Hexed

leaky faucet.
    I called my hotel’s plumber, Fremont Hansen, who agreed to come right away, and asked the guests in room 6 to go out for a while. Fremont had a balding head and gentle hazel eyes and believed he had magical powers. His true power lay in fixing the plumbing, but today, after nearly two hours, he crawled out from under the sink, still baffled.
    “Don’t know about this one, Janet,” he said, pushing back his cap to rub his high forehead. “I’ve taken everything apart and replaced the faucets and resoldered the pipes. I’ve used plenty of plumber’s enchantment, but nothing is working.”
    “Plumber’s enchantment?”
    Fremont wriggled his fingers. “You know what I mean.”
    “Oh brother,” came a drag-queen drawl from the mirror above him.
    Fremont did have a touch of magic in his aura, but I’d never had the heart to tell him how minor it was. The magic mirror, on the other hand, had no such compassion. The true magic mirror hung downstairs in the saloon, but it had learned to project itself through every mundane mirror in the hotel, kind of like a magical CCTV. Fremont couldn’t hear it, because only those with very powerful magic could—lucky us.
    “Honey,” the mirror said, “he’s got as much magic in his fingers as a shriveled-up transvestite has in his—”
    “Stop!” I said.
    My one maid, Juana, who was bringing in clean towels, thought I was talking to her and halted in the doorway.
    Fremont leaned to peer at the bathroom mirror. “I swear something is buzzing behind there.”
    I’d told the guests they could return by six, and it was five forty-five now. “Anything?” I cut in.
    Fremont heaved a sigh. “Let me try something.” He got back down on his hands and knees while Juana went out for more towels. By the time she returned, Fremont scrambled up again, looking triumphant. “I think that’s it.” He grabbed the faucet’s handles and cranked them wide open. “Here we go!”
    The faucet exploded in blood.
    Hot, red gore fountained over the bathroom, soaking us, the floor, walls, ceiling, shower, and Juana’s clean towels in scarlet horror. It was blood all right, with its metallic tang, and warm, as though it had just erupted from a human body.
    “Shut it off!” I yelled.
    Fremont dove under the sink again. “Damn it, damn it, damn it . . .”
    The aura that radiated from the blood was horrific—black, sticky, evil. Juana kept shrieking as the rain continued and so did the mirror.
    “Shut up!” I shouted at both of them.
    Juana’s eyes blazed through the blood running down her face. “I go home! I don’t work for you no more, you crazy Indian!”
    She flung the blood-soaked towels at me, turned, and hightailed it out the door. Fremont’s wrench clanked against pipe, and the shower of blood abruptly ceased.
    Fremont pulled off his cap to reveal that only the top of his balding head had escaped the red rain. “I don’t know what the hell happened, Janet. Or what’s making the water that color. Corrosion?”
    “It’s not corrosion. It’s blood. The real thing.”
    “Plumbing don’t bleed, not even in Magellan—”
    Fremont broke off when he saw me staring not at him but at the mirror. He turned around, and his face drained of color.
    The mirror now bore words, washed across it in red blood.
    You are doomed.
     
    THE GUESTS OF room 6 chose that moment to walk back in. They were well-groomed, well dressed, and pale white from northern climes, the kind of people whose money I needed to keep my little hotel in the hot Southwest open. They took one look at the mirror, at me and Fremont spattered with blood—not to mention the walls, mirror, and part of the bedroom carpet—and walked back out again.
    I grabbed the cleanest of the towels and rubbed at my face as I chased them down the stairs.
    Cassandra, my neat and efficient hotel manager, didn’t betray any surprise when the couple approached reception and demanded to check out, me covered in blood and panting apologies behind them. My offer to move them to another room was declined.
    Without asking questions, Cassandra calmly told them we’d charge them only half the fee for the night they’d spent and give them vouchers for the restaurants in town. I let her. She suggested the restored railroad hotel in Winslow as an alternative and offered to have their bags delivered there if they liked. They accepted.
    Cassandra disarmed the guests with her cool charm, but they still left.
    Once they