Daniel M. Hoyt grew up in the wild suburbs of Ohio, attending school, dutifully doing his homework on time, mowing patterns in the lawn in the summer, and flipping through pocket books he found at the grocery store, notably one on the subject of white witchcraft. A career in mathematics, software architecture and rocket science later, those carefree days in Ohio were all but forgotten—until witches moved into his present neighborhood, resulting in the strange but true story presented here. Since his first sale to Analog, in which he discovered with a shock that it's possible to get paid to lie (without getting arrested), Dan has sold several stories to other magazines and anthologies, including Baen's Transhuman anthology, and even crossed over to the dark side of anthology editing with Fate Fantastic (DAW) and the recent Better Off Undead (DAW). Catch up with him at http://www.danielmhoyt.com
"Why is it," my mother asked from my bedroom doorway, "that we have the only dead lawn in Cauldron Acres?" Even without seeing her, the sound of her flats tap-tap-tapping the hardwood floor in the hallway made it clear she was annoyed.
I shrugged from my prone position in bed, swabbing my face across a line of drool on my sweat-soaked pillow. Resisting the urge to wipe, I lay still, not bothering to open my eyes. It was my duty as a teenager to feign indifference.
"How is it even possible, young man? Isn't the mower bewitched to cut the lawn to precisely two inches every Thursday? Aren't the sprinklers bewitched to weed-and-feed every Tuesday evening? How, how, how can we possibly have such a crappy lawn?"
Shrugging again, I opened one eye and lazily glanced her way. "Maybe they're broken," I mumbled. That was the truth. I'd removed the spark plugs from the mower the previous fall, and cut the power to the sprinkler system months ago. Funny thing about bewitching machines from the mortal world: most witches expected the machines to be in working order to begin with, and only spelled the additional functions—like simple scheduling. If the machine didn't actually work, the additional spell wouldn't work, either.
Mom harrumphed and slammed my door shut. A minute later, I could hear her arguing with Dad in the living room. I figured I had maybe ten minutes until he'd come in for The Talk. Time to get up.
Grabbing my cell phone on the way to the shower across the hall from my bedroom, I thumbed the speed dial button for my best friend and fellow mortalo, Steve Lickens. "Slick? What you got going on today over in Spell Woods?"
"Not much," he said. "Painted a big pentagram in purple on the garage door last night. Half the neighbors are over trying to de-spell it."
I chuckled. Witches could be so dense sometimes, always looking for the spell or charm, with the obvious mortal answer staring them in the face. I think that's what attracted me most to the mortalos—not the "return to simple mortal times and values" that everyone thought, but the entertainment value of seeing clueless witches running around with their metaphorical pointy hats up their—
"You planning on living in that bathroom, Junior?" my dad's voice boomed outside the door, accompanied by barbaric pounding that rattled the hinges.
"Headcase," I mumbled into the cell. "Later, Slick." I snapped the cover closed, twisted the shower faucet on, clenched my teeth and called out, "In a minute."
Showering as slowly as I dared, I made sure to lather up extra hard with my mom's flower-bouquet soap and baby shampoo. When I opened my bedroom door forty-five minutes later, baby blue towel wrapped around my hair and wearing a fluffy pink, floor-length bathrobe, I found Dad sitting on my bed, fuming. I shuffled in, wrapped in a cloud of violets and hyacinth.
Rolling his eyes and wrinkling his nose, he said, "Must you smell so much like a girl, Marvin?"
Ah, the official start of The Talk. First Topic: My Name.
I turned my back on him to open my closet door and smiled. Mortalo 1, Dad 0. "I prefer Headcase, Dad." I grabbed some boxers and slipped them on under my robe.
"Not that Headcase doesn't suit you, but I distinctly remember naming you Marvin Denworth Case, Jr."
I pulled on cream-colored jeans and slipped off the robe, letting it heap on the floor. "I'm sure you did. But I still prefer Headcase."
"Is this another one of those mortalo things?" Mom said from the open doorway, sighed, and stepped in to retrieve my robe. "This silly name? Is it a mortalo name? What you see in mortal ways, I just don't understand. Witchcraft has made our lives so much easier!"
Pulling the towel off my head, I handed it to Mom so she could retreat to the safety of the doorway. The towel had already served its purpose, which was to confound Dad. My short blond hair would be dry by now, anyway. I selected a bright red polo and slipped it on.
