Bitch Witch Read online

  “I am going to hit and run on you. I’ve got to go. Here.” Sarah tossed her insurance card out the window. It fluttered to the ground.

  He tried to hand over his card, but Sarah put the window up so quickly that his hand bumped against the glass. She looked away from him, glanced into the rearview mirror for show—she could already sense the momentary break in activity behind her Jeep—and shoved the gear into reverse.

  “Hey! Wait!” Cowboy hollered as she backed out.

  His yell came faintly through the glass, but Sarah didn’t pause, instead stepping on the clutch and moving into first gear. She needed to put as much distance between them as possible, and do penance for casting the damn spell that tore out the driveshaft of that pickup and bloodied half a dozen people. After that she’d figure out how the hell to break a love spell without casting again to do it.

  Sarah arrived at work a half hour early Monday morning. She hadn’t slept last night—not that she ever really did. Witches couldn’t sleep long or deeply. Her aunt used to say it gave them more time to play.

  Mondays were Sarah’s idea of play, and her favorite day of the week. With a box of Dunkin Donuts in hand she swung by the coffee machine in the breakroom on the way to her cubicle. Despite the stigma attached to being female and making coffee for the department, Sarah liked good coffee and didn’t mind the stereotype. She made coffee almost every morning, and often brought treats. At lunch she regularly picked up as much takeout as she could carry. Most days she even wore a dress—they hid her penchant for sweets—and she always agreed to work late when asked. She didn’t mind being the poster child office worker from the fifties. She enjoyed every minute of mindless drudgery at Mass Power and Light.

  Sarah placed an éclair, arranged artfully on a real plate, in exactly the right spot on her desk and slid into her chair. This was what normal people did. People with souls not pledged to darkness.

  Sipping coffee with real cream, she gazed at the pale blue fabric of her cubical walls and the muscles in her neck relaxed. Pushing last night’s fiasco out of her mind came easy now. A calendar with pictures of New England beaches hung next to a framed poster of inspirational quotes. A fresh flower arrangement sat next to a silver frame with a smiling older couple. An assortment of highlighters lay beside colorful sticky notes, and a huge computer monitor sat smack in the middle of her desk. Normalcy.

  Lies.

  Sarah grimaced and glanced at one of the quotes on her poster.

  Life is what we make it. Always has been, always will be. ~ Grandma Moses

  So what if she sent herself the flowers every week? So what if hours shopping for stationery and pens replaced growing herbs and manipulating dark matter? And so what if the couple in the photograph were actually the parents of a college roommate? Sarah had created a normal life for herself, and these props helped enforce that image. What happened to the women in her family wouldn’t happen to her, because she had chosen a life without magic.

  Mostly, liar.

  “If I smell coffee when I get off the elevator I know Sarah’s here,” a voice bellowed over the cubicle wall. “You’re the only clerk who makes it! You have a great work ethic. Don’t think we don’t notice!”

  Didn’t do it for you, Mr. Management. “Good morning, Avery.”

  “Good morning, Sarah. Did you have a good weekend? How’re you doing?” Avery Gross, appropriately named, hovered over the fabric wall, invading Sarah’s personal space with his bleached smile and Edward Cullen hair. A mid-level manager, Avery had been promoted over Sarah last week. Since then he had managed to mention it daily, with small doses of, your time will come! It was always said politely, if self-satisfied, because he really wanted to fuck her.

  “I’m just ducky! Yourself?”

  The phrase had become Sarah’s standard reply, but Avery didn’t really need any prompting to launch into his weekend commentary.

  Sarah was okay with that. It saved her from lying. She couldn’t say her weekend had flown by; it had crawled. Other than casting, blowing up someone’s engine and being woven into a love spell, most of it had been spent lying on the couch watching old Meg Ryan movies on mute and rereading novels. Watching or reading anything new might take her mind in dangerous directions, especially during PMS weekend. So Sarah had laid low until cramps and the need for sugar and carbs drove her to make that disastrous Sunday night dash for sustenance.

  Do not think about the damn cowboy! Especially not with Avery and his bulging pants now at eye-level. Standing inside her cubicle now, Avery blathered on about Cape Cod, both hands in his pockets. The better to rock back on his heels from time to time and practically shove his dick in her face.

