Mateo’s mother forbade him from ever using magic. But now that she’s gone, magic’s his only marketable skill, and he’d really like an exorcism—which costs money he doesn’t have. So he calls himself an Occult Specialist and chants a few half-remembered spells in his crappy Spanish to make extra cash.
Then comes Topher, a naive nepo baby with a curse that keeps killing people around him. He’s rich and too clueless to clock that Mateo and his astral-projecting best friend Ophelia have never actually had a client before. Lifting Topher’s curse should be simple, but as luck would have it, nothing is simple, and Topher, whom Mateo soon develops a crush on, might be at the center of a deadly magical conspiracy. And the more magic Mateo does, the stronger the demon inside him grows and the more he wants to eat people. But would caving to the urges of an ancient evil really be that bad if it helps him get a payday?
CHAPTER ONE
“You a witch?”
Mateo Borrero pulls an earbud out, muting the furious screeching and synth blasting his ears to see who’s leveled this super creative insult at him. He’s greeted by the least surprising answer: a douche-bro hanging out of a truck, halted at a red light. The guy comes in a matching set, another at the wheel, craning around his friend to help jeer. The truck is big, and the douches are bigger. A guy in all-black and eyeliner is a threat to their dicks in some ill-defined way.
Because it’s a bad idea to humor assholes looking to start something, Mateo pretends he doesn’t see them, even though he unmistakably turned and stared. This flies for all of six seconds.
“Hey, witch bitch!” the guy yells even louder, getting innovative with rhyming now. A real poet screaming from his car. “You deaf, too?”
This is prime words will never hurt you territory. They’ll get bored if he doesn’t react. But his mouth and temper operate at a different speed than his brain. “I heard you, I’ve just got zero interest in getting blown by a guy in a polo, so I’m pretending I didn’t.”
There’s a beat of silence as the pair try to navigate the meaning of this witty retort, and then a Slurpee cup explodes inches from Mateo’s boots. The truck peels off, the poet hanging out the window cackling.
The crosswalk pings, but Mateo stands motionless, searching desperately for calm—three breaths, staring after the truck as it disappears around a corner. He tries not to envision how nice it would be to drag the poet out the truck window, grate his laughing face off on the asphalt, slit him from belly to neck, reach inside, and squeeze a handful of viscera until it pops.
The crosswalk light goes through another cycle before he can run his tongue over his teeth and confirm they’ve returned to their usual human bluntness so he can continue on to work.
He steps through the Slurpee. Cherry. Like a snowman died in traffic.
* * *
The print shop opens and closes late on Wednesdays for reasons no one remembers—and therefore never explained to him—so the front is locked when Mateo walks up at ten till noon. Pizza Lady next door waves as he struggles with the steel grate that separates him from his low-paying-but-needed job. Not for the first time, he longs for a spell that might fuse it locked forever—and give him a million dollars—but the mechanism slides open like it always does.
Wednesdays are the best days of his week, excluding paydays. All of the joy of a cool room that smells like paper with none of the misery of getting up at 6 am. Stylish sweater stowed and hideous uniform polo applied to body, Mateo surveys the orders from last night. It’s clear Angelica was on shift because everything’s done and the handwriting is serial killer neat.
He pours a coffee from the shitty pod machine in the back—which is a sin in Seattle, but he doesn’t have twenty bucks to waste at an artisanal café—brings out the cash drawer, and uses a boot to ferry the brown rubber doorstop into place between door and frame. The front door sticks, so it’s easier to leave it ajar, even if it means flies come in as the days get disgustingly warm.
As a proper, self-respecting goth, he hates the approaching summer. He’ll go to his grave in long sleeves and black skinny jeans with too many zippers. It’s a stereotypical look for a novice witch—the douche-bros were correct, but he still hates them. When he started practicing brujería, he considered changing his style, but he looks good in black.
Flicking the switch by the door, Turbo Print and Ship blazes to life against the front window in neon blue. Glancing at the schedule, he’s surprised to see a new name. Doris could have told him. This is probably revenge for caving to his oft-repeated request for staff.
This new guy’s late, though. He should have shown up ten minutes ago. Bodes horribly.
Officially open, Mateo retreats to his post behind the counter, sips his bitter coffee, and tries to improve his mood via force of will. In flows a ceaseless mix of office workers who’ve waited until the last second to print their proposals, college students with homework assignments who just realized their ancient instructors expect a physical copy, and people who haven’t used a computer since 1982 but have the sudden and inexplicable need to fax something.
Plastic customer service smile slips into place over black-painted lips. It’s his only defense against the masses. As hands do the automatic motions of drudgery, his mind wanders, counting up the extra hours worked this week and calculating the paycheck.
Things are tight again. Always. Mateo’s perma-roommate, best friend, and non-blood-related family, Ophelia—who only sometimes exists in this plane of reality—can’t even afford her share of utilities, let alone rent. Another roommate would help, but it’s tricky to screen for sincerely-okay-with-goth-shit, not just on a superficial level. Though, rent isn’t at the top of his list of problems. What he really needs is enough cash to handle his affliction.
But every time he gets a little ahead, Ophelia’s car dies, something critical breaks in the house, or a collection agency comes knocking about his deadbeat mother’s debts.
He has to ring up the next two customers with a close-lipped smile for fear his teeth have gone pointy again. His mother, who conveniently went missing five years ago—happy eighteenth birthday to Mateo—left him a crumbling house with a lien on it, a box of vintage Mister Donut cups, and her demon.
***
K. Valentin works as a senior art director in casual gaming, herding twenty-plus amazing artists into some semblance of organization. She has been published in the Bag of Bones Horror Anthology, the Latino Book Review, and Cosmos: An Anthology of Dark Microfiction. As a comic writer and illustrator, her work has been published in Puerto Rico Strong and Proud: An LGBTQ+ YA Anthology. She has a BA in creative writing from Southern New Hampshire University. An Amateur Witch’s Guide to Magic and Murder is her debut novel.
Steve Davidson is the publisher of Amazing Stories.
Steve has been a passionate fan of science fiction since the mid-60s, before he even knew what it was called.