"Maybe it's too easy, Jenny," said my dad, no doubt leaning on my nightstand as he struggled up from my bed. "Maybe we've done him a disservice by giving him so much." He stomped to the doorway.
Topic Number Two of The Talk: What Went Wrong?
"Hey, look," I said, turning to face my parents in the doorway. "I know we still haven't covered Topics Three and Four of The Talk—What Do You Want From Us? and Grounded for Life!—no, wait, that's Topic Five; Four is Why Aren't You More Like Your Brother? Anyway, the point is, I've got stuff to do. Later."
I pushed between them, ignoring their startled, open-mouthed stares, and headed for the front door.
"Yo, Headcase," String Cheese called out to me from one of the swings at the elementary school playground. "Heard you got a sick lawn this year." Behind him, Slick laughed and launched himself face-down into an open swing, Superman style.
"In all senses of the word, yeah," I yelled back, took a deep breath of asphalt fumes and jogged over to them.
Most of the playground was empty, but there were a few other mortalos hanging out, two guys on the monkey bars and six or seven girls sitting in the grass over by the soccer field. Ironically, mortalos hated the malls because there were too many mortals there. Here, we could talk freely, without worrying about dropping the wrong words to the wrong people.
Mortals didn't know about witches. We lived in our own communities—like Cauldron Acres and Spell Woods—that had glamours cast over them in case any mortals wandered in. Costwold Acres and Fell Woods, for instance, both butted up to the same private golf course in the Fairway development, along with a half-dozen other neighborhoods, all of them mortal. Costwold and Fell looked just like Pennington Green to the mortals—smiling residents mowing and watering their perfect green lawns mid-morning on their assigned days. Without the glamour, though, they'd see that no witches pushed the mowers in Cauldron Acres and Spell Woods, only magic.
Grabbing the third swing, I plopped onto the rubberized slat-seat. "Took out the spark plugs last year. Can't schedule a rock very well."
"Nice," said Cheese. "Wish I'd thought of that."
"I set the height low," said Slick. "Practically scrapes the dirt on half the lawn, leaving big patches of bare earth. Got the old man buying a new mower every month, trying to figure it out."
Cheese snickered. "You two are dangerous, you know that?"
"I put the plugs back in before I came over," I said, casually. "Keeps 'em guessing if it works for a week every now and then. I'll break it again next Thursday."
Slick said, "You guys help me paint the garage tonight? I figure it'll drive 'em nuts trying to figure out which counter-spell worked, and why it took all night."
String Cheese perked up. "I'm in." He turned to me expectantly.
"Sure." I shrugged. "Why not?" Maybe by then I'd gather enough courage to broach the subject I'd been meaning to discuss for a while.
"Don't you think these pranks are getting a little old?" I asked between paint strokes on Slick's garage that night. We were about two minutes from finishing. "I mean, we've been mortalos for a couple years, right? But what have we actually done? What's the point?" I swathed on more paint.
Slick stopped dead and stared at me. "Are you serious? These things are classic. You should have seen my pop's face when he saw the pentagram!"
"That's not what I mean. I know we've done stuff, but I mean . . . what have we done that's, you know, not just a stupid—"
Slick looked as though I'd just removed his kidney and offered it to him as a snack.
"Forget it," I said. "I was just thinking."
Cheese brushed his final stroke and tossed the paint brush into the trash bag we'd brought along to cart away evidence. He stepped back, folded his arms and nodded. "I think I see what Headcase means. We need to step up. Do something they'll remember. Something big."
That was definitely not what I meant.
Slick grinned and finished up his section of the door. "Yeah. Something big. And I've got just the thing." He tossed his brush in the trash bag. "Grab the paint, Cheese. Head, get the trash bag. Let's do it!"
My stomach twisted a couple times and I froze.
"C'mon, Headcase, we've got to get moving if we want to do this tonight." Slick hoisted the trash bag and turned to go.
"Do what, Slick?"
Cheese snickered. "Who cares? Slick knows what to do. Let's just do it."
I grimaced. "No. I want to know. What are you planning?"
Slick put down the trash bag and turned around to face me. "You know how the glamour on the sign at the entrance to neighborhood makes it look like Fell Woods to the mortals?"
I nodded. "But you can't un-glamour it. And painting it won't be visible on the outside. It's just witches who'll see it, not mortals."
