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Once upon a time in the highest peak of the tallest silver skyscraper, a man fell to the ground and cried out like a beast. All around him, papers drenched in red ink were strewn across the floor, each one a new debt he could no longer afford. The man had lost everything, though he would not have to carry the consequences of his unscrupulous actions for long.
For at his door, his secretary appeared, dressed in a short, black dress and a shimmering black cape. She opened her palms and from them floated hundreds upon thousands of vague, green dollar bills. She’d been a witch all along, hiding in plain sight. She’d seen his exploitative ways and the consequences that followed, both good and bad.
She made a deal to absolve his debts. In exchange, he would begin a new life and dedicate himself only to bettering the world. If he failed, she would take it all away. He agreed, and they signed the contract in blood.
Five years passed in peace. The man married and started a family. He started working for a charity and dedicated his energy to providing housing. It did not take five years, however, to feel the draw of how lucrative this opportunity could be. With everything in his power, he resisted, but he worked hard and hatched up a plan fast.
Soon, his old habits returned with a vengeance. Eventually, he moved to a mansion on the hill and looked down on all that he had done. As it was written, the witch returned to his doorstep once more.
For his treachery, he had to pay. All of his worldly possessions and his first-born child. The child would, she said, do what he could not—make this undeserving world a better place.
The man cried at the witch’s feet, begging not to take his child away.
The witch took pity, but it was too late. The contract was sealed and bound long ago.
When she reached for the man’s young son, however, she learned that the man had deceived her with his wily tongue. He was not the first-born child.
Angered, the witch set fire to his possessions and stole his voice so that he may never deceive others with his lies again.
She then set off to claim her prize, and the man never saw her again.
Aubrey woke up with a start, all her bones seeming to ache as she slowly sat up at her desk. What a strange dream, she thought, stretching out in her chair. She didn’t even remember falling asleep.
She turned on the television behind her and left on the news for background noise. As she turned back to her laptop, a velvety-voiced woman was describing a sudden and inexplicable fire that engulfed a mansion in New York. Miraculously, no one was harmed.
Aubrey scrolled through her emails, idly noting the time as she began working through them.
It was an evening like any other. Grey. A few droplets of rain knocked gently at closed windows. Soft jazz played at a low volume, while the yellow lamplight encircled her work space. She picked up her blue mug and glanced into it—her tea had been cold for hours.
She picked up her blanket, wrapped it around her shoulders, and carried her mug to the kitchen. It was then that her doorbell rang.
Aubrey glanced toward her laptop. Though she could not see the time from where she stood, she last recalled it being almost ten o’clock at night. “What the hell?” she muttered under her breath. She placed her freshly steaming mug on the kitchen counter, turned off her television, and listened.
The doorbell rang again.
“Who is it?” She called, shuffling out into the hallway of her modest bungalow.
Hearing no response—not a single sound—she crept to the door and looked through the peephole.
On her front step, waving her fingers through the fisheye, stood a busty brunette with her breasts practically spilling out of a low-cut black dress.
Aubrey frowned and did not unlatch the chain from her door when she cracked it open. “I think you’ve got the wrong house, ma’am,” she said, trying so very hard not to stare at the red lips or the ample chest.
The mysterious woman grinned. “You’re Aubrey Posen,” she said, pulling out a scroll from seemingly out of thin air. “I believe you belong to me.”
Aubrey’s brows furrowed. “Yeah, whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it.” She slammed the door shut and turned, thinking only of her fresh cup of tea when a sudden gust of wind tore through the room, sweeping through her hair, through the fabric of her blanket, and seemingly right into her bones. Rainwater splattered across her floors and walls. She looked up, her jaw dropping slowly, to see the woman standing on her front step with one hand on her hip and the other glowing purple, palm up toward the sky.
Her door was gone.
Simply gone.
“Ex cuse me?” She screeched, barely noticing the slight burn of her tea spilling over onto her fingers. “ What did you do to my door? You’re getting rainwater all over my floors!”
The woman raised a carefully sculpted brow. “I just magicked away your door, and you’re worried about a little water?”
