In the south side of Salem is a coffee shop named The Vallor Cafe and Parlour.

  A week ago, in defiance of everything Salem now was, it hung a sign proudly claiming it was named after a member of the Church of Satan, including a picture of the man in a cloak, with his coffee cup resting on the grave of Judge John Hathorne.

  Today that sign is gone, replaced by one that says it’s under new management. I sit at the window, watching the sidewalk, waiting for my contact, sucking down the cold dredges of watery coffee. In the reflection in the glass I can see the ‘New Management’ and a barista talk quietly about me.

  A man talks loudly on his phone with what I think is an AI girlfriend, a woman in name brand clothes is three coffees deep, doom scrolling on a laptop with a sticker that says ‘edit later just write,’ and a couple on a date both scroll their phones awkwardly, each too uncomfortable to say they’d rather be anywhere else. A missing cat poster that was on the bulletin board is gone.

  The ‘new management’ approaches. “Hi, sir, can’t help but notice you’re done your coffee, was there something else we could do for you?”

  “I’m meeting someone here.”

  “You’ve been here for an hour.”

  “They’re late.”

  “Very late,” new management says. I can’t entirely tell if they’re a man or a woman, and frankly that’s the only thing I like about them. “Well, better luck next time maybe. I just wanted to say, we’re pretty close to capacity here-”

  I look around the nearly deserted cafe.“You’re kicking me out?”

  “Yes sir, it’s policy.”

  “What policy?”

  “Franchise policy,” he looks at me, my big backpack tucked under my stool, the darkness under my eyes, and decides to continue by saying, with an accusatory smile: “There’ve been instances where unhoused persons have sat in the cafe all day for the cost of one coffee.” They pause, and I don’t fill the space. “So you see the problem.”

  “Did you take down a poster of a missing cat?”

  “Sir?”

  “Did you?”

  “It upsets the fast, cozy, and convenient atmosphere,” he says. “And besides, we don’t want politics in our business”

  “A girl's missing cat is political?”

  They’re gesturing me out the door as they say, in a tone like someone who knows what they’re saying might be played in court someday: “Animals have become a polarising topic, and both sides make some excellent points.”

  “The ‘kill all animals just in case they were put here by little green men from outer space’ side makes some good points? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Sir, this is private property, and what I do-”

  “This is a fucking community gathering place. What happened to the owner, what did you threaten him with, what the fuck do you think you’re doing here? Do you think this place generates a dollar of its revenue based on the coffee? This place is a community institution, take the community out of it and it’s an empty fucking room!”

  “The owner sold. I bought. Get out before I call the police.”

  I don’t push my luck. Not this time. I swallow the last gulp of coffee, grab my backpack and head out the door.

  I sit at the bus stop, waiting, fighting myself not to pull out my phone, and failing.

  You can speak, just don’t bother speaking to me.

  That’s the last text Vern left me, in response to a note on the fridge I left while I packed up my things. It’s as I’m reading that message again, and again, just before I do the painfully stupid thing of scrolling through the messages we sent when things were easy, that I see the bushes on the other side of the road rustle.

  Salem doesn’t have wildlife anymore. If it’s bigger than a bumblebee, and it doesn’t have a chip, it’s at risk of being a witches familiar, and dealt with by the drones. So that rustling is either a very brave raccoon or the missing cat.

  I find a gap in the ground level traffic and cross the street, look into the bush. And there I see a white rabbit with red eyes waiting in a shrub on the sidewalk, facing away.

  “You’re not that cat,” I say, before remembering speaking to stray animals might as well be a capital offense. “Or my date.”

  It bounces, twists and lands, facing me with its red eyes. It’d be cute if I hadn’t seen it limp, dead, and matted with blood three weeks ago. In its mouth is a small piece of card stock, which it places on the ground before turning to face the water main hidden behind the shrub, and jumping into its digital display.

  I pocket the card, and don’t take it out even as I wait at the bus stop. I don’t need any high resolution street camera catching the words off of it in public.

  I don’t read it until I’m back in Malden, at my public bunk. My room is busy, maybe half the total occupants sitting around in their little cubbies. I squeeze through a group of four men who are talking about the beef and dairy draft, get to my cubbie, and close the shutter behind me.

