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.

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 four,” she 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, No, he knows from rough women. I better be gentle or I’ll lose him.

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.

“It’s mac and cheese again, Terry,” Mom called from the kitchen at the back of the house as I ushered Gareth in through the front door, “unless you have other ideas.”

“I have a guest, Mom.” We passed through the living room and the hall into the kitchen, the heart of the house, where Mom and I spent all our together time after she got off work. The patina of a million cooked meals covered the kitchen ceiling in a yellow haze. The center of the room was a round table, often stacked with newspapers and mail, with just enough room for us to set our plates and silverware down. Sometimes we cleared the debris off, but it didn’t take long to build up again. The kitchen colors weren’t very inspiring, beige and brown, with a yellow fridge, all geared toward comfort and convenience. A cheese-and-boiling-pasta scent greeted us.

Mom stirred a pot on the stovetop, her silvering brown hair coming down from its neat coils around her head drift in long, limp tendrils around her face. She was flushed from the stove’s heat and still wearing the white shirt and black suspenders she wore at the florist shop. It was a weird uniform that made her look more like a waiter than a flowership girl, but they liked that at Flowers While You Wait. “Gareth, this is my mom, Rebecca Dane. Mom, this is Gareth Mathis.”

“Hi, Gareth! I hope you like mac and cheese. Terry, could you throw together a salad?”

“Sure.” I checked the fridge and remembered why I’d gone to the supermarket in the first place. Produce! We were out. I sighed. “Well, I guess not, Mom. I forgot to shop.”

“Frozen broccoli, then.” She nodded toward the microwave. I got out the broccoli.

“Gareth, would you like something to drink?” Mom asked.

“That’d be great.” He looked lost, standing in our kitchen, his hands clasped in front of his chest as though he were begging or praying, his brown-blond hair squiffed by the wind.

“Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. Cups are in the cupboard over there.”

Gareth poured himself some orange juice.

Mom asked, “Where’d you two meet?”

“At the supermarket,” I said. “Gareth’s a witch, but he hasn’t had any training. I thought I’d get him started.” I filled a glass with water and took a seat at the table.

“Really?” Mom put the lid on the mac and cheese and came to the table.

Gareth had gone red again. “Terry,” he said, his voice squeaking in a surprising way.

“What?”

“Maybe he didn’t want me to know he’s a witch,” Mom said. “It’s okay, Gareth. I don’t tell anybody these kinds of things. I appreciate Terry being up front about it, too. It’s when she’s keeping secrets that I get upset. Have a seat.”

“Are you a witch, too?” he asked as he settled in a chair beside me.

“No, not at all,” said Mom.

He turned to me. “So where’d you learn?”

“I had a teacher for about six years after I turned into a witch.” I could take him to meet my mentor, but then I’d lose my chance to train him up to be my new twin and business partner. Besides, my mentor no longer let me cross her threshold. She was pretty strict about not dabbling in the dark arts.

“But you still live at home,” he said. “And you think I should move out?”

“His mom makes him feel bad about what he is,” I told my mom. “She’s scared of him.”

“Oh, honey,” said my mom. She put her hands on Gareth’s, squeezed. “So sorry you have to deal with that.”

“Did Terry put a spell on you to make you say that?”

“Nope. No magic in the house,” said Mom.

“He doesn’t even know how to check for spells,” I said. “I’ve got my work cut out for me.”

“For once, I might actually approve of what you’re doing,” said my mother.

“So can I start his training here?”

Mom frowned, tapped her index finger on her mouth a couple times, and then nodded. “As long as it’s just matter stuff, not spellcasting on people. For the dark stuff you have to take him somewhere else. Okay?”

“All right.”

We had dinner, and afterward, Mom sat at the table with coffee and a crossword puzzle while I explained basic principles of magic to Gareth. Mom loves hearing this kind of stuff. It gives her insight not only into me but into my traveling twin, who blows home every once in a while. (I mean it about blowing, too. She brings the wind with her before she remembers to tell it to go outside and play.)