“What is your problem?” Aubrey demanded. She marched up to the woman, jabbing her finger into her shoulder hard. “I told you I don’t want whatever you’re selling!”
The woman watched her, amusement clear in her dancing green eyes, and she grinned. “You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what you did to my door, but I want it back or I’m calling the police.”
The woman raised both hands. “Suit yourself.”
With a snap of her fingers, her front door returned behind her. Aubrey reached for her door, only to feel a cold gust of wind rush behind her. Ignoring it, she jiggled the knob roughly and found it locked. “Hey!” She cried out, glancing behind her, eyes wide when she found that she was all alone on the front steps. “What the—”
She yelped, falling forward when the door suddenly swung inwards. Narrowly avoiding further embarrassment, she caught herself on the doorframe, blowing her hair out of her face as she glared up at the woman holding her door open.
“Welcome,” she purred triumphantly.
Aubrey huffed, then tightened the fallen blanket around her and strode inside, head held high. “I don’t know what you want, but I’m calling the cops,” she declared, marching right past the obnoxious intruder.
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that.”
Aubrey ignored her as she picked up her phone from her desk.
Down the hall, footsteps drew closer. Her phone was asking for her passcode when a sudden cloud of warm breath and perfume hit the back of her neck. Every hair stood on end—all at once, her brain seemed to empty, replaced only by a tsunami of sudden desire. “You really need to relax,” came the woman’s voice, so low and seductive it sounded like it was coming from inside her head.
What is happening? Aubrey thought faintly. Warm hands covered her own and slowly eased her phone out of her fingers.
“Good girl. Now, come.”
Seemingly in a blink, she was seated on her couch, the woman in black standing over her with a full display of her cleavage and a knowing smile. “Comfortable?” She asked, one hand resting on a cocked hip while the other bounced a small, purple ball of light between distractingly long fingers. “We have a lot to discuss.”
Aubrey nodded absently, still dazed from the perfume this woman was wearing.
“My name is Stacie,” she said, gesturing to her chest without dropping her strange, purple light. “As you can see, I’m a witch.”
Aubrey squinted. Skepticism niggled in the back of her mind. At that moment, her mind seemed to swim in a jelly so thick that she’d completely lost command of her language.
“I’m sure by now, you’ve heard of the fire in New York that burned down a mansion? The one that belonged to your dear old dad?”
This snapped Aubrey out of her trance. “My father?” She said incredulously. “But I don’t…”
“Have a father? Oh, I know. You’re both dying to forget the other exists, and yet“—Stacie drew closer, resting a knee on the couch cushion next to Aubrey’s; Aubrey glanced down at the expanse of tan skin as her tight dress rode up with the movement—“here we are,” she whispered, running a finger along Aubrey’s jaw.
Aubrey tore her glance away from Stacie’s legs when the ball of light, currently suspended beside Stacie while she tormented Aubrey with whatever sex magic seemed to be at her disposal, began to shimmer. The soft, purple glow pulsed, elongating itself until it morphed into an old scroll.
“This is my contract with your father,” Stacie explained. She chuckled at the wide-eyed expression on Aubrey’s face as she straddled her thighs. Aubrey inwardly cursed that intoxicating perfume for not being able to speak and for shivering when Stacie’s fingers found her neck. “He had a debt he couldn’t repay, and he promised me his firstborn child. He lied, of course, having me believe it was his young son. But perhaps that was for the best— you , babe, are a much, much better prize.”
Finally, something seemed to snap inside Aubrey and the anger returned. She shoved Stacie off her. “I’m not some prize,” she seethed, “and I want nothing to do with anything he is a part of.”
Stacie stumbled, but caught herself. A flash of surprise was all she offered before her annoying smirk returned. “I’m afraid you have no choice.” She unfurled the scroll to reveal seemingly hundreds of thousands of tiny words no human eye could read. “Line 56, section 3 states that all debtors must repay the amount stated in full to the creditor, whereby the creditor takes full possession of goods. You are the goods in this case—your father has already signed you away.”
“Ex cuse me? I’m nobody’s ‘goods’,” Aubrey protested, crossing her arms.
