Carrot and Stick: How to Practice Responsible Witchcraft in a High-Crime Neighborhood - Chapter XI

Chapter XI

In-progress shots of civilian Carrot by Zara!

***

Silas didn’t think he’d ever entered a nail salon before. It just wasn’t his kind of place. He was pretty sure there were at least two of them within the magic community, because he had a vague memory of seeing them in passing, but other than the occasional visit to a barber, he wasn’t terribly keen on personal grooming of this sort.

Maybe Summer would like it? She was usually pretty modest, but he knew that she liked looking at those girly magazines. They could just never afford the nice things she saw in them.

In any case, the moment he stepped into Lina Nails he was hit by a deep and foreboding sense of... trespass? 

He wasn’t sure if that was the right term for it. It felt like when he had visited the teacher’s lounge at the Academy, or when he entered the restricted sections of the Ordo’s headquarters to deliver something. 

Silas Switchbranch did not belong in this place.

The walls had a few rather tacky posters stuck to them with nails and beauty products on display, they provided a bit of non-pink light to the room, which was needed because the rest of the space went from a pale, almost white-ish pink to a neon pink so vibrant it hurt to look at. It even smelled pink in there. Or at least, the mixture of soaps and perfumes and the faint scent of isopropyl alcohol made him think of pink.

The salon was rather small, an old brick building squeezed in between two others, with a narrow glass window at the front and a thin and long kind of floorplan. There were two little stations further in, with plush chairs across from tall stools and little UV lamps.

“Hi!” Carrot said as she entered and held her hat so that it wouldn’t smash into one of the display racks to the sides. “We’re here to make an appointment?”

Silas glued on a smile and tried not to look as awkward as he felt. Still, this was a job, so he casually pulled out his detection device and swept it across the room.

The readout pinged non-stop, like a geiger-counter in a uranium mine. He shared a quick look with Carrot, but she just smiled guilelessly. It wasn’t long before someone came to greet them. A thirty-something year old woman that seemed a little scatterbrained and lost. She had an agenda in one hand with appointments on it. 

“Hello? Um, yes, welcome to Luna Nails. Did you have an appointment?”

“We might have one, maybe,” Carrot said. “Are you alright, miss?”

“Hmm?” the woman said. She blinked, then jumped, not so unlike someone startled awake. “Oh, um, yes. Appointments... wow, uh... sure, we can take you now?”

“Sure,” Carrot said. “Seems like there aren’t any customers here now?”

“Oh? Well, yes, we do things fast. It’s just a few seconds, I think,” the woman said.

He flicked his scanner up and down in her direction. More readings. Lots of residual magical energy, but... he didn’t think she was the source.

Judging by how confused and a little tired she seemed, she was either a severely overworked customer-facing employee, or something more sinister was up. Silas suspected the latter. 

“Okay, please, take a seat... oh, are you both having your nails done?”

“No, not me,” Silas said.

The woman blinked. “In that case, you’ll have to wait outside, please.”

He stared. “And if I was getting my nails done as well?”

“Oh! That’s good. Sit on the second seat, please.” She stared deeper in, almost as if looking for where the seats were. “That one, I think. Yes, that one. I’ll be... back.”

The woman wandered off, walking with a bit of a wobble to her step until she slipped through a back door and was gone.

“She didn’t ask about what we wanted, or prices, or anything,” Carrot said.

“Yes,” he replied before he reached out and touched his forehead. He could feel something pushing at him, something subtle and intrusive. “There’s a compulsion magic here, I think,” he said. “It’s subtle. I think it’s not too dissimilar to a SEP field.”

“A what?” Carrot asked.

“It’s... something we developed to make normal mundane people not feel bothered by seeing anything overtly magical,” he explained. “I believe we’re in an area with something similar, though it feels darker.”

“I can’t feel anything like that,” Carrot said. “Though there’s a lot of magic here.”

He nodded. “The hat’s protecting you. It’s what it’s meant to do. I think she wanted us to sit... on those.”

There were two rather comfortable and rather odd chairs to one side. They were hidden from view by a small divider, but both seats were otherwise out in the open. 

They were leather and steel, old chairs that definitely belonged to a salon of some sort, with reclining backs and all, though they were also definitely dated. He flashed his scanner at them, and it squealed at their presence. 

“Oh, those are real cursed, aren’t they,” Carrot muttered. 

“Yeah,” he agreed. 

His mind started to churn as he started to run through the logical conclusions to what he was seeing. 

There were two chairs. Both seemed nearly identical, and while he couldn’t be sure about the type of curse on them, he could guess that they were similar in nature to one another. That was obviously very concerning for one big reason.

A single item gathering negative magical energy until it was cursed happened. It happened all the time. Usually it would be something minor and a passing wizard would only handle it if they happened to notice the object. 

Two, similar objects meant that there was purpose behind the curse. Plus, these radiated more negative energy than some unlucky item that had randomly absorbed negative energy. 

Someone had made these and cursed them on purpose, then set them here where they would be used. 

Carrot stepped closer, and he reached out, touching her shoulder to stop her from getting within range of the chairs. “I think I can figure out what they’re doing if I touch them,” Carrot said. “Just a little?”