I said, “You have to perceive things to be able to affect them-or, at least, it helps. Do you ever sense things other people don’t?”

“I don’t know. How could I tell?”

“I knew you were a witch, and that your mom was, too. I learned it through my witch senses. Do you ever get strong feelings about people or things?”

His eyes narrowed, and he glanced past me, as though looking at something out a window, though he stared toward a wall. “I used to when I was little, but not for a long time. My mom’s dresser set. Her brush. It’s old. It felt like it might be able to-but she wouldn’t let me touch it, after that time she found me waving it around.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Good news, probably. You have the senses. They’re just asleep. Once we wake them up, you’ll be able to do things. I’ll try a spell to open your witch eyes. Wait here a sec. I have to get my kit.” I ran upstairs, grabbed my traveling witch kit, and dashed back to the kitchen. I cleared newspapers off the table. “Mom, is this okay?”

“Does it hurt anybody?”

“Not physically. I don’t know about the psychic consequences. It should show Gareth what he does and doesn’t see.”

“Gareth, are you ready for this?” Mom asked.

He laughed, with scorn in it. “Hey, I’ve seen her work before. I don’t expect anything to happen.”

Mom slanted a look at me. I smiled back at her. “Go ahead,” she said.

I assembled dust of ages, scent of spring gone, sound of three high notes on a piano, and a trace of vanished sunrise. Power pooled in my palms as I bracketed my ingredients with my outstretched fingers. “Show us what he could see, and why he doesn’t,” I whispered, not a spell I’d ever said before. I wasn’t sure if it would work. It didn’t even rhyme.

The ingredients flared, mixed, and vanished, leaving a twist of smoke behind. The world shifted around us. Everything in the kitchen glowed with colored light, and streams or strings stretched between people and furniture, appliances, floor, ceiling, walls. Some pulsed, beads of light sliding along the strings between things intimately connected; some shimmered in time to the hum from the refrigerator.

In the midst of all this weaving, an overlay that didn’t obscure the physical forms of things-translucent as it was pervasive-something hovered above Gareth’s head. A miniature thicket of rose bushes, and trapped inside, a pair of eyes, their irises deep, shifting gray/golden/dark and shadow. The bushes had cleared from in front of them, so that they peered out, as if from a cage. They looked this way and that. Whatever they looked at deepened and intensified. They looked at me, and I felt warmth against my face as though I leaned toward a fire.

“What is this?” Gareth cried, and his extra eyes looked at Mom. She had been turning and gaping at the room, trying to take in everything at once, but now the power of the eyes’ gaze focused her into concentrated Mom. She was taller, with a crescent moon in her hair-wrong symbol, I thought; Mom was hardly a virgin goddess-and a veil of golden haze surrounded her.

“What did you do?” Gareth asked, turning on me, and again I felt the warmth of his regard. I held out my hands, studied what the eyes made of me. I was cloaked in shadow so dark it made me look like a silhouette, but flashes of color rippled through my new outer skin.

“Why are you closed most of the time?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?” Gareth demanded. “What’s with all these visions? Did you spike my orange juice?”

The eyes blinked, a shuttering of images-all the color left the world, then returned as the lids rose. The eyes rolled up until mostly white showed.

“Someone put a spell on you to blind you.” I reached out, my hand a black spider against the green and red and dark glow of vines and flowers. “Do you want to be free?”

“Make it stop,” Gareth said.

“I’m not talking to you,” I muttered. With my shadowy hand, I touched the roses caging his vision, pressed this stem and that. A thorn bit my finger and I sucked in breath. Itching tingle spread from the puncture. The eyes stared at me. The shadow cloaking my outstretched hand faded as the itching tingle spread from my finger to my palm, and up my arm. My powers leached away as the shadow faded, revealing nothing but normal flesh, blood, and shirt.

