Midlife Curses

by Christine Zane Thomas

  We found our first shifter running in the other direction to the humans. I touched him and I said, “you can move.”

  His eyes moved, next his arms. He shook himself out.

  “Get out of here,” Trish pointed.

  We did the same to every shifter and werewolf in sight until finally we caught up to Dave.

  “Dave, you can move,” I said.

  He shook his head, backing away from us.

  “It’s okay. I’m not afraid of you.”

  Maybe I should be.

  “Can you talk?” Trish asked him.

  He shook his head.

  “Then you should get out of here,” she said.

  He shook his head again, pointing his paw in the direction of the bookshop.

  “Okay,” Trish nodded, “you hide out in there. We’ll figure out the rest.”

  “What the heck are we going to do?” I asked her.

  “A memory charm,” she said confidently. “I’ve got it. Good job with the whole pausing time thing. I’ve never seen anyone do that.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed, “I wish I could say the same.”

  Trish worked on her memory spell while I did a little something akin to Gran’s cleaning on the people, returning them to proper positions as if they’d been having fun at the festival—not getting terrorized.

  When Trish thought she had the memory charm worked out, I unfroze them.

  It seemed to do the trick. We both sighed with relief.

  We waited in the bookshop for the streets to clear. I was anxious to get back to Gran and see if she knew what had caused this whole ruckus to begin with.

  Dave, still in wolf form, prowled the aisles of the shop. As a wolf, he wasn’t used to being caged. I imagined he had as many questions as me and Trish, he just wasn’t able to voice them.

  We left as soon as the streets had cleared. The three of us heading in the direction of Gran’s house and the graveyard. There wasn’t time for cars, nor did I think Dave could fit inside one. He ran while Trish had me hop on the end of her broom.

  We were making good time when it happened.

  I thought I saw a glint of metal in the distance, something that set my fingers to burning and my neck to prickling.

  I shoved past Trish and veered the broom toward it. Not knowing how to drive a broom, I found the ground came a lot faster than I thought it would. We hit a tree with an unsatisfying thwack.

  We fell. Branches whipped at my face before the dread of falling, then I tumbled knees first into the brush beneath.

  “You idiot,” Trish said. “You broke the broom.”

  “Dave,” I called out.

  The wolf’s loud panting came around the tree beside us. He stopped and scouted the tree line behind me. Then he tipped his nose in the air, sniffing.

  Something still felt off.

  The glint of metal hit my peripheral vision. And when I whipped my head around to see what it was, it was too late.

  Green hoodie kid. He stood other side of the tree wielding the very same gun he’d pointed in my face. Now he had it trained on Dave.

  “No!” I screamed in anguish.

  I ran to push Dave away. After all, he had much more to live for than I did. At the same time, the gunshot echoed across the wood.

  29

  Silver Bullet

  The next few moments were a blur. The gunman disappeared through the forest while Trish and I worked to stop the bleeding on Dave—wolf Dave’s shoulder.

  I even took off my shirt, fixing it tightly around his hairy werewolf arm and compressing the wound. But neither of us were field medics.

  What I’d do to have Jade here right now.

  “We’ve got to get him to a hospital,” I said.

  Trish was the voice of reason. “Like this?”

  Dave yelped in pain.

  “Do you have any better ideas?”

  “We need your Gran,” she responded. “Do you think it’s a silver bullet?”

  “I don’t know.” I was afraid to dig my finger in to find out. “It looks like it doesn’t matter. He isn’t healing himself. Do they do that?”

  Trish shrugged.

  “Let me think of a spell.” Trish also noticed how the ring of blood on what used to be my clean shirt expanded from the size of a dollar to a frisbee. “If only you hadn’t crashed my broom.”

  “If I didn’t,” I said, “I think he’d be in a worse state.”

  I didn’t know if that was true. But I had to start trusting my inner witch. Each time I hadn’t just went on to prove how wrong I’d been to fight them.

  Even with Trish there, I felt alone and helpless. A rustling from some bushes ahead said even that wasn’t true.

  I turned to face it, thinking it was probably that kid with his gun back to finish the job.

  Then Brad’s voice boomed. “Your Gran is on her way,” he said. “And the moon will dissipate shortly. He’ll be back to his human form—only then can you take him to the hospital.”

  “If Gran’s coming,” I said, “can’t we just magic this bullet out of him?”

  I figured that was why Trish needed her—for a spell or something.

  “The short answer is no.” Brad made his way around me, and he put a reassuring raccoon paw on my back. At once, I felt comforted, like a hug from someone you’d missed seeing for years and years.

  “He’s right. We’ve used a lot of magic already tonight,” Trish chimed in. “The good thing is it’s midsummer. Or it was. The bad thing is we’re already outside the witching hour.”

  I didn’t know there was a limit. But now that Trish mentioned it, I felt drained. Between freezing hundreds of people at the festival, her wiping their memories away, and whatever Gran had done, we’d used a lot of magic in little time.

  Through the trees above us, the light faded, and the moon was a sliver of its former self.

