Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 49441 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49441 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Before her, I’d never even heard of a witch who would sell spells without actually working one-on-one with clients. Let alone sell spells to absolute strangers via a custom-made box she’d posted outside of her apartment building, so she didn’t even have to walk to the post office to send anything out.
It was an impressive level of laziness.
But it was that laziness I was hoping might work in my favor.
I was running out of time.
I flexed my hand, feeling an ache in my knuckles as I stood outside of the apartment building where the witch who I hoped could solve all my problems lived.
“Is that for Roxanne?” I asked as a delivery guy climbed off of his bike and grabbed a large bag of takeaway out of the front basket.
“Ah, Roxy,” he said, checking the app on his phone.
“I can bring it up to her,” I said, reaching in my pocket for the one thing that made humans do just about anything you asked of them. Even willingly let you open up a vein and have a nice long drink.
Money.
The man’s eyes bulged at the hundred-dollar bill. Then he was thrusting the bag at me while taking the cash.
“Thanks, man. Really,” he said, rushing to climb back onto his bike.
Such a simple thing, money.
I’d had more than enough time to learn how to compound my own.
But humans never seemed to be flush with it. Save for a few billionaires at the top. Men and women who made monsters like me look like sweet little kittens.
Speaking of, a stray or locked-out pet was lounging on the front steps when I approached. Sensing me, it leaped to its feet, its hackles raising, its middle back arching comically high while it let out a hiss.
“Right back at you,” I said, stabbing my finger into the button beside Miss Caulderone’s apartment. It was the only one marked at all. But she had gone above and beyond to make her name clear in blocky permanent marker. One would assume, so all the delivery men and women could easily find her, since she never seemed to leave her apartment.
In fact, I had yet to lay eyes upon her, so she must fill her potions box in the daylight hours.
I was expecting someone gray-haired, stooped, and arthritic. Not exactly the best candidate for the task I needed completed. But beggars, it was true, could not be choosers.
Besides, every other witch had turned me down.
In fact, most I could not even get close to, thanks to their many wards to keep dark spirits away.
I had a sneaking suspicion as the door unlocked, and the universe took that as an invitation to allow me inside, that Roxanne Caulderone was not the sort to go out of her way to ward her apartment.
I made my way up to the third floor, where I saw the ghost of a woman at the end of the hall, tssking at the Easter mat that was still outside of a tenant’s door despite it being the middle of summer.
“You,” she said, spotting me, raising a long, bony, gray finger. “You should not be here!” she said in that faraway voice that all ghosts had.
Humans, if they heard it on nights when the veil between planes was low, would likely find it terrifying.
I’d been living amongst the ghosts for the better part of three hundred years. Not even the ones holding their own heads or walking around with limbs blown off affected me anymore.
Besides, they had no actual power.
“I was invited,” I informed her as she moved toward me, feet floating just an inch or so above the ground as she eyed me with beady black eyes in her ashen face.
“Something isn’t right with you,” she told me, moving closer.
Tell me about it.
That was why I was here, after all.
I ignored the ghost as I made my way to the second apartment, finding that the witch had affixed some sort of shelving unit to the exterior of her door. Presumably, for delivery people to drop off her packages since she was such a recluse.
The scent of the Chinese food in my hand wafted up at me, creating a physiological response I wasn’t sure I’d felt for three centuries.
The churning of hunger.
For food.
Sure, vampires could consume food to allow us to appear more human. But we rarely tasted anything. And it certainly never sated our particular kind of hunger.
On a grumble, I raised my hand to knock.
As my knuckles met the door, I felt no resistance, save for the familiar block that wouldn’t allow me to enter without explicit permission.
Then this blessedly clueless witch did exactly that.
Invited me in.
Sure, she meant for it to be an invitation for the delivery man. But the universe didn’t often care for those types of specifics.
The block lifted, and I was able to grab the knob and push the unlocked door inward.