Page 5 of Vengefully Matched

“Line one is Valerie from Ferndale; I’ll tell her you’ve been pulled into an essential meeting. Line three is the mundane mayor; that one you should take first—it’s not even his secretary on the phone. Line four is one of the representatives from the historical society. I can have them give me information about the event they’re proposing, and you can call them back later.”

“What would I do without you, Kevin?” She thought darkly to the time when Priscilla Hart had tried to hire Kevin out from under her for a presidential campaign.

She could remember the Hart for Honor campaign posters he had sent her, the ones with a picture of her smiling dopily and holding several shopping bags—her mother’s entire bridge club, for whom she’d been holding the bags, cropped delicately out of the frame—with the tagline about how a vote for Vanderbilt Voisin was one for style over substance.

“Good thing you’ll never have to know!” His voice was chipper, as always.

She put down the phone, and when it lit up again, pressed the button for speaker mode.

“Mayor Khalil?” Goddess, she hoped Kevin had got it right and it wasn’t the historical society again.

“President Vanderbilt Voisin.” The mayor’s voice was gruff, but not unkind.

Her first call with the mayor had been quick but painful; his knowledge of magic in Hallowcross, a secret to all other nonmagical beings in town, was decades old. She’d met with him twice since, and though his frosty demeanor had shifted into polite distance, she was absolutely certain that he would have preferred to work with Priscilla Hart.

Mainly because when she had called on him, that first time, he had been so aghast at her electoral victory that it took him a solid three minutes to convince him that she was, in fact, the new president of the North American Council of Witchery.

“I’d love to talk to you about setting up a routine meeting to discuss magical and mundane interface and prioritize issues on our end,” she began.

She could practically see him cross his arms through the phone line, though she’d never violate his privacy by casting any sort of spell that would literally let her do so.

“I can’t commit to all that with the current state of my schedule,” he said. “But I’d be happy to meet in person next month if you’re available.”

“Absolutely,” she said, laying on every bit of charm she could. “I was hoping that you and I would get a chance to brainstorm. Maybe over a shared document?”

He coughed. “I’ll have my assistant call yours to schedule that meeting, and you can share documents face-to-face, the good old-fashioned way.” He cleared his throat. “And please have Councilwoman Hart call me about the Constance Witherspoon incidents.”

Agatha held back a groan of frustration.

“Of course,” she said. “Take care.” She hung up the phone and sat back, sighing as the pothos twitched restlessly on its shelf.

Every new mayor was trusted with the highly privileged knowledge of magic in Hallowcross, something that had been kept from the nonmagical humans for hundreds of years to avoid public outcry. Mayor Khalil was a bristling, grumpy old man known for his mittens and his sour expressions, but he was a fierce advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and had kept Hallowcross welcoming for decades. There was no way he would lose an election, and he shouldn’t. He was an amazing mayor. He just also happened to be committed to print copies over electronic documents and tied to the oldest witch family in Hallowcross.

And the problem with that was the Harts. The mundane mayor had been in office long enough to have worked with Benedict Hart, and his mother before him. Which meant that he insisted his Council liaison be the Council member who absolutely made her the most uncomfortable.

Fucking Priscilla Hart.

Agatha sighed and hit the intercom button. “Kevin, can you come in with the agenda?”

The door swung open, and Kevin gestured with his tablet. “Ready.”

She sighed. At least she could count on Kevin.

“The community garden is first.” Kevin slid into the chair across from her desk.

“Perfect. Can you make sure it’s clear in the item description when the memo goes out that we would like this to be a pilot program for use by the Council nationwide?”

“Noted,” he said, tapping furiously. “What’s our next high-priority item?”

“Safe storage of magical objects and oddities.” She cleared her throat. She didn’t like to mention the Fountain of Youth elixir, and fortunately, Kevin didn’t press the issue. She rubbed her temple just thinking about the late night she’d pulled last week reading all the footnotes in the compendium documenting the properties of immortality magic and why it was forbidden. Nasty stuff, really, and awfully dry writing to boot.

“And after that?” He tapped away at his device.

“Enforcement of Council decrees on psychic activity and divination regulations.”

“Ah,” said Kevin, nodding. “Connie.”

“Yes.” Connie Witherspoon had been a fake roadside psychic known affectionately as Madam Cleopatra until a dustup with a soul eater last year had left her in a magically induced coma, which she awoke from with actual powers. It was ironic that now, Connie could not entirely control her prophesizing. If she didn’t figure out how to use her power effectively, it would explode out of her at inopportune times, like at the Shaw’s, when a burst of pent-up divination turned into prognostication in the vegetable aisle that had been an absolute nightmare to cover up.