When I arrived at the Chambeaux & Deyer offices a short while later, the pig was already there.
She was an enormous white sow the size of a riding lawn mower, with large dark brown spots on her hide. Her flat upturned nose snuffled around the worn carpeting with the sound of an asthmatic vacuum cleaner, rooting under Sheyenne’s desk, snorting the edges of the room as if we kept truffles under the baseboards. Her name was Alma Wannovich.
Fortunately, we’re accustomed to unusual clients. By now we had gotten used to the big sow, as well as her equally large but currently less noticeable sister, a heavyset black-gowned witch who wore a midnight-blue scarf spangled with gold stars and crescent moons. Her wiry black hair stuck out in all directions like a panicked steel-wool pad.
“Good morning, Mavis,” I said to the witch, then to the sow, “Good morning, Alma.”
Mavis Wannovich tangled her fingers together in a gesture of desperation, though she didn’t exactly fit the traditional damsel-in-distress mold. She turned to me without waiting for Robin to explain why the two sisters had come into the offices. “Ms. Deyer just received a letter from the publisher, and they deny everything! They refuse to help at all. They claim we don’t have a case. How can they say that? Just look at Alma!”
The sow blinked her dark eyes at me, then grunted.
I did my best to sound reassuring. “You just let us handle that. Robin will know how to respond.”
Robin stood with a pencil stuck behind her ear, preoccupied with rereading the letter. She looked up at the dejected witch, and I could see the wheels turning in her mind. “Don’t be surprised or disheartened. I told you to be prepared for a blanket denial in response to our demand letter.”
Mavis lovingly patted the sow’s broad head, scratching her behind the ears. She tossed one end of the starry blue scarf over her shoulder. “We’ll try to be strong.”
Robin continued, “This is just standard procedure. Every publishing house has boilerplate letters, and they respond to complaints with categorical and vehement denials. It doesn’t mean you have any less of a case just because they say so, but they hope you’ll give up. We are not going to give up.”
The sow grunted and snorted as if reciting a long paragraph in pig language. Mavis interpreted. “I know we have to pursue this case, Ms. Deyer, but my sister and I are just two witches trying to get by. We don’t have the money for a protracted legal battle.”
“Don’t you worry about that a bit. If necessary, we’ll finish your case pro bono.”
“She means on a contingency fee basis,” Sheyenne interrupted, rising from her desk. “One-third of the monetary award, plus costs, but only if we win.”
“We’ll fight for Justice,” Robin said. “Alma has been wronged, and you have been wronged. The publisher’s mistake caused your suffering, and I won’t stand for that.” Robin put her arm around the witch’s shoulders. “Come and sit down, and we’ll talk about the next step.”
With a wan, stiff-upper-lip smile, Mavis trundled toward the con-ference room with a swish of her black gown. The door to the room wasn’t wide enough to accommodate the large sow and the large witch at the same time, so Mavis let the pig walk in ahead of her. After they invited me to join them, I moved one of the chairs away from the long table so that the pig would have a place to stand.
Alma was Mavis’s sister, just as largely built, although she’d had blond hair (with occasional black roots, which might be the reason for the dark spots on the sow’s hide now). The two witches had bought a new book of obscure spells released by Howard Phillips Publishing—”We Love Our Craft.” But due to an unfortunate typo in the incantations, one of the spells had gone horribly wrong: Instead of turning the two rather homely witches into svelte Aphrodite look-alikes, the spell backfired and transformed Alma into a fat sow. She’d been that way ever since. All of Mavis’s attempts to reverse the spell had failed.
I remember how distraught the witch was when she first led the large pig into our offices, weeping. This was exactly the type of case that got Robin’s passion. “A spelling error in a book of spells is a clear example of gross negligence,” she said. “Look at the damage it caused! The publisher hasn’t even offered to correct their mistake. We have to stop this before others suffer the same fate.”
“I don’t think the book had a very large printing,” Mavis admitted. “We had to special-order it.”
“They could at least have used a spell check,” Robin said.
I offered, “Let me make some calls, put you in touch with witchcraft troubleshooting organizations that could help you find a reversal of the spell.”
“Sheyenne will get you a list of support groups, too,” Robin added.
Once the Wannovich sisters became our clients, I did some investigating, discovered that Howard Phillips Publishing specializes in collectible editions of arcane works, and they have offices here in the Quarter. So far, their largest seller has been an annotated but abridged edition of the Necronomicon bound in alligator skin (they had announced, but never published, an extremely limited numbered edition bound in human skin). Recently, the company had begun to offer publishing services, for a substantial fee, to print and distribute the memoirs and ruminations of unnaturals. Everybody, it seems, wants to write their life, and death, and life story. Most of these memoirs were available only in e-book formats and print-on-demand. Despite their fancy logo, Howard Phillips Publishing was little more than a vanity press.
Robin passed me the response letter, which was written in flowery legalese on formal stationery. The publisher’s legal department—probably one guy in a back room somewhere—insisted, “Witchcraft is a dangerous hobby, and every practitioner should use appropriate caution. The spells in our spell books are intended for entertainment purposes only. The publisher accepts no liability for any misuse or inadvertent accidents that may occur as a direct or indirect result of our books. We make no warranties, express or implied, about the accuracy of our content. Any damages are the sole responsibility of the user.”
“Reads like a form letter,” I agreed and handed it back to Robin.
“We’ll file a suit against them,” she said. “In order to protect other users, our first course of action will be to demand that they withdraw all copies of this spell book from the market until the typo is corrected. In fact, I can probably get an ex parte injunction by showing irreparable harm to the user—i.e., being turned into a sow.”
“But how long will all that take?” asked Mavis. The sow let out a squeaking snort, then sat on the carpet.
“I’m afraid it’s going to require some time. First, we have to serve the complaint, and they have thirty days to file an answer. If they don’t agree to take the book off the market, I have to file papers and go through written discovery, after which we take depositions, move for a trial date.” A glint appeared in her deep brown eyes. “As another possibility, we can go directly to the media. Obviously, one interview with you and your poor sister, and our case is won.” Robin leaned over to gaze at the mournful sow, and she put both her hands on the table. “But we are going to win this one. We’re going to win!”
“I believe you, but my sister’s a sow!” Mavis’s lower lip trembled, and I could see she was about ready to unleash a hurricane of tears and sniffles. “I always wanted to work in publishing. I even applied for a job at Howard Phillips, offered to help with proofreading. They never responded. And now … my poor sister!”
Alma nuzzled up against Mavis’s dark skirts. The witch straightened her back, and her expression darkened. As she rose from her chair, Mavis’s black gown seemed to grow more voluminous, her hair standing out like a big curly thundercloud. “If we can’t find a way to fix this, then I want to nail that publisher to the wall!”
Robin sounded cheery, “We can help you with that, too, if you like.”