The Magic Touch

Oliver had put the wrong labels on three hundred bottles of sleep tonic. The others knew what was coming. Hazel pointed one finger and turned him into a mouse.

He sat beside the label printer, trembling beneath his enormous ears.

“Perhaps now you’ll read what’s in front of you next time.”

“He can’t read now,” Maisie said.

“It’s true. Mice have terrible vision,” Hazel said.

Maisie picked Oliver up and placed him in an empty shipping carton. Then she went back to peeling the labels off the bottles. She was fourteen, two years older than Oliver. Maisie no longer thought of herself as a child, in the sense of someone that needs caring for. She was already someone who takes care of themself.

Outside, a delivery truck blocked the narrow Greenwich Village street. The driver leaned on his horn. Someone leaned on theirs in reply. Hazel’s phone vibrated against the counter.

Another customer wanted to know whether the sleep drops were safe to take with the energy drops. Hazel considered this a stupid question unworthy of her time.

Hazel typed, Please refer to the recommended usage on each product.

The customer replied almost immediately.

A lot of help you are. Customer service my tusks!

She put the phone facedown.

Blackwood Botanicals occupied the ground floor of a brick building between a shuttered tailor and a restaurant that sold eighteen-dollar poke bowls. The kind of thing Hazel remembered feeding to pigs. The front room contained shelves of amber bottles, packing materials, two computers, and a framed witch-owned business certificate.

The certificate had cost ninety-five dollars. Becoming a witch had cost her everything.

At the back of the shop stood a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Behind it were a mop, a bucket, and a sink, the condition of which, was all the warning needed to stay away.

Unless one rang the silver bell first.

Hazel rang it with her thumbnail and opened the door.

Warm, damp air touched her face. The laboratory extended well beyond the dimensions of the building, its copper pipes disappearing into a vaulted ceiling. A glass reactor stirred itself over a blue flame. Beside it, a stainless-steel centrifuge rattled on its rubber feet.

Her first employer had used a cauldron. Hazel had used one herself until she learned what a commercial landlord charged for smoke damage.

She passed the drying herbs, the locked cabinet of roots, the grimoire propped open beneath a tablet displaying overnight sales. On the workbench lay an envelope sealed in gray wax.

The seal broke before she touched it.

“Oh, don’t be theatrical,” she said.

The letter unfolded.

Effective immediately, the Council prohibited the commercial use of Black Somnus Root and all derivatives, including Somniferin-9.

Hazel mused. Did they really think they could regulate her?

Her new product was mainly Black Somnus Root, and it was a cash cow.

From the front room came the faint scratching of claws against cardboard.

“Maisie. Change him back.”

“I don’t know how.”

Hazel closed her eyes.

She had to do everything around here. Absolutely everything.

***

At noon, she attended the emergency meeting above a private dining room on East Nineteenth Street.

The restaurant downstairs served bone broth. Upstairs, a necromancer argued that the ban discriminated against practitioners whose clients had already died.

“You can’t give them insomnia,” he said. “That’s my point.”

The Council’s representative waited for him to finish.

Around the table sat women and men who, between them, could call rain, alter memories, speak with the dead, and make a married person polyamorous. Every one of them looked tired.

A glamour witch kept smoothing the skin beneath her eyes. It returned to its original position whenever she stopped concentrating.

Hazel sat beside Vera, who had once specialized in fertility charms and now sold a subscription called Abundant Abundance.

“How much inventory?” Vera whispered.

“Whatever you’re thinking, add a zero.”

“That much?”

At the head of the table, the representative opened a folder.

“We have received reports of dream suppression, waking disorientation, and progressive failure to recover during sleep.”

“People have always failed to recover during sleep,” Hazel said. “It’s called Manhattan.”

A few people laughed.

The representative did not.

“The root prevents the sleeper from experiencing distress. It does not cure them of being New Yorkers.”

“People buy it for the health claim.”

“The distress is like weight. It accumulates.”

Hazel looked down at her phone. Eleven new orders. A message from her manufacturer asking whether the launch date remained firm.

