Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She's Dead (Toad Witch Series, Book One)

by Christiana Miller

  "Perhaps it should be. I am not used to paying a woman so much for so little," he said, squeezing just hard enough to hurt before he let go.

  I resisted the temptation to check for bruises and shoved the check in my pocket. "You're married, you have a house full of children and a door that doesn't lock. Trust me, anything else would be a bad idea."

  Although I was beginning to understand Kimmy's reading a bit better.

  "Besides, this fortune-telling gig isn't as easy as you might think," I said, as I walked around the room, blowing out the remaining tea lights.

  "You make up stories, entertain the women and children. Will I marry Justin Timberlake, Miss Lady Witch? Maybe not, but you will find someone just as handsome or as rich. See? I can be strega too." He sat at the reading table and lowered his voice. "We are not so different you and I. We both gamble on the future, tell people what they want to hear."

  "Actually, most of the time, I wind up doing exactly the opposite." I tossed out the used tea lights and started boxing up my dragon statues.

  He laughed. "So you are not only bad whore, you are also bad businesswoman."

  I resisted the urge to clock him with a dragon statue. Instead, I dug through my bag to see if I had any Advils left. This exchange wasn't helping my headache any.

  I found a travel packet wedged into cosmetics bag and downed the pills with the warm remains of a soda.

  "Experiencing other people's pain, seeing their lives play out in front of you, it's not as much fun as you may think," I said.

  "Bah. I know who you are, better than you do." Mr. Lyra stood up and brushed imaginary lint off his trousers. His erection gone, he seemed bored with the game. "You live in a world of make-believe and you act as if you do the world a favor. You cry about this gift, but it's pazza, crazy. You are here because my daughter, she is in love with Buffy and all the stregoni on the television. You are human party favor, no more."

  As I gathered up the moody, haunting Templar cards I used for decoration, Mr. Lyra continued, his voice sharp. "You do not deal with life or death, nothing is at stake for you. Is all just a game."

  "You sound like a man who needs a reading and doesn't know how to ask."

  "So you charge me for another hour? No. Grazie."

  "On the house. Short reading, one question. If you have the coglionis for it," I said, throwing some Italian back at him.

  He looked at the cards. I could tell he was tempted.

  "Tell me, Mr. Lyra, are you better off walking into the future as a leap of faith, every day an unknown adventure? Or, for a smart man like you, is it better to move forward having all the information?"

  As I flipped through the Templar deck, I noticed Lyra's face blanching at some of the images: Horned Gods holding skulls; winged angelic figures challenging humans; lusty women cavorting with skeletons.

  "It's a question that's always plagued me. Is forewarned really the same as forearmed? Can this," I tapped the deck, "give you the power to turn the Hand of Fate to your favor? Or is it just another way to ruin a perfectly good week?"

  "No blow job?" he asked, sounding almost hopeful.

  "No blow job."

  "Okay. Show me the future, strega. When am I going to die?"

  Of course. Why would I expect anything different? "Are you sure?"

  "Is it too much question for you?"

  "It's not me I'm worried about."

  "That is the answer I want."

  I shuffled the cards. "Take a quarter out of the bowl and offer it to the skull. Silver must change hands, so this reading belongs to you. Unless you want to know when I'm going to die."

  Which really was a question I had been majorly on the fence about, ever since I pulled the cards on my birthday. Although, I was so invested in the answer, I didn't think the cards would tell me, even if I wanted them to. Once you get too invested in the outcome, the cards have a tendency to shut down. That's why they say people can't read for themselves. It's utter crap. You totally can read for yourself. Up until the point where your fears take over and render your sight impotent.

  He snagged the last quarter out of the bowl and tossed it in front of the skull, where it joined the rest of the quarter brigade. I shuffled the cards again and had him cut the deck. He slid one card out of the middle of the deck, put it on the bottom and handed the deck back to me.

  One by one, I laid the cards out.

  The Emperor: a winged, horned man, surrounded by books and skulls.

  Three of Swords: a woman entreating Death, while comforted by an angel.

  Nine of Swords: a woman crying over an angel's felled body, broken swords littering the earth.

  Ten of Swords: ten swords buried deep into an angel's body.

