stacy benedict

“Yeah, and my portfolio’s worth over five mil.” The blue-and-yellow macaw gave Carrie a saucy wink. “I can keep
you tits deep in herbs and potions, bae.” Another wink. “All day, all night.”
Carrie dug her fingernails into the palm of her closed fist. She gave him a tight smile.
Years of vigorous study, apprenticeships with the best sages in North America, and a decade of crafting spells
published in four world-renowned grimoires were meaningless to her peers, her family, and apparently to this macaw. She couldn’t believe she’d been reduced to this, but here she was, dressed in her solstice best, stuck in a basic hotel banquet hall on a speed matchup.
“I need more wine,” she blurted before the macaw expounded further on his stock-picking spell.
“Please,” he said, “let me fetch you another glass.”
Carrie stood up fast, unsettling the table and causing the macaw to flap his wings to regain balance. “It’s okay. I
need the whole bottle.”
Without a backward glance, she stormed past the cash bar, ignored the tacky bat decor, and meandered around
a legion of tables with preening magicians babbling to potential familiars. Her target appeared like a distant mirage. She dodged wandering mage apprentices with canape trays and inched closer toward sweet, glorious freedom.
Fuck this. Fuck the $250 ticket fee. I’m better than these sad conjurers.
Double doors with red emergency Exit signs above them never looked so good. Carrie marched toward them, eyes focused, purse firmly in one hand, car keys in the other.
A blur dashed in front of her before she could register what it was. In this case, the it was a who. She smacked face-first into Maryanne’s voluptuous boobs.
“And just where do you think you’re going?” Maryanne snatched Carrie’s arm and dragged her to a corner of the banquet hall not congested with tables of desperate witches and warlocks.
Carrie yanked free of her sister’s grip. “I can’t take it anymore.”
“In Hecate’s name, you can, and you will.”
“No.”
“You promised Mom.”
Carrie’s determination faltered.
Maryanne smiled, knowing she had landed a lethal blow.
Well, near lethal.
Carrie shook off the barb. “Forget it. This is stupid. I don’t need a familiar.”
“Every decent witch needs to settle down with a good familiar.”
“It’s not the 1500s.” Carrie rolled her eyes.
“She’s right.” Ferris popped his head out from Maryanne’s jacket pocket. The brown ferret gave Carrie his usual disapproving once-over. “Don’t you want a steady magical conduit to bring meaning to your spells?”
Carrie slowly clenched and unclenched her fist. “My spells are already plenty meaningful, thank you very much.”
“Look,” Maryanne said and touched her shoulder, “I’m—well, Ferris and I are worried about you.”
“Me?”
“You’re one hundred forty-five now, and the sand in your bio-essence hourglass is dribbling down.”
“You don’t want to turn two hundred with regrets, do you? Waiting until it’s too late to find a familiar,” Ferris added in his squeaky voice.
“It takes a powerful witch to go through life casting spells alone. But, one day, you’ll be setting a hex on some guy who cut you off in traffic, only to look in your rearview mirror and see a—”
“Don’t you dare say what I think you’re going to say,” Carrie cut Maryanne off.
“A hag witch.” Ferris raised his snout in the air.
Carrie sharply inhaled. Magic crackled like lightning under her skin and lit the tips of her fingers a bright orange.
People at the tables close by stopped talking to stare at them.
It’ll take a second to send that nasty furry cretin flying.
Ferris dropped back down into Maryanne’s pocket, knowing he’d overstepped.
Maryanne held up both palms. “Easy. Don’t get angry at him. He’s only saying what everyone else is.”
Carrie glared at her.
“Or, um, will.”
Carrie exhaled slowly. She knew her sister was right. Being without a familiar in your fifties and sixties, witches said she was just modern and independent. Being without a familiar at one hundred, the covens whispered that her magic was beautiful, and she’d find the right familiar any day now. At one hundred forty-five, they wondered what was wrong with her magic and said she was still single because no familiar would have her.
Carrie’s shoulders slumped. Despite feeling happy with her life and work, the constant questions were having an effect. “I’ve tried to connect with familiars.”
“You’re too picky.” Maryanne folded her arms. “And you haven’t really put your magic out there. Every familiar I’ve set you up with, you reject.”
“Are you really bringing up that awful hamster again?” Carrie snapped.
“He liked giving kids cursed apples. You like giving kids cursed apples.” Maryanne looked at her as if the answer was obvious.
Carrie rubbed the bridge of her nose and asked Goddess Hecate for strength. Where’s one of the apprentices with the mojito trays from earlier?
