by Renee George
“Did you see anyone else outside at the time?”
“No one strange. Jenny Weaver had just crossed the street and went into her muffin shop.”
“Coming from where?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe some of the shops down the way.”
“Anyone else you recognized? The more people who might have witnessed the event, the more we might be able to piece together how it happened.”
“Well, I saw Lincoln and some of his friends.” She peered at Ford. “lt’s a school day, so I gave him a hard time about skipping.”
Ford frowned. “I’m not his keeper.” Ford didn’t talk much about Lincoln. I assumed they weren’t close because of the age difference, but maybe there was something there I didn’t know about. “Who was he with?”
“Becksy Ansel, Joanna Crandell, and Tommy Lowe.”
“What were they—”
A clown jumped out in front of us, honked a handheld horn, and then started doing a jig. His rainbow-colored hair shook with every movement, his grin painted to resemble a tooth-filled maw, and his eyes circled with black.
Ford screamed. Well, as close to a scream as a man with his low vocal range could muster. He staggered back, his eyes wide and his skin as pale as moonlight. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was getting ready to keel over from shock.
The clown laughed, jumped between us, and bopped Ford on the head with a foam bat.
Ford pulled out his weapon and aimed at the clown’s large red bow tie. “Die, motherfucker!” he yelled.
The clown clutched his bat and took off across the street, disappearing around the corner as he headed down Angel’s Grove Street.
Ford whirled, gun raised, and I grabbed his arm. “Don’t kill the clown.”
He stopped, straightened, and holstered his weapon. His eyes still looked wild as he scanned the area.
“Are you okay, honey?” Genuine concern wound through me. As I touched his shoulder, I could feel him shaking. What was wrong with him?
Bright tinkles of laughter gained our attention. I turned sharply toward the offender. Or, as I quickly observed, offenders. Plural. My best friend Lily was standing off to the side with a guffawing Tizzy on her shoulder. At least Lily had the good taste to keep her laughter to a quiet snicker. Tizzy, however, laughed so hard she lost her balance and fell off Lily’s shoulder.
The squirrel recovered before she landed smoothly onto the sidewalk. “Sweet Goddess in a tutu,” Tizzy said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Ford Baylor is afraid of clowns.”
Chapter Four
I ABSCONDED THE scene with Lily and Tizzy and put Ford in charge of the patrol officers. I trusted him to handle the interviews and the evacuation. Besides, after the clown incident, he needed something to do, and I needed to make sure squirrel and werecougar weren’t added to his lunch menu.
We went to Modesta’s Tea Haus for lunch. Romy Quinn, the owner, had been in the crowd this morning, and I wanted to talk to her. Of course, my choosing to interview her had nothing to do with the Turkey Pesto sandwich on soft Artisan bread I held in my hand. I made an mmmmm sound as I chewed.
“Stop that,” Tizzy said. “You sound like a gerbil.” Her narrow shoulders shuddered.
“What the heck happened to the road, Haze?” Lily asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” I took another bite. “I…” Mmmmmmmm. After some quick chews, I swallowed. “I’m guessing some witch got carried away with a prank.” At least that seemed to be the consensus. “But I don’t understand why. A magical prank doesn’t help the witches win.”
“Maybe they meant it to be something small, and they messed up the spell or something.”
Tizzy shook her head. “Haze is the only one who could mess up magic that bad, and I would have felt it if she’d pulled off that kind of power.”
“Hey! I’m not that bad.”
“You’re worse,” Tizzy said. “But buck up, buttercup.” She placed one paw over her heart and the back of the other to her forehead and affected her best Scarlett O’Hara impression. “After all, tomorrow is another day.”
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” I took another bite of the sandwich and hummed.
Lily put her elbows on the table to draw our attention and stop the fight. “So it would take a lot of power to make a lake of boiling tar in the middle of town, right?”
“I suppose so.” I looked to Tizzy for confirmation.
She shook her head. “Sometimes I’m ashamed to call you my witch.”
I smirked. “Aww, don’t be like that.”