The representative slid a photograph across the table.

A man sat on the edge of a bed. His hands rested on his knees. Behind him, his shadow stood upright against the wall.

Its hands covered its face.

No one laughed.

***

Daniel came into the shop that afternoon for his usual order.

He worked in a building where the lights never went out. Hazel had never understood precisely what he did there, or why zombies were such sound sleepers, although it involved other people’s money and seemed to make him ill.

“Two of the nighttime ones,” he said. “The big bottles.”

“You bought two on Friday.”

He smiled apologetically. There was a small cut beneath his lower lip where he had shaved without noticing.

“How much are you taking?”

“What it says.”

“Daniel.”

He looked toward the window.

“Sometimes more.”

Oliver stood behind the counter, sleeves hanging over his hands. Hazel had restored him before lunch, though he claimed his teeth still felt wrong.

“Are you sleeping?” she asked Daniel.

“Like a rock.”

“And when you wake up?”

He rubbed his palms against his trousers.

“Usually Tuesdays.”

Hazel reached for the bottles, then stopped.

Behind Daniel, his shadow lay at the wrong angle.

It was not doing anything remarkable. It had simply curled up beneath the chair by the door.

“You should take a few days off.”

“I’m getting married in June.”

“What has that got to do with it?”

He gave her the embarrassed smile again.

“The wedding. The apartment. Everything.”

She put one bottle on the counter.

Then she took it away.

“I’m out.”

He glanced at the shelf behind her.

“Those are reserved.”

After he left, Maisie watched Hazel carry the remaining bottles into the laboratory.

“You could have told him.”

“Told him what?”

“That they don’t work.”

“They work perfectly.”

Maisie’s expression did not change.

Hazel shut the door.

***

By five, she had called everyone she knew who dealt in restricted ingredients.

Zelda in Queens had none. A broker in Prague could obtain a substitute if Hazel did not insist on knowing what it was. No testing. Vera suggested changing the product name – but Black Death was too good.

Oliver knocked.

It lay in a shallow dish beneath the lamp, black and fibrous, with a pale shoot emerging from one end. Enough for the demonstration batch. Enough, if she stretched it, to keep the investors interested.

“What?”

“I have to leave.”

“You have a curious concept of working hours.”

“It’s visiting hours.”

She looked up.

“My sister,” he said.

He had mentioned a sister before. Hazel hated family. Such an inconvenience.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“They’re still doing tests.”

“How long has she been there?”

“Three weeks.”

Hazel set down her magnifying glass.

“Which hospital?”

He told her.

From the other side of the room, Maisie said, “You said you’d go last week.”

Hazel had no recollection of saying it. If the girl just died, problem solved. Why interfere?

Oliver watched her with the careful expression children wore when they thought an adult was about to let them down.

She liked living up to expectations.

“Get your coat.”

***

His sister’s name was Lina, but they called her Linnie.

She was thirteen and sat propped against pillows with a blanket over her knees. Someone had braided her hair. There were oranges on the windowsill and a photograph of a village built along the side of a green hill.

“You’re Hazel,” she said.

“Apparently.”

“You’re thinner than I thought.”

Oliver looked at the floor.

Linnie offered Hazel an orange.

“I don’t eat things that were recently alive.”

“Then hold it while I do this.”

She was untangling the cord of her phone charger. Hazel found herself standing beside the bed with an orange in her hand.

The room smelled of disinfectant and vinyl. Beneath it was something else—a faint, bitter sweetness.

She knew that smell.

“What are you taking?”

Linnie gestured toward the little paper cup on her tray.

“Besides those.”

He reached into his backpack and produced an amber bottle.

Blackwood Botanicals. Night Garden.

“I thought it would help.”

Hazel took it from him. The bottle was almost empty.

“She couldn’t sleep,” he said.

Linnie grabbed his hand.

“It did help.”

Unlikely, Hazel thought.

Behind the houses, pale flowers grew along the terraced hillside. She moved closer.

“Where is this?”

“Home.”

“And those?”

“My grandmother calls them moon bells. They smell terrible when it rains.”

