The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

A Spell of Trouble

Part 1 — The Smashed Wristwatch

“Here you go!” Amber carefully sat in the empty chair at the small circular table. She placed the two drinks she held down with considerable care. “One Bloody Mary.”

“Thanks, kid,” Evelyn replied, taking the drink and a sip in one smooth motion. Instantly, she looked at Amber with a mixture of suspicion and distrust.

Amber tried to keep a straight face, but after a brief moment she caved under the pressure of Evelyn’s intense emerald gaze. “Okay fine! It’s a Virgin Mary. I’m sorry!” Amber professed in embarrassment.

“Goddess save me,” Evelyn muttered under her breath. Around them, the comedy club was alive with laughter and applause, almost a full house booked. Amber and Evelyn were sitting right at the back near the bar, a perfect place for observing everyone. Raising her voice slightly, Evelyn addressed Amber scoldingly. “What a betrayal! Honestly Amber, when I ask you to do something, I need to be able to trust you’ll follow it to the letter!”

“But the cov—“ Amber protested.

Evelyn silenced her with a glare. “Don’t lecture me on what the Coven Elders have asked us to do, Amber. They requested me alone to look into these disappearances. Madam Collette only requested you to tag along because you’re in dire need of some seasoning. So if you’re going to be a thorn in my side, let me know now so I can tie you up with false leads and busywork while I get shit done.”

Amber clenched her jaw and stared back at Evelyn, feeling like she was using all her might to hold back angry bitter tears. Evelyn saw her effort and rolled her eyes. Amber dropped her gaze to the floor, feeling like looking anywhere was too much shame to bare in that moment. A tense silence electrified the air between them before Evelyn sighed and relented.

“Look. I’m sorry,” she offered, eyes to one side and arms stiffly crossed. “They say you’re one of the most promising witches for your age, but you need to get your head out of your books and cauldron and experience some of the real world. And if you’re going to be an asset to me, I need to know I can trust you to do exactly what I say. You hear me?”

Amber glanced up from the patch of stained wood on the floor and saw Evelyn’s attempt at a diplomatic face. Evelyn looked more like a punk rocker than an experienced witch. Naturally youthful like most witches, she could easily pass for twenty one despite being nearly thirty. Her firm cheek bones, sharp brow, and intense gaze filled Amber with the impression of confidence and determination, while her sweet lips, button nose, and wavy dirty blonde hair with vibrant red streaks through it was as disarming as the most potent serenity spell. Evelyn looked like the kind of person who was fun and friendly, but with a fiery passion that nobody would want to get on the wrong end of. She was entirely capable of making Amber feel terrified and down on herself one moment, yet with a softened expression of her blue-green eyes and a kind word Amber’s clenched heart and choking shame was already loosening.

“Okay, yeah,” she finally muttered. “I hear you. I’m sorry.”

“Forget about it.” Evelyn waved a hand and smiled as if the issue had been disintegrated by a particularly effective incantation. “Now go get me the demon cursed drink I asked for, and then let’s enjoy the show as we scope this place out”

Amber agreed and made her way back to the bar. The entire time she cursed herself under her breath.

“Idiot idiot idiot idiot!” she muttered. How could she have been so stupid? She thought she had been taking the initiative by making their drinks alcohol free. She had assumed that since Evelyn and her were at the comedy club on official coven directive that it was more important that they didn’t drink and kept a clear head in case they needed to draw upon their magic. As she waited at the bar she shook her head at her own naivety. Evelyn was not even a decade older than her, but she had faced down and defeated dark witches, ghouls, and more than one angry spirit.

For Amber, who the coven had been teaching and guiding in complete shelter for years now, to actually be given an assignment like this with a witch as renowned as Evelyn was a rare honor and a priceless opportunity to learn. Her theoretical knowledge and understanding of the works of magic was unparalleled with witches her own age, but when it came time to use magic in training exercises with her peers, she was always beaten or outwitted.

