Updated Apr 13, 2026 • ~14 min read
Chapter 1: The Cursed Client
Oliver
Oliver Reyes is halfway through his third cup of coffee when the door to his office swings open with enough force to rattle the protective charms hanging from the doorframe, and he looks up from the grimoire he’s been annotating to find a woman standing in the threshold with wild eyes and hair that’s defying gravity in a way that has nothing to do with hairspray and everything to do with residual magical energy clinging to her like static electricity.
“I need help,” she says, voice shaking, and before Oliver can respond—before he can even set down his coffee mug with its faded “World’s Okayest Curse-Breaker” label that Daniel gave him as a joke last Christmas—a potted plant on the filing cabinet lifts into the air and hurls itself across the room, shattering against the wall in an explosion of soil and ceramic shards.
Oliver doesn’t flinch, just sets his mug down carefully on the cluttered desk and stands, already reaching for the small leather pouch of salt he keeps in his pocket for exactly these kinds of situations. “Poltergeist manifestation or curse-induced telekinesis?” he asks, tone conversational, friendly even, because he’s found that panicking clients respond better to calm questions than to dramatic proclamations, and this woman—mid-forties, expensive-looking suit now rumpled and stained, wedding ring conspicuously absent from her left hand—is clearly on the edge of a breakdown.
“I don’t know,” she says, and another object lifts—his stapler this time—hovering in the air like it’s suspended by invisible strings. “My ex-boyfriend cursed me. I ended things three weeks ago and ever since then, things just… fly. Everywhere I go. I got fired yesterday because I broke every window in the conference room during a board meeting.”
Oliver nods, moving around the desk with practiced ease, already cataloging the symptoms in his mind—localized telekinesis, triggered by emotional distress, likely a minor hex designed to make the victim’s life inconvenient rather than actually dangerous, the kind of petty magical revenge that small-minded practitioners use when they’re feeling vindictive. “What’s your name?” he asks, pulling a stick of chalk from his desk drawer and kneeling to draw a quick containment circle on the hardwood floor, the familiar motions soothing in their repetition.
“Jessica Marino,” she says, watching him with the kind of desperate hope that Oliver has seen on countless faces over the years, the look of someone who’s tried everything else and is putting their faith in magic as a last resort.
“Nice to meet you, Jessica. I’m Oliver, and I’m going to fix this, but I need you to step into this circle for me.” He finishes the chalk lines, adds the necessary sigils at the cardinal points—protection, grounding, clarity, release—and stands, gesturing to the space he’s created. “It’s going to contain the magical energy so we can isolate the curse and break it without any more of my office supplies becoming projectiles.”
Jessica steps into the circle, and immediately the stapler drops to the floor with a clatter, the ambient magic in the room settling as the containment takes effect. Oliver can feel it, the way he always can—that faint buzz at the base of his skull that signals magical activity, the gift his grandmother insisted was a blessing even though it’s never been strong enough to do more than sense magic, not actually wield it. His abuela was a bruja, a real one, powerful and respected, and Oliver inherited just enough of her legacy to be sensitive to magical energies without having any real power of his own, which is ironic considering he makes his living breaking curses that he can’t actually cast.
“Stay there,” he says, and moves back to his desk, pulling out the small wooden box where he keeps his working tools—a silver knife that’s never been used for anything but cutting magical ties, a vial of blessed water from a church in Barcelona that his abuela visited before she died, a length of red thread that’s been knotted nine times for breaking bonds. “Tell me about your ex. What kind of practitioner is he?”
“He’s not—I mean, I didn’t know he was magical until after I broke up with him,” Jessica says, hands twisting together nervously. “We dated for six months. He seemed normal. But after I ended things, he showed up at my apartment and said I’d regret leaving him, and then he did… something. Whispered words I didn’t understand and touched my forehead, and ever since then, everything’s been chaos.”
Oliver returns to the circle, kneeling at its edge, and he can see the curse now—not with his eyes, exactly, but with that sense his grandmother gave him, the ability to perceive magical workings as impressions, as feelings, as the ghost of something that exists just outside normal perception. This one is tangled around Jessica’s aura like barbed wire, thorny and mean-spirited, designed to trigger whenever she experiences strong emotion and turn that emotion into kinetic energy. “It’s a spite hex,” he says, already unknotting the red thread. “Relatively common, unfortunately. The good news is it’s easy to break. The bad news is your ex is a petty asshole.”
