Aisha, freelance witch, certainly doesn’t have any work to keep her busy lately. That specter has cast a pall over her normally cheery, if unpredictable, life. The offer of a potluck and a new friend couldn’t come at a better time. Meeting Ben’s art buddy could be just the distraction she needs.
“I don’t need pity jobs. I’m a real witch for hire, not just some kid.” She could find work, someday. More work. Eventually. But most people didn’t need or want a witch to fix their printer, when all it really needed was a properly installed toner cartridge. (Josh at the local copy store got an earful, which might be a good thing, but Aisha wasn’t interested in making a career of that.)
By dessert, Aisha thinks she might make it through this with no intrusive thoughts and only minimal babbling on her part. It’s all fun and mug cakes until the microwave explodes, turning the kitchen into a battlefield.
It had only counted down two seconds when the display fizzled, scrambling the numbers into gibberish. Aisha opened her mouth to ask what it was doing. Before she could, the light within the microwave increased, becoming a hellfire glow.
Something more than packing boxes has started lurking in the corners of the apartment. Something dark just moved in the periphery of Aisha’s vision. Something plans to drive them out and steal a home for itself. And whether this is a paying gig or not, stopping it is going to keep Aisha very busy.
“Something dark,” Charmaine added in time. “I’ve seen—you know how you see something out of the corner of your eye and your caveman brain goes, ‘oh no, a predator’ until you look at it directly?”
Aisha shivered. “Yeah?”
“Only when I look at it, I can still see something moving.” Ben hissed, baring his teeth in a grimace both comical and horrified.
