Nancy Werlock's Diary

The Apprentice-1

The Apprentice

April 28th

Ever since I left the family business to pursue my own career, I have lived under the deluded belief that the reason Mom never found another apprentice was that she was hoping I would eventually change my mind. I realize now that was not the case. The real reason, I now surmise, is that young witches today are...well...how do I explain?

Anastasia, whose birth name is Margaret but insists on being called by her Spiritual Name, is one of Mom’s regular customers. She’s sixteen years old. Everything Anastasia knows about magic she learned from watching reruns of Charmed and reading Silver Ravenwolf books. Most of her purchases over the last year have been crystals and jewelry making materials. She wears what she makes. Often all of it at the same time.

“My mom said I should try to find a summer job for the summer,” says Anastasia while browsing the collection of semi-precious and simulated gemstones during her weekly after-school visit. “Because I’ll be able to get my learner’s permit soon and I’ll need gas money.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” I reply while ringing up a female customer’s purchase of jasmine, vanilla, and sandalwood essential oils and a pair of diffusers. “I hope he appreciates it,” I say to the woman.

The woman blushes. “He damn well better,” she whispers and then giggles.

“Two-parts jasmine to each one-part vanilla and sandalwood,” I say as I tap her hand. “Do you have any grape seed oil?”

“No, why?”

“Makes an amazing carrier for massage oil.” The woman’s face lights up so I give her a free sample I have behind the counter. “Make sure to come back and tell me how it works out.”

Anastasia walked over to the counter with a small pewter unicorn figure in her hand. “What was that all about?” she asked as the door closed behind the woman.

“Get that smirk off your face. She’s planning a romantic evening with her husband.”

“Oh my God, how did you know that? Did you read her mind?”

“I read her purchase.”

“Oh, I didn’t see what she bought! Which oils did she buy? Is it for a love potion?”

“Not your business. And no. Just oils to set the mood. Is that all your getting?” I pointed at her hand.

Anastasia nodded and placed the figure on the counter. “You knew she was planning on getting freaky just by her purchase?”

I shook my head. “$4.29, Anastasia.” She handed me a $5 bill. “And she stopped at Victoria’s Secret before she came here.”

“How did you know that!?”

“You didn’t see the Victoria’s Secret bag she was carrying?” I handed her the change.

“Oh, no,” she laughed. I wrapped the figure in tissue paper before putting it in the bag. As I handed her the bag, she gave me an impish grin.

“So, how do you know it’s her husband?”

“She was wearing a wedding ring.”

“Yeah, but how do you know she isn’t planning a romantic evening with her boyfriend on the side.”

I shake my head. “Because she was still wearing her wedding ring.”

Anastasia shrugs and puts her purchase in her purse. “Are you going to hire anyone to help with the shop? Because, I’m, like, here all the time so I know where everything is already.”

“I’m not looking for summer help. I need someone full time.”

“But I could help out until you found someone!”

Keeping Three Wishes open, even on a reduced schedule, while also trying to maintain my clients has proven to be a burden. If it had been any other normal shop, I would have hired Anastasia for the summer. Stocking shelves and running a register is easy enough for a teenager. But there is an inventory of items that can only be handled by me or someone I could trust. How exactly would I explain to a sixteen-year-old why a customer needed a vial of goat’s semen? Hell, I still don’t exactly understand why a customer would need a vial of goat’s semen, but Mom’s supplier actually was promoting it in last month’s sales catalog as one of the “Hot Buys” of the season.

And considering how Anastasia carried on about something as simple as essential oils, I don’t think I want her handling orders for goat’s semen.

I chase Anastasia out of the shop and close up for the day. I have an evening session with the Breyers’ and still need to check my Help Wanted listing on WitchNet.

You won’t find WitchNet with a Google search for witches or magic or occult or stuff the average person would associate with the Craft. It doesn’t hotlink with other occult sites. In fact, the domain isn’t even WitchNet or anything close to that. The domain name is deliberately long and complicated to prevent people from accidentally stumbling across it. It is invitation only, with various levels of technological and mystical security protocols in place to protect the site.

You might wonder why all of the secrecy when witchcraft is so out in the open and accepted. The thing is, the Craft isn’t accepted. A watered-down illusion of the Craft is what people accept. The Craft is shielded under the combined ruses of religious freedom and pseudo-science. We don’t brew potions. It’s holistic healing or homeopathy. We don’t cast spells or rituals. We practice anthroposophical medicine. Most people think of witches as New Age hippie environmentalists. And we’re totally cool with that. Because if they actually understood the truth, it could get ugly.

See, the Inquisition didn’t finally end because mankind suddenly became enlightened. It ended because people stopped believing the supernatural was real. There is a scene in the original Men in Black when Kay says to Jay, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.” This pretty much sums up the situation with the supernatural.

Can you imagine the panic if people realized that I could summon a Class Three Succubus? Not that I have any reason to. But I could. Or what if they knew that zombies were real? Granted, we aren’t talking Walking Dead zombies. Technically, those are ghouls, not zombies. Zombies are harmless. But that isn’t really the point. The point is, if the general population had any understanding of what was really going on around them, things would get very scary very quickly.

I log on to WitchNet to find another seventeen applications for the apprenticeship. This brings the total count to over seventy applications in just under a week. You’d think that out of that many applications I should be able to narrow it down to three or four of the best candidates and start interviewing. But the fact is there isn’t a single decent candidate in the whole bunch.