Amber continued to berate herself in irate whispers. “It doesn’t matter if you can summon the biggest fucking fireball anyone has ever seen if thrice cursed Julia turns the ground under your feet to quicksand and buries you before you can throw it at her…”

She simply had to use this experience to learn how to use her magic, not just know about it. Evelyn’s words had stung because they rang with truth. Amber did need seasoning. She vowed she would pay attention to Evelyn and obey her to the letter from this point on, like her life depended on it.

She ordered the alcoholic Bloody Mary, showing her ID with some reluctance. Like Evelyn, she looked younger than she was, passing for 18 while in reality she was 23. She would never admit it out loud, but she found herself incredibly jealous of Evelyn’s appearance.

Amber had very pale skin and medium-length, black, wavy hair that she kept neatly tied in a single braid. The practicality suited her, but she looked like a stick in the mud next to the charismatic and confident Evelyn, who also had more tattoos and piercings than Amber could count. Getting both was common among modern witches, but they often held symbolic significance, representing trials faced or foes vanquished. Amber was yet to get anything done other than have her ears pierced in the traditional place, which was more a stylistic choice to help her blend in with the non magical population.

Her attire consisted of loose, dark clothing that obscured her figure that was slightly more curvy than Evelyn’s (another source of envy), allowing her to blend into both non-magical and magical environments with ease.

With the Bloody Mary in hand, Amber promptly returned to the table where Evelyn was laughing and clapping along with the rest of the audience.

“Oh that was amazing!” she exclaimed to Amber as the younger witch took her seat once more.

Amber crinkled her nose at the people on the stage. The flamboyant magician and his skimpily dressed assistant. The glitter, the flourish, the forced comedy, it all felt so lame to her.

“I don’t get how you could be enjoying this quite so much…” Amber remarked to Evelyn, her striking eyebrows arching high in puzzlement.

Evelyn gave Amber a knowing look, the look one gave someone who wasn’t in on the joke. “Alright kiddo, time for you to learn something.”

Amber blinked a few times in surprise. “What? Really?” She tensed in anticipation. Was Evelyn going to teach her a spell right now? A focusing technique? A rare rune that wasn’t in her reference books? The speckles of amber in her light brown eyes shimmered slightly as she gazed excitedly at Evelyn.

Evelyn’s lips curled into a coy smirk. “It’s not what you think. Watch the magician. Really watch him.” She put her own focus towards the stage, taking some sips of her actual Bloody Mary as she did so.

Amber watched. The magician proceeded to collect quarters from people’s ears, out of their mouths, from their hair, and so on. He got quite the crowd response when he produced one from the cleavage of a particularly large breasted lady in the audience near the stage. He then asked an elderly man to pick a card, and after a couple of obvious wrong guesses and false fluster on the magician’s part, he asked the man to check his coat’s inside pocket. Of course the correct card was there, the eight of diamonds. Much crowd applause.

The magician then went into a bit of a comedy routine making fun of the local tourism industry. Tourists and townies alike laughed along as Evelyn tapped Amber on the shoulder.

“So, he’s not using real magic, is he?” Evelyn asked rhetorically.

“Of course not,” Amber replied, trying not to sound too dismissive.

“Right. We both absolutely know this because we are both currently employing magic to detect other sources of magic.” Evelyn shrugged, before motioning to the rest of the audience. “But they all know it too.”

“No, some of them think it’s real,” Amber argued. “They don’t know any better, and they attribute anything they can’t explain to god, demons, or magic.”

“You talk like you’re so different from them, Amber. You and me are barely different from everyone else in here, that’s probably the hardest thing you’ll eventually get your head around.” Amber opened her mouth to protest, but Evelyn quickly continued. “But that’s not the point. The point is most people know that it’s not real magic that they’re experiencing, but people love to have their reality twisted in such a safe and fun way. It doesn’t matter that they can’t explain how the rabbit gets into the hat, they love the mystery and because of that they fall for the misdirection. Tell me, what was the assistant doing for the last few minutes?”

“She was, uhh…” Amber faltered.

“She set up the next three tricks, all while the attention was on the Marvelous Harold. When she does something, that means all eyes are on her hot spandex covered—” Evelyn faltered this time as she chewed her words over, blushing slightly. “Her, ahem, deliberately dressed body… Well that’s when the magician does the sneaky stuff. They’re always several steps ahead of the audience between them. There’s a certain talent and skill involved there that has my respect, and it sure as hell deserves yours.”

