Midlife Curses

by Christine Zane Thomas

  She moved Twinkie to her shoulder. At first, I’d thought he was a white mouse, a lab mouse, but now I realized his fur was mostly gray with sprinkles of light brown and black. His eyes were black and beady.

  “Is Twinkie a boy or a girl’s name?” I asked.

  “Technically, a familiar is neither,” Trish said.

  “And technically my mouse parts are female,” Twinkie’s voice reverberated through the room.

  “Fine then,” Trish said. “She was my mother’s familiar. And she stuck around after Mom died. We didn’t have to go through that awkward stage, if you will.”

  “The awkward stage?”

  “You know, like what’s going on with us right now. Becoming friends. Getting to know each other’s habits. All that jazz.”

  Trish was right. We were becoming friends. How weird.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

  “Oh,” I said, startled. “No reason.”

  But the harsh reality was, I didn’t need a new friend right now. I needed to not be a witch. I needed not to have found a dead vampire. It was time I made my way back to California and put this all of this crazy stuff behind me.

  8

  In Witch We Meet Someone New

  “I guess I’ll take you back to your car.” Trish scooped her keys off the counter and stowed Twinkie in her cleavage. “You good for a ride, little one?”

  “I hate it when you put me here,” he said.

  “He says that, but I’m not sure it’s true.” She winked.

  I held up the book. “I really do want to pay for it.” Paying for it would ease my conscience.

  Especially, I thought, when I leave this place in my dust.

  After this morning, I was ready to point Crookshanks at California and stomp on the gas. Witch or not, I didn’t like being around a murderer—especially one who could off an undead vampire.

  Trish ignored me. “By now,” she said, “I bet the parking lot’s cleared out. Even if the sheriff’s still there.”

  “Do you think he will be?”

  Trish studied me. It was a casual question, one with no subtext. Still, it was like she was looking into me.

  “You like him, don’t you?” she smiled. She pushed some loose strands of purple hair back and with a dramatic backhand, squeaked, “Oh, sheriff, I’d love to go in for an interrogation.”

  “Stop. No, I wouldn’t.”

  Trish was coming around the counter when the front door jingled.

  I pivoted and found a man standing in the doorway. He seemed hesitant to step into the shop until his dark eyes met mine. He smiled.

  His looks were a stark contrast to the rough-around-the-edges sheriff—who I totally didn’t have a crush on. This man had the dreamy looks of a movie star—a clean-shaven face with strong features, a cleft in his chin, and cheekbones most women would kill for. His wavy dark hair was so thick it’d stop your fingers if you ran them through it. He chose a brushed back style, not too messy, not too neat. He was slim but filled out his button-down shirt. A button-down shirt with the top two buttons undone.

  He smiled. “Mornin’, ladies.”

  “It is morning,” Trish conceded. “Did you read the sign on the door? We’re not supposed to be open for a couple of hours.”

  “I did,” he admitted. “Then I used my powers of observation. People inside. An unlocked door. The open sign.”

  “Crap,” Trish muttered under her breath. “We’re only here because—”

  “Because of what happened up at the grocery store?” he guessed.

  “How’d you—”

  “TV.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “That redheaded reporter is cute. You were in the video, you know?”

  He pointed at me, losing some handsome points by calling the duck-faced Summer Shields cute.

  Plus, the more I looked at his hair, the more I thought he was showing off. Hey, I’m over thirty, and I don’t have a receding hairline.

  “All right,” Trish said. “You got me. How can I help you today?”

  “I’m looking for a book. So, I thought I’d swing by.”

  “Did you try Amazon?” Trish asked.

  “Why would I try there? I wanted it today.”

  “Two-day shipping. Or it could be in an e-book. You could be reading it on your phone right this minute.” Trish brushed at her chest. Twinkie had tried to sneak a peek.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to read it on my phone. Are you really trying to turn away a customer? Does your boss know you treat people like this?”