Jessica laughs, a sound that’s half-sob, and Oliver grins up at her because humor helps, because making clients feel human instead of like victims tends to make the whole process easier. “I’m going to cut the connection between you and the curse,” he explains, holding up the silver knife. “It won’t hurt, but you might feel a little dizzy when it releases. That’s normal. Just breathe through it.”
He doesn’t wait for her response, just presses the flat of the blade against the chalk line of the circle and begins the working—it’s not a spell, exactly, because Oliver doesn’t have the power for spells, but it’s something close, a combination of ritual and intention and the trace magic in his blood that lets him manipulate the curses other people cast. He speaks the words his abuela taught him, a mix of Spanish and older languages he doesn’t fully understand but knows in his bones, and he wraps the red thread around the knife’s handle, pulling tight, visualizing the barbed wire of the curse unraveling, fraying, coming apart.
The magic resists at first—it always does, because curses are stubborn things, designed to cling and persist—but Oliver is patient, and he’s good at this, better than he probably should be considering he’s mostly human, and after a moment he feels the curse give, feels it snap like a rubber band pulled too tight, and Jessica gasps as the magical energy dissipates, flowing out of her aura and into the containment circle where it burns away harmlessly in a brief flash of light that smells like ozone and burnt coffee.
“There,” Oliver says, sitting back on his heels, feeling the familiar exhaustion that comes after curse-breaking, the way it drains him even though he’s not the one casting magic. “All done. You’re free.”
Jessica touches her forehead, eyes wide, and then she starts crying—the good kind of crying, relief and release—and Oliver stands, offers her a tissue from the box on his desk, and gives her space to process while he scuffs out the chalk circle with his shoe.
By the time she’s composed herself, Daniel has emerged from the back office where he’s been doing research all morning, and Oliver’s business partner—tall, lean, perpetually caffeinated, entirely human but with an encyclopedic knowledge of magical theory that makes him invaluable—surveys the broken plant and scattered office supplies with the weary resignation of someone who’s cleaned up after Oliver’s curse-breaking sessions too many times to count.
“Successful consultation?” Daniel asks dryly, and Oliver shoots him a grin.
“Always am.”
Jessica pays in cash—curse-breaking exists in a legal gray area, not quite legitimate enough for credit cards but necessary enough that people are willing to pay handsomely for Oliver’s services—and leaves with instructions to call if she experiences any residual effects, though Oliver knows she won’t need to because he’s thorough and the curse is well and truly broken.
The moment the door closes behind her, Daniel’s expression shifts from amused to serious, and Oliver feels his stomach drop a little because he knows that look, the one that means Daniel’s found something in his research that’s going to complicate Oliver’s life.
“Three witches vanished this month,” Daniel says without preamble, moving to his desk and pulling up a file on his laptop, turning the screen so Oliver can see. “No bodies, no trace. Magic signature completely erased.”
Oliver moves closer, reading over Daniel’s shoulder—missing persons reports, news articles from occult community forums, witness statements from covens reporting members who disappeared without warning. The first witch vanished four weeks ago in Providence, the second two weeks after that in Cambridge, the third just five days ago right here in Boston. All of them powerful practitioners, all of them simply… gone.
“That’s not curse work,” Oliver says slowly, that familiar buzz at the base of his skull intensifying as he looks at the crime scene photos, at the spaces where magic should leave traces but doesn’t, where there’s just… nothing, like someone took an eraser to reality. “That’s something darker.”
“I know,” Daniel says grimly. “I’ve been digging into historical records, trying to find similar patterns. There are cases going back decades—clusters of disappearances, always witches, always without trace—but nothing recent until now. Whatever’s doing this has been dormant for a long time.”
Oliver’s mind is already racing, cataloging possibilities—magical predators, entities that feed on power, rogue practitioners harvesting energy—and none of them are good, all of them are dangerous, and this is exactly the kind of case that he should probably stay far away from because curse-breaking is one thing but hunting whatever can make witches disappear without a trace is something else entirely.
“We should refer this to someone with actual power,” Oliver says, even though he knows he’s not going to, even though he can already feel the pull of curiosity and the need to help that’s gotten him into trouble more times than he can count.
“I already did,” Daniel says, and he pulls up another file, this one with a name and an address. “Talk to Sage Thornwood. She might know something.”