He worked his jaw, then nodded, slowly. The hat ought to protect her, at least a little. Still this was like looking at someone about to grab red-hot iron with gloves on. The gloves would help, certainly, but they’d only help so much.

Carrot carefully reached out and smacked the edge of one chair, like someone swatting at a fly.

“Huh,” she said before shivering all over. “Oh, ew.”

“Well?” he asked.

“I think... it makes you want to just sit down and relax and forget? I don’t know? It’s given me that kind of feeling.”

“Weird,” he said. “Definately negative in aspect, but not altogether... evil. Maybe this is just the first step, however?”

“Like... once you’re sitting down and relaxing, someone comes in and steals a kidney?” Carrot asked.

“That is absolutely not what I was thinking, no,” he replied before looking around. He moved his sensor as well. It pinged off of a few other things, but mostly it seemed like it was lingering magical energy. Some paint nearby, sitting on a shelf, was magical to some degree, but it seemed unaspected. Ulvex paint, of all things, not enchanted. 

“Oh, I don’t know if we can snoop,” Carrot said before she pointed to something across the room. There was a table with some supplies that Silas couldn’t identify on it, as well as some magazines. “But there’s something magic there.”

He frowned and crossed the room. His device wasn’t pinging off anything in particular, but when he moved the magazines aside, he found something else that was concerning.

A notebook. 

Just a plain, spiral-backed notebook, the kind that probably existed in the thousands in schools across the world. There was nothing written on the front, but when he flipped it open, he felt himself blanching.

Runes, spell formation, notes in the margins. He flipped through a few more pages. There were instructions. Each one numbered, and kept very simple. A child could follow these. 

“What is it?” Carrot asked.

“Spells. Or... a set of spells? They’re meant to be cast via painting, of all things. I’ve seen something similar, but only in enchanting, which isn’t my domain. This one... absorbs magic. This one contains it. This one... complicated, but I think this one transforms life energy into magic? That’s a cursed spell if I’ve ever seen one. And this last one sends magic.”

“Sends?” Carrot asked.

“In theory, and I suppose in practice, you can have a magical ‘battery’ or container send magical energy to another place, or to a person. Though that would be dangerous.”

“Like... from across a room?”

“Or further, yes. But the further you go, the greater the loss of efficiency. It’s very inefficient.”

Carrot leaned over. “So... one spell absorbs magic, another turns life into magic, and another contains it, and then one sends it somewhere?”

“They’re all separate spells,” he said.

“But can they work together?” she asked.

He felt his gut sink. “In theory, yes.”

“And you said they worked by being painted on?” Carrot asked.

He nodded. She’d come to the same conclusion he had, then.

The door leading deeper into the salon opened, only except for the sleepy clerk, what stepped through did so with a clack of hooves on linoleum.

“Oh, my, goshness!” Carrot gasp. “So cute!”

***

Carrot couldn’t resist, she clapped her hands together and did a little dance. Sure, the thing was clearly a daemon, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t cute! 

The daemon deer was just about tall enough to meet her eyes, with soft-looking pale brown fur and big, soft eyes. “Hi!” she said.

The deer daemon froze. She--because there were no horns, and Carrot was pretty sure she was a doe--froze for a moment before her pretty eyes narrowed. “Go sit down.”

Carrot fell back onto her heels. She felt a wave of magical energy splash over her, like standing in the path of a fan blowing warm air, only... yeah, it didn’t connect.

Silas took a step towards the chairs, then stalled before shaking his head. “Carrot. I don’t think I need to explain that that’s trouble.”

“No, I get it,” Carrot replied.

The doe wasn’t entirely naked. It had a small vest on (so cute!) with a bunch of pockets that she could probably reach into by turning her head around. There were the handles of brushes within, and tiny jars that were probably for nail polish. 

“I’m going to use something that’ll distract people away from here,” Silas muttered. “Do you think you can take it?’

“I can,” Carrot replied. She was feeling pretty confident about her skills. She could take on a daemon, even if it was in its own territory.

“Pft,” the doe said before she shifted and widened her stance. “Take me on? I don’t think you know what you’re dealing with? Why don’t you Sit Down and we’ll see if we can’t turn you both into good little batteries for master.”

“Master, huh?” Carrot asked. “Strange that that person would come up again so soon. Hey, I hope you don’t mind, but I have a newly improved spell to test out. Thai isn’t the best place for it, but... yeah, I’m really excited about it. Or you can surrender.”

Carrot grinned.

“If you surrender, I’ll pet you behind the ears, and on the chin, and give you scritches, and we’ll become best buddies, and we’ll go for long walks in the countryside, and I’ll feed you berries.”

The doe blinked. “Weird human,” she said. “Fine then. Let me show you what the Master has taught me. Cursed seal art: Painting the World of Pain!”

Carrot stared, wide-eyed, as nail polish came pouring out of the bottles on the doe’s back and started to form glowing sigils in the air. 

“Oh... well, shoot! I guess we’ll have to put off the scritches for later, then!” 

***