  It’s a single bed, a couple drawers above and below me for my clothes, which I can only access with the shutter open. I sit at the foot of the bed, watching my head, and stare into the mirror above the little desk- workspace, vanity, and kitchen table all in one. Thats where I have the one surviving bit of ornamentation I grabbed from Vern. A nine inch tall Sarah Kerrigan, in all her Zerg glory. Queen of blades. I hope the Avatar won’t mind that that’s what I was calling her for short.

  I give Kerrigan a little fist bump. “I’m coming for you, girl,” I say, then read the card.

  Harvey Aitkins, you are hereby invited by I, Henrietta, elder witch, keeper of avatars, and custodian of the witch society of the greater salem quarantine, to attend a formal gathering on this, the second saturday of october. Verbally accept this invitation at 5:11 PM to gain safe passage. As you do not have a familiar, nor the guidance of a witch, my own familiar will act as your guide.

  Okay. I can handle that.

  I text Ali: “It’s now.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Oh yeah. Make sure she brings you, spread the word.”

  He sends back a grimacing face emoji, and a thumbs up. My heart is fluttering. It’s 4:47.

  I spread the same text to everyone who gave me their number, rehearse in my head, play some music to psych myself up, then suddenly its five minutes till. No time to do makeup, best I can do is brush my hair and change out of my store uniform, which is anything but graceful with how little space I have in here. I watch the clock on my phone, count down the last seconds, and at 5:11 I whisper “I- accept this invitation?”

  The card bursts into light, I shut my eyes and for a second I think maybe I’m dead, maybe witches deal with failure via magical mail bomb. Then I open my eyes, look in the vanity, and see the shape that the light has taken.

  Marked in a fuzzy glowing white, visible but without physical presence, I am wearing a collar. Shackles on my wrists, shackles on my ankles.

  A prisoner on her way to the gallows, then.

  About time.

  I open the shutter to my room a crack, and where my neighbours should be is a blur, like a long exposure shot, I can make out moments of stillness, but everything else is like smoke in the air, fading as I swipe at it and reforming behind me. And beneath the smoke the white rabbit is waiting for me.

  I leave my room, turn to lock the shutter but its already reset to the closed position. The rabbit bounds away, leaving white sparks of light in the air, marking the path down the stairs and outdoors, where I see the sun as a ring around the sky, an overcast light even without clouds, and a long white trail the rabbit laid.

  It isn’t a short walk, each turn I expect to find the end of the road, but there’s always more to tread. Nobody else is out, the streets a blurry river with no cars, the traffic lights are all on at the same time. I’m already deep in some magic I’m never going to understand. But I’m not alone, either. Some distance away I spy a vague shadowy man on horseback, hooting and hollering at this rare chance to ride in peace, and a curly blue witches hat on his head. Then elsewhere, a crow leaving trails of deep indigo, and I spy Sazwa and Ali hand in hand, under matching hats, well ahead of me. Ali’s still walking on a crutch.

  Better off than Luis, at least.

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  When I do reach the end of the path, there’s no lineup, no grand hall, no mansion, just the old boston common and the white lights marking a path around the bandstand. There’s always been a door here, recessed in the ground, but today it’s open, with a long magical ramp leading the way in. I look around behind me, but it looks like I’m the last one in.

  Last chance for fear, I breath out, feel the shuddering of my body, breath in, and step inside.

  Spectral hats float and bob all around, overtop of nobody, piano plays dimly in the distance, through the doorway it’s a ballroom that’d dwarf any gymnasium, entirely incongruous with the humble doorway that accesses it.

  Beneath the hats I slowly pick out the faces I recognize. In fact, I only see faces I know by name. The others are recognizable as people but without detail, just a fuzzy outline, a feeling of a person in the background of a memory, underneath those spectral hats, horns, crowns and halos.

  I can see the band- Vern and Red and Mickey and Rigs. Luis in his wheelchair, nervously rolling away from Vern, having clearly not gotten what he wanted. I can see Sazwa and Ali talking among Sazwa’s coven, a blurry figure under a serpent's hood, and the scary old woman who has a strong and unkind grip on the shoulder of her shy borrower. Two or three other witches I know incidentally, and a lot more borrowers, waiting at the heels of someone hidden in a matching hat, bringing drinks and food around, waiting politely to relay a message.

  But then there’s one more person, one with no hat over her head, one stranger not hidden from view. An old black woman with long white locs, who collects her rabbit from the ground, and raises her kindly brown eyes to me.

  I approach.

