But there was no answer, which appeared to be the standard response from the afterlife today.
“Popsicle?”
“Yes?” I answered, my teeth chattering as I watched some of our store items float past me.
“What is this Plane Eleven?”
I almost laughed. It was a threat I’d used often when I was a witch, but truth be told, I’d never done it before. “It’s a plane for very bad people. Obviously not one our loud friend wants to visit, judging by the way he quite suddenly stopped creating havoc.” Shivering, I looked around for my purse as my thoughts raced, but I needed some answers here. “Arkady, is anyone with you? Can you see who did this? Usually Win has a handle on what’s going on up there.”
Arkady, riddled with panic moments ago, scoffed derisively at me. “Dah, malutka. You do not say?”
All right. This joke had gone too far now, and I was tired of playing along. “Okay, my hunky cosmonaut, you guys have had your laugh. I already told you, I get it, and I went too far teasing Win. Now where is my spiteful little British spy? We’ll need a big dose of the afterlife’s help for this one, methinks.”
“Stephania,” he rasped, his tone so heavy, I was glad it wasn’t sitting on my shoulders. “I will say one more time. Win is gone. He is gone, and I don’t know where he is. I repeat. Zero. Is. Gone.”
Chapter 4
This is the part where everything goes a little sideways, spirals downward, and then goes a lot topsy-turvy. This is the part where I finally take Arkady seriously.
A chill so violent, so dark and black, rolled upward from my toes to the top of my head, and I began to shake, almost unable to catch my breath from the trembling.
This is the part where I realize a piece of me has suddenly gone missing, and I’m terrified because I don’t understand the reason why or, most of all, how.
Still, I straightened and forced myself to approach Win’s disappearance like I would any other mystery. With logic and critical thinking.
“Okay. I get it,” I whispered and paused, lost in a swirl of racing thoughts.
I looked up at the ceiling, fighting the tightness growing in my chest and the sick feeling in my stomach. There was no need to panic yet. Not yet.
Clearing my throat, I slogged my way toward the last place I’d seen my purse as everything around me began to shift once more, and the water, miraculously, all but dried up. Then the ice on the walls began to shrivel, and the freezing-cold temperatures rose.
I think at this point my mouth fell open. I hadn’t experienced paranormal activity on this level without Win in quite some time, and it took a moment before I began to feel less fearful and instead sought to understand the purpose behind the event.
Whatever that warning was about, whomever it was from, it would have to wait for the time being. Win was missing—and nothing else took priority.
“Malutka,” Arkady said, with a snap-out-of-it tone.
Gathering my thoughts, I looked upward. “Yes, Arkady?”
“You are okey-doke, my biscuit?”
Swallowing hard, I nodded as I discovered my sodden purse, still at the doorway to the back room. Oddly, the moment I picked it up, it went from a sloshy mess to dry as a bone, and seconds later, my clothes followed suit.
This was so odd…
I’m not sure what kind of voodoo was going on here, but whoever that ghost had been—and again, this is an assumption on my part; I don’t know if it was a ghost or maybe even a demon—it was pretty powerful.
“Malutka, answer me,” Arkady prodded with a forceful tone.
“I’m mostly okay, if not chilled to the bone and stunned. Forget about my condition. Let’s attack Win’s disappearance the way we do any other crime scene. The way Win would want us to go about solving his disappearance. Tell me the last thing you remember seeing before Win disappeared. Was he there on the bench with you before you nodded off?”
“Dah, and he say you are Philistine because you like the Cheez Whiz. He sit right here with me on bench. We sit together every day, delicate butterfly. Always.”
“But you never go anywhere else? Like maybe bingo or a club or…I mean, I don’t know. Are there such things on Plane Limbo?”
It was just a big, vast canvass of nothing in my mind’s eye. Sure, I occasionally thought of a waterfall because Win had mentioned one once when we’d crossed over, of all things, a pig. But I never gave it much detail or depth. Now I wondered if there weren’t places to go. Like grocery stores and malls…
Oooo, were there malls in the afterlife?