Slick smiled and jerked a thumb at the garage. "Yeah, like the pentagram. I know. Mortals couldn't see it."
"Then why the paint?" Cheese asked.
"Because," Slick said, "we're going to paint the other entrance signs—the ones that aren't glamoured."
"The ones to the mortal neighborhoods?" Cheese asked.
Slick nodded, grinning.
"Pentagram Green?" I asked, hopefully. "Charm Clubhouse, Batwing Hazard—that sort of thing?"
"No glamours on those," Cheese said, nodding vigorously, "so mortals'll see the paint. I like it!"
I had to admit, this had all the makings of a mortalo prank to be remembered. Maybe String Cheese was right; maybe my unrest was really rooted in the fact that we hadn't yet done anything distinguishing.
"I'm game," I said after a moment's pause. "Let's do it."
"We made the papers, Head." Cheese's voice boomed tinnily from my cell phone's micro-speaker before I got it to my ear. "Your pentagrams on the grass in front of the signs were a nice touch. Got the mortals all in a panic now, wondering if some kind of Satanic cult has moved in here. They're calling it the FairWitch Project."
"Hold on, I got another call." I flashed to Slick on call waiting, and switched to a three-way conference with String Cheese.
"I told you guys it'd be big, didn't I?" said Slick proudly. "The whole town's talking about it! We're gonna be famous!"
"Yeah!" said Cheese. "Famous!"
"Hold on," I said. "Nobody knows it was us. You want to confess to this? Just to get the credit?"
"Well, yeah," said Slick. "Not right now, of course, but after it blows over. Couple of weeks, probably, just to make sure none of the other mortalos lets it slip. Once the press is hooked on some other scandal, nobody'll care about who did this. We'll be safe then."
"Sounds great," Cheese said, a little too enthusiastically for my tastes. "Just say the word, and I'm there with you."
"Yeah," I said, secretly hoping that day would never come.
My bedroom door burst open. My father, panting, said, "They've caught . . . the FairWitch vandals . . . they're Unipagan Church members . . . damned wannabe witches . . . want to be a recognized religion." He closed the door.
"This just in," said the pretty blonde anchorwoman on News 6 at 7. "Houghton County school officials have just revealed incontrovertible proof that witchcraft does indeed exist. You may recall, the FairWitch Project vandals, as they call themselves, brought this issue to the public eye just two days ago when they relabeled most of the neighborhood entrance signs in the Fairway development northeast of town with . . . witchy names. All but two of them, Costwold Acres and Fell Woods, now sport names like Pentagram Green and Toadstool Drive."
"And pentagrams, Stephanie," her co-anchor added, off-screen.
"And pentagrams," Stephanie the news anchor repeated, chuckling. "Thank you, David. The FairWitch Project, they said, was a crucial part in raising the awareness of our government's refusal to grant them official church status. The Unipagan Church has been operating in the red for several years now, and in an exclusive interview obtained by this reporter yesterday, one of the high ranking church officials there—who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from rival church members outraged at the vandalism—admitted that the only thing keeping them from operating in the black is the church's tax bill. This official speculated that some church members privy to this information simply may have gotten tired of waiting and decided to take action on their own. The official stressed that this was not an authorized operation."
"So, it was just some kids goofing around, then, Stephanie?" David asked, off-camera again.
"That's what you'd think, David," said Stephanie. "But, no, that doesn't seem to be the case. School officials at Fairway High brought in a team of spectral analysts from a company called Ghost Hunters yesterday. Tom Shadow-Walker, from Ghost Hunters, is here with us to explain. Tom?"
"Thank you, Stephanie." The camera panned over to a gray-haired man in a crisp black business suit, white shirt and black tie. "Ghost Hunters has been in the area for about seven years now, investigating haunted hotels and houses. We've developed some state of the art equipment specifically geared for measuring spectral wavelengths commonly used by spirits that have crossed over. We've had great success with this equipment in recent years."
"And it was this new technique that proved the haunting at the Sanford Hotel last year, isn't that right?"
"Yes, it was, Stephanie. We're the first operation of this kind to be certified by a major industry. Even the science community is taking notice."
David muffled an off-screen chuckle, and Tom glanced at him briefly just before his cheeks flushed slightly. He kept smiling and said nothing.
Stephanie didn't miss a beat. "And you found something interesting at the school yesterday, correct?"