  Sarah nodded, trying not to look at the bulge. Although, if she didn’t work with him, and if she hadn’t instituted a zero sex with other employees policy, she’d be all over that. Purely for educational purposes. Maybe size does matter.

  Someone down the hall called to Avery that the team meeting was about to start. He looked at his Apple watch. “Gotta fly. Management status meet up every single Monday morning at seven!” He exaggerated the last few words as though weary of it, as though it wasn’t only his second meeting.

  “Let me know if anyone wants coffee,” Sarah said, ignoring a hip thrust.

  Avery lowered his voice. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Some people,” he darted his eyes around the empty office area before continuing, “might get the wrong idea.”

  “Wrong idea?”

  “Well, you don’t want them to think you’re brown nosing. I mean I know you’re not, don’t get me wrong. But you know how people are. Maybe you should take it down a notch. We noticed you’re a good employee. We appreciate you, and you’ll break the glass ceiling on your own one of these days. There’s no need to suck up. You’re a shoe-in. You’ve got the girl-card.” He winked.

  Brown noser? Girl card?

  We realize you’re a good employee?

  Suck up?

  Annoyance flared in the pit of Sarah’s stomach. They’d offered Avery’s job to Sarah first. She’d turned them down. Mindless, meaningless tasks were why she’d taken this job. She didn’t want to break any glass ceiling or climb a corporate ladder. All she wanted was to keep her hands busy, her mind preoccupied with the mundane, and not cast any effing spells. If she could do all that, maybe she wouldn’t be swallowed up by dark matter at a young age.

  “You’re not really going to eat that?” Avery indicated the éclair on her desk and patted his perfectly flat stomach. “Just say no! Isn’t that what they say?”

  Teeth clenched together in a perfect smile, Sarah said, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. They say that.”

  Avery leaned over her, the crotch to face ratio briefly neared to a mere ten centimeters. He crouched down beside her, nabbed the plate and tried a pathetic Scooby Doo impression with the donut as his puppet, “Rut-roh, Sar-rah, I’m rot real reakfast!”

  Good gravy, maybe he doesn’t want to fuck me. Maybe he wants me to maim him.

  “Seriously though, you don’t want to eat junk. You’d be surprised how fast a Daphne can become a Velma.” Winking again, he plopped the plate down and turned to leave, the bulge in his pants leading the way.

  Itchy cock! The spell shot out of Sarah before she could consciously think twice.

  It hit Avery near the cubicle opening. That was the problem with casting, one spell always led to another. And they all feel so damn good! With euphoria dancing through her, it was easy to take the spell in stride, and even easier to rub Avery’s face in it.

  “Hey, Avery, can you hold up a minute?”

  “Uh.” He pressed his thighs together. “I need to get to the meeting. Management responsibilities you know. Ha ha! Or maybe you don’t know yet. But you will! Ha ha!”

  Sarah scratched at her cheek. A very itchy cock for Avery! Double the dose for double the dick. “Just a quick question!” She s
cratched her shoulder, hoping the action tormented him as she forced him to linger. “I need a manager with admin privileges to approve changes I made to a BHC form. Can you do that for me?” She gazed at him with a pleading expression, not reaching for the mouse. It might take more than a minute. It might take until he scratched the damn thing with both hands in the middle of the office.

  Avery jiggled his hands in his pockets. The bulge seemed to have shrunk. “Email it to me. I can’t approve anything without looking it over first. You understand.”

  “It’s the 11-17. I only widened the columns so they could fit another decimal point. Mercer wants it this morning, but I suppose I could have you send it to him after the meeting. Would you put a note in explaining why it’s late?”

  Avery scissored his legs back and forth. “Fine. Hurry up! I can’t be late.”

  “You still have fifteen minutes.” Sarah turned toward her computer, slowly clicking at the mouse and scratching the back of her hand with the other. Itch. Itch. Itch. Avery didn’t need to know she had admin privileges herself. Her boss had said he couldn’t be bothered waiting for Sarah to get Finance’s approval all the time, but didn’t dare give those privileges to all the clerks, as the majority of them spent the day on Facebook and he was afraid what they’d do with it.

