“Again, good thing you’re not a movie star, then.”
I smiled to myself as I checked out of the conversation. It was completely ridiculous, of course. Lara Lancaster was one of the most famous actresses in Hollywood; there was no way she was going to come to Moonlight Cove, whether or not she was a witch. Elisa had busied herself helping Gareth at the register with something, so I decided it would be best if I just got out of the way. I peeked my head into the kitchen to call for Luna. She bounded after me and climbed up to my shoulder.
“Bye, Bella. Hang in there, sweetie,” I said. Bella nodded.
“I will. Thank you.”
I gave Elisa a silent nod of farewell and headed back out to my broom. I climbed on and kicked off again, toward the senior center. I was gripping the broom with one hand and holding my sad decaf in the other.
“Where to now?” Luna asked.
“Senior’s Center. I have a feeling that’s where I need to be.”
“Witchy instinct?”
I nodded. Leaning forward, I kicked the broom into high gear, speeding off down the road. The Senior’s Center was a fairly glamorous, newer building. It was built in the 90s, which made it brand new compared to most of the town. The builders had done a great job of making it look welcoming, bright and modern, and it kept that same look to this day. When we arrived, there were older people milling about outside, talking to each other in conspiratorial tones. They were glancing suspiciously at one another, too.
A little confused by the weird, edgy atmosphere, Luna and I walked into the building and went straight to the front desk to register in for the day. As I was signing my name, I heard an old lady telling her friend that a bingo game was about to start. That little light in the back of my mind lit up, telling me to go for it, as crazy and weird as it might be.
I looked up at the secretary behind the counter and. “Hi. I’d like to sign up to join the bingo game, if you don’t mind.”
Chapter 6
“You’re on your own now,” Luna said, hopping off my shoulder. She padded over to the front door of the center and sat down, planting herself firmly by the exit.
“Really?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah. If you want to play bingo like an old raisin, go for it. But leave me out.” I laughed and shrugged.
“Fine. I’ll come back for you afterward. Try not to get into any trouble while I’m gone, okay?” I told her. She agreed with a huff.
I stepped into the bingo hall. Really never thought that would be something I’d do in life – well, not for at least another forty years or so, anyway - but there I was.
The name “bingo hall” made the place sound a little more grand than it really was. The place looked more like a conference room that had been converted into a sort of permanent gambling center. With a carpeted floor patterned in a stereotypically hotel-ish geometrical design, and with rows of tables throughout the whole place, it looked like some sort of conference for accountants or something wouldn’t have been out of place. The room could probably seat about a hundred people, I guessed, but it wasn’t exactly the entire Senior Center that was present tonight, like I’d been expecting.
In fact, the players were almost all women, all of them well into their sixties and beyond. Most of them wore floral dresses and cardigans, some even sporting wide-brimmed hats. Hats seemed to be in vogue at the Senior’s Center. One woman even sported an old-fashioned pointed witch’s hat, albeit with a somewhat subtle trim to make it look less like some gaudy human Halloween costume.
At the front of the hall was a raised platform and a wooden table, and at it sat the most beleaguered-looking young man I’d ever seen in my life. Looking at him was a bit like looking at leftover mushroom pizza in human form. He had messy, cowlicked brown hair and a collared shirt with a tie that was a little loose, and I was pretty sure the five o’clock shadow on his face was permanent. When I stepped into the hall, his vacant eyes gave me a what-are-you-doing-here sort of weary look.
Scanning the room for open seats, bingo card in hand and not the first clue about what to do, I made my way over to the nearest open seat near the back of the room next to a short, spry-looking woman with a streak of bright blue in her gray hair, which only made her thick, round glasses look even more distinct.
“Oh! Well, hello there, dearie!” she said, giving me a bright smile the moment I sat down with a nervous one of my own. “You’re a new face! Oh, it’s so good to see a few young people getting in on the action!”
“Haha,” I tried to laugh and put a little sincerity in my voice. “Um, yeah! I mean, what’s the point of having a bingo hall in town if you can’t try it out, right?”
