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TWELVE

Forty-two men matched with Thorn. And that was within an hour of her uploading her new profile picture earlier this morning.

If Madam Maude were here, she would eat her words about Thorn being highly unsuitable.

The photo Thorn took last night wasn’t even one she’d put effort into. She was a little cross-eyed in it from trying to figure out where to look when taking a selfie.

By breakfast, ten of those men had direct messaged her through the Darling app. Some of them simply commented that she was beautiful. Others asked how her day had been or about her hobbies. A small number jumped straight into asking to meet up.

Thorn studied the profiles of her suitors.

“I’m glad to be a modern woman, Bandit. Back in our time, for courtship and marriage, twenty-nine was considered old for women.

I would’ve had to concoct an even stronger potion to make me a twenty-year-old.

But look! Some of these modern men even specified in their profiles that they don’t want children or more children!

I shall reply to those only.” While she might have plumper skin and the perkier boobs of a twenty-nine-year-old, her uterus was still approaching forty.

Unfortunately, most of those matches, even those who had messaged her first, simply did not respond to her replies. Their exchanges all went something like this:

MAN: Hey, beautiful.

THORN: Hey, handsome.

THORN: Anyone there?

THORN: Anyone there?

THORN: Anyone there?

But later that afternoon, one did reply. Jason. Forty years old. A banker. Looking for the one. One child shared with ex-partner and not looking to make more.

JASON : How did you get the name Thorn? Are you prickly?

THORN : My sister, Rose, told me that she named me to be a part of her.

JASON : How sweet!

THORN : But she couldn’t have named me, because she was only a year older. My mother told me she and my father only wanted one child, so he left right after I was born, and so she named me after what I always was—a thorn in her side.

Jason’s status switched to typing… and he was still typing when Bandit hopped onto the table next to the rubber pet brush Walls had brought him yesterday. The tourists are here.

The door opened for another round of the Covenstead Witchy Tour. Today’s guide was a Historical Society member named Janet.

“Everyone, look at what our resident witch, Thorn Scarhart, is brewing!”

“Come and quench your thirst with fresh bat-wing juice,” Thorn said, mustering as much enthusiasm as she could, though she only got up to the zeal of a wilted cabbage.

She was too distracted. As she served the goblets of lemonade with one hand, she had her eyes on her cell phone the whole time.

Jason’s status now kept switching between typing… and online .

“Are you Thorn’s daughter?” a tourist asked in between sips of lemonade. “I saw pictures of your mother on social media. And you look just like her but less wrinkly and with darker hair.”

How horrifying that in the past ten years, Thorn had aged twenty years. “I’m still Thorn. I drank a top-of-the-line Youth potion.”

“Of course, of course.” The woman winked.

Thorn winked back. She had gotten used to tourists taking everything she said and did as part of the act.

The woman took another long, slow sip. “But I paid to see the famous cranky old witch Thorn Scarhart. And now she’s young and doing nothing but being on her phone, just like any other person on the street.”

Thorn put down her phone. She grabbed the costume wand. But before she could strike the goblet out of the tourist’s hand, Janet scurried over and ushered the group toward the bed.

“The real Thorn will be back soon,” Janet said. “In the meantime, please take a look at this antique bed where the witch dreams of wreaths and wraiths.”

In no time at all, the fifteen members of this all-adult tour group were busy debating whether the bed could fit a lover.

The real answer was yes. But long before Thorn had ever had a lover in that bed, she’d shared it with both her mother and sister.

It was cramped, but being cuddled up with them on a cold winter’s night was a childhood memory she could recall with true fondness. She didn’t have many of those.

“Would Bandit have to leave the house or be locked in the bathroom when sexy times were in progress?” a tourist asked.

I’m not some impressionable kitten. Bandit pawed at the brush. Groom me, minions.

As much as Thorn admired modern society’s open attitude toward sex, she couldn’t help but blush. Her whole face was the color of a beet when her phone chimed. Jason had finally replied.

To say that Thorn was flummoxed by his response was an understatement.

Maybe this was yet another time-period miscommunication, like last week, when a tourist had mocked her chin hair and she’d slipped a hex ball into his coat pocket, only to find out later that GOAT was a compliment that stood for “greatest of all time.”