  Avery rocked from side to side. Sarah sensed rather than saw him try to dig deeper into his pockets to scratch. As Excel finished loading, Avery moved behind her chair and tried to surreptitiously scratch his dick across the back of it. Really? Pausing in her clicking, she glanced back at him. He stopped, bent down and frowned at the screen, feigning interest.

  Although Sarah spent most of her time on the wagon, when she did cast, it wasn’t dabbling small stuff. The Archer women could trace their lineage back centuries and Sarah had no doubt not one of them had ever cast an itching spell that could be relieved by scratching. Scratching would have the opposite effect.

  “Oh, hey!” Avery straightened, his entire body twitching, and waved down the hall, responding to an imaginary summons. “Now? Right now? Sure. Be right there!” He backed out of the cubicle. “Sorry, Sarah. Looks like they want me right now!” He turned and ran. Sarah could see his shoulder moving as he clawed at himself.

  “Good luck with that,” she whispered under her breath.

  Bitch, really? Grabbing a pen she clicked it open and shut repeatedly. Uncalled for. This is his little life. It’s like Aunt Lily and her looks. Some people have to feel they’re the best or they can’t function.

  In the end Aunt Lily’s casting with the goal of physical perfection had killed her. Constant casting had a cost, and as her soul blackened her looks reflected an ugliness that no amount of surface polishing could hide. Sarah tried not to remember how Aunt Lily had looked at the end. Wart-covered Kitchen Witches in gift shops were nothing in comparison to what a beautiful face became when it tried to contain that much evil.

  Caught up in sad thoughts, Sarah didn’t brace for the aftershock of the itching spell. It caught her full in the face and knocked her flat on her back with the chair beneath her.

  “What was that?” Mindy Millerton peered over the cube wall. “Sarah!” She darted inside. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  The roof of Sarah’s mouth itched so severely she sneezed several times in succession.

  Mindy laughed. “Did you sneeze yourself over? Sarah! Hey, are those underwear Versace? Those are silk, aren’t they? How on earth do you afford all the nice things you wear on our salaries?”

  I loot my dead aunt’s closet. Sarah rolled out of the chair, briefly displaying the thong side of them. She shook her head, trying to reorient herself. The incessant itching in her mouth was tough to ignore. “H-hand-me-downs,” she managed to say. Sitting back on her feet, Sarah untwisted the lavender and gold print dress to hide her underpants and tucked the embroidered strap of lilac bra into place.

  Mindy watched with jealousy in her eyes. “From who? The royal family?”

  Sarah got to her feet and righted the chair, trying to resist scratching her tongue against the roof of her mouth. It would only make it worse.

  “Is your family rich?” asked Mindy.

  “I’m not,” said Sarah, and it was only partly true. She’d inherited the Archer fortune. None of them had worked, because witches didn’t have to. Sarah worked, not touching a penny of their money, not touching even the tempting interest that would easily exceed the salary of any Mass Power and Light executive.

  “Did they disown you or something?” A gossipy gleam lit Mindy’s eyes. Sarah could already hear the rumors she’d ignite.

  “No.” Sarah dropped into her seat. “They died.” She grabbed the mouse and scooted it over the pad with an image of the Wayside Inn on it.

  “Oh,” said Mindy, looking uncomfortable. She gazed around Sarah’s cubicle. “Oh, hey, did you bring donuts?”

  “Yeah. I think there’s some left.”

  “Why do you bring donuts? You suck!” Mindy rushed out of the office, likely to score one before the influx of coworkers decimated them.

  ON THE WAY home Sarah stopped by a gift shop in Sudbury to pick up more stationery for her obscene collection. Since it didn’t involve dark matter, she couldn’t resist a small cast that made other shoppers hurry out of the shop. A witch needs her space. If she had to stand in line too long listening to people complain, it would be a lot worse.

  Another stop at a local café netted dinner. It took a full fifteen minutes of debate before Sarah made a deal with her fat cells and ordered a low-fat green smoothie and a ciabatta sandwich with sun-dried tomato and raw mozzarella, minus the trademark fresh basil. The idea of fresh basil made her mouth water. She’d been alone for three years now, but it still grew thick in the gardens at home, somehow self-perpetuating despite being an annual plant. Herbs were as bad as baking. It made her want to dance naked under the moonlight and listen to the secrets of the universe.

