Customer Service (for the Recently Enchanted)

“Thank you for calling HexSupport. Your wait time is approximately one lifetime.”

Renee said the line like a prayer she didn’t quite believe in. Her headset pinched the curve of her ear, and the neon sigils flickering across the cubicle walls buzzed like hornets in a jar.

Someone in Facilities had set the lavender diffuser to “repentance,” making the office smell like a yoga studio that ghosted you.

She adjusted her wand—duct-taped, regulation gray—and brought it awake with a flick. “HexSupport, this is Renee, Level Three Enchantment Specialist. How can I help cancel the curse you gave yourself today?”

A man whispered, “I think my girlfriend’s hair is… alive.”

“In a conversational way or a devouring way?” she asked, pulling up the Charmify.AI integration panel.

“Conversational. Mostly.”

Renee sighed. Another Love Lock bundle—algorithmic spell optimized for retention, not consent. Her basil plant from home, an act of rebellion since HR banned caffeine after the Gremlin Incident of ’42, leaned toward her like it wanted the gossip.

“Okay,” she said. “That’s Level Two Animism. Brush counterclockwise and repeat, ‘I release you,’ three times. If it slaps you, you probably deserved it.”

He laughed, relieved. She logged the case as resolved, and the dashboard rewarded her with virtual confetti. Corporate had gamified empathy last quarter.

The wand felt warm in her hand. She rubbed its tape seam the way people rubbed worry stones—absentmindedly, reverently. Around her, a hundred voices murmured into headsets, smoothing panic into compliance. The floor hummed like a beehive full of apologies.

Next call. “HexSupport, this is Renee.”

“I bought a Summon™,” said a man, “and now there’s a demon in my dishwasher giving me performance reviews.”

“Is it speaking in tongues or bullet points?”

“Bullet points.”

“That’s a corporate demon. Offer it a lateral move into your junk drawer. Praise its initiative. Give it a stapler to manage.”

A pause, then delight. “It’s organizing my batteries by brand!”

“Excellent,” she said. “Please rate this call on a scale of one to five pentacles. Anything under five gets me turned into a compliance toad.”

Her basil nodded sagely. They both knew she was joking. Mostly.

Renee rubbed shea butter into her knuckles. The night shift chewed up the hands first. By 3 a.m., they ached like unkept promises. She closed her eyes for half a breath. Then: the next call.

“HexSupport, this is Renee.”

A pause. Then a child’s voice. “Hi… my mom’s frozen.”

Renee’s spine straightened. The basil went utterly still. Her dashboard, sensing tension, offered a chipper sticker—YOU’VE GOT THIS!—complete with a flexing wand. She clicked decline.

“Hey there,” she said, keeping her voice low. “What’s your name?”

“Ellie.”

“Hi, Ellie. Where are you right now?”

“In the kitchen. My mom’s smiling, but… she won’t blink.”

Renee’s pulse picked up. “Did your mom use a spell today?”

“The app said it would make her feel better. It was called A-I-Cura. It said it could fix heartbreak.”

Renee froze. AI-Cura. Spell ID 32F4-REN-0427. Her code. A freelance grief buffer she’d written months ago for ChatSpell’s open marketplace—intended to dull heartbreak, not paralyze a person mid-laugh. It wasn’t supposed to freeze anyone.

“Ellie, can you tell me what happened?”

“She cried at the sink. Then she pointed her phone at herself, said the words, and the air got fizzy. She laughed, and then she got stuck.”

Renee searched the protocol database. No reversal existed. Of course not. The company sold comfort, not closure.

“Do you see her phone?” Renee asked.

“It’s on the floor. It keeps saying, ‘Would you like to upgrade?’”

Renee pressed a thumb between her eyes. “Put me on speaker, okay? Set the phone near her hand.”

A clunk. The faint hum of a refrigerator, the steady drip of a faucet, a faraway dog negotiating with the moon.

“Good job, Ellie. Now, I’m going to say some words. You’ll say them after me. It’ll sound like a game, but it’s not a game. We’re going to help your mom.”

“Okay.” Her voice was small, but steady.

