Two weeks after arriving in Madison, she was hosting her first open house. She picked up two clients from it, and they each had offers accepted for their purchases two weeks after that.
"Did you whammy them?" I asked.
"I do not whammy people," she told me. She smiled. "They will be very happy in the houses they are buying. I will cast contentment spells in each house after closing."
"Contentment spells? You said you did one for Neal, and for my old apartment in Bayfield."
"Yes." She paused. "Have you ever sat in a Japanese rock garden?"
"Yes. It's very calming."
"I make the house feel like that."
"Oh," I said. "Do our house!"
She laughed. "I did. The day we were painting. I embedded it in the paint. It's going to last until someone paints over it."
It took me a few months before I realized it, but Arianna slacked those first few months. She asked other agents for permission to hold open houses in their listings. In real estate, open houses are more about generating new leads for an agent than they are about trying to sell the house. Sure, sometimes homes sell from an open house, but what happens more often is that the agent meets a new client. With Arianna's skills, that happened at an amazing rate. I didn't realize it at the time, but it wasn't normal to pick up one to two clients per open house.
She cheated, of course, but she defended herself. "They want to buy houses. I don't make anyone buy a house. I don't steal them from other agents. I am just good at getting people to tell me honestly what they want, and invariably, one or two people are on the edge of getting serious. Shopping open houses is a good way to see what is out there, but going out with an agent is a far better way to shop when you get serious. I make sure I am that agent."
During those first few months, she only held an open house every other weekend, picking up on average of at least one client per open house. Once the commission checks started coming in, she told me, "It's time for you to get your agent's license."
"I don't need one for my job," I told her.
She smiled. "You aren't going to be in that job very long. We are going to be partners."
"Arianna," I said. "I can't do what you can."
"No, but you are a dream at pushing paper. You need an agent's license to do so."
So I sighed and took all the classes, which were very intense, but it wasn't difficult. A few more of Arianna's commission checks later, and suddenly I found myself as Arianna's sales partner.
She still kept things slow at first while I learned the ropes. She helped me line up a few clients of my own and then watched over me as I went through the entire process. As soon as she was satisfied I understood the business, she stepped things up.
She started hosting two to three open houses every weekend. She was picking up as many as four clients a weekend, and most of them ended up buying something. She was a selling machine.
I handled all the paperwork. We made a great team.
But when Arianna threatened to skip closings, I balked. "No," I told her. "These are your clients, and they deserve to have you there at closing. Besides, you are going to bless their house afterwards."
What was amazing was that the entire process generated magic for us. People are very passionate about buying their houses, and Arianna sucked up stray magic, feeding it all to me. Except for the rare problem, each client was a net gain of magic for us. I was filled to bursting and had to beg her to stop giving me anymore.
"I feel fat," I told her.
She laughed.
Six months after arriving, Arianna renegotiated her agreement with our broker, cutting in half the amount the broker got per one of our sales. "Take it or we'll leave," she told him. She didn't even have to use any magic.
* * * *
I began measuring the years beginning with the year Arianna bound me to her. I stuck to a normal calendar, of course. So in my mind, the first year together, until New Year's Eve, was year zero.
I also picked several anniversaries for us, some better than others. I didn't pick specific days of the month. Instead I based them on the day of the week. She had claimed me as her familiar on the first Saturday in June, so henceforth, every first Saturday in June was Familiar Day.
The previous Saturday, the last Saturday in May, was a day of mourning for me. That was the day I first surrendered to her magic and allowed her to cast her three spells on me. It was also that night that I attempted my suicide. On the calendar, some years I called it S-Day. Other years I marked it as IHA Day for "I Hate Arianna". I only did that the years I was angry with her, and Arianna flinched every time she saw IHA on the calendar.
But she never forbade me from marking the days however I wanted.
Backing up a week and two days to a Thursday, and we had the anniversary of the day we first met. Years when I was pleased with Arianna, I made her take me to a cheap bar somewhere. Years when I was unhappy with her, I went to a bar alone and got drunk. She would arrive shortly before the bar was going to close, induce me to pass out, and get help carrying me to the car.
But the fourth Sunday of each June corresponded to the day we reached our compromise. I called that our wedding day, and Arianna was just as happy to celebrate that day with me as I was. She treated me like a queen and had me pampered majestically.
As our first year anniversaries were coming up, I marked the calendar. I used abbreviations, and I didn't tell Arianna what they were. I marked the day we met with an "M" and told her, "We are busy this evening. Do not schedule anything. This is important to me."
She had a client call that afternoon, wanting to write an offer that evening. She didn't even consult with me; she put him off until Friday. I knew she had done so, and I was very pleased with her.
At six, I thought to her, "I am going out. You are to wait an hour and then find me. When you are close, I will have more orders."
She chuckled into my head and only asked how to dress. "Casual."
When she found the dive I was at, she offered a mental tickle. "Seriously?"
"You may not approach me until you have figured out what is special about tonight. Then you will try to buy me a drink."
