17. Bad Odds, Better Company
Bad Odds, Better Company
Elias knew desperation when he saw it. Panicked investors who’d bet it all on the wrong “sure thing”—angry marks at the moment they understood they’d been taken.
Not to mention a memorable riot outside the First National Bank of Chicago.
But the gathering in Oak Haven was something else.
The witches were there to decide how to handle an interloper with a god complex.
And judging by the mood? They handled it about as well as an alley cat handles a bath.
He stood at the back, trying to look inconspicuous. Not easy when you were a century-old con man at a witch town meeting. Fortunately, Luna was beside him, whispering brief introductions in his ear.
On the platform sat Oak Haven’s Elder Council: Kelly Melrose, looking grimly regal, along with four other witches.
They radiated a confidence born of outliving even their worst mistakes.
At the podium stood the cardigan-clad Conrad Delmonico, town selectman.
It was evident Conrad loved rules of order more than Elias had ever loved anything.
Conrad banged his comically oversized gavel. “Everyone, if I could please get some order! Order, please!”
Nobody was listening.
In one corner sat Priti Chatterjee, a childhood friend of the Melrose girls and the head of the town’s EMS (Emergency Magic Service).
She sat stiff-backed, her hands moving in sharp, decisive gestures.
Clearly the kind of woman you called when something bled.
Priti whispered something urgent to Aphra Pierre, another childhood friend.
Aphra nodded, somehow hovering between empathetic and skeptical at once.
Belinda Chatterjee—Priti’s mom and the town’s reigning gossip—sat rage-knitting in the front row beside her husband, Sam.
Luna’s sisters clustered at the front with their partners: Delilah with Jasper, Scarlett with Nate.
Polly, owner of the town bookstore, sat next to them with her teenage daughter, Violet.
Violet was lost in her own epic romance .
. . with her handheld device. Judging by her intense expression, she was either defusing a bomb or starting a war.
To Elias’s left, a small table held an enchanted transcription machine that was supposed to be recording the minutes. Currently befuddled by all the noise, it was just typing “NO MINUTES FOR YOU NO MINUTES FOR YOU NO MINUTES FOR YOU” on an endless scroll.
Conrad tried again. “Please, everyone! I’m begging you, some semblance of—”
Elias nudged Luna. “Does it always go like this?”
“This? Oh, this is relatively calm.”
He looked around the room, cataloguing names, faces, and temperaments as he once did marks. I’ve run cons in speakeasies, union halls, and Fifth Avenue penthouses, he thought. But I’ve never seen anything quite like this.
Eventually, Conrad wrestled the crowd into order.
“Now then. You all know why we’re here: the CastR situation.
Ashton Vex has escaped with three magicians, now his apparent allies.
I’m told it’s safe to assume he hasn’t left town, due to his awareness of the forgetting spell.
That means he’s likely staying put. This presents us with an opportunity. The floor is open for suggestions.”
Up on the stage, Jerusha’s hand shot up, and she certainly wasn’t one to wait to be called on before speaking. “I have a perfectly simple solution. Turn the boy into something harmless. A goat, perhaps.” She paused, considering. “Or a Ficus. I can keep him in my garden.”
“Oh!” Belinda clapped her hands, delighted. “Or turn him into luggage! I could use new luggage.”
Scarlett spoke up loudly from the front. “I don’t hate the idea.”
Kelly shot her middle daughter a look that could have curdled milk. “Of course you don’t. Delilah, I trust you have some rationality to offer?”
Delilah stood, calm and reasonable as always. “If Ashton disappears, people will notice. They’ll look for him. And once they start looking, they’ll keep looking.”
“That’s precisely what the forgetting spell was made for,” Jerusha replied. “They’ll forget us as soon as they leave.”
“But they won’t, exactly.” Jasper stood up, looking a little reluctant to put himself in the middle of all this. “Yes, the forgetting spell resets any awareness of Oak Haven. But it won’t change their concerns for their missing CEO.”
“Which will lead them back to Oak Haven,” Delilah inserted, “again and again.”
Jasper gazed at Delilah with obvious affection. “Ask me how many times I forgot this place and still found my way back.”
That landed. The witches nodded, realizing that the disappearance of a well-connected person like Vex might invite more attention than they could handle.
Jerusha clapped her hands decisively. “Well then! Can’t we just throttle the local Wi-Fi? No connection, no app. Problem solved.”
Scanning the room, Elias perceived a fault line: older witches nodded, while everyone under sixty raised their eyebrows.