Black Somnus. Growing wild. A whole field of it.

“How much land does your grandmother own?”

Linnie laughed.

“Why?”

“No reason.”

“You should come. She would like you.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I have feelings about people.”

Hazel looked down. She had had feelings once too.

***

She returned the following evening without Oliver.

For professional reasons, she told herself. The girl’s symptoms were relevant to the Council’s findings. So was the photograph.

Linnie was watching a program about people renovating houses they could plainly not afford.

Hazel pulled a chair beside the bed.

“I need to ask you about the plants.”

“All right.”

“When are they harvested?”

“Usually after the rainy season.”

“By whom?”

“People take what they need.”

“And if they need more?”

“They take it.”

It was like discussing commerce with a soup kitchen.

Linnie reached for the water pitcher. Before Hazel could think better of it, she lifted a finger. The pitcher rose, tipped over the glass, and settled back on the tray.

Linnie watched with interest.

“Oh,” she said.

Hazel waited.

“My grandmother would love that. Her wrists are terrible.”

“You understand what you just saw?”

“Yes. Could you do the window? It sticks.”

Hazel stared at her.

Then she opened the window.

Cool air entered the room, carrying the smell of rain and traffic.

Hazel didn’t like Linnie. She reminded her of someone she’d known a long time ago.

***

Over the next four evenings, Hazel learned that Linnie and Oliver had come to New York after their mother died. An aunt had taken them in. Then the aunt had died too. Real orphan shit.

Linnie cleaned offices at night and worked in a bakery on weekends. Oliver’s placement had been described by three different agencies with three different euphemisms.

He called it “the Home.”

Their grandmother could take them both, Linnie said. Getting there had been the difficulty. First there had been paperwork. Then there had been money. Then Linnie had become ill.

“You could have sent him back,” Hazel said.

“By himself?”

“He was six.”

“Yes,” Linnie said. “He’s twelve now.”

Hazel looked away.

In the reflection of the darkened window, she could see herself sitting very straight, her bag held on her lap.

She had been nine when her mother left her outside a church with a paper sack containing two dresses.

The woman who eventually took her home had believed hunger improved obedience. Hazel had stolen bread, then coins. It had escalated from there. One winter evening, locked outside for stealing, she had wished the kitchen window would break.

Every window in the house had burst inward.

Mother Ruth found her three days later.

The Gift ran in families, she explained. Sometimes it slept for generations. Sometimes a girl went her whole life without discovering what she was.

“What wakes it up?” Hazel had asked.

Mother Ruth looked at her cracked lips and the purple marks above her wrist.

“Abandonment. Magic is a defense mechanism. Nothing more. Unless misused.”

At the hospital, Linnie shifted against her pillows.

“Were you always able to do things?”

“No.”

“Who taught you?”

“Life. And a woman.”

“Was she kind?”

Hazel considered this.

“Life wasn’t. The woman had her moments.”

“She must have been nice.”

***

On Friday, Linnie would not wake.

Oliver called at four-thirty. Hazel arrived with her coat unbuttoned and the last piece of root wrapped in a handkerchief inside her bag.

The ward had become busy. That terraced hillside was ripe for the picking.

Hazel waited until the staff had finished examining Linnie. Then she asked Oliver to get her coffee.

“I don’t want to leave.”

“Neither do I. Go.”

When he was gone, she closed the curtain.

Linnie’s breathing was shallow. Her face had the exhausted softness Hazel had seen on Daniel, on Vera, on her own reflection above the laboratory sink.

Hazel put the root on the bedside table.

She could use it to force Linnie deeper. Quiet the disturbance. Make her comfortable. That was what the product did, and it was what Hazel had become very good at doing.

Instead, she took Linnie’s hand.

Mother Ruth had taught her another way, before they discovered how many bottles Hazel could fill in an afternoon.

She had not done it in years.

The first sensation was cold.

Then she stood in a bakery kitchen, although there were no doors and the ovens were dark. An alarm rang somewhere. Linnie was searching for her shoes.

“I’m late,” she said.