“You two,” Lily said. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “It’s nice. I’m so happy for you, Haze. You have Ford now. And,” she smiled fondly at the squirrel, “Tizzy, of course.”
My heart ached for my friend. Both her parents had been killed our senior year, and less than a year ago, her younger brother had been murdered. All part of Adele Adam’s plan to rule the world by turning Shifter pain into powerful druidic magic. Robert Pierce could be as pissy as he wanted to be with me, but I don’t regret stopping Adele. Not one bit.
“You doing okay, Lils?”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “Danny always loved Halloween. The prank competition seemed to bring out the best in him. It was the one time a year I didn’t feel like a complete failure as a surrogate parent.”
Lily, at the young age of eighteen, had become her little brother’s guardian. He’d been seven at the time. With Danny gone, she had no family left. Except for Tiz and me, but I knew she felt alone in her community.
I put my non-sandwich holding hand over Lily’s. “I’m sorry, babe. If it’s any consolation, you can join me in my hatred for all things Samhain.”
A gray Persian cat with olivine green eyes leaped up onto the table. “Hello, Tisiphone,” she purred.
Tizzy squeaked in alarm. The cat rolled onto her side in front of Tizzy and stretched. “Long time, no see.”
“Who’s your friend?” Lily asked.
“This is Lumpypits,” I said. “Romy Quinn’s familiar.” I’d always gotten along with Romy, but her familiar was a mean, snarky ball of cute. The cuteness just made her nastiness even uglier.
“It’s Lupitia, cretin,” the cat said to me. To Tizzy, she added, “I can’t believe you’ve stuck with this loser all these years. I’d have petitioned the familiar council for a new witch. Yours is definitely broken.”
“Well, I can’t believe your witch puts up with such an unimaginative familiar. It must make her magic so very dull,” I said.
Tizzy, too stunned to speak apparently, crammed a large Brazil nut into her mouth.
So much for back-up.
Lily’s claws came out, and she tapped them in front of the cat and bared a little fang as she said, “Amscray kitty before I show you how the big cats play.”
Lupitia’s eyes bugged as she scrambled off the table. Tizzy ate another nut.
“I can’t believe you didn’t let her have it, Tiz. What’s up?”
“Nuffin’,” she muttered as she chewed.
A scream silenced the entire restaurant. Romy Quinn ran out of the kitchen, her eyes wide with terror. I rushed past her, expecting a dead body or something equally as horrible. Instead, I slipped on the slick floor and was dropped right into the middle of the apocalypse. Flames enveloped the oil fryers as the greasy liquid bubbled over the edges, the sink faucets gushed water out onto the floor, and a white powder covered the burners and walls. An explosion rang my ears. I scrambled backward, my feet slipping in the oily water.
My eyes burned as acrid smoke ate up the oxygen around me. I heard my name, but it sounded muffled after the explosion. A hand grabbed the back of my shirt and hauled me out to the dining room. I blinked through the tears that had formed because of the irritants and my vision cleared. Lily was yelling something at me. I am six inches taller than her and outweigh her by a good forty pounds, but she hauled me up like a professional strongman. I felt Tizzy’s claws on my legs
as she climbed up to my shoulder. When I turned my head to look at her, all the while, Lily moving us toward the door, Tizzy grabbed my face.
“Haze!” She tweaked my nose. “Are you all right? You don’t seem all right. Lily, I think the explosion damaged her brain!”
My hearing was finally coming back, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. “We have to get everyone out of here,” I said, my throat hoarse from smoke inhalation.
“We already did,” Lily said as we walked to the curb. Sirens in the distance meant the fire department was on the way.
Romy clutching Lumpita to her chest, big fat tears rolling down her alabaster cheeks, ran up to me. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“Tell me what happened?” Luckily witches recover quickly, it’s in our genetics, but I still felt a bit wheezy. “What started the fire?”
