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2. Instant Celebrity

2

Instant Celebrity

A rush of welcome air-conditioned air greeted me as I opened the door to my apartment, which occupied the space directly over the store. What wasn’t quite so welcome was Archie, the cursed cat who’d become my de facto pet, sitting inside the hall and swishing his tail in irritation.

“I’m still a cat, you know,” he declared as soon as I shut the door behind me.

“Oh, wow, I would never have guessed,” I said, heading into the kitchen so I could pour myself a glass of ice water.

Of course he stalked after me, tail still waving from side to side in a movement I’d come to recognize as his way of expressing his utter dissatisfaction with me. “You said you were going to fix this,” he complained. “You said you were going to break the curse.”

“I am,” I told him as I got a glass down from the cupboard. “I’ve been working on it.”

“Hmph.” He was silent for a moment while I poured myself some water from the Brita pitcher in the fridge. “The only thing I’ve seen you working on is that ridiculous store of yours.”

I reminded myself that anyone who’d been stuck in a cat’s body for the greater part of sixty years had earned the right to be cranky. As far as I’d been able to tell, it was the late 1940s or early ’50s when a local witch cursed Archie to be a cat after he’d rejected her advances, and the whole time since, he’d been wandering around Globe, just another stray to the uninformed observer.

While I was sensitive to his plight, I also secretly wondered whether my magic was really up to the task of restoring him to his human form. His complaint to the contrary, I truly had been doing my research, trying to find the one spell or charm that might bring him back to himself. So far, it had been slow going. Once or twice, I’d even found myself wishing that Lucien Dumond was still around, if only because he’d been a pretty powerful sorcerer, and maybe he would have been able to come up with a solution, since one continued to elude me.

But Lucien was gone, so I had to go it alone. And it really didn’t help that Archie was constantly on my case about the whole situation. More than once, I’d reflected that the witch in question should’ve realized he was doing her a massive favor by turning her down. She probably would have hit him with a nasty hex after spending a few weeks in his company.

“You need to back off, or I’ll take you to the Humane Society,” I warned him.

Since Archie knew those words were an empty threat, he only tilted his head slightly before lifting a paw to give it a thorough licking. “You wouldn’t do that,” he said in between swipes with his little pink tongue. “You’re far too soft-hearted.”

No point in arguing with what I knew was the truth. “I ordered some books from a seller in New York,” I said. “They’re from the collection of a man who had the biggest library of occult works on the East Coast. I’m really hoping I’ll be able to find something worthwhile in there.”

“I hope so, too,” Archie replied. “This is all getting terribly tedious.”

“More tedious than when you were stuck wandering around downtown Globe without a home, scrounging from trash cans?” I asked innocently.

He shot me an evil glare and stalked off toward the second bedroom, which I used as an office and was where his bed was located. Not that he seemed to sleep in it much — he always seemed to be underfoot — but I think he liked hanging out in there because I also kept my altar in that room, and he knew he was getting in the way of me performing my rituals. I’d gotten to the point where I could mostly ignore him, true, and yet it still didn’t feel quite right to do that sort of thing with an audience.

Let’s just say Archie wasn’t going to win any awards as Roommate of the Year.

Thinking about my altar made me realize that I definitely didn’t want to show off my private ritual space to the world the way most of those witches on i********: seemed to. I frowned for a moment, pondering the problem, and then realized I had the perfect solution right downstairs. After all, I ran a shop that carried all sorts of supplies for altars. I could just grab the things I needed and set up a secondary altar in the stockroom, a place I could photograph and use for faux rituals, videos I could put on i********: without ever revealing to anyone who might be watching anything about the place where I did my real work.

