“Indeed,” Win murmured, his warmth pervading my bones.
I smiled, looking at the sturdy black picture frame I’d bought a few weeks ago, sitting by the microwave. The insert of a man sat inside, a dashing, incredibly handsome man with steely-blue eyes, a sharp jawline, and hair the color of a starless Texas night.
A stranger of course. Some model used to display the frame, but I’d decided this would be my frame of reference for Win. The model reminded me of the image that came to mind when I thought of my intrepid spy.
I crossed the plywood of our temporary kitchen floor and opened up the lone cabinet left on the wall until our new ones arrived next week, pulling out a box of Pop-Tarts.
“Stevie! What have I told you about a proper lunch? How can you become uber-spy if you eat like that? You must feed your body, not massacre it. It’s your temple, not a 7-Eleven.”
I ripped the packaging and broke off a piece, stuffing it into my mouth and chewing. “I’m not going to become a spy. You do realize that, right, Win?” I asked the picture frame, holding it up in the direction his voice came from. “I mean, it’s Ebenezer Falls, not a Hellmouth. How often do you suppose I’m going to need to know how to torture a suspect with needle-nose pliers or bungee jump into a ravine? Like never.”
“How quickly you forget Madam Zoltar and my cousin Sal.”
“Like I could forget being tied up, clocked so hard in the face I almost broke my eye socket, and having a gun held to my head by an utter lunatic?” The memory was still quite fresh for me, thank you very much. In fact, I still got the occasional headache as a stark reminder.
“And do you remember your incredible aerialist act? You were bloody like Robin Hood, Stevie!”
“Do you remember how sore my throat was after that from screaming like I was on fire? Would really rather not repeat that. Like ever. Did you scream like a girl when you had to swing on a rope in order to catch the bad guys when you were a spy? I’d bet not. Besides, like I said, how often do you think I’ll need these skills I’m supposed to feed my body for, anyway?”
My cell phone rang to the tune of “Unchained Melody”, Win’s idea of hysterical irony after we’d watched Ghost, which meant there was a call coming in for Madam Zoltar.
I cleared my throat and accepted the call. “Good afternoon, this is Madam Zoltar speaking, here for all your afterlife needs. How can I assist you today?”
There was some static on the other end of the line and a pause before someone said, “Are you the lady I saw today in the parking lot? The one with the turban and the flowery dress?”
Instantly, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. So I answered with caution. “Who’s calling, please?”
“This is Bianca Bustamante.” Then she sighed, quite clearly a sigh of resignation. “My mother asked me to call you.”
My eyes flew open wide in surprise. “Oh, Bianca, I’m so sorry about your father. I loved Tito. He made the best tacos ever, and he was incredibly kind.”
“He called you a murderer.” She said the words like she’d dropped a bomb in the middle of my kitchen and relished the thought of it going off.
Now I frowned. But she was right. He had indeed. “But he made up for it. No harm, no foul. No hard feelings.”
“Good, because I need your help. Even if you’re a fake, which I’m sure you are, my mother is inconsolable.”
My heart tightened in commiseration with Maggie. She’d been beside herself in the parking lot, and I hated that, so I ignored the crack about me being a fake. “I’m not sure how I can help, Bianca?”
“Mama wants you to contact Papa.”
So soon? He likely hadn’t even settled into the afterlife yet. And even if he had, maybe he’d crossed over and couldn’t be contacted at all.
I fought the tightness in my throat and gripped the phone. “I’d be happy to try, but to be honest, he’s only been gone a few hours. That can make contacting him almost impossible.”
Bianca snorted into the phone. “Right. Listen, lady, I don’t believe in your hokey garbage. Not even a little. But if it makes my mother feel better, if it calms her down enough that we don’t have to worry she’s going to have a heart attack, then make it up as you go along.”
Phew. Talk about no-nonsense. But everything I believed in railed against the very idea of tricking Maggie. “No. That’s not something I can do, or would ever do. I’m not going to lie to your mother. She deserves better than that. I’m sorry. I wish I could help.”
