Bump (A Witchlight Novel)

by Jaime Munn

  “It’s lovely,” I said after a moment when the battle within was as under my control as it would ever be.

  “You can look through either end too,” Sofia said. “I call it The Fair Witch’s Wand.”

  I looked at her. I had no doubt that if Livia had been there, she’d have thought we were French kissing with our eyes again.

  “When did you make it?” I asked.

  “Yesterday. It was hard to get all I needed locally. I almost resorted to a smash and grab of the rose window in the old Catholic church on Cicada Street, but I found some coloured jars and bottles at a thrift store just in time.”

  I smiled at that.

  “I’ll see about the fur. The pack will have to speak on this.” Sofia rose. I followed suit, keeping a firm hold on the long, slender kaleidoscope. I wondered how many green and turquoise jars had been broken to make it. There were slivers of red and amber in it too but sparingly used. The texture and the flow of the design made me think of gnarled wood. I wondered about the two pieces that Erica had in Tangles. How similar were they?

  “You’re heading back to the city?” I thought I could hear the disappointment in my voice.

  She nodded. “I’ll hopefully be back soon with the fur. Otherwise, I’ll be back with new pieces for Tangles. Erica expects the two I had for her to sell quickly.”

  “Lucky you had summer myth art to hand.”

  Sofia smiled. I could tell it was her mischievous smile. “I changed the names of the two pieces to suit Erica’s theme. Don’t tell her that.”

  I laughed but the sound faded quickly when I thought of what Erica had been through.

  Sofia left with a soft good bye. I felt an emptiness of longing settle over me.

  F.C. emerged from the basement a little later like he’d been giving us some privacy. Doubtless he’d just been curious about the contents of my store room and client den.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Livia stopped by after lunch.

  “Either she’s a method actor or Erica’s sick,” she declared dropping into the seat beside me. She didn’t look at me but scanned the two customers who were wandering around the store, frowning at prices. I didn’t tell her that her statement struck me as a tautology. “She looks like death warmed over…” she paused looking thoughtful. “That sounds like a snooty name for a dish made from road kill,” she observed, then shrugged. “Anyway, she looks sick.”

  “Did she eat her pudding?” I asked.

  Livia gave me a reproachful look. “Really? That’s the question you ask me?”

  I nodded.

  Livia sighed. “She ate two. They’re quite good actually.”

  “They’ve got sugar in them and not that artificial sweetener crap.” I firmly believed that food manufacturers had been hard selling artificial everything as healthier—low fat too—not because it was particularly either of those things but because it was cheaper on their pockets in the long run.

  Livia pursed her lips. She had different opinions about the artificial sweetener crap. I knew sugar was far superior because no witch I knew could spin anything out of a taste of sugar-free.

  “I ate two as well, but only because Erica was so embarrassed at having a second helping of pudding.”

  I nodded.

  “She said she saw you earlier.”

  I nodded again.

  “She said you were very concerned about her.”

  I gave nothing up to her fishing expedition but another nod.

  She sighed, exasperated. “You never said you’d seen her already.”

  “You never asked.”

  “Nilla, really.” She shook her head. “I think the pudding helped my headache,” she said changing the topic. Then turned to face me. I could tell she’d changed her mind about letting it go. “You’re mixing your signals there, Nilla. Are you toying with Erica?”

  My eyes widened in surprise. “Of course not,” I exclaimed. One of the browsing customers looked our way. I lowered my voice and continued. “You saw what she looked like, Liv. I was genuinely worried about her.” And it was my fault too, I thought. Grace would never have gone after Erica if it hadn’t been for me. Still, it was better Erica than Emma, even though thinking that made me feel guilty.

  Livia scowled. “I don’t think that is the way Erica saw it.” She sighed. “Why you don’t just give her a chance I’ll never know.”

  "She's not my type," I replied irritably, wondering if Livia would understand even if I explained to her the half glimpsed world around us. How I wanted someone in my life who could see it even if only partially. I wondered if my logic would even make sense to anyone else.

