Bitch Witch (9 page)

“Tell me that is a hand-me-down and I’ll scratch your eyes out!” Mindy came through the cubicle entrance and put her hands on her hips. “I hate your guts.”

“Thanks,” said Sarah.

“I’d sell my soul to look like that,” said Mindy.

Sarah’s heart fell. Aunt Lily had.

“I was going to ask you out to lunch, but I’m not going anywhere with you looking like that. Go fuck yourself.” Mindy marched back out of the cubicle.

Encouraged by this response, Sarah played social butterfly instead of spending the morning hibernating in her office and pouring over forms. She helped the two newest clerks with the archaic computer system and delivered folders to Document Control. She spent one hour in her boss’s office filing his paperwork and genuinely listening as he talked to her about career path opportunities inside the company. From ten until noon Sarah attended a meeting in Personnel dubbed “New England Women Lighting the World.” She managed not to fall asleep, resisted the temptation to cast on a fly terrorizing the conference room, and felt saintly not giving the speaker the taste of a real buzz word.

After the meeting Jackie Hamilton, a blonde drone from Personnel, squished six people into her old Mercedes sedan and drove to Papa John’s for pizza. Sarah sat in the backseat wedged next to Avery Gross and his big package. For once she thought she held her own next to his annoying perfection. Every time he shifted his finely sculpted legs to make more room for his junk—which seemed to have healed up nicely because he was definitely back to waggling it at people—Sarah amused herself crossing and uncrossing her now magically long-looking legs. She could tell Avery noticed.

The dress had transformed her. Sarah’s toenails, ragged from a summer spent in dire need of a pedicure, appeared polished blue. Chubby and ghost white limbs looked lean and tan. Unshaven legs didn’t need pantyhose. A comfortable sigh slid through Sarah, the rare kind of an average woman enjoying a pretty day. Her contentment had required zero casting and none of the actual sacrifice of a worker drone, unlike mani-pedi-facial-spa-chick, woman-in-business Jackie. Now that Labor Day had passed, Jackie had apparently given up her carefree summer navy suit for brown and strapped on a tan Fitbit bracelet to match. The woman wore a size two, because thin was in for female executives and she had her career path and life by the gonads, goddammit.

Crammed in the hot backseat with her head against Avery’s shoulder, Sarah tried to get a read of him, allowing the drone of voices and the background music of ABBA to lull her into a bit of a trance. If she was going to try Avery on for size, and possibly weaken the spell pulling her to Paul, it seemed like a good idea to find out some things, like if he had a wife at home. But the start and stop of Jackie’s car traveling up Boston Post Road pushed her life into Sarah’s head instead of Avery’s.

Family of mill workers.
Lots to prove.

Divorced, working mother.
Big surprise, Jackie has bigger balls than most men.

One daughter who’d been taking her SATs since middle school.
Poor kid.

Determined to override Jackie’s boring facts about her wretched kid being primed for an Ivy League college—
any New England Ivy League college because Jackie would show them all
—Sarah turned her face against Avery’s arm and sniffed him. Axe body wash.
Seriously, dude?
Plenty of aerosol deodorant.
Cares zip about the ozone.
Freshly ironed shirt.
Maybe he lives with his mother.

Jackie parked almost half a mile from the restaurant, explaining she needed to get five thousand steps in by noon. Everyone in the car grumbled, and Sarah agonized in Aunt Lily’s heels. She regretted not cramming the fly up the woman’s perfectly powdered nose when she had the chance.

Seated at lunch across the table from Avery, she took revenge with every bite of her extra-cheese, stuffed-crust pepperoni pizza and large Cherry Coke. Jackie had to earn her dress size with a side salad and no dressing.
So, hah, and I went to Brown.

While Avery blathered on about working out, Sarah pondered the different ways she could wear this same dress if she invested in suit jackets, sweaters, belts, and vests. On the car ride back Sarah realized she’d only thought about Paul thirty or forty times all morning, and maybe she should leave her office once or twice a month to hang with these people during lunch. They weren’t as deep as Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, and they weren’t as hot as a bunch of 18
^th
Century Outlander Scots, but they hadn’t made her want to cast flames into their genitals—the fly hardly counted—and pizza definitely tasted better with conversation.

Avery walked ahead with Jackie, who had to park at the back of the lot because she could score another five hundred steps. Twice he glanced back at Sarah bringing up the rear in her stilettos. She managed to keep them on and hadn’t cried once, although she had a feeling that tonight when she took them off and put her feet flat she might.

The second time he looked back Sarah knew their conversation was about her. It didn’t take any pull from dark matter to know that, or to move in with her finely tuned witchy senses and eavesdrop on their conversation.

“You’re kidding, she went to Brown University?” said Jackie.

So boring, but yeah, suck it.

“What kind of grades did she get?”

“Pretty decent I heard,” Avery said.

Come on you loser! I aced everything, and I didn’t cast to do it either!
Funny thing about witches, when they did anything by hand they wanted accolades and a parade.

“Why is she still a clerk after two years? I’ve never seen her put in for a single new position, and everything internal comes over my desk.”

“That’s the question,” said Avery. “Maybe she has no ambition.”

You asshole! I like the job!

