Ivana: I thought so too.
Athena: But I do have a question. Can the undead really die?
Ivana: I wasn’t exactly sure, not until this week.
Athena: Okay, so vampires can be killed. Do we know who killed him?
Ivana: Again no. But I know what you’re going to say…
Athena: Because you have the script?
Ivana: Well, that too. But no, I didn’t slay the vampire.
Athena: Me either. No matter what my last name is—I would never.
Ivana: Not even if he’d cornered you in a dark alley?
Athena: I mean, maybe. But that’s totally off topic. Granted, it does make a good segue for today’s show sponsor.
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Ivana: Is that a real thing, Athena?
Athena: I guess you’ll have to Yahoogle it and find out.
Ivana: You’re always making me Yahoogle things when I prefer Goohoo.
Athena: Goohoo dot come—the world’s trusted source for screening your next employee.
Ivana: Okay, now we’re seriously off topic. We hope you enjoyed this special episode of Creel Creek After Dark. Check the show notes for more information. Hit the like or subscribe button. And remember to tune in next week!
19
In Witch I’m Accused
We ruminated on the podcast for a little while, wondering what authority—what information Ivana, I mean Jade—it was obviously Jade—had about Mr. Caulfield.
But the more we thought on it, the more we believed they were just blowing smoke. They had good instincts, but the podcast was a joke. Even the comments section treated it that way. No one took them seriously. Maybe we didn’t have anything to worry about.
Still, the next day, I tried to stay off of Jade’s radar. She was busy in her new role as manager. I took my post next to Trish hoping I could ride out the day without making any waves.
I had only been there for an hour when the intercom crackled. It squealed, piercing mine and the customers’ ears. There was some fumbling on the mic before Jade’s voice found it.
“Constance to the manager’s office,” she said. “Constance Campbell to the manager’s office.”
Is this high school? Her tone told me all I needed to know. I was in trouble.
“Is she serious?” I asked Trish. My line was three people deep and Trish’s was no better. Jade had a view of the registers from the television in Mr. Caulfield’s office. She could’ve picked a better time to air out whatever grievance she had with me.
I continued to ring up a frumpy middle-aged woman. And I after that, I started ringing up the next customer, a man.
The intercom crackled with static. “Now, Constance.”
“I guess she means now,” Trish said.
“I got that.” I turned the aisle’s light off. “Sir, do you mind moving to the other register?”
“But I—”
“I know,” I said, shaking my head at him mournfully. “I’m sorry, but she did say now.”
The man snorted. “Yeah, I heard her.”
Jade’s thin frame was dwarfed by Mr. Caulfield’s desk chair. The chair was massive, filling the whole space between Mr. Caulfield’s desk and a filing cabinet—her desk now. Behind her, a coffeemaker on the cabinet was gathering dust.
I stopped in the door like that high schooler afraid to go in the principal’s office. I waited for Jade to acknowledge me.
“Come in and close the door,” she said without looking up.
Jade was antsy; she tapped her fingers on the desk.
“I don’t want this to be awkward,” she said.
Too late.
“I know you interviewed for this job. Cyrus told me. And I want you to know that just because you didn’t get it, doesn’t mean you aren’t welcome on my team.”
It probably wasn’t the best time to tell her I’d actually gotten the job, I just didn’t want it.
“I’d also like you to know,” she went on, “that I’m not like everyone else in town. I don’t jump to conclusions. I need hard evidence, facts, before I make a decision.”
Now, she had me confused. What kind of conclusions? Is everyone in town talking about me behind my back? Surely not.
“Of course, I would love to hear it from you,” she said. “Where you were the night Mr. Caulfield was killed. Trust me. I know he had enemies. But your little spat the day before, well, it does make me wonder whether or not I can trust you.”
“Wait… what?”
My spat?
I had to give it to her. She didn’t pull any punches. She’d just come right out and accused me. Something I couldn’t have done to her. Until now.
“Are you asking if I killed Mister Caulfield?”
“It’s a simple question,” she said. “I assume you can answer it, can’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, you killed him or yes, you can answer it?”
“I meant no.”
“Now I’m confused.”
“Join the party,” I said. “The answer is no. No—I didn’t kill him. And yes, I could answer your question. But I won’t.”
“You’re on thin ice as it is, Constance. You’re sure you can’t tell me where you were the night he was killed?”
“I could ask the same of you,” I spat. “You didn’t even come in that morning. And I heard your fight with him about coming in that night.”
“I’d hardly call it a fight. We had a disagreement about scheduling.”
“Same with me,” I argued. “I came in late that morning. Getting reprimanded by my boss is hardly a motive for murder.”
“I agree,” she said. “But there’s something strange about you. You’re different. Care to tell me why?”
Jade’s words lit a fire in the pit of my stomach. Anything I said now was going to come out with venom.
“I don’t know what you mean. Don’t come at me with accusations when you can’t even defend yourself.”
