Back Off Witch

  A Croft & Tabby Short 2

  Brad Magnarella

  Copyright © 2022 by Brad Magnarella

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design by MiblArt

  bradmagnarella.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  New to the Croftverse?

  Author’s Note

  Croftverse Catalogue

  Join the Strange Brigade

  The Prof Croft Series

  PREQUELS

  Book of Souls

  Siren Call

  MAIN SERIES

  Demon Moon

  Blood Deal

  Purge City

  Death Mage

  Black Luck

  Power Game

  Druid Bond

  Night Rune

  Shadow Duel

  Shadow Deep

  SPIN OFFS

  Croft & Tabby

  Croft & Wesson

  MORE COMING!

  1

  “Urgh,” Tabitha grunted. “Hrmph.”

  I peered up from the student paper I was grading and found my plus-sized cat shifting restlessly on the divan. Adjusting myself in my reading chair, I sighed and dropped my gaze back to the beginning of the paper.

  A minute later Tabitha let out a disconsolate “Ruraow.”

  I clenched my jaw. She knew exactly what she was doing, but I refused to take the bait. I backed up a sentence, lost the thread of the student’s very fuzzy argument, and had to start all over again.

  “Wrraaoowww!”

  I slapped my pencil down onto the paper. “What?”

  “You know what,” she snapped. “It’s as hot as the devil’s crotch in here.”

  I gestured to the icebags I’d piled around her cushion like the lower tiers of an igloo, and the three fans pointing directly at her. Tufts of her ginger hair spun ahead of the currents. When I tried to talk, one landed in my mouth, sending me into a sputtering fit.

  “Use your words, darling.”

  I cursed myself for showing weakness. “It’s eighty-two degrees,” I said, pausing to pick the remaining hairs from my tongue. “Warm, granted, but if you stopped moving around so much, you’d be fine.”

  “Why can’t you just buy a window unit?” she complained.

  “Because this is temporary. We’re supposed to dip again next week.”

  We’d had the opposite problem back in October when, surprised by an early cold front, the building had taken several days to change over to its heating system. It wouldn’t switch back to AC again until May, meaning we had to manage the November heat wave on our own. This year’s happened to coincide with my fall break, when I’d been planning to catch up on an unwieldy pile of ungraded papers. Planning being the operative term. Tabitha’s complaints had been going on for two days now.

  “Of all the wizards to imprison me in this wretched body,” she continued, “it had to be a miserable cheapskate.”

  “If I’m so cheap, I should probably return your case of premium goat’s milk then, huh? Not to mention your tuna steaks… your filet mignons…”

  Threatening her food supply usually quieted her down, but she was in one of her rare moods.

  “I’ve seduced princes in my lifetime, titans of industry. I’ve lived in palaces and on grand estates. Eaten dinners worth their weight in gold. Worn dresses that women literally killed for. And now look at me—having to contemplate licking myself all over to keep from heat-stroking.”

  “I’ll be happy to drop you in a bucket of ice water.”

  “But with my recent luck,” she continued, “I’ll choke on a furball and die.”

  “Be sure to write out your last will and testament. Not that you own anything.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t care,” she went on contemptuously. “Perfectly content to sweat in your underclothes like a common pig.”

  “Do pigs wear underclothes?”

  As she narrowed her ochre-green eyes at me, I could see her preparing her next assault, but I was spared by a knock at the door.

  “Silence mode,” I reminded her as I went to answer it.

  Beyond the peephole stood a petite young woman with a snow-white pixie cut and large glasses.

  She waved. “Hi, Everson.”

  “Kayla?” I asked, unbolting the door.

  At the last moment, I pulled on my trench coat, which was hanging on the door-side rack. Tabitha exaggerated a lot of things, but not about me being in boxers. Just as I was fastening the coat’s belt, the door opened and Kayla clomped past me wearing a pink summer dress and a pair of polished black combat boots.

  “Do you have anything cold to drink?” she asked without preamble.

  “You can see what’s in the fridge.” I followed her into the kitchen. “We’re out of ice, though.”

  “Her again,” Tabitha said blandly.

  Fortunately, Kayla had already opened the refrigerator door, and the top half of her body was inside.

  “How’s your dad doing?” I asked loudly.

  I hadn’t seen Kayla Starling since helping her father out with a supernatural creature that had terrorized his construction site. He’d ended up in the hospital, which was better than dead, but I still felt guilty.

  “How’s he doing?” she repeated as she emerged with a carton of orange juice. “Stubborn, crabby, aggravating—his usual self. He returned to work against doctor’s orders, but it’s probably the best medicine for him. Don’t tell him I said that. Thanks again for what you did.”

  “I’m just glad he’s all right. And how have you been? Going for a new look?”

  The last time I’d seen her, she was sporting brunette hair down to her waist.