  “I’m not turning you away,” Trish argued. “You’d know if I was.”

  She totally was turning him away.

  “And what I do with my business is my business. I’m my own boss.”

  “You really are the friendly sort.”.

  “As friendly as they come,” Trish retorted.

  “I’m Cyrus—or Cy—by the way. And you are?” He was asking me, not Trish.

  “I’m, uh—”

  “She’s not interested.”

  This was the third time Trish had come to my rescue in two days. The first time with Hal, I should’ve let her. The second time, with Summer, I gladly accepted. This time, I was somewhere in the middle.

  “Wow. You two know how to make the new guy in town feel welcome.” This time, he smiled enough to reveal a set of dimples. He got a few handsome points back.

  “You’re new in town?” I couldn’t help myself. New to town, like me, and in a place as small as Creel Creek. What an odd coincidence.

  Trish thought so too. “What, did they start incentivizing?” she scoffed.

  Cyrus chuckled.

  “I’m serious. Did you two get checks in the mail or something? She,” Trish pointed, “just moved her a few weeks ago.”

  “I did,” I agreed. “They said my check’s in the mail.”

  “It’s a small check,” Cyrus said. “Very small. I got mine yesterday.” The dimples returned, but I was over it. I was not getting involved with anyone who’d voluntarily move to Creel Creek, Virginia.

  “No, but seriously,” he said, “I live here now. My father left me the vineyard outside of town.”

  “Your father was Mister Armand?” Trish asked.

  “He was.” Cyrus nodded.

  “But you never lived here,” Trish said pointedly. It wasn’t a question.

  “No, no. I was raised by my mother overseas—in Egypt, in France, and Belgium. I did spend holidays here every now and again. It feels like ages ago.”

  Honestly, I’d thought the vineyard was closed. I’d seen it from the road running errands for Gran. It looked abandoned. Maybe it was and Cyrus was going to revamp the place.

  But those were questions I could ask Trish later. Her annoyance at his presence escalated when she found out who he was.

  “I really am here for a book,” he told her.

  “I’m sure you are,” Trish said. “Well, feel free to take a look around. I guess we’re open.”

  Cyrus began to comb the shelves until Trish realized her mistake. She wasn’t admitting defeat, not exactly, but she wanted this guy out of her shop as soon as possible.

  “What book is it?”

  “The Ghostly Guide to Astral Projections. You heard of it?”

  “It sounds vaguely familiar,” Trish sighed. “Try the first aisle, toward the back on the right.”

  Any attraction was lost at this point. I might soon be a witch, but I was never going to be into a guy who believed in ghosts.

  Trish must’ve had similar feelings. “So, you’re into ghosts?” she called to him.

  We could no longer see him; two shelves of books blocked our view.

  “Maybe I’m a ghost hunter,” he said.

  He found the book and strode to the counter, pleased with himself. “There. I knew you’d have it.”

  “Are you really a ghost hunter?” I asked speculatively.

  “Maybe.”

  Trish rolled her eyes
, but he caught her in the act. “What? You mean to say you sell this stuff and you don’t believe in it?”

  “I’m cautiously pessimistic,” Trish replied. “I’ve seen a few things, but nothing definitive. And I’m even less confident you’re a ghost hunter. You’re too pretty.”

  “That might be true.” Yep, he was severely conceited. “But there’s a lot going on in this town.” He looked at me. “You should do yourself a favor and learn more about it. The check’s only good if you stay around a while.”

  He paid for the book. It was a little more expensive than the average used book. Okay, it was a lot more expensive. Almost twenty dollars.

  “It was nice meeting you two,” he said, not meaning it.

  “We didn’t meet,” I replied. “Meeting requires the exchange of names.”

  “Oh, but we did,” he countered. “I’m Cyrus, like I said. And you’re Constance Campbell. I remember from the TV. Her name is Trish Harris. It’s on these business cards.” He pointed to the cards beside the register.

