Night Shift Witch, #1

by Cate Lawley

  Alex, Camille, Ben, and I filed into the house in search of wine—or tequila—and found something else entirely. Baked goods of the very inedible variety.

  Not that we’d forgotten about the cooling body parts. We’d just let other concerns take over for a moment.

  Camille’s lace tablecloth made a particularly disturbing backdrop for the haphazard display of arms, legs, feet, and other parts that she’d left cooling on racks. They all had the color of cooked dough, but the shape of very real human body parts. It was disconcerting to say the least.

  Too late, I recalled that Ben might be particularly disturbed by the sight.

  I turned to him, expecting the pasty complexion I’d seen when he’d learned about vampires, but he looked fine. Better than fine. His eyes were wide with…wonder?

  “This is amazing. They’re so realistic.” Ben reached out a hand then stopped himself. “Can I touch them?”

  “Absolutely.” Camille beamed at him. “When we’re done, you won’t be able to tell the difference between the fake Chalmers and the real one.”

  “Wow. Does this type of work have any medical applications? Prostheses, for example?”

  I shook my head and wandered over to the bar, leaving Camille to explain the magical facts of life to him. Tequila was calling my name. I could handle a few shots without deleterious effect, and wine just wasn’t gonna cut it.

  “I like him,” Alex said softly from just behind my right shoulder.

  “He’s my boss, Alex. Heck, he’s barely that. I’ve worked for Kawolski’s Funeral Home less than a day, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be much longer. Seriously, would you keep me on after this?” I poured myself a shot of tequila and threw it back in one swallow. With a little gasp, I said, “Good stuff.”

  “You’re working on the assumption he’ll remember any of this.” He lifted an eyebrow when I poured another shot.

  I rolled my eyes and filled a second shot glass. Handing him the glass, I said, “Prost.”

  We clinked glasses and downed the second or third best tequila I’d ever had.

  “Hey, now,” Camille hollered. “Take it easy. That’s the good stuff. Pour me a shot before you drink it all.”

  Ben eyed us all like we were crazy. “I didn’t know there was ‘good stuff’ tequila.” He declined when I offered to pour him a shot. “Maybe you guys can clue me in on the plan while we assemble the fake Mr. Chalmers.”

  “We have a plan?” I tipped my glass at him and tossed back another shot.

  “I’m thinking yes. Now you just need to clue in the new guy.”

  Alex lifted his glass to Ben. “And that, Star, is why I like this guy.” Alex took a sip—how he could sip tequila, I’d never understand—then said, “I do have a plan. First, we verify that Abby wasn’t involved. I think we can use her help.”

  Hands on her hips, Camille said, “No. First thing we do is assemble the fake Mr. Chalmers and get him out of my house. I don’t want my neighbors stumbling on the human meat feast we’ve got going here.”

  Wow. She was right. Laid out on the table, on drying racks that could equally be viewed as bizarre serving trays, were hunks of… No. Nope. I nudged thoughts of cannibalism aside.

  “I think she has a point. There’s a creeptastic factor here that wouldn’t go over well with outsiders. Let’s get this corpse built.”

  An hour later, all the pieces seemed to be in place, each connected by a minor binding spell. What looked like a doughy outline of a man rested on Camille’s dining table.

  “So how do we animate him?” At Ben’s worried look, I added, “I mean make him look fully human.”

  “That’s the second trickiest part,” Camille said, “after mixing the dough.” She retrieved a few supplies from her premixed potions cupboard.

  Which was one of several reasons Alex kept harping on me to find a new mentor. The more powerful the witch, the less prep work and paraphernalia was required for any particular task. Camille leaned heavily on potions that she spent a lot of time and energy preparing in advance. She was effective and loved what she did—but she didn’t have the sheer wattage of some other witches in the area.

  And I didn’t regret my choice for an instant.

  Camille flashed one of the vials at me before placing it on the counter, and a laugh burbled up in my chest. “I remember that one.”

  Camille fetched a few more small bottles, explaining as she lined them up, “Star accidentally inhaled some of the fumes.” She shook a finger at me. “After I warned you twice.”

  “You did.”

