Page 1 of Hex and the City
1
LEON
Idrew the pinch of salt out of my pocket, a secret blend of herbs and spices, a recipe handed down through generations of witches. Scanning the empty living room, I raised my hand to my mouth, laid my palm flat, and blew. The magic left my lips like a whispered promise, a kiss goodnight.
The air rippled where my breath met the powder, the spell seeping into reality. It reached with sticky fingers throughout the house, a sweet, cloying tangle of magic to make the muscles limp, the eyes heavy. Honey to conjure the sweetest of dreams, scorpion venom to keep the body numb, all mixed together with crushed rock salt.
For the rest of the recipe, you’d have to buy the cookbook.
Kidding. There was no cookbook. It was all in my head, our old traditions, captured there from when my mother showed me how to grind the magic into powder. Sleeping salt, we called it. I could still hear the scrape of stone against stone, the pestle and mortar that was once owned by her mother, and her mother’s mother, and — well, you get the picture.
“Leonardo,” she would say, this woman who only lived in my memories. “Grind harder, or we’ll be here all morning.”
I chuckled under my breath, then covered my mouth as I stifled a yawn. Oops. Too much sleeping salt, maybe? At least I knew the spell was working, if a little too well. I crept forward in my quietest sneakers — worn and ancient, but it paid to be cautious in case the magic didn’t take.
“Leonardo,” she would say. “Grind like it owes you money.”
I shook my head and chuckled again. Leonardo always felt so formal, except when my mother would say it. Coming from her it only brought affection, warmth. My kingdom to hear her say it again, just the once. These days I preferred Leon. Leon Alcantara, if you’re nasty.
Depending on the person, I might also accept Witch Boy.
Witch Boy, they called me, those who procured my services, and those who knew about the subtle, stealthy little magics I could make. Were they wrong? Not exactly. Maybe it would be more appropriate to call me a witch man, given that I was already in my early twenties.
But I chose to believe that they picked that alias to go with my boyish good looks and my rakish charm. I glanced around for a convenient mirror I could use to inspect said looks, to describe my wild, looping curls of black hair, my big, beautiful brown eyes, but alas.
Still, I liked to believe that in cases where I actually had to use sorcery to worm my way out of sticky situations, half the magic was in my appearance and my charisma. How many times had I saved my own hide by disarming someone with a winning smile?
Shortly before crippling them with a stunning spell, of course, or blasting them in the face with a bolt of pure energy. In magical terms, it paid to be a pretty boy, in my opinion. A pretty Witch Boy. None of that was going to help me with this infiltration, though.
No, the point here was to be sneaky. Casting the sleeping spell was my safety net, or perhaps more appropriately, a security blanket, just in case. Let sleeping dogs lie, as it were, put any night owls to bed, and keep the cats as uncurious as possible.
I had a fair bit of experience with prowling in my line of work. Above all things else, it was best to stay unseen and unheard. The people in this building could have an entire arsenal of firearms, or enough spell power to down an elephant, depending on their weapons of choice.
With all of them fast asleep, though? I could sneak in and sneak out unnoticed, and more importantly, completely unharmed. So what if my magic was imperfect? I wasn’t a spurned evil faerie come to lay a curse on a castle, all because a shitty king and queen couldn’t be bothered to send out an invite.
I just needed to get my bag, baby.
A velveteen bag, according to the client. Red, drawstring closure, and holding a quantity of dust. Based on the bounty they’d set, I could easily guess that this wasn’t any simple honey-sea salt-scorpion venom concoction, like the stuff I’d used to cast my blanket of sleep.
What was in the bag, anyway? This mysterious material. Magic drugs? Faerie dust? Powdered sugar?
Not really any of my business. Clients that I found through the spider network could be anyone from a dabbling hedge wizard to a truly powerful sorcerer. At the end of the day, we relic finders were just there to do a job and collect a paycheck. The fewer questions we asked, generally, the better.
“Where are you hiding?” I whispered, asking the room a question like it would heave and creak with an answer.
Scoundrel. Vulture. Thief. Witch Boy. I’d been called many names in my line of work, but I really liked that last one best. It was what my contacts — the spiders — sometimes called me, something that stuck enough that the few competitors I did run into often thought it was my codename. My call sign.
Like a superhero, you know? Kind of badass. Witch Boy. Huh.
I’d met a lot of interesting people drifting from city to city, mostly in California. There was a contact person in most major urban centers, typically based in a bar, a quieter sort of club, the backroom of a rundown shop. Spiders, they called them, these job-givers, these keepers of secrets. They had a few spiders here in Dos Lunas too, naturally. If I was lucky, I could dip in, pick up a job, and dip out again.
But it was far more common for me to be unlucky. I might run into another finder, someone gunning for the same job. Because why would our clients limit themselves to making their gigs exclusive, right? Multiple finders could be running for the same target, whether it was a velveteen bag of dust, a pair of jewels worn over the eyes to reveal hidden truths, or a magical wand unearthed from an ancient tomb.
It didn’t matter to the clients if we ended up hurting or killing each other in the process, picking each other off as we climbed over increasingly bigger piles of dead bodies to get to the golden goose, the holy grail. The ends justified the means, and they’d still only have to pay the one person who actually succeeded. In rare cases, surviving finders might consider sharing the reward. Emphasis on rare. Some might even team up long term.
Not me, though.
“Lone wolf,” I muttered under my breath, creeping toward the kitchen, keeping my eyes open for any sign of velveteen red.