Although determined to listen, Amber was not known for backing away from a debate, and Evelyn diminishing her own craft seemed incomprehensible to her. “But we can literally shoot lightning from our hands if we wanted to!” she pressed. “We can hurl balls of fire, we can make tangling vines sprout out of the ground. We can summon animals to aid us, we can brew potions of incredible strength or skill or that produce any number of miraculous effects. There’s no comparison, surely.”

Evelyn shook her head, grinning broadly now. “We’re currently looking for a rogue witch or wizard (or something worse) who has been kidnapping young men and women, specifically those who have dormant magic within them. How does any of those spells or potions you just listed help us do that right here, right now?

Amber frowned, her brow wrinkling as she tried to win her point. “But we are using magic to help us find them.”

“Exactly!” Evelyn almost laughed now. “We’re using the one spell that’s actually useful in this situation, the detection spell.” She then gave Amber an expectant glance. “Otherwise we’re blending in and using the same set of eyes and ears to sleuth out whatever we can, the same way every other mug here would be doing were they to be helping us. So we have all of this magic literally at our fingertips and the vast majority of it is presently useless.”

Amber wanted to bitterly protest at this, but she stopped to consider her argument. Being able to use magic simply made her and witches like her better than most humans on the planet. That she (and they) had tapped into the fundamental essence of magic that flowed through the world demonstrated that they had achieved a level of wisdom and connection with the self and the universe that few would ever experience. She didn’t brag about it, she didn’t use her powers to attack or belittle those who had no magic, but it was a simple truth. Witches and wizards the world over typically were the fine barrier between humanity and its predators of times past that had mostly faded into obscurity and legend. Amber was better than the powerless humans she vowed to protect, but it wasn’t personal.

Still, she had no counter to Evelyn’s point, so she reluctantly stayed her tongue to hear what Evelyn had to say next.

“Besides, I hate lightning spells,” Evelyn admitted. “My teeth always feel super weird while I’m casting them, and I get static shocks off any metal surface for hours after. Honestly, I’d rather have a taser like the ones the cops use.” When Amber laughed incredulously at this, she added, “Seriously!”

“But a taser can be taken from you. Your magic can’t!” Amber insisted.

Evelyn suddenly looked bewildered. “If only that were true! Hell, it should be true...” When Amber raised an eyebrow at this, Evelyn instead shook her head and returned to an amused smirk. “Look, don’t get me wrong, of course our magic is our greatest asset, but what I want you to learn from everything we do together catching this scum is that it’s not your only asset.” She then perked up as she glanced at the performers once more. “Hey, look, they’re about to do another trick, watch this closely.”

Amber turned to see the magician strike up a friendly conversation with one of the better dressed gentleman in the middle of the room. They bantered, and then the magician asked about the man’s wrist watch. Upon insistence and some pressure from an eager crowd, the man took off his watch and let the magician take it in his hands. Sprouting words of admiration and guessing its five figure value to within a thousand dollars, he handed it to his exotic assistant who also admired it.

“See that?” Evelyn whispered. “I couldn’t tell you when it’s going to happen or if it already has but the reason he hands it to her is to make the switch to a fake.”

The nervous audience member gratefully took his watch back from the magician, who went on to examine the watches of two other audience members.

“More misdirection,” Evelyn commented. “See how he isn’t taking it off the wrist this time? It’s because he’s already made the switch with the first guy who’s currently wearing a fake.”

Sure enough, the magician returned to his first mark, declared that his was the nicest watch in the room, and invited him to the stage where he asked to see it again. The tension in the room was palpable when the magician produced the comically large mallet and the shock was evident when he smashed the watch to smithereens.

The magician looked shocked himself. Amber was convinced that he’d made some mistake and really destroyed the man’s watch from the way he was going pale. He profusely apologized while the now watch-less man turned scarlet with rage. Amber turned to Evelyn to gloat, but Evelyn just watched with a knowing smile.