“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I had just cast a clean-up spell, and the oil fryers began to smoke. The next thing I know, flames are rolling across the counters and spilling onto the floor. I tried to cast a water spell to put them out, but then the pipes and faucets started clanking and rattling.” Her matted chestnut brown hair clung to her neck. “Then blam! Water started spraying everywhere. Since my spells seemed to make everything worse, I tried throwing flour and salt down, but nothing slowed the fire down.”
“Do you think someone sabotaged your kitchen?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know how they could.”
I thought about my coffee incident, how a simple heating spell had gone radioactive in a heartbeat. “Has your magic been reliable?”
“Yes,” she said. “Always.”
“Romy knows her stuff, you walking disaster,” Lupoopiehead added.
“Hey, don’t talk to Hazel like that.” Tizzy’s tail tightened on my throat. “She almost died in there.”
“Her ineptitude must be contagious,” the cat said.
Tizzy’s little body went rigid.
“Easy there, girl.” I stroked her fur. The fire crew, a five-person operation that consisted of five witches with infinity for earth magic, stood in front of the burning business.
“Out, out fire and flame,” they chanted in unison. Their auras turned red as the heaviness of the spell filled the air around me.
“Is that normal?” I asked Tiz.
“Nope,” she squeaked. “Run!”
Lily grabbed my hand and yanked me into a sprint moving away from the restaurant. We only got about ten feet before the massive explosion threw us down on the sidewalk. Concrete debris and ash rained down on me as I struggled to catch my breath.
I felt for Tizzy. She was no longer on my neck. I swallowed a hard knot of fear as my pulse quickened. “Tiz?” I coughed, my chest aching with the effort. I was pretty sure I broke a couple of ribs. “Tizzy,” I said louder.
I turned my head and saw her running toward me. She jumped off a piece of fallen brick and leaped into the air, her arms and legs spreading wide, in a display that said, “That’s right, bitches, I’m not just a squirrel, I’m a fabulous, flying squirrel!”
“Magnificent,” Lupitapocket’s said. I looked at her, and she shrugged before sauntering off to her witch, her tail swishing like a cat who caught the mouse.
“Catch me, Haze!” Tiz shouted, and I snagged her from the air.
Ouch. Raising my arms made my ribs hurt even worse. “What happened to you?”
“I wanted to make sure no one else was left inside,” she said.
“Well, no hero shit from you, you hear me?” The brief second I’d thought she’d been caught in the explosion had filled me with such a heavy grief. I didn’t know what my life would be without her, and I never wanted to find out.
“Me,” she laughed. “A hero? Forget about it.”
Tizzy glanced Romy’s way, watching as the witch hugged her stupid cat. There was a wistful expression in my familiar’s eyes. Did she wish I was more like Romy? Goddess, I hoped not. Maybe the furball had been right. Maybe Tizzy would have been better off trading up for a better witch.
“Are you okay, Tiz?”
She wiggled her nose. “If I’d had known you were taking us to a bonfire for lunch, I’d have brought marshmallows.”
Lily put her hand on my shoulder. “I see Ford’s truck.”
“Oh, and look,” Tizzy added. “The weenie has brought himself. Lily, did you bring the roasting sticks?”
I laughed. It hurt. Goddess help me, I loved my familiar.
Chapter Five
FORD’S TRUCK roared up the street and screeched to a halt outside the perimeter established by the patrol officers. Real firefighters, with water hoses and stuff, squirted down the area with water and foam. The fire had mostly extinguished in the blast. No oxygen meant no fuel for the flames. He almost fell out of the cab as he shoved the door open. He ran past the growing crowd and only slowed when he saw me.
He reached me in seconds, his fingers tucking my hair back behind my ears. I was certain he was trying to see if either one of them had been blown off in the explosion. Next, he moved his hands down my arms. “Hello,” he said.
My skin tingled at his touch, and the warm smell of cinnamon rolls overtook the pungent scent of smoke and burnt oil.
“Hi,” I said, wanting more than anything to roll around in his yummy aroma. When he touched my ribs, I winced.
“Hurt?” His voice was raw. I could see the fur rippling just beneath his human skin. It was taking everything in my mate’s willpower to hold it together.