  “Hello Harvey,” she smiles, all cheek. She takes a hand off her long white staff and offers it to me to shake.

  “It’s- Heidi, actually,” I say. “Vern has had trouble adapting.”

  “He is a troubled man,” she agrees. As I don’t shake her hand she lets it fall back to her side. “You- the- uh- your-” she gestures towards the shackles on my wrists and clears her throat. “Most people get a hat.”

  “Do you not decide?”

  “I don’t, Heidi. Please don’t be afraid, or think ill of us. This should not be a long or painful meeting, just a chance to have this all resolved, so we can each start our next chapters cleanly.”

  “I don’t think that’s how this is going to go,” I say plainly.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I guess we’ll see. So what happens now? Big public trial?”

  “I prefer to keep things quieter, Heidi. I don’t think you’ll object to the next steps I have in mind.”

  I raise my voice: “Oh, so you’re going to give back Kerrigan, to my sole custody?”

  The noise hushes, people turn. There is no ambiguity about who I’m referring to, even if the name is new.

  “No,” Henrietta says. “Heidi, dear, I understand you’re upset, but if you’re planning on making a scene-”

  “Yes, the fuck I am planning on making a scene, thank you for noticing!” I shout. “Come on, witch lady, tell me what punishments you’ve got lined up, I think we’re all excited to hear!”

  Henrietta looks at me, pityingly. My heart thunders in my chest, I feel manic, sweaty, unkempt, like a fucking child. She raises her staff, and brings the butt down against the ground, the sound reverberating through the hall. Everything goes quiet.

  Her voice travels, not booming but audible in every far corner. “Heidi, your failure, and the failure of Luis, a fellow borrower, lead to the maiming of the former and of another borrower, Ali, as well as injury to another witch, Mickey. What should have been a simple escort was instead an embarrassment to us all. Your witch has disowned both of you. Left to your own devices the seeds within you would consume your souls, and as such you have been invited here, firstly to have those seeds removed. Secondly, if you have any mundane or magical resources to heal your fellows, you’re obliged to make use of them. Finally, we will arrange for you to lose all memory of your time as a borrower and people you met as such.”

  “Henrietta, thank you for asking!” I say. “Now, me I think that when someone’s been a borrower for about a minute and a half, and they’re ordered to attack someone, maybe the person who ordered them around is responsible, what are your thoughts on that?”

  “Heidi, I’m afraid this is the wrong crowd to suggest a man was ‘just following orders’ in front of,” she says, with pity and ice. “I understand the pressures he had, but his actions are his choice to live with.”

  “Oh fuck that,” I complain. “Borrowers are hired guns, you pick us for our subservience, our desperation, our lack of understanding. And now you expect us to say no? To know which group of weirdo criminals taking shit by force are the good guys?”

  “Ali was deescalating, communicating-”

  “While the old bitch was picking us off one by one!” I shout. “I’m not going to stand here and get the play by play from you. You weren’t surrounded, you weren’t scared. It must be so easy to sit here now on your high fucking horse and act like we’re the crazy ones, try it when you actually show up to do your own dirty work!”

  Henrietta does not take the bait, does not go low when I do, does not raise her voice, does not budge an inch. She’s not who I’m counting on.

  “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Vern yells from the crowd.

  And everyone watches the lash of a pact placed upon me, everyone watches that chain around my neck swing into his hand, every borrower in attendance looks at this image of a borrower silenced, bound, forced by their own witch. And now Henrietta is forced to respond.

  Her staff hits the ground. The crowd silences their full hearted bitching before it starts. Henrietta says: “Vern, release this pact.”

  “I’ll deal with him-”

  The staff butts the ground again and cuts him off. “This pact is unacceptable, insulting, cruel, it stands against everything we fight for.”

  “Oh boo fucking hoo, it’s a pact, he agreed. Just let me handle-” The staff butts the floor again. The silence blankets the room.

  “Handle this, Vern? When there is something in my court that I trust you to handle, you will be made aware. Perhaps a dire rat might crawl into my cellar and require your multifaceted skillset. Until such a time I recommend you make your sight in my halls rare and your voice rarer. Do we understand eachother?”

  Vern’s face turns red, he stands tall, is he on his tippy toes? From this vantage he looks every bit like a toddler being put in time out. Mickey puts a hand on his shoulder, holds him back, shakes his head. And Vern releases the thread from his fingers. Mouths the words that free me for now.