The magician and his assistant gathered the broken pieces of the watch from the table and the floor around the stage, the magician quipping that he could perform another type of apology while on his knees to more laughter from the audience. Then the magician covered the shattered watch debris with a cloth and with a dramatic sweep the watch was gone.

“Where was your attention that whole time?” Evelyn asked.

“Um, well it was on the… on the…” Amber gestured to the whole scene as it was unfolding before her.

“Uh huh. Did you watch the assistant at any point?” Evelyn smiled wryly.

Amber sighed. She hadn’t. When the magician asked the man’s wife what it was that was sparkling on her ankle, Amber knew at once she’d been duped again. The audience cheered, the man looked intensely flustered and relieved as he recovered his watch. The Marvelous Harold took a bow, and then when the applause died down, he asked for a few volunteers from the audience, scanning the room with his gaze.

“Now what makes that trick so convincing is that the watch was swapped out in plain sight, not letting anyone stop to think it might even be a fake,” Evelyn explained. “And then with the shock of the supposed real watch being destroyed, everyone is too distracted to notice where the genuine article really is, so it can end up anywhere.”

“But it all relies on having a good fake, right?” Amber mulled.

Evelyn nodded approvingly. “Yes, but a fake that only has to be good enough to be convincing for a few seconds. But now you’re starting to think about it, try and see the value in it.”

“Okay, I guess I’ll think about it more la—”

And then Amber felt it. She stiffened in her chair as the spell washed over her, probing the magical field she had put around herself but finding no way through.

“Stay calm,” Evelyn urged, herself remaining perfectly still. “Okay, tell me what spell that was,” she muttered under her breath.

Amber squinted, recalling the knowledge as if looking it up from a textbook. “An assessment spell, for sensing the magical power or potential of someone.”

“Or someone’s,” Evelyn corrected. “The whole room was just scanned, best as I could tell. Amber, please tell me you’re masking right now, otherwise we’re rumbled.”

“Of course I am,” Amber replied sharply. Her masking spell made the magical aura that surrounded her look as normal as a typical human. Were she not masking, she would have been burning as bright as a blazing fire to whomever cast the assessing spell. “I cast the seven standard protections on myself every morning, noon, and night. “I’m always covered.”

“Good.” Evelyn nodded. “I mean, overkill typically, but good for right now.”

From the stage, Harold then said in a deep voice. “Come on now, don’t be shy. Who wants to be hypnotized?”

Amber frowned. She was about to retort to Evelyn’s comment when she felt the next spell collide against her defenses. Before she could figure out exactly what kind of spell it was this time, she felt a strange compulsion to volunteer for the Marvelous Harold. Wouldn’t that be funny? She was an expert at meditation and spirit trances, hypnosis was similar, just a process guided by someone else. It would be enjoyable. She didn’t want to seem shy...

But that wouldn’t be following the instructions of her assignment. She was there to help Evelyn, to scope out the place, find who was responsible for the disappearances, and take them down.

Then again, if magical compulsion followed by hypnotic programming was how these disappearances were being orchestrated, what better way to discover how exactly it worked than to step into the trap herself? She was a capable witch, she could handle herself.

She started to rise to her feet.

And then was abruptly dragged back down into the chair by Evelyn, who shook her head in dismay.

“Tell me, kid, when you cast your seven protection spells, did you ever give any thought to how the enchantments might stack or how they might even interfere with one another?”

Amber snapped out of her mild trance and shook her head. Her cheeks started burning bright red as she realized how stupid it was to fall for a compulsion charm so easily.

“I mean, do you really think you need a shield that can stop energy projectiles right now? Or an enchantment that soothes angry animals?” Evelyn berated her under her breath.

Amber didn’t reply, she just clenched her fists and felt voices within her urging to break down and give up, to slink back to the coven and study for another seven years so she wouldn’t be so stupid the next time she walked into civilization.

“One or two spells well cast can be better than a dozen shoddy ones. That’s another lesson for you to remember,” Evelyn said, more kindly this time.

“I’m sorry,” Amber sulked. “Please don’t tell Elder Collette.”

