Page 3 of Vengefully Matched

“President Voisin, your mother is on line two.” Kevin paused, the intercom crackling. “Again,” he added, voice gentle through the plastic speaker of her desk phone. “She said it’s urgent.”

“Thanks—I’ll grab the call and then we can go over the agenda for tonight’s meeting.”

“Perf,” chirped Kevin. He paused, and then continued, “I’m willing to invent an emergency dentist appointment. Just say the word.”

“No.” Agatha rubbed her forehead. “Much better to get it over with. Put her through.”

“If you’re certain,” he said sympathetically.

In the privacy of her office, shrouded by frosted glass windows that separated her suite from the rest of the Council, Agatha threw up her hands in frustration, contorted her mouth into a silent scream, and banged her head against her palm. Her silver pothos shifted, glowing slightly at the accidental magic of excessive frustration. One frond wove up the edge of a bookshelf and down the other before she managed to get it under control.

Agatha Vanderbilt Voisin could handle her own mother. After all, she was one of the most powerful witches of the century, particularly gifted with plant craft, and elected Council president. She’d defeated Priscilla Hart, that irritatingly attractive witch with a long family legacy to back her campaign, even after the absolute carnage of Hart’s election strategy, which had attempted to paint her as a bumbling airhead. “Galinda,” Priscilla had called her, as though she were the culpable, conforming sort, just because she, too, favored pink. Agatha was anything but bumbling, though, and after winning the close race, albeit with a responding slogan she wasn’t exactly proud of, she’d instituted order. Yes, she had referenced Priscilla’s romantic bad luck in a way that made her a bit queasy, but it was for the good of the whole. After all, it was Agatha who had smoothed an awkward transition following an emergency election and the abrupt departure of the North American Council of Witchery’s former president in the wake of Priscilla’s horrifying behavior at the altar last fall. It was Agatha who had been proper and composed, never batted an eye, even though she had been internally aghast to find that Priscilla was willing to jilt her bride, and then run for her old job when said jilted bride unceremoniously quit. Heaven, it was even Agatha who had sweet-talked the vice president of the UK Witchery Council into agreeing to a junior exchange program next year. That had been tricky now that the British expat and former NACoW president had, well, repatriated, on account of her fiancée bolting.

It was Agatha all along who was the right person for the presidency. She could handle her mother. But that didn’t mean that at this precise moment in time she wanted to handle her.

“… Agatha?” Kevin’s voice was gentle, buzzing through again. “Your mom’s still on line two. Should I tell her you’ve been called into an important meeting?”

“No,” she said. “She’ll just keep calling. Put her through.”

“Good luck.” Kevin was worth his weight in gold, really, which was saying something, because Kevin Cross was six-foot-four of pure muscle, an Adonis in person, so handsome that the interns in the mail room sometimes joked that if man-dough were a thing, they’d sculpt him from clay just exactly as he was, no modifications needed. He was thoughtful, and he had an uncanny knack for securing her honeycomb lattes at precisely the right flavor and temperature.

She shook her head, hoping to clear the cobwebs.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, voice pitching a fraction of an octave higher.

“How is the youngest Council president in the history of the North American Council of Witchery?”

She rubbed her temple. Her mom’s pride in this victory still going strong, then. “Fine. Busy, but glad to be busy.”

Her mother clucked. “Are you taking time for water and a facial routine? You should never be too busy for self-care, hon.”

The sobriquet, and the drawling war-ter pronunciation of the hydration reminder made her smile. Her mother never had lost the speech patterns of Baltimore, not even after high school, college, and med school up north.

“I never skip skin care. I plan to be young and beautiful forever. How are you?”

Tiffany let out a dramatic sigh. “Your father just finished the new deck, and we have been having cocktails and watching the leaves fall on the weekends. You should come.”

“Sure. Maybe this weekend.” Agatha was most certainly not going to come this weekend, but it was almost a four-hour drive, so her mother would understand. In fact, when Agatha inevitably made excuses about having too much work to do, which wouldn’t even be a lie, her mother would bubble with pride and fawn over her again for winning the Council election.

“Fantastic. You know, Louise down the street has her son visiting from Burlington. You remember little Adam Bumper? A few years older than you in school, and so successful. Owns his own graphic design company, and you wouldn’t believe what he has been up to.”

“I’m sure he’s great.” She twirled a pen between her fingers to stop the agitated magic from seeping out. The fronds of the plant behind her swayed.

Her mother was a meddler, particularly when it came to Agatha’s love life.

“Agatha, go on. Guess what little Adam Bumper does in his spare time?”

“Runs an OnlyFans for people with foot fetishes?”

“Agatha Marie Vanderbilt Voisin, I raised you better than to shame sex work.”

“I wasn’t shaming, I was guessing. Maybe Adam has really big feet and does numbers in pictures of them next to coffee cups for size reference.”

“All right, Agatha Ann, you’re very funny. Guess again.”

Agatha had no middle name—her parents had opted to make them all Vanderbilt Voisins on paper when she was born—and one of her mother’s favorite pastimes was filling in increasingly creative fake ones in random conversation.

“Uhhh… Is he into amateur photography?”