Sticky Witch I
Meet Rosen, Material Practitioner
I wasn’t expecting this,” Mr Galbaldi confessed. His face alternated between bewilderment and glee, clashing with his lime polo shirt and white hair. I called it “Expression No. 5,” which was much better than Expression No. 2 - outrage - or Expression No. 1, which was outright disbelief.
“Nobody does,” I agreed. “But since the Merlin Convocation ten years ago, magic’s been flowing back into the world and well - this is one of the results. People discovered their affinities, and mine was binding.”
I pressed my hands together in the prayer pose - yoga is surprisingly useful for magical training - and pulled them apart again. Looking closely, you could see the translucent strands catch the light. With a sigh, I stepped onto the ladder, propped against the wall and edged the strands into the brickwork at the lowest point of its cracked face. This was the tricky bit. With the right nudge, I could fix the wall and pull it back into alignment despite the shift in the ground beneath. Doing so would save the entire house from collapse. According to the surveyor, the subsidence had stopped, but Mr Galbaldi did not have the funds for a complete rebuild. Hence, me, on a stepladder, repairing the wall like a seamstress mending a rip.
“Does it hurt?”
The voice was right next to my ear, and I jumped, causing the magic to spark. Mr Galbaldi had found a stepstool and was hovering at my shoulder.
“Crap! Ow!” I shook my hand and sucked my fingers to release the charge. The wall in front of us groaned as the pressure eased. I glared at my client, who had the grace to look embarrassed. “Mr Galbaldi,” I said firmly after pausing to rein my temper. “I am rearranging 100,000 pounds of brickwork, mortar and concrete. I am trying to do this without crashing your roof or crunching your foundations. It’s delicate, dangerous work. Please give me the space to concentrate!”
“Er. OK. Sorry.” He hopped off the stepstool. “Coffee?” he asked, shamefaced.
“When I’m done. Give me two hours.”
It took closer to three. Once I had pulled the wall together, I had to tidy up the crunching where it met the foundations. I was a sweating mess when the last strand was in place.
Mr Galbaldi had a fancy expresso maker that he switched on as soon as I entered his neat kitchen. Standing next to it was my tame surveyor, Colin, who had invited me into this mess in the first place.
“All done?” he asked, his eyebrows raised. I nodded, my eyes fixed on the coffee machine. “External cladding edited and all points resealed. There was a lot of internal weakness - more than you let on, you git. Who strengthened the foundations?”
Colin blinked twice and saluted me with his coffee mug. He was a few years older than me with beautiful long eyelashes and dark colouring. I usually ignored his flirting - it was bad for my day rate.
“Glenda.” He held up his hands before I started my tirade. “She needed the work, and I double-checked everything before I called you in.”
Mr Galbaldi slid across my latte. I took a sip. The beans were fresh, and they tasted like heaven on my tongue. “What’s the problem with Glenda?” he asked.
“She’s an earth witch with a death wish,” I grumbled.
“She’s fully certified and insured,” Colin pointed out quietly.
“Huh.”
Mr Galbaldi drummed his fingers on the worktop. “Should I be concerned?” he asked. “I was a police commissioner before I retired. I can get in touch with my old colleagues.”
I exchanged a glance with Colin. “No,” I said with a sigh. “Glenda and I have history, that’s all. She was involved in the Gia Riots and got one of my brothers into trouble.”
“Oh.”
“However, she has reformed since then, and her work is exemplary,” Colin interjected. He fumbled for one of his business cards. “My firm checks all the documentation and requires three referrals before we recommend any subcontractor. If you call our office, you will be sent copies of Glenda and Rosen’s paperwork.”
Mr Galbaldi waved the card away. “It’s not necessary,” he said. “I was a bit surprised, that’s all. I was away when they did the foundations, and I thought Glenda Hale was a traditional builder with a digger. Same for you, Miss Pearce.” He glanced at me. “I didn’t know you would be a magic user.”
“There’s a reason why I’m cheaper than a traditional builder’s team,” I said, taking another sip from the mug. “But we prefer not to shout about it. I’ve had a lot of - bad reactions.”
Mr Galbaldi raised his eyebrows. “I’m an atheist,” he said. “And now I understand why you asked for my religion on the questionnaire.”
Colin nodded. “When we first started to use Rosen, she turned up to one job and got ambushed by one of the local religious sects. They tried a full exorcism on her.”
I winced at the memory. “It was a few years ago, but we had to call the police.”
“Interesting,” Mr Galbadi murmured. “Do you ever regret choosing magic?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t choose magic,” I explained. “It chose me. It’s like my eye colour or being left-handed. I discovered I had it when I turned 14 and stuck the school bully to a bench.”
Both the men chuckled at that. I rubbed my forehead to stave off the rising headache. “Colin, can you give me a lift?” I asked. I could see the questions lining up behind Mr Galbadi’s tongue, and I didn’t want to spend the next hour talking about my past.
“Sure,” Colin said sweetly. “No car?”
“It’s in the garage. I took a taxi.”
He glanced at my face and thankfully kept quiet until we were seated in his Volkswagen and the engine was switched on.
“What’s happening?” he asked as he steered out of the driveway.
I stared out of the window. “Have you looked at how many subsidence problems we’ve been having in the past six months?”
Colin shrugged. “A few more than usual, but there been a lot of flooding. Climate change, magical disruption and so on. Why?”
I grimaced. “More than a few. I contract for most of the local firms around here, and my workload has doubled this year.”
Colin frowned. “You think it’s deliberate?”
“Yeah. I think Glenda’s up to something. The problem is, I can’t prove it. Too many people are using the local covens for landscaping and plant recovery. If she sabotaging people’s foundations, it’s getting lost in the general noise. The local police don’t know what to look for half the time, and we don’t have any specialist teams down here to investigate.”
Colin slowed the car down as we approached the roundabout. “You think she’s drumming up work for herself?”
I shook my head. “No. I think it’s larger than that.”
“Why?”
“Because I rang around all the builders and surveyor firms on Friday to find out how many subsidence cases they had on their books. On Saturday, someone punched my car in.”
Colin swore under his breath. “When you say punched…?”
“Like a giant took both his fists to my car boot.”
“You need to be careful.”
“I know.”