Sorry. Got sidetracked there.
“Plane Limbo is what you wish it to be, malutka. It is different thing to different people. For us, it is peace and quiet on the bench by the waterfall, watching as the souls come and go.”
That made sense. Win and Arkady’s lives had been full of intrigue and mystery, with more chaos than the inside of a vacuum. Peace and quiet was likely something they’d both crave.
Running a hand over my currently drying-at-the-speed-of-light hair, I frowned. “And you’ve asked your fellow Plane Limbo friends if they’ve seen him?” I asked as I made my way to the reading room—where the table was put back together as though it had never been broken in a bunch of pieces, making me frown.
“Of course I ask, Stevie. I ask everyone all night. But you know how it is here. Some people are not reliable due to bad experience. The, how you say…trauma?”
Ah, yes. Trauma. Sometimes, if a soul is taken harshly from this world and they end up on Plane Limbo due to unfinished earthly business or doubt about crossing over, they can present as very confused.
But if not even a confused soul had mentioned Win’s whereabouts, that was cause for concern.
But wait a minute. I froze in place, not only because an idea crossed my mind—but because now, every single thing that had been torn asunder, broken, knocked over, was mending itself right before my very eyes.
“Stevie,” Belfry whispered in hushed awe, “I’ve never…”
My mouth fell open. This was like watching someone wave a magic wand and make everything right again, and believe you me, I’d seen that happen a time or two.
“Sweet Kremlin,” Arkady breathed followed by a whistle. “How can this be real, my butternut squash? Did you see this before they take your witch powers?”
I inhaled while I watched the cash register rebuild itself while I stared on, aghast. Listen, I’m a witch, and I’ve seen lots of spells cast in my time. I’ve seen all manner of amazing events, but never with this sort of magnitude.
“No,” I said on a breath out. “I’ve never seen something this big. I don’t understand…”
But as I said that, I realized I was becoming sidetracked by the bibbidi-bobbidi-boo of it all and not focusing on the problem at hand. We were losing time and becoming distracted from the real problem. My spine stiffened. “Arkady, we need to focus. We can’t deal with the reason this is happening right now. We need to find Win first.”
He cleared his throat with a gruff cough. “Dah. Yes. We must stay focused. So where were we?”
Tucking my purse over my shoulder, my eyes still wide with wonder, I answered, “You said you asked around on Plane Limbo about whether anyone had seen Win.”
“Dah. No one has seen Zero. I check three times today. I ask about tall, handsome man with sharp suit and blue eyes.”
My heart clenched hard at Arkady’s description of Win, and that’s when I thought of something else. Something that made me gulp hard, but the question had to be asked.
“Okay, so here’s another question for you. Have you seen the light recently?”
“To the Great Beyond, malutka? Is this what you ask?”
Holding my breath, I could only nod as I decided to make my way back to the front of the store.
Arkady must have realized what I was really asking, because he quite suddenly hissed an answer. “You do not think, Stevie…? No! He would never! I do not believe! Zero would never leave you
!”
Fighting the tears forming in my eyes, I gripped the repaired counter, staring at the postcard rack next to the restored glass surface. “Are you sure?” I squeaked, forcing myself to say the words that needed saying, but also because I needed to air them out—put them out into the universe. “Maybe he finally decided to cross, Arkady. Some souls waffle for a very long time, and then a feeling or a particular calling overwhelms them and they make a snap decision. It happens all the time.”
My chest constricted as though someone had tightened a corset around my torso, but I was once a medium. I knew what happened when the right time came for a soul to pass.
Yet, he gasped in clear outrage. “Zero would not leave!” he thundered, totally catching me off guard with the fury I heard in his voice.
Arkady was always so lighthearted and easygoing, but his loyalty to Win shone through every word he spoke.
Bel burrowed deeper into my neck. “I gotta agree with the crazy spy upstairs, Stevie. Win would never leave you—us. Never. And even if that was a choice he decided to make, don’t you think he’d at least say goodbye first? Would he up and leave without looking back? C’mon, Stevie. I know you know better.”
