16. The Monkey’s Paw
The Monkey’s Paw
Luna tried to focus on the conversation happening around the inn’s cramped corner table. But her attention kept drifting to Elias. His fingers drumming against his teacup, the clean line of his jaw, the exact shade of his eyes when he looked her way. Everything else blurred into insignificance.
Stop it, she told herself firmly. There are three magicians trapped at this table and a tech bro upstairs about to destroy magic.
This is not the time to think about any of that.
The kiss in New York. Or her fear for his safety, right before the magicians attacked.
Or how she’d felt in the basement just now, her heart thudding as if something inevitable was about to happen.
The three magicians sat with their backs against the wall.
A beautiful bit of Kelly Melrose stagecraft, making the scene look casual while giving the men no easy route to the door.
The square-shouldered one who’d done most of the talking in the basement looked deeply uncomfortable wedged between his two companions.
The nervous one with wire-rimmed glasses kept pushing them up his nose.
The third one, the smirker, was enjoying the whole mess slightly too much.
“So this CastR,” the square-shouldered one was saying. “It’s an application? For phones?”
“And it enables anyone to use magic?” Glasses sounded more curious than alarmed, which was definitely worse.
“That’s the idea,” Luna said. “Anyone with a phone and $2.99 can point, click, and cast a spell.”
“Sounds very democratic,” said the boxy one.
“Sounds like a disaster,” Delilah said. “It’s removing all the safeguards. The training. The understanding of consequences.”
“But surely people would use it responsibly,” the smug one said.
Scarlett let out a bark of laughter. “Oh, honey. No.”
“Love spells become stalking,” Delilah said. “Revenge hexes spiral. Healing spells—” She cut off. “Botched healing isn’t pretty.”
Luna studied the magicians’ unimpressed faces. They weren’t getting it. Witch paranoia, they were clearly thinking. Typical elitist gatekeeping.
Scarlett’s knee was bouncing with impatience, and her grip on the teacup was so tight, a hairline crack ran through the ceramic.
Luna knew the signs; her sister’s fuse was burning down.
“Heard of the Monkey’s Paw?” she asked suddenly.
“An old story. Parents wish for money, son dies in a factory accident, they get the exact amount they asked for in compensation. So they wish for their son back—”
“And he returns as something that should have stayed dead,” Delilah finished.
The square-shouldered magician just looked confused. “What’s your point?”
“Yeaaah, I get it,” replied Scarlett. “That’s a little sophisticated for guys like you.
How about Pet Sematary? Do you know that one?
Same concept: be careful what you wish for.
That’s CastR in a nutshell. Millions using magic, no idea what they’re doing.
Every home will become its own Stephen King story. ”
“But any application would have safeguards,” the bespectacled one protested. “Limitations, surely.”
“Give me a break,” Scarlett said flatly. “I lived in that world for a decade. The motto was ‘move fast and break things.’ Not safety over profit.”
Luna could see that her sister’s aggressive approach was going nowhere.
If Scar was so determined to play “bad cop,” she had to at least try the opposite.
“Please, I understand your frustration with witches, really I do. But I beg you to just consider how badly wrong this can go. Even for well-trained practitioners like yourselves, spells can go sideways at any time. Once I was in Florence, and I saw an ambitious young warlock mess up a weather spell so badly he nearly flooded the Duomo. Now imagine that in someone with no training at all.”
Elias’s hand brushed hers under the table, she hoped as a form of encouragement.
His fingers found hers and squeezed once, quick and warm.
I’m here. She squeezed back, hyper-conscious of every point of contact.
This is fine, she thought, keeping her face carefully neutral.
Nobody can tell that my nervous system just lit up like a Christmas tree.
“Who is this guy, anyway?” the square-shouldered magician asked. “This creator of CastR? I want to meet him.”
“Ashton Vex,” Scarlett answered. “He’s upstairs right now. And you know what, you’re right. Let’s go have it out.” She stood up and moved toward the stairs.
“Scarlett—” Kelly started.
