Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber Page A

energy horrifying and crushing Hervey.
    He chuckled again, so that the three women lifted their eyebrows. He looked around at them enigmatically.
    “And yet,” he asked himself, continuing his earlier ruminations, in what was, at first, a much lighter vein, “why not?”
    Three witch women using magic as Tansy had, to advance their husbands’ careers and their own.
    Making use of their husbands’ special knowledge to give magic a modern twist. Suspicious and worried because Tansy had given up magic; afraid she’d found a much stronger variety and was planning to make use of it.
    And Tansy — suddenly unprotected, possibly unaware of the change in their attitude toward her because, in giving up magic, she had lost her sensitivity to the supernatural, her “woman’s intuition.”
    Why not carry it a step further? Maybe all women were the same. Guardians of mankind’s ancient customs and traditions, including the practice of witchcraft. Fighting their husbands’ battles from behind the scenes, by sorcery. Keeping it a secret; and on those occasions when they were discovered, conveniently explaining it as feminine susceptibility to superstitious lads.
    Half of the human race still actively practicing sorcery.
    Why not?
    “It’s your play, Norman,” said Mrs. Sawtelle, sweetly.
    “You look as if you had something on your mind,” said Mrs. Gunnison.
    “How are you getting along up there, Norm?” her husband called. “Those women got you buffaloed?”
    Buffaloed? Norman came back to reality with a jerk. That was just what they almost had done. And all because the human imagination was a thoroughly unreliable instrument, like a rubber ruler. Let’s see, if he played his king it might set up a queen in Mrs. Gunnison’s hand so she could get in and run her spades.
    As Mrs. Carr topped it with her ace, Norm was conscious of her wrinkled lips fixed in a faint cryptic smile.
    After that hand, Tansy served refreshments. Norman followed her to the kitchen.
    “Did you see the looks she kept giving you?” she whispered gaily to Norman. “I sometimes think the bitch is in love with you.”
    He chuckled. “You mean Evelyn?”
    “Of course not. Mrs. Carr. Inside she’s a glamor girl. Haven’t you ever seen her looking at the students, wishing she had the outside too?”
    Norman remembered he’d been thinking the very thing that morning.
    Tansy continued, “I’m not trying to flatter myself when I say I’ve caught her looking at me in the same way. It gives me the creeps.”
    Norman nodded. “She reminds me of the Wicked —” he caught himself.
    “— Witch in Snow White? Yes. And now you’d better run along, dear, or they’ll be bustling out here to remind me that a Hempnell man’s place is definitely not in the kitchen.”
    When he returned to the living room, the usual shop talk had started.
    “Saw Pollard today,” Gunnison remarked, helping himself to a section of chocolate cake. “Told me he’d be meeting with the trustees tomorrow morning, to decide among other things on the sociology chairmanship.”
    Hervey Sawtelle choked on a crumb and almost upset his cup of cocoa.
    Norman caught Mrs. Sawtelle glaring at him vindictively. She changed her face and murmured, “How interesting.” He smiled. That kind of hate he could understand. No need to confuse it with witchcraft.
    He went to the kitchen to get Mrs. Carr a glass of water, and met Mrs. Gunnison coming out of the bedroom. She was slipping a leatherbound booklet into her capacious handbag. It recalled to his mind Tansy’s diary. Probably an address book.
    Totem slipped out from behind her, hissing decorously as she dodged past her feet.
    “I loathe cats,” said Mrs. Gunnison bluntly and walked past him.
    Professor Carr had made arrangements for a final rubber, men at one table, women at the other.
    “A barbaric arrangement,” said Tansy, winking. “You really don’t think we can play bridge at all.”
    “On the contrary, my dear, I think