  “Oh, a friend of mine did this last week. The inspiration came to me during a lucid dream where I was in a mystical highland at night. The reflection of a full moon beckoned from a nearby pond, whispering that whatever I saw in the water would be of vital importance in the next lunar cycle. I expected to find a rune-stone or some kind of animal totem—I’ve been feeling really connected to amphibians lately.” She paused to swig straight from the carton. “But what I saw was a reflection of myself, and I had this short, moon-like hair. The message being to honor my wisdom.”

  Tabitha snorted. “Your wisdom?”

  “How interesting,” I said over my cat’s remark.

  Kayla was steeped in emotional auras, intuitive readings, and energy healings, despite having little to no actual abilities in any of them. Her sincerity, however, was very genuine, which made her hard not to like.

  “And that’s the reason I’m here,” she finished.

  I squinted at her. “To show me your lucid dream hair?”

  “No, to honor my wisdom. I believe I have another supernatural case for you, but it’s best if I take you to this one.”

  As she replaced the orange juice in the fridge, I looked over at the stack of student papers fluttering beside my reading chair. Beyond them, Tabitha was fussing on the divan again: “Urgh, hrmph, ruraaow…”

  “Okay,” I said.

  A sudden smile lit up Kayla’s eyes. “Is that a yes?”

  “Right now, anything that gets me out of here is a yes.”

  2

  Following a change of clothes and a thirty-minute subway ride, during which Kayla talked incessantly about carnelian crystals, we emerged from the station at Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood.

  It had fared better than the rest of the borough in the wake of the Crash, but it still carried an edge. Several businesses were shuttered, and clusters of hardened teens watched us from street corners. Unconcerned, Kayla waved or smiled at everyone until we arrived at a block of brownstones with street-level businesses.

  “Here it is,” she said, stopping in front of one.

  I read the sign aloud. “The ‘Superhero Depot’?”

  “I volunteer here. C’mon, let me show you the inside.”

  “Volunteer?”

  I waited for an explanation, but she was already pulling the door open. The inside was blessedly air-conditioned and exactly what the name suggested. The store sold everything from masks and costumes to tactical belts and spell kits to powdered supplements for special abilities. Out of curiosity, I picked up a container promising SUPER STRENGTH. The ingredients, in very fine print, were for chocolate milk.

  The place seemed popular with the neighborhood kids, anyway. There were already a couple of them inside when we arrived, and now three more ran toward the back. “Hey, Kayla!” they shouted in passing. Apparently, she really did volunteer here, but I couldn’t begin to see how this related to a case.

  “I didn’t think you were coming in today,” someone said.

  I replaced the container on its shelf and turned to find a middle-aged man dressed as Clark Kent. Beneath his dark, gelled hair and a pair of lenseless glasses, his shirt was unbuttoned to reveal a blue spandex shirt with the famous S logo. I hoped to God he worked here and didn’t just hang around for kicks.

 
“Clark, this is the friend I was telling you about,” Kayla said, gesturing to me. “I’m just giving him the tour. Clark, Everson. Everson, Clark. And, yes, that’s his actual name. Clark Lindsey. He manages the store.”

  “That’s a relief,” I murmured.

  Clark regarded me with a pair of critical blue eyes. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Everson.” As we shook hands, he asked, “Have you done this before?”

  Still not knowing why I was here, I looked to Kayla for assistance. Her quick nod urged me to say yes.

  “A little here, a little there,” I hedged.

  “Today might not be the best day, actually,” he told Kayla. “We have a full house.”

  At this point, I had no idea what anyone was talking about. The store was far from full. But I was picking up some weird tension between Kayla and Clark.

  “Oh, but Everson can do magic,” Kayla said.

  Clark’s eyes glinted as they returned to mine. “Is that right?”

  Whether or not he was the client, I thought I’d made it clear to Kayla that my wizard identity was to stay between us. With blood rushing to my face, I stammered. “Well, not real magic or anything.”

  Clark laughed. “You’re in the right place, then. All right, go ahead. I’m sure they’ll enjoy that.”

  They? I thought, peering around again.

  “Thanks,” Kayla said coolly.

  As he left us, she hooked her arm in mine and walked me toward the back. “Sorry about that,” she whispered. “I thought he would be off today, and I don’t want him to know why I brought you.”

  So, not the client.

  “While we’re on the subject, why did you bring me?”

  I was starting to suspect that soliciting my help had been an excuse to take me to her favorite store, where she volunteered for reasons that only made sense to her. I could feel my patience thinning, not least because I’d worn my trench coat and was sweating rivulets, even despite the AC.

  “You’ll see in a sec,” she replied. “Step over here, please.”

  We were at the back of the store, but the kids who’d flown past a moment ago were nowhere to be seen. Kayla solved the mystery by pulling a wall of shelving. It swung out to reveal a secret corridor and a clamor of kids’ voices. Kayla watched me with clasped hands, clearly pleased by my reaction.

  “It’s an afterschool tutoring center,” she said.