When she entered the bar, I was playing pool and flirting with the guys I was playing with. "You may not feed me any magic until I give permission," I told her.
She laughed. "You're full anyway."
She worked the room herself. I was full, but she wasn't. When she got too close to the pool tables, I mentally hissed at her, and she veered away.
She'd been there for twenty minutes and hadn't bought me a drink. "Do I get a hint?"
"I am in a dive playing pool with some guys, acting like I don't know you," I told her.
Two minutes later, the waitress stopped by with a glass of wine. "This is from the woman at the bar," she said.
I set the wine to the side and ignored it.
"You're not going to drink your wine?" Arianna thought at me a few minutes later.
"Nope."
Several minutes later, she stepped up to my side and extended her magic to me. I withdrew, putting the pool table between us.
"I'm not sure I like this anniversary," she sent to me.
"If you play your cards right, it might end differently than last year."
"It's not exactly a year," she said.
"It was a Thursday night," I replied.
She extended her magic to me, but it approached from behind me, and I didn't see it. She wrapped it around me and caressed my face with it.
I laughed, and the guys I was playing pool with offered a funny look.
"You may bring me my wine and play pool with us," I sent to her. "I'm down fifty bucks. Earn it back for me and you may have my body later."
We didn't stay long. She cheated. She wrapped me tightly in her magic and had me so horny I could barely breathe. "How am I supposed to drive?" I asked her on our way through the parking lot. I couldn't keep my hands off of her.
"We'll return to get y
our car tomorrow."
When we got home, I gave her my body.
I had marked Suicide Day with an S. A week after Meeting Day, two days before Suicide Day, Arianna asked me, "What is this day?"
"You probably want to call it something else," I said. "It's Suicide Day."
"Oh honey," she said.
"It's also Binding Day and I Hate Arianna Day."
"Oh Moira," she said. I saw tears in her eyes. I kissed them away.
"I don't hate you," I told her. "But I did that day."
"What are we doing then? I don't think you're calling it a celebration, and I forbid any reenactments."
"You probably have better memories of that day than I do. That was the day you captured me."
"I captured you the night before," she said.
"But you cast your spells on Saturday." I looked down. "I haven't figured out what we should do."
"We don't need to recognize that day," she said.
"I bet you have happy memories of that day."
"Bittersweet," she admitted. "I had won, but I also knew I was losing at the same time. It wasn't how I wanted to win." She looked away. "It wasn't until you told me I was being evil that I even considered my actions from your perspective. By then, I was committed."
"What would you do differently, in hindsight?"
"Even in hindsight, honey, I don't know. I wasn't in a good place. I had just been banished here. I had only the money from my purse, and it was going to run out. If I were in a better place, I would have tried to woo you, somehow. Honey, under no circumstances would I have let you go. Right or wrong, I wouldn't have let you go."
"Then I believe it should be a day for you to atone for what you did, and for us to help someone else in trouble, someone who needs our help."
So every year that day became a day where we volunteered. Some years, we helped at a homeless shelter. Some years, it was Habitat for Humanity. Every year, Arianna decided what we would do, and if there were more distasteful aspects to our volunteer efforts, she did them. That first year, she made some phone calls, and we provided baby-sitting service for a single mother. Arianna baby-sat, and I helped the mother run errands she couldn't run with the children in tow. It was a small thing, but it meant a lot to me.
We went home together. Arianna was amazingly chipper.
"Five children, and you came away unscathed." Then I looked at her. "You cheated!"
"Damned right I did," she said. "Or Megan would have at least two fewer children right now."
"Unless you already planned something, I would prefer to stay in tonight."
"I planned for us to stay in. We have movies, and I will pick up dinner while you relax in the tub."
"Oh no," I said. "No tub. Or are you going to hand me the razor blades, too."
"Oh god, what was I thinking?" she said. "We'll pick up dinner together."
"After we take a shower together," I said. "No hanky-panky."
"You like my hanky. And my panky."
"Yes, but no sex on Suicide day."
"Can we call it something else?"
"I Hate Arianna Day is your other choice."
"How about Beg Forgiveness Day?"
"Nope," I said. "In your head you can call it what you want, but those are your choices for what I call it."
When we arrived home, she studied the calendar. "F." She smiled. "That's the day you forgave me."
"F is for Familiar," I said. But I was pleased she thought it was for Forgiveness.
"That was the day you gave me the best gift anyone could possibly give me, Moira," she said.
"Then that is the day we will give each other gifts. They will be small but meaningful. We will stay in. I will cook. You will plan any rituals we are to have."
"May we spend the entire day together?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. "You will plan what we do, but you must have me home by four. From four to seven, I will make dinner. But you will buy the wine, and we will exchange gifts after dinner."
She smiled.
We made gentle love in the morning. Then we packed a picnic and went for a hike at a nearby state park. Arianna had me back promptly at four, and I made a simple dinner. We dressed up for dinner, cleared the table after, and exchanged gifts.