“No, Mama. He’s been here for weeks. In our inn.
And I was basically giving him a masterclass in magical theory because I thought he was just some harmless nerd!
We need to confront him. I’m going. We’re going.
Everyone’s going.” She was already moving toward the stairs, heedless of whether anyone was behind her. “This ends now.”
Luna exchanged looks with Elias. “Should we—?”
“Absolutely.” He stood, pulling her up, their hands linked. “Wouldn’t miss this.”
By the time Luna reached the second floor—Elias right behind her, his hand now at her lower back in a way that was making coherent thought difficult—Scarlett was already pounding on room 12’s door.
“Vex! Open up!”
“Scarlett, please slow down.” Kelly had caught up, too.
“Ashton Vex, you open this damn door right now!”
The damn door swung open.
The stench hit Luna first: stale sweat and old Chinese takeout.
Room 12 looked like Silicon Valley had thrown up inside a Victorian bedroom.
Cables everywhere, laptops and hard drives covering every surface, papers with code and sigils taped to the walls in chaos.
The whole room buzzed with the mosquito hum of overworked circuits.
In the center of it all, cross-legged on the bed with a laptop balanced on his knees, sat Ashton Vex. His hair stuck up at odd angles, there were dark circles under his eyes, and that T-shirt had definitely been white once upon a time. But his smile was genuine, the look of a true believer.
“Scarlett!” He closed his laptop. “And wow, quite the delegation. Please, come in. Sorry about the mess—I’ve been in a peak flow state.”
“Bleagh,” Scarlett replied. “Is that what you call stealing magical knowledge under false pretenses?”
“Stealing?” Ashton looked genuinely puzzled. “No. I’m making knowledge accessible, instead of locked away in some ivory tower.”
Elias’s hand found Luna’s again, and she was grateful for the anchor. Somehow, Ashton’s wide-eyed earnestness was more unsettling than moustache-twirling villainy.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Kelly said, and Luna heard real fear in her mother’s voice. “Magic isn’t software.”
“Actually . . .” Ashton stood. “Magic is exactly like software. Input, process, output. A symbolic language that manipulates reality through structured intention. That’s functionally identical to high-level programming.
For centuries, magic has been gatekept, either by birth or apprenticeship.
But with CastR, anyone can access it. An uninsured mother can still help her sick child.
A needy student can enchant his way to a scholarship.
Magic for all people, not just those with the correct bloodlines. ”
Hang on . . . A horrible thought shot through Luna. Was he right? She turned her horrified gaze to Elias, dread knotting in her belly.
“No way it’s that simple,” he said to her quietly. And then louder: “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.”
“Uh, sorry?” Ashton tilted his head like a curious puppy. “Comment from the peanut gallery?”
“What happens when that single mother you’ve imagined accidentally summons a monster?” Elias asked. “What happens when that student’s enchantment backfires and drains the budget of the whole school?”
“Edge cases.” Ashton waved this off. “Any new technology has growing pains. We’ll iterate, improve, release updates—”
“You can’t update magic!” Delilah’s voice was sharp. “You can’t patch a curse that’s already cast!”
“Not with that attitude.”
Kelly stepped forward. “Mr. Vex, I am ordering you to cease all work on this project immediately. Furthermore, I’m asking you to leave the Stargazer Inn. Today.”
Ashton laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You’re evicting me?”
“I’ll return any payments.” Her voice was flat. “You and your equipment must be gone by sunset.”
“Throwing him out won’t solve the problem,” Elias pointed out. “His company is well outside the influence of your forgetting spell, and they’re already involved.”
Luna groaned internally, knowing Elias was right. Vex’s minions had to be well versed in magic by now. “He was already making phone calls the last time we saw him.”
“The last time . . .” Kelly turned slowly, terrifyingly, to gaze at her youngest daughter. “You mean, when you exposed our entire culture to this profligate outsider?”
“Uh.” She gazed down at her shoes. “Yeah.”