"Yes," Tom said, straightening his tie. "We were in the area on another job, and noticed an incredible amount of spectral waves in a certain range emanating from somewhere close by. We identified the source as the newly remodeled high school and contacted school officials. We went into the property and located a wall at the end of a corridor that was just bursting with spectral wave activity in the frequency used by crossed-over spirits. There's just a fenced-in empty field on the other side. Nobody uses it; the maintenance staff didn't even remember keeping it up, although it was clearly maintained."
"And that's when you found proof of witchcraft, right? Folks, we've got some truly amazing video footage here to show you. Tom, tell us what's happening here."
A split-screen view appeared, outside Fairway High on the right, a blank wall on the left. Both views had running digital clocks in their lower right corners, with identical times.
"Hey, I know those places!" David said off-camera.
"Yes," said Stephanie coolly, "so do I."
"We keep a video record," said Tom, "of all our operations with a high-speed camera, usually for later review. Sometimes the spectral phenomenon only lasts for a fraction of a second, so we want to capture as much detail as possible. You can see on the left side where one of our investigators, Candy, is trying to locate the source of the interesting spectral waves. She's locked onto what she thinks is the source, she's leaving the room now to remotely bombard it with a short burst of xenon radiation—it can burn or blind her if she's still in the room. The xenon reacts with this particular spectral frequency to move normally invisible waves into the visible spectrum so our cameras can capture it more easily. But here, watch what happens."
On-screen, the wall in the left view disappeared, revealing an extended hallway with about a dozen doors identical to the classroom doors in the foreground. Simultaneously, a two-story building appeared in the right view, attached to the school. There was no break in the video, and both view clocks continued ticking away identical times.
"Holy smoke!" barked David off-camera. "Did you see that?"
"As near as we can tell, there was a glamour in place, and we broke it," Tom said triumphantly.
"A glamour?" Stephanie asked calmly.
"It's something witches do to make us see something other than what's there. They can cast one of these glamours on pretty much anything, and make us see whatever they want."
"So that's it, folks," said Stephanie. "Proof that witchcraft exists. The question remains: Should it be allowed?"
"They caught the real FairWitch vandals this time," Dad said from my doorway. "It's the Society for Everyday Witchcraft. They say the Unipagans are just trying to capitalize on the press the FairWitch Project's been getting over the last week. The SEW produced documents dated a month ago showing their official plan for FairWitch-like vandalism in communities all over the country. They say this was just supposed to be the first, but they don't need to do any more, now that they've got national coverage for their cause." He closed the door.
I flipped open my cell, punched in Slick first, then conferenced in String Cheese. "This is not good," I said. "That chick on News 6 pointed out that our two neighborhoods weren't vandalized, and a couple days ago that stupid Ghost Hunter guy sent a crew over here. They xenoned the glamour and then drove down the block with cameras going! They stopped in front of our house and zoomed in on the dead lawn. I'm so screwed."
"My pop's hiding in the house," Slick said. "People at work know where he lives. He told them he's not a witch, but they hassled him so much his boss told him to take some time off. Mom's talking about moving. She thinks it's not safe any more."
"Where would you go?" Cheese said, with startling clarity. "Glamours have been cracking all over the world. There's nowhere to hide. My folks have been working with some of the others to come up with a xenon-proof glamour. They say it's the best they can do."
"Mortals will forget," I said. "They always do."
"Yeah," said Slick, "but not until they've burned a few of us at the stake."
"Maybe. But, still, what are we going to do? We started this mess; we need to do something about it."
"It's spun out of control, Head, gone nationwide. What can we do now? Tell everyone it's just a prank?"
"Cop to it now?" yelled Slick. "I don't think so! They'll crucify us!"
"I need a walk," I said. "Can't think straight. Playground, ten minutes."
On the way, I passed by a guy—he looked familiar, but when he glanced up and recognized me, he looked down quickly and changed course slightly away from me. I could tell he was using an invisible glamour. I moved to intercept. About three feet away from him, he noticed me and looked up, startled. "Get away from me," he said sharply and continued on. "It's not safe for us to be seen together."
I headed back to the playground and found Slick and Cheese by the swings, like normal. The rest of the playground was deserted.
"That guy, Jason, was over by the monkey bars," Cheese said. "Saw us coming and took off. You see him?"