That first year, I gave her a cut crystal water goblet. She gave me a delicate necklace and pendant of a cat.
"You bitch," I said when I saw it. "A witch's familiar. I love it." I made her put it on me immediately.
After we had exchanged gifts, she said, "Now, for the ritual. We are going to tell a story from our past. I am going to go first, and I am going to tell you how I came to be banished."
Banished: Arianna's Story
I was living in Atlanta. Even though I grew up in New England, that was a long time ago, and I last lived there over two hundred years ago. I have spent decades living in various places in Europe, but I love the south most of all.
I had been in Atlanta for nearly four decades, and it was probably time for me to move on for a while. I hadn't lived in Paris since before the war and was thinking about that, or perhaps Milan.
But I hadn't had a real threat for a long time, and I had grown cocky.
Witches do not tend to get along well with each other. We tend to be jealous of each other, and we are a legitimate risk to each other. Witches of similar types will be in competition for the available resources. Any witch without a familiar will be searching her territory for one, and any witch with a familiar will be trying to prevent any nearby witches from acquiring one. Twice familiars were born in territory I controlled while I already had my own familiar, and each time, I acquired the familiar and sold it to a witch living far away. Ironically, one of those is the other witch living in Atlanta.
Witches are also a direct risk to each other. We are jealous of each other's power, so we tend to spy on each other, hoping to discover the other's secrets. We also are quick to take offense with each other, and so open conflict is not uncommon.
Finally, if one of us gathers the attention of the mundane authorities, the two most common defenses are to leave the area or frame another, weaker witch living nearby.
Josephine and I were sharing Atlanta, which would normally be rare, but I had given her a familiar, and so when I requested permission to move to Georgia, she had granted it. This was at the start of the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s. It was a time of free love, which you can imagine was a bonanza for me.
Josephine is a death witch; our way of gathering power is so different from each other, we couldn't possibly be in competition. With magic so easy for me to acquire, I was never forced to be overt, so Josephine was the only soul living in Atlanta who knew my true nature. This meant we could be relaxed with each other, as much as two witches are able, and we became friends, of a sort. Wary friends.
But over the next thirty years, I became arrogant. I probably arrived in Atlanta already cocky, but it grew exponentially worse. I was rich, very, very rich, and living quite a decadent lifestyle.
I began to overreach. I took offense at something Josephine said, and we stopped socializing with each other. I should have left Atlanta, but I decided she had been there long enough, and she should be the one to leave.
So arrogant.
Even then, we were successfully sharing the city, but I started stepping on her toes, and I was ignoring her warnings.
She really was quite indulgent with me; she had ample reason to slap me down much sooner and much harder than she did.
But the final straw was when I stole from her, or at least that is how she saw it, and I would have seen it the same way.
It started in a nightclub in February. It was a cold night, cold for Atlanta. I had a booth and had surrounded myself with a variety of lovely if vacuous beauties.
The girl walked in, and I noticed her right away. I stared across the room, recognizing her, and she had barely sat down at the bar that I sent one of my beauties to her with a glass of wine. My beauty pointed me out.
I raised my glass to the girl, and the girl accepted the wine I had sent.
After that, I pretended to ignore her.
A few minutes later, I noticed a shadow across my table. I had been busy teasing several of my playmates into some public indiscretions with each other, and hadn't noticed the girl approach. I looked up.
"My name is Martina," she told me.
"Arianna," I said. "Sit." I gestured for one of my playmates to make space, and Martina sat down next to me. I admired her dark features and long, silky legs.
"You play with fire," she told me.
"Do I?" I asked. "How so?"
"My grandfather works for a friend of yours. Josephine."
"Josephine?" I said. "Really. How intriguing. And are you one of Josephine's creatures?"
"No," she said. "But I am not sure she doesn't think so."
"Have you been in her bed?" I asked.
She smiled. "Perhaps you do not know Josephine as well as I thought you did. She prefers boys for her bedmates."
I returned the smile, looking down at her legs. "Perhaps I know her better than you do. More wine?"
I didn't wait for an answer, but simply poured, filling her glass.
Raven, one of my beauties, began to sulk. She thought she deserved more attention. She said something unkind, I don't remember exactly what right now, and I turned to her.
"Perhaps you feel you are more deserving of my attention," I asked her.
"Yes," she said. "I was here first."
"Well then," I told her. I began stroking her, surrounding her with my magic. Martina became unhappy, but I told her to wait, I had a gift for her. I wrapped my magic around Raven, and when she took a kiss from me, the spell claimed her. I wrapped her in a spell of obedience, only temporary, and then transferred control of the spell to Martina.
"A gift," I said. "Her name is Raven. For twenty-four hours, she will do whatever you ask, except attempt to hurt me."
"Really?" Martina asked. "Raven, kneel on the floor and massage my feet, please. These are not the most comfortable shoes."
Raven immediately obeyed, and when Martina asked her to further abase herself, Raven did everything Martina ordered.
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