I inhaled again, a shuddering breath as I closed my eyes and regained my composure. “You know what the calling’s like, Bel. It’s irresistible to most.”
“Yeah. I know what’s it’s like, and Win’s not most,” Belfry retorted, sounding a little angry with me himself. “So how ’bout you drop that nuttybutter notion right now and move along with another theory, Cowpoke? Because that one sucks stinky rotten eggs.”
I held up my hands in surrender, swallowing my threatening tears. “Okay, okay. It was just a theory. Win would want us to consider every angle.”
And he would. He’d tell me to think logically rather than emotionally. I didn’t doubt that for a second. I didn’t like it because this wasn’t some nondescript case where I didn’t know the victim. This was Win. My Win. Our Win.
Bel took flight from my shoulder and buzzed around the store before he landed on the windowsill under our Madam Zoltar sign. “Yeah, but he wouldn’t want you to consider that angle. So next theory, please, Sherlock.”
Biting the inside of my cheek to keep from crying, I still secretly wondered if that wasn’t exactly what had happened to Win. How did one up and disappear from a place he’d never once left unless they did so by choice? Where else could he have gone but to another plane? As far as I knew, it was very difficult to plane hop.
Though, that thought made me cock my head and ask out loud, “ Arkady? Have the two of you ever plane hopped? Could Win maybe have gone off to another plane?”
“Malutka,” Arkady said on an aggravated sigh. “You know how difficult this is to do. You say so yourself many times. Nyet. We never plane jump unless you count airplane. This we do often.”
Still, I clung to the theory because it was, at the very least, a theory. “But Win was a spy, Arkady. It’s not like he isn’t used to difficult missions, right? Or you either, for that matter. In fact, I’d bet he’d consider it a challenge. And plane hopping isn’t impossible, it’s just hard.”
“Do you use noggin today or did you lend to someone else? He left in middle of conversation with you, dah? If Zero decide to plane hop, which is crazy, he would not do so while he talk to you. He has fancy manners. That would be rude. You know this about our Zero. Plus, he would never leave you. Find new theory.”
Okay, he had a point. Win likely wouldn’t disappear in the middle of a conversation, and that only made me worry more. I sort of didn’t give a lot of credence to the part where Arkady pointed out Win would never leave me, his manners aside.
Maybe because I wasn’t thinking about our personal relationship? I was thinking of us as a whole—all the working parts.
Trying not to let him or Bel see I was shaking, I leaned against the counter and pretended to approach this with a level head. “Fair enough. So, Arkady, do you have a theory? Any theory at all?”
There was a long pause, a drawn-out silence as Arkady considered, and I prayed with everything I had he’d have some ideas…until he said, “Nyet, malutka.”
His tone was so full of remorse, my pulse began to slosh in my ears.
My mouth went bone dry and my knees went weak, but I managed to hang on. “Then give me a minute to think, because I’m not sure where to go from here.”
I began to pace, because movement felt like the only answer to this cagey fear crippling my limbs, somehow still marveling at the event that had just taken place.
As I looked around, I couldn’t believe just moments ago it looked as though a tornado had whizzed through Madam Z’s, and now, everything was right back where it had been when I’d left yesterday.
Yesterday…
Before Win had disappeared. This was crazy. He’d never done anything like this before, and just as Arkady said, he would never leave a conversation the way he’d left ours last one. I didn’t know where to go from here? How did you investigate a mystery in the afterlife?
I had to wrap an arm around my middle to keep from losing my morning coffee. Win wouldn’t want me to give in to my fear. He’d want me to figure out what happened to him—someway—somehow. It’s how we’d met. It’s how we’d bonded. It was the glue that held us together, among other things, and I refused to believe we wouldn’t continue to solve mysteries.
We were a team, with sidekicks and everything. Win would never willingly walk away from us.
Which could only mean he’d been taken unwillingly?