“Amber. Relax,” Evelyn inisted, putting effort into hiding her exasperation. “You’re here to learn, alright? Just promise me that you pay attention to everything that happens and learn from it.”

“Okay.” Amber nodded resolutely. “I promise.”

“Good. Now pay attention. Looks like he’s bagged a few volunteers.” Evelyn air quoted the last word. “And I’d bet good money that at least one of them is a potential, that the compulsion spell was targeted at magic auras.” She shook her head in frustration. “We can’t start a duel in a place this crowded. We’ll have to wait this out and confront him after the show.”

“Alright.” Amber agreed, feeling her heart beat faster at the thought of the confrontation to come. They were closing in on their target, but it still required patience.

As the magician produced a sparkling pendant and waved it before the five seemingly willing volunteers that had made their way onto the stage, Amber pulled on some strands of magic as gently as she could, making sure the amount of energy involved wouldn’t be noticed by anyone trying to sense magic in that moment. She carefully dispelled her protections that Evelyn had pointed out as useless, and gradually reinforced her mental barriers. She could feel the spell strengthen and tried to ignore the nagging voice in her head that complained about leaving her exposed to a surprise attack of an ice burst.

“Oh, and one last thing,” Evelyn mentioned, though staring keenly at the developments on the stage. “I know how to break or bypass each one of the seven standard protections that we’re all taught. Do yourself a favor and develop a protection spell that’s unique to you, and never, ever tell anyone about it or how it works.”

Amber nodded. Then raised an eyebrow. “Wait, not even you?”

Evelyn shook her head gravely. “Not me, not Elder Collette. No. One. Trust me on this.”

Amber felt the weight of Evelyn’s words push against her. It almost felt like it was causing Evelyn pain to utter them. She nodded again, and then following Evelyn’s cue, turned her attention back to the stage.

They watched as the magician waved the pendant in front of the five volunteers. He recited a script of them feeling sleepy and to focus on his voice, and Amber watched with curiosity as the volunteers did indeed look lethargic and entranced by it all. Of course, in a club full of people, in the name of entertainment, they probably felt safe to fall into trance or at least play along. But something sinister lurked beneath the facade.

Both Amber and Evelyn felt more spells being cast near the stage, but it was hard to say for certain if it was the magician casting, or perhaps someone else blended into the crowd.

“Getting closer right now isn’t an option,” Evelyn muttered. “We’ll stand out too much. It’s actually kind of clever using stage hypnosis as a front for actual compulsion charms, because the look is the same even if the potency is a bit different.”

The magician soon sent two of the volunteers back to sit down, and then started having the rest perform for the entertainment of the crowd. One became convinced they were a ballet dancer, another could only communicate in quacks and hops, while the third shamelessly hit on the entire front row of the audience. Every few minutes, as the Marvelous Harold was doing more conditioning to one of the subjects with his pendant, both Amber and Evelyn felt more magic being used. More compulsion spells. More programming going into the helpless humans that they couldn’t prevent. After having his puppets follow various commands, the magician seemingly released them to sit back into the crowd.

More magic tricks followed, including the finale where Harold was seemingly sliced in half by a comically large circular saw. The fake blood splattering the audience was possibly a touch too far, but as the magician and his assistant took their final bow, it was clear that the show had been a hit.

“Okay. Let’s go confront this fake not fake magician guy…” Amber declared eagerly as the performers departed backstage.

Evelyn frowned, looking at the audience as most of them got up to either leave or go to the bar. “Not so fast. Do you have a tracking rune prepared today?”

“Yes, three,” Amber replied.

Evelyn smiled, a flicker of pride appearing in her electric blue eyes momentarily. “Very good. In case the magician turns out to be a dead end, I want to have another potential lead. Go plant them on any three of the hypnosis subjects you can, especially if you can detect any aura around them, however faint. If they really are being compelled, at least we can track them that way. Then, meet me backstage.”

Amber bristled at hearing this. “You’re going in there yourself?”

“Yes I am,” Evelyn replied firmly. “That a problem?”

Amber’s nervous eyes met Evelyn’s intense gaze. “No.” she replied, and then hurried off to find the hypnosis subjects before they left.