After checking that the water in Archie’s bowl was still fresh — the cat sometimes annoyed the heck out of me, but I wasn’t going to retaliate by neglecting him — I went down the back staircase and into the store. From the locked case by the cash register, I retrieved a boline and an athame, a pair of ritual knives, the boline small and used for cutting paper and other items used in spellwork, the athame larger and showier, used while making an invocation to the Goddess. In addition to the knives, I rounded up a choice selection of crystals, an altar cloth emblazoned with a screen-printed pentacle, and a few more odds and ends. Then it was back to the stockroom, where I cleared off the table I used to pack my occasional mail orders and set out the altar cloth with everything arranged nicely on it.

Once I was done, I thought the setup looked lovely. It wasn’t the same as the altar upstairs in my second bedroom, but that was a good thing. I didn’t want this altar to look anything like the one I used in real life.

I’d just gotten in a new shipment of manifestation candles, so I arranged several of them on the altar as well, choosing the ones for prosperity and money and health. Even if this was going to be mostly for show, I wanted to make sure I’d be putting good energy out into the universe.

And actually, maybe I needed to watch exactly how much energy I put out there. Right before the store opened back in April, I’d performed a prosperity ritual, figuring I needed all the help I could get when it came to having my store be a success. Not too long after that, Lucien Dumond had been murdered by his younger brother Eugene and the girl Eugene was involved with, and Lucien had left all his money to me. No one could argue that I was now very, very prosperous…even though obviously, I hadn’t been thinking of that sort of outcome when I first performed the ceremony.

Well, there wasn’t anything I could do about it now, except try to be doubly cautious in the future.

I’d already set up my i********: account. Selena_Blue was my username, since I figured I might as well get shout-outs for the store in there while I was doing the more mainstream witchy stuff. Yes, I’d be fine even if the store didn’t make a cent, but Once in a Blue Moon was my baby, and I didn’t want it to be a dismal failure.

From what I’d been able to tell, most witches on i********: first posted a photo and a little introduction about themselves to get started. And while my altar was all set up, I knew that I, with my dark, straight hair pulled back in a scrunchie and wearing a plain shirt and jeans — and those lime-green Keds — wasn’t anything close to camera-ready.

I went back upstairs and sent a wary look around. To my relief, Archie seemed to be asleep, lying in a pool of sunlight on the living room’s polished wood floor. I tiptoed into the bedroom and shut the door — an unnecessary precaution, since the master suite was the one place the cat tried to avoid at all costs.

Even so, I felt better with the door closed.

After that, I went to the closet and got out one of my witchiest-looking tops, the black one with the lace insets and tone-on-tone embroidery. Since it had a low, scooped neckline, it provided the perfect backdrop for me to festoon myself with a bunch of crystal pendants, along with silver pentacles, hands of Hamsa, evil eyes, and anything else that would make me look like an occult practitioner extraordinaire.

I pulled my hair out of its scrunchie, and applied way more eye makeup than I usually wore, accompanied by a dark brick-colored lipstick. Then I stared at my reflection and chuckled.

“Trick or treat,” I remarked, and winked at the almost unrecognizable Selena in the mirror, blue eyes circled in kohl, mouth coated in a shade worthy of a silent film star.

Actually, I figured it could only be a good thing that I didn’t look anything like myself. Maybe the “Selena_Blue” was a dead giveaway, and yet I had to hope that if any of my former practitioner friends and acquaintances back in L.A. came across one of my photos, they’d just keep scrolling because they wouldn’t even realize it was me.

Once I’d deemed myself ready to go, I went back downstairs. The stockroom probably wasn’t the most photogenic setting in the world, with its dingy off-white walls and battered wood floors, but with the fake altar positioned behind me, it served well enough.

The photos turned out better than I’d hoped. I chose the one that seemed the best, with me looking suitably sultry and mysterious in front of an altar bedecked with flickering candles, and then did my best to compose a short caption.

Merry meet, my witches! I’m @Selena_Blue, from the magickal town of Globe, Arizona. Follow me for rituals in a place positively charged with magick! #witches #magick #ritual #blessings

Oh, dear Goddess. That sounded absolutely ridiculous. Supposedly hashtags were the way to go, even though it felt as though I was trying to write in a foreign language.

