The Witches’ Reunion

As the High Priestess, I decided to host the first witches’ reunion in the city of Pasadena while everyone was distracted by the Rose Parade.

Our faces looked more tired, but the spells and our old-world cooking recipes remained the same.

Witches came from everywhere.

Some parked their brooms in the bicycle area, which immediately caused problems because several of them looked identical in the dark.

Others Ubered to the reunion because they did not want to deal with confusing their broom with someone else’s and accidentally flying home on a stranger’s emotional baggage.

Some came from the desert. Some came from small towns where the only available moon water was whatever had collected in a birdbath.

But we denied access to the ones who bought their sage at Silver Lake boutiques and translated English into Latin as if Latin were their native tongue.

We had to draw the line somewhere. We discriminated against Hollywood witches.

“Blessed be,” I said.

“Now, sisters,” I said, tapping the microphone. “Tonight is a very special night.”

The room had been decorated with battery-operated realistic flame candles from Costco.

“For centuries, we have had to go through intermediaries. Spirits. Messengers. Minor entities. Ouija boards. Magic 8 Balls. Occasionally, a very overworked raven.”

Several witches nodded.

“You remember the raven,” I said. “He took forever to relay messages because he had accepted too much work. Funerals. Omens. Breakup dreams. One woman kept asking him to check if her ex had moved on.”

“At some point, he was carrying so many messages that he started misdelivering them. He sent apologies to the wrong widows. He delivered bad omens after the person had already died.”

The room went still.

“That was especially unhelpful.”

A witch whispered, “If you can no longer trust ravens, who can you trust?”

“The devil,” someone shouted.

The room froze.

That voice sounded familiar.

I paused.

Then I continued, because when you are hosting an event, you cannot allow every demonic voice to derail the program.

“Recently, my cable company upgraded my internet at no extra charge.”

The room went silent.

“I do not know exactly what plan I have now. Fiber? Ultra? Max? Something with bandwidth. The point is, I was finally able to host a night with the spirits without buffering.”

A few witches gasped.

“Yes,” I said. “The connection was strong enough for the spirits to carry a message all the way down to him.”

Someone whispered, “To the devil?”

I nodded.

“To the devil.”

“And tonight, sisters, for the first time in his devilish life, he has agreed to appear not through a raven, not through a dream, not through a Ouija board, not through a Magic 8 Ball.”

The room grew still.

A witch in the back dropped her candy canes.

“No other witches’ convention has ever brought you the devil himself as a guest speaker,” I said. “Not Salem. Not Voodoo Doughnut. Not even that overpriced retreat in Joshua Tree where they made everyone sleep in yurts and called it spiritual resilience.”

Several witches murmured.

“You remember the one,” I said. “The retreat where they released goats into the camping area to police negative energy, but the goats immediately turned against the participants and began trampling through the tents.”

A few women nodded.

“By the end of the weekend, every participant needed a chiropractic adjustment.”

“And then,” I continued, “instead of apologizing, one of the organizers tried to add another healing activity.”

“What activity?” someone asked.

“Chiropractors with goats.”

The room went silent.

Several women groaned.

Then one witch in the back finally snapped.

“Show us the devil!”

At that exact moment, someone’s phone started ringing.

The ringtone was an eerie little song, the kind of melody that sounded like it had been composed by a haunted ice cream truck.

Everyone turned.

The Costco candles flickered mechanically.

The computers in the back began installing mandatory updates.

On the snack table, the hot salsa began getting hotter.

A witch dipped a tortilla chip, tasted it, and immediately started coughing.

“It’s increasing,” she said.

Then the fire alarm went off.

The projector screen flickered.

A figure appeared on the screen, seated in what looked like a very Wayfair-decorated home office.

The devil adjusted his horns.

“Can everyone hear me?” he asked.

The organizer rushed forward.

“You’re muted.”

The devil rolled his eyes and cursed.

“I have been summoned across dimensions,” he said, “and still somehow, the first thing I hear is that I’m muted.”

“For centuries,” he said, “humans have been using my name irresponsibly.”

The room went still.

“They keep blaming me for everything. Wars. Son of Sam. Greed. Reality television. Men who own acoustic guitars. I have nothing to do with most of that.”

He sounded tired.

“I have not had official business on Earth since they crucified Jesus.”

Someone gasped.

“What?”

“That was the last time the assignment made sense,” he said. “Jesus was there. There was structure. At one point, we even tried to be civilized and went out for wine to resolve our differences.”

“And did you?” someone asked.

The devil looked away from the screen.

“In a way.”

“We made peace with each other. I went back to the underworld. He went back to his father’s kingdom.”

No one spoke.

“And both of us,” he said, “gave up on humanity.”

“After that?” someone whispered.

“After that,” said the devil, “humans started freelancing.”

The room went silent.

“Do you know how annoying it is to be blamed for every terrible thing people do when I have been retired for two thousand years?”

“So you retired after the crucifixion?” someone asked.

“Spiritually, yes,” he said. “Administratively, it took longer. The final paperwork wasn’t processed until the end of World War II.”

The room went still.

“After that, God accepted my resignation, and I looked around and realized humanity no longer required outside influence.”

