Gwen wrinkled her nose as the rotted corpse tumbled to the ground. “I hate zombies, I really do. They smell, they’re always so twitchy and jerky, and they always go for the head. Are you two okay?” She glanced at the couple cowering in the corner of the alley.
Their eyes were wide, and darting between her and the now re-dead undead.
“Wh-wha-wha…” blubbered the man.
The woman was a little more pulled together. “What the fuck was that?!” she shrieked, and Gwen flinched.
She forgot sometimes how things appeared to normal people. She’d been, well, not normal for a very long time.
“It’s okay,” she said, trying to be comforting, reassuring. The look of terror on the man’s face indicated that it wasn’t working. “It’s dead. It can’t hurt you.”
“What the fuck is it?” The woman was not calming down.
“It was just a zombie,” Gwen said, edging over a little to stand between the corpse and her new problem. Maybe if they couldn’t see it, they would pull themselves together.
“A zombie? Like in one of those stupid horror movies?” The woman was indignant now. “How stupid do you think we are?”
“I don’t think you’re stupid at all,” Gwen started, but the woman cut her off.
“You must think we’re total idiots, to believe that that was a zombie. It must have been a mugger. Some addict who was deformed from all the drugs. Right, Bill?”
The woman shot a glance at the man next to her, but Bill still wasn’t fully back with them. She rolled her eyes at him. “Oh, come on, Bill. Pull yourself together. You’re running for Senate, for fuck’s sake.”
Gwen’s eyes widened. No wonder they looked familiar. She had seen them on TV a few times, but never paid much attention.
The woman turned her sharp gaze from Bill to Gwen. “Thank you,” she said, her expression anything but thankful. “What do you want?”
Gwen was confused. “Want?”
The woman nodded. “To keep quiet about this? We can’t have it getting out that a potential Senator was mugged by an addict, who was then killed by some strange woman in an alley.”
“Oh, I don’t want anything,” Gwen said, hurriedly. Zombies, vampires, warlocks, drunks in a bar, she could handle, but the politician’s wife before her was more terrifying than anything she’d come across.
The woman narrowed her eyes. “You must want something. I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t want something.” She grinned, and Gwen took a step back, narrowly missing the rapidly decomposing zombie. “And I have ways of getting rid of what I don’t trust.”
“Umm,” Gwen said, racking her mind for something to say. She was used to people thanking her and running away when things like this happened. Actually, just the running away part. Witches didn’t get thanked very much these days. Or ever.
An idea struck her. “How about,” she said, aware of the woman’s shrewd eyes on her, “a, favor?”
“A favor?” the woman echoed, her tone cold.
“Yeah, a favor,” Gwen said, shifting her feet. “If I need something in the future, I’ll contact you. You’ll help, and we’ll be square.”
“Hmm,” the woman said. “I suppose this is Washington. Favors, deals, happen all the time.” Her eyes flicked to her husband, whose shakes were subsiding. Soon enough, he’d get his brain back, and could end up being a problem.
“Fine,” the woman said, holding out her hand. Gwen took it gingerly, like it might bite her. They shook, and Gwen helped the woman to her feet.
They both pulled on Bill’s arms, and held him upright as he regained his footing.
“Maggie, what… what just…” he mumbled, but the woman just shook her head.
“I swear, men can be so fragile,” she muttered.
Gwen let out a laugh, and immediately shut up at the glare Maggie sent her.
“Sorry.”
Maggie lifted her chin defiantly. “Think what you want of me, but my husband is a good man, and he is going to change everything around here.”
“Sure,” Gwen said, not mentioning the number of times she’d heard that same boast in this town, and the number of times anything actually panned out. In what other city in the world could a witch make such a good living by selling truth serums and concealment charms? Maybe New Orleans, but for entirely different reasons.
Maggie opened her purse, fishing around for something. “I swear I had a business card in here somewhere,” she said.
Gwen just waved her off. “I’ll know how to find you.”
Apparently that was not reassuring. Maggie glared at her again, and somehow it still made Gwen uncomfortable.
“I prefer my associates interact in a more… grounded, way,” Maggie replied, her voice clipped.
Gwen understood. Lots of people wanted witches’ help, but didn’t actually want to be involved with magic. Didn’t want to think too hard about how things really worked.
And so Gwen waited patiently until Maggie found an embossed, cream colored card, and passed it over.
The card read Maggie Woodchat, Development Consultant.
What the hell does that even mean? Gwen wondered, but didn’t have the chance to ask. Maggie was already dragging her husband from the alley, checking to make sure there was no one around to see them.
Gwen watched them go, then turned back to the zombie with a sigh.
“You know you live in a weird city when the normal people are scarier than the monsters,” she told it, pulling a few magical odds and ends out of her pockets. “Now, let’s see if we can figure out who sent you after the potential senator and his tenacious wife.”
Inspired by a writing prompt from Writing Prompt Generator.
© The Lightning Tower, 2020