But I’d promised Josie I would do my best, even if the message felt just as artificial as the getup I was wearing.

Before I could lose my nerve, I pushed the screen to post the photo and its accompanying caption. For all I knew, absolutely nothing would come of this. It wasn’t as though i********: — like all social media — wasn’t already flooded with millions of different faces and voices, all clamoring to be heard. My silly little post would probably sink to the bottom of that sea of posts, never to be seen again.

I reached for a snuffer — it was never good practice to blow out ritual candles, since you’d be blowing away your intentions at the same time — and was just about to start putting out the altar candles when my phone beeped.

The snuffer dangled from one hand as I bent down to peer at the screen of my iPhone.

It looked like someone had responded to my photo.

Love your look, @Selena_Blue. Can’t wait to see more of you and your rituals!

The comment had come from someone named Isis_Moon. Somehow I doubted that was her real name, either. The tiny thumbnail of her showed hair dyed cobalt blue and what looked like the triple moon tattooed across her throat. It seemed she was taking her name — real or not — pretty seriously.

Should I answer her?

I had no idea how this was supposed to work.

Since I was so new to all this, I figured I might as well err on the side of friendliness.

Thanks, @Isis_Moon. I have lots of great things planned!

Another ping from my phone followed immediately. Wow, had she been camped on the photo, just waiting to see if I would respond?

No, this was from someone else, a guy with the handle of Sausalito_Timmy.

Looking good, @Selena_Blue!

Even in his thumbnail, he seemed to be leering at me.

Great. I’d forgotten about attracting the internet creepers along with the people who might be honestly interested in witchcraft. I’d already been missing Calvin Standingbear for a variety of reasons — even if I was angry with him at the same time — but right then, I knew I’d have felt a lot safer knowing I had six foot four of impressive San Ramon Apache ready to glare down any interlopers who might decide to show up in Globe so they could see me in person.

Not that I was completely without defenses. I didn’t follow the left-hand path, and generally didn’t believe in casting jinxes and hexes, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t send a judicious flat tire someone’s way if they got too pushy.

But I was probably borrowing trouble. It was easy to be all creepy on i********: or f*******:, when you could do or say pretty much whatever you wanted without repercussion. Actually traveling to a place to find someone in person required a lot more work.

More and more pings came in, and I realized my hashtags had worked a lot better than I’d planned. Was it normal for the first post of an absolute newbie to garner this much attention?

Somehow, I doubted it. My best guess was that my prosperity spell was working overtime again.

However, I couldn’t let my phone keep pinging like that. It would drive me crazy within an hour. Although it took a few false tries, eventually I was able to navigate to my profile settings and turn off any audible notifications.

Once that was done, I realized I was still holding the candle snuffer in my other hand. The thought occurred to me that I might as well take some more photos of the altar, and maybe a video. I could do a quickie prosperity spell, post it in i********: stories so it would only be available for a short time. At least, I thought that was how it was supposed to work. If the video didn’t disappear within twenty-four hours, I could always take it down manually.

I put down the snuffer, then took some more shots of the altar. Afterward, I propped up my phone on one of the stockroom racks so I could leave it recording while I worked my way through my favorite prosperity ritual.

The result wasn’t bad, but I could tell I’d need to get better lighting in here if I were going to keep doing these videos on my backup altar. Well, I supposed I could go online and research what would work best without getting in the way of the stockroom’s original purpose.

I posted the video with a little disclaimer. Sorry 4 the lighting! I’m new to this…will get it figured out eventually. #newbie

Amazingly, I got responses to the video almost right away. New people, too, names I didn’t recognize. How the heck were they finding this stuff?

Even more astonishing was the realization that I’d somehow gotten almost five hundred followers in less than ten minutes. Was that a thing?

Apparently, it was…if you were using magic.

I shook my head in bemusement, even as I finally snuffed the candles and uttered a silent thank-you to them and the universe for the energy they’d manifested that afternoon.

Exactly what had I just started?