“That’s not how it works,” Polly called out. “If the app exists anywhere, it exists everywhere. We’d have to babysit the entire internet forever. Or . . . destroy the network.”
“Impossible!” Priti Chatterjee barked out a laugh. “You can’t do that.”
Then Louise Demain stood, and when Louise stood, Oak Haven paid attention.
“Why not craft a spell that rides the network itself. An elegant contagion, a glorious plague of unmaking that spreads like a fatal whisper through every tower and cable, every satellite. The curse would flow like blood through dying veins, turning each device to ash before it can birth further abominations into this doomed reality.”
Belinda applauded. “I love it! Let’s kill the phones!”
“No phones,” Jerusha noted, “no CastR.”
“You’re proposing planet-wide technological destruction?!” Aphra’s voice cracked with disbelief.
Priti shook her head. ‘You can’t kill phones, Mom! If you destroy cell phones, you isolate everyone not standing next to a phone jack. Hikers lost in the woods, elderly people living alone, anyone with an emergency in their car. People will die.’
Luna piped up. “This town already carries enough guilt from selfish decisions, hastily made. We certainly don’t need another Salem.”
A ripple of recognition went through the elders. The word Salem still drew blood.
“But the app!” Belinda protested. “It puts all witches in danger!”
Delilah countered, “Louise’s idea puts everyone in danger.”
Conrad tried to reclaim order. “Perhaps we should—”
Too late. The room had already fractured along generational lines.
Older witches were ready to burn the internet.
Younger ones recoiled, horrified at the potential collateral damage.
Voices overlapped, cutting each other off.
The careful parliamentary procedure that Conrad loved drowned in an angry tide.
“—can’t just destroy civilization—”
“—you’re being dramatic—”
“—you’re being naive—”
“—what about my phone?!—”
The transcription machine gave up, typing “[indecipherable shrieking continues]” on a loop.
“Hoo boy,” Elias said, sotto voce. “This is swell.”
“Helen Keller could’ve seen it coming.”
“Hey, that’s swell! I actually understand that reference!”
Kelly was shouting for calm, Conrad battering his poor gavel, the whole room pitched toward a brawl when Aphra suddenly stood. “Is it even worth all this?” she asked. “Maybe we should just . . . let it go.”
All debate collapsed into a sudden, unnerving stillness, like everyone had forgotten what they were about to say. Even the transcription machine hiccupped and stopped.
Aphra didn’t traffic in despair, not ever. If she was leaning toward surrender, then the town really was on the edge of something they wouldn’t come back from.
“Are we considering surrender?” someone asked.
“They’re going to give up,” Luna whispered to Elias, her voice thin with disbelief. “We’re just going to . . . let it happen.”
He studied her face, filled with worry, frustration, and a desperate need to do something.
A century ago, he’d likely have walked away from the whole mess.
But that was before Luna Melrose had dragged him out of the Void and made him remember what it felt like to care about something.
“Never fear. I get far worse at the track. But I always bet anyway.”
Then he stood. “You know what this reminds me of?” His voice carried easily across the deflated crowd. “Every poker game I ever lost was by folding too early.”
A few nervous chuckles. Elias felt the room’s attention pivot toward him. Good. Hooked ’em.
“Now, I’m a stranger here, obviously and—”
“—and a magician,” spat Jerusha. “But please, do tell us how to save ourselves.”
“Mr. Shaw is our guest,” Kelly announced. “He was imprisoned by his own kind for a century. And when some of us were cast into the Void, it was Mr. Shaw who kept us safe. The least we can do is hear him out. Please, Mr. Shaw. The floor is yours.”
“Well.” Elias cleared his throat. “If you truly want to end Ashton Vex, you don’t make him vanish.
You make him spectacular. Public. Let him sell himself to investors, let him climb as high as he can possibly climb.
” Elias paused, letting the idea settle.
“And then you pull the rug. Leave him with nothing.”
The room stirred, skepticism and curiosity mingling.
“Are you saying you want to con him?” Aphra asked.
“I want to let him con himself,” Elias corrected. “Give him enough rope, as they say.”
“That’s insane,” someone muttered.
“This is practical,” Luna shot back. “We can’t fight an app, but we can fight a man.”
“It’s too risky,” Priti said. “If anything goes wrong, if anyone finds out—”
“If it goes wrong, the world learns more about magic than we’ve revealed in three hundred years,” Delilah finished.