Right Hand Magic by Nancy A. Collins

faintest hint of a Scottish burr. “Are you Hexe?”
    “Not even close,” I laughed, wiggling the fingers of my free hand.
    The stranger’s face turned beet red. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—”
    “You’re at the right place, though,” I assured him as I unlocked the front door. I quickly checked the foyer to see if Scratch was standing guard, but he was still upstairs, keeping an eye on Lukas.
    “Hexe!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “There’s someone here to see you!”
    Hexe emerged from the back of the house, drying his hands on an embroidered dish towel. He didn’t bat an eye at his visitor’s sartorial splendor.
    “Yes, sir. How may I be of service?”
    “The name’s Ottershaw. Wallace Ottershaw. You come highly recommended by a friend of mine—Louis Feldspar?”
    Recognition sparked in Hexe’s golden eyes. “Ah, yes! Mr. Feldspar! His estranged wife cursed him with dysmorphophilia.”
    “Dysmorpho-whatsit?” Ottershaw scowled.
    I silently heaved a sigh of relief that someone else, for once, was willing to play the nump, because I didn’t know what the hell it was, either.
    “It’s a compulsive preference for ugly sexual partners,” Hexe explained dutifully. “Mr. Feldspar was most relieved when I succeeded in lifting the curse.”
    Ottershaw eyed Hexe, taking in his purple hair and the faded CBGB’s logo on his T-shirt. “Louis said you were good. Are you?”
    “At the risk of sounding immodest, Mr. Ottershaw, I am very good.” Hexe gestured to the open door of his study. “Please step into my office and tell me what your problem is. Oh, before we start, I trust you won’t mind that I include Miss Tate on the consultation?”
    Ottershaw gave me an uneasy look. “Is it absolutely necessary that she be involved?”
    “I will need her help in preparing a potion,” Hexe replied with the utmost seriousness.
    This was news to me, but I didn’t argue the point. I had always wondered what kind of services Kymerans provided for their human clients, and now I had a chance to find out firsthand.
    I followed Ottershaw into Hexe’s office, which resembled a cross between a law office and P. T. Barnum’s rummage sale. Bookshelves crowded the walls, extending all the way to the ceiling, from which hung a stuffed crocodile. While some of the shelves housed leather-bound books, others were crowded with religious reliquaries, pickled pathology specimens, carnival sideshow memorabilia, and, in one case, a tableaux depicting taxidermy squirrels playing poker. In the middle of the room was a desk covered in drifts of arcane ephemera, on which sat a Tiffanystyle lamp with a shade made from an armadillo’s shell.
    “Please be seated,” Hexe said, gesturing to the easy chair opposite the desk.
    Ottershaw hesitated as he tried to figure out a way to sit down without flashing everyone in the room, before finally tucking the kilt between his milk white legs like a diaper. He sat down, wrapping his hands protectively across his knobby knees. The only way he could have looked more uncomfortable was if he set his hair on fire for good measure.
    “The reason I came to see you is . . . I can’t wear pants.”
    “I take it you’re not Scottish, then?” Hexe said with just a hint of a smile.
    “I was born in Scarsdale, for crying out loud. My mother’s grandfather was from Aberdeen, though. This is his kilt I’m wearing. It’s an heirloom,” Mr. Ottershaw explained, shifting about uneasily. “And it’s as scratchy as hell.”
    “So I see. Now, what makes you believe you can’t wear pants?”
    Ottershaw’s cheeks turned crimson. “It’s not that I can’t. It’s just that whenever I do put on a pair of trousers, I, uh, well, you see—I have this uncontrollable urge to go.”
    Hexe frowned. “Go where?”
    Mr. Ottershaw’s blush climbed all the way to his bald spot. “You know— go .”
    Hexe’s eyes suddenly widened. “Oh! I see! Would that be Number One or Number