Ferris popped his head up. “My brother’s friend’s cousin is still single and looking for any witch. He, too, is getting up there in age and wouldn’t be fussy either. Want me to give him a call?”
“Shut up!” Carrie turned to leave.
Maryanne didn’t grab her arm this time. She only said one word. “Mom.”
Carrie stopped walking and hung her head. “Damn deathbed promises,” she grumbled.
Maryanne stepped in front of her. “I was twenty-five, going on twenty-six, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever meet the right familiar either. Then”—she smiled with a dreamy, faraway look on her face— “I was in the park, minding my own business, feeding the pigeons on the bench near the south exit …”
Carrie groaned mentally.
“I saw him. I knew Ferris was my familiar instantly.”
Ferris sat up. “And I knew you were my witch.”
“He said to me, ‘You know there’s a spell that makes the bread decay inside them, giving the pigeons diarrhea whenever they fly over a human’s car.’ ”
Ferris nodded. “And then you said, ‘Show me.’ ”
“And, together, we worked as one.”
“There wasn’t a car in the parking lot that wasn’t covered in pigeon shit that day.”
“I felt right with my magic for the first time in my life.”
“Our lives,” Ferris agreed.
Where are those bloody apprentices serving the alcohol?
Carrie looked around in vain. The nearest server was halfway across the room.
“You, too, can have what we have.” Maryanne lifted Ferris from her pocket and snuggled him against her cheek.
The pair closed their eyes and began warbling “So This Is Love” to each other.
Carrie rolled her eyes. The ears of whoever wrote that song must be bleeding acid. I’m sure of it.
She left the pair and walked back to her table with the enthusiasm of a demon being forced back into Niflheim.
Along the way, she stopped at the bar and paid for two dry martinis.
With all due respect, damn you, Mom.
The macaw was perched at another table, talking to an excited warlock, judging by his wide eyes and the grin on his face. In the bird’s place sat a tarantula who was larger than her hand. Carrie downed one martini in a gulp before sitting down.
Help me get through this, Goddess Hecate.
She rested her head on her hand and waited for the spider to impress her.
And she waited.
And waited.
“Hey!” She shook the table after a while.
“Wha—huh?” The tarantula startled awake.
“Were you sleeping?”
“Apologies,” she croaked. “These matchups are always so dull and stupid.”
Carrie snorted.
“Plus, I was at a friend’s zombie revival last night that lasted until six a.m.” The tarantula yawned.
Carrie perked up. “You attended Sorcerer Kempnek’s revival?”
“It was a rager,” said the tarantula as Carrie leaned in. “We’ve been working on an all-encompassing tincture, feeding zombified human brains to insects.”
“Impossible.” Carrie shook her head. “No magic can turn a creature lower than a mouse into a zombie. I’ve been studying zombification of marine life for the past seventeen years.”
The tarantula skittered back. “Wait, you’re not thee Carrie Nithercott?”
She blushed. “That’s what my parents named me—without the thee, of course. And you are?”
“Gibb. I’ve read your articles in the National Magic Review. It’s nice to not only meet a fellow zombieologist, but to also put a face to such a lovely mind.”
“There are so few of us women in the field.” Carrie smiled.
“Indeed!” Gibb continued on, telling Carrie about the revival and later about her research.

Carrie scooted her chair closer to Gibb, not wanting to miss a word, and later declined a toad asking for time
when Maryanne, the matchup hostess, instructed familiars to switch tables.
On the third—or was it the forth?—order to switch partners, Carrie asked Gibb, “Do you want to get out of
here?”
“Only if we’re leaving together,” Gibb replied.
Carrie picked up her purse and stood, but then hesitated before reaching for Gibb.
Is this right? She was happy with her life as it was now, without a familiar. Was she making a mistake? Had she
really met her familiar in a cheesy budget hotel’s banquet hall at one of her sister’s matchups for loser
magicians?
A jolt ran up her arm. Carrie looked down.
“Everything all right?” Gibb had crawled halfway up her arm.
“Um …”
We’re only talking, not making a lifetime commitment, Carrie reassured herself, although the thought of committing didn’t bring about hives as it usually did.
“Yes. All is well.” Carrie helped Gibb to her shoulder, which felt normal for some reason. “Do you like Italian?”
“Immensely. I transmuted an entire restaurant of humans into grasshoppers once. Gorged myself silly.”
“Mmm, mmm.” Carrie walked through the metal double doors, humming to herself as she listened to Gibb’s story. “Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm.”

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Song List

Brandy, Paolo Montalban – So This Is Love