Damned spell! Could it kill my witchness? I never thought anything could. In trying to save Gareth, was I dooming myself to being normal?

Before my darkness left me entirely, I murmured power words and picked more carefully through the roses, looking for help. The thorns sprouted and pricked my hands again. Weakness spread through me. Both my arms were bland.

Near the base of one of the vines, I found an aphid like a small hard bump, then another. I rested fingertips on their backs. “Small things, strengthen; change the balance. Shift the spell, let loose the sight. Sip the sap and wreck the roses; give me back my stolen might,” I murmured, putting the remnants of my power into it. The aphids listened and grew strong, sucked the lifeblood out of the rose spell until it withered and fell away. They nestled in my palms, gleaming soft, fuzzy green, the size of kiwi fruits, full of the power they’d sucked from the spell.

Gareth groaned. “Stop it, Terry! Whatever you did, make it stop!”

I exchanged a glance with the eyes. They blinked again, then the lids closed, slowly, and all the extra color faded from the room.

“All right,” Mom said, “what was that, Terry? Did you break a rule?”

“I just did what I said. We saw what Gareth would see if he used his witch senses.”

“What, all that?” he said. “That was crazy.”

“You have to get used to it.” I sat in a chair at the table and rubbed one of the aphids against my cheek. So soft. It made a small, vibrating sound like a purr. I was exhausted, and a little worried: the rose had poisoned my power. My defenses were weak, now; if anything with power came at me, I could be badly hurt, though not destroyed, because of my secret protection. I needed to find a spell to restore me.

Chances were the rose spell had also poisoned Gareth’s powers somehow, maybe paralyzed them. Now that it was gone, maybe he could get some joy out of his power. Maybe he’d be grateful. I hoped so. I wanted to use him in many different ways. “That’s where you begin with your powers,” I said. “See what you can see. Then decide how you want it to change, and work toward that.”

“What does this have to do with those spells you sell?”

“I decide what the spells will do. I infuse them with power and direction. Once I craft the spells, other people can use them.”

“You hypnotized me,” Gareth said.

I sighed and rested my hands on the table, palms up, with the aphids in them. I wasn’t sure what to do with my new friends. They solved the problem for me, sank into my palms. A flush of unfamiliar power flowed through my veins, mixed with the power the roses had sucked out of me, now come home.

I leaned back and closed my eyes, felt this foreign power move through me. It was a slivery power, like bamboo under fingernails, a power with hate in it, and strength, edged with elegance and beauty. “Tell me who you belonged to,” I whispered, and learned about Gareth’s mother, forced by her mother and grandmother to use her power when all she had wanted was to be normal. They had put a geas on her to pass her power to her daughters, but none of her daughters had been born gifted. A boy with gifts was an abomination. When she discovered Gareth’s gifts, she locked them in a hedge of roses and put them to sleep. This was a power she had to renew constantly, as his witch eyes struggled to open.

And in the meantime, with that geas on her, continually unsatisfied, she twisted up in some truly unpleasant directions.

I accepted the foreign power as part of my arsenal. Strange to meet power darker than my own. Everyone I knew in the witch community thought I was the bad guy, the unnatural one who forced people into things against their will. I was as capable as Gareth’s mother of mistreating other people.

I would take joy in foiling her.

Gareth shook my shoulder. “Terry?” he said. “Terry-it’s happening again.”

“What is?” I asked.

“The world looks screwy!”

I straightened and rubbed my palms together as a final thankyou to the aphids. I felt not only restored after the rose’s poison but augmented.

I glanced around. The room seemed normal. I studied Gareth, and realized his aura had awareness in it now. He looked all around, panicked.

“Your witch eyes are open now, Gareth. You can close them if you don’t like it, but you can also open them whenever you want. What you see, you can change.”

“Can I change you? You look like the Grim Reaper.”

“Really? Skull and all?”

He stared at my face. “Mostly it’s the dark cloak. I guess I can see your face. Are you smiling at me?”

