Jenna gasped. “I’ve had just about enough from you,” she said, standing the princess back up. “You know we order once a week from this bakery for our Junior League meetings. Cookie will have your hide if you lose my business.”
Cookie Olsen is my boss, and “Cookie” fits her like “Snuggles” fits a Doberman. As a general rule, I don’t want Cookie mad at me, but I was in the middle of remembering all the reasons I don’t like Jenna, which date back to high school, and I really couldn’t concentrate on two annoying women at the same time.
“You can buy the sheet cake, but you can’t have the castle cake.”
She huffed impatiently. “A hundred seventy for the castle cake, and that is final, missy.”
I’d never noticed before how small Jenna’s eyes were. If she were a shape-shifter, she’d be some kind of were-rodent. Not that I’d seen any shape-shifters except in books, but I knew they were out there. Aunt Mel’s favorite ex-husband had been eaten by one.
I come from a line of witches that’s fifteen generations old. They’ve drawn power from the earth for over three hundred years. Somehow I didn’t think Jenna would be impressed to hear that though.
Jenna flipped open her cell phone and called Miss Cookie. She explained her version of the story and then handed the phone to me.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Sell her the cake, Tammy Jo.”
“No, ma’am.”
“I’m not losing her business. Sell her the cake, or you’re fired.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Good girl,” Cookie said.
I handed the phone back to a very smug Jenna Reitgarten.
“Bye-bye,” she said to Miss Cookie and flipped the phone shut. She dug through her wallet while I put the castle cake into the box I’d created for its transport. I took out the sheet cake, which was already boxed, and set it on the counter.
“That’ll be forty dollars,” I said.
“What?”
“Cookie said I could either sell you the castle cake or get fired, and I’m going with option B. A cake this size will feed me for a month,” I said. “Longer if I act like you and starve myself.”
Jenna turned a shade of bright pink that her daughter Lindsey would have just loved. Then she tried to reason with me, and then she threatened me, waving her stick arms around a lot.
“Sheet cake, forty dollars,” I said.
Her complexion was splotchy with fury as she thrust two twenty-dollar bills at me. “Lloyd won’t hire you. Daddy uses him to cater meetings and lunches. And there are only two bakeries in this town. You’ll have to move,” she said.
“Well, I’ll cross that drawbridge when I come to it,” I said, but I knew she was right. Pride’s more expensive than a designer purse, and I can’t afford one of those either.
Jenna stalked out with her sheet cake as I calculated how long I could survive without a job. I’m not great at math, but I knew I wouldn’t last long. Oh, to heck with it. Maybe I will just leave town. If Momma and Aunt Melanie came back and found me gone, it would be their fault. I hadn’t even gotten a postcard from either of them in a couple months, and the cards that came were always so darn vague. They never said what they were doing or where they were. I really hoped they weren’t in some other dimension since I might need to track them down for a loan in the very near future.
* * *
LIKE MOST GHOSTS, Edie arrives with the worst kind of timing. It’s like getting a bad haircut on your wedding day, making you wonder what you did to deserve it.
There was a strange traffic jam on Main Street, and as I was trying to get around Mrs. Schnitzer’s Cadillac, Edie materialized out of mist in the seat next to me. It certainly wasn’t my fault that it startled me. I rammed the curb and then Mrs. Schnitzer’s rather substantial back bumper.
I held my head, wishing for an ice pack or a vacation in Acapulco. Then I got my wits together and moved my car into the drive of Floyd’s gas station and out of traffic. I grimaced at the grinding sound I heard when I turned the wheel too far left. I hoped the problem wouldn’t be expensive to fix, given my new unemployed status. With my luck, it would be. Maybe I could just avoid left turns.
Mrs. Schnitzer didn’t bother to get her Caddy out of people’s way. She slid out from behind the wheel of her big car and sidled up to mine. She wore a lime green polyester skirt that showed off her own substantial back bumper, which, except for the dent, matched her car’s perfectly.
She asked me a series of questions, like what was wrong with my eyes (plenty, since I can see Edie, my great-great-grandmother’s dead twin sister), was I on drugs (not unless you count dark cocoa), and what did I think Zach would say when he found out (which I decided not to think about).
Edie was decidedly silent in the copilot’s seat. She was dressed in a black-sequined flapper dress, which is a bit much for daytime, but I guess ghosts can get away with some eccentric fashions, being invisible to most people and all.
“Here Zach comes now,” Mrs. Schnitzer said, beaming.
“Great,” I mumbled and checked my rearview mirror. Sure enough, a broad chest of hard muscle covered by a tight white T-shirt was approaching.
Mrs. Schnitzer said, “Tammy Jo ran right into the back of my car. And I’ve got to get home to get ready for the mayor’s party. I don’t have time for this nonsense today, Zach.”
In other words, “Deputy Zach, straighten out your flaky ex-wife.” I clenched my teeth, resenting the implication.
He played right along with her. “You go on, Miss Lorraine. I’ll deal with this.”
She wiggled back to her car and drove her dented bumper off into the sunset. Zach tipped his Stetson back, showing off dark blond curls and a face that incites catfights.
