The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told

Hostile Takeover by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

I’m a thirty-year-old woman who lives at home with her mother. When guys do this, I suspect it’s because they can’t find a woman their age who will cook and do laundry and pick up after them the way their moms do. When a woman does it, the only legitimate excuse is that Mother is feeble and needs help.

My mother refuses to be feeble. I could cast a spell on her to make her feeble, but she has a rule: no witchcraft in the house. This is why I have to have an outside office to craft the spells I sell on my website. I have broken Mom’s no-magic-in-the-house rule a couple times, but she really means it when she says she’ll kick me out if I do it again without permission.

I tell people I still live with my mom because she needs my rent checks. I make twice as much money with my spell business as she does at her florist job. The checks meant something to Mom while Dad was defaulting on the alimony, but now that he wants to get back together with her, he’s paying regularly, so my expressed reason for living with Mom is a lie.

What I really crave is living with someone who understands me. This is a big secret. Not my biggest one, but one of the top ten. My twin sister and I became witches the same day, and for a while we grew into our power together. We were close before we turned into witches, but afterward, we were so tight I had trouble loosening up enough to find a boyfriend. Tasha and I went to the same teacher and learned the same lessons. We practiced our arts on each other… until I took a turn toward the dark side, and she refused to follow. She got all mystical instead, dedicated herself to the powers of Air, and left me so she could pursue her new faith. Now she travels the world practicing weird rituals that don’t get her anything but good will. I can see that being a bankable asset, but only if you spend it sometimes, which Tasha never does.

Mom’s the only one in town who understands me. So she’s stuck with me, whether she likes me or not.

As part of my business practice, I hung out at the student union building at the local university. My regular spell customers knew to find me there, and I hooked up with new ones all the time. The right conversational opening gave people all the excuse they needed to complain. Once I knew their problems, I knew which spell to sell them.

The S.U.B. was a rambling building. There was a bowling alley/ video arcade in the basement, a food court on the second story, offices for university clubs and special interest groups scattered throughout, potted plants, meeting rooms, and snarls of conversational furniture everywhere. I could lurk there with impunity.

A boy witch bumped into me in the food court. I was waiting to buy a gyro, and he was heading toward a girl. In addition to sideswiping me and not apologizing, he totally dinged my witch radar. I’d encountered other witches here and there on campus, but never somebody else with such powerful vibes.

“Hey,” I said, giving New Witch Boy the up-down.

He brushed past me without answering. I wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the world unless I worked at it, but I had style. Short dark hair in a clean cut, and single-color tailored clothes. I passed for college age all the time. Was this guy gay?

I wandered after him, not so much offended as intrigued. Maybe he didn’t have witch radar and didn’t recognize me for what I was. I’d met a number of powerful people, and power made its home in them in different places; I no longer expected anyone else’s power to match mine.

“Shelley,” he said, catching up to a girl who was hurrying away. I was disappointed. She had that blonde cheerleader look-long, washed-out hair, big blue eyes, lush lips, and big, pushy breasts-so beloved in teen-centric TV and too often in real life.

“Not now, Gareth,” she said. Her voice incorporated acid. “My boyf riend’s watching.” She swung away, bobbing gently in front, and Gareth stood, his mouth half open in either idiocy or preparation for a remark that never made it past his teeth.

I stopped beside him. “If you’re that interested in her, why don’t you enchant her?”

His mouth closed and he stared at me with angry amber eyes.

“Hey, hey, I was just asking,” I said.

“Get away from me,” he said.

“Sheesh, you don’t have to be nasty.”

“Did my mother send you here to pester me?”

“No, but I’d like to meet her.”

He blinked. “What?”

“If she’s the type of mother who sends girls to torment her sons, she might be my kind of fun.”

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Terry Dane. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“Terry Dane? Do you run that spell website?”

I smiled. “You’re heard of me!”

He looked madder than ever. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I shrugged. “Making a living?”

“With those watered-down imitation spells? More like wholesale fraud.”

“Come on. Have you tried them?”

“I bought the spell for studying harder. It hardly helped at all.”

“Did you dissolve it in hot water?”

“What?”

“You have to use hot water to make it truly active-the hotter the better.”

“Oh-I thought-”

“I include instructions with the spells for a reason. It’s not my fault if you ignore them. I’m feeling generous today, so I’ll give you a replacement for the last one you messed up, but this is a one-time deal.” I shrugged out of my backpack and rummaged through my sample case. The spells I carried with me were stronger than the mass- produced ones I made for mail order, on the principle of intermittent conditioning, and the desired-recapture-of- the-first-time syndrome. If your first hit was really effective, you kept thinking the next one would work just as well. Every once in a while I sent out the stronger versions through the mail to keep my regular customers coming back. “Here.” I held out the little gray-paper-wrapped cube that was the “increased study skills” spell. “Hot water. Tea or coffee works.”

He hesitated.

“Don’t use it until you’re cramming for something. The effect is temporary unless you reinforce it with actual studying on a regular basis. Wait until the night before the exam; it only helps you retain things for forty-eight hours, and that’s an outside estimate. Why do you need something like this, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on. You’re a witch. You could make your own.”

He grabbed the spell and strode away without a backward look.

“So, no coffee?” I yelled.

About fifteen people turned to look at me. Usually I kept a low profile, but at the moment I was past caring. Had I just wasted a free spell on a guy who was going to ignore me?

“Hey, Terry? You got an attract spell on you?” asked Seth, a short guy with bad teeth and too many green pieces of clothing. One of my best customers. I’d slipped him a free “see yourself as others see you and figure out how to fix your obvious errors” spell once, the permanent version, because it increased the effectiveness of all the other spells I sold him. He had learned to smile with his lips closed, but he couldn’t seem to overcome his penchant for green. “There’s a girl I want to impress right over there.”

“Sure,” I said, instead of, “Another one? What happened to the last six girls you used an impress-her spell on?” The spells had to have worked, or why was he coming back for more? Maybe it was a case of wanting something until you actually had it, or maybe the short-term effect had kicked in. If you didn’t actually interest the person you attracted after two or three exposures, the spell would wear off and the relationship was over. I fished out the red-wrapped spell Seth wanted-one of my best sellers-and he handed me fifty bucks.

“Thanks.” He ran off. I wondered if I should use an attract spell myself and pursue Gareth, but he’d already vanished.