  Ben eyed me suspiciously. “So, what happened?”

  “Everything turned purple.” I twisted the bottle around so that he could read the label.

  “Purple Haze.” Turning his incredulous gaze to Camille, he said, “You have a special potion specifically for making people see purple?”

  Camille chuckled. “No, that’s a side effect, but it seemed an appropriate name. And don’t ask. You don’t want to know what it’s for.”

  Ben inched away from the innocuous-looking blue glass bottle.

  Alex eyed the various bottles lined up on the counter with some doubt. “Seven potions? Are these all really necessary?”

  “Do you want him to look, feel, smell, and decompose like a real person?” Her motherly smile was freakishly at odds with the image of a decomposing Robert Chalmers.

  Alex lifted his hands. “You’re the expert.”

  She raised her eyebrows and shot him a mildly amused look. “Step back, unless you’d like to be seeing purple…or worse.”

  Alex, Ben, and I all took a big step back from the dough corpse on the table.

  Lips twitching, Camille started sprinkling the figure with a few drops from each of the bottles. I focused on the body using my magical sight, but didn’t see anything until the last two potions. First the body glowed with a mellow amber light, the color of Camille’s magic. Then, when she added the last potion, the magic snapped into place. One moment a doughy bread man lay on the table, and the next, Robert Chalmers, version two.

  Ben stumbled back a step. “He moved.” He shuffled back another foot. “It moved. I swear it did. Is this like that voodoo zombie thing? Are we going to be putting an undead man in the ground?”

  I glanced at the clock. It was three in the morning, so I should probably cut the guy some slack.

  Who was I kidding? He’d discovered magic, witches, vampires, wizards, and replicated corpses in less than a day. He was doing pretty good.

  Camille beat me to the punch. “First, voodoo isn’t really what we do.” Camille was all about the truth, so she added, “Not usually.”

  Ben wasn’t looking particularly reassured.

  I quickly added, “It’s not alive. Wasn’t ever alive, never will be alive, and therefore is not undead.”

  “It moved.” Ben glanced at Alex. “Right?”

  “It did.” I gave him a sheepish look. “But I promise it won’t again.” I might even have been telling the truth. From what I’d seen, the corpse had twitched in its first moment of pseudolife and then fallen lifeless to the table.

  I glanced discreetly in Camille’s direction, and she gave me a little shrug.

  Not helpful.

  After a few seconds, Ben rubbed his eyes. “Right. I’m not riding in the back seat with it. Actually, any chance he’d fit in your trunk?”

  Alex eyed the corpse and then clapped Ben on the back. “We’ll make it happen.”

  Without too much fuss, Alex wrapped Chalmers 2.0 in a sheet Camille provided and threw him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  I made Ben wait in the house until we had the body packed away in my trunk. Good thing I did, because Alex and I had to do some twisting and jamming to squish Chalmers’ big body inside my Civic’s trunk. I had to keep reminding myself it was like a huge loaf of human-feeling bread—not an actual human.

  And I really didn’t want to linger on what it looked like Alex and I were doing. If one of
the neighbors got a good look—which they wouldn’t because magic—but if they did, they’d definitely see Alex and me struggling with an uncooperative corpse wrapped in a sheet. Suburban neighbor fail.

  Once the trunk was firmly shut, I retrieved Ben, and the three of us set off for the funeral home. I swallowed a giggle as Camille waved goodbye from the driveway.

  Ben looked over his shoulder and waved back at her. “I feel like I’m leaving my gran’s after a holiday meal.”

  And then I did giggle, because that was exactly how I felt—fake body in the trunk notwithstanding.

  I drove exactly two miles above the speed limit, stopped completely at all stop signs, and popped a few breath mints in case I still smelled like tequila.

  Not that I wouldn’t pass a breathalyzer. It was incredibly difficult to intoxicate a witch with drugs or alcohol. Four tequila shots had the same effect on me now that half a glass of wine had when I was a fifteen-year-old human kid. And those shots had been hours ago. But I wasn’t going to give any cop running around looking to fill some traffic ticket quota an excuse to stop us.