  "Well you've been dating your type all your life, Nilla, and where has that gotten you?"

  The words were harsh, but her tone was gentle and tentative. I sighed, hating that she was right.

  "God knows that I've dated every type,” she continued making fun of herself to ease the hurt in her statement. “And at least it’s never boring. It might surprise you if you tried it once in a while.”

  I wanted to say I preferred monogamy, but that was a phrase filled with spite, so I locked my jaws on it and counted silently to ten. In that time Livia found Sofia’s gift.

  “Oh Nilla,” she sighed fingering the kaleidoscope. “Looks like your dry patch is really over.”

  One of the customers finally decided on a purchase and came forward with a bedside lamp. She’d picked up the display lamp despite the fact that all the boxed lamps were neatly packed beneath the tables. I smiled tightly at her.

  “Let me get you one of those boxed.”

  “I like this one,” she said firmly.

  I got the feeling that she was expecting me to switch it out for something inferior and shrugged. I rang it up, took her money, and put the lamp in a plastic bag.

  “People,” Livia sighed when the customer had left. “We’re just that darn weird.” She stood. “I have to get back to work as well. See you in a few hours then.”

  I nodded and waved her out. As I unpacked another lamp to replace the recent purchase, I wondered if Livia was right about Erica. Had she mistaken my guilt over what Grace had done to her for an interest of a more carnal nature?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I closed the store at three. Customers dwindled down to nothing on a Saturday afternoon. I liked to get a little weekend all to myself. F.C. strode beside me as we made our way to Coffee-on-Main. He caused quite a stir. I could almost feel his ego puffing up as people watched him quick-step confidently beside me. I didn’t need to tell him to wait outside the coffee shop. He jumped up onto a litter bin and watched me as I strode in.

  I felt his eyes on me the whole time I was in the short queue. It wasn’t creepy at all. Despite the fact that he was to all intents and purposes a cat I felt a little safer with him watching my back. Perhaps I still hadn’t convinced myself that Grace didn’t have another ace up her sleeve.

  I picked the Cinnamon Cookie Dough flavour because it was new and we’d never tried it before. It sounded like an overseas import and ordering two made me feel a little cosmopolitan and not at all the small town girl that I’d become over the last couple of years. Sometimes I missed the big bad city.

  F.C. was pretending not to notice his admirers when I exited with two takeaway cups in hand. He jumped down to the pavement and we made the short trip to Tangles in minutes. He followed me in this time like he knew there wasn’t a ‘no pets allowed’ sign in the window. Livia gave him a frown, but when he merely sat in the middle of the gallery floor looking at the art like a diminutive critic she shrugged.

  “Remember, if he breaks anything you’re buying it,” she told me as I handed her a coffee.

  I barely heard her as I spotted one of Sofia’s pieces standing on a square of white marble. It was bright and banded in colour like a rainbow.

  “Which one is that one?” I asked.

  I heard Livia’s exasperation in her tone. “Lugh’s Window. It might be sold.”

&
nbsp; I crossed to it and looked at the price written in Erica’s neat handwriting. I was in the wrong profession. The opening to the kaleidoscope wasn’t as obvious as the piece that Sofia had given me, but it only took a moment to discover it. I bent forward and looked into the world of colour within.

  The kaleidoscope, it seemed to me, was an analogy for the world that Sofia and I could see, the veiled world, and its supernatural influences on the ordinary world around us, the young world. It was the perfect medium for a werewolf artist I thought. Unlike most of the art I’d seen passing through Tangles, it spoke to me on a very deep level. Possibly it was just my hormones.

  I spent an hour with Livia before deciding to head home and leave her to close up the art boutique. She wanted to get home to relax but felt guilty about not dropping by Erica to see how she was doing. I told her I’d visit her boss for her. She gave me a stern look along with her good bye.

