Page 52 of No Charm Done

Elias nudged Luna. “Does it always go like this?”

“This? Oh, this is relatively calm.”

He looked around the room, cataloguing names, faces, and temperaments as he once did marks. I’ve run cons in speakeasies, union halls, and Fifth Avenue penthouses, he thought. But I’ve never seen anything quite like this.

Eventually, Conrad wrestled the crowd into order. “Now then. You all know why we’re here: the CastR situation. Ashton Vex has escaped with three magicians, now his apparent allies. I’m told it’s safe to assume he hasn’t left town, due to his awareness of the forgetting spell. That means he’s likely staying put. This presents us with an opportunity. The floor is open for suggestions.”

Up on the stage, Jerusha’s hand shot up, and she certainly wasn’t one to wait to be called on before speaking. “I have a perfectly simple solution. Turn the boy into something harmless. A goat, perhaps.” She paused, considering. “Or a Ficus. I can keep him in my garden.”

“Oh!” Belinda clapped her hands, delighted. “Or turn him into luggage! I could use new luggage.”

Scarlett spoke up loudly from the front. “I don’t hate the idea.”

Kelly shot her middle daughter a look that could have curdled milk. “Of course you don’t. Delilah, I trust you have some rationality to offer?”

Delilah stood, calm and reasonable as always. “If Ashton disappears, people will notice. They’ll look for him. And once they start looking, they’ll keep looking.”

“That’s precisely what the forgetting spell was made for,” Jerusha replied. “They’ll forget us as soon as they leave.”

“But they won’t, exactly.” Jasper stood up, looking a little reluctant to put himself in the middle of all this. “Yes, the forgetting spell resets any awareness of Oak Haven. But it won’t change their concerns for their missing CEO.”

“Which will lead them back to Oak Haven,” Delilah inserted, “again and again.”

Jasper gazed at Delilah with obvious affection. “Ask me how many times I forgot this place and still found my way back.”

That landed. The witches nodded, realizing that the disappearance of a well-connected person like Vex might invite more attention than they could handle.

Jerusha clapped her hands decisively. “Well then! Can’t we just throttle the local Wi-Fi? No connection, no app. Problem solved.”

Scanning the room, Elias perceived a fault line: older witches nodded, while everyone under sixty raised their eyebrows.

“That’s not how it works,” Polly called out. “If the app exists anywhere, it exists everywhere. We’d have to babysit the entire internet forever. Or . . . destroy the network.”

“Impossible!” Priti Chatterjee barked out a laugh. “You can’t do that.”

Then Louise Demain stood, and when Louise stood, Oak Haven paid attention. “Why not craft a spell that rides the network itself. An elegant contagion, a glorious plague of unmaking that spreads like a fatal whisper through every tower and cable, every satellite. The curse would flow like blood through dying veins, turning each device to ash before it can birth further abominations into this doomed reality.”

Belinda applauded. “I love it! Let’s kill the phones!”

“No phones,” Jerusha noted, “no CastR.”

“You’re proposing planet-wide technological destruction?!” Aphra’s voice cracked with disbelief.

Priti shook her head. ‘You can’t kill phones, Mom! If you destroy cell phones, you isolate everyone not standing next to a phone jack. Hikers lost in the woods, elderly people living alone, anyone with an emergency in their car. People will die.’

Luna piped up. “This town already carries enough guilt from selfish decisions, hastily made. We certainly don’t need another Salem.”

A ripple of recognition went through the elders. The word Salem still drew blood.

“But the app!” Belinda protested. “It puts all witches in danger!”

Delilah countered, “Louise’s idea puts everyone in danger.”

Conrad tried to reclaim order. “Perhaps we should⁠—”

Too late. The room had already fractured along generational lines. Older witches were ready to burn the internet. Younger ones recoiled, horrified at the potential collateral damage. Voices overlapped, cutting each other off. The careful parliamentary procedure that Conrad loved drowned in an angry tide.

“—can’t just destroy civilization⁠—”