“I am, Gareth.”

“How come your mom has a moon on her head?”

“I don’t understand that myself. It’s not there when I look at her. Have you figured out how to close your eyes yet?”

He glanced around, looking haunted again. Mom got to her feet, shaky, and went to the coffeemaker for a refill. She had some experience with weird witch effects-most of them from my sister, who was allowed to witch around the house, since she didn’t hurt anyone. Mom hadn’t had enough exposure to be relaxed about it, though.

“I can’t-oh,” said Gareth. “Oh, it’s all gone again. Okay, good.”

“Terry. Explanations?” asked Mom. She dumped extra sugar in her coffee and drank.

“Gareth’s mom put a spell on him to close up his powers. Did you see the roses?”

“I did. Thanks, by the way, for making me part of the equation.”

I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic, but, even though I hadn’t planned for her to see everything, I was glad she had. It meant she knew more about Gareth’s problem. “She planted those to keep his powers asleep. She tends them constantly to make sure he’s crippled. My spell messed hers up. Now his powers are awake, but he doesn’t know how to use them. Can Gareth live with us, Mom? If he goes home, his mother might shut him down again.”

Mom’s frown was ferocious, but I knew she’d cave. She had the softest heart of anybody I knew.

“I have rules,” Mom said, the start of her consent.

Gareth moved into the guest room. We went back to his house the next morning, when his mother was at work and his sisters had gone to school, to retrieve his belongings.

The house had no witch vibes. It looked like a TV sit-com house, not distinctive, not identical.

His room was a sad excuse for a boy’s room. There were red roses winding in the wallpaper, and no pictures of cars, airplanes, metal bands, or things blowing up. His clothes were all neatly folded or hung on hangers-no dirty laundry on the floor or draped over the desk chair. I was more of a boy than Gareth was.

I’d brought a duffle bag for him. He put everything in it very neatly, then stuffed his backpack with a bunch of books.

On our way to the front door, I said, “So where’s the room your mom uses for her rituals?”

Gareth looked over his shoulder toward a doorway I hadn’t noticed before-and that disturbed me, because now that I know where to look, the witch vibes coming from it were incredibly strong. “We’re not allowed to even open the door,” he said, as I grabbed the doorknob. A stinging jolt shot through my hand, the same poison Gareth’s roses had carried. I jerked back, shaking my hand. Weight in my other hand made me look: I saw one of the aphids, shrunk to the size of a marble, rising from my palm. As soon as it separated from my skin, I held it near the doorknob; it leaped the gap, fastened to the protect spell, and fed.

“What is that?” Gareth whispered.

“This is what freed you yesterday.” I hadn’t realized they could manifest again, but I was thrilled. Spellsuckers! A staggering number of household applications occurred to me. “I found them feeding on your mother’s power-suppression spell, and helped them eat faster. They broke the spell for you. I wonder if they’re yours?” The aphid on the doorknob was as big as a cantaloupe. My right hand, still tingling from the spell jolt, unhosted the second aphid, and I set it to join the first.

When they were both the size of fuzzy, pale-green watermelons, the tiny scritching sound of their feeding stopped and they dropped from the doorknob. I caught one, and Gareth caught the other. “Do you want the power?” I asked.

“What?”

I cradled my aphid in both hands, and it deflated, feeding me spell power again, exquisite hate and strength, a hot syrup both burning and sweet. “Put it down if you don’t want the power.” My voice was hoarse as my body adjusted to this influx. I was lucky to have had a taste the day before, otherwise I could see this killing me, as poisonous as it was-or it could have killed me if I hadn’t had my special protection. What if someone random touched the doorknob?

I directed the power flow into a fireproof box in my mind. I could store this power and dilute it for personal use later.

The aphid vanished into my palm again.

“It’s stuck! Ouch! It burns!” Gareth tried to shake the aphid off his hand, but it clung, a gelatinous mass, and shrank. He keened, a high, mindless wail.