Maybe by a spiteful warlock named Adam Westfield?
My stomach plummeted, and I had to bend at the waist to keep from losing what little was in my belly.
It had been a long, long time since I’d given Adam Westfield my valuable time and thoughts, but the very idea of his involvement, of any kind, petrified me.
“What’re ya thinkin’, Stevie B?” Bel asked as I came to stand at the picture window and gaze out at the rain splattering against the sidewalk.
I watched as the food trucks, very much alive with patronage, even in the rain, doled out goodies to the people of Eb Falls. I watched as everyone went on about their day and, for a split second, I envied that.
There’d always been a fear, somewhere deep inside my brain, that Win would either choose to cross over or Adam would exact revenge on me through him.
The former being the reason I’ve never told him how deep my feelings for him are—because I never wanted him to feel any manner of guilt if he ever chose to leave Plane Limbo. How could I tie him to this world—to me that way?
But if Adam was involved…
“Stevie?” Bel called me once more.
I licked my lips, forcing the words from my mouth as though they were pushing their way through peanut butter. “I’m thinking Adam Westfield. What if he has something to do with this?”
I know Bel tried to hide his gasp, but he was unsuccessful. “You don’t think…”
“I don’t know,” was all I could manage to say as the world tipped sideways for a moment before righting itself. Even breathing his name was like a punch to the gut.
“This is bad warlock, yes, malutka? The bad man who take your witch powers?”
“Yes. Yes, he’s the one who took my powers, and he’s tussled with Win before. Have you heard his name mentioned at all, Arkady? Surely, someone as powerful as Adam would come up in conversation?”
“Nyet,” he replied tersely. “No one speak of him but Win. He tell me all about what he do to you.”
I breathed a semi sigh of relief as my cold chills evaporated. At least there was that to comfort me. I couldn’t bear it if Win was hurt because of me, and trust me, Adam would steal Win’s soul if there was a way, just because he was so close to me and Adam knew it would leave me in devastation.
Squaring my shoulders, I gave a sharp nod, and maybe I dismissed Adam too quickly, but there was no reason at this point to suspect he was responsible for any f
oul play. Besides, I couldn’t linger on the subject of the spiteful warlock for too long or I’d crumble from terror.
“Okay then, back to the drawing board.”
As I said the words, I looked down at the floor under the window…and frowned.
How had that postcard gotten there?
I looked back at the rack, and every single one of the postcards that had been scattered throughout the store were now back in place, exactly as we’d left them last night.
Bending at the knee, I grabbed it and held it up to the gloomy light from outside, my fingers clammy.
“Malutka?”
“Spring,” I murmured. “This is a postcard inviting people to visit Eb Falls in the spring, with a picture of the sheet music from Vivaldi’s concerto for…spring. It’s Win’s favorite of The Four Seasons.”
“What does this mean, cupcake? Explain to Arkady, please.”
My heart began to throb and my pulse pounded in my ears as I gripped the postcard. “Win always said spring was a time for rebirth. Oh, Arkady, you don’t think…” I stopped speaking as my mind reeled and my stomach lurched yet again.
“What, Stevie?” Bel squawked, buzzing around my head, his wings flapping with a fury.
“I…I think he’s done what he always said he’d do if the opportunity ever presented itself.”
“What he will do?” Arkady asked, his voice tight and strained.
“A body,” I answered after a dry gulp. “I think he’s trying to possess a body.”
Chapter 5
“This is, as you say, bananapants, malutka! You do not believe Win is looking for body to inhabit, do you?”
We’d all piled into the car and headed home in almost complete silence, none of us able to articulate words after I’d suggested Win was body hunting.
Now, as we sat at the kitchen table, the afternoon ahead of us, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I don’t know what to think, Arkady! I mean every postcard in the whole stinkin’ place was right back where it started, all neatly returned to their holders but that one. The sheet music for Vivaldi’s spring concerto—Win’s favorite of the four. Can you explain that?”
Witch Way Did He Go? Page 4