“So that’s how you’re going to play this? Tit for tat. Okay, I’ll tell you where I was that night.”
I waited. She was shaking her head like a crazy person. Back and forth. Back and forth. “I was out with a friend. All night. She was with me the whole time. Neither of us killed anyone. I was running late that morning. I’d overslept.”
“That’s a pretty weak alibi,” I said. “Who is this friend? And what were you two doing?”
I thought I had a good idea of who that friend was. But I wanted her to tell me.
“Are you the police now?” She cocked her eyebrow mockingly. “No, that’s right—you’re a cashier at grocery store. I gave my friend’s name and a recording of what we were doing to the authorities. Sheriff Marsters was happy with my explanation. I think you should be too.”
I was sure she was going to tell me about her little podcast. After all, she’d gone this far. I knew she was proud of it.
“Now, do you have something to tell me?”
“Still nothing,” I said.
Jade glowered at me. “Go back to your register. There seems to be a bit of a line.”
I craned my neck to see the television on the side of her desk. Sure enough, it gave the manager—Mr. Caulfield included—a bird’s eye view of the front of the store. Trish’s line spilled out and down of the row of registers.
“That is quite a line,” I said. “And if you don’t want to tell me about your podcast, that’s fine.”
“You—you’re a listener?” She struggled with that for a moment, eyes wide.
“Occasionally.” I beamed at her.
“What I do in my off hours is—”
“Is fun?” I gave no indication that I thought Creel Creek After Dark was serious in any way.
She flushed. “Right.”
And I’d been dismissed. I retreated fro
m the office, pushing my luck by saying, “Good chat. We should do it again soon.”
20
In Witch I Get Robbed
Not much had changed since coming into my abilities. Using magic proved tricky. I’d tried a handful of spells, but I could count on no fingers how many had been successful.
Oh, I usually made something happen—heat coursed from my fingertips and electricity crackled through the air. But my intention always got lost in translation. I was like Luke getting stung by the training ball, not yet ready to connect with the Force.
A few days passed. Then a week. It felt good to be back to the daily grind. For the first time ever, there were customers waiting at the door every day, almost like they’d come to appreciate their local grocery.
Jade took her new role as manager seriously. She hired her replacement at the butcher counter. A hire from within—Nick, from produce, took over. Hal moved up to take Nick’s place.
Jade had also promoted someone to assistant manager. This, I was less enthusiastic about. Trish took the post and in turn made me lead cashier.
I didn’t let the promotion or its $0.25 an hour increase go to my head.
I was thankful for Trish’s gift. Hal had neither spoken a word nor approached me since my birthday. He chose instead to watch me from afar. I guess warding off infatuations wasn’t something her protection spell could do.
The next Saturday morning, my line flowed like the conveyor belt. One in. One out. Two in. Two out. And by lunchtime, Trish had to call in more baggers. The freckle faced youngster at the end of my register was named Craig.
And speaking of infatuations, Craig’s was on the other register.
Wynter, a night shift cashier filling in this morning, had all the youth and fresh good looks of a prom queen.
“I’m going on break,” she said. She had a dreamy manner of speaking, and she hardly made eye contact with anyone except Craig.
“Have fun,” I said
“Yeah, have fun,” Craig managed to say.
She wasn’t gone long before my line got out of hand.
I rang the customers up on autopilot, chipping away at the line. I’d cleared the line when the lights flickered off then back on again like there was brief power outage. If the power was off for more than five minutes, the generator would kick on.
“That was weird,” I said.
I glanced outside and my eyes locked onto a man in a green hoodie. Ducking his head, he entered through the sliding doors and turned, never giving me a chance to see his face.
It was the hoodie that stood out to me. It wasn’t cold. Far from it. We still had most of the summer ahead of us.
“What was?” Craig reached for another paper bag and folded it open.
“The lights,” I said. “The way they flickered.”
Craig cocked his head. “Did they?”
“I think so.”
He shrugged it off. “Maybe I had my eyes closed. It wouldn’t be the first time I napped on the job.” He smiled. “Don’t tell Jade. Or Trish.”
“Have you seen Jade?” I asked him.
“This morning, maybe.” He heaved a heavy bag into the customer’s cart. “I think she’s busy doing manager things.” He made air quotes.
“You don’t approve of manager things?”
“If she’s like Mister Caulfield, she’s sitting back there drinking coffee and watching us do the work.”
“Yeah?” I tried to hide my smile. That did sound accurate.
Craig lowered his voice. “I heard you got offered the job.”
“Did you?” I raised my eyebrows, giving him one of those maybe I did, maybe I didn’t smiles.
“And you turned it down?”
“Listen,” I said, “I know when you’re sixteen, running a store like this might seem like a decent gig. But I’m in a weird place in my life right now.”
A really weird place. In life, in love, and work, I thought. And that was without adding magic to the mix.
“I’m eighteen,” Craig corrected. “And I’m with you. I wouldn’t touch that job either—even if it came with a six-figure salary. It doesn’t come with a six-figure salary, does it?”
