Ben stared at the frothing beverage in front of himself with undisguised disgust.

He wasn’t entirely sure what she had put into it, but it smelled of bad eggs that had been mildly spiced with nutmeg.

“Drink that and over the next three hours those men will assume they went on a vacation that had nothing to do with hunting you down. Though why they think they’d take vacation here in Gable I have no idea… But that’s their problem.” Spidena shrugged, and proceeded to wipe down her work table and magically whisk the bottles she had summoned back to her shelves with a flick of her wrist. Apparently, despite the seeming chaos of the room, there was an order of sorts to where things were kept. Though the half finished ham sandwich still haunted the back of Ben’s mind with its mystery…

Aside from leftover lunches, Ben found himself preoccupied with staring at the odorous beverage in front of him while making no move to get any closer to it.

“You know, I had plans for today myself. You’re welcome to wait here while the magic takes effect, but I have some other time-sensitive projects I’m managing.” Spidena turned, and laid a hand on her table with her hip jutted out; her dark hair frizzing out of her long braid after brewing the liquid sewage that was allegedly going to produce powerful magic.

Ben glanced at her, swallowed with difficulty, then, seizing the cup, drained it in a single go as quickly as possible. He tried not to think about what felt suspiciously like an eyeball pass down his throat, or the other mystery grains that tickled his tongue afterward.

He got it down.

He fell to his knees.

He thought he was going to retch. He grabbed the edge of the table, panting.

The nausea would ease then swell like the waves under a ship, sweat sprouted along his brow, and so Ben kept doing his best to breathe through the ordeal. He was miraculously able to spare a wishful thought that none of the men after him would come crashing through the door right then and there, as he was relatively certain he’d be as useful as a soiled handkerchief should such an encounter happen.

Spidena watched his struggle through the potion’s initial consumption while resting her chin in the palm of her hand, bored.

While it was true that sometimes magic as powerful as that one could make a person bedridden for days, and sick from any end it chose to evacuate, she knew this particular customer wasn’t quite all he seemed.

While his poor, thin coat, plain white shirt, scuffed worn brown boots, and pants with frayed hems screamed ‘impoverished commoner’, he had not only known the weight of owing a witch a favor, but he also had the means of repaying Spidena what she wanted, and it wasn’t a small thing either.

So, she knew he could survive a little forget-me-now incantation complimented with a potion to seal the deal.

By the time Ben could push himself back up to his feet, albeit unsteadily, he still looked awfully pale, but he managed to turn his attention to Spidena and weakly ask, “Is that it? I thought you said it could be an incantation… Why did I have to drink… that.”

“Because you wanted them to only forget you and you wanted it quickly which isn’t how incantations typically work. The potion just helped steady the incantation. Like mortar for bricks or stones in a wall. If I were just wiping out the three years that would’ve been easier.”

“I said wiping out the three years was fine!” Ben exclaimed both in exasperation and frustration while resting his hands on the table and hanging his head as another rise of queasiness overcame him.

“That wasn’t what you first said! Gods! I ask for details, and then you’re obstinate about it! Then you complain when I do a spectacular job. I’m going to kill Windelle for making me think this could be a rewarding line of work.” Spidena threw her hands in the air and turned back to her stove to refill her teacup.

After topping up her beverage, she then seized a bottle on the dresser where she kept her mismatched dishes, and banged it on the table in front of Ben.

“Drink this. It’ll get the aftertaste out of your mouth and help you get over the worst of it. I’m going upstairs to finish an order.”

“I… I don’t think I can drink or eat anything right now,” Ben all but wheezed as he stared at the amber liquid he assumed—or rather hoped to be whiskey.

“One mouthful will get rid of the worst of it,” Spidena called over her shoulder as she started to ascend the steps to the room upstairs.

Ben doubted anything short of melted garbage could smother the aftertaste on his tongue, but he decided he’d rather risk it than continue suffering through the acidic bitterness that made him wonder if he’d ever be able to taste again. He uncorked the bottle, and didn’t bother to do the polite thing and ask for a cup. Bringing the bottle to his lips, he tossed back a mouthful, and like magic, just as the witch had said, he felt perfectly fine again. Even his tongue felt an immediate reprieve.

Ben blinked in bafflement at the liquor. There wasn’t even any burning feeling. As though the liquor canceled out the potion…

Was it that the whiskey itself was different? He debated taking another drink but decided it wasn’t wise to help himself casually to anything belonging to a witch, and so instead he set the bottle back on the table ,and sidled over to the stair landing to sit.

He leaned his right shoulder against the wall and eyed the door. If anyone came in, he’d have the advantage, though he doubted the Vontrik thugs would even consider looking in a witch’s shop for him.

Most people were too wary to interact with witches, and even if they mustered up the courage in an hour of desperation to seek a potion, incantation, or some other scrap of magic, they often were too frightened from the experience to ever consider doing it again.

