Hex Marks the Spot

by Madelyn Alt

  “Should I assume Tom knows all of this?”

  “Yeah, and he was none too happy. The magical symbol really creeped him out. Some of the guys on the force are the ones pushing the satanic worship theory.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me. So many people seem happy to look for evil in everything. What does puzzle me is how they can be surprised when that’s exactly what they find.”

  “Well, I won’t deny that there’s something bad going on in town.” I looked at her as a sudden notion struck me. “You feel it, too.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. Yeah, I guess I do. Maybe that explains why the hospital has been so wacky lately. Honestly, I don’t think any of the patients really sleep anymore.”

  As if to prove her point, Junior suddenly sat bolt upright, ears perked and whiskers twitching.

  “What’s the matter, girl?” I asked her, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Uh-oh.

  “Maggie,” Steff whispered, her eyes like saucers. She pointed to the door to my bedroom. It was swinging inward, creaking on its hinges as it went.

  Junior leapt to her feet, her fur standing at attention from head to tail. Growling, she advanced on the opening door, creeping step by step as hackles traveled like the vibrations of a Magic Fingers mattress up my spine.

  The bedroom door slammed in the dog’s face.

  Steff and I jumped to our feet at the same time, staring in shock at the closed door. Junior abandoned all pretense of bravery. Whining now, she backed away from the door, a frown worrying her doggie brow as she came to rest with her rump leaning against our legs. My hand reached down to her, to give and to receive reassurance in kind.

  “Does it do that often?” Steff asked, a little shakily.

  I shook my head.

  “That’s good. Wow, I wasn’t expecting that.”

  I shook my head again.

  “What is that, exactly?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s attached to the house, or to me, or what. Maybe it just wants to remind us that it’s there.” I thought back to the armoire cabinet door at Louisa’s, and shivered.

  “Wow. I mean, I’ve seen a ghost before—remember I told you about the one that used to sit on the end of my bed back in Massachusetts?—but he was fairly quiet and mostly reserved himself for odd moments in the middle of the night. Yours is, uh, pretty bold, isn’t it?”

  Leave it to me to have attracted a poltergeist. I mean, I had a possessed car, a conscience that had adopted the voice of my Grandma Cora as its mouthpiece, and my apartment housed little black shadow goblins, so why not one more?

  Or were they all one and the same?

  Actually, so long as it wasn’t Luc Metzger hanging around…

  Maybe it was time to stop being afraid all the time. Maybe it was time to work to understand.

  Everything. And that meant the chaos energy, too.

  Chapter 13

  Junior had a surprise for me the next morning. More than one, actually. First thing, I awoke to hot breath washing over my face. Blearily I opened my eyes and in the gray half-light of dawn I saw a dark face hovering over my own.

  Gaaaaaah.

  I half-scrambled, half-rolled out from under my bedcovers, scrabbling instinctively for the baseball bat I’d taken to sleeping with. It took me a moment to remember Junior, and a little longer to remember the reason for her presence.

  Junior, undeterred, pranced playfully across the bed and launched herself at me. My breath left me as her feet hit my shoulders. “I guess you need to go outside, huh?”

  She licked my face. Repeatedly.

  Now, far be it from me to refuse kisses from anyone, even slobbery ones, but when you’re still blinking the sleep out of your eyes and trying to find your bearings, such exuberance can be a bit off-putting. Gently I took her paws in hand and lowered them to the bed, stepping backward as I did so.

  My bare foot met with something cold and revolting on the carpet.

  Oh. My. God.

  “Junior!” I screeched. “What have you done?”

  Junior leaned her front paws down and her rear up on the bed in a combined full body stretch/tailwagging extravaganza. Obviously she didn’t realize how close to an untimely demise she really was.

