Page 2 of Hex and the City
You never knew with these people, where they might keep valuable magical objects. Many, like the residents of this home, likely didn’t even know they were sitting on something otherworldly and potentially very dangerous. Some might have stumbled on something truly magical and kept it in plain sight. A cursed butter knife, say. Hey, not at all impossible.
But there was no obvious place for someone to keep a bag of dust. And what were the chances that someone unwitting had already opened the drawstring bag and accidentally emptied its contents? Probably why the client set such a pretty price on this job.
Time was of the essence. If the bag was dropped on the floor from a height, then the powder was as good as a cloud of worthless dust. If it was accidentally opened and scattered all over the carpet instead? Straight into the vacuum cleaner. Again: worthless.
I turned over a couch cushion. Wow. Some quarters, a ball of lint. As if. What was I even expecting? Of all the things I’d retained from mom’s lessons on witchery, wasn’t there even one spell to help me detect magic? Damn it. I’d heard of people who had trained themselves to sniff out enchanted objects.
Wouldn’t that be helpful? Truly powerful artifacts could radiate fields of arcane energy that would be impossible to ignore, but again — bag of dust. I opened a cupboard, nudged a vacuum cleaner with my toe, passed my hand over its plastic body. Still nothing. No hum and buzz of magic.
And this job was worth more than a month’s rent, too. Good thing I found someone willing to rent short-term — crappy and windowless, with a microwave that sometimes refused to work. But it still beat any motel. I was only passing through Dos Lunas, after all. Needed to save up. Needed to keep moving.
Something clunked.
I darted toward the darkest part of the room, an alcove facing away from the front door. I pressed myself up against the wall, heart racing, my pulse thundering in my ears. Fuck. My hand shook as I reached for my phone to check the time. No way. A family of three lived here. They were supposed to be knocked out for the evening.
Was there a pet? Crap. Did I forget about a pet? But my sleep spell should have taken care of that. If my magic could lull actual humans to rest, then surely it could take care of a chihuahua, too. I sniffed carefully, trying to make out the presence of dog smell, or kitty litter.
I smelled something worse. There, right by my ankle, plugged into the wall. One of those automated air fresheners, devices sent straight from hell. I wrinkled my nose at the fragrance, some thick, artificial lavender bullshit. Its face-like dispenser frowned menacingly at me, more threatening than any security system.
Knowing my luck, this little bastard was going to spritz its payload of devil-smell in the next minute. Right into my face, too. The fainter ambient fragrance reached deep into my nostrils, tickling, poking around the inside of my sinuses.
Oh, no. Oh, God. I stopped partway through a sharp intake of breath, the beginnings of a sneeze. No, no, no. The worst possible time.
And then I spotted him: another finder, creeping into the living room. He must not have come in through the front door. Leather jacket. Rugged. Goddamn leather jackets. I’d seen the type around. Gruff, grumpy, and especially dangerous, because you knew they had an axe to grind.
He didn’t know I was there yet, though. Good. He scanned the living room, very much the way I did when I first arrived. He took a step forward, his face illuminated by a moonbeam, or the aura from a lamplight out on the nearby street.
Oh, no. He was hot.
Right on schedule, the air freshener spritzed.
2
MAX
All clear in the house. Dark and quiet, just the way I liked it. The back door was unlocked. I didn’t even need tools or a spell to unlatch it. Easiest infiltration of my career.
“Very negligent,” I muttered to myself, disapproving. I curled my fingers, tugging snarls of magic out of the air, channeling my own stores of arcane essence. I released my intent into the ether, speaking the word meant to nullify the security system. “Obfuscate.”
A puff of sparkle exploded silently throughout the house, like translucent glitter, or diamond dust. That would keep me covered from electronic deterrents for a good while.
The father wasn’t supposed to leave any of the doors open. He didn’t seem the type to make that mistake, after all the time I spent observing their family. Too careless, especially knowing they’d be out of town for a while. Cancun for the week. Good for them.
I could do them a favor and make sure to lock up after I found the velveteen bag. My good deed for the day.
Did I know too much about the people who lived in this house? Please. Too much preparation? No such thing. It was the basis of my entire approach to finding magical artifacts and relics — no, of my entire life. Nothing quite like preparedness for eliminating possibilities of error.
I knew, for example, that I would need to show up prepared to unlock at least one door to gain entry. I would also need a spell to throw up arcane chaff — my obfuscate spell — to generate static interference and scramble any security cameras. No record of my passage, only snow. All part of my infiltration routine.
Because that was what Maximilian Drake was all about. Routine, habit, discipline, lessons my many tutors and professors had drilled into my head over the years. It had all become second nature to me, part of my programming.
Life felt simpler when I didn’t have to think. No friction, only action. No thoughts, only muscle memory. Stick to the schedule, respect the routine. No need to decide what to wear in the morning. Same as every other day. A white undershirt, a leather jacket, jeans, boots. My favorite watch. Simple and clean, nothing flashy.
Same as my magic. Despite my strict education, I only knew a handful of spells, but each one was a valuable tool in my kit, as familiar and cherished as a part of my body. There were many ways to use a knife, a tool in itself. And strung together in a chain, combining the optimal sequence of spells, I could get the job done extremely efficiently.
Penetrate. Obfuscate. Dissipate. My ideal sequence for infiltrations.
That last one was an old favorite. Worst case scenario, if I ran into someone, I could quite literally make myself scarce. An imperfect form of camouflage, and very short-term, lasting only about a minute. Still, the partial invisibility that the spell granted had many uses.
