Or a spell situation?”
“Both,” she said. The bag jolted. “But this takes precedent.”
She leaned forward and unclasped the purse. Something inside thumped, then launched. A frog the size of a large plate cleared the lip of the bag and belly-flopped directly into the flamingo pool with a sound like a steak hitting a skillet.
Mint leaves waved. The Barbie spun. The frog blinked one huge golden eye. That was unusual. Bella hissed from the shadows in the corner.
I pointed at my feline. “Don’t even. I’ll have your furry butt at the adoption center faster than you can say snack.”
Marcia gestured at the frog. “I misread the old language for ‘tongue of lover’ as ‘lover’s tongue.’”
Indigo stirred, languid and amused, behind my sternum.“This is evolution’s punishment for arrogance,”she purred.
“Thank you for the ethics lecture, carnivore.”