“There’s a lot of money in it for you,” she enticed, as though I could be bought.
Now I bristled, planting my hand on my hip in outrage. “I can’t be bought, Bianca. I don’t talk to the spirits for money. Ask anyone who’s had a reading with me and they’ll tell you, I donate almost all of the cost of my time to several different charities.”
Her cynical laughter rang sharp in my ear. “Everyone can be bought. Listen, what do you need from me? An open vein? All I want you to do is at least try. But if the spirit moves you to make something up once you see how torn up Mama is, to help her recover faster, then all the better.”
Good gravy. Her father had died just a few hours ago and she didn’t even sound like she’d shed a tear since finding him at the food court. But if Maggie was in pain and there was a slim chance I could find Tito, and I didn’t have to lie about it, I’d do it for her—and for my Taco Man.
“Fine. I can fit you in tonight at eight. Please bring something personal of your father’s, like a piece of jewelry, a picture, something he held dear. Does that work for your mother?”
I stressed her mother due to the fact that Bianca appeared to want to get this over with as soon as possible. Maybe she had a hot date or maybe she just couldn’t be bothered consoling her mother, but she could have at least waited until Tito was buried before she skipped off to the next bit of business needing her attention.
“Yeah. We’ll be there. Make sure you warm up whatever gadgets you use to make the lights flicker—or whatever it is you do.”
A spike of anger sizzled along my spine. “I most certainly do not use a gadget, or any gadgets, for that matter. I’ll have you know—”
Suddenly, I was speaking to dead air.
“She hung up!” I yelped, dropping my Pop-Tart on the counter and brushing the crumbs from my hands to pick up the picture frame. “Can you believe the gall of that woman, Win?”
“I can’t believe the form on that woman,” Win remarked with a wistful sigh. “One swish of those hips—”
Snarling, I pointed at the face of the model in the picture frame. “Not helping, Win! You’d better get your spidey senses in gear and see if you can find a spirit to help us find Tito, because if that woman gives me one iota of grief tonight, I’ll show her just what kind of a fake I am when I cast a hair-loss spell to rival Rogaine’s regenerating properties!”
“I hate to break this to you, but your spell-casting days are over.”
Setting the picture frame down on the countertop, I smoothed my caftan over my stomach. “Then I’ll just pull it all out in big, silky clumps. Now please, see what you can see around there on Plane Limbo, would you? Maybe find that woman who contacted us not so long ago? While you do that, I’m going to go make a voodoo doll of Bianca and I’d like some alone time to do it.”
Win’s laughter followed me out of the kitchen and up the stairs, a project that was still a work in progress.
And that’s when something else hit me.
While BY was busy flirting with Spy Guy, I’d never once used his full name. I’d only called him Win.
So how had she known his full legal name?
Things to ponder while I dug out my old Barbies and jabbed their tiny waists and pointy plastic toes with straight pins.
Chapter 5
I’d cooled down a bit since this afternoon and my phone call with All-Business Bianca, but still not enough to not want to clock her in her perfectly double-chin-free jaw.
As I set up Séance Command Central
at the store, lighting candles, making sure the tablecloth was free of wrinkles, I once again thought about Baba and how she knew Win’s full name.
I, crazy as this sounds, even considered calling her up and asking her how she knew, and if she’d tell me anything about him.
But I quashed that like a bad habit. Win had asked me to respect his privacy, and I was trying to do just that. I hadn’t once Googled his name or even the word spy—but knowing Baba perhaps knew something I didn’t was a little bit disconcerting.
Of course, she’d been around for hundreds of years. And she was a witch—the supremo witch of all witches. She had every power each witch in every coven had, times three. Naturally, she could contact the afterlife just as I once did.
I’m sure she’d hunted down all the information she needed about where I was in my life now before she ever poofed herself into my house. That tweaked me. She had no right to my life anymore.
And then I got over it. I had to begin to really separate myself from my old life if I hoped to successfully transition into this new one. I couldn’t cling to the hope I’d get my powers back.
