Mulberry Wands (35 page)

Susan dozed.

What felt like a moment later, she woke up to
the sound of Maggie talking with someone outside.

Susan jerked awake, her neck aching from the
awkward position. Her eyes were gummy and her mouth was dry. She
took a sip of the diet Coke off the table, but it had grown warm
and didn’t do much to relieve the taste in her mouth.

The screen door banged open and Maggie came
in. She looked like she had the juiciest news to share. “Sue,
you’re not going to believe who’s here.”

Susan just stared at her sleepily. She’d had
a dream about coffee grounds and blood, and zombies.

“Your brother has come to see you.”

“What?”

“I’m going to let him in,” Maggie reached for
the door, as though reanimated corpses weren’t something to get
worked up about. She waggled her eyebrows, like a kid delighting in
someone else getting busted. “You asked for it. I told you not to
try and see Christopher again.”

“No, wait!” Susan screamed. “Maggie!”

The door slammed open and a guy she’d never
seen before stared at her.

Susan stopped screaming.

“Who are you?” Susan asked.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “I heard you
screaming and I thought—”

Maggie chuckled and fumbled for a cigarette.
“Daniel, this is my daughter, Susan. Susan, this is Daniel. Daniel
Van Jans.”

Susan looked at Maggie to be sure she had
heard right. Maggie lit her cigarette. She met Susan’s eye and
nodded.

Susan stood up. He looked like he was in his
mid twenties, though he had a super-conservative haircut like he
was Mormon or a young Republican or something. He was wearing a
Tommy Bahama shirt with the subtle print of palm trees on it, with
matching shorts (were those linen?) and Tevas. His watch looked
like the expensive ones that were always advertised in the back of
Phoenix Mansion and Grounds.

“I’m Susan Stillwater.” She extended her hand
to shake. His nails were extra-short, like he bit them and then got
a manicure to try and hide the evidence.

She looked at his face, searching for a
resemblance. He wasn’t bad looking, though nothing special. Did he
look like her? Maybe the nose. And the lower lip, a little bit.
Forehead was shaped differently. His hair wasn’t thick and bushy
either; she must have gotten that from Maggie.

“Daniel here was looking to hire a mage,”
Maggie drawled around her cigarette. “I was thinking maybe you
should take it, seeing as how you’re between jobs right now.”

Daniel looked Susan over, calculating. “Are
you a mage?”

“Yes, I am,” she said, in her most confident
“hire me!” voice.

“Here’s the situation,” he said. “My sister
is engaged, and the rest of the family doesn’t want her to marry
this guy.”

“Sister?” Susan asked. He had a sister? One
old enough to marry? “Why don’t you want her to marry him?”

“He’s really, well, he’s just not suitable,”
Daniel said. “We want you to cast a spell on her to make her fall
out of love with him.”

“Legally I can’t, you know.”

Maggie rolled her eyes.

“We can make it worth your while,” Daniel
said.

Susan shook her head. The MIB was already
watching her closely on account of certain incidents that weren’t
entirely her fault (though you couldn’t tell them that). The last
thing she wanted was to get caught casting spells on people without
their consent. Of course, she also desperately wanted to get to
know this guy and his sister. And especially his dad.

And then there was the money thing. She could
really use some money.

“Of course, if someone has cast a love spell
on her in the first place, it’s totally legal to dissolve it.”

“Right,” Daniel said, with a cagy smile.
“Perfectly justified.”

“I’d need to meet her, with her fiancé. Maybe
with the rest of your family there too? To act as distractions in
case I need to get some hair samples for the spell?”

“Uh, yeah. They’ll be at my Dad’s house on
Thursday. I can call and see if it’s all right for me to bring a
date.”

Susan looked at Maggie. Maggie was smirking.
She hadn’t told him anything.

“I will not be your date,” Susan said.

“Right,” he said. “Strictly business.”

Daniel handed her a business card. It had his
name on it, along with the name of a law firm downtown. She looked
at his face again. Surely he was too young to be a lawyer.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank all the people who helped
me write and publish this novel. First of all, I’d like to thank my
first readers: Jim Pratt and Betsy Mahaffey for their praise and
criticism (but mostly for the criticism).

Big hugs of gratitude go also to the
wonderful and splendid volunteer copyeditors Christine
Yount-Bobenhausen who found typos, embarrassing tense changes, and
formatting errors that I missed, and for Connie Schultejans, editor
extraordinaire, who gave it her final go-over.

Thank you also to Steve Deffeyes, who created
“Gondola” the title font, generously provided for free from
dafont.com.

But mostly I want to thank you. Yes, you, the
one reading this right now. Thanks for buying (or borrowing, or
downloading) my books, thanks for reading them. Thank you to
everyone who posted comments on my blog, or RT @Seabingen on
twitter, or wrote a review on Amazon or Goodreads, and to everyone
who liked my stories well enough to tell someone else about them.
Huge thanks in advance to anyone awesome enough to write a review
and let others know what you thought.

If you want to follow more of my e-publishing
adventure, look at some unusual art, read my book reviews, or read
ALTERNATE SUSAN, the first book of the Desert Mages series,
serialized for free, visit www.catherinecheek.com

Urban Fantasy Featuring Kit Melbourne:

SEEING THINGS

TREEMAKER

DAYRUNNER

FAERIE KILLER

CHANGER’S TURF

Urban Fantasy Featuring Susan Stillwater

ALTERNATE SUSAN

MULBERRY WANDS

THE HEAT STEALER*

*Forthcoming

About the Author

Kater Cheek is a graduate of 2007 Clarion.
Her work has appeared in The Living Dead anthology, Weird Tales and
Fantasy Magazine, among others. She has art, book reviews, sample
chapters, and links to her other work at www.catherinecheek.com.
When not writing, she throws pots, gardens, binds books, practices
aikido, and plays with molten glass.