11. Tea and Sympathy （Hold the Sympathy）
Tea and Sympathy (Hold the Sympathy)
The tea smelled like something reptilian had died in it.
Luna stared into the delicate china cup, watching steam rise from liquid the color of angry bilge water.
The smell was so aggressively awful that her eyes watered.
But Luna also understood that this was absolutely typical of Louise’s “hospitality.” Welcome to my shop, the tea seemed to say. Now suffer.
Seated beside her, Elias held his own cup like he’d been handed a live grenade. His gaze darted from the tea to Luna and back, his arched eyebrows clearly saying: No way in hell I’m drinking this swill.
Luna returned a death glare that she hoped would clearly convey her response: You will drink whatever the time witch gives you and you will smile while doing it.
Louise hadn’t been surprised to see them at her doorstep, but she’d certainly been outraged.
The question was: why? Luna knew, because she’d already lived through it, that the entire situation with the Oak Haven as Christmas Tourist Trap would be resolved before the year was out.
So that couldn’t be what was troubling Louise.
It had to be something worse. Far, far worse.
And yet Luna was almost relieved. Far better to focus on Louise’s mysterious rage than to think about that kiss back in New York.
The kiss that had made her forget her own name for a few seconds.
That kiss that she absolutely, positively was not going to think about right now, especially not while sitting three feet away from the man who’d—
Stop it. Focus on the crisis at hand.
“Partake of this libation, mortals,” Louise intoned from her throne-like chair. “’Tis a most singular blend, cultivated in realms where shadows feast upon the dreams of the dying.”
“Yeah,” Elias muttered, “smells about right.”
Luna obediently lifted the cup to her lips and took the tiniest possible sip. It tasted exactly as bad as it smelled, with bonus notes of sulfur and heartbreak.
“Now then . . .” Apparently satisfied by their suffering, Louise was ready to reveal her mind at last. “Shall we discuss the mess you’ve made?”
Luna’s stomach flip-flopped, and not just from the tea. “What mess?”
“Do not feign innocence with she who gazes into the writhing abyss of mortal folly. That display of mystic prowess you so carelessly wrought before Ashton Vex? When both of you strutted and preened like creatures in the throes of some primitive mating ritual?”
Heat flooded Luna’s cheeks. Mating ritual. That was uncomfortably accurate.
“Just exercising a little harmless magic for the rube,” Elias said, though his tone suggested he already knew this explanation wasn’t going to fly.
“Just what, you misguided spawn of entropy? You don’t even belong in this timeline!
Yet you carelessly unleash forces beyond your pitiful comprehension?
And in the presence of one whose essence is devoted to the commodification of that which should remain sacred?
Your paltry water-weaving, your perversion of innocent holiday decorations?
This provided our avaricious visitor with precisely the inspiration his mercenary soul required. ”
“What sort of inspiration are we talking about here?” Elias asked, though Luna could hear the wariness creeping into his voice.
“The variety that spawns what these modern mortals term ‘applications,’ Mr. Shaw.”
“Listen, sweetheart,” he said, that familiar note of irritation entering his voice, “you’re gonna need to talk some English here because I still got no idea what you’re blathering about.”
Oh no, Luna thought. She could see Louise’s violet eyes narrow to lethal slits. If he thinks I get upset when he calls me sweetheart, wait until— Before Luna could even finish the thought, Louise lifted one finger in Shaw’s direction and he vanished.
The silence that followed was deafening. Luna stared helplessly at Louise, and the time witch stared vengefully back. Even the timepieces throughout the shop seemed to hold their breath.
I have to say something, Luna thought. But what could I possibly say that would not make this terrible situation even worse? “Ah, Louise? Um . . . where . . . ah, where did you send Elias?”
The ancient witch glowered. “Where he belongs.”
Elias abruptly reappeared in his chair. His tie was undone, his immaculate suit was smoking in several places, and he had that thousand-yard stare shared by everyone who’d ever pissed Louise off.
“The sky was on fire . . .” he whispered, staring at nothing.
“And the dinosaurs . . . dear God, the dinosaurs were screaming . . .”
Luna quickly reached over and patted out a small flame that had started on his lapel. “You okay?”
Elias blinked several times. A sudden and violent coughing fit resulted in a lungful of ash spilling out of his mouth and onto the floor. He gazed up at Louise in newfound, terrified respect. “My sincere apologies, ma’am. Won’t happen again, ma’am.”
“Best not. Now, gaze upon the fruits of your reckless exhibition.” She gestured to the air, and images began to form, like a movie projected onto smoke.
“Ashton Vex will succeed in ensnaring the very essence of magic within his infernal contraptions—portable devices that any wretched mortal may wield to bend reality to their pathetic whims. Spells once reserved for the talented few will become accessible to anyone for a trivial fee. Charms for luck, love, and even power could be downloaded at a whim. All respect for magic will be lost, as it becomes no more than a novelty to be manipulated. He has christened this abomination . . . CastR.”
“That’s impossible,” Luna said immediately. “Magic doesn’t work that way. You can’t just digitize it.”
The images shifted, showing what looked like a gleaming tech office, full of people in expensive casual wear and ON sneakers.