It would stall all the good things happening right now, leave a door open for doubt and possibly keep me from doing something that would fill my soul just as much as being a witch once did. I wanted to embrace what I knew I had. That was Ebenezer Falls and performing Madam Zoltar’s duties in her stead. Those things were certain.
Madam Zoltar had once told Win just before her passing that she knew she couldn’t truly contact the dead, making his contacting her a dream come true. He’d contacted her because she was open, because her heart, if not her reality, was pure.
But what MZ was good at, what she excelled at doing during her time as a fake medium, was comforting the bereaved, giving them the nudges they needed to let go and move forward.
She wanted her clients healthy, and most of all, she wanted them to live.
I wanted that, too.
So I set BY from my mind and concentrated on tonight and seeing Bianca and her mother.
My eyes scanned the interior of the store, chock full of my personal things I’d finally been able to afford to take out of storage, thanks to Win. My healing crystals sat on all the newly installed shelves by the dozen, scattered in order to protect the health of the store and the people who entered.
My collection of snow globes—the ones Win had teased me were as bad as my addiction to thrift-and vintage-store clothing—sat amongst the crystals, each with a special memory attached.
We’d decided not to sell the typical psychic/medium fare tourists seemed to eat up with a spoon, simply because most of the stuff didn’t really work anyway. But mostly because I took this very seriously, and while the way I dressed in honor of Madam Z was a little hokey and stereotypical, I was not.
Win’s presence appeared out of thin air, the vibe in the room going from introspective to energetic.
“It looks smashing in here, Stevie. A perfectly soothing setting. For someone who exists on Pop-Tarts and tacos, I’m impressed at your attention to detail.”
I still wasn’t quite over his Bianca-and-her-hips-don’t-lie comment, which, if I’m brutally honest, also niggled me. Why should I care if he found Bianca attractive? A eunuch would find her attractive. She was gorgeous. There was no denying that.
“I just want Maggie to be comfortable. She should be at home resting, grieving, figuring out what to do next now that Tito’s gone, not here having a séance to ease the stress her daughter seems so callously unable to handle.”
“I’ve given this some thought, Stevie. Would it hurt to tell a white lie if it makes Maggie’s grief lighter?”
Hands on my hips—which I assure you, are absolutely not as enticing as Bianca’s—I let my displeasure show. “Shoot no. I’m never going to agree to that, Win. I’ll never lie to someone about a dead loved one. That’s just bad karma all around. It can come back to haunt you.”
“Has something like that come back to haunt you?”
“Nope, because I’d never do it. But remind me to tell you about a witch named Mercy who—”
The chimes on the door rang, thwarting my story as Bianca arrived with Maggie in tow. Despite the warmth earlier in the day, the rain had returned, and with it, cooler temperatures swept in.
The wind from outside blew at the edges of the tablecloth, the damp air sending a chill up my spine.
Seeing Maggie, her wide chocolate eyes swollen into slits in her head, rimmed in a shade of red I didn’t know was possible, almost made me reconsider Win’s suggestion.
But then I saw Bianca, with her skepticism all over her flawless face, and I girded my loins. I would only be feeding her cynicism by pretending I could talk with Tito if I really couldn’t. She wouldn’t know it, but I would.
Behind Bianca and her mother came Bianca’s siblings, Mateo and Juan Felipe. They surrounded Maggie, hovering behind her, their eyes stricken with grief.
I moved slowly toward Maggie, unsure how much English she knew or how receptive she’d be to my sympathies. She’d always been a hearty woman, robust in not just appearance, but in personality.
Now, she looked so frail, so cracked around the edges, I was desperately afraid to stick my interfering paranormal finger in the tiny fractures for fear they’d bust wide open and she’d fall apart.
Holding out a hand, I offered it to her. “Mrs. Bustamante, I’m so sorry about Tito.”
She took it, her fingers cold and clammy. When she gripped my fingers, she trembled. “Si, gracias. Tell me you can find my Taco. Por favor, Senora. I need to speak with him. You help, si?” she whispered before her voice cracked.
