Right Hand Magic by Nancy A. Collins Page B

protested.
    “That’s okay; The more I think about it, the more I’m pretty damned sure it’s Boyland,” Mr. Ottershaw insisted.
    “I don’t care if there’s a video of him paying for it on YouTube; I refuse to curse him, or anyone else,” Hexe said sharply. “I practice Right Hand magic only, Mr. Ottershaw. That’s why my lifting powers are so strong. I don’t dilute them by practicing any Left Hand magic. If that’s what you really want, you can take your money and go elsewhere!”
    “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to insult you,” Mr. Ottershaw said, unnerved by the outrage in Hexe’s voice. “Go ahead and get rid of this curse, spell, whatever the fuck it is. Assuming you can fix it, that is.”
    “Are you asking if I can lift the curse?” Hexe sniffed. “Of course I can.”
    “How much?”
    “Five thousand dollars.”
    Ottershaw’s eyes looked as if they were about to leap from their sockets. “Five thousand! That’s outrageous!”
    “If you say so.” Hexe shrugged. “You’re welcome to go elsewhere. However, I doubt you’ll be able to find anyone willing to do it any cheaper. And if you did find someone who could underbid me, I doubt they could reverse the spell in less than two days.”
    “Two days?!?” Mr. Ottershaw wailed. “But my presentation is this afternoon!”
    “All the more reason to get started, then,” Hexe said pointedly, folding his arms across his chest.
    “Okay! Okay! You win! Five thousand it is!” Ottershaw snapped. “It’s not as if I have a choice in the matter, is it?”
    “No, you don’t,” Hexe agreed as he reached inside the desk and removed a wireless handheld credit card terminal. “Will that be credit or debit, sir?”
    I blinked, taken aback by the sudden intrusion of modern technology in the middle of a conversation about curses, sorcery, and the casting of spells.
    “Credit,” Mr. Ottershaw replied as he fussed with the clasp of the horsehair sporran hanging from the front of his kilt. “Give me a second. . . . It’s somewhere in this damned fuzzy purse. . . . Is MasterCard okay?”
    “I take everything except Diners Club.”
     
     
    “So . . . are most of your clients like this guy?” I asked.
    Hexe laughed without looking up from the cauldron he was stirring. We had withdrawn to the kitchen, leaving Mr. Ottershaw to ogle the pickled monkey’s paw and other oddities in the study while we concocted the potion needed to counteract the curse. I say “we,” but in reality Hexe was the one doing all the work. All I did was hand him jars full of dried herbs and less identifiable items when he asked for them.
    “He’s pretty typical. Most curses are more embarrassing than deadly—more like elaborate practical jokes, really. For example, an angry wife makes her cheating hubby’s junk look like a balloon animal; a jealous man inflicts horrendous bad breath on his romantic rival; someone arranges for the coworker in the cubicle beside him to develop Tourette’s. Hand me that jar of dried frog feet, will you? Thanks.
    “These curses might be socially awkward, but, in the end, they’re far from life threatening. They’re also the curses easiest to lift, because they’re normally cast by jugglers—Kymerans who use both Left and Right Hand magic. Because the caster is ambidextrous, the curse is rarely dark enough to do any real damage.
    “But I also get victims of genuinely malevolent curses—where they vomit up sharp objects, like pins and needles, or are compelled to bite themselves or murder their own children. Those cases are extremely difficult to turn widdershins. Hand me that jar of fly agaric, please. . . .
    “The reason those are harder to lift is because the caster is usually a necromancer. They practice nothing but Left Hand magic, and because of that, their curses tend to be very dark, and very, very strong.
    “Luckily, Mr. Ottershaw’s enemy—whoever he or she might be—was only interested in hindering him, not harming