Shanna Swendson - Don't Hex with Texas

For an introductory fee of five hundred dollars and then a monthly fee of two hundred dollars, you could learn to use your powers. The site promised that within two months, you could start using magic to more than make up for the amount you spent on the lessons. Lessons would be taught online using streaming video, with message boards for interacting with the instructor and with other students. The rest was the usual “act now” stuff, including info on paying by credit card for automatic monthly payments.

I clicked around on the page, trying to find more information, but everything appeared to be password protected. Oddly, I didn’t see anything to click on in order to sign up for the classes. That must have been their trap to weed out immunes. The “sign up now” button was probably an illusion that I couldn’t see.

This was big. If Idris was out to teach people how to do magic his way, the world could be in a lot of trouble. On a whim, I tried Googling every phrase I could think of that might lead me to magic lessons, but I didn’t ever get the Spellworks site in the search results. At least it didn’t look like random people playing around on the Internet could stumble on the site. The question was, how widely were they advertising this? Was it just around here, and what was the purpose in teaching a bunch of amateurs to do petty parlor tricks?

When I’d wrapped up my work for the day, I headed straight to the courthouse to find Sam. I took a magazine stuffed with printouts from the Spellworks website and sat on a bench, trying to look like I was just casually sitting there, reading the magazine. Sam flew down from the roof to join me. “The perp must’ve heard of my reputation and took off,” he said with a grin on his grotesque face. “Not a single sight of ’im. And boy, is this town of yours slow, or what?”

“Tell me about it. Believe it or not, this is pretty exciting as things go around here. But I have something you need to see.” I pulled the pages out of my magazine to show to him. “It’s not quite what was on the website—maybe magic doesn’t come through on the printer—but I think you can get the idea. They’re recruiting new wizards. Can they do that? Are there really people out there who don’t know they have magical powers?”

He shrugged. “Hey, that’s not my area of expertise. I just do security, you know? But there’s gotta be someone out there who doesn’t know he’s really a wizard. We can’t catch ’em all. This definitely looks bigger than a single rogue wizard to me. It might be easier to put a stop to this here than in New York.”

“Why’s that? All our people and resources are in New York.”

“But there’s no power here. The magical lines are weak in these parts, which is why you don’t have a big magical community. Magical folk tend to settle around lines of power. We get a few of our big guns down here who are highly trained and who’ve got their own reserves of power, and fighting off the bad guys will be a snap. In New York, there’s enough power flying around to put everyone on a more even footing. We just need to figure out who our local wizard is, grab him, and then we can use him to draw Idris out.”

“Cool.”

“Hey, ain’t it funny that you headed down here to get away from all that, and then it comes to you anyway?”

“Yeah, it’s a real scream.” From what Sam had said, it didn’t sound like the specifics of my decision to leave had been widely broadcast. I may not have escaped from magic, but I had still separated myself from Owen so he wouldn’t be tempted to make the wrong choice in a showdown, so I figured I’d still accomplished something by leaving. “You’ll tell headquarters what’s going on?”

“Don’t worry, I got it under control.”

Before I could respond to him, someone called my name from across the courthouse grounds. I turned to see Nita waving at me. Then she ran full throttle toward me, so fast that Sam had to scramble to get off the bench before she plopped down on top of him. “What are you doing here?” she asked me.

I tried to keep my eyes from following Sam as he flew back to the courthouse roof. “Oh, you know, just hanging out.”

She raised an eyebrow. “At the courthouse?”

“The grounds are nice. It’s like a park. And my family isn’t here.”

“That would be the important part.”

“So, what are you doing here?”

“Mom sent me to the grocery store. It’s my day to get off ‘early.’” She formed air quotes with her fingers. “That means I get to go home at a normal hour after working a normal day, and Dad works the desk until Ramesh gets to start a little later on the overnight shift. This is practically a weekend for me.” She whirled a finger in the air in a halfhearted show of celebration. “Whoopie. Hey, I have an idea. We should do something tonight.”

I looked around at the sleepy town square, then spread my hands to indicate all that nothingness.

“Like what?”

“We could eat out and go to a movie. It’s a Tom Cruise movie this week.”

“Eww.” I made a face. “I can’t stand him.” Besides, the last thing I wanted to do right now was look at a dark-haired, blue-eyed man who wasn’t Owen.

“Your lack of aesthetic sense is not my problem. He’s pretty as long as he keeps his mouth shut. And it’s not like we have a lot of options. There’s one movie screen in town, and that’s what’s showing.

Otherwise, we could watch Bollywood musicals with my mom or crime dramas with your dad, or I guess we could find an empty motel room and watch HBO.”

We’d actually had some cool slumber parties doing that when we were kids, but the idea wasn’t as thrilling now as it had been back then. “Okay, you win. Dinner and a movie it is.” Plus, being out and about would help me spot any additional magical weirdness that might ensue. It was almost like I was getting to be part of the investigation.

Nita bounced off the bench. “Cool! Now we just have to get some groceries and take them home to Mom, and then I’m free.”

“I could wait here for you.” I wanted to talk to Sam some more, and the wizard seemed to be most active at this time of day.

She shook her head vigorously while she grabbed my arm and tugged me off the bench. “No, I need you with me so I can escape. If you’re with me already, Mom won’t be able to come up with an excuse for me to stay in.”

We picked up the groceries, then rode in Nita’s ancient Escort to the little house behind the motel where the Patels lived. Mrs. Patel greeted me with her usual combination of warmth and suspicion. I always got the feeling that she liked me but didn’t quite trust me not to get her daughter in trouble—

never mind that it was almost always the other way around. Moving a mile a minute, Nita dashed through the kitchen, putting away the groceries she’d bought and chattering nonstop about our plans so that her mother couldn’t get a word in edgewise to object. When we were back outside in the car, I was out of breath just from watching her performance.

The café on the town square was practically full when we got there—not that there were too many tables to begin with. Dean and Sherri were there, seated front and center. I gave them a wave as we headed to our own table but didn’t stop to talk. “I still can’t believe he married her,” Nita said when we sat down. “He was so hot, he could have had anyone.”

“Nita, he’s my brother.”

“So? He’s still hot, and I’m not related to him. Okay, so he’s a bit of a jerk, and I could have thrown myself at him naked and he wouldn’t have noticed, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like looking at him.”

She craned ever so slightly in her seat to get a better view.