“I like your spirit,” Stacie said with a chuckle. “Delusional as it is, it’s pretty sexy.”
In spite of herself, Aubrey blushed. “I have to ask you to leave.”
“I can’t.” Stacie shrugged. “You know that Mariah Carey song? ‘You will always be a part of me; I’m part of you indefinitely,’” she sang. “That’s us now. We’re bound to each other.”
Aubrey narrowed her eyes. She stood, trying to stay as composed as she possibly could despite her wildly beating heart. “I’m leaving.”
She was barely out of the living room when she felt something clasp around her neck. Her hands flew up, surprised to find something thick and solid around it. A collar, strung with a rope of purple light leading right back to Stacie.
“That’s a good look on you,” the witch said with a wink. “I’m afraid I can’t let you leave either.”
“What do you want with me?” Aubrey growled. She grunted when Stacie tugged at the lead. Soon, she was back on the couch, arms crossed like a pouting child, her blanket loosely draped around her shoulder for meager comfort. “I’m not giving you my body just because my dad’s the biggest asshole on the planet. You can shove your ancient scroll right up your ass.”
“You’re body?” Stacie laughed loudly. Her voice rang, stoking Aubrey’s anger as she bent down to run her fingers across her collar. Aubrey leaned back, though there was no escape. She bit down a sigh when the perfume hit her once more, Stacie’s voice low and seductive in her ear. “Tempting.”
“S-stop this,” Aubrey said. She cleared her voice to find the strength to swat her away in spite of her own traitorously hammering heart. “I’m not in the mood for games. And get this thing off me”—she tugged at the collar—“it’s humiliating!”
“I don’t know,” Stacie replied, cocking her head to observe her work, “I think it’s pretty hot. That, and I don’t think you’re ready to listen.”
“If this is how you treat your ‘goods’,” Aubrey said, furiously quoting the word with her fingers, “then I will not hear anything you have to say. I don’t care that you’ve got your magic—I refuse to comply. You break into my home, you hold me hostage . You are a criminal .”
This surprised the witch, her brows raising along with both hands while her scroll hovered in place. “I see. Well, it seems we seemed to have gotten off on the wrong foot,” she said, shaking her head with a laugh. “You misunderstand me.”
Aubrey gestured erratically to the collar and leash. “Tell me which part of this looks like a misunderstanding.”
“Fair point.” Stacie waved a hand and the collar unsnapped, her cheeks dusted with embarrassment like a child being disciplined by her teacher. “I apologize. That shouldn’t have been my first impulse.” She cleared her throat and picked up her faltering bravado. In my defense, I did like the way it looked on you,” she added with a wink.
Aubrey looked down at the leather collar in her hand, then up at Stacie suspiciously. For a woman who could make a door disappear with a wave of a hand, her sudden awkwardness did not make sense. Tentatively, she stood once. Stacie’s dark eyes tracked her movement, raking them slowly over her body. Even though she was in her pajamas—an old college t-shirt and a pair of old, blue flannel bottoms beneath her tartan blanket—Stacie watched her like she was a ten-course meal, and it sent shivers down her spine. She wondered dimly whether the woman was under some kind of curse. Nothing else could possibly explain this intensity.
Or this aggravating magnetism.
“Tell me what you want from me.”
Aubrey bit down on her lower lip—far from her intention, she hardly recognized her own voice in such low and sultry tones.
“Just your compliance, really,” Stacie replied with a small smile. She reached out and grabbed the collar, turning it back into light as she pulled Aubrey closer and closer, until she stood in front of the seated witch, her shadow falling over her in a reversal they both seemed to welcome. Emboldened by the invitation, Aubrey’s eyes fell freely to Stacie’s chest, then back up to her smile, followed by her eyes—greenish up close, a colour hard to pin down, much like their owner. She really was beautiful up close.
“You really are beautiful up close.”
Aubrey’s heart skipped. It took one disorienting moment to realize she hadn’t spoken her thoughts out loud. Rather, it was Stacie, complimenting her and her goddamn pajamas in a way she did not feel like she deserved.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Aubrey whispered.