  Slowly, Dave’s hairy face and chest began to thin. His form twisted. He howled with agony as he became himself once again. But by the time his face was actually his face again, he was unconscious. His transformation back to mortal man hadn’t done anything for the wound on his shoulder. If anything, it looked worse. I rewrapped the loosened shirt.

  We didn’t have to wait long after that. Our ears were greeted by the sounds of an octogenarian hoofing it through the woods and cursing with every other step.

  “I’m here. I’m here.” Gran caught her breath. “Why don’t you have a shirt on, dear?”

  I moved for her to get a better look at Dave.

  She pointed to the wound, her ruby red ring glittered in the moonlight. “Have you girls checked if it was silver?”

  We shook our heads, but Gran was already muttering a spell. “The idiot,” she said. “Sterling silver. I think we can save his life.”

  “How?” Trish asked.

  “By calling an ambulance,” Gran spat. “Which one of you has your phone?”

  Trish handed Gran her phone.

  “Not me. You call it in.”

  Trish made the call.

  “He’ll be all right,” Gran assured me. “Help me get him to the road. Repeat after me.”

  “Light as a feather. Stiff as a board.

  Let’s get this oaf to a hospital ward.”

  “Gran!”

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  Dave’s body floated into the air about waist height. I pushed him by his bare feet. We found the closest road and somehow the medics were already arriving.

  With it, Willow’s cruiser parked on the side of the road behind the ambulance.

  They loaded Dave up quickly. Neither medic had much to say. I wasn’t sure if that was part of a spell or perhaps, they too were paranormals. And they knew something crazy had happened tonight.

  Willow offered me a shirt and us a ride to the hospital. “Nice bra,” she said, handing me a crumpled brown uniform shirt.

  “And where’ve you been tonight, Miss Clairvoyant?” Gran asked her.

  “Shrouded
in mist,” Willow answered. “And you?”

  “Just realigning the moon and the tides,” Gran said matter-of-factly.

  “Can you get me up to speed?” Willow asked the lot of us. “Someone’s been bad. I think Dave was right. There’s a hunter here.”

  “And they went hunting werewolf tonight,” I said.

  Trish and I took turns explaining the events of the Midsummer Festival in the car, then told her about the kid who’d shot Dave. She winced, knowing that it was her and Dave’s fault that the kid was still on the loose.

  “But how is that kid so powerful?” Trish asked.

  Gran didn’t say a word. She just stared in thought.

  Lights flashing, siren on, it didn’t take us long to get to the hospital. Dave was already into surgery when we arrived.

  “So we all agree that something crazy’s going on, right?” Willow whispered in the waiting room. We weren’t the only ones there. But by the looks of the people in the room, we had nothing to worry about. They were in their own states of shock and focused elsewhere.

  “Right,” Trish and I said in unison.

  “Maybe,” Gran said, out of sync.

  “And you’re sure it was that same kid who shot Dave?”

  “Yes.”

  Willow nodded. Then suddenly, she froze. Her eyes went cloudy white. A second later, she shot for the door.

  “Where are you going?” we asked.

  “I’ve got a job to do.”

  “You don’t want to wait and see if he’s all right?”

  “I already saw,” she called back. “And I think I know where to find the culprit.”

  “I’m getting a ride home,” Trish said, standing.

  “Me too.” Gran yawned.

  “You’re leaving me?”

  “Willow said he’s going to be all right.” Trish shrugged. “We’re not doing him any good here.”

  “That’s not exactly what she said.”

  I wasn’t hearing it. I was going to stay as long as it took—even if he was going to be all right. I needed to know Dave was going to be okay.

  An hour later, groggy and yawning, Dave’s sister Imogene trotted through sliding glass doors of the emergency room waiting area. With her, his three girls were all in pajamas.

  Though we didn’t know each other well, Imogene found me and squeezed me into the tightest of hugs.

  “Is Daddy going to be okay?” Elsie asked.

  I nodded, though I only had the minor assurances of a psychic cop.

  In the waiting room, the girls got comfortable—comfortable enough to sleep. Kacie snored, laying across my lap with her head in the crook of my arm.

  “I appreciate you staying,” Imogene kept telling me. But even she was swayed by the necessity of sleep eventually.

  My eyes were tired too. But my mind wouldn’t let them wink without having some say.

  It was all related. Mr. Caulfield’s death, whatever happened to Nell Baker in her cabin, the missing ghosts at Cyrus’s vineyard, and now tonight.

  Even the robbery at the grocery store—that same kid shot Dave. It couldn’t all be a coincidence. It was linked. But was he really the one behind it all?

  How?

  A doctor stood in the doorway for the rest of the hospital, the operating and patient rooms. He waved in our direction.

  I rubbed Imogene’s shoulder, startling her awake. Then she followed me to him, after I laid Kacie down next to her sisters on the wide waiting room chairs.

  “How is he?” Imogene asked.

  “I think he’s going to pull through,” the doctor said. “He did lose a lot of blood though.”

  Imogene nodded.

  “And the bullet?”

  With his eyes, the doctor indicated that he knew exactly why Imogene was asking this question. “Nothing to worry about there. It’s out of his system. We have him on a special drip to counter its effects.”

  “Good. Good.” A tear rolled down Imogene’s cheek. My eyes burned, doing the same.