“Excuse us, everyone. Mister, you’re saying that with your technology, anyone can do magic?”
The three magicians were lurking in the doorway. The bespectacled one had spoken, staring at Vex with desperate hope.
Vex’s smile returned, broader than ever. “Anyone. Everyone. That’s exactly what I’m saying. No more gatekeeping based on bloodlines. Magic should be a human right.”
It was suddenly as if Vex were magnetized and the three magicians made of iron. No, she thought. No, no, no.
“It isn’t that simple—” Kelly started.
“Isn’t it?” The square-shouldered magician’s voice was sharp with years of resentment.
“How many times have witches told us our magic doesn’t count?
That magicians are nothing but entertainment for children’s birthday parties?
And now you’re saying we can’t make it accessible to others suffering the same discrimination? ”
“We’re saying it’s dangerous!” Scarlett’s voice rose. “We’re not gatekeeping because we’re snobs, we’re gatekeeping because magic can kill!”
“Then we’ll build in safeguards,” Ashton said smoothly. “AI oversight. Tutorials. Rating systems. This is just a UX problem.”
“You think you can AI-moderate magic?” Delilah sounded incredulous.
“Why not?”
“Because magic is alive!” Luna surprised herself with her own vehemence. “It’s not content. It’s a relationship with forces that have their own intelligence.”
“That’s correct,” Kelly said. “And you three need to get out of here.”
“I don’t think so,” the square-shouldered magician said. “You don’t get to tell us what to do. We’re not your prisoners.”
“You attacked us—” Scarlett started.
“And you trapped us here!” The smirking magician suddenly found his voice. “You know, you people are always the same. Blah blah blah magical community, but the second someone threatens your power, you lock them up.”
Luna saw Kelly’s hand move, saw the beginning of a containment spell, and knew they were seconds from violence.
But Scarlett struck first.
Her spell shot across the room like a heat-seeking missile. Luna watched it arc toward Ashton’s head in slow motion, watched him duck with surprising agility, watched the spell slam into his laptop instead.
The explosion wasn’t huge, but magic and electronics had never played well together. Vex’s laptop detonated, sending sparks and smoke cascading through the room. Other devices began shorting out in sympathy, screens cracking, batteries swelling.
“What the—!” Vex dove behind the bed.
The sprinkler system activated, sending cold water raining down. Through the chaos of smoke and spray and shouting, Luna saw the three magicians rush to Ashton’s side.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine, fine—” He was grabbing external hard drives, shoving them into a messenger bag. “But we need to get out before they do that again.”
“You’re not going anywhere!” Kelly shouted.
The square-shouldered magician pulled out his wand. There was a flash of light, a smell like burning copper, and suddenly the room filled with a thick gray smoke that the sprinklers couldn’t touch.
“Everyone out!” Kelly was coughing. “Out, now!”
They all stumbled into the hallway, dripping from the sprinklers, choking on the acrid stench of melting electronics. As the smoke cleared, Luna leaned back into the doorway, knowing what she’d find but needing to look anyway.
The men were gone.
The equipment that remained was thoroughly destroyed—melted, fried, sparking sadly in puddles. Delilah picked her way through the wreckage, while Scarlett stood frozen, staring, her face pale. “I missed . . . how did I miss?”
“Well,” Kelly said finally, “that could have gone better.”
“Could have gone worse,” Elias offered. “Nobody died.”
“Yet,” Scarlett said darkly.
“They’ll regroup,” said Delilah. “Ashton’s smart enough to have backups.”
Luna watched water drip from the singed curtains, remembering the look on the magicians’ faces when Ashton had called them “disenfranchised.” She didn’t need Delilah’s analysis to know they’d be back.
The look on those men’s faces had said it all: they’d unintentionally brought Vex three new disciples.
They were still standing there in the ruined suite when Zahir appeared with towels and the long-suffering expression of someone who’d seen this kind of thing a thousand times before. “Tea, anyone?”
“Gods, no,” Scarlett sighed. “Bring whiskey. And a mop.”