Luna watched in growing horror as one of them pointed their phone at a wilted plant and watched it bloom instantly.
Another waved their phone across their coffee mug and it levitated off the table.
“He’s actually doing it,” Luna whispered. “He’s turning magic into . . . into Candy Crush.”
“When this horror is unleashed upon the writhing masses,” Louise continued, “it shall place the forces of creation within reach of every smartphone-wielding bag of bones, for the paltry sum of $2.99 per lunar cycle. Premium incantations shall, naturally, command higher tribute.”
“Now listen here—” Elias started, then caught himself and quickly amended, “I mean, respectfully speaking, ma’am. This is nuts.”
“Ohhh dear, can such blasphemy be so? Yes, it is so! Even the most rudimentary magics, when placed in the grubby hands of millions of untrained mortals, shall render obsolete every witch and conjurer who draws breath.”
Luna felt sick. “People won’t need us.”
“That’s only the beginning. Picture: some lovesick fool attempts to ensnare the heart of another with a love spell, but instead summons forth a demon.
A child seeks to curse a rival and accidentally dooms an entire bloodline to eternal suffering.
A doctor uses magic to save a terminal patient but unleashes a plague instead.
” Louise’s images shifted: fires, floods, people running in terror.
“Well, look,” Elias said after a beat. “What do you say we just take a little trip back in time and—”
“THOU SHALT NOT.” Louise’s voice thundered through the shop.
“If we went back to before we gave the demonstration,” Luna argued, “then we could just not give it. Problem solved, no?”
“No. If I send you back in time again, what fresh catastrophe would you unleash? No doubt you’ll create some greater calamity.
Then, here you’ll come again, begging me to send you back to mend your latest disaster, only to birth yet another abomination that demands yet another journey into the labyrinth of time?
” Louise rose from her chair, and her shadow stretched impossibly across the floor, like the wings of some primordial beast. “I decline ensnarement in such an ouroboros of stupidity.”
“So what’s the play here, ma’am?” Elias’s tone suggested he already knew he wouldn’t like the answer.
“You shall journey forward to the summer of 2026 to thwart him. ’Tis when this CastR abomination shall be unleashed upon the world. You must unite the warring factions of witches and magicians in common cause against this shared menace.”
“It’ll never happen,” Luna replied. “Witches and magicians have been at war for centuries. They’ll never collaborate.”
“It appears that Fate has gifted you with a common adversary.”
Elias was looking increasingly green, and Luna suspected it wasn’t entirely due to the tea. “You’re asking me to go even further into the future, ma’am?”
“I am commanding you to repair what your carelessness has shattered.”
“But I need to go home.” There was something almost plaintive in his voice that took Luna by surprise. “Listen, lady, you sent me all the way back to the dinosaurs, didn’t you? So surely you could just ship me back to my own time.”
“Your time?” Louise’s voice sounded like the night terrors of galaxies. “Foolish mortal, you have dwelt in the Void, severed from your temporal moorings for nigh on a century. At what juncture do you intend to cease this pathetic flight from reality and confront the present?”
“But this ain’t my present, ma’am.”
Luna rubbed her temples. “The point is, you want us to go to summer 2026 to stop this thing.”
“I’m not going anywhere but where I belong,” Elias said firmly. “Which for the hundredth time is Chicago 1926.”
“Look,” Luna said, “this might sound crazy, but what if we just went with the classic time-travel solution? You know, like how people say, if time travel exists, let’s go kill Hitler as a baby?”
“Kill a baby?” Elias looked genuine horrified. “What kind of monster are you, Melrose?”
“No, no, you misunderstand. I didn’t mean literally. It’s that idea of using time travel to go back and stop something before it even starts.”
“But what could this baby Hitler possibly have done to deserve that?”
Luna groaned. “Oh gods, we do not have time. . . Never mind, bad example.”
“You look so sweet and innocent.” Elias still looked shaken. “And then you want to murder an infant.”
“No, I wasn’t seriously suggesting—”
“The Melrose meatsack raises an intriguing point,” Louise interrupted. “And it is certainly true that infants are repellent creatures. But a temporal paradox of that magnitude may require me to spend eternity untangling the resulting chaos. Most tedious.”
“Right,” Luna said weakly. “Sure.”
“Precisely. So, you shall journey to the summer of 2026. You shall convince the fractured magical communities to unite in common cause. You shall thwart Ashton Vex and his blasphemous contraption. And thou shall not perpetrate any felonies, major or minor, chronological or otherwise.”
Luna turned to look at Elias. Singed suit, haunted expression .
. . the way he was maintaining his dignity despite the shrieks of T.
rexes still ringing in his ears. He’d lost a century to the Void.
Now she was asking him to risk even more.
But Oak Haven was her home. And if the digitization of magic succeeded . . .
Elias met her stare and something passed between them—not quite understanding, but a recognition that they were in this mess together.
He straightened his singed lapel with as much dignity as he could muster.
“Well,” he said quietly, “I suppose I’ve been in worse scrapes.
Not much worse. But when this mess is resolved, I’m taking my reward in the form of a trip back to my own time. Understood?”
“Most excellent.” Louise clapped her hands with the sound of thunder, and the world dissolved again.