“Girl, you’re lucky your lips are sweeter than those cakes you bake, or I’d have revoked your license a long time ago.”
I’d had a fender bender or two in the past. Mostly, they weren’t my fault.
“Edie showed up—”
“Tammy Jo, don’t start that. It still chaps my ass that I paid that quack Chulley sixteen hundred bucks to get your head shrunk, and all I got for my trouble was a headache.”
“I told you it wouldn’t work.”
“Then you shouldn’t have gone and wasted my money. Now listen, I’m busy. You go on home and get ready for Georgia Sue’s party, and I’ll talk to you there.”
“We’re driving separate?” I asked. Zach and I have an on-again, off-again relationship, but we were supposed to be on-again at the moment, as evidenced by the fact that he’d slept over the night before last and I’d made him eggs and bacon for breakfast.
“Yeah, I’ll be late,” he said. “I was at TJ’s house when they called me to give them a hand with this. Longhorns were on the thirty-yard line. You believe I’m out here today?”
On game day? Frankly no. If there’s no ESPN in heaven, Zach will probably pack up and move to hell. The fact that he forgets our anniversary and everybody’s birthday every year, but has the Longhorn and Cowboy football schedules memorized as soon as they come out is just one of the reasons our marriage didn’t survive. Another small problem was the fact that I still believe in the ghost sitting silently in my passenger seat, and he felt a psychiatrist should have been able to shrink her out of my mind with a pill or stern talking-to.
I looked around at the traffic jam as Zach examined my front end. “So what’s going on here?” I asked. He didn’t answer, which is kind of typical. “What’s happened?” I repeated.
He looked at me. “What’s happened is you crashed your car, which means I’ll have to call in another favor to get it fixed. Unless you’ve got the money to pay for it this time?”
Now didn’t seem the right moment to mention I’d gotten fired. “I’m going home,” I announced.
“You think you can handle it?” he a
sked, his lips finally curving into that sexy smile that could melt concrete.
“Yes.”
“Good. Gimme some sugar.” He didn’t wait before stealing a wet kiss and then sauntered off just as quick.
“Hi, Edie,” I said, as I maneuvered back into traffic. “I really wish you wouldn’t visit me in the car.”
“He still has quite a good body.”
“Yes.”
“Are you together?”
“Kind of.” Like oil and vinegar. Mix us up real good and we’ll work together, but sooner or later, we always separate.
“So it’s just sex,” she said, voice cool as a snow cone.
I sighed. “You shouldn’t talk like that.”
“He is forever preoccupied and yet often overbearing, an odd and terrible combination in a man. It wouldn’t matter so much if he could afford lovely make-up gifts, like diamonds.”
“Can we not talk about this please? I’ve had a rough day.”
“I heard you quit your job. Well done.”
“I didn’t quit. I can’t afford to quit. I was fired.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“Well, what did you hear? And who from?” It unnerved me that there were ghosts that I couldn’t see strolling around spying on me. Did they watch me in the shower? Did they watch when Zach parked his boots under my bed? I blushed. Edie noticed and laughed.
I stole a glance at her exquisite face. With porcelain skin and high cheekbones, she was prettier than a china doll. She wore her sleek black hair bobbed, either straight or waved, depending on her mood and her outfit. Her lips were painted a provocative cherry red today. Rumor had it that Edie had inspired men to diamonds—and suicide. It was generally accepted in my family that one of her jilted beaus had murdered her, but she never shared the details of the unsolved 1926 New York homicide of which she’d been the star.
“How are you?” I asked.
“I’m dead. How would you be?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. I had no idea. Was it hard being a ghost? Was it boring? She was very secretive about her life, er, afterlife.
“What made you visit today?” I asked, still trying for polite small talk.
“I heard you showed some backbone. I decided to visit in the vain hope that you might be turning interesting.”
I frowned. Edie could be as sweet as honey on toast or as nasty as a bee sting. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “For a minute I forgot that this isn’t my life. It’s your entertainment.”
Her peridot eyes sparkled, and she favored me with a breathtaking smile. “Maybe not so vain after all. Did I ever tell you about the time I stole a Baccarat vase from the editor in chief of Vanity Fair and gave it as a present to Dorothy Parker? I liked the irony. He fired her, you know.”
“Who was the editor?”
“Exactly,” she said with a smile. “Getting fired isn’t such a bad thing. You just need a present to cheer you up. As luck would have it, one is on the way.”
“One what?” I asked, peering at her out of the corner of my eye. She couldn’t take a corporeal form, so there was no way she could pick something up from a shop or even call into the Home Shopping Network, which was really a very good thing. From what I knew of Edie, she had very expensive tastes. There was no way in the world I would have been able to pay for any “presents” she sent me.
“What’s this?” Edie asked as she moved through the passenger seat to the back.
“A cake,” I said.
“It’s a Scottish castle. Eilean Donan. Robert the Bruce still visits there. You’re such a clever, clever girl. Only you have the bridge a bit wrong.”
“I’ve never been to Scotland. It’s just a castle I made up.”