  Simultaneously gagging and cringing in horror, I pulled my foot out of the pile of muck and, lifting it off the floor, I hopped to the bedside table in order to switch on the lamp, hoping and praying I didn’t encounter any other, um, deposits of any kind. With the lamp on, I twisted and fell to the bed, careful to keep my foot from coming into contact with anything important while I surveyed the damage.

  Sweet Mother Mary! Did the animal not sleep at all? A minefield of shredded newspaper studded the carpet, toilet paper stretched from the bathroom to the bedroom and back again, and then of course there was the dreaded spot, which was now mashed into the carpet. Not to mention the socks and other sundries that had been dragged from the laundry hamper, which someone had knocked over on the bathroom floor.

  What I couldn’t figure out was how she had done all of this without waking me.

  Somehow, all of this seemed even harder to deal with than the spooky stuff the night before.

  Junior snuffled my ear, then rolled around on the bed, kicking her feet joyously in the air. Completely unconcerned that her character was being maligned due to her involvement in World War Three.

  I sniffed as tears sprang inexplicably to my eyes. “Junior, I don’t like you.” Sniffle. “I really don’t. No, don’t you dare try to apologize. Just let me sit here a moment and wallow in my misery.”

  There was only one thing to do that didn’t involve PETA jumping down my throat. “Well, come on, then, you six-toed goober. Let’s get this cleaned up.”

  It took me nearly an hour to get the bedroom put back to rights, mostly because every time I turned my back on Junior, she tried to undo everything I was working so hard to accomplish.

  “What am I going to do with you?” I asked her, facing her down with my hands on my hips.

  There was only one thing for it. She was going to have to go with me. Hopefully Tom would have heard from the shelter in the next county by the time I got to Enchantments.

  Junior enjoyed the car ride, but between the wet nose prints, dog slobber, and shedding, Christine was never going to recover. It was with some relief that I led her into the back office at Enchantments and fastened her leash to the doorknob.

  “Well, well, what have we here?”

  Liss had poked her head through the curtains when she heard the sounds of my arrival, and was now gazing upon my unlikely friend with some amusement.

  I cleared my throat. “It’s a long story. Suffice it to say, Junior either had to go with me yesterday evening or face certain extinction. And now I need to call Tom, because if Junior goes home with me, she is going to face certain extinction all over again.”

  Liss’s eyebrows lifted. “Long night?”

  “An even longer morning cleaning up after a busy night.”

  “Ah. Did you sayshe ?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Consider that a nonquestion,” she said, trying to hide her smile.

  I picked up the phone. It was a little early still, but if I knew Tom…

  “Stony Mill Police Department, Sergeant Howard speaking. Is this an emergency?”

  “No, no emergency. Hi, Jim, this is Maggie O’Neill. Is Tom there?”

  “Oh, hey, Maggie. Yeah, he just stepped in the door. Let me get him for you.”

  I heard a click as he put me on hold. A moment later, I heard Tom pick up.

  “Your dog left her bone here at the station,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Good morning to you, too. She did? Good. She’ll have something to chew on while waiting for the shelter people to come get her.”

  There was a pause, the kind that gave me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Behind me, Junior pulled on the end of her leash and whined. “Um, there might be a bit of
a problem with that,” Tom said.

  “What kind of problem?”

  “Well, you see, there’s no room at the inn. The shelter is full up, Maggie. And since they’re a no-kill shelter, well, they have to have room before they can accept any more.”

  I absorbed all of this, trying to decide what it meant to me. And what I was coming up with was a whole lot of doggie messes.

  “Now, if you want me to, I could have a go at some of the other shelters we have access to, but none of the others are no-kill.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t have rescued Junior from certain injury only to give her up to a shelter that can’t even guarantee her prolonged good health. I’m just going to have to come up with an alternative.”

  “I’m sorry, Maggie. I wish the news was better. But hey, it’s not the end of the world. She’s a cute little thing, right?”