He didn’t have the defenses to handle this. I grabbed his hands as the aphid vanished under his skin and followed floods of power along dried riverbeds inside him, places where his witch power ought to flow. I couldn’t stop the rush of hot new power, but I could soften it by adding power of my own, cold power I rarely tapped. He gasped over and over, and I saw that his mother’s power didn’t poison him either. He had been living with the restriction spell inside him long enough to acclimate to it.

The power rushed through all his channels and reached the river’s source, burst through a wall, and uncapped the spring inside. I had to let go of him then, he burned so hot.

He screamed. I covered my ears with my hands and waited it out.

Finally he collapsed, twitching, on the floor.

I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I wasn’t sure that was the right prescription, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.

When I rejoined Gareth, he sat up and took the glass from me, and my shoulders, tight as corsets, loosened. I hadn’t been sure there was anything left of his mind.

“I feel sick,” he whispered.

“I know.” He could talk! I relaxed even more. “Do you need anything I can get you?”

“An explanation?”

I laughed, relieved he could ask. I rose and grasped the doorknob. It didn’t bite this time. I turned it and pushed on the door, but the door rattled: it was locked. Mechanical protection in addition to magical. I knew a lot of unlock spells, though, and the first one I tried worked. “Let’s see what we earned.” I hauled Gareth to his feet. He staggered, straightened, wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

I let go of the doorknob and stepped back, giving him the choice. He studied me, then gripped the knob and turned it.

First thing out of the room was a smell, cold and rotten, like a cave where corpses were stored. The door opened inward. Gareth pushed it and let it swing. The floor inside was painted a lightsucking, tarry black.

“God,” he said. “I’m glad I never saw this before. I couldn’t sleep in the same house with this again.”

His mother’s altar took up the whole far wall, a black freize with niches in it where tentacled god-statues lurked, some veiled with dark lace, others staring, visible and revolting. On the flat stone bench below, a large brass bowl held ashy remains of burnt things and a scattering of small charred bones. A red glass goblet was half-full of dark liquid. A scorched dagger lay between the goblet and the bowl. A carved ebony box stood on the bench, too.

One of the god-statues waved three tentacles at me. I’d had dealings with him before. For a dark god, he had a great sense of humor. I wiggle-waved back.

“Let’s go,” Gareth said.

“Wait. Look in there with your witch eyes. See if there’s anything you need to take.”

“What?”

“Look.”

Along the side walls of the room-any windows had been covered over-there were shelves full of magical aids and ingredients, and a small library of hide-bound books. Gareth stepped over the threshold into the room. A shudder went through him as he stood in the heart of his mother’s power. “What am I looking for?” he asked.

“Something that belongs to you.”

“I’ve never seen any of this stuff before.”

I shrugged. He examined the shelves without touching anything. I wouldn’t have touched, either. Everything looked dusty or dirty, even the ingredients I recognized.

After a tour of the room, Gareth stopped at the altar. He held his hand above the dagger, the bowl, the goblet, and finally the box. He lifted the box’s latch and swung the lid up. Soft light glowed from inside. “Oh,” he cried. His hand hovered, then dipped in. He lifted a fist and pressed whatever he held against his breastbone. When his hand lowered, there was nothing in it, and nothing on his shirt, either. He turned toward me. His face was alive with confused excitement.

The front door slammed open. “Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?” cried Gareth’s mother. She saw the open door to her secret room, and shrieked.

“I’m the girlfriend,” I said.

She stalked forward, her anger growing with every step, until her shadow towered above her, filled with lightning strikes in random directions.

“How dare you open that door?” she screamed, and then, when she saw that Gareth was in the room, she went silent, which was worse than the screams, though less ear-torturing.