  "Four years," I said, turning over the Six of Swords, which showed two women journeying across the water in a sword-filled boat. "If you don't change the path you're on, you have four really rough years, full of anger, betrayal, sorrow and pain."

  "You are fucking with me, yes? None of those are the Death card."

  "The Death card is for spiritual transformation and change. You wanted to know about your mortal death." I cast my sight out into the universe, to double-check my answer. It still held. I tapped the cards on the table. "You will die of your own doing. Too stubborn for your own good. You have very little time left, to change your path."

  "Impossible."

  I closed my eyes, hands spread wide over the cards, as I focused on Mr. Lyra's body. "Cancer. Lower down, either colon, or prostate, maybe testicular. You should see a doctor as soon as possible, while it's curable. The window's closing."

  He cursed at me in Italian. "If you think this is funny..."

  "I'm not laughing." I gathered up the cards and put them away. "See a doctor, Mr. Lyra. Or you'll be dead in four years."

  Unbeknownst to us, Kimmy had walked in with a piece of birthday cake for her dad, just in time to hear this last piece of advice. She burst into tears -- big, racking, screaming sobs -- and dropped the plate, smearing the thick icing into the imported Chinese carpet.

  Mr. Lyra took Kimmy into his arms, "Hush, my beauty, it's okay. This witch is not like Willow. She is a liar and a phony."

  The butler appeared at the door. Lyra handed Kimmy over to him. "Take her. My wife has Percoset in the bathroom, give her half-dose."

  As the butler left with the girl, I turned to Mr. Lyra. "I'm sorry, I didn't know she was there."

  He shot me a dirty look. "Take your things and get out. You are finished in this city. I will see to it. I make one phone call, no one will hire you again."

  "Mr. Lyra, please. Even if you don't believe me. For your family's sake, please see a doctor while it can still make a difference."

  But he turned on his elegant, imported leather heels and walked away.

  "And for God's sake, stop sedating your daughter," I hollered at his retreating form. "You're really not doing her any favors."

  But he ignored me. I pocketed the quarters from the skull and quickly finished packing up. I barely had the lid fastened on the box when the burly butler returned. This time, his sights were set firmly on me and he looked pissed. So I did what any self-respecting witch would do.

  I grabbed my box of goodies and ran.

  I quickly tossed the quarters from the readings into the fountain of pissing cherubs, as an offering to the spirits, and then jumped in the car. At least I had a paycheck. Call me paranoid, but my next stop was going to be the bank. Just in case Lyra tried to put a stop payment on it.

  As I floored it out of there, checking in my rearview for pursuing bodyguards, I really hoped I was wrong about Lyra and his daughter. Nobody deserved a fate like that. At least the reading I had done for the mother had gone well.

  Mrs. Lyra was an easy read, her past, present and future laid out clearly in the cards. From starting her own business with a female partner, to her current struggle to expand and an upcoming affair with a young, male secretary. Reading her cards was like reading a Jackie Col
lins' novel. And Mr. Lyra's death, should he choose that path, would leave her a very wealthy, very vulnerable widow.

  As I drove, I tried to shake off the residue from the readings. What a day. Above me, the sun dipped below the canyon and the underside of the clouds lit up in bright orange-red waves -- an ocean of fire racing across the sky. It's the Devil's palette, my dad always said. Beautiful to look at but deadly.

  Although, thanks to the air initiatives, the deadly part was getting a little less so. But the beauty of the view did its job. I could feel my teeth unclenching and the throbbing in my head downshift a notch.

  As I crested the hill, I glanced in the direction of Lyra's fortress-like mansion, remembering his threat. Too bad I didn't read my own cards before racing over there this morning.

  Good luck, Mr. Lyra. You're going to need it. You and me both.

  Chapter Six

  When I got to Gus's apartment, he was hard at work, dashing the hopes of the next Great American Screenwriter. He worked as a freelance reader, which meant he set his own schedule and he could work from home, but he got paid crap. Although he seemed to have a knack for finding boyfriends with enough cash to subsidize his lifestyle.

