The next time I saw Gareth was in the supermarket by the produce section.
Ding! Ding! Witch in the vicinity! I turned from the mountain of Minneolas I was casing and saw Gareth squeezing an avocado. I decided to stalk him, since the straightforward approach hadn’t worked.
He put three avocados in a plastic bag and turned to hand the bag to a woman. Ding! Okay, that was why two dings the first time, and maybe why he could ignore me so easily-he already had a companion witch.
“Gareth, I said
A testy companion witch. Twice his age.
Two girls rushed up, stair-steps, wavy brown hair, with the same tawny eyes Gareth had. “Look, Mom! Stephanie found the brown sugar!” said the taller girl, and the other one said, “Lacey got the flour!”
“Good job, girls,” said the woman, smiling down at them, an edge of enchantment in her expression. For sure the kids felt loved. Cheap trick. I had that one in my repertoire, but it was so easy I rarely used it. Maybe I should try it on Gareth. He was probably used to it, and would fall faster than someone never exposed.
A slender young woman, her brown-gold hair in short curls, arrived and set a bag of raisins carefully in the cart, offering the mother witch a tight smile.
“Thank you, Rae,” said the mother, her voice not so supple and graceful this time.
“What else do you need?” asked Rae.
Mom witch consulted her shopping list. “Chocolate chips.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before? Those were in the same aisle,” said Rae. She frowned and marched away.
“Mommy, what else can we find?”
“Bread, girls,” said the mother to the two girls, who jumped up and down. “Look by the back wall.” She gestured toward the store bakery, and the two raced off, giggling. She held out the bag with three avocados to Gareth without a word, and he went back to the produce aisle.
I edged over to him, reached for an onion. “Okay, I get why you’re allergic to witches,” I muttered, “but I’m not your mother.”
He jerked and dropped three avocados on the floor, starting an avocado avalanche. I snapped my fingers and stopped them all from tumbling, sorted them back into a stable pile. “You’ve got to work on your people-sensing skills,” I said. “I didn’t actually sneak up on you. You could have seen me in your peripheral vision.”
“Are you following me?” He stood, picked up the three fugitive avocados, and placed them carefully with the others.
“Maybe.”
“Get away from me.”
“Am I totally unattractive to you?” That came out more plaintive than I liked. I didn’t let Helpless Me out to play in public. This guy was demoralizing me, and I should probably move away from him. Instead, I said, “I can change.”
“Why are you even interested in me? I’m not sending out signals, am I?” His eyes widened. “Did I put a spell on you?”
“Simmer down. I’m just short of witch company at the moment, and you’re the first likely candidate I’ve sensed in a while.”
“I’ll be interested in you if you can teach me how to stop being a witch,” he whispered, just as his mother swooped down on us.
“Didn’t you find another avocado yet? What’s taking so long?”
“Hey, Mom. This is Terry, my new girlfriend.” Whoa! I was promoted! He went on, “Terry, my mother, Sally Mathis.”
She stiffened immediately, worked hard, and came up with a smile. “Nice to meet you. You won’t distract him from his homework too much, will you?”
“Is schoolwork a problem for Gareth?” I asked. Did she or didn’t she realize I was a witch? Maybe she was one of those instinctive practitioners who had never explored the range of powers available to her. In which case, Gareth might be completely untrained. I could turn him into whatever I wanted.
I grabbed a perfectly ripe avocado and handed it to Gareth.
“He lacks concentration,” said Gareth’s mother. She was being pretty bitchy about her son to someone she didn’t even know.
“I can help him concentrate,” I said, in my best cat-purr voice.
“Wonderful,” said Sally with a sour frown. “It’s a thrill and a half to meet you.”
“Likewise, I’m sure.”
Gareth put the avocado I’d chosen in the bag with the others and handed it to his mother. “We’re going for coffee.”
“But-” said Sally.
I linked arms with Gareth, smiled at his mother, and led him away. I left my half-filled basket on top of a pyramid of cans of corned beef hash.
Outside, we headed for the nearest Starbucks. We both ordered the house blend, and I paid, since I’d offered to before. We settled at one of the tiny round tables, and I hunched toward him. “So what’s your new agenda?” I asked. “It’s quite a distance from ‘get away from me’ to girlfriend.”
He hooked both hands behind his neck and pulled his head down like someone getting ready to be searched by cops. “I thought you could help me figure out how not to be a witch.”
“Why would you want that? Are you totally not getting what a blast this is?”
He looked up. “She wanted the girls to get the power, but they didn’t. She’s scared of me having it.”
“Are you still living at home?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Well, there’s your first mistake. Get away from her.” Like I could talk. My own mom was completely ready for me to move out. I was the one who wouldn’t go.
“But I don’t know how to-Dad’s out of the picture. He hasn’t paid child support in three years. There’s four of us, and-She just barely managed my college tuition, even though I have scholarships. She can’t afford to pay for a dorm room for me, and I-”
Couldn’t he work his way through school? I guessed it depended on his skill set. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Seventeen.”
“Oh.” He couldn’t even vote yet. But if he’d graduated high school early and gotten scholarships, why did he need spells to help him study? “How do you use your witchcraft on a day-to-day basis?”
“I don’t.”
“Not at all?”
“Not on purpose,” he said, and flushed.
“How about your mom? What does she do with hers?”
“Woman things,” he muttered, his gaze on the tabletop.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“She won’t tell me. She does it at home in a room with the door closed. All I know is there’s stinky incense involved, and words I can’t hear through the door. The craft has passed from mother to daughter in our family for generations. She hates that I got it instead of the girls.”
“Gareth,” I said, exasperated. Then I thought,
I started over. “Okay, listen. I can’t unwitch you-I don’t know how-but I can teach you how to make it work for you.”
“With those stupid spells you sell? I don’t know much, but I can tell they don’t work very well.”
“They don’t have to work well to sell well. I don’t want to upset the social balance by giving anyone giant advantages in any of the areas I service. That might lead to scrutiny I don’t want. I can teach you how to be a much better witch, but you have to agree to help me. If I train you in the business, you can make enough money to get your own place. What do you say?”
He stared at his coffee cup so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but at last he said, “Okay.”
First I took Gareth home with me. I figured he should know what a mom was supposed to be like.