  “Is there anything we could do?” Imogene asked. “Can we see him?”

  “You can see him in the morning,” the doctor said. “Until then, we always ask relative and friends for blood donations.” The doctor motioned down a corridor.

  I nodded along. I’d be happy to give blood. Then I gasped.

  This was what we’d failed to put together. Mr. Caulfield wasn’t killed because of a lover’s quarrel with Cyrus. He was killed because of the blood he’d taken from one of Nell’s animal friends.

  And I thought I knew how to prove it.

  30

  Use the Force, Constance

  The first thing I did was call Trish—who wasn’t pleased to hear my voice with it still dark outside. But this couldn’t wait. I tried to get through to Willow too. After all, she was searching for someone far more dangerous that she probably thought. Not only some sort of wizard but a cold blooded serial murderer to boot, one with inside knowledge of this whole town.

  I sent Brad to fetch Gran and Stevie, asking that we convene in the graveyard in hopes of gleaning the information we needed.

  A simple summoning spell, just to prove Cyrus’s innocence and find out without a doubt who this hunter was that we were dealing with. We were sure to have enough magic for that between the three of us for a summoning spell. The problem had always been knowing precisely what we were summoning. Well, I’d worked that out.

  I’d worked everything out except finding a late-night ride to the graveyard. None of the ride sharing apps worked in Creel Creek, not even the shady ones.

  I gave Imogene another hug, then searched the hospital closets for a broom.

  If Trish could fly, so I could I.

  It turned out that thought was kind of a spell. And after several false starts, I was flying through the stale light of morning and through the swirling fog in what I hoped was the direction of the graveyard.

  I landed with no fanfare just outside the gate. The broken gate, off its hinges. It lay in the dirt, barring no one’s entrance.

  “Brad?” I called. I’d beaten both Trish and Gran here. I was going to wait on them. But my impatience got the better of me.

  I strode inside with purpose, making my way up the hill to the tree they’d used to transfer those gifts to me. How I’d squandered them all, the foresight and all of the protection.

  It was time I made amends. I could do it—I could do it on my own.

  “Turned by a witch into something wrong.

  Used by a vampire all along.

  He was the one who chose to stay.

  Who was the one who got away?”

  The wind whipped over the hill and through the branches on the tree. It gusted through my ears with a whisper.

  Haaaalllll.

  That wasn’t right. I wanted to ask the spirits again. I wanted to tell them they were wrong. My magic was busted.

  A shudder ran down my spine. Strolling up the hill in a cloak with a staff, and with a shoulder-height black wizard staff complete with a skull on the end, was Hal Aaron. Halitosis Hal himself.

  “You?” I said accusingly.

  “Me.” He shrugged nonchalantly. A wicked smile spread across those gross mossy teeth.

  “I, uh, I—” I struggled to find words. “I’m warning you,” I said.

  Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when you feel threatened—threaten back?

  He paid the threat no mind.

  “I’m not alone,” I said. I was completely alone. “Trish will be here soon. Gran will—”

  “Oh, Trish, I need you at the graveyard right now?” Hal mimicked my voice to a T.

  “It’s too early for this, Constance? Fine. I’ll be there.” This time, it was Trish’s voice, the voice I’d heard on the other end of the line—back when I was sure that it was the kind in the green hoodie who’d done everything. Back when I was sure Trish was on her way.

  “How?”

  “A spell,” he said. “I just had to say the right words when I
entered my number into your phone.”

  I put a hand to my mouth.

  “So, you remember asking what I said? I thought for sure you’d figured me out then.”

  At the time, it had seemed like something of such little consequence. I’d never planned to call Hal. Yet, he’d used that to trick me—and probably to spy on me as well.

  The reality set in like a bucket of ice water dumped over my head. If it was Hal on the phone when I’d called Trish, then it was probably Hal on the phone when I called in to Willow as well.

  “Now you’re catching on,” Hal sneered.

  It’s okay, I thought. I still have Gran. Brad was going to get her. He couldn’t stop that. Can he?

  “Oh, you don’t get it, do you?” He looked at me, placating a pitiful pout on his lip. “I know all your moves. I banished your familiar to a realm he’ll never find his way out of.”

  I was too scared to scream.

  “Lucky for your Gran, the protection on her house is solid. Unlucky for you, she’s fast asleep. Now, to matters at hand.”

  “What—what do you want? What’s this all about?”

  He’d already gotten away with the murder of Mr. Caulfield. There was nothing I could offer him, and nothing I thought I’d done to deserve a gruesome end. I wondered if this was still about a date.

  “Your power.” Hal dug his staff into the ground, climbing slowly up the hill. “Did you know you can take a witch’s power in her first year? It’s a very special year, turning forty. I’ll have it from you now.”

  Hal reached out his staff toward my chest. But a few feet away, he came to a stop, almost like an invisible barrier was blocking his way. He barreled backward, then tried to round the invisible barrier. But again, he was flattened on his ass.

  Trish’s protection spell.

  He tried and tried. The spell was going to hold on no matter what Hal did.

  “How’d you do it?” I tried to get him talking, so I could think.