Page 9 of An Amateur Witch's Guide to Murder
They end up at the kitchen table, Ophelia pressing cold fingers to the pink line that’s the only thing left of the knifing.
She releases his arm, considering him. “Add me as a consultant. Get double the pay.”
“Ophelia De La Garza,” Mateo says slowly, scandalized. “You’re a fucking genius.”
“Don’t I know it.” She takes the seat in front of him. In their boxy kitchen, she always looks unreal. Five foot nothing, skinthe tone of wet sand, and eyes the exact shade of the sky over the ocean at sunrise. The point where the orange ends, but there’s a washed-out blue before the real color of the sky begins. They used to be brown. Another facet they don’t understand.
Getting a few grand could change things.
They’re both in a bad way. The very real possibility of her drifting out of her body and being unable to find her way back again is a fear so many magnitudes larger than his fear of what’s happening to him. But his demon problem puts a target on both of them because nobody likes demons. If he’s found out by the wrong people, they’re both in danger. Also, it stops him from being able to freely use magic. If Topher’s money can buy him an exorcism, he can become a proper brujo and maybe learn the kinds of things that could help her.
For a second, they’re hopeful.
But then Ophelia asks, “What about Dagger Lady?”
Mateo grimaces, the pain in his arm gone but that problem persists. “Yeah, I dunno. She found me at work, which maybe means she knows where this house is and followed me.” It’s not like she pulled up employment records.
Ophelia sucks her teeth for a moment, squinting. “Yeah, probably that. I might have seen her. Couple of days ago. Some pant-suited lady was on the lawn when I came home.”
Mateo gapes at her. “Why is this the first time you’re mentioning her?”
“Oh right, because a random lady on the lawn for, like, two minutes, is an extremely notable occurrence in this house of magic and demons,” she says sardonically. Which, fair. “She didn’t try to stabme. She just stared when I pulled in, then walked off.”
“She can’t get in, so at least there’s that,” he says, extremely hating that this crazy lady had been so close to Ophelia. Movinghouses so his mom’s criminal associates can’t find him would be ideal, but the house is warded all to hell, keeping him safe from wider demon-hating-people detection.
Not that he can hide away inside forever, either. He has to go to work. And if Ophelia leaves the house, she’d also be in danger, since Dagger Lady proved tonight that anyone Ignacia-adjacent will do for knife-based interrogation.
“Wild coincidence that a rich weirdo and Dagger Lady both found you at work today,” Ophelia points out, and they stare at each other.
Itisa wild coincidence. Considering how earnest and upset Topher had seemed—and how bad he was at working—Mateo can’t imagine he was putting on an act. Or fathom a reason for one. Dagger Lady didn’t need help. She was doing a fine job of scaring the shit out of him.
“I think that’s what the curse does,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “Makes unlikely, shitty situations happen to people around him.”
The first edge of concern enters her voice as she asks, “You had protection wards on?”
“Yeah. She didn’t know what I was,” he says. You’d probably bring more than a fancy dagger to a demon fight. “Just thought I knew where Ignacia was.”
He doesn’t want to get distracted from the possibility of a real payday by his mom’s residual bullshit, but he also can’t pretend he wasn’t knifed. Especially when it could happen to Ophelia. “Okay. As my newly appointed assistant—”
“Additional consultant. Sexist,” she interrupts with her shitty smile. They both let the appropriate level of seriousness slip away from the conversation.
“As my newly appointed unpaid intern,” he returns with his own shitty smile, “You have to help me brainstorm how the hell to uncurse this poor, wretched, extremely wealthy soul.”
“I’ll have a look at him, I assume.”
There goes the faint sheen of levity. “No. No way. Even if it mighta been my mom’s shit, I got stabbed being around Topher. And the headache? What the hell even was that?”
“Has the curse ever caused a medical emergency?” she says with raised eyebrows.
Genius. Maybe Topher’s curse was trying to give Mateo, like, an aneurysm or stroke or other bad brain thing, but his demonic healing wouldn’t let it. “You’re getting a promotion,” he says, pulling out his phone, opening his notes app, and typing out the medical question for Topher. There could be additional casualties Topher wasn’t attributing to his curse—which is grim. “But that super makes me not want him near you even more.”
“What’s he gonna do? Kill me again?”
Mateo makes a pained sound deep in his throat. She won’t talk about it, but she’ll make horrible jokes all the goddamned time. “Now you’re fired.”
She leans back in her chair, the metal base like a pair of C’s connected at the top and bottom. They’d found a set of them on a corner about a month ago and dragged them home. They smelt unrelentingly of hairspray. “This is forty-five hundred. We can put protection wards straight up your ass if that’ll help. I have to look at him. Dagger Lady, too, if she shows up again.”
Another groan, but he starts a list on his phone. It feels professional to have a list, and they’re professionals now. “Fine. Protection wards upyourass. What else?”