Renee raised her wand toward her mic. The duct tape smelled faintly of lemon from the building’s ever-blooming trees. “Spell ID thirty-two F four,” she murmured, “rollback to pre-bind state.

Release frost from flesh and grief from grid.”

Ellie repeated it perfectly. Kids were good at magic—they hadn’t learned to distrust it yet.

“Now,” Renee said, “ask your mom if she wants to come back.”

“What if she doesn’t?”

“Then we wait,” Renee said softly. “We don’t force her. We hold her hand and breathe.”

A moment passed. Then—the sound of ice deciding to become water. A pop, a gasp, the rhythm of a faucet again.

“What happened?” A woman’s voice, hoarse and alive.

“Mom!” Ellie’s sob burst through the line. “You got stuck!”

Renee closed her eyes. “You’re safe,” she whispered, though no one could hear.

They talked for a while after that. Soup. Warm blankets. Deleting the app. Renee promised to send a free reversal kit, even though there was no such thing. When the call ended, the dashboard summarized it in cheerful bureaucracy:

CALL DURATION: 28:19.

TICKET CATEGORY: USER ERROR.

POLICY FLAG: UNSANCTIONED SPELLCASTING.

The wand port hissed and locked itself.

Ezra’s face appeared on her screen, smile polished to compliance. “Hey, Renee. Quick retro on Ticket 44-413?”

“Now?”

“Just a sec,” he said. “You’re one of our best.”

They met in the glass conference cube. The air smelled of citrus and corporate guilt. Ezra perched on the edge of the table, ankle over knee, posture of a man who believed empathy was a deliverable.

“So,” he began, “amazing save.”

“Thanks.”

“Thing is, we don’t do saves. We offer best practices. No interventions.”

“She was frozen, Ezra.”

“I hear you,” he said. “But you overrode recording and cast a reversal. That’s a breach.”

“To keep a child from losing her mother.”

He gave a patient smile. “You’re one of our top performers. But we can’t be responsible for, you know—outcomes.”

“People,” Renee said. “You mean people.”

He exhaled. “Take the rest of the night off.”

Corporate for consider yourself suspended.

At her desk, Zara slid her a contraband coffee. A tiny sigil glowed on the lid. “Heard,” she said.

Renee nodded, took a sip, and let the heat burn her tongue until it felt like defiance.

Her queue blinked: Account Review in Progress. She should’ve gone home. Instead, she opened the spell repository. AI-Cura v1.1. Her creation. Her mistake. Comments below the code scrolled endlessly: Life saver! Worked too well, lol. Can’t feel my hands but five stars!

The cursor blinked like judgment.

Magic and machine were both languages for want. That’s what people never understood. The app didn’t care about healing; it cared about data. It turned grief into a subscription, heartbreak into engagement.

Renee copied the code into a blank field. Her grandmother’s voice echoed in her head: What you bind, you carry.

She rewrote. A safeguard, not a fix. Every AI-generated spell would have to detect a living pulse before it could execute. No heartbeat, no magic. Restoration spells exempt. Domestic charms exempt. Anything to manipulate love, grief, or control? Blocked.

She named it Heartbeat.

The cursor hovered over “Deploy.” Her throat tightened. She thought of Ellie’s voice. Her mother thawing.

She pressed Enter.

The system blinked. Are you sure?

“Yes,” Renee said out loud.

The building exhaled. Sigils on the walls steadied. Her basil rustled like gossip. Far above her, the digital veins of ThaumaTech began to pulse with something new.

Ezra’s face reappeared, color draining. “Renee, what did you just—”

“Nothing you’d understand,” she said.

The lights flickered as the update spread through the network. A thousand terminals flashed in sync. Across the city, call queues froze. The new version uploaded itself like a whispered prayer.

CHANGELOG UPDATED: HEARTBEAT 1.0

The messages started flooding in almost instantly.

A woman wrote: Didn’t turn my husband into a frog. Talked instead. Thank you.

A teen: You said to unbind my self-worth from my screen time. I can breathe now.

A barista: The demon in my espresso machine unionized. Tips are better.

