Witches recognize their own.

So I could tell this customer was . . . different . . . the moment he walked into my store. Not to mention the bell on the door failed to chime.

He was gorgeous: golden hair glinting in the light of the amber sconces, eyes the blue of a perfect periwinkle, tanned skin with just a hint of whiskers inviting one’s touch. Tall and graceful, he had the too-perfect, unreal beauty seldom seen outside a movie theater. And we were a long way from Tinseltown. This was San Francisco, where “silicon” referred to computer chips, not plastic surgery. Here, people were only too real in their endearing, genuine lumpiness.

But what really drew my eye was the energy he emitted; to a witch like me, he was as conspicuous as a roaring drunk at an AA meeting.

The stranger approached, the lightness of his step suggesting a talent for sneakiness. I waited behind the horseshoe-shaped display counter and fingered the protective medicine bundle that hung from a braided string around my waist.

“Lily Ivory?”

“That’s me,” I said with a nod.

He placed an engraved business card on the glass countertop and pushed it toward me with a graceful index finger.

Aidan Rhodes--Male Witch

Magickal Assistance

Spells Cast—Curses Broken—Love Potions

Satisfaction Guaranteed

“Male witch?” My eyes wandered up, down, and across his muscular frame. “Are you often mistaken for a female?”

This was San Francisco, after all.

“Rarely, now that you mention it.” A glint of humor lit up those too-blue eyes. “But most people don’t realize men can be witches.”

“Sure they do. They just call them ‘warlocks’.”

He winced. “Warlock” means “oathbreaker” in Old English, and calls to mind the men who betrayed their covens in the bad old burn-the-witches-at-the-stake days. Some male practitioners called themselves “wizard” or “sorcerer,” but most preferred “witch”. It was a solidarity thing.

There are as many different types of witches—the good, the bad, the magnificently venal—as there are familiars. Still, the vast majority of us are female. I had an inkling of the power of a traditional women’s coven, but in my experience male witches were wildcards with a tendency to stir up trouble.

Nothing about Aidan Rhodes suggested otherwise.

“Cute accent,” he said. “You twang.”

“It’s not my fault. I grew up in Texas.”

“I know. I knew your father.”

“Really.”

“We worked together.”

“Is that right?” My tone was nonchalant, but my mind was racing. Aidan Rhodes was not overtly threatening, but if my father was involved all bets were off.

I glanced over at my co-worker Bronwyn, who was across the room preparing a concoction for a middle-aged client with a nasty case of eczema and a nastier case of an unfaithful husband. The women’s heads were bent low as Bronwyn ground up dried herbs with a wooden mortar and pestle. They appeared absorbed in the task. Too absorbed. Aidan Rhodes, male witch, must have cast a cocooning spell. If so, they wouldn’t hear a single word we said; indeed, wouldn’t be aware of his presence at all.

“It’s not every day someone like you moves into the neighborhood, much less opens a shop.” Aidan’s long, elegant fingers caressed a pile of hand-tatted lace collars in the wicker basket on the counter. “A retail store, though, that surprises me. Unusual career path for one of your…talents.”

“Is there a reason you’re here?” I asked, upgrading the man from a curiosity to an annoyance. I wasn’t usually so abrupt with potential customers, but it seemed unwise to use the shopkeeper’s standard greeting, “May I help you?” in case I inadvertently obligated myself to him. There’s many a slip twixt cauldron and lip, my grandmother, Graciela, had drilled into me. Words mattered in the world of spell casting and a slip of the tongue could have dire consequences.

“As a matter of fact, there is. I brought you a housewarming present.”

“Thank you, but that’s not necessary.”

“I’m happy to do it.”

“I’m afraid I can’t accept.”

“Oh, but I insist.”

“I said no, thank you.”

“You don’t know what it is yet.”

“That’s not the—”

“Pleased ta meetcha.”

I whirled around to find a misshapen creature perched, gargoyle-like, atop an antique walnut jewelry display case. He was small and bent, with a muscular body and scaly skin, a large head, a snout-like nose and mouth, and outsized ears like a bat’s. His fingers were long and human-like, surprisingly graceful, but his enormous feet had three toes and long talons. His voice was deep and gravelly.

“I’m your new familiar,” it said.

“I’m afraid not, I’m a so—” I turned to give Aidan a piece of my mind, but he was gone, the door slowly swinging shut. The bell had once again failed to ring. I swore under my breath.

“A so what, Mistress?”

“Excuse me?”

“Before you started swearing you said you were a so.”

“I wasn’t swearing.”

“Were too.”

I blew out an exasperated breath. “I’m a solo act. I don’t need a familiar.”

“You’re a witch, aintcha? Ya gotta have a familiar.”

“Says who?”

“It’s in the handbook.”

