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I wrote down the information I’d gleaned from Tansy’s research and handed it to Eamon as they recounted their journey so far in trying to get rid of Tansy’s obsessive spirit once and for all—
Bang. Bang.
I gritted my teeth.
This was the second time that incessant pounding had interrupted us. I got up and pounded on the wall, but the noise continued unabated.
Considering I’d probably have to avoid having people over altogether very soon, to hide the fact that I’d been using forbidden magic to keep Salt and Pepper young, I’d wanted to enjoy this visit, but shouting over the racket was no fun.
“I’d invite you to stay for tea, but I don’t think you want to be here any longer than you have to with this noise in the background!” I yelled over the banging.
I saw my guests out.
I walked over to Zayn’s door and knocked, though I doubted he’d be able to hear it. As expected, no one came to the door, and the noise continued.
I stomped back to my apartment furiously. Salt and Pepper were back in their rat tree, cuddling together in a hammock. At least Salt wasn’t showing any other signs of aging, like trouble climbing, but that would come soon enough. I picked him up and hefted him in my hands.
Did he feel lighter too? That was another sign of aging. Unlike Pepper, who was my little chunky monkey, Salt was slim and had trouble keeping his weight up at the best of times.
It wasn’t too difficult to hide my magical transgression from my clients and casual friends. I usually just disappeared for a bit, and when I saw them again, reintroduced my rats as Salt and Pepper 2.0. Or 3.0, depending on how long I’d known the people in question. But it meant I had to hide out for long enough that it was believable and make sure no one knew my babies well enough to realize they were, in fact, the exact same rats.
Andthatmeant never keeping close friends for too long. Romantic relationships were strictly out of the question. I’d never doom my babies to old age for a man. Never.
God must have been in an extra cruel mood the day he created rats. Why give these amazing rodents the brains of a toddler and such a huge capacity for love, but only two to four years to live? It wasn’t fair.
So I’d…done something about it.
The only person who ever figured out Salt and Pepper were the same rats I’d gotten as a ten-year-old was Great Granny Syl, because she was the only one who’d paid attention enough to get suspicious. But she’d taken the secret to her grave.
Sylvana was my dad’s grandmother. Dad didn’t have much magic and had made up for it by excelling at work. Mom had magic, but it wasn’t very strong. Or maybe she never honed it. And they were both always very busy.
My parents hadn’t known what to do with me when, as a kid, I started setting things on fire—magically and by accident—and throwing my voice around the house. I was a mischievous kid, and upset that my parents weren’t giving me what I thought was enough attention, I’d tried my very best to force them to notice me. It had backfired.
Sick of my shenanigans, they’d sent me off to live with Great Granny Syl after I’d put magical makeup on Dad one day before he left the house for work. I guess his office hadn’t appreciated blue eyeshadow and neon pink lipstick, especially since he couldn’t remove it and had to wait for the spell to wear off.
Sylvana knew a thing or two about raising children with too much magic on their hands. Her daughter, my grandmother, had apparently been very much like me…or me like her…though she’d passed away when I was just a baby, and I never knew her.
At any rate, my great granny not only taught me how to use and control my magic, she also taught me discipline. For the first time in my life, I felt truly seen.
It wasn’t that my parents didn’t love me. They did. They just didn’t know how to show it, nor did they know how to deal with me. No parenting books out there told them what to do when duct tape magically appeared over their mouths when they were lecturing their kid.
Now that they were older and I was grown, we’d been spending more time together.
They hadnotbeen there, however, the first time I’d used magic to extend Salt and Pepper’s lives. Sylvana had. She’d been very angry with me for using illegal magic. Stealing life force to extend another life was forbidden, and the law didn’t differentiate between human being or an animal.
The way I saw it, I hadn’t taken anything that wasn’t already lost. There was an owl who lived behind Great Granny Syl’s home in the country, and I’d waited for it to catch a vole. And then thirteen-year-old me had simply transferred whatever was left of the vole’s waning lifeforce over to Salt. It had taken several weeks of watching and waiting for the perfect moment, but I eventually found a donor for Pepper as well.
I was an impish kid, but I wasn’t a psychopath. After I’d explained how I did it, Great Granny Syl relaxed, glad I wasn’t secretly murdering small animals behind her back. And then we’d come to the agreement that as long as I wasn’t hurting anything or anyone…and no one else found out…it would be our little secret. She’d stressed over and over how important it was that no one else knew. The EA, formerly known as the Secret Enforcement Agency, wouldn’t care how ethically I’d used the forbidden spell; they’d only care that I’d used it at all.
Sylvana never had a familiar. Instead, she’d leaned heavily on physical items and artifacts to augment her powers, and her collection was her world. She took collecting minor magical artifacts to an artform. They filled every nook and cranny of her home. It bordered on hoarding.
That quaint little home out in the country, the one where I’d spent so much time growing up, was now mine. It was still filled to the brim with her stuff, and I needed some semblance of order. Clutter messed with my energy. I needed to clean it out before I moved in. Hence my inability to just up and leave the apartment next to the constant banging.
My work phone was flashing on the coffee table, and I grabbed it. I grumbled. Another text message from Nigel. He was an old acquaintance from way back in the day. I’d been a teenager, and Great Granny Syl had signed me up for a course on potions.
Not being particularly social back then, I’d been stuck without a partner for a project and had ended up with him. Unfortunately, Nigel was the worst student in the class and had about as much magic as a McDonald’s Happy Meal, and I’d ended up doing most of the work.
We lost touch after the course, but he’d recently found me again through my business listing and had approached me with a very unromantic offer. Despite his magical shortcomings personally, he came from a long line of witches, and his grandparents planned on leaving the family estate and business to the descendant with the greatest magical abilities. Coveting the inheritance, he’d offered me money to bear him a child.