But Thorn was capable of rolling with the times. She went off to compose a reply.

“Look, that young witch is even taking her phone to the bathroom,” complained a tourist rudely testing the springs of Thorn’s bed. “I prefer the old witch.”

When Thorn stepped out of the bathroom a few minutes later, one tourist was brushing Bandit, and another lone figure was standing by the shelves of potions.

It was Lily, the young woman who’d visited more than a week ago. “Thorn, you look especially beautiful today.”

Thorn launched forward and pulled Lily into a bear hug, surprising both of them. Lily because she didn’t think she had said anything very impactful. Thorn because she realized it had been years since she hugged anyone. Or received a hug.

“I’m sorry,” Thorn said. “You’re the first of the pesky tourists to compliment me.”

“Are you getting ready for a special event?”

Thorn beamed. “I’m going on a date with my husband.”

“An anniversary date?”

“First date.”

Lily was clearly confused.

“First date if our conversation goes well. I’m still learning about modern on-the-line dating.” Not that Thorn was experienced in dating in any form in any century. Not with a grand total of one lover and a relationship that had lasted fourteen months, nearly two decades ago.

“Online dating is the pits. Actually, dating in general is the pits. It could be fun if you don’t expect to find love.”

“If you’re not looking for love, why would you date?”

As Thorn was schooled by a relative stranger in the concept of hookups and one-night stands, she could have spontaneously combusted with bashfulness.

But she was mostly grappling with the fact that in a century that frowned upon soul-stealing, it was remotely acceptable for women to eschew marriage.

“But if you must do the dating app thing”—Lily sighed in resignation—“just be careful of unsolicited dick pics.”

“None of my matches is named Dick.”

“I meant pictures of penises.”

“A man did send such a picture, but his name isn’t Dick.”

“Wait a minute.” Janet practically flew from beside the bed to beside the table where Thorn now sat. “You didn’t reciprocate, did you?”

“I might have,” Thorn said hesitantly as the other tourists gathered round. The looks on their faces suggested that she had committed a social sin. “Is that not part and parcel of modern courtship?”

Janet’s eyes were so big Thorn wondered if they were up for grabs if they popped out. Eyeball of human was an ingredient for Invisibility potion.

“Is that why you were in the bathroom?” Janet asked.

Thorn didn’t want to, but she nodded. “To be honest, I don’t understand the allure of swapping photographs of body parts.”

Janet’s mouth opened. Thorn couldn’t hear her scream, but it frightened Bandit off the table.

Humans , he spat just before he disappeared under the bed.

Finally, Janet brought her pitch back down to human range. But this time, she whispered, “Did you tell this man you’re the Covenstead witch? What if he distributes that picture? The Historical Society will be history!”

Thorn looked at her phone. “Jason just replied. I guess he didn’t like my response, because he wrote, ‘You’re sick,’ and unmatched me. I don’t understand! I even used the ‘Romantic’ filter over the photograph.”

Janet looked over Thorn’s shoulder. There were three seconds of silence as Janet registered what kind of revealing photo could disgust a man who sent unsolicited dick pics.

Then she lunged away and braced herself against the wall, all the while making retching sounds as if she had swallowed a frog.

But atop the low cabinet by the window, Penny looked perfectly fine and happy in her cat-safe enclosure.

“You’re deranged,” Janet managed to say in between retching fits.

“I put it right back,” Thorn said, though she had no idea why what she’d done was such an offense.

Earlier in the bathroom, Thorn Scarhart had placed her witchy fingers over her abdomen.

Without so much as a drop of blood, her fingers then slid through her skin, glided past flesh and muscles, until she reached her right kidney.

She pulled it out of her body and snapped quick a photograph of it before putting it right back where it hung.

In the end, Janet did upchuck. And that ended the tour ten minutes early.

After Lily and Thorn shepherded the tourists out, Janet emerged from the bathroom wiping her mouth.

She said, “You’re playing this role way too dark.”

“Too dark would be if I’d taken out my heart and didn’t put it back quickly enough.” Thorn snorted. “Because I’d be dead, get it?”