Looking back, I realized where I'd seen the guy terrified to be seen with me. "I think so. Didn't want to be seen with me. Had an invisibility glamour."
Slick shook his head grimly. "Figures. Weekend mortalo, that one. First sign of trouble and he's wearing a glamour."
"You gotta admit," Cheese said, "it's still effective for moving targets. They can't xenon bomb us if they don't know where we are. Too dangerous to scatter shoot xenon everywhere."
"True," I said, and an idea struck me. "But maybe we can use the glamour to help us. We're going to need some help."
"Look around, Head," Slick said. "The other mortalos are gone, hiding. I've heard it's like this everywhere. Who's going to help us?"
"I was thinking of asking our parents," I said and grinned.
"The Salem Revolution is behind it all," Dad said when the three of us walked in. "They said the SEW faked those documents. They aired a video of one of their council meetings from last year, talking about their Witch Emanicipation Plan."
I sighed. "It's not a revolution, Dad."
"Phase One was a major media event to start the revolution—what became the FairWitch Project—they even claim they suggested the name to the media."
"It was us, Dad."
"Phase Two was the disclosure of withcraft. Turns out one of their members is one of the founders of Ghost Hunters, and she admit— What?"
"It was us. We did it. We painted the signs. I did the pentagrams myself."
Dad stared. "What? What about the Lickens' garage door? Bob said there were some suspicious characters lurking around that night, and then the purple pentagram appeared."
Slick rolled his eyes. "I painted the pentagram the previous night. We painted over it that night, that's all. There was never any spell."
Dad narrowed his eyes. "Is this one of those mortalo things again?"
"No," I said. "And you don't have to worry about that any more. I don't think anybody's going to want to go mortalo for a while."
"They were just pranks, Mr. Case," Cheese said. "Like the dead lawn. We were just having fun."
"The lawn?" Dad said, clearly confused.
"I broke the mower and the sprinkler. The spells you put on them can't work on broken machines."
"You broke the machines?" Dad's voice rose. "On purpose? Why? Why would you do something like that?"
Mom ran in when she heard the yelling. "Marv? What's going on?"
By this time, Dad was hyperventilating. "Junior . . . sabotaged . . . the mower and sprinkler!"
Mom glared at me. "Is this true, Marvin?"
I glanced at my friends. I never told them my real name. Slick choked on his giggling; Cheese mouthed, "Marvin," and pantomimed gagging himself on his finger.
"Headcase," I mumbled. To my mother, I said, loudly, "Could we postpone the Grounded for Life part of The Talk until later, please? We need your help to fix this."
"I'm listening, young man," Mom said. "What did you have in mind?"
* * *
"We have some special guests tonight, folks," Stephanie the news anchor said. "We have three local boys and their parents here, and they claim to be the brains behind the FairWitch Project. Isn't that right, boys?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said. "It was all Sli— Steve's idea."
"Why don't you introduce yourselves," Stephanie prompted.
We did, and Slick gave her the short version: what mortalos were, how we'd been pranking our parents, and how we wanted to do something we'd be remembered for.
Stephanie the news anchor laughed. So did David the sidekick. "Really, boys. Do you really expect us to believe you? The Salem Revolution's evidence is very convincing, and you're just three teenagers."
Cheese smiled. "Gosh, Miss Stephanie," he said innocently, "I didn't know you could lose your cool. I thought Mr. David was the buffoon." Cheese could be amazingly insightful when he wanted to be.
David the co-anchor stopped laughing immediately.
Stephanie's smile dropped momentarily, then returned at the forefront of a forced chuckle. "How sweet."
"I think what my friend Ross meant," I said quickly, "was that while we certainly realize it sounds less glamorous—if you'll excuse my pun—that this whole thing was just a teenage prank gone awry, it's the truth."
"Yeah," said Slick, "how hard do you think it is to manufacture a few memos and a video and claim credit?"
Stephanie raised an eyebrow. "And what's your evidence?"
"Now see here, Miss," Dad said sharply and pointed at her accusingly. "Are you doubting my son?"
"It's all right, Dad," I said and pushed his arm down. "We don't have any evidence, ma'am."
"Which is why you should believe us," Cheese said.
Everyone turned to stare at him.
Cheese leaned forward. "If we had evidence, would you doubt its veracity?"
"Of course," Stephanie said. "We've already had three groups claim responsibility with manufactured evidence."