Then, a voicemail.

“Hi,” said Ellie. “Mom’s okay. She’s asleep on the couch. I made soup. I left some for you at the front desk. You sounded hungry.”

Renee laughed, full and human.

Security arrived, polite and grim. The woman in front carried a clipboard like a sword. “Administrative Leave Pending Investigation,” she said, sliding the paper over.

“You good?” she added, softly.

“Ask me tomorrow.” Renee signed, gathered her things—her wand, her basil, her worn scrunchie—and walked into the lemon-scented dark.

Outside, the city breathed differently. The billboards flickered, reset.

FIX YOUR LIFE IN ONE TAP! became SPELLS NOW REQUIRE A HEARTBEAT.

Somewhere, an executive choked on espresso. Somewhere, a lover chose conversation over convenience. Somewhere, a child’s mother decided to grieve the old way—slowly.

Renee walked home under a sky that hummed like circuitry remembering the wind.

Her apartment smelled faintly of rain and citrus. On the mailboxes sat a plastic container marked RENEE in a child’s handwriting. She lifted the lid. Soup. Still warm. Protected by a charm that would fade by morning.

She carried it inside like communion. Ate slowly, as if each spoonful were a vow.

Afterward, she opened her personal spellbook—navy, frayed, pages smelling faintly of candle smoke. On a blank page, she wrote:

HEARTBEAT (Variation: Witness)

What you bind, you carry.

Her phone buzzed. Zara: You legend. Systems down. People are casting by hand again. It’s chaos. I love you.

Renee typed back: Hold the line. Then added a heart. The old kind, not the emoji.

She slept like someone had unspooled a ribbon from her spine.

Morning came lemon-bright. Newsfeeds screamed: HEXSUPPORT HACKED—SELF-OPTIMIZATION TAKES A HIT. Anchors wrung their hands about “consumer rights” and “unauthorized empathy.” An influencer cried on camera about having to ask her roommate to hold her hand for a thirst charm. The roommate smiled like she’d been asked to matter.

Renee poured coffee and read an unsigned email: This doesn’t have to be a firing. Come back and we’ll find a path forward.

Another email followed: Consulting opportunities available. People will pay for spells that don’t sell them back their own hearts.

She stepped onto her fire escape. The city below shimmered with new possibility. Two teenagers stood on the corner, palms pressed to the pavement, whispering a chant. A dandelion cracked through the sidewalk. They shrieked and high-fived.

Her phone rang. The ringtone was an old one—nostalgic, defiant.

“Hi,” said a voice. “This is Ellie’s mom.”

Renee smiled into the morning air. “Hi.”

“I wanted to say thank you. We ate soup on the couch and cried a little. I didn’t freeze. And Ellie… she wants to learn. You know. The kind of magic that helps.”

Renee nodded, unseen. “That I can teach. But she’ll teach me, too.”

They agreed on a time. A kitchen table. A pot of soup. A lesson.

After she hung up, Renee wrote herself a list:

– Return headset (maybe with flowers)

– Send Zara a real wand tape

– Buy lemons

– Teach Ellie the reversal hum

– Apologize to Ezra’s plant

– Learn a spell that doesn’t require an audience

The building’s group chat pinged endlessly—neighbors asking who could hold whose hand for a “tiny charm, nothing big.” Someone posted a sign downstairs: NO BLOOD MAGIC IN STAIRS, PLEASE AND THANK YOU.

Renee laughed. The sound surprised her.

There was a knock at her door. Her neighbor—the one with the tiny dog—held out a small jar wrapped in lavender tissue. “Honey,” he said solemnly. “For the revolution.”

She laughed again, took it, handed him a lemon from her bowl.

When she finally sat down, she whispered a quiet grace into her spoon: Thank you for the kid who believed me. For the woman who thawed. For the plant that stayed. For the duct tape that held. For the lemon that refused to apologize for being bright.

Her phone buzzed one last time.

HexSupport is experiencing longer-than-usual wait times.

Renee grinned and whispered back, “Thank you for calling. Your wait time is approximately one lifetime. Please hold someone’s hand.”