“There is no handbook. Besides, I’m allergic to cats.”

“I’m no cat.”

“So I’ve noticed. But I’m probably allergic to…creatures such as yourself, too. Run along home to your master.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause you’re my master now, Mistress.” The creature attempted a smile, which took shape as a grimace.

“I’m serious. Now, scoot.”

The grimace fell from his greenish-gray, gnarled face. Had it been possible, he would have paled. “You don’t want me?”

“It’s nothing personal. I just don’t need—“

“Don’t send me away, Mistress!” he begged, jumping down from the display case. Even at full height he didn’t reach my belly button. He dropped to his knobby knees and clasped his hands, gazing up at me in supplication. “Please don’t send me away. I’ll be good, Mistress, I swear.”

“I can’t have a goblin in the shop!”

“I’m not exactly a goblin.”

“Gnome, then.”

“Not really a gnome, either….”

“Whatever you are, you’ll scare away customers.”

“Howzabout a pig?”

“A pig?”

With a sudden twist of his scrawny shoulders, he transformed himself into a miniature Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. He grunted, wagged his curly tail, and darted around the counter.

“Hey! Get back here, you—”

“Bless the Goddess, isn’t he sweet!” Bronwyn squealed, nearly knocking over a rack of 1950’s-era chiffon prom dresses in her haste to cross the room. “Where’d he come from? I’ve always wanted one of these! George Clooney had one, did you know? They’re very smart.” Bronwyn scooped up the squealing swine and held him to her generous bosom where, I couldn’t help but notice, he stopped kicking and snuggled right in, his pale pink snout resting on her ample cleavage. “What’s his name?”

I sighed. I had a million things to do today. Evicting a piggish gnome—or a gnomish pig—was not one of them.

“His name’s…. Oscar,” I said off the top of my head, thinking of the Sesame Street character. The ugly little fellow seemed like he would feel at home in a garbage can. “But he’s not mine. He’s a…loaner. He’s just visiting.”

Bronwyn and Oscar both ignored me.

“Oscar. Aren’t you just a darling? Aren’t you Bwonwyn’s wuvey-dovey piggy-pig-pig?” She crooned to the creature in the high-pitched, goofy tone humans reserve for cherished pets and pre-verbal children.

Oscar snorted and rooted around in her cleavage. Bronwyn chuckled. I sighed.

A plump woman in her mid-fifties, Bronwyn had fuzzy brown hair and warm brown eyes. She favored great swaths of gauzy purple clothing, lots of Celtic jewelry, and heavy black eye make-up. The first time I saw her I couldn’t decide if she was a delightfully free spirit or just plain nuts. Shortly after I opened my vintage clothing store, Aunt Cora’s Closet, she had approached me about renting a corner of the shop for her small herbal business. I welcomed the company. Bronwyn was a so-so herbalist and an amateurish witch, but she had lived in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood since its hippy heyday and knew everyone. She would be my entrée into a new and unfamiliar city.

Besides, Bronwyn had been one of the first people I met upon my arrival in San Francisco, and she had welcomed me with open arms. Literally. Bronwyn was a hugger of the bear variety.

Finding a safe place to call home wasn’t an easy task for a natural witch from a small Texas town. For years I had traveled the globe, and finally came to the City by the Bay at the suggestion of an ancient parrot named Barnabas, whom I’d met one memorable evening in a smoky bar in Hong Kong.

“The Barbary Coast,” he’d said, gazing at me with one bright eye from his perch on the bar. “That’s the place for you. But be careful!”

“Of what?” I’d asked.

“The fog,” Barnabas replied, holding a banana in one foot and peeling it with his beak. “Mark my words. Mark the fog.”

“What about the fog?”

“Mark the fog! Mark the fog!” he screeched. “Hey! Son-of-a-bitch bit me! Whiskey! Whiskey and rye till the day that I die! Set up another round! Who’s buying?”

That was the problem with parrots, I thought as Barnabas waddled off to harass the bartender. They’re smart as heck and never forget a thing, but they do like their booze.

I can’t normally understand animals when they speak, so I assumed he was either a shape-shifting elf –like the pig currently snuggling in Bronwyn’s ample arms—or I had been drinking way too many Mai Tais. But either way, I took the incident as a sign. I packed my bags and headed to San Francisco, a city home to so many beloved lunatics and cherished iconoclasts that for the first time in my life nobody noticed me. Or so I hoped. The unsettling appearance of Aidan Rhodes-the-male-witch and Oscar-the-familiar might make keeping a low profile a challenge.

I watched as Bronwyn embraced the wriggling pot-bellied pig with her typical unguarded, open-hearted enthusiasm, wishing I could do the same. I didn’t know quite what to make of my new “housewarming gift”. What might Aidan Rhodes, male witch, want from me? And why would he bring me a familiar, of all things?