  “All the way, Vern, dissolve the pact, you hold no power over this borrower.”

  He lowers his eyes, his face tremors with rage, and then the promise is gone, no longer held to, like it was supposed to be after that night.

  I don’t raise my voice again. I don’t thank her either. “Luis didn’t do anything wrong except trust Vern. I didn’t either. Are you going to stand here in front of this crowd- boy, there sure are lots of borrowers tonight- and tell us not to trust our witches? That this is what our trust will be rewarded with, someday? That you can’t do anything to keep him from making and using more of us?”

  Henrietta is quiet, not stumped, but taking the high road. I stay quiet, too, following her example, silence is supposed to be powerful right? “I will speak to Luis about his next steps, and I will consider your wisdom,” she says in a tone as crisp and cold as winter itself. “And I empathize, more than you know, with this situation you have been put through. Nevertheless, I warn you that if you refuse to have the seed taken out-”

  “I do, Henrietta, I refuse. I will accept when you go after mister trust fund to pay to fix his mistakes, when you remove your ridiculous memory condition, when Kerrigan is put back under my control, and not a minute sooner.”

  “That can all be- excuse me?” She realizes what I said at a delay. “The bannerette is one of the Avatar of Apocrypha, a vital and shared resource for our fight, Heidi.”

  “A shared resource I found!”

  “Finding a river does not make the water yours.”

  “But if you shove that river in a cargo van it does? You can dispense your justice and talk down at me all you like, it won’t change the fact that you’re a thief, Henrietta.”

  The room goes still as the dead.

  “I don’t think this is a productive use of our time, Heidi. I don’t think you’re going to get what you want from this conversation, and I’m sorry. It’s just not in my power to do. Your choice is simple: take this deal now, or go back to your life with the seed still in you. I will send another invitation to the next ball, when you’ve had time to think.”

  “I’ve had lots of time, ma’am. I think you can do what I’m asking. I think you know it’d be right. I think you think you don’t have to.” I take a deep breath, look to the faces in the crowd I do recognize, not a single one meeting my eye, not a single one ready for the embarrassment of what comes next. “How many Borrowers are there? Among all these witches, how many, you think?”

  Henrietta makes no reply.

  “One per witch? Some with none, some with two? What’s that, about a hundred, Henrietta?”

  “About seventy, I don’t have an exact account.” She says, then whispers, unamplified, such that only I can hear: “If you think you can call on this crowd to stand up and support you, I would save yourself the shame,”

  “Seventy, okay,” I nod, ignoring her advice. She’s probably not wrong, I doubt I’ve changed anyone’s minds. I don’t need to. “See I had this idea, and I had some magic burning a hole in my pocket, and I had a promise I made to Kerrigan, and I had so much free time now that I wasn’t doing Vern’s laundry. I met with Rigs, with Ali, with everyone else I knew, and everyone they knew, and everyone they knew, and I kept networking. I’m great at networking, probably my best talent, was basically a fixer once upon a time. I did not win a lot of glowing support, Henrietta, that’s not one of my talents. But I did get most of them to make a certain little promise that they probably wouldn’t have to fulfill.”

  Heads hang in the crowd. Sazwa turns to stare her betrayal at Ali.

  “That if I got more than half of us borrowers on the same side, we would do something, that if I got more than half of us borrowers collected, and our demands weren’t met, we would act. That if I got more than half, we would form a union.”

  Henrietta is dead quiet, expression severe, calm, immutable. But I see the smallest flicker of her eyelids, the tiniest little taste of ‘oh shit.’ The sight is worth all the sleepless nights, all the coffees I bought and drank alone, all the texts that didn’t get answered, all the people I ambushed at home or at work to get my goddamn handshake.

  “About seventy? Is that your final number?”

  “Approximately seventy. Maybe eighty.” she swallows. “As high, even, as ninety. Many witches do not attend these balls. How many borrowers did you make this pact with, Heidi?”

  I smile wide, stare down the room, at every one of the borrowers who promised as a joke, as a dream, as a show of solidarity that was never, ever, going to work.

  “Fifty one.”

  I snap my finger. Threads flash into the air, winding from my heart, from the hearts of everyone who promised, between us all, a spiderweb of promises and witnesses that bind us on the path.

  “The borrower’s union raises its first demand: You have three days to give us Kerrigan, or we strike.”