“That’s the spirit!” she said with a laugh, patting me on the shoulder and giving me a squeeze. I couldn’t help but feel like she was checking whether I had much meat on my bones. “I’m Gertrude, Gertrude Bowman.”
“Artemis,” I replied, “Arti’s fine, though. Nice to meet you.”
“Now, don’t let this den of vipers scare you off,” Gertrude said, giving me a knowing look before narrowing her eyes at all the other women in the hall. A couple of them had been looking over their shoulders at us, but they quickly looked back.
Den of vipers?
“I’m not sure if there’s much here I would find threatening, exactly,” I admitted, fiddling with my bingo card uncomfortably. There was a card marker sitting next to me, attached to the table by a thread.
“Look a little more closely, dear,” Gertrude said in a lower, more ominous tone, and I noticed her point a bony finger toward a couple of the tables in front of us. Two of the women who had a much older, sleepier woman between them like a buffer were glaring each other down like a couple of dogs about to get into a fight.
I blinked and squinted to make sure I was seeing properly, but then my eyes started drifting around the room, and I noticed that it wasn’t an isolated case. Every few seconds, some little old lady somewhere was casting the dirtiest of looks at others, some close to each other, some across the whole hall. Daggers might as well have been flying from their eyes.
That was when I noticed the signs posted around the walls. Yes, signs, plural. They were all written in extremely large, black print on warning-sign-yellow paper:
USE OF MAGIC STRICTLY PROHIBITED IN BINGO HALL!
VIOLATORS WILL BE BANNED WITHOUT WARNING
NO EXCEPTIONS
As if that wasn’t enough, there was a picture of a single pointed finger under the words withå a big red X over it. Under those, someone seemed to have hand-drawn a crystal ball and put a similar X over it. And under that was what looked like a deck of Tarot cards, also banned with an X.
“Wow,” I murmured. “Have there been some issues?”
“Oh, honey,” Gertrude said with a toothy, dentured grin. “You have absolutely no idea.”
Suddenly, the man at the front of the hall tapped his throat with his finger and muttered an amplification spell, and when he spoke, it sounded like he was equipped with a microphone. His voice was every bit as dull and defeated as he looked.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he droned. “Our weekly bingo will begin in five minutes. Please make sure you have your cards and are seated at a table. Please keep your hands to yourselves for the duration of the game. Interfering in any way with your neighbor’s card will result in an immediate ban from the bingo hall.” As he spoke, his eyes glazed over, and I could tell this script probably played over in his head at night. “If your dauber is not working, please notify me in a calm manner, as I have spares. Interfering with other players’ ability to declare their numbers is strictly prohibited. Threats of physical violence to my person or other players will result in a ban. And of course, no magic whatsoever is to be used. Thank you for joining us on this exciting Thursday night.”
“Was all that really necessary?” I asked Gertrude in a low voice.
“Oh, he’s being lenient tonight, he must be in a good mood,” she said thoughtfully.
&nbs
p; I had to shake my head a little to make sure this all wasn’t a fever dream. I felt like I had stepped into a cage fighting ring.
“So, I guess it’s probably too much to hope that he’s going to explain things,” I asked, fidgeting in my seat. “How does... I mean, how do you…” I trailed off.
“Oh dear, do you not know how to play?” Gertrude asked, her wide eyes looking gargantuan behind her spectacles. At the look on my face, she started giggling triumphantly. “And they say it’s the old people who don’t understand things nowadays!”
“Do you have a 5-minute version of the rules?” I asked quickly, feeling like I’d get eaten alive if I couldn’t carry my weight in here.
“Oh, don’t fret, it’s really simple,” Gertrude replied. “It’s more of a gambling game than anything, but I probably don’t have to tell you that magic can make games of chance a little fuzzy.” She held up her card. “This is your card. You’ll see it’s got some boxes on it, each with twenty-five squares of numbers, and they go from 1 to 75. Each box is one round. With me, sugar?”