Now was the time for honesty, and the time to ignore Bianca’s icy glare. “As I told your daughter, Mrs. Bustamante, I’ll do my very best. Please…” I motioned to the table, wrapping my arm around her waist and leading her to the chair next to mine. “Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. Can I get you something to drink? Water, maybe?”
Maggie slipped into the chair, her spine almost collapsing as she did. She tightened her shawl around her shoulders, shivering before she looked up at me, her eyes so bloodshot from crying it was all I could do not to cry, too. “Water, por favor.”
“Of course.” I looked to Tito’s sons, avoiding the beautiful Bianca’s eyes altogether. “All of you, please gather round the table and get comfortable. I’ll be right back.”
I scurried off into the back room and went for the fridge, finding my hands were cold, too. I was sick with nerves about this. If I couldn’t contact Tito, would that tip Maggie over the edge?
This felt wrong. So wrong.
“Win? You here?” I whispered, looking around the dimly lit back room the way I always did, hoping against hope to catch a glimpse of him, knowing that would never happen without my lost powers.
“Always.”
“Any news from the Plane?” I prayed he’d found the woman who’d reached out to us previously.
“No. Not a bloody peep. I’ve talked to anyone who’ll listen to me, and no one can remember a woman with a Spanish accent being here in limbo. It’s like it never happened, but I swear to you, she existed.”
Swallowing hard, I inhaled and pulled a cold bottle of water from the fridge. Wishing it was a beer I could guzzle to take the edge off. “And no Tito, I suppose?”
“No Taco Man, either. But here’s something to hang on to. No one’s seen him here, or on any plane throughout the planes. If he crossed, there would have at least been a sighting, don’t you think?”
“I would think so, but what do I know about the afterlife except for what I’m told? I’m told an event like choosing to cross is a big deal. So yeah. I think you would’ve heard if he’d gone over. But then again, how do I know the information I’ve been fed all these years is right? I’m worried, Win. I don’t want this to be the straw that breaks Maggie’s back. She’s very clearly on the edge. Ugh, I want to strangle that Bianca. How could she think this would make Maggie feel bette
r?”
“I’d like to think she knows her mother better than we do and the reason she’s being so forceful about it is because she just wants the best for her. So let’s at least try, Stevie. I’ll give it all I’ve got, both engines.”
The murmurs from beyond the back room were hushed, intermittently broken up by a soft sob from Maggie, raising the levels of my anxiety.
I checked on Belfry, napping as usual under the banana leaf plant, and stroked his tiny back to wake him. “Bel? Time to wake up, partner. We have work to do. You know what to do, right?”
He snuggled against my palm as I tucked him into the pocket of my caftan. Bel was aces at picking up signals from not just outside—where, were he anything but a familiar, he’d spend his days—but from people, ghosts, and even plants. You name it, he could tune into it, and tonight he’d be my gauge for Maggie’s mood.
“You bet. Use my sonar to sense signs of too much stress in Maggie. If she looks like she’s cracking, send the signal.”
“And the warning signal is?” I prompted, more for my own peace of mind than a reminder to Belfry.
“I screech like a seagull.”
Using my fingertip, I pressed a kiss to it and stroked his head. “Perfect. I love you, Bel. You’re the best familiar ever. Win? You ready?”
“I am indeed,” he said, but his tone held a hint of concern.
I’d learned a lot of things about Win since we’d become entangled in each other’s lives, and one of them was how much he cared about those around him. I suppose that would make him a crappy spy—messy relationships and emotions and all—but it made him a great partner in the afterlife.
“Then let’s do this.”
I made my way back out and headed for the door, where I turned off the neon sign and flipped our open sign to closed. Scooping Bel discreetly from my pocket and setting him by the cash register, I dimmed the lights in the back where the reading table was and turned off the lights in the front entirely.
My stomach was in an uproar, but I ignored the churn and handed Maggie the water. “Are you ready, Mrs. Bustamante? Everyone?”
Quit Your Witchin' Page 5