“I don’t know. I’d hate to ask her for anything,” I said.
“I think it will be all right. She’s behaved herself since Regina’s death. It’s not like we’ll owe her a favor. I’ll offer to buy the materials. She’s still a witch, and that makes her a sister. Maybe she’ll act like one.”
“You can try. While you’re out, I’ll get the day’s baking done. Once my Mom and Tom get into the shop, I’ll make an excuse and we’ll go to the house. I want that thing gone.”
“What about Glinda? She’s got Sadie working in the shop with her now. We should ask for her help. Three is better.”
“Three is better,” I said. “Okay, we’ll ask her.”
Ginger returned an hour later with everything we needed. I just about had the baking done, so I put a pot on the stovetop to make the Hellfire Away Home and Laundry Spray. A pot was as good as a cauldron when you were a kitchen witch.
“I take it Esmeralda was there when you knocked,” I said.
“Yeah, she didn’t look so good. It appeared I woke her. That makes sense given how early it is. I thought I might have to go by her house or find another nearby witch, but she was there.”
“I’ve heard a rumor that she is living in the shop,” I said. “I don’t think she makes enough money. She might have lost the house. I need to go by there sometime and make sure that she disposed of her poisoner’s garden appropriately.”
“Do you think the shop is struggling because she is doing legitimate business now?”
“It’s too bad, but yes, I think that’s what it is. Regina made her money by tricking people. It’s harder to make money when you won’t swindle your customers,” I said.
“That’s too bad,” Ginger said as I started to add ingredients to the pot.
“Well, give it time. She’s got to put some more distance between her and the Regina scandal. It would probably help if she renamed the place and got a new sign. It would be less of a reminder to people that a charlatan, and Esmeralda’s mentor, used to run the place.”
“That’s true,” Ginger said and threw the black salt into the water.
It was starting to boil. I checked the Cookbook of Shadows to make sure we were doing everything correctly, and then Ginger and I finished up the potion.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Well, we have to let it cool and then we can put it in a bottle. I don’t have a spray bottle here, but we can look for one when we get home. Or we can stop at the pharmacy on the way and get one from the travel section. I should have remembered before you went.”
“I bet we have one at home. It seems like something we’d have. You have quite the hoard of containers, bottles, and jars,” Ginger said.
“While we wait for it to cool, you can help me put the cupcakes out for the day and start the coffee.”
“Oh, wow,” Ginger said. “Are you hiring me? This would be like my first real job.”
“Sure. Ginger, you’re hired. You’re now an official employee of Sweet Magic Bakery. I’ve got some paperwork you can fill out after we banish the demon from our house.”
Ginger helped me stock the cupcakes, and we got it done in record time. I had to pull my Mom aside when she arrived for work and explain to her what was going on. I’d completely forgotten to tell her, and she seemed a little unnerved that I suddenly had a twin sister.
“I thought I was losing my mind for a second,” she said.
“Nope. That’s Ginger,” I responded.
“Well, I like her much better as a person. I’m far more confident she doesn’t have the plague this way.”
“Mom.”
“So, what are you ladies up to today? I assume since you’ve hurried up and gotten the shop set up that you’re leaving the bakery to Tom and I for the day.”
“About that. Okay, so there’s a demon infesting my house and Ginger’s boyfriend is the suspect in a murder. Someone killed his ex-girlfriend last night in the woods near where he took Ginger on a date.”
Chapter Eight
After I finished explaining everything I knew about Ginger’s situation and the demon in the house, Ginger and I headed over to Petals to the Metal to ask Glinda if she could accompany us to my house for the demon cleansing.
“Wow,” Glinda said.
She was behind the counter and turned around to see us when we came through the door. I watched as her eyes darted back and forth between the two of us for a moment.
“Did you intentionally make her look just like you, or was that a side effect?” Glinda asked.
“We didn’t do anything specific to make her look this way,” I said. “It’s just how she came out. I’m not that self-absorbed.”
“When Trucker told me she looked just like you, I thought he was exaggerating, but she’s definitely a candidate for a twin. Probably not an identical twin, but one of those fraternal twins for sure,” Glinda said.
“You’re talking about me like I’m not here,” Ginger said.
“Oh, sorry,” Glinda said. “It’s so cool to meet you this way. I guess I just got a little flustered.”
“It’s okay,” Ginger said and plucked a rose from a display near the front counter. She held it to her nose and inhaled deeply.
“So, what brings you two in today?” Glinda asked. “I’m going to assume it’s not just to introduce your new…”
“Cousin,” I said. “We’re going with cousin. My cousin Ginger from out of town is staying with me.”
“We’re here because the house is infested with a demon,” Ginger said. “Probably more than one by now. We were hoping you’d come help us get rid of the thing. Is Sadie here today?”
“She should be in any minute, and I’d love to come help you get rid of a demon. That sounds fun,” Glinda said with a chuckle. “I hate infernals.”
Sadie came into the shop, and Glinda told her that she’d be gone for a few hours. I introduced my “cousin” Ginger to the new girl working at Petals to the Metal, and we left before she could ask too many questions.