“That’s dark,” someone whispered.

“That’s documentation,” said the devil.

“So who won?” someone asked.

The devil smiled.

“That depends who you ask.”

Then he logged out without saying goodbye.

“Okay, everyone,” I said, returning to the microphone. “This concludes our reunion.”

The witches looked disappointed.

“I know. I know. Traditionally, this is where we would dance around a fire.”

Several women nodded.

“Unfortunately, we are not allowed to do that here.”

A few witches started heading out.

“I did try to negotiate. I told the owner of the center we would keep it casual. Nothing dramatic. Just a small ceremonial flame. Maybe roast a few marshmallows.”

“He wasn’t buying it.”

“He said if he smelled anything burnt or sulfur, we were not getting our deposit back.”

The room went quiet.

“And sisters,” I said, “we have already lost enough tonight.”

“Also,” I said, before anyone could leave, “do not forget to take the blueberry muffins.”

Several witches froze.

“The almond flour blueberry muffins I made to raise funds for Witches Awareness. Everyone grab as many as you can fit in your baskets and sell them on your way home.”

“Please Venmo me the proceeds by midnight,” I said. “And do not eat the inventory. This is a cause.”

Someone whispered, “What does Witches Awareness even do?”

I looked at her.

“It raises awareness.”

“For witches?”

“For the fact that we are still here, still misunderstood, still being blamed for TV hauntings, and apparently still responsible for our own snacks.”

“I started going door to door selling homemade almond flour blueberry muffins to raise money for women who had been spiritually misunderstood by their local communities.”

Unfortunately, it started raining.

I had been walking through the neighborhood for hours with a basket of muffins, a damp flyer, and a level of commitment that, in hindsight, may have crossed into poor decision-making.

By the time I reached his house, the rain had gotten worse. My hair was stuck to my face. My cloak was soaked through. The almond flour muffins had absorbed so much moisture they were beginning to resemble emotional sponges.

I knocked.

When he opened the door, he looked at me standing there in the rain with my basket of witch muffins and immediately said I was going to catch pneumonia.

“I don’t think pneumonia works that way,” I said.

“That’s what everyone says right before they catch pneumonia,” he said.

Then he looked down at the basket.

“And not only are you going to catch pneumonia,” he said, “but those muffins are going to catch pneumonia too.”

“They’re almond flour blueberry muffins.”

“Not anymore.”

I looked down.

The bottom row had absorbed so much rainwater they had begun to swell against the paper liners.

“They’re moist,” I said.

“They’re pneumonia sponge muffins.”

“How many pneumonia sponge muffins have you sold?”

“Only a dozen,” I said. “And I’m about to sell another dozen in this house.”

He stared at me.

He sighed.

“Venmo or Zelle?” I asked.

He pulled out his phone.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll take a dozen.”

I lifted the basket.

“Give me the batch from the bottom,” he said. “Some of those are still dried.”

That was when he told me to come inside.

He handed me his raincoat.

“Put this on,” he said.

So I took off my wet clothes and wore only the raincoat while my clothes dried.

I had just come from the witches’ reunion, and told him we had failed to close the circle properly.

We had been unable to locate a stray black cat.

A lot of people assume any cat will do, but that is not true. The familiar has to be unfamiliar. That is what most civilians don’t understand about pentagram work.

If you bring your own cat, he will step into the circle just because he wants you to like him more.

That invalidates the ritual.

What you need is a stray black cat. A gangster cat. A cat who has eaten behind restaurants, slept on top and under cars, and fought at least one koala for territorial reasons.

That kind of cat does not get scared and break the circle just because a shadow appears.

“I missed your goofy-looking face,” he said.

“It’s not goofy,” I said. “I just have really high cheekbones, and they keep getting higher and higher. One day they’ll rise all the way to my forehead and become horns.”

“It sounds like you wouldn’t mind at all,” he said. “You’re probably already shopping for hats slightly bigger to accommodate them.”

“Did you put cinnamon in the blueberry muffins?” he asked. “You know I’m allergic to anything good.”

“I did,” I said. “But just a little. So you should only die a little if you eat them.”

“I wish you were joking,” he said. “But knowing you, you probably calculated the dosage.”

“That’s my Cin,” he said. “Always obsessed with just dying a little.”

“Dying a little never killed nobody,” I said.

“I bet if I woke up dead, you would probably love me again.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I guess you’d have to die first to find out.”

“Okay,” he said. “This is going too far. I like funny Cin better than macabre Cin.”

How do I stop seeing you in my dreams. Can you remove the spell?

“It wasn’t a spell,” I told him. “It was one single strand of my hair and one of the buttons from my blouse. The button must have popped off inside your house. They were both carrying residual charge, a tiny part of my soul.”

He stared at me.

Then he looked horrified.

“Once you find the button and the single strand of hair,” I said, “you should be able to exorcise me from your head and your home.”

“I heard you’re done with everything,” he said. “Getting rid of everything. Selling everything. Closing everything.”

“Where are you going?”

“Here,” I said.

And I pointed.

He looked at it for a moment.

“That’s out of this world,” he said.

“Exactly.”