"Exactly," Cheese said triumphantly, and sat back in his chair.
There was about ten seconds of silence. Even Stephanie didn't know what to say.
Cheese rolled his eyes. "Why would three teenagers with no evidence claim responsibility if it weren't true?"
"For the fame?" Stephanie said slowly. "Just like the others?" She looked at Slick. "Didn't you say you wanted to do a prank big enough for recognition?"
"Yes we did, ma'am," Slick said. "And I think we managed that, don't you?"
Stephanie looked unconvinced, but Slick's pop chimed in before she could respond. "Miss? It really doesn't matter if they're telling the truth or not. The point is that the situation has gotten completely out of control, and we've got a proposition to solve it."
Stephanie blinked, then turned to the front camera. "There you have it, folks. A way to fix the mess that is the FairWitch Project. We'll see what that is when we come back."
The director, standing by the camera, silently counted off three fingers, then said aloud, "Clear. You've got three minutes."
Stephanie the nice news anchor rounded on Slick's pop, eyes flaring. "What the hell is this? You never said anything about any proposition, just confessions."
"Would you have had us on if we had told you?" Mrs. String Cheese's Mom asked.
David chuckled. "Of course not. It's not good news copy."
Mom folded her arms. "This is. Trust me."
"Do you seriously think," Stephanie said with an air of strained patience, "that I'm going to put you back on without knowing what you plan to say? Not likely!"
"Look, lady," Dad said in a low voice through clenched teeth, leaning over so that his face was inches from hers. "Witches are real, and we're not going away. We've hidden our power for centuries, so you mortals wouldn't be scared and try to pull another Salem, but now that you know about us, we need to change the rules. You can fear us because we're different, or you can embrace those differences and let us help you improve your quality of life—it's your choice. All we want is to live our lives without fear of persecution, and you can help us do that. We just want peace, and we think we know how to make it happen. Make no mistake about this: we'll turn you into a frog on live TV, if necessary, but we will have our say, whether you like it or not."
Stephanie blanched.
Dad leaned back and straightened his tie.
"Thirty seconds and we're live," the director called out.
"Security!" Stephanie yelled. "Get them out of here now!"
The next few seconds never made it on the air at News 6, but they made quite an impression on the rest of the world once the footage leaked. The short version was: two beefy security guys run in with guns drawn, two guns clatter to the ground in front of the news desk, two frogs jump across Stephanie's desk, Stephanie the news anchor screams and falls backward in her chair, David the sidekick jumps up and bolts off-camera, two security guys materialize where frogs were in mid-jump, headed for the floor, general pandemonium ensues, director yells, "Roll commercial!"
"You're witches, right?" the slim redheaded kid said without preamble, walking up to us at the swings on the playground.
Slick nodded. Cheese and I said, "Yeah," in unison.
"I thought so. We're over in Turnstile Drive, and we got a mower spell from some guys going door-to-door, but it didn't work. We need it fixed. Everyone says go to the guys at the swings."
"Yeah," Cheese said. "Witch Plus, That's Us."
"Sounds like you went with one of the fly-by-nights," Slick said, shaking his head. "Poor sap. They weren't Better Witchcraft Bureau certified, right?"
The redhead shook his head and looked down. "But they were really cheap!"
I put my arm around the kid's skinny shoulder. "We hear it all the time. You went cheap; now you want quality. Let me tell you about us. We're the real deal. BWB certified and everything. But we're not just ordinary witches. Any decent BWB witch can do a spell for you. Auto-wash your car, auto-mow your lawn, that sort of thing. We're gonna do that for you, sure, but for just a little more than our competition, we're gonna make your machines work, too, so that the spells work. That's our commitment to you, and that's why everyone says come to us, even though we cost a little more. We'll take care of you."
I took the kid's information and set up an appointment, then text-messaged it to my dad so he could get a crew out there pronto.
Dad had been right about changing the rules, and led the way personally. After helping form the BWB, Witch Plus was the very first BWB-certified company anywhere, and now that we're franchising out, our operations are appearing in neighborhoods all over the world like popcorn. Slick's mom and pop quit their jobs and Dad gave them a franchise at no charge. Cheese's folks, too, since we were all there from the start.
It's funny—despite Dad's complaints just a couple months ago, he's the primo mortalo of witching now.
And our lawn is always nice and green.