"Son, every first born in our family has had an accident after they turned twenty-five," Grandpa continued stubbornly. "That's the same age when Aengus MacLachlan betrayed his beloved women. Her family, who were powerful witches, cursed us."
Connor's head was going to explode. He had heard that story a million times. Grandpa thought the guy was a traitor. Yes, he had broken some girl's heart in the past. And yes, all of them were long dead. His band for sure did not know about Aengus' misdeeds when they kicked him out. The bastards had been just looking for a chance to get rid of him since he was the only one who cared about not selling their music too cheap. Now, as they lost their songwriter and lead guitarist, let them go and play some crappy pop. As if he cared!
Connor actually did care. The band meant everything to him. He had dedicated almost of decade of his life to it.
"Alright, let's pretend for a moment, I believe in all that crap about witchcraft. How does that information help me?" he asked his grandfather. Connor hoped the old man would leave him alone after that. No such luck!
"Break the curse," Grandpa shrugged as if his grandson was stupid not to see such an obvious thing.
"How?" Connor was almost screaming.
"Oh, that I don't know, Son. But I'm guessing that if a witch has done it, it will take another witch to undo it," Grandpa explained. Probably to avoid more questions from Connor, he said that he needed to buy groceries for dinner and hurried to leave.
Perfect! Connor mumbled. Though, if him finding a witch would mean he could get back into his band, maybe he was eager to believe in witches. How hard should it be to find one? Connor powered his laptop. He knew it was a silly idea, but at least, it was entertaining. “How to meet a witch,” he asked Google.
He was ready for a screen to pop up saying that he was an idiot. Instead, the search engine offered him hundreds of websites. One local website Meet&LoveAWitch.com caught his interest. He was sure a bunch of psychos would be hanging out there. In his wheelchair and bored to death, Connor qualified as a weirdo. In addition, they were local psychos. So if it turned out that he found a witch, he would not need to travel half the world to meet her. He signed up.
Find a witch! Yeah, sure, good luck with that, buddy, he muttered to himself.
Not much happened at first. His initial guess was almost true—weirdoes—one stranger than the other. Conner had received the oddest messages and invitations during the first week of his membership at Meet&LoveAWitch.com. The more days passed, the more he got convinced that his misfortunes had nothing to do with magic. His band had kicked him out because he was a big pain in their backs. He had been stubborn, egocentric and no amount of talent was a good enough excuse for that.
"Why are you here?" A strange message woke him up one morning. He growled. It was becoming a bad habit not to turn off the Wi-Fi on his phone at night. Waking up to another weird message was nothing he was looking forward to. He checked it anyway.
The sender's username was unfamiliar to him. Surprisingly, she looked quite nice and almost felt like a normal girl from a normal dating website. He checked the message again.
FirstBornWitch: "Why are you here?"
Connor: "Why not?!"
He'd usually start a conversation in a much nicer manner, but the girl had asked for it. Why would she send such a message to a stranger at 8 am? Why did he need a reason to be on that website?
FirstBornWitch: "You don't believe in magic. Why are you here?" she answered immediately.
Ah, that was what she meant. But how on Earth could she know? Connor checked his profile information. He had been careful filling in the “about me” part, making sure he did not mention how skeptical he was about such places and what he really thought about most of the users. There was nothing to give away his lack of trust in magic for sure.
Connor: "Why u think so?"
FirstBornWitch: "i sense it"
Oh, now this was getting crazy. So she was going to claim that she could “sense” what was going on in his head? Connor barked a laughter. Hilarious. He immediately regretted that he woke up so early.
Connor: "so u can sense me?"
Hmm, this sounded too cheese. He was almost about to change his mind but his finger pressed “Enter” before he could do that. Was he flirting with her?
FirstBornWitch: "Maybe. You haven't answered me. What r u looking 4 here?"
She was stubborn. Connor shook his head. It was probably his foul morning mood or the strange dreams he had had at night or maybe his hope that he could be back in his band, that suddenly made Connor start typing.
Connor: "My ancestor was cursed. Need to undo it now to get back into my band."
The word “curse” was like a sweet tune to the most users here, they were hooked up immediately. For a strange reason, Connor did want to sound interesting to this girl. She had intrigued him. Yet, one could never know what was true and what not in the virtual space.
FirstBornWitch: "U r in a band? Hot. tell me more"
Connor smiled. That was the one true way to his heart. He loved talking about his music. Now, when he was practically out of the band and nobody who knew would take him for a serious musician, chatting about music online was a remedy to his wounded heart. One big bonus