I wanted to ease his anxiety with a good cuddle followed by a voracious boinking. “Just some bruised ribs.”
“Cracked?”
“Maybe.” I reached up and caressed his cheek. “I’m okay. I promise.”
He nodded and kissed my forehead. “We’re going to run out of barricade tape if this keeps up.”
“I’ll add ordering more to my to-do list. Right now, I have to figure out why the town is turning into Armageddon.”
“First, we need to have Tanya look at your sides.”
“Nope. Not going to happen. I’d sooner suffer through a punctured lung.”
“Haze,” Ford cajoled. “Tanya is a good healer.”
“She can see me when I’m dead.” As if summoned, Tanya and my father crossed the police into the destruction zone. “Speak of the devil. And why is my father with her?”
“Hazel,” my dad said. “Are you okay? You look terrible. Your hair is singed. Are you burned?” Annoyingly, he was checking me over.
“I’m fine, Dad.” I rolled my eyes. “Really.”
“I suspect she broke a few ribs,” my traitorous mate said.
“I can fix that,” Tanya said.
“No,” my father said. “No magic.”
Wait. I narrowed my gaze at him. “What’s going on? What do you know?”
“I’ve been getting reports on magic going awry since early this morning. I even had an incident myself. I tried to transport myself back to the coalition after I saw you at the tar lake, and I ended up out by the quarries instead. When I tried again, I found myself knee deep at the edge of Eden lake.” He shook his head. “I had my phone on me, so I called for a ride back into town, but witches and warlocks all over town are having control issues with their magic now. It’s definitely getting worse.”
“That must be why the restaurant blew up,” I said. “We need to call a town meeting, but until we can get everyone together, we need to get a phone tree going to warn all the witches not to cast spells for now.”
“They’re not going to like that,” Tanya said, her own distaste showing in her pinched expression.
“They’ll enjoy burning the world down around them even less.”
“Chief!” Mitzy Thomas shouted. This was a banner day for her and Parker. “There’s someone under a piece of wall on the side of the building.”
“Goddess, no,” Romy Quinn said. “Please tell me I didn’t kill someone.”
I couldn’t give her the ans
wer she wanted, so I didn’t respond. Instead, I moved into action. “Show me.”
Ford and our entourage, Tizzy, Lily, Dad, and Tanya, followed my curvy patrol officer around the side of Modesto’s. Two legs, clothed in burned embroidered flare leg jeans and wearing red and white saddle shoes with two-inch heels, protruded from the wall.
“I recognize the shoes and those pants,” Tanya said. “Those belong to Agatha.”
Again? Was someone stealing Agatha Milan’s clothes to perpetuate another hoax? Tanya didn’t seem as upset this time, and I understood why. I suspected the Shifters were pulling the same prank again. But why was Agatha Milan being targeted? “Did you touch or move anything, Thomas?” I asked my officer.
Parker stepped in and said, “We didn’t want to move anything or contaminate the scene.”
Mitzy’s expression soured. She hadn’t liked him answering for her, but she didn’t say anything. I liked Mitzy Thomas, but she would have to get tougher if she wanted to work in law enforcement. Especially, if she wanted to work law enforcement in a paranormal town.
Tizzy climbed up on my shoulder. “Those jeans are retrolydelicious. Very cool.”
“And could be connected to a dead body,” I said dryly.
“Very sad,” she added. “I like the shoes, too.”
“Tizzy.”
“What? You could stand a new wardrobe update, Haze.”
“Not in the middle of a crime scene.” I booped her on the nose with my finger. “Decorum.”
“You hid me away from people for nearly two decades. It’s no wonder I don’t know how to behave in public.”
“Uh huh.” She knew exactly how to act to push all my buttons. “Lily, can you take Tizzy home?”
“Sure,” Lily said. She held up her hands, and Tizzy, with a despondent sigh, climbed into her cupped palms.
“She such a party pooper,” Tizzy said to Lily.
“We’ll can go shopping on the way home,” Lily replied. “A little retail therapy will perk you right up.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m almost out of walnuts at home!”