The first problem is that nobody read the requirements. I specified that this was an independent apprenticeship. Meaning it was for an adult student already educated in the Craft who was looking to specialize. Over half of the applications are parents trying to place their pre-teens in a residential apprenticeship. I didn’t officially become Mom’s apprentice until I was fourteen, and even then, it was only because I had been raised with a demonological education, so I already knew most of the risks. Most of these kids wouldn’t know a boggart from a pooka. More importantly, they are kids. I don’t want to raise someone else’s kids. I’m not running Hogwarts. I’m running a business.

About a third of the applications are what I like to refer to as Fairy Princesses. Your typical Fairy Princess is a witch between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four who spent most of her formative years studying enchantment or illusion. Kind of like Anastasia, only they actually know some incantations. The problem with Fairy Princesses is that they tend to be rather sheltered. They’ve never confronted anything truly dangerous. They have a romanticized notion of the Craft, which gets reinforced by their liberal use of mind-altering magic to make men fawn over them. Most Fairy Princesses don’t live pass the age of thirty, however, because eventually they try those stunts with some other witch’s husband or, worse, some shapeshifter, vampire, or incubus-possessed skin puppet.

The rest are either underqualified to pursue demonology or suspiciously overqualified. You have to worry why a Rank Two Transmuter or a Rank Three Necromancer would suddenly want to take up Demonology. Particularly in this economy. With gold selling at $2,000 an ounce, a Transmuter would never have to work again if he was careful and didn’t overplay his hand. And you might not think it, but necromancy is a rather lucrative profession, albeit a creepy one.

After skimming the newest batch of applications, I head over to the office for my appointment with the Breyers. Just as I get over the Ben Franklin Bridge, there is a detour because of a traffic accident.

Have you ever suffered the displeasure of driving in Philadelphia? It is not a driver-friendly city. It’s a spider web of one-way roads, often blocked due to double parking or oversized trucks, and highways that have off-ramps that creep off in all directions without any warning. Once you know a route, it isn’t a big deal. But a detour through Philadelphia just as well could be a detour through one of the upper levels of Hell.

The detour leads me right into a second detour, this one because two lanes are blocked off for construction. While stopped behind a Septa bus trying to navigate the single lane that was still open, I called the Breyers’ to let them know I was running late.

“Oh, I’m glad you called! Will forgot he was supposed to meet with his brother tonight, so we have to cancel,” says Ms. Breyers.

“I’m almost at the office. Can he just meet with his brother later? I don’t know when I’ll be able to reschedule.”

“He left already.”

“When did he leave?”

“About an hour ago.”

“So, you knew an hour ago you weren’t coming, and you are just now telling me? What have we been talking about the last three sessions? Haven’t we been talking about improving your channels of communication and recognizing the needs of others?”

“Um...oh...well, Will and I have opened up channels of communication! He apologized before he left and acknowledged my feelings! We’ve made real progress.”

The bus in front of me came to a complete stop. The car behind me did not.

“I’ll call you Friday to reschedule.” I hang up and put the car in park.

The guy who rear-ended me is already out of his vehicle, cursing about women drivers. The bus still hasn’t moved, and now the driver in the car behind the car that hit me insists on blaring his horn.

Have I mentioned how much I hate driving in Philadelphia?

“Do you not see the giant bus stopped in front of me?” I say as I step out of my vehicle.

“Why didn’t you just go around it?” the man slurs. Drunk and belligerent. Wonderful.

“Sure, next time I’ll go up on the sidewalk, so you can slam into the bus instead of me.” I step around to the back of my car and look at the bumper. There is a little chip in the paint, but no real damage. He has a small dent in his front bumper, but otherwise the vehicle is fine.

“Alright already!” we both yell at the guy who keeps leaning on his horn.

The drunk guy looks around and shakes his head vigorously. He looks at his car, looks at the bus, and then looks in his car. “Look, lady, I’m sorry. Been a long night just trying to get home you know?” He fumbles with his wallet and pulls out a pair of twenty-dollar bills. “Will this cover the damages no reason to call the cops or anything just paint right is this okay?”

The bus finally starts moving again. I wave off the drunk. “Just go home. That’s what I’m going to do.” I turn to get back in my car when the man grabs my arm. “Take the money!” He shoves the hand holding the money into my chest.

“I don’t want it!” I push his hand away.

“Leave her alone!” The drunk gets pulled away from me by another man. He pushed the drunk toward his car. The drunk turns around and makes a fist. The other man just stares into his eyes and says, “In your car. Now.” The drunk shakes his head again and gets in his car.

The man, who doesn’t look older than maybe eighteen or nineteen, approaches me. “You okay, Miss?”

“Yeah, thanks for that.” I put a hand to my face as the i***t with the horn starts leaning on it again. “I gotta get off this street. Holding up traffic.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he says as he touches my elbow. “We’ll talk later.” He turns and walks off before I can ask his name.

I finally got home just before 10 AM. As I step out of the shower, I feel an energy shift in the house. I wrap my robe around me and slowly open the bathroom door. I sniff the air. No sulfur smell. I quietly chant the Third Eye incantation and look around. No residue anywhere. I hear what sounds like wind chimes coming from downstairs.