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Another ping from my phone followed immediately. Wow, had she been camped on the photo, just waiting to see if I would respond?
No, this was from someone else, a guy with the handle of Sausalito_Timmy.
Looking good, @Selena_Blue!
Even in his thumbnail, he seemed to be leering at me.
Great. I’d forgotten about attracting the internet creepers along with the people who might be honestly interested in witchcraft. I’d already been missing Calvin Standingbear for a variety of reasons — even if I was angry with him at the same time — but right then, I knew I’d have felt a lot safer knowing I had six foot four of impressive San Ramon Apache ready to glare down any interlopers who might decide to show up in Globe so they could see me in person.
Not that I was completely without defenses. I didn’t follow the left-hand path, and generally didn’t believe in casting jinxes and hexes, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t send a judicious flat tire someone’s way if they got too pushy.
But I was probably borrowing trouble. It was easy to be all creepy on Instagram or Facebook, when you could do or say pretty much whatever you wanted without repercussion. Actually traveling to a place to find someone in person required a lot more work.
More and more pings came in, and I realized my hashtags had worked a lot better than I’d planned. Was it normal for the first post of an absolute newbie to garner this much attention?
Somehow, I doubted it. My best guess was that my prosperity spell was working overtime again.
However, I couldn’t let my phone keep pinging like that. It would drive me crazy within an hour. Although it took a few false tries, eventually I was able to navigate to my profile settings and turn off any audible notifications.
Once that was done, I realized I was still holding the candle snuffer in my other hand. The thought occurred to me that I might as well take some more photos of the altar, and maybe a video. I could do a quickie prosperity spell, post it in Instagram stories so it would only be available for a short time. At least, I thought that was how it was supposed to work. If the video didn’t disappear within twenty-four hours, I could always take it down manually.
I put down the snuffer, then took some more shots of the altar. Afterward, I propped up my phone on one of the stockroom racks so I could leave it recording while I worked my way through my favorite prosperity ritual.
The result wasn’t bad, but I could tell I’d need to get better lighting in here if I were going to keep doing these videos on my backup altar. Well, I supposed I could go online and research what would work best without getting in the way of the stockroom’s original purpose.
I posted the video with a little disclaimer.Sorry 4 the lighting! I’m new to this…will get it figured out eventually. #newbie
Amazingly, I got responses to the video almost right away. New people, too, names I didn’t recognize. How the heck were they finding this stuff?
Even more astonishing was the realization that I’d somehow gotten almost five hundred followers in less than ten minutes. Was that a thing?
Apparently, it was…if you were using magic.
I shook my head in bemusement, even as I finally snuffed the candles and uttered a silent thank-you to them and the universe for the energy they’d manifested that afternoon.
Exactly what had I just started?
3
Wine and Sympathy
My friend Hazelstared down at her phone, her expression one of utter shock. “How in the world did you get almost a hundred thousand followers in just twenty-four hours?”
“I don’t know!” I replied, knowing I sounded a little wild. And all right, maybe Ididknow…or at least, I suspected. Still, even though I couldn’t deny that my spells were pretty effective, never in a blue moon — no pun intended — had I believed I could get that many eyeballs on my tiny little Instagram profile in such a short amount of time. “I mean, I promised Josie I’d do my best, because I knew she wanted the town to get more visitors, but this is just crazy.”
Hazel and I were sitting in the living room of the cozy Craftsman-style cottage she called home. Because I’d bought a few of her paintings…and quietly persuaded my mother to buy one as well…Hazel had abandoned her idea of renting out the spare bedroom at her house, since she really didn’t need the money at the moment. That change of plans suited me just fine, since it meant we’d have way more privacy for our little chats.
While the house was vintage, its air conditioning was not. We sat in cool comfort, drinking nicely chilled chardonnay as we discussed my predicament. Hazel had come over to my flat plenty of times, but right then, I’d just wanted to get away from the shop and the apartment above it…even while I didn’t quite want to admit to myself that part of that desire might have been a wish to be far away just in case any over-eager admirers decided to show up on the property.
“Did you post anything new today?” she asked.
I nodded. Part of me had wanted to delete the app and act as though I’d never started this whole crazy project, but doing so would have been pure cowardice. Instead, I’d posted a close-up picture of my athame and boline — well, the athame and boline I’d borrowed from the shop’s inventory — and then followed up with a brief “story” about writing down intentions and burning them in a cauldron. I’d done all that during a short lunch break and hadn’t put a lot of thought into it, but even those two posts had been enough to push me past the 100K mark for followers.
“I sort of felt like I had to,” I explained. “I mean, here I had all these people following me out of nowhere, and it just seemed like I needed to give them some new content.”
Hazel’s mouth twisted, although I couldn’t exactly tell whether she was holding back a grimace or a smile. The small diamond in her nose twinkled in the sunlight streaming through the windows, although she’d recently abandoned the brightly colored streaks in her hair and left them a soft gold, pretty against her light brown base color.
“And that’s the problem right there,” she said. “Facebook and Instagram want you to keep posting content for them because that gets more eyeballs on the advertising in everyone’s feeds, which is where they make their real money. It’s all a huge racket.” She paused to sip some chardonnay before adding, “As soon as I figured that out, I deleted both apps from my phone and never looked back.”