“I didn’t ask.”
He nodded. His curiosity sated for the time being.
There weren’t many customers left, with a handful of items each. “You mind if I take my lunch too?”
“Are you and Wynter friends?” I asked.
“Not exactly.” He blushed.
“She is cute,” I told him. “I mean if you like that whole homecoming court, Jack and Diane thing she’s got going.”
“Jack and who?”
“Forget about it.”
“She reminds me of the girl that used to babysit me when I was little,” he said wistfully. “But no girl could ever live up to Miss Kenzi.”
“Someday one will,” I said.
Craig was still young. He had time to figure these things out. Unlike me. Silently, I wished him good luck. Then I realized that maybe I could do more than that.
Then again, my powers could backfire… on him.
He’s eighteen, I reminded myself. There will be plenty of girls.
I thought about everything Gran had taught me so far, the little that she had. And I made a rhyme.
“Lucky in love.
Come push or shove.
If Craig deserves a mate.
Make Wynter see he’s great.”
Like Gran, I twirled my finger down where no one could see, and I felt the warmth of magic, that tingle that came with using my powers, flow from my fingertip.
Pleased with myself, I checked out a few more customers and found mister green hoodie at the end of the line.
He picked up a bag of candy and set it on the belt. He didn’t have any other groceries. And when I greeted him, he ignored me. He didn’t even look my way.
Not that he was the first person with odd tendencies to come through my line. Or the first one with bad wardrobe choices. Earlier that day, I’d rung up a seventy-year-old woman with a purple thong rising from her jeans.
But something about him wasn’t right.
Is my powers trying to warn me?
I was glad he only had the one item.
Except there was a gun in my face before I had time to scan his M&Ms.
“All the money in the register,” he muttered. His voice wasn’t familiar, but the way he dragged out the syllables was.
He kept his head down, not letting me get a good look at his face.
But the only thing I was looking at was that gun. Inches away from my face. I could see every detail—most notably, the small barrel. One wrong move and a projectile moving faster than the speed of sound would rocket out of it and through my witchy skull.
I wondered if this guy know how little money was kept in the drawers—a few hundred dollars, tops.
“Is three hundred dollars worth killing someone for?” I whispered.
“Shut up,” he shouted. “Open the till.”
It was his voice that drew the attention of the entire store, not mine.
He noticed it too. A woman down the cereal aisle pulled out her phone. The robber moved his gun from me to her.
“Put the phone down,” he demanded. “Everyone get down! Slide your phones this way.”
The sound of phones skittering against the floor was surreal. A still lit phone stopped beside his foot. The woman’s phone had dialed out, there was a call on the line.
The thief bent down to end it.
That was probably the moment I should have done something. I should’ve used my magic.
After all, I’d just performed a spell—and one that maybe had worked. At least, nothing had backfired.
These were the kind of circumstances where magic was useful. It was just me who was useless. I was petrified.
Green hoodie thief turned back to the register, frustrated. His eyes went wide. “Where’d she go?”
He waved the gun around, looking around wildly t
hen he leaned over to get a better look under the register. The gun waved around, nearly connecting with my head. I shied away.
“Where the hell did she go?”
No one in the store offered him an answer. I was speechless, waiting for one of them to point and say, “She’s right there, doofus.”
He looked again sweeping the space behind the register with the gun. It should’ve clocked me right in the head. But it passed through me like I wasn’t there at all.
I looked down and realized that I wasn’t there at all. My hands, my arms, my body, none of me was visible. I screamed, or I would have. Except my voice had also disappeared.
I watched, dumbstruck, as the agitated thief gave up looking me and went for what he hoped was a payday. He pounded on the register, but everything needs a password these days. Too bad for him.
Sirens sounded in the distance. Green hoodie looked up and I finally caught a glimpse of his face. He was younger than Craig by a hair—the peach fuzz kind on his chin. His blue eyes were panicked.
Now was the time for him to run. He hadn’t stolen anything yet, although waving a gun was a serious enough crime. He grabbed the M&Ms and made a break for it.
Except instead of running out the doors and into the parking lot, he bolted the other way—through the store, sidestepping around people on the floor and dodging their buggies.
Two sheriff’s vehicles pulled up in the fire lane. One familiar SUV, one cruiser. Dave and Willow burst from their vehicles. They drew their weapons, then Dave indicated for Willow to go around the building while he entered the store.
The doors slid open and Dave entered, searching for the threat. Like the green hoodie M&M thief, he looked through me to Trish, who’d been down one of the aisles.
“That way,” she mouthed, pointing energetically.
Nodding, Dave moved stealthily in that direction. When he was out of my line of sight I turned my gaze outside where their vehicles were parked, sirens off but lights spinning.
To my surprise, I saw a person out there.
He’d stripped off the green hoodie. With his baggy jeans sliding off, the thief jogged to a rusty old cavalier and peeled out of the parking lot.
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