In the rearview mirror, I saw her tilt her head and smile. “Did you see it in a dream perhaps?”
“A daydream,” I said hesitantly.
“It’s about time, isn’t it?”
“About time for what?”
“I’ll see you later.” She faded to mist and then to a pale green orb of light that passed out of the car and was gone.
I was happy that she’d liked my cake, but troubled by what she’d said. I was afraid she was thinking, as she had before, that I was finally “coming into my powers.” She’d proclaimed as much on other occasions and had always been disappointed. No one in the history of the line had ever had their talents appear after the age of seventeen. Here I was twenty-three years old now; I knew I was never going to be a witch. In a lot of ways, it was a relief. Magic had always tempted my mother. She’d mixed a potion to help her track down a lost love, and she hadn’t made it home to Duvall in more than a year. Finally her twin sister, Aunt Melanie, had gotten worried and had gone after her. Now who knew where they were? And what about Edie? She was said to have had remarkable powers, but they hadn’t saved her life, had they? They may even have drawn something evil to her. Magic was dangerous, and I was glad I didn’t have it. Really, I was.
* * *
LIKE A LOT of things about our family, our home is more than it seems to be. From the street, it’s a Victorian cottage that yuppie couples find quaint and offer us lots of money for. But that’s because they can’t see over the big wooden fence. The backyard hides a darkly shaded Gothic alcove with a collection of brooding gargoyle statues and a garden of poisonous plants and plenty of stuff for potion-making. It’s the kind of place where Edgar Allan Poe would have felt right at home but that I try to avoid except for an occasional round of fertilizing. You’d be surprised how well witch’s herbs respond to Miracle-Gro.
I was relieved to find a package on the front step. My friend Georgia Sue had remembered to drop off my Halloween costume for me. I was going to be Robin Hood this year, and had already been practicing getting my long red hair squished down under a short brown wig. I scooped up the box and went inside, only to remember I had left the cake in the car.
I zipped back out and retrieved the cake. As I set it on the countertop, I noticed that the light on the answering machine was flashing and pressed the message button.
“Tammy Jo, it’s me. I dropped off your costume. I thought you were going to be Robin Hood, honey? Well, at least it’s blue and green, and those are good colors for you with your hair. But hoo-yah, I don’t know what Momma’s going to say. And Miss Cookie. Tongues will be wagging. You know how the ladies of First Methodist are. Katie Dousselberg still hasn’t lived down singing that Britney Spears song on Talent Night . . .”
I scrunched my eyebrows together, advancing on the box suspiciously. Georgia Sue’s voice kept going. I love her dearly, but she’s the sort of person who can’t see why anyone would say in one sentence what could be said just as well in three.
“Did you hear about the sheriff’s house? There was a crazy traffic jam on Main, Tommy Hilliard said. If Zach told you anything, you better call me up. I want to have the best gossip tonight. I am the hostess, after all. Don’t hold out, sugar. Call me up.”
I peeled the wide cellophane plastic tape off the box and peeked inside, blinded for a moment by the reflection of a million little sequins.
I pulled out the gown, which had some sort of stiff-spined train and a plunging neckline that would embarrass a Vegas showgirl.
“What in the Sam Houston?”
I shook out the dress and realized that the back was a plume. In this costume I would be something of a pornographic peacock. I tilted my head and wondered how I’d gone from a sprightly Robin Hood to this. Then I remembered Edie’s comment from the car. She’d sent me a present.
Our town, Duvall, Texas, prides itself on having all the things that the big cities have (on a slightly smaller, but still significant scale), and one of our residents, Johnny Nguyen Ho, had created diversity for Duvall in several ways. He was our Vietnamese resident, our community theater director, and our not-so-secretly gay hair sa
lon owner. Recognizing his talent for costume-making during his early play productions, most people in town sent him orders starting in February for their Halloween costumes.
Johnny Nguyen, in addition to his other considerable talents, fancied himself a psychic. And crazily enough, Edie had found a way to be partially channeled into his séance room, a spare bedroom he intermittently converted for this purpose by using a lot of midnight blue velvet and a bunch of scented candles from Bath & Body Works.
As I looked at the dress, I clenched my fists. There was no time to get a new costume, and I could not skip my best friend’s Halloween party.
“Edie!” I called, wanting to give the little poltergucci a piece of my mind. But Edie is not the sort of ghost to come when called.
“Edie!” I snapped, as a new thought occurred to me: Liberace had had less beadwork on some of his costumes—how much would this upgrade cost me? I didn’t need to be psychic to have a premonition of myself living on peanut butter and Ramen noodles.
If Edie could hear me, she ignored me. “Typical,” I grumbled. One of these days all the people and poltergeists who didn’t take me seriously were going to need me for something, and I just wasn’t going to be there—or at least I wasn’t going to be there right away.
Of course, my day of vindication would likely be sometime after Sheriff Hobbs, a serious churchgoing man, arrested me for indecent exposure. He’d probably give me a stern lecture on how short the path could be from poultry to prostitution.
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Casually Cursed Page 35