Hexed

from behind. “What is it?”
    The house looked mundane again, just a drab olive building. I swallowed. “We’re going to need protection. Lots of protection.”
    I set my wooden box on Pooki’s hood and flipped it open. Jim peered at the calligraphy set inside. Most shapeshifters didn’t do magic, because we were magic enough as it was, and most didn’t trust magic. I totally understood why. Magic was iffy, but claws and fangs produced the same result every time. However, I was born to a long line of magic users, so concerned with tradition that they passed on their knowledge and rituals even when technology was at its strongest and almost no evidence of magic remained. My family took my education very seriously.
    Half of the time my magic didn’t even work, but Jim had seen me pull it off once or twice. It’s not that he was impressed—he was far too cool for that—but Jim treated my talent with respect. He was in trouble and he trusted me to get him out of it. I had to step it up.
    Jim nodded at the house. A pale yellow light appeared in one of the upper-floor windows, as if someone held a candle up to the glass.
    “Isn’t it cute,” I murmured. “It’s saying hello.”
    Jim smiled at the light. The only time a jaguar showed you his teeth was when he was about to sink them into you.
    I pulled two thin strips of hanshi paper out, dipped my brush into the ink, and wrote the string of characters for general protection on each piece.
    The ink shimmered a little in the moonlight. I held my breath.
    Please work. Please, please, please work.
    The magic snapped, sparking through the paper. I exhaled and tossed one strip at Jim. The paper sliced through the air, stiff like a blade, and stuck to his chest. He stared at it.
    “Don’t mess with it. It’s a defensive spell.” I tossed the other piece of paper in the air, stepped toward it, and it adhered to me, over my left breast. “Let’s go.”
    Jim pondered the little piece of paper. “You want me to go back into that house protected by a magic sticky note?”
    “Don’t even start,” I told him. “It’s working. If it weren’t working, you couldn’t drag me into that place.”
    “What did you write on here? ‘Don’t die’?”
    “No, I wrote, ‘Don’t be an a-hole!’”I headed for the house.
    “On yours or mine?”
    “On yours.”
    “Well, in that case, your magic isn’t working. I’m still an asshole.”
    Grr, grr, grr.
    Twenty feet to the house. A shiver shook me and I clenched my teeth. You can do it, White Tiger. Don’t be a wuss.
    Fifteen feet. I could see it now, the translucent mess of sliding tendrils, ready to grab us, like a nest of colossal dark snakes about to strike. The bad magic would hit us any second.
    Ten feet. The tentacles rose as one.
    Screw it. I reached over and grabbed Jim’s hand. His fingers closed on mine, warm and strong.
    The magic shot toward us. I clenched Jim’s hand. The paper on my chest sparked with pale blue and the tentacles fell away, as if singed by fire.
    Oh gods. Oh phew. My heart pounded in my chest at about a million beats per minute. Pheeeww. Okay, alive. Alive is good.
    I realized I was still clutching Jim’s hand like a moron and let go. He was looking at me. “Is everything cool?”
    “Mhm.” I nodded, my voice a little too high. “Everything is great. Let’s go.”
    We walked between the tendrils of magic to the door. A long scrape marked the dark green paint, exposing steel underneath. I could tell by Jim’s face that he didn’t remember it. We both leaned close and sniffed.
    Smelled like paint.
    Jim tried the handle. It clicked under the pressure of his thumb. The door swung open slowly, revealing a gloomy large room, as if the house had yawned and we were staring straight into its maw.
    He said he had left the door locked and I knew he would have.
    Jim stepped through the doorway and I followed him.
    The inside of the house smelled wrong: hot and sharp with an undercoating of dust, like rusty iron scrap left to bake in the sun. Through it floated the stench of burned coffee and a faint scent of blood, fouled with a hint of decomposition. The blood was old, at least twelve hours, probably more.
    The front of the room lay empty. Ahead, a large counter cut the room nearly in a half. To the right, a small stove supported a teakettle and a coffeepot. Gloom pooled in the corners, and if I squinted just right, I could see the faint tentacles of magic snaking their way in and