Which made perfect sense. Partaking in magic when you were a seeb had a particularly unnerving feeling of the world tilting toward an abyss of unknown wonders and horrors. Your very rooted sense of how the world worked and reality shaken to its very core. No one came away from a deal with a witch entirely certain of the laws of life.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Except in such cases where small magic was sold. Magic bits that almost seemed inconsequential. Cleaning out a colony of bats from an attic with nothing but a satchel of cinnamon and peppermint didn’t seem all that impressive, and truthfully, the few murmured words of a spell that made it work a little more timely was easy to overlook.

Ben’s mind drifted through these thoughts of witches and magic. Thoughts he hadn’t really had the time to dwell on for much of his life.

He leaned his head against the wooden panel of the wall, and listened to the rustling that was coming from up the stairs behind the closed door Spidena had disappeared behind.

While the shop was cool for the early spring day, there was a stillness about it that started to lull Ben into a state of relaxation. Or maybe it was a combination of the potion and whiskey he had just consumed, but he was suddenly feeling quite tired, and so as his eyes slowly blinked shut, he felt himself be carried off into a pleasant realm of darkness where he could rest.

*

The sound of a hammering woke Ben up with a jolt, and had him instantly recoiling back with a raised fist.

Only he found himself staring at Spidena, wearing a light blue shawl buttoned around her shoulders, a sensible black wool skirt on, and a dark blue corset around her middle. Her hair was brushed and rebraided, and a carpet satchel hung at her side, though it looked empty.

It took Ben a moment of watching Spidena to realize she was nailing the white dress she had been wearing earlier that day to her work table, and there was a silver coin on top of it along with a small pile of dead beetles.

Deciding not to ask what new spell she was working, Ben stood, clearing his throat. “So what’s the favor you need?”

Having finished her task, Spidena glanced over her shoulder at him, her hands were in fists on her hips, the hammer still in hand. “I need to go to Kintel. You’re going to take me there and make sure nothing happens to me.”

Ben rose to his feet. “What?”

“I’m assuming you don’t have anyone else after you?” Spidena asked in a business-like tone while stepping over to her dressers and shelves and adding things to her satchel, though the bag never seemed to look any fuller…

“You can’t come with me! I already have something I need to do. Can’t I–Argh!” A sharp pain flared in Ben’s heart that had him clutching his chest and bracing his hand against the wall for support. Breathing started to become an issue, and spots danced in front of his eyes.

“You agreed to the favor. If you back out now something awful will happen to you. You might go blind, or have a weak heart for the rest of your life… You might even go temporarily mad for a decade or two!” Spidena explained as she finished shoving a glass ball that briefly filled with white, glowing fog while in her hands.

The pain eased away after she finished speaking, but Ben still felt as though he were on the brink of fainting.

“Ready to go?”

Ben stared at the witch dumbly for fifteen seconds before uttering. “How… Did you know I was going to Kintel?”

Spidena’s eyebrows flew up. “What?”

For the first time since meeting her, the witch looked alarmed and concerned.

“I… I have to go north first to get the gold, but then I was going to travel through the Drebin Forest to Kintel.”

Spidena’s jaw dropped, and her eyes filled with horror.

She looked to the ceiling and raised her fists. “DAMNIT! I SHOULD’VE KNOWN!”

Ben would’ve liked to say his bewilderment worsened in that moment, but he had already traveled to the furthest reaches of that sentiment several moments before. At the rate things were spiraling around him, he was going to get a headache.

“Godsdamnit, damnit, damnit!” Spidena cursed, almost spitting. Her knuckles fell to rap on her skull. She stalked over to a cabinet that in most people’s homes would’ve been used to store their finest dishes, but Spidena had loaded it instead with mysterious packages wrapped in yellowing paper. She yanked out a flat one that had in large black letters the words EMERGENCY ONLY scrawled over it seven times.

She shoved it into her satchel, then continued staring at the rest of the packages that also had ominous warnings written all over them in silent debate.

After a full minute of contemplation she grabbed a large one shaped like a jar that said, ARE YOU SURE? twelve times on it, and then a third one shaped like a triangle that wrote, YOU BETTER HAVE LOST YOUR MIND only once, but it was the one Spidena deliberated the longest on before, with great reluctance, she added it to her bag.

She stared at the other packages thoughtfully, then with a shake of her head and a wave of her hand as though dismissing herself, she closed the doors, locked them with the small iron key that had been sitting in the lock in the first place, and rounded back to face Ben.

“I guess we better be off. This is going to be a bigger favor than even I thought.” Spidena then threw open the front door and stepped out into the bright sunlit cobbled street.

Following behind her hesitantly, his mind still foggy from the sleep and magic, Ben cast a final glance around the shop. As he closed the door behind himself he wondered if he would one day come to regret involving himself with Spidena Kettle…

Unfortunately, even the witch herself wouldn’t be able to answer that question for him. Though she was asking something very similar to herself at that moment.