  Having a corpse in the trunk, even the fake kind, was an exceptional incentive for safe and legal driving.

  When we arrived at the funeral home, I sent Ben ahead to unlock the door while Alex and I unstuffed fake Chalmers from the cramped confines of my trunk. The less Ben saw of me manhandling a corpse like it was no big thing, the more I could cling to the fiction that I’d still have a job when this was over.

  A few minutes later, and Chalmers 2.0 was stashed next to the real man in cold storage. It was eerie how alike they were. Of course, the fake version didn’t have that sucking void clinging to him. Now that I knew it was there and what to look for, it was easy enough to see.

  We needed to get the real Chalmers disposed of quickly, because it couldn’t be safe for him to linger around as he was.

  As we filed out of cold storage, I said, “Time to head home. To get some sleep.” I turned to Ben. “And don’t you have to work in the morning?”

  Ben glanced at his watch. “You mean in four hours? Theoretically, but I don’t have any client appointments booked until late afternoon. What about the real Robert Chalmers?”

  Alex pulled out his car keys. “He’s fine locked in your cold storage for the night. With a good outcome on the Richard front, I suspect Mrs. Chalmers will choose to have you properly dispose of the body.”

  Ben nodded, but he looked out of it.

  “Are you safe to drive?” I could easily drop him off at home. What was another hour of missed sleep in the grand scheme of things? If it meant making sure Ben arrived home safely, I’d skip out on sleep entirely.

  “No, I’m good. My place is just around the corner.” He rubbed his eyes again, then caught my worried look. “Really, I’m fine to get home, but thank you.”

  I nodded uncomfortably. I wasn’t exactly the motherly sort, so it made me itch that I was feeling motherly.

  Hmm. Not motherly.

  Protective.

  Ben’s gaze narrowed. “I’m with you guys tomorrow. Until this is cleared up—”

  “Yeah.” Alex stretched out his hand. “Good working with you today.”

  Alex never shook hands. Most of us enhanced folks didn’t. He really did like Ben—or he was trying to get a read on him. Much more likely.

  Enough with the speculation. I needed to get some sleep before I could trust myself to differentiate between healthy suspicion and paranoia.

  I did a quick calculation. Alex always got at least six hours of sleep when possible, and I knew the trouble he had when he skimped. Unpleasant trouble. Potentially much worse than unpleasant. In other words, he didn’t skimp when at all possible.

  All of which meant that we shouldn’t meet until midday.

  “Meet at Camille’s at noon?” I asked.

  Everyone agreed, and we went our separate ways.

  On the way home, I tried not to consider the fact that unless I pulled a rabbit out of a hat, today might be Ben’s last day to remember magic, vampires, wizards…and witches.

  15

  The Plan

  “Did you love him?” Alex asked from his seat at Abby’s kitchen table.

  Except it wasn’t Alex. It was some guy who looked like him.

  It couldn’t be Alex, because the man I knew didn’t talk about love. I’d never heard the word pass his lips. And this was a guy who I was pretty darn sure had loved me, in so far as he was capable. Still did, if I had to guess, just not in a romantic way.

  What had gotten into him?

  Abby, aka the girlfriend, had big doe eyes, and they were currently shining with unshed tears. “I did. I know it’s ridiculous.” She ran a knuckle underneath her eye. “The man was a golem.” She gave Alex an exasperated look. “We all know what they’re like.”

  Alex handed her a neatly folded, pristinely white, monogrammed handkerchief. He had a serious stash of them. When I lived with him, I used to tease him about having an entire dresser drawer devoted to hankies. Neatly folded, not at all rumpled, hankies. The man was a mystery in many ways, including his bizarre ability to maintain them in an impeccable state when the rest of his attire most closely resembled that of a college kid who’d overslept his exam.

  She dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “What do you need me to do?”

  We’d interrupted her at lunch, my first clue that she wasn’t a vamp. But now, with the tears, it was doubly clear. Vamps didn’t cry. Because they were sociopaths? Or because they were physically incapable? No clue. They just didn’t. Vampires were weird.

  Abby wasn’t a witch—that I could see even without my magical sight tuned to perfection. Wizard? Not that common for women to be wizards, but it happened.