  “Anything else?” asked the cashier.

  Careful to avoid eye contact, Sarah shook her head. With the fading delight of two big casts exiting her body, the temptation to cast again slid up and down her torso like strong, tattooed hands might. “Wait. Yes. I’ll have a shortbread cookie.” Cookies felt good, and they had the added bonus of not escorting her soul to the dark side.

  “Dipped in chocolate?”

  Well, duh. “Sure. Make it two.”

  Parking the Jeep along the street in front of the house, Sarah ignored the overstuffed mailbox that no longer closed from all the unopened mail crammed inside. Several plastic-bagged newspapers lay in the street. The grass needed to be mowed. The two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old house sat in the middle of a five acre corner lot on North Street, two stories high with an attic big enough to stand up in. The ivy-covered porch sprawled the length of the house, so deep no light came through the south-facing windows shaded by it. Wicker tables and chairs had once decorated it, but Sarah had gotten rid of them. Not even a rocking chair remained to tempt her into a trance. She’d left the ivy growing over the structure, intertwined with sapphire blue morning glory that bloomed from dawn to dusk in summer.

  The antique lead glass in the double doors had changed; once a floral design, it had taken on a spidery look after everyone died. If the forces of evil were into metaphors, and Sarah figured they were, this said: We’ve claimed the blooms in our web and await the next blossom.

  “Oh, fuck you,” said Sarah, shoving the unlocked front door open and locking it behind her. Inside the thick walls and heavy glass windows, silence prevailed. Home sweet home. No matter that she should sell the monstrosity and get one of those steel and granite condos she lusted after. No matter that this place held horrific memories that no one should have. Like Sarah’s oddly dexterous fingers, chubby arms, and dark Archer hair, it was part of her.

  There were rooms in the old house Sarah didn’t go into. Her mother’s room. Her grandmother’s room. The basement. The attic. The greenhouse out back. The garden. There were part
s of her existence she denied: the dark side, what happened to all the women in her family, and the fact that there were no men. But Sarah knew cutting herself from the fabric she’d been born into wouldn’t work. She had to change it. She had to weave a new pattern into it.

  That meant a trip to the attic, before the fiasco in the Target parking lot caught up with her. “Tomorrow,” she said aloud. “Or Wednesday. This week for sure.”

  Kicking off Aunt Lily’s bright purple Italian leather pumps, Sarah traipsed toward the kitchen. She tossed the bag from the stationery store on the floor next to a bureau littered with other bags. Entering the kitchen, she slid onto a high stool at the marble topped island. Lifting the lid on the old laptop that always sat there, she resumed play on You’ve Got Mail. She ate her sandwich while Tom Hanks did perfectly normal things with Meg Ryan, like put her out of business and realize love didn’t come along for everyone if they were stupid.

  Sarah imagined her father had been perfectly normal. Despite her Archer witch genes, his were clean. Her mother had claimed he’d been an Olympian, having always attended the games with Aunt Lily. They liked sex with athletes, especially once they’d decided to have daughters. Sarah glanced down at her full breasts, well covered beneath the print dress, her soft arms fully exposed, and her short legs dangling from the high stool. Yeah, right. He must have been a jockey. When she’d been stupid enough to ask more about the donor, as her mother and Lily had referred to the men who’d unwittingly given them babies, her mother had shrugged and said she never bothered to find out which one did the job right. “What difference does it make, Daughter?”

  Giving in to the lure of Cherry Coke over the healthy smoothie, Sarah went to the refrigerator and grabbed the last one. Maybe Amazon delivered soft drinks. She wasn’t going back to Target anytime soon. I wonder if he’s at Target today. He should be drawn to find me. The sudden urge to go there hit her like an unexpected wave of salt water in the desert.

  Sarah coughed, tasting salt instead of Coke. “Dammit! I’m not going! Do you hear me?” she shouted at the empty room. “I don’t care! I will not! I don’t care how tempting he is. I’m holding out for the real thing, so fuck off!”