  I pushed aside a stack of scripts and flopped down on the couch. Gus's apartment was tiny but interesting. A shelving unit with four animal tanks separated the living area from the temple space. In the tanks were a laid-back boa constrictor, a bad tempered iguana with a vicious bite, a horned dragon badly in need of some PMS-regulating medication and Gus's most recent pride-and-joy, Lord Grundleshanks, the poisonous toad.

  "How'd it go?" Gus asked, taking a plastic bag of crickets over to Grundleshanks's tank.

  "It's gone. The evil Mrs. Lasio has won the war. Maybe I can pitch a tent on the beach."

  "What I meant was, how'd the party go?" He opened the lid to Lord Grundleshanks's aquarium and dropped a cricket into the mud.

  "Ah, my stint as fortune-telling whore to precocious, budding porn stars."

  "Sounds like you were a big hit," he laughed.

  I snorted and walked over to the refrigerator to snag a bottle of organic lemonade. "If hit means being banned from ever setting foot in Beverly Hills again, then yeah, sure. It went swimmingly." I sighed and unscrewed the cap. "So much for the great new career path. He's going to blackball me in Beverly Hills. Who does that, anymore? I have no idea what I'm going to do."

  "Shop in the Valley?"

  I rolled my eyes. Trust Gus to make a joke out of my life falling apart. I debated telling him about the cards, my dad's ghost, the weird visions. But Gus would probably see it all as being cool, a confirmation of my inherent witchiness, and he'd book me at the next party as a Medium, since I was black-balled as a Fortune Teller.

  "Hey, could you stop that? You're scaring the toad."

  "What... ?" I had no idea what he was talking about until he pointed at my head. I touched it and winced. Ouch. I'd been banging it against the fridge door without realizing it.

  "I don't mean to come between you and your inner masochist, but if Grundleshanks is upset, he might not eat."

  "Sure, no problem. I can take it up again later." I walked back to the couch, feeling like an idiot.

  Gus made a face at the tank. "What are you? A fierce toad warrior or a warty doormat? Don't you dare let that cricket have its way with you." He pointed at the cricket tank. "If word gets out, none of them will respect you. Not a one. What will you do when your food rises up and revolts?"

  I looked at the toad tank. Grundleshanks, who kind of looked like a lump of muddy goo with two eyeballs poking through the surface, didn't seem particularly fazed. A cricket marched and hopped over the muck, oblivious.

  "My life's falling apart and you're giving a pep talk to a mud lump?"

  "Sacrilege, woman! Lord Grundleshanks the Deadly is a most important toad. A poisonous toad. The Emperor of Toads." Gus tapped on the glass. "I can't believe he's letting that cricket jackboot all over his head. Come on, boy. Crickets are just glorified cockroaches. Chomp, chomp."

  "Maybe you should stop reading him Pinocchio at bedtime."

  "You know what you need?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at me.

  "A new life?"

  "A big dose of Gus. I believe it's time for our birthday outing. And it starts as soon as the toad eats." He turned back to the aquarium.

  "I don't know if I have that long to live." I muttered.

  But Gus was determinedly staring at the mud-embedded Grundleshanks, as if willing it would make it happen.

  It wasn't until I started humming the Jeopardy theme and threatened to go home, that he finally conceded defeat.

  As Gus got dressed for our night out -- heaven forbid he wear his lounging around outfit, when he could swap it for something snazzier -- I wandered through the apartment and into Gus's temple room. A skull on a dolmen-like stone altar grinned at me. The walls were painted with vines and trees, and there were twenty-one wands hanging from wall hooks. Each wand was made from one of the sacred woods, such as birch for new beginnings or blackthorn for protection. It really was a very interesting room. I always felt at peace in there.

  Eventually, I found myself back in front of the toad tank. Two eyeballs were slowly rising out of the muck, fixated on the oblivious cricket. The air between the two animals was charged, even if the cricket didn't quite seem to realize it.

  Suddenly, Grundleshanks's tongue shot out at the speed of light and the cricket was gone.

  Gus walked out of the bedroom but I couldn't take my eyes off the toad. "That was amazing. I had no idea he could move so fast."

  Gus stopped dead. "Grundleshanks ate?! And you saw him?" He stomped over to the cage. Sure enough, the cricket was gone. "Grundleshanks ate. Damn you, Grundleshanks. You treacherous amphibian. Traitor of the first degree. The minute my back is turned!"