  Yeah. This cute little thing—who currently had her teeth sunk into the tail of a coat that was hanging from the coat rack, and was now pulling with all of her might—was a furry-faced menace in the making. It wasn’t her fault—I knew it was because she must have been raised in a barn, or a garage, or something. But that didn’t help when I was the one stuck with cleaning up her messes.

  I hung up feeling more than a little bit desperate. What on earth was I going to do with a sixty-pound tornado with a poop and paper fetish?

  Liss came up and put her hand on my shoulder. “Bad news?”

  I sighed. “You could say that. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with Junior here. I thought I was helping matters by taking her home, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Hmm. With all the farms out here, I’m sure someone could use a good dog.”

  “They’d have to be special, though. Junior is a sweetheart, even if she is a little on the excitable side. I couldn’t let her go to just anyone.”

  Liss thought a moment. “What about Eli? Perhaps he’d know someone.”

  Good idea! “Would you mind if I pay him a visit?”

  “Of course not! We have to take care of our animal friends.”

  “It’ll only take a little while,” I said, grabbing hold of the leash and giving Junior a solid chin scratching before either of us changed our minds. “I’ll be back before the store’s official opening.”

  “Take your time, no need to hurry. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  I left Liss there, sorting through a box of new tarot card designs that had just arrived from the U.K., and headed out toward County Road 500 North. It occurred to me, not for the first time, how lucky I was to have found Liss and my job at Enchantments. I had never belonged in the corporate world, even such as it was in a small town like Stony Mill, Indiana. I wasn’t cutthroat, I didn’t care about moving up the corporate ladder one vicious rung at a time, and it annoyed the heck out of me that it wasn’t intelligence and proven ability that moved you up that ladder, but rather a total lack of regard for your fellow man. Enchantments suited me. At the store I got to know our regulars but didn’t have to spend time with them after hours. I was surrounded by beauty and music and things that made my soul come alive. I had a steady supply of all the best teas and coffees Stony Mill had to offer. I had a boss who understood my every sensitive / intuitive personality quirk, and didn’t seem to mind a single one of them. Not to mention there was a freedom attached to the job that I had experienced nowhere else. I was lucky, lucky, lucky, and I knew it. Someone was definitely watching out for me that day I spilled through the door. Someone knew what they were doing. I was just the blessed beneficiary. In my heart I knew that Liss had been sent to me for a reason. Perhaps in time I would fully understand what that meant.

  Eli was just coming out of his barn when I crossed into his driveway. I pulled up next to him and rolled down my window to talk.

  “Liss said you were on your way,” he said with a nod by way of greeting.

  “How—?”

  He patted his breast pocket. “I have a cell phone for business purposes.”

  “Oh. Oh, I didn’t even think about that.”

  I must have looked embarrassed, because he laughed at me. “This is the twenty-first century, ja?”

  Was I being lectured about the need for technology by an Amish man? What was this world coming to?

  “So, what can I do for you, Miss Maggie?” he asked. He bent down and looked into the car, his big square face as kind as ever beneath his flat-brimmed hat. “Who do you have here?”

  Junior pushed her way between me and the steering wheel so that she could stick her head and half her body out to meet Eli’s hand. “This,” I said as I dodged her sweeping club of a tail, “is a friend of mine. I picked her up last night—the poor thing was terrorizing an older woman in town who knows my mother, and I was afraid she was going to take her frustrations and fear out on the dog.”

  “That was kind of you.”

  “Yes, well, it was supposed to be a temporary fix, but the only no-kill shelter in the area is full up, and Junior here is better suited to being an outdoor dog, I’m afraid. It took me an hour this morning to clean up the havoc she’d wreaked overnight.”

  He held the dog’s face between his massive hands and gazed into her eyes. Junior melted into a puddle at the attention, right before my eyes. Amazing. “She was excited. New surroundings. She wanted to, how do you say? Make her mark? Mark her territory? She meant no harm.”

  As if to confirm this, Junior pulled her head back inside just long enough to lick my cheek, then went back to Eli’s gentle ministrations.