I nodded, taking a deep breath. Gertrude continued, giving me a quick rundown of just how to play.
“Then you call out ‘bingo!’ and pray someone doesn’t shoot a lightning bolt your way,” she chimed happily with a smile as she finished her explanation, and I had a sinking feeling that she wasn’t completely joking. “The patterns get a little more complicated as the night goes on, and the last round is usually a ‘blackout’ where you have to fill it all out.”
“Seems a little complicated for the caller, having to randomize everything on the spot,” I said, looking at the haggard guy as he made his way back to his seat. “Couldn’t you just print out a bunch of random stuff for months ahead of time?”
She gave me the sweetest, most condescending smile I’d ever seen. “Ohhh, you sweet thing. That might be true in the human world, but this is Moonlight Cove Senior’s Center Bingo.” She said it with an edge that was usually reserved for describing a boxing tournament.
“I saw you wiggle those hands, Agnes!” one woman snapped at the table in front of her, making me jump. “Don’t you go working your finger-magic on the security spells!”
“Edith, you old bat, I’ve got arthritis!” Agnes snapped back, shaking a fist. “But I’ll fight through the pain if you keep running your mouth like that!”
I sat paralyzed in my seat with wide eyes. What on earth had I just gotten into?
“That’s Edith Hagen,” Gertrude whispered to me. “Most competitive woman in the hall. She might well have raised a stink just now to cover up her own cheating.”
“I heard that, Gertrude!” Edith snarled back at us, making me wish I had an invisibility spell. “I’ll turn your dentures into bingo balls if you can’t keep your gossiping mouth shut!”
Gertrude just stuck her tongue out at Edith, who turned back around, grumbling. In an even quieter voice, Gertrude whispered to me, “I’m sure you heard about poor Susanna? The two of them were the top dogs around here. Their feud is the reason there are so many signs up.”
I made an o with my lips, and suddenly, the tip to come here started to make more sense.
“Alright, buckle up,” Gertrude said with a grin. “He’s about to get started!”
Sure enough, a simple pattern appeared on the wall a moment later, after a wave of the man’s wand. He then reached into the ball pit and drew out a shining marble, looking at the smoky number on it.
“B-5,” he announced, and the game was on. People hounded their cards, two of them stamped the spots and looked triumphant, while others frowned. Gertrude cleared her throat subtly. I glanced at her, and she nodded down at my sheet. I noticed that I had that number!
“Beginner’s luck!” Edith snapped at me, making me jump in my seat yet again. I hadn’t even noticed she was watching! “Gertrude, I swear, if this pretty little friend of yours is some kind of trick-”
“Please refrain from threats of violence while the game is in session,” the caller’s voice droned, and Edith shot him a nasty look that he ignored.
The game marched on, and even though I expected to be bored out of my mind, I actually kind of felt myself getting excited about each number getting called out.
By the moon’s cycle, I’m looking into my future right now, aren’t I?
It helped that I had a good view of everything going on from where I sat. The women really did hound each other, and outbursts like Edith’s weren’t uncommon at all. Edith was by far the quickest to call others on suspicious activity, though.
When someone won the first round, she shuffled up to the front excitedly, and the caller inspected her card. He then tapped it with his wand and raised an eyebrow as it burst into flames before my eyes, and I gasped.
“What the?” I said, surprised.
The caller frowned at the woman who’d won and nodded to the doors. Crestfallen, she shuffled off, mumbling something about shoddy enchanted paper.
“Anti-cheating spells,” Gertrude explained when the woman had left the building, and I just stared as if I’d seen lightning strike twice. “It’s taken very seriously, you see. But some people just don’t learn. Edna there isn’t a first-time offender.”
“So that’s how you cheat at bingo?” I said.
“Well, in the human world, it’s a lot more straightforward than that. Switch cards with a dozing partner, make friends with the caller and have him rig the game for you, that kind of thing. But like I said, magic makes people get creative.”
“Why, though?” I asked, dumbfounded. “No offense, but I mean, it’s just bingo, right?”