  I took F.C. home first and realised that I still hadn’t picked him up any cat food. I wondered if kibble would be acceptable to his lordship’s Frankenstein genetics. What did a homunculus eat? Did it eat at all? I knew the answers, but I doubted they applied in this case. I opened up another can of tuna, and F.C. polished it off. Then he sat licking his jaws with what I thought was a very satisfied smirk on his face. I was probably going to meet some resistance from him if I introduced kibble into his diet, but cans of tuna didn’t come cheap.

  I opened up the balcony door and reluctantly left it open as I got ready to make my visit to Erica. I tried to draw a little energy together, akin to casting a spell, but it was like squeezing water from a stone. I hoped that by the next day I’d have my juju back or my life expectancy was going to plummet dramatically. You didn’t need to be a gambler to dislike those odds. Damn, Grace St John. Why hadn’t a house fallen on her yet?

  I reached the Hanley Manor just after five. Erica let me in looking more like herself than she had earlier. It wasn’t just a layer of makeup masking everything either.

  “I still feel a little out of it. It’s like I’m skipping portions of the day.”

  “The good news is it looks like a twenty-four hour bug.”

  She nodded. “Now I’m going to have to figure out a way to give up this sugar habit you’ve foisted on me.”

  “Hey, sugar has a bad rap,” I said.

  Erica laughed. It sounded more carefree and genuine than what I had heard from her before, but then I’d only heard her laugh in Tangles. Then it was merely being polite to the customer contemplating spending a lot of money on a piece of art. Or maybe I’d just never noticed anything more than my preconceived notions of her obsession with the veneer of beauty.

  We had a sweet tea together before I hurried home. Erica offered me dinner, but I turned her down with a plea that I wasn’t sure how my new cat was adjusting to life in the apartment. I also hadn’t gotten used to the psychic rubber band connection stretching between F.C. and myself. Erica seemed disappointed. Perhaps her brush with Grace St John had lowered the defences she usually presented to the world, allowing her emotions to seep through. Had I been the one who was only skin-deep all these years and hadn’t been able to see past the mask she wore to hide her true feelings?

  I wondered about that as I took a cab back home and all through my supper too before crawling into bed.

  I woke feeling a little more witchy. F.C. was pressing his whiskers into my face. He needed a bathroom break. I wondered if I could teach him to use the toilet. It was only going to happen though if he learned to flush and didn’t leave the toilet seat up.

  While F.C. did his business, I started my day with a hearty bowl of sugar and threw in a few white chocolate drops for good measure. I pondered the chocolate drops as I ate my cereal. I didn’t know why the package advertised them as chocolate. From the ingredients list there wasn’t any chocolate in them, but there sure was a lot of sugar. That did the job for me. I felt the sugar combusting into witchy reserves of magic. It was like witch Christmas. Technically that would be called Halloween. I was getting the treats, but Grace was probably working on the tricks already.

  That thought sobered my sugar and magic buzz. I got into the shower feeling a lot more nervous about my day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  If I didn’t open the store on Sunday, I didn’t get my full week of business in the lamp trade. I would have preferred a day off like the plebs that wandered past the store, sometimes peering in through the glass windows. It was depressing to be stuck inside when my battery was feeling supercharged compared to yesterday’s empty. Outside the summery day was kicking off to a beautiful start. F.C. sensed my contained energy. He paced the room for me. It was strangely comforting watching him.

  He paused long before the door to the store opened like he’d sensed the arrival from a mile away and didn’t want to miss a minute of it.

  It was the second time Grace St John had darkened my threshold. Two times too many already.

  She stood in the doorway starring at F.C. who sat staring back at her with eyes wide open. The creepy Victorian angel lamp was like a small sun in the window display next to Grace. It threw light over her that for the first time I realised looked very much like the amber glow of the veiled world.

  I couldn’t read what Grace was thinking as she got an eyeful of what I’d done to her homunculus. Her features were still and expressionless, but she looked a little pale. I wondered whether to attribute it to F.C. or to the cost of delving deep into Erica’s mind and meddling with Livia’s.

  “Cat got your tongue?” I asked when a suitable period of silence had passed. Grace looked up at me scowling.