“You’re in the hospital.”

“I have to get Oliver.”

She opened a cupboard. Inside was another room, crowded with beds.

Hazel felt pain run through her legs. Her back tightened. She tasted old coffee and the sourness of having gone too long without food.

A telephone rang.

Linnie searched her pockets.

“If I miss it, they give the shift to someone else.”

“Let it ring.”

“I can’t.”

The floor tilted. Hazel caught the edge of a steel table.

For a moment she was outside the house again, staring through the kitchen window at a loaf of bread. Someone inside had drawn a chair close to the stove. She could see only the person’s feet.

She knew what came next.

She could break the window. She could make everyone inside as cold as she was.

Linnie gripped her hand.

“Stay with me.”

Hazel nearly pulled away.

The pain was more than she remembered. Or she had become less accustomed to bearing anything she could make someone else bear.

She sat down on the kitchen floor.

Linnie sank beside her.

The alarm continued. The telephone rang and rang.

Hazel held her hand.

Eventually, the ringing stopped.

***

Linnie’s bedside table was covered with Thank You cards. Hazel read them while she slept. Thank you for the wheelbarrow. Thank you for sending us food. Thank you for the bracelets you made us. Thank you for sending money. Thank you for the money to rebuild the schoolhouse. This girl, in a hospital bed, was financing a village!

When Oliver returned, Hazel was crying. One tear.

She was furious with him for seeing it.

“Allergies,” Hazel said.

Linnie opened her eyes.

“Your coffee,” Oliver said.

On the bedside table, the root had begun to grow. Fine white tendrils spread across the laminate, seeking somewhere to take hold.

She picked it up, carried it into the bathroom, and burned it in the sink.

***

The recall took most of the weekend.

There were calls, demands, refund requests, and a message from an investor containing the phrase fiduciary responsibility three times.

Maisie changed the website. Oliver packed returns. Everyone answered customer credit card disputes.

On Tuesday, Linnie sent a photograph of herself sitting in a chair beside the hospital window.

On Thursday, she asked Hazel to visit.

“I’m busy,” Hazel said.

“I’m Linnie,” she responded.

***

The envelope lay on Linnie’s blanket.

Hazel assumed it contained a bill.

Inside was a printed airline itinerary with her name on it.

She read it, then looked at Linnie.

“What is this?”

“A plane ticket.”

“I can see that.”

“I’m glad we’ve established your vision isn’t going.”

Hazel read the dates. Beside the window stood a small suitcase. Oliver’s backpack rested on top of it.

“You’re leaving?”

“Next week.”

“And you bought me this?”

“Grandmother helped.”

The ticket had cost a small fortune.

“Can you get a refund? It’s too much.”

“You don’t have to come.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

But she could not explain what she meant without explaining the photograph, the questions about acreage, the calculations she had made while Linnie slept. What she intended to do.

“I was interested in the plants,” she said.

“I know.”

“For my business.”

“Yes.”

“You may not understand the sort of business I had in mind.”

Linnie adjusted the blanket over her knees.

“Then you can tell us when you get there.”

Hazel looked at the itinerary again.

“My grandmother has already told everyone about the water pitcher,” Linnie said. “You’ll have to do it at least once.”

“I’m not performing tricks for an entire village.”

“Just the pitcher. And maybe a window.”

For the first time in weeks, Hazel laughed.

It came out strangely. She cleared her throat.

On the windowsill, the photograph leaned against a vase of flowers. Hazel could still see the hillside, the pale blossoms, the crop no one had thought to sell.

A month ago, she would have known exactly what to do with it.

“Has Oliver got a proper coat?” she asked.

“It’s warm there.”

“For the airport.”

“He has a coat.”

“It’s a dreadful coat.”

Linnie smiled.

“I can make a fortune with the Black Somnus Root, you know.”

“Yawn.”

“A fortune.”

“I think you’ll really like them,” Linnie said. “They are going to love you.”

“What makes you think…”

“I have a good sense of these things.”

“I’m terrible with people.”

“No. You’re just shy. I think you’ve got the magic touch.”