  “How do you know that?” I asked, curious at the certainty of his assessment.

  He shrugged.

  “Well,” I said, willing to give him and his insight the benefit of the doubt, “she may have meant no harm, but she was just a bit destructive, and she doesn’t appear to be house-trained. I think she’s probably been an outdoor dog, which makes keeping her in my little apartment problematic.”

  He nodded in understanding. “Some spirits are more suited to the wide-open spaces.”

  “Exactly.” Now, that was what I liked about Eli. He had an innate understanding of what made people—and spirits—tick, and he expressed it with such steadiness and wisdom that a girl couldn’t help but feel reassured by his very presence. But that didn’t make the next part any easier. “Liss suggested I ask you…I mean, I was hoping…Would you possibly know…” I wasn’t usually this tongue-tied, but it was a big request to make of anyone, and I wasn’t sure how to proceed.

  “You say you picked her up in town?” he asked, seemingly oblivious to my discomfort.

  Distracted, I nodded. “Yes.”

  “You know, she has the look of…” His voice trailed off as he picked up the dog’s foot. “Ja, that’s it. This is Luc Metzger’s dog.”

  I stared at him while an uneasy ripple traveled up my spine. Yet another connection to Luc. Following on the heels of the armoire “spirit,” it did not make me feel at all comfortable. It was almost creepy, the idea that a spirit could be facilitating from beyond the grave for his own purposes.

  Eli didn’t notice. “Ja, see here? Her feet? Dead giveaway, those toes. If you don’t mind driving, we could take her over there right now and make sure I’m right. It’s only a mile or so.”

  “Sure,” I found myself murmuring, still boggled over the latest in life’s little synchronicities. “Hop in.”

  Within minutes we were bumping into the driveway of another Amish home, its identity obvious due to its lack of electrical wires leading from the poles to the large white farmhouse. Not to mention the plain exterior, horses in the pasture, and laundry hanging on the line, all in shades of blue, black, and white. The property had several fenced-in areas of pasture, some with horses, some with milk cows, one with goats. Relegated to the back seat when Eli had taken over the passenger side, Junior seemed to perk up the farther we traveled up the lane. By the time I pulled to a halt, her entire body was quivering with readiness, and her tail was swishing nonstop. I felt sur
e that Eli must be right. “Is this home, girl?” I asked her, patting her on the head.

  A young woman had stepped onto the porch when she heard us pull up. Garbed in the traditional Amish garb of a dark blue dress, ugly black shoes, and white apron and head cap, with a black wool sweater thrown on for warmth against the spring breezes, Hester Metzger set down the little girl she’d held supported on her hip and came down the steps to meet us.

  “Eli, what a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t expecting you.” Her gaze flicked to me as I rose from behind the wheel, and her brows drew together slightly as she tried to place me. “And—I have met you before, I think, but you must forgive me, I do not remember where.”

  “You have met before?” Eli asked, looking at me for confirmation. “I did not know that.”

  “It was at the farmers market,” I said, dipping my chin in a respectful hello to Hester. “I bought noodles from you. They were very good, by the way. I can’t remember when I’ve had better.”

  “Thank you. Yes, that’s right. The farmers market.” She nodded to herself, but her eyes never left me. “I remember you.”

  “The cookies were very good as well,” I added, to fill the silence that seemed determined to settle in. “My grandfather loved them.”

  “Thank you.” She folded her hands over her tidy apron front, waiting. “What can I do for you, Eli?”

  “We were wanting to check in with you, Hester. See how you were faring.”

  Her face remained noncommittal. “I am fine, as you can see.”

  “No more…troubles?”

  Trouble? What trouble?

  Hester shrugged, her pink cheeks going even pinker. “People will believe what they wish to believe. It is not my concern.”

  “It should be. You will need help.”

  “Not from them.”

  “Ah, Hester, a place like this does not run itself. The community is important.”