  Alex leaned forward on the table. “We’re looking for a confession.”

  Abby pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I’m not a witch. I can’t dig in his brain for the truth.”

  I casually shifted in my seat so Ben wasn’t in my peripheral vision. I had no desire to catch his response to that particular factoid. We’d been open about mind-wiping, and I’d even fessed up to having a peek inside his head, but what Abby described was so much more invasive. I didn’t like the idea of him envisioning me doing that.

  Not that I could pick out truths from an unwilling mind. Not yet. That was all part and parcel with honing my magical sight, and I wasn’t exactly practicing that skill like I ought.

  “We just need you to be exactly who you are: a grieving woman who’s recently learned the man she loves has died,” Alex said.

  “Right. I’m not an idiot, Alex. You want me to add a little persuasion to the mix. Am I right?”

  Alex’s expression froze, just for a split second, then he said, “That’s up to you.”

  If I hadn’t been looking for it, I’d have missed the flash of unease. Anything that reeked of compulsion made Alex uncomfortable, and what was persuasion but a mild form of compulsion? Or so he’d said to me at some point.

  The mention of persuasion at least gave me a good guess as to what Abby was: a coyote. A trickster with the ability to manipulate perception in small degrees, especially when the subject wasn’t expecting it. Persuasion was a little like sleight of hand. Know what to look for and all the magic is gone.

  Finally, Abby said, “Okay, I’ll do it—for Robert.” She sniffed. “This is all Lydia’s fault. I swear, she has more love for that kid than she ever did Robert.”

  “That kid…you mean Richard, her PA?” I asked.

  Abby looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head. “Right. That little vamp twerp who runs around chasing after her. The woman wants to be worshipped, and her little vamp servant is the closest she’s going to get.” She balled up Alex’s handkerchief. “As if Robert would ever put anyone—let alone her—on a pedestal. He wasn’t that kind of guy.”

  No, I couldn’t imagine he was, not considering what I’d learned about him in the last day.

  “Then you
’ll attend the funeral?” Alex asked. “Mr. Kawolski is making the arrangements.”

  Alex indicated Ben, and Abby’s jaw dropped.

  “A human funeral? With the digging, and the hole in the ground, and the…” She squinted at Alex. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “No, not yet,” Alex replied. “We won’t be putting the original Chalmers in the ground.”

  “Ah, your witch has created a replacement.” Abby sniffed. “Why? Why go to the bother?”

  With a blandly polite look that I suspected got a lot of mileage, Ben said, “It’s been scheduled and announced to friends, family, and coworkers. Cancelling at this point would arouse suspicion.”

  Ben omitted the part where he’d originally refused to consider cancelling the service for ethical reasons—before Alex and I had convinced him a golem would never consider being buried and couldn’t have made the arrangements himself. Too bad, because that part sounded a little better, and it was what got us started on the doppelganger corpse path.

  “Family? Really?” Abby shook her head and shot Ben a look dripping with condescension.

  No trace of her grief remained. She was one hundred percent mean girl now.

  “Give him a break,” Alex said. “Once it became clear there were irregularities with the funeral arrangements—”

  “The fact that there was a funeral at all didn’t clue you in?” Abby really was embracing that mean-girl persona.

  Alex continued, “Once we discovered the irregularities, we figured whoever had made the arrangements had something to do with Robert’s death. All the more reason to allow the ceremony to go forward.”

  Abby gave Ben a disapproving look. “You don’t know who scheduled the funeral, and you own the funeral home?”

  I was starting to see how the dead guy and she might have been a good match.

  “There are extenuating circumstances,” Alex said with a twitch to his lips. “Do you want to help retrieve a confession and punish Robert’s killer or not?”

  From the read I was getting off this woman, no way would she miss the unfolding drama that was likely to take place at Chalmers’ funeral. Yes, she genuinely cared for the man. And yes, it seemed she did want his killer caught. But she was also a bona fide mean girl in grown-up shoes. I had no doubt she’d derive real pleasure from attending the service and watching all the players of Robert Chalmers’ life congregate.