“If she graduated from Brown she has ambition.”

Swoosh! Skinny bitch knows it.

“Does she always dress like that?” asked Jackie.

Sarah smoothed the sides of the sheath dress down.
She dresses awesome, but today is nothing but net.

“We-ell!” Avery dragged the word out and ended with a cough as an exclamation point. “I’m not sure what’s gotten into her today.”

Total hotness.
Sarah waved at the guards sitting inside their shack near the entrance to the building. She flashed her badge and swayed her hips.
Am I right, guys?
The female guards looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
Oh, fuck you both, bitches.

Jackie never once looked back, clomping alongside Avery in her sensible loafers. “That’s probably why she’s still a clerk. It just shows a lack of class.”

What?

“I bet it’s expensive. Most of her clothes look pretty high-end.”

You all are more obsessed with money than a coven of witches.

“Yeah, but that looks like it belongs to her wealthy little sister. I’m surprised she can sit down in it without blowing the seams out. I couldn’t bear to look when she climbed in and out of the car.”

Bitch!

“In her defense I’ve never seen her wear anything like that before.”

“Maybe Mercer can get her into one of my Dress for Success classes. I’m embarrassed for her, but I could help her out.”

Ugh!
An angry noise shot out of Sarah’s mouth and she surreptitiously pointed the tips of her fingers at Jackie’s back. Avery held the door open for her, but of course Jackie couldn’t have that. Her iron gonads might drop off if she let a man help her. The spell hit her as she reached to hold the door for him, forcing her unwilling body over the threshold into a face plant in the middle of reception. From outside the doors Sarah heard the squeaky sound Jackie’s skin made as it slid across polished floor.

Sarah could have handled a rude remark, but not pity. Genuine embarrassment made her meaner than she might have been, especially since a niggling realization hit her.
It would have to be one freaking powerful spell to cast on everyone looking at the dress years later, but it wouldn’t need to be near as strong if it was cast only on the wearer! This dress is casting on me!

Sarah tromped past Jackie and Avery as he attempted to help the woman to stand, while still respecting her independence as a woman to help herself up.
Oh, it sucks to be a man in the 21
^st
Century! Talk like a Cinderella Mouse, Avery!

Sarah let that spell fly too. It had little strength, and wouldn’t last, but she knew he’d said something in a high squeaky voice when everyone gathered around Jackie’s prone form burst out laughing, including Jackie.

Whatever!
The aftershock of both spells hit Sarah as she stomped up the stairs, and she tripped up the last one, hiccupping a high-pitched helium sound.

“Did you guys drink at lunch?” Mindy Millerton stood above her, brows raised.

Sarah hiccupped the sound again and said in a high-pitched voice, “Do I look like a fat pig in this dress? Tell me the truth!” The last word was punctuated with another hiccup, but Mindy didn’t laugh. She stood clutching a large Pendaflex file, wearing a cheap, shapeless off-the-rack dress in probably a size sixteen. Considering Mindy stood barely over five feet tall, Sarah’s remark couldn’t have been directed at a worse person.

“Did someone say that? I keep a shank in my purse if you need it.”

“Come on, Mindy! Why did you say it looked so good?”

“It does.” Mindy gazed at her, complete sincerity in her expression. “I’d fuck you.”

Sarah laughed the hiccupping mouse sound. “Liar. I think we could be friends though.”

“Yeah? Maybe if you lost ten pounds and gave me all your hand-me-downs,” said Mindy, “and stopped eating baby mice at lunch.”

“Seriously girl-crushing on you right now,” Sarah said as her normal voice returned.

Mindy waved bye with her middle finger. “You left your cell phone on your desk. It’s been ringing for the last two hours. What nerd outside middle school uses Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off as a ringtone?”

Paul!
Sarah’s mind shot to him like a compass returning north.

“I might have looked at it and noticed you have calls from the Shrewsbury Police Department. Second hand clothes, huh, shyster?” Mindy marched off, tossing over her shoulder, “If they give you the chair for stealing, will me your clothes? I’ll pretend we were friends posthumously.”

S
arah, thank you for getting me out!” Paul’s voice faltered as he swept his eyes over her dress, but he wisely said nothing about it. The cops didn’t seem to notice. Paul signed his release papers and Sarah ran her debit card to pay the fines, and they stepped out the front doorway of the station.

Sarah grabbed his arm and hauled him off to the side. “Now will you admit you feel the draw? Or do you have another reason for sleeping in the park by my house?”

Paul couldn’t quite meet her gaze. “Actually, I had nowhere else to sleep.”

“Why didn’t you get a hotel room?”

He waited for several cops to pass them and go inside before replying in a low voice, “Not enough cash.”

“What? You drive a BMW convertible! Why can’t you afford a hotel?”

“The car is my father’s. I was supposed to pick it up for him. I have no money because I left Afghanistan four months ago. Apparently nobody wants to hire an EMT who spent the past three months in a psychiatric hospital in Dallas.”

Whoa.

Psychiatric hospital? And I showed him I was a witch!

“Why were you in a psychiatric hospital?”

“Are you going to judge? I mean as a woman claiming to be a witch, who thinks she’s caught up in a love
spell,
I don’t think you should be casting any stones.”