  “That’s not the same,” I argued. “Plus, we don’t even know your last name. Is it Armand like the vineyard?”

  “Go ahead,” he told Trish, “tell her who I am.”

  “Cyrus Tadros,” Trish said with contempt. “Son of Edward Armand, I guess.”

  “Mother never liked his last name,” Cyrus said. “See, I saw you scrutinize my credit card. You really need to get one of those fancy readers like they have at the bakery. The one that read chips and let me sign with my finger.”

  “Buy a few more books and maybe I can afford one,” Trish retorted.

  “Maybe,” Cyrus wavered. “But not today. Like I said, it was nice meeting you two. Don’t get into too much trouble, now.”

  With that, he left the shop.

  I waited one second before laying into Trish. “What was that about?”

  “It’s not what you think,” Trish said. “I mean it might be—what do you think?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” I admitted. “I thought you two might know each other. You came off kind of…”

  “Rude,” Trish suggested.

  “Something like that.” I was actually thinking of the word I’d thought Gran had mistaken for witch.

  “No wonder this place has trouble covering the rent,” I said.

  Trish shook her head. “I don’t know who he is. But in the few years I’ve run this place, we’ve never had a new customer. Not one that wasn’t online. I don’t know what his agenda is, but I’m confident he has one.”

  “So, you don’t think he’s a ghost hunter?”

  Trish shook an imaginary Magic 8-Ball. “All signs point to no.”

  “And his father? Who is he? Or who was he?”

  “That’s another thing,” Trish said. “I didn’t know he died. The vineyard’s been there for as long as I can remember.”

  I screwed up my face, my eyebrows in particular. “You mean it’s still a vineyard? It looks closed.”

  “That’s cause it is closed,” Trish said. “At least, it’s closed to visitors. But they still produce wine. Good wine, too. I might have a bottle at home.”

  “So, what’s his agenda, then?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. But I’m thinking maybe it has something to do with Mr. Caulfield’s death.”

  9

  Too Familiar

  After Trish dropped me off at my car, I returned to Gran’s. Gran and her familiar were dying for the inside scoop, Stevie more so than Gran. He hovered on the fringes of the conversation, not saying much. I think he realized it unsettled me.

  How am I ever going to get used to a familiar? I didn’t think I wanted or needed one.

  “This is all my fault,” Gran muttered.

  “What is?”

  “Your involvement,” she said. “I knew that vampire was trouble. But I never would’ve believed something like this could happen. Not here. Not now. I shouldn’t’ve summoned you here.”

  It was like when I’d stopped time, except Gran was still talking— well, her mouth was moving. I’d actually hit the mute button. When she realized there was no sound coming out she looked puzzled.

  I shook my head. “You just said you summoned me.”

  “I never said that,” she lied, her voice coming back. “I mean I shouldn’t have said that.” Gran shook her head.

  I gaped at her, dumbstruck. This made so much sense. When I’d gotten into the car, I was heading for my dad’s place in San Diego. Gran used magic to get me here.

  “I had to,” she pleaded. “You were never going to learn anything out there on your own. When your husband did what he did, it made things a whole lot easier.”

  I couldn’t hide how much it upset me. It explained everything. The problem was, I was here now. And though I was ready to pack up and leave, I didn’t think the sheriff would appreciate that. There was also the coming into my powers thing to deal with—she did have a point there. A small one.

  “You’re terrible,” I said.

  I locked myself in my room for a few hours in my best replication of a teenage tantrum. Forty going on fourteen.

  Before I got here, Gran had used her spare room to stow her sewing supplies—not that she was much of a seamstress. Like the cluttered downstairs, she was more of a collector of sewing materials.

  There were yards and yards of fabric packed tightly on a bookshelf beside an old Singer sewing machine. It lived under a blanket of dust on a desk barely big enough to hold it.

  Above the fabric, I’d cleared space to house my small collection of books. I added the one from Trish next to my copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Strange, how so much of my life’s reading centered around magic and the paranormal, almost as if I’d sought it unknowingly. Now, I wanted to push magic away.