  "Chill, Gus. It's just a toad."

  Gus sputtered, beside himself. "I have been watching him for weeks. I have fed him and watered him and watched him and waited and nothing. Nothing. He's shy, he says. Doesn't want to eat in public, he says. But let a pretty girl come over..." He glared at Grundleshanks. "Show-off."

  The eyeballs on top of the mud lump calmly blinked back at him.

  "I'm going to need an entire bottle of single malt to get over the betrayal. You understand, my disloyal amphibious friend, that you're putting me right into the drunk tank?"

  I couldn't help but laugh. "I need to find you a Toads Anonymous group. You do know you have a hugely co-dependent relationship with your squat little friend, right?"

  Gus sniffed. "Less talk, woman, and more movement. The pub awaits."

  As we were walking out, I snuck a look back at Grundleshanks and I could swear that he winked at me. I almost said something, but I quickly squelched the impulse. Gus really wasn't very good at dealing with betrayal, real or imagined, human or animal.

  The Laughing Hound Pub was housed in a quaint wooden cottage, white with gold trim. British, Scottish, Welsh and American flags hung from the roof. The outdoor tables were usually filled and tonight was no exception. We walked in, weaved past a dart game and scored a table in the back, away from prying ears.

  In L.A., actors and writers tended to lurk around every corner, practicing "human observation," (a.k.a. eavesdropping), so you had to stay on the ball. There was nothing creepier than realizing your private conversation was being transcribed by a desperate screenwriter. Except, maybe, seeing it replayed on some low-rent cable movie.

  It didn't look like that would be a problem today, though. The pub's clientele was filled with self-involved Anglophiles, soccer fans and homesick Brits. I sat down and ordered a shandy, much to Gus's amusement.

  "A shandy? What the hell is that? Beer for wusses? Get a pair of balls. Order a real drink."

  "It is a real drink."

  "Bloody lemonade."

  "With a pale ale kick."

  "More like watered-down piss if you ask me." He looked up at the waitress. "Black a
nd tan, with a whiskey chaser."

  "And Black and Tan's a real drink?"

  "No, Ouzo's a real drink. Whiskey's a real drink." Gus grinned. "Black and Tan is a thirst quencher with body."

  By the time we got around to placing our order, the drinks were on the table.

  "Okay, on to the next thing. Let's find you a new apartment." Gus spread out the apartment rental section of the Recycler and wielded a highlighter over it like a sword of Damocles. "What can you afford?"

  "Nothing. My unemployment's running out and I don't have a job."

  "What are you paying now?"

  "Lenny hasn't raised my rent since I moved in."

  "Which means?"

  "Six hundred."

  "For that cavernous place of yours? With a pool and outdoor grill? What kind of spell did you weave to get a deal that delicious?"

  "Now do you understand why I don't want to leave?"

  Gus leaned over, putting on a bad New Jersey accent. "You want I should put a hit on this Lasio broad? Concrete shoes, TNT, dyn-o-mite? Get rid of her and you're sitting pretty."

  I laughed and shook my head. Just then, the waitress came out with our order. Scotch eggs for me and shepherd's pie for Gus. She looked really familiar. I stared at her, trying to figure it out.

  "Do you want something else?" she asked, tucking a long piece of blond hair behind her ear.

  "No, I'm sorry. It's just... I swear I've seen you before."

  "Yeah. I get that a lot."

  Gus looked up at her. "Hey, weren't you the girl on that sitcom?" He turned to me. "Remember? It was about a teenage witch in Beverly Hills and her cat friend."

  "Oh, yeah!" I looked at the waitress again. "You were great in that. You were the cat, right? I mean, after the witch turned the cat with the Cartier diamond collar into her human best friend with a Cartier necklace."

  "Yeah, that would be the one. Before that, I was played by a stand-in cat."

  "Wow," Gus munched on a piece of cheddar. "What are you doing here? Researching a role?"

  She sighed and jingled the change in her apron pocket. "Nope. Just making a living."

  She walked off, leaving me in stunned silence. I reached over and smacked Gus's arm. "If she has to pick up work as a waitress, what freaking hope do I have? This economy sucks."