“Bah!” Edith’s voice scoffed at us, and Gertrude rolled her eyes.
“Prestige means a lot around here,” Gertrude said quietly. “You young witches don’t appreciate things like luck nowadays, but someone who’s really lucky is a mark of being an excellent witch. At least, that’s how it used to be.” She shifted in her seat a little. “And the prizes are pretty darn good, too. It’s free desserts and cakes for the first rounds, but the last rounds can be things like human artifacts for collectors, free group dinners around town, or just cold, hard cash. One year, we had a big bingo blowout tournament that lasted all day, with a cruise ticket as the prize. I’m genuinely surprised blood wasn’t spilled that day.”
I was too, after everything I’d seen.
By the end of the game, after two intense hours, Edith marched proudly up to the front to have her card verified before walking away with a bottle of expensive imported red wine that made me raise an eyebrow. A bottle like that had to be worth a few hundred, at least.
“Ah well, that’s how it goes sometimes,” Gertrude said, looking at her unhelpful card. “It’s all about chance. It was so nice meeting you, Arti. Do come back, won’t you?”
“I’ll make a point of it,” I said with a smile, “It was nice meeting you, too!”
I hated to hurry away, but I needed to get to Edith. But by the time I stood up, she was already heading out the door with her prize.
“Oh, your hair is just so long!” an elderly voice said to my right.
“Dear me, you’re so beautiful! My grandson would love to meet you!” another said.
“I’m so sorry, I’m in a bit of a hurry-”
“It’s so nice to see young people with a taste for the simpler joys in life,” an octogenarian said, putting a bony hand on my arm, and I gave a weary look to the doors. My chance to catch Edith was gone, and I’d be lucky if I made it out of the hall while I was still young.
But I’d learned one thing: after this game: it was starting to look like a real possibility that someone could get killed over bingo. And I wasn’t sure if Edith’s teeth were real, but by the moon, she really showed them.
Chapter 7
Finally free from the horde of very insistent, very complimentary older women, I strode out of the bingo hall, looking around for Luna. She was still curled up by the entrance door, presumably asleep. But I could tell when she was fa
king it. Probably pretending to sleep so that it was less likely for some stranger to come up and try to pet her. It was a well-practiced tactic she used on guests at the bed and breakfast. People were forever trying to pet her and befriend her. After all, she was tiny and adorable. But Luna was not a fan of attention from strangers. In fact, I was just about the only person she let get close, and I was pretty sure that was just because she was my familiar and we had a special connection.
I walked over to her and gave her a gentle nudge with the toe of my boot. She let out a soft, purring, questioning mew and looked up at me, blinking, still doing the “sleepy cat” act. When she realized it was me prodding her and not some meddlesome older person, she dropped the act and stood up, stretching.
“Took you long enough,” she quipped.
“You have no idea,” I said, shaking my head. “That place is like a den of vipers, Lu.”
“Oh, please. It’s a bingo hall, not a prison yard,” she yawned.
“No, you don’t understand. I’m being dead serious. They don’t mess around in there. That bingo hall is like walking into a scene from a mafia movie. I kept expecting a full-on brawl to break out,” I told her. She snorted.
“Oh, well if I had known how cutthroat it would get in there, I would have definitely tagged along,” she said. “Just trying to picture what a cage fight between two old ladies would look like, oh, that’s hilarious.”
I knelt down to scoop her up and place her on my shoulder. She curled up, cautiously holding onto my top with her claws just in case. She was always careful not to scratch my skin nowadays, but the first several times I carried her around this way, she wasn’t quite so trusting, and blood had been drawn a few times. Luckily, we’d had plenty of practice since then.
“I’m telling you, Luna, those old ladies were this close to flipping a table and leaping at each other’s throats,” I whispered. “I can definitely see why people seem to think bingo might be at the center of this case. Susanna was a resident here, and from what I’ve been told, she was well-known - notorious, even - for winning at bingo.”
Witching for the Best Page 5