We all piled into my car and drove back to the house. Ginger held the spray, I drove the car, and Glinda told us a story about Trucker eating an entire box of instant biscuit mix in the middle of the night.
“When this demon is gone, I’ll bake you some of the best biscuits you’ve ever had. You don’t need to buy that stuff,” I said.
“Can you make the cheddar garlic biscuits like you get at that one fish place?” Glinda asked hopefully.
“I can make cheddar garlic biscuits so good you’ll forget your name,” I said.
“I’ll take that bet,” Glinda said.
Once we pulled up into the driveway, it was immediately apparent that something was wrong with the house. It was as if there was a shadow cast over it, but there was nothing large enough nearby to cast a shadow over the entire house. Even the large trees in my yard never covered it completely.
We stood out in the front yard and watched. You could see things moving around inside. The curtains rustled. Sometimes one of them would split just enough to see a glowing eye peak through.
“I’m so glad we’re out here,” Ginger said. “It’s worse than I thought.”
“I think we’re going to have to go inside, Ginger,” I said. “I’m not sure if we can get rid of them with the spray from out here.”
“How are we going to get spray bottles?” Ginger asked. “I thought we’d at least be able to go inside. Maybe we should go back to the pharmacy.”
“Let’s check the garage first,” I said. “Maybe something for the back garden. It’s worth checking before we drive back to the store. The longer it goes on, the worse it’s going to get. I don’t know how much longer the house will contain them.”
The three of us went into the detached garage that sat just behind the house. Something tapped on the windows as we walked by the side of the house as if it were following us. Glinda walked on the other side of the driveway practically in the neighbor’s yard. I wondered if she regretted her
decision to come along.
We searched the garage for ten minutes and I thought we were going to have to give up when Ginger said she found something. She brought me an old spray bottle of weed killer that had expired ten years before. It must have been there when I moved in.
“Just rinse it out real good,” Ginger said as I turned the old bottle over in my hands.
“You think that will work? I don’t want to spray weed killer residue all over the house,” I said.
“We’re witches,” Glinda countered. “Rinse it out while you do a bit of a cleansing spell. It will be fine.”
So, that’s what I did. Once it was clean, I poured the Hellfire Away Home and Laundry Spray into the bottle and screwed on the spray cap.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go bust some demons.”
“I really hope that stuff works,” Ginger said.
“You and me both,” I responded.
“I wish we had three bottles,” Glinda practically whispered as we left the garage.
“You guys stay behind me,” I said as we walked to the back door of the house. “Or you can stay outside. I understand if you don’t want to go in. This is far worse than I expected.”
“No. I’m going in,” Ginger said. “I’ll cover you as best I can with protection magic.”
“I’m not leaving my witch sister hanging,” Glinda added. “I’ll cover us with protection magic as well. This is super scary, but we can do it.”
“I just hope we’re not being lured into a trap. Is this a good idea?” I asked. “Or are we being deceived by the fiends inside?”
“Well, I don’t think they can affect the Cookbook of Magic,” Ginger said. “That’s your grimoire. They can’t touch it. We probably should have brought it with us.”
“Yeah, but it was keeping these things from infecting the bakery. It’s protecting my Mom and Tom. You’re right. The Cookbook of Shadows wouldn’t have given us the recipe if it wouldn’t work. Let’s do this.”
When I opened the back door, the stench inside the house almost knocked me over. I was glad that my Mom hadn’t volunteered to come. She’d have lost her mind to the foul odor. I knew all we had to do was get rid of the demons, and the smell of rotting meat and sulfur would vanish. At least, I hoped it would.
There had been a lot of rattling sounds coming from the house when we were outside. Once I had the door open, I could hear footsteps coming from upstairs and from the living room.
When the three of us stepped into the kitchen, silence dropped on us like a blanket. It wasn’t a comforting silence, either. I felt like the moment just before something bad was about to happen had been extended indefinitely. I had to force my lungs to take in breath because my body wanted to shut down.
It was oppressive. I began to lose the will to cleanse the house and wondered if I could live in my bakery. I knew I could set up a cot in the kitchen, and it would’ve been so much easier than taking the next step.
Then it hit me. Losing the will to drive out the demons was a trick of the very creatures I’d come to expel. They were trying to demoralize me so I wouldn’t send them back where they came. I straightened my back, held up the spray bottle, and started to spritz. It was my house, and no hell spawn infernal was going to take it from me.
Why aren’t witches afraid of the dark? Because they know they are the scariest thing in it.
As I sprayed the kitchen, a loud moaning began. It crescendoed into a deafening roar, and I wondered if my neighbors would be calling Joe about the noise.
“Keep going,” Glinda said. “I think it’s working.”
“I think it sounds like you’re making them mad,” Ginger added.
I walked from the kitchen down the hall to the living room and kept the spray held up in front of me like a weapon. Every few seconds, I would pull the trigger and shoot a burst of the lovely scented mist out in front of us.
The moans and screams grew so loud that Ginger had to do a spell to protect our ears from the noise. Glinda did her best to put a bubble around the house so that the neighbors wouldn’t call the sheriff. I hoped that the spell would also keep the fiends inside the house because we hadn’t thought do a containment spell before I starts spritzing the things with banishing spray.