Then, Stacie blinked, as if she too found herself caught under a strange spell.
“I...what?”
It was then that they both noticed her hands on Aubrey’s hips, an intimate gesture that sent her leaning back on the armchair, arms up like she was on fire. “Sorry,” she mumbled quickly.
Aubrey did not understand. Wasn’t this the same woman who showed up at her door half-naked and desperate to make her angry? The same woman who—merely minutes ago—had clasped a collar around her neck and claimed her as hers ? Of all the transgressions she’d committed that night, her hands on her hips seemed a strange one to suddenly apologize for.
To see her eyes cast down, genuinely contrite—it tugged at Aubrey’s heart somehow. She liked this side of her, a part of her thought gleefully. It was just too cute.
Get yourself together, another part argued quietly in the haze of her perfume. You barely know this woman. That part of her was stifled, however, when she leaned over her, a hand in each side of the armrest, and saw Stacie swallow as she looked up at her. She felt, for the first time all night—perhaps for the first time in her life—genuinely powerful. “So, if your scruffy scroll says that I belong to you,” Aubrey said with a smirk, “that means you belong to me too.”
“Well—”
“Least you could do is buy a girl a cup of coffee first.”
“Um, I-I think—”
“What? That this is all a misunderstanding?” Aubrey raised a brow, delighted at the way this arrogant witch could be so easily reduced to a stuttering mess. “The way you look right now says otherwise. If this wasn’t your plan all along, would you be wearing this perfume?”
Stacie scrunched her nose, the confusion on her face so comically clear that she probably deserved an award. “I’m not...wearing perfume?”
Aubrey inched closer—Stacie stiffened visibly as her hands fell to her shoulders, leaning close enough to feel her breath on her skin. “I beg to differ,” she murmured. Entranced by the scent, so close it seemed to bloom across every nerve ending, she pressed her lips to her neck. The witch gasped softly in her ear, her fingers finding themselves once more on her skin, just beneath her t-shirt. “You did this to me.”
Even with her consciousness floating miles away, Aubrey knew she was not herself. Something about this scent —sweet and delicious and all too enticing—something about this power —something about her —this stranger and her green eyes. She knew she wasn’t herself, but she didn’t care.
She pulled away, her hands sliding from her shoulders to her neck to cradle her jaw in both hands. Stacie’s eyes were alight, her lips parted in anticipation. It was as if an invisible force had plucked her heart out of her chest and tugged her toward this other woman—a woman so powerful, yet so pliable in her hands. Perhaps this was the magical bond that Stacie talked about. Yes, she thought, her lips brushing Stacie’s softly, let’s go with that story. She watched Stacie’s eyes flutter close, then allowed herself to be pulled in—onto her lap—while she deepened the kiss.
“Is this what you wanted?” Aubrey whispered.
Stacie’s eyes opened, her chest rising and falling to the rhythm of Aubrey’s own—speechless.
“Well?”
“It…wasn’t what I had in mind,” she said slowly, “but I’m definitely not complaining.”
Though the scent still stuck to her senses like dandelion seeds, Aubrey resisted the urge to kiss her again—devour her whole if given permission. Instead, her consciousness swam forward and posed a question she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to: “So the debt is paid?”
Stacie touched her hands, still resting on either side of her neck, and gently peeled them away as she shook her head. “Delicious as it was,” she replied with a smirk, “that’s not what this contract needs.”
Aubrey sat back, not resisting when Stacie didn’t let go of her hands. “Then what?”
Stacie’s smirk dissolved into a somewhat sheepish smile. “According to Council rules, for debtors who can’t repay their debt to the world, their next of kin takes over—usually the firstborn,” Stacie explained. “As a witch, it’s my duty to train the firstborn in the magical arts so they can make the world a better place in a way that their parent could not.”
Aubrey frowns. “I’m sorry—what? How does that even— what ?”
“It’s really quite simple,” Stacie said, wincing a little at the glare levelled at her. “In your case, I’d paid off your father’s loans in exchange for a lifetime of servitude to the people he exploited. He failed, so now he must pay. Not only did he lose all of his material goods, his firstborn is to be under my mentorship until they’re of age. Then, they are contractually obligated to fix the problems that he caused.”
