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Here’s the first chapter of Curse of the Dead Witch!

As a Wizard, I was used to surprise. Immune to it, I would have said. After years of strange occurrences and wild magic, the unexpected was expected. But being held at wand-point in an alley by a bipedal otter in a bowler hat, who was side-eyeing me because they could only hold the wand with their teeth? That was a real Halloween Tuesday surprise.

“Hey! Hey, take it easy, little guy.” I held up my hands to the otter, the hem of my cloak sliding down my arms, showing my hands were empty, several rings on my fingers, and my arms only had a leather cuffed wooden watch on my left wrist and a few beaded bracelets on my right. “I just wanted a bagel. There is a great bagel cart on the street at the end of this alley. But I can take the long way around. No need for violence.”

The otter mumbled a few consonants around the wood in its teeth. I shrugged and shook my head, my white forward-swept hair moving with the motion.

It spit out the wand, catching it between its arms and chest, still aimed my way.

“I need you to solve a murder.” The voice that came from the otter was a car grease slick baritone. It caught me off guard. He repeated his question as I paused, lost for words.

“I’m basically a magic plumber,” I replied. “I fix rituals and totems and things that have worn down or shorted. I’m not a cop. You want Detective Palamondryne if you want a murder solved.” I made a motion as if to wave him over. “I can introduce you, not an issue. Happy to do so. If you put away the wand.”

The otter shook its head. “No. You,” he insisted, waving the wand.

I willed a bit of magic at my left index finger, where I kept a pewter ring carved into a basic shield spell totem. “Sure, okay. Murder. Yep, I can do that. Why not? It’s like finding a break in a sigil…I think. Can I consult with Detective Palamondryne? He’s very good at his job. Nicest urban druid you ever met. Not that you’d meet many, I think he’s one of the only ones. Who knows, right? I’m more about sigil craft and gravity myself—”

The otter cut me off with another wave of the wand. “You talk too much. You need to get to work.”

“Look…” I sighed and lowered my hands just a bit. I drew a quick heavy rune with my right hand as I did and threw the spell at the otter.

The wand dragged at his arms, and he squeaked in alarm, triggering the wand as it tilted. He had been aiming at my head, so when a black and purple mist moving like an old fashion steam train at bullet speed flew at me, it was almost center mass.

I activated the shield totem ring and a nearly invisible three-foot by four-foot rectangular wall of force popped into being, positioned between myself and the oncoming highspeed mist plume.

I had worked on this totem for months when I was apprenticed to Vivian. I’d crafted it with care to block every sort of elemental magic I could think of. It had taken the brunt force of many firebolts, flying icicles, globs of acid, jets of water, even fist-sized stones. But no defense is absolute. And I’d never seen a wand cast a curse before.

The mist roiled right through my prideful shield and through my skin. I felt it latch onto the currents of mana rolling through my body and spread. In less time than it took to cross the distance between me and the otter, it settled deep, orbiting my heart.

Curses are nasty magic. They require a sacrifice to begin with. And as evidenced by my own failure, they can bypass almost all defenses. They’re made of three parts; sacrifice for power, will for purpose, and a goal for the trigger. Any of these three parts could also include a time limit in their structure. Curses are deceptively simple to craft, should you be willing to sacrifice the appropriate being. And almost impossible to break beyond letting the curse play out as it was designed.

I blinked at the otter before squeezing my eyes shut and sapping the energy from my shield back into myself. I sighed loudly, held up my right hand and, with a snap of my fingers, engulfed my hand in blue-black flames.

“Okay. You have my attention,” I told the otter. “Remove the curse and we can talk. Be convincing.” I opened my eyes. Instead of my amber-gold irises, I knew from previous experience that my eyes had become a deep, glowing purple, as I had opened my Sight. A third eye, as it’s been called. The difference between seeing the world and Seeing the magic that makes up the entirety of existence.

I could see the wand. It was pulling in the magic around it to fuel its next charge of curse energy, like a black-silk spider’s web constantly flowing outwards and ebbing back in, dragging the magical shine off everything.

My gravity spell on the wand shone like a glossy black sheet, pinpricked with amber stars as it held the wand to the ground.

The otter was a rippling cerulean blue contained within its own aura, a tinge of orange from the panic it seemed to be feeling.

The otter took two steps back, gulping visibly and leaving the wand where it had fallen. “Sage Aulune, I’m so sorry. I wish drastic measures were not so warranted, but they are.” He ducked his head and touched the brim of his bowler hat. “I am Thimble, sire. Humble familiar of the Hedge Witch Aoife.”

I waved my hand while dismissing my Sight. “Hey, stop. None of that sage business. That was my master. I’m just Calder. And you’ve yet to explain or remove the curse. Don’t force me to keep more bad memories.”

Thimble ducked his head again. “Yes, right, of course, sire. I regret to inform you, I cannot remove the curse. But!” Thimble held up his hands, staring at the flames licking up from my hand. “It was crafted by my master. She can remove it. Or she could. But this curse wand was given to me with specific instructions.”

He coughed into his hand and stood up straighter, speaking with a smoky, feminine voice, like a recording. “In the event of my untimely demise due to seemingly unnatural circumstances, you are to take this wand, seek the most powerful master of the arcane you can find and cast this upon them. The curse will sap their magical potential within three days’ unless they discover my murderer and avenge my death. In payment, you will give them access to my laboratory, stores, and collection of grimoires, which they can keep or sell as they see fit.”

His recitation finished, Thimble drooped. He pushed his hat up and looked me in the eyes. “As you can see, I had little choice in the matter. I was compelled by my master and cannot go against her express wishes, even in death.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “I know pact magic. Okay, Thimble, tell me what you do know. Since removing my magical potential will kill me, I need to do as the curse commands. You said you serve a Hedge Witch? As in, a human who was trained by a witch?”

Thimble explained that the Hedge Witch Aoife had died yesterday when her heart exploded from her chest. Either another curse or a powerful ritual spell. The body was in the morgue, the police had already investigated, and the file was sitting on someone’s desk at the station. Thimble also gave me the witch’s home address—an acreage about twenty minutes’ drive out of town.

“So, her heart just spontaneously exploded?” I asked.

Thimble nodded. “She was gardening. Windvain summoned the police.”

“Windvain?”

“Another familiar, a seagull. She brought the police to my master’s home. They looked around after getting the Barrys’ permission—”

“Sorry, the Barrys’?”

“Barrage, Barricade, and Barrier. Three beavers my master bonded for home defense.”

“You master had five familiars? That’s excessive, even for a Hedge Witch. Did she have a lot of enemies?”

“She had six familiars, actually. Her first was Bucket, a black bear with a sweet spot for my master and a penchant for forcible limb removal of intruders. But he was thankfully out on a task when the police arrived.”

I just shook my head. “Six. And more than half of them for home defense. Yeah, this Aoife had a lot of unfriendly people in her life.”

“I wouldn’t know, sire. I mostly performed butler duties.”

I sucked at my teeth. Waving my hand, I reversed the heavy enchantment on the wand, floating it up into the air and directing it into my unlit left hand. I cast a compression spell on it and threw the now-twig object into my blazer’s interior pocket. “Ok. I’m taking this. I suppose I’m heading to the morgue.” I snapped my right hand to extinguish the flames. “I advise you to get lost, somewhere far away from the city. If she had enemies, they might not want to leave loose ends.”

Thimble bowed fully this time and nodded. “Had I not been compelled to seek you out, I would have already done so. Good luck Sage Aulune.” With a quick dive, he disappeared into the cement as if he was diving into a pool, without a splash to mark his passage.

“Next Halloween, I’m staying in all day…” I muttered.

***

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