  At the end of the corridor, we stepped into a sizeable room that held bookshelves, study tables, and about twenty kids, including the vanished three.

  “So this is where you volunteer.”

  “Every Tuesday and Friday. Isn’t it cool?”

  “Very cool,” I agreed, seeing now what Clark meant by a full house. In addition to the twenty-odd kids, three college-aged adults were struggling to get everyone to settle down.

  “Is this the magic guy?” one of them asked, looking from her phone to me. Apparently, Clark had texted ahead. Before I could answer, Kayla waved her arms overhead.

  “Listen up, my angels,” she announced. “If everyone sits down and gets really quiet, we have a special treat for you. My friend Everson Croft is a magician, and he’s here to perform a couple of neat tricks!”

  In a rush of excited whispers the kids complied, which seemed magical in and of itself, but now forty eyes were staring up at me expectantly. Kayla patted my back to wish me luck and stepped away.

  “Hi.” I raised my hand awkwardly. “I’m, ah, Everson.”

  “Are you gonna make something disappear?” one of the kids asked.

  “Yes,” I said, grateful for the suggestion. “As a matter of fact, I am. Watch closely.”

  I lifted my protective coin from around my neck by its chain and dropped it into my right hand. I showed it to everyone, passed my other hand over it, and then showed them that my right hand was now, miraculously, empty.

  “Ta-da!”

  My late grandfather had taught me the trick, along with several other sleights of hand. A few appreciative oohs sounded, but the majority of the audience appeared unimpressed.

  “Shoot, my sister can do that,” a large boy with a fade cut said.

  “And I can still see the necklace,” a girl added. “It’s that lump in his sleeve.”

  Voices went up as the other kids began to spot it, too. I quickly pocketed my hands and let the coin and chain slide out.

  “It’s in his pocket now,” Fade Cut said.

  “That’s not nice, Troy,” one of the volunteers told him.

  I glanced over at Kayla. She was smiling above her clapping hands, blithely unaware that the crowd was turning against me.

  “You guys are good,” I scowled, “but have you ever seen someone levitate?”

  “Aw, man,” Troy complained. “He’s gonna turn so you can only see one leg, then he’s gonna go up on his tiptoes with the other. My sister showed me that one, too.”

  Dammit. I stopped turning.

  “Can everyone see both of my legs?” I asked as I squared myself back toward the audience. A few murmurs went up in response. “Well, can you?”

  “Yes!” they answered in unison.

  “How about you, spoiler guy?” I asked Troy.

  “Yeah,” he said, still trying to affect a seen-it-all expression, but he straightened slightly with interest.

  “All right. Watch very closely.”

  Feeling pressured to up my game—by a group of kids, no less—I decided that one teensy-weensy invocation wouldn’t hurt.

  “Protezione,” I whispered.

  In a crackle of energy, the air under my feet hardened. I grew it upward so that, inch by teetering inch, it gave the impression that I was floating. By the time I was a half foot off the floor, my audience had lost its collective mind. They were all shouting at once, but while some pressed forward for a closer look, the rest were scrambling back in exhilarated fright. Troy was among the second group.

  I dropped down and pretended to stagger with exhaustion.

  “Do it again!” they cried. “One more time! One more time!”

  “I’m afraid that took all my energy,” I said. “But if you work hard this afternoon, I’ll attempt it again before I leave.”

  When the kids saw I wasn’t going to budge, they returned to their seats and started into their homework. A strange satisfaction moved through me as I looked over the room. I had never worked with kids before—and after the rocky start, I’d never planned on doing so again—but I actually enjoyed that.

  Kayla rushed up and patted my back. “You’re a natural!”

  “Well, it is in my blood,” I said modestly. “Who’s he?”

  I nodded at a young boy in the back, no more than seven or eight. He wore a green cape he must have picked up in the store. Throughout my act, he’d remained hunched over a piece of paper, working obsessively. He hadn’t looked up once, not even when his peers went screaming and scrambling past him.

  “Oliver Johnson. He’s actually who I wanted you to see.”

  I looked from the boy back to her. “The case involves a child?”

  She nodded solemnly, moisture already standing in her eyes. “I think there’s a monster in his closet.”

  3

  “A monster,” I repeated.

  My knee-jerk skepticism went back to our first encounter a few years earlier, when Kayla and her friends believed they were calling up a benign nature spirit and ended up with a giant acid-spewing slug. I’d lost my right earlobe banishing the thing. But because Kayla had been right about the strange doings at her father’s construction site last month, I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  “How about talking me through why you think there’s a monster in his closet.”

  “Oliver hasn’t always been like this,” she said. “He started coming here last year for help with his reading. I wasn’t volunteering then, but the others say he was sociable in a sweet and gentle way, always smiling. And he loved the volunteers. Now he does this every day—comes in, goes straight to the back, draws by himself, and then leaves with his mother. He won’t talk to anyone.” As we watched him, Oliver hunched further over his project, lips compressed in a frown.