  “You might as well have made a Chihuahua for your purse,” she said sneering at me, but I didn’t think her disdain was that convincing when she was spreading it so thick. I decided that getting to rub my victory in her face personally was worth having the wicked witch pay me another visit.

  “But witches have cats.” I smiled at her. I checked my little kettle, topped up the water level and set it to boiling. “Tea?” I offered. Although the thought of drinking with Grace set my teeth on edge. I was still in the mood to rub her face in my victory though. F.C. was enjoying his moment in the spotlight. “Sugar free of course.”

  Grace was still a moment, studying me with her hard green eyes, then she shook her head. “Tempting, but no thank you. I’m actually in the market for a lamp.” She turned to the creepy Victorian angel lamp. “That lamp.”

  “It’s not for sale.” If Grace St John wanted my creepy lamp, I sure as hell wasn’t going to sell it to her.

  “Pity.” Her voice was cool and untroubled, but I thought it was an act. The lamp disturbed her on some deep level. I wondered if she knew something about it that I didn’t. She was clearly an accomplished wicked witch. Why were the evil ones always so diligent? Evil was supposed to be the path of least resistance if you went by public opinion, but most of us coasted through life in neutral. Truly becoming something, good or bad, required a lot more effort than that. Evil tended to be populated by skill and genius, not that I admired that kind of skill or genius but it had been a recurring theme I’d found.

  The kettle boiled. I pulled out a mug, put in a heaped teaspoon of coffee. Caffeine wasn’t a witch’s go to energy boost as much as sugar, but it provided a kick in all the right places for the body’s energy reserves. I deliberately over sugared my coffee in front of Grace. She’d already declared war on me.

  “Rather old school,” Grace said as I stirred in the boiling water and added a spoon of coffee creamer.

  “If it ain’t broke,” I replied and didn’t bother to finish off the idiom. I wondered if the lamp had been her only reason for coming. Did she think it had defeated her? I bristled at the thought that she would so easily dismiss me. Did she think some bauble had been the only thing standing between me and death? “Anything else?” My voice sounded thick with emotion. I hoped Grace wouldn’t zero in on sulky as predominant.

  “I might as well ask you if
you’d like to change your decision,” she took a step towards me.

  F.C. hissed, standing up and fluffing himself out. I got the show from an angle, but it looked impressive. His claws seemed a little less cat and little more as Grace had originally made them. She stopped moving forward, but I had to admire how she didn’t take a step back either. Nor did her poise shift from confident to nervous though her eyes examined F.C. very carefully before flicking back to me.

  “He gets his aggression from me,” she said. I didn’t like the insinuation that we’d created something together.

  Narrowing my eyes, I tried to gauge how much she had recovered from the toll of sifting through Erica’s memories. Her makeup concealed any imperfections. Her eyes were bright even if they were filled with cold. I sipped my caffeinated sugar. There was, it appeared, such a thing as too much sugar, even for a witch. That said, I would never admit it out loud.

  “Are you willing to die for a little fairy godmothering?” Grace asked when it became clear that I had nothing to say to her. Her tone was clipped, her voice icy.

  “Die?” I raised a brow at her. I wanted to throw a little more sarcasm into it, but baiting Grace St John wasn’t the smart move. Still, there was no reason to appear meek in front of the baddest witch in town. “I haven’t made any plans for that. It’s completely off my schedule.”

  She laughed. “Oh, Nilla, you’ve got to bite back or even paper cuts, when delivered frequently enough, can kill you.”

  “But it takes a lot of paper cuts. You look like you’re on a very tight deadline,” I said, not letting my voice crack over the punch line despite it having the D word. If I couldn’t throw it around like Grace, I should get out of the witch’s kitchen before the spelling got too hot for me.

  Grace took a moment to respond. I wondered if I’d struck a nerve. It made sense from how quickly and how ruthlessly she’d gone after me, but I couldn’t imagine what deadline prompted her to action. Emma was barely a month old. Whatever her destiny, she couldn’t hold it in her little fists yet.