  This small collection was all I had left from a lifetime of reading. Over the years, I’d given books to friends, donated them, and even left a whole bookcase at the house with Mark.

  It doesn’t matter, I thought. I can find almost everything on digital digitally these days. Trish had made a good point when she asked that Cyrus guy why he hadn’t looked for his book online.

  But are Trish’s suspicions justified? Could he really be the killer?

  If being new in town meant getting labeled a murderer, then what was I, suspect number two?

  And how do you kill a vampire, anyway?

  Gran didn’t know how it worked. She didn’t know much about Mr. Caulfield, except that he was a vampire—information I could’ve used yesterday and the days before it.

  Then again, I thought, maybe vampire is just a label. Someone who drinks blood. But whose blood?

  I hadn’t been brave enough to ask if they existed eternally or could turn into bats. Gran did say that my knowledge about witches was wrong. Perhaps the same could be said of vampires.

  I glared at my frayed copy of Twilight.

  How dare you forsake me.

  One thing was certain, Vampires don’t sparkle. Mr. Caulfield wasn’t ghostly white either, not even redhead pale. And he wasn’t beautiful by any stretch of the word.

  On the bed, I hoped to achieve an afternoon nap, but my racing mind wouldn’t allow it. I went to the bookshelf again.

  Despite my animus of all things witchy, I leafed through Trish’s book. It read like bad fanfiction, like a wannabe book of nursery rhymes. And like all nursery rhymes, it dealt with death and the macabre—and of witches’ trials and tribulations.

  The first was about a witch that was convinced another witch was hexing her dairy cows so they wouldn’t produce as much milk. The next verse, she claimed a wizard had taken the form of a goat to spy on her. She was careful not to let the goat see her true powers, afraid that the wizard would attempt to steal them.

  Eventually she did, by accident. And when her suspicions proved to be true—the wizard tried to kill her—only for the other witch, the one she thought hexed her cows, to kill him.

  I guessed the moral of the story was t
o trust your fellow witches but be wary of wizards.

  Judging by my chat with Trish earlier, she’s taken this advice to heart.

  It was midafternoon when I looked up from the book. Time had gotten away from me. I would have sworn I’d only been reading a few minutes or so. The book was thin.

  My stomach growled and I realized I hadn’t eaten lunch.

  I made a quick sandwich and spent the afternoon and evening steering clear of my grandmother and her familiar, tough, considering they lounged in the places I wanted to be—the living room and the kitchen respectively.

  I wandered outside to the garden. Not that I felt like gardening. I just wasn’t ready to talk to Gran again. I was bound to say something not nice. I wanted to be left alone. But an icy prickling sensation told me that it wasn’t going to happen.

  Someone—or rather, something—was watching me.

  In the excitement of the morning, I’d completely forgotten about my finding my familiar.

  The sun had already dipped behind the mountains; only a sliver remained. And the wood between the cemetery and Gran’s fenceless garden filtered those rays into almost nothing.

  It grew darker the closer I got to the edge of the yard. I stopped several feet away from the trees, giving myself a wide berth if I needed to run.

  “Hello?” I said tentatively, hoping that whatever it was would show itself.

  I scoured the tree line for movement.

  I was beginning to get frustrated by the lack of initiative on my familiar’s part. If whatever, whoever, it was is supposed to be my familiar, why hadn’t they showed their face?

  An owl hooted.

  “A bit early for you to be out,” I called to it.

  It didn’t reply.

  I gave up and turned toward the house, checking over my shoulder a couple of times. I climbed up the steps to Gran’s deck. And discovered a pair of yellow eyes I was sure were responsible for that prickly sensation.

  “Why were you watching me?” I asked.

  “You can’t refuse the call forever, you know?” Stevie didn’t bother answering my question. His gravelly voice was like nails on a chalkboard.