“Let me get this straight,” Aubrey mumbled, pinching the bridge of her nose with a thumb and forefinger, “when you said that I belong to you, you meant as…a student?”
“Yes.”
Aubrey was furious. “Are you—”
“Overly dramatic and think that you seemed fun to tease? Yes,” Stacie said with a short laugh.
This time, the anger returned. “Then why did you cast this goddamn spell on me?” She demanded, jabbing a finger into her shoulder.
Stacie furrowed her brows. “What are you talking about? I didn’t cast any spells on you.”
“Then explain your perfume!”
“Perfume? Wait...no, you explain your perfume then!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?”
The two women stopped, studying each other as frustration simultaneously faded into confusion. “I’ve read these contracts back to front,” Stacie murmured, almost to herself, “I’ve taken more apprentices than I could count. But this ”—she gestured between them with a finger sweeping back and forth—“doesn’t make any sense.”
“So this…isn’t your magic?”
“It could be a part of this bond, but…I can’t say I’ve ever quite felt this way before,” Stacie said, looking away.
Hurriedly, Aubrey pushed off her, her skin feeling like it was on fire. If it wasn’t magic, then everything that happened...the way she’d behaved...no, she told herself firmly. This wasn’t her—Aubrey Posen didn’t do things like that. Things like climbing onto strange women and kissing them. Not for a million dollars— not while sober. She was not like her father. She did not do chaos.
Suddenly, she wanted to throw up. Instead, she walked back into the kitchen where she’d left her tea seemingly hours ago. She took several deep breaths, trying to clear her head of the scent Stacie had left. It lingered, however, on her clothes—she could almost taste its flavour on her tongue.
When she returned to the living room, she half expected Stacie to be gone—a figment of her imagination, a fantasy come to life after too many late nights alone, working away to pass her time. Every day the same: exactly how she’d wanted it after her scum-of-the-earth father had left her and her mother hanging high and dry. But Stacie was still there, a gorgeous wrench in her immaculate machine, standing in the middle of the room running her hands through her hair.
“Feel better?” She asked with a small smile.
“No.”
Stacie chuckled. “That’s fine, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re still my apprentice.”
“And if I say no?”
Stacie shrugged. “Then the family curse carries forward. Your little half-brother first, then his children, or his children after that. Assuming you don’t have children of your own, of course. It’s like royalty, you know?” Then, she smiled, her earlier, more brazen self returning as she crossed her arms. “I have a feeling you won’t say no though.”
Aubrey glanced over at her laptop, her emails still glowing white, just like how she left them. There were probably more now—there would always be more to keep her chained down to her desk.
Stacie offered a way out.
Doing good for the world—what the hell does that even mean?
Imagine. Her—a witch! This whole thing was a joke.
Then again, it could be fun. It could be exciting. It could be a chance to do , to be something more.
“You probably want to learn more about this connection, just like I do,” Stacie said, offering a hand. Aubrey looked at it. She hadn’t even thought about that. Stacie’s eyes twinkled. “There’s something special about you—about us. I feel it. It’s like I was always meant to find you. We can change the world, you know.”
Aubrey glanced into her eyes, then took the outstretched hand. Maybe it was her beauty, her charm, her scent—maybe it was her boring-ass life or the thrill of adventure, but when Stacie wrapped her fingers around her own, and drew out a portal to another world, Stacie was right. It felt right.
Beyond the purple portal was a world she’d never seen. Moss-covered bridges and treetops gleaming with life—below, she recognized the deep blue oceans and swirling white clouds. Billions upon billions of tiny lights dotted the oceans below. One among many, many lights, she knew, was her and her tiny life.
Stacie backed into the portal, their hands joined at the seam of two realities. “Well? What do you think?”
Aubrey took one last look around her apartment, then back to Stacie. Excitement thumped in her chest, her smile widening as she took her first step into this new world.
“Maybe my father isn’t good for nothing after all.”