The air in the café smelled heavenly like a mix of cocoa,
caffeine, vanilla scones and a host of other sweet scents and Wilson couldn’t
get enough of it. He’d been sitting by the corner since four in the afternoon
trying his best to spot his prey. Now which one of them would turn out to be
the witch?
Wilson didn’t often
hunt for witches in trendy caffeine dens but he’d heard it from a reliable
source that the java here was suspiciously good. It could be the blonde by the
cappuccino machine; she seemed perky and far too pretty to be wasting her time
making coffee so she was Suspect # 1. There was also glasses who was handing
out scones next to the till; that acne and oily hair could conceal a formidable
spell slinger, after all the witches of the 21st century were a generation of
nerds. Blame social media and the internet, it’d made even magic banal and
geeky. Suspect # 2 confirmed.
Wilson was
surreptitiously taking pictures of them with his phone while pretending to stir
his lukewarm coffee. Lastly there was grandma standing all prim and proper in a
corner like she was surveying peasants come to beg for scraps from their queen.
Her upper lip was thin and white as if she disapproved of everyone. Witches
tended to be uppity. Suspect # 3 had just entered the competition.
Wilson’s horns were
beginning to itch under the blue cotton ball cap. He really had to get this
over with. It had just turned six and the sun was beginning to go down as New
Yorkers spilled from distant high rises in a mad dash for their homes. He had
to deal with the witch before the evening crowd filled this place and he lost
her in the rush.
He breathed in deeply
and when he exhaled a cloud of white smoke blew out to quickly fill the café.
He got up as people started keeling over from the smoke that filled their
lungs, laying spells over the glass and doors to keep people out and to cast an
illusion over the place. To everyone on the street it would like it was
business as usual in here.
“Three different spells in the space of seconds, I have to
say I’m impressed witch hunter.”
Wilson turned around and who did he find casually leaning
against the counter? It was the red haired kid who’d been stacking the cups.
The witch was a man?
“You’ve got to be kidding me. A witch can’t be a man,” Wilson
complained.
Color filled the
redhead’s cheeks, “Who said I’m a man?”
“Oh,” Wilson took a
closer look at the red uniform and still only saw the skinny frame and the
whiskers on his/her chin. “Really?”
The witch screamed and the sonic wave that hit Wilson
throwing him back was certainly real enough. His head stinging from colliding
with one of the glass doors Wilson stared up at a blurry image of the kid,
“Okay already, I’m convinced.”
He threw his own custom designed knockout spell at the
little drama queen dropping her to the floor. Wilson struggled to his feet,
running his hands down his black Death’s Head shirt and grimacing at the dust
on it. These people were filthy.
He walked over to the
witch and ungraciously slung her over his shoulder and went out the back. The
snoring customers and staff would just have to wake themselves up; he wasn’t
worried low level spells usually lasted a few minutes at most.