If the sounds around us were any indication, they couldn’t get out. I couldn’t hear their moaning and wailing anymore, but I could feel the house vibrating with negative energy. All around us there were muted thumps and what sounded like wood being twisted until was almost broken. I needed to move faster because it sounded like the demons were trying to rip the place apart.
I’d been walking slowly because I was a little afraid, but I had to push past that. I picked up the pace and started spraying like crazy. By the time we got up the stairs, my hand ached from how many times I’d pulled the bottle’s trigger, but we didn’t run out. In fact, it never felt like the bottle got less than half full. The potion was making sure we didn’t run out.
The shaking in the floor subsided, and I pointed to my ears and gave a thumbs-up. Ginger took my hint and undid the spell muting our hearing. I needed to know if there was still screaming and moaning going on.
There was a little bit of wailing, but I walked into the last upstairs room and sprayed it, and its closet, thoroughly. With that, the house fell silent. It wasn’t that creepy silence, though. It was peaceful. We’d been successful.
“Look, guys, I don’t know what’s going on or why that happened, but let’s go down to the kitchen and make some more of this stuff. The recipe isn’t too difficult. We just need some more bottles. I think you guys should have a bottle of this stuff too.”
“There are a couple of old spray bottles in the upstairs bathroom. I’ll go get them,” Ginger said.
“Do you think this had anything to do with her becoming human?” Glinda asked cautiously. “Like because the balance is upset or something?”
“That’s not it.” A now familiar voice said from behind me.
“Oh, Goddess. We missed one. Get it,” Glinda exclaimed.
“That’s not a demon,” I said. “She’s just a ghost.”
“Lucinda,” the ghost said.
“I’m pretty sure you’ve given me your name before and it wasn’t that,” I said, but I really couldn’t remember.
“Eh. It doesn’t matter. My name is Lucinda,” she said.
Ginger came running down the stairs. “Whoa. That’s not a demon.”
“It’s not,” I said. “Did you get the bottles?”
Ginger held them up for me to see. “Got ‘em, boss.”
“We were just about to make some more potion,” I said to Lucinda the ghost. “It’s strange having you here. I’d always thought you couldn’t go far from the cemetery and that’s why you lured me there at first.”
“I couldn’t back then, but things have changed,” Lucinda said. “The veil is thinning and the tethers that keep us bound where we belong are fraying.”
“That’s how the demons were able to use the energy from my spells to get through,” I mused.
“Yeah, and that was just the beginning. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, but something much worse is coming.”
And then she was gone again.
“What do we do?” asked Glinda.
“Let’s just go make the potion. If what Lucinda said was true, then all we can do right now is be prepared.”
Chapter Nine
The next day, I decided to stay and work in the bakery. I’d been around a lot less since I’d hired Tom, and I missed my customers. Tom was an excellent employee and he and my mother were great at running the shop, but I needed to be there sometimes too.
I got in that morning before everyone else and baked the day’s stock. The Cookbook of Shadows didn’t reveal any new recipes that would indicate that anyone was in immediate danger, so that was a relief.
It did show me a recipe for a cheddar cream cheese muffin, and I thought that was a little different. Makin’ the Cheddar was t
he name of the savory treat. I shrugged and looked at the clock. I had plenty of cream cheese, but I didn’t have any cheddar. The last time I’d made anything with cheese in it was an apple pie and cheddar cupcake two years before. Cheese and Thank You had been a hit, and I needed to remember to make it again.
There was time for me to run to the market and get some cheddar for the recipe. I locked up the shop, jumped in my car, and realized about halfway there that I should have called to make sure they were open. I never went to the store that early in the morning, so I had no idea.
When I arrived, the lights were on in the store, but there were only three cars in the parking lot. Three cars meant that there were probably people inside. I stepped out of the car and looked through the grocery store’s huge floor-to-ceiling front windows. Sure enough, there was a girl at the checkout and at a customer milling around the produce section.
I walked quickly from my car to the sliding doors and they opened when I stepped in front of them. Jackpot. Christmas music played over the store’s speakers, and I wondered when the Cookbook of Shadows was going to start giving me holiday cupcake recipes. I thought that perhaps I shouldn’t wait for it. Maybe I just needed to add Mistletoe and Mint or Elation Eggnog to the daily menu myself.
I picked up three blocks of cheese. For a brief moment, I considered the bagged stuff that was already shredded, but they added extra starch to that to keep it from sticking. It wouldn’t take much for me to shred it myself. A little magic went a long way when it came to cheese preparation.
As I was checking out, I saw a familiar truck pull up into a parking space. It was Lupin. I debated for a few moments whether I should go talk to him or not. I needed to get back to the shop, but my curiosity was burning like a bonfire.
I didn’t think he’d killed Amanda, but if there was any chance that Ginger was dating a monster, I had to know. That made my decision for me. I waved when he looked up and saw me.
“Good morning, Lupin,” I said as I crossed the asphalt parking lot toward him.
“Hello, Zoe. Is Ginger with you?”
A Howling Good Time (Wicked Witches of Destiny Cove Book 3) Page 4