At last she stepped forward, muttering words that hurt my ears. She slammed her left palm into my chest, sending a powerjolt through me that would have knocked me on my ass if I hadn’t just processed a lot of her power. I was still humming with stolen strength, though, and her own power inside me shielded me from the new assault. She flicked her hand toward Gareth. A bolt of blue lightning shot out, sizzled through his shirt, scorched his chest. He staggered, straightened, planted his feet, and faced her.

“Okay,” he said.

She gasped.

“I got your eviction notice, Mom. I’m moving in with Terry.”

“What?” She stepped toward him. She laid her hand on his chest. “You-what?” Her voice was a whisper now.

“Good-bye.” He pushed past her, and her hand slid off of him.

She ran to the bench and opened the ebony box, gasped again.

By that time we had grabbed Gareth’s things and were headed for the front door.

Mom made cocoa in the kitchen for us after Gareth had stowed his duffle and backpack in the guest room.

“He’ll be able to pay rent and utilities,” I said. “I’m hiring him as my assistant, so he should make plenty of money.” Too bad his mother was so short-sighted. She hadn’t known what a valuable asset she had. He was mine, now. Her mistake.

“Sure, sure,” said Mom.

“I better protect you, Mom. His mother’s really scary. She might come after us.”

“Great,” Mom grumbled.

“Are you okay with me spelling you a shield against her? She almost killed us.”

“Terry!” Mom reached across the table and grabbed both my hands, clutched them tight. “Don’t do dangerous things! How many times do I have to tell you?”

“I had to rescue him, Mom. You would have, if you saw what it was like at his house.”

She softened. She reached for Gareth’s hand. He ducked her, then stilled and endured her touch.

“All right,” my mother said. “Protect me, Terry.”

Strange, almost scary happiness shot through me. Mom didn’t trust me with magic; she knew my track record. She was giving me a new and precious chance.

I so didn’t want to mess this up.

“Open your witch eyes,” I told Gareth, “and watch what I’m going to do. This isn’t a spell I sell anywhere.”

I conjured magical armor for my mother, and she sat still for it.

After we washed dishes and cleaned the kitchen for the night, I followed Mom into her bedroom, leaving Gareth to settle himself in his new space.

“Lots of changes,” Mom said.

“Yeah. Thanks so much, Mom.” I sat on the bed. “Sorry I had to spring this on you without warning.”

“Do you actually like the boy, Terry?”

“I don’t know yet. He’s got a lot of garbage to get through before he’ll be useful.”

She ruffled my hair. “There’s my girl. I wondered where you went, honey. You’ve been way too nice all day.”

I laughed.

Mom went to her closet. “I suppose you want to play with the pretties.” She pulled her jewelry box from behind a stack of shoeboxes on a shelf. Not a very secret hiding place. I had warded our house against burglars, though. She could have left the box in plain sight and it would have been safe.

I opened the box, touched the charm bracelet Mom’s grandmother had left her, the pearls my father gave her on their twelfth wedding anniversary, the malachite earrings she had given to her mother, taken back after her mother died. Buried under a tangle of chains, pendants, and bracelets, some of them gifts my twin Tasha and I had given her for various birthdays and Christmases, I found my heart.

I gave Mom my heart for her forty-fifth birthday. I made it into a really ugly brooch, red enameled and gaudy, with rhinestones. It was heavy and awkward to wear. If she ever pinned it to anything, it would drag down the material.

She treasured it the way she treasured everything my twin and I ever gave her, but she never wore it, which was just as well.

I knew Mom would never break my heart the way Gareth’s mother had treated his. She wouldn’t use my heart as a tool to supplement her own desires. As long as I kept my heart safe and separate from my body, I could not be mortally wounded, though I could be hurt-a lot. Now that Gareth had reclaimed his heart, he would be vulnerable to kinds of assaults he had been immune to before. I could make that work for me.

I held my heart in my hand just long enough to warm it, then hid it among the rocks and metal in Mom’s jewelry box. I closed the box and handed it to my mother. She tucked it away.

She kissed my cheek good night.