The door opened again, its bell tinkling merrily as my inventory scout walked in.

“Maya!” gushed Bronwyn. “Come meet our sweet little Oscar.”

“Jumpin’ jehosephat, what is that?” Maya recoiled. Twenty-three years old chronologically, but closer to forty on the cynical scale, Maya had dark dreadlocks dyed bright blue at the ends, ears edged with silver rings and cuffs, and an aversion to make-up because, she’d explained earnestly, it was “too fake.” Why the bright blue hair didn’t strike her as equally artificial I wasn’t sure. Maya attended the San Francisco College of the Arts part-time, but her passion was visiting the elderly of her community and recording their stories for an oral history project.

I met Maya a few weeks before as she sat on a blanket on the sidewalk, half-heartedly peddling the 1940s-era beaded sweaters some elderly friends had given her in their attempt to “make a lady out of her.” That quest was doomed to fail, but in the course of our conversation Maya and I discovered we had mutually beneficial business interests: she scouted her friends’ closets and attics for inventory for my store, and I paid her a generous finder’s fee.

“I believe it’s called a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig,” I said. “Apparently George Clooney has one.”

“Had one,” Bronwyn corrected me.

“Okay….” Maya said. “Why?”

“A friend couldn’t keep it,” I said. “It’s only here temporarily. Sort of a foster situation.”

“We eat things like that in my neighborhood,” said Maya.

“Hush, child!” scolded Bronwyn, clapping her hands over the pig’s ears and whispering. “He’ll hear you.”

“He’s a pig, Bronwyn,” Maya pointed out. “In case you didn’t notice.”

“He’s not deaf. And he’s a special pig. I love my little Oscarooneeroo.”

“Hey, whatever floats your boat,” Maya said with a shrug and an enigmatic smile.

Today Maya was taking me to meet a woman who had lived in the same home for more than fifty years and who, according to Maya, “had never thrown away a single item of clothing.” That description was music to my ears. Hunting down high-quality vintage clothing was a competitive sport in the Bay Area, and elderly pack rats were my bread and butter. Besides, I was on a mission lately: I needed to find the perfect wedding dress.

Not for myself, mind you. Me and romance…well, it’s complicated, to say the least. But Aunt Cora’s Closet was my first attempt at running a legitimate business, and I was so determined to do well that I wasn’t above giving the fates a nudge. On the last full moon I anointed a seven-day green candle with oil of bergamot, surrounded it with orange votives, placed malachite and bloodstone on either side, and after scenting the air with vervain and incense of jasmine I cast a powerful prosperity spell. Two days later the fashion editor at the San Francisco Chronicle called me with a fabulous plan: her favorite niece was getting married, she wanted to outfit the entire wedding party in vintage dresses, and could I be a doll and help her out?

As my grandmother always said, “Be careful what you wish for.” After weeks spent haunting estate sales, thrift stores, and auctions, I had managed to rustle up several options for each of the eleven bridesmaids as well as half a dozen gowns that could be altered to fit the bride. But anticipating bridal jitters, I wanted to have plenty of options on hand. Maya’s lead on two more gowns, if they were in good condition, would bring the selections up to eight. Surely one would catch the bride’s fancy.

The bridal party was scheduled to arrive tomorrow at two o’clock for a mammoth try-on session, and Bronwyn suggested I make the afternoon an event by closing the store to passers-by and serving mimosas –champagne and orange juice-- which sounded like a good idea. I hoped. I wasn’t what you’d call an experienced hostess.

As we used to say back in Texas: I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers.

“Lily, you ready to go?” Maya asked.

“Sure am.”

I grabbed my 1940s cocoa-brown wool coat from the brass coat stand near the register and pulled it on, securing the carved bone button at my neck. It was only four in the afternoon, but a wall of fog was creeping in, dropping the temperature a good fifteen degrees in the past five minutes. Late afternoon or early evening fog is not unusual for San Francisco, which sits on a thumb of land between an ocean and a bay. Still, recalling Barnabas’ warning to “Mark the fog,” I wondered if the weather had anything to do with Aidan Rhodes’ visit. Spooks loved the fog.

The thought gave me pause. If Aidan’s witchcraft was powerful enough to command the weather, I would have to be careful around him.

“Go ahead and close up if we’re not back by seven,” I said to Bronwyn, gently tugging on Oscar’s ear. “And you behave yourself, young man, or I’ll send you right back to where you came from.”

“Don’t you listen to her, Oscar Boscar Boo. Mama Bronwyn won’t let mean old Aunt Lily send you anywhere,” she crooned to my would-be familiar as Maya and I walked out into the cool March mist.

Shape-shifting creatures and meddlesome witches aside, the quest for really cool old clothes must go on.