Oliver reads the name, reads the address—a bookshop in Salem, because of course it’s in Salem—and feels that buzz intensify, anticipation mixed with something that might be trepidation. “The Thornwood witch?” he asks, because he’s heard the name before, whispered in occult circles with a mixture of respect and fear. “I heard she’s terrifying.”
“She is,” Daniel confirms, and his expression is sympathetic in the way that means he’s sending Oliver into a situation he knows will be difficult. “Good luck.”
Oliver looks at the screen, at the address for Thornwood Occult, at the case files detailing three missing witches and the vast emptiness where their magic used to be, and he knows he’s going to take this case because he always takes the cases he shouldn’t, because someone has to help and it might as well be him, even if the person he needs information from is apparently terrifying enough to warrant warnings.
He saves the address to his phone, finishes his now-cold coffee in one long swallow, and tells Daniel he’ll be back later.
“Try not to get cursed,” Daniel calls after him, and Oliver laughs because if he had a dollar for every time Daniel said that, he’d have enough money to retire from curse-breaking entirely.
The drive to Salem takes forty minutes in typical Boston traffic, and Oliver spends the time listening to a podcast about historical hex work and mentally preparing himself to meet a witch who’s notorious enough to have a reputation that precedes her. He parks on a street lined with tourist shops selling crystals and tarot decks to people who think magic is aesthetic rather than real, and finds Thornwood Occult tucked between a coffee shop and an art gallery, its storefront painted deep purple with gold lettering that shimmers faintly in the afternoon light.
The moment Oliver steps inside, he feels the wards—powerful, layered, the kind of protective magic that takes serious skill and even more serious power to maintain—and that buzz in his skull becomes a low hum, his grandmother’s legacy recognizing the presence of real magic, the kind that could kill him if it wanted to.
The shop is exactly what he expected—shelves crammed with books, bundles of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, crystals arranged in geometric patterns that probably serve magical purposes he doesn’t understand—and behind the counter, reorganizing jars of what looks like graveyard dirt with the kind of focused intensity that suggests she’s irritated about something, is a woman who must be Sage Thornwood.
She’s beautiful in a way that’s sharp rather than soft, all angles and dark hair pulled into a messy knot, dressed in black like she’s attending a funeral or trying to ward off conversation, and when she looks up at the sound of the door chime, her eyes are the most striking shade of green Oliver has ever seen—and completely, utterly unwelcoming.
“We’re closed,” she says flatly, voice low and cold, and goes back to organizing her jars.
Oliver blinks, glances at the sign on the door that clearly says “OPEN,” and decides to try charm because charm usually works and he’s very good at being charming when he needs to be. “Hi! I’m looking for Sage Thornwood!”
She doesn’t look up. “Get out.”
“I haven’t even said why I’m—”
“Don’t care. Out.”
Oliver takes a breath, adjusts his approach, and tries honesty instead because charm clearly isn’t working and he’s running out of options. “Three witches are missing. I think you know something.”
That gets her attention. Sage Thornwood goes very still, hands frozen over the jars, and when she looks at him again her expression has shifted from annoyed to something much more dangerous, something that makes the wards around the shop hum with barely-contained energy.
“Who sent you?” she asks, and her voice is quiet now, deadly quiet, the kind of quiet that precedes violence.
“I’m a curse-breaker,” Oliver says, keeping his tone calm, non-threatening, trying to project competence and trustworthiness even though he’s pretty sure this woman could destroy him without breaking a sweat. “I want to help.”
“I don’t need human help,” Sage says, and the dismissal in her voice stings more than Oliver wants to admit.
But he sees something in her eyes, beneath the anger and the coldness—he sees fear, genuine fear, the kind that comes from loss and trauma—and he knows, suddenly and certainly, that she does know something about the missing witches, and that whatever she knows is personal.
Oliver doesn’t leave. He stands there in the doorway of Thornwood Occult, meeting the gaze of the most intimidating witch he’s ever encountered, and he makes a decision that’s probably going to change his life in ways he can’t predict.
“I’m not leaving,” he says quietly. “Not until you talk to me.”
Sage Thornwood’s eyes narrow, and the air in the shop crackles with magical potential, and Oliver knows he’s either about to get some answers or get thrown out by a very powerful and very angry witch.
He’s really hoping for the former.
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