witches of cleopatra hill 07 - impractical magic

by Christine Pope

  Unfortunately, a good number of her friends and family probably wouldn’t view him as much of an improvement.

  “I don’t think it’s presuming,” he said, glad to see a bit of the tension leave her jaw. “You know this place — I don’t.”

  “Well, that’s true.”

  They had to pause then as Eden came back with their beers, and then they placed their orders. For exactly the same thing — the Cuban Mary burger. Bleu cheese and caramelized onions? Colin wasn’t about to pass that up.

  “She was a famous madam here,” Jenny explained as she picked up her pint glass. “Well, not here, here. Her brothel was one street over and farther up the hill. It’s been for sale forever.”

  “Someone’s trying to sell a brothel?” Colin asked, unable to keep the amusement out of his voice.

  “It’s not a brothel anymore, obviously. It’s a ‘historic building.’” Colin could practically see the air quotes Jenny put around the phrase. “Anyway,” she continued, “her family wants to offload it, but the land it’s on is so unstable that it keeps sliding a few inches every year. So no bank will finance it. Cash-only deal.”

  “That’s unfortunate.” Unable to stop himself, he said, “Maybe one of you McAllisters could buy it?”

  Jenny gave him a peculiar look. “‘You McAllisters’?”

  Damn, he’d really put his foot in it there, hadn’t he? Backpedaling, Colin said, “Well, that is — your family kind of owns this town, doesn’t it?”

  Instead of appearing offended, she shook her head and chuckled. Long strands of dark blonde hair fell over her shoulders, and Colin found himself suddenly not caring all that much about her family and its real estate holdings. “I wish,” she told him. “Maybe that way we could get a signal installed at the corner of 89A and Hull Avenue. It seems like someone gets creamed there at least once a month while trying to make a left. But no, we don’t own this town. We’ve lived here a long time, and here are a lot of us, but there are just as many ci — people who aren’t remotely related to the McAllisters here.”

  There it was again — that slip where she’d meant to say something else and then checked herself. Ci…what? Citizens? That didn’t make much sense.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “the property would need so much rehabbing that it’s not really worth the effort. But if you’re that interested in it, we should go on the ghost tour. Cuban Mary’s place is on the route.”

  “‘Ghost tour’?” he echoed, not sure if she was teasing him or not. “That sounds like sort of a touristy thing to do.”

  “Aren’t you a tourist?” Jenny replied. Her eyes were wide and guileless, but he thought he could see a teasing glint in them. “Besides, even if you don’t believe in ghosts, it’s a great way to get more familiar with the town and learn a little bit of local history. I checked, and Frankie has a few spots left in her six o’clock tour. We could do that and still make it to dinner at seven-thirty with no problem.”

  A ghost tour. Colin could just see Ryan Ortiz getting a good laugh out of that one, should he ever find out. But, as Jenny had said, it probably was a good way to get some more local history under his belt.

  What he would do if he actually saw a ghost, Colin had no idea. He figured he was fairly safe from that eventuality, however.

  And if you do see one, he thought, well, that proves there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio. Which also means that gorgeous woman sitting across the table from you might actually be a witch.

  That seemed to settle things. He picked up his beer and said, “Tell Frankie I would love to go on her ghost tour.”

  * * *

  It was funny how you got a different appreciation for a familiar place when you were looking at it through a newcomer’s eyes. Jenny knew she probably could have been blindfolded and sent to wander Jerome’s streets, and would still have unerringly found her way home — or to the Spirit Room, or to the Mile High Grill, or the Passion Cellars wine-tasting room, or any one of a hundred other points of interest — but on that day her hometown felt like something new and fresh, a place where she was setting foot for the first time.

  The reason being, of course, Colin Campbell.

  He didn’t mind going to the obviously touristy places like the Jerome Museum or the national park that housed the mansion that had once belonged to William Clark, the man who had financed the United Verde mine. The streets were steep, but Colin seemed to enjoy going up and down them, all the way from the head shop at the top of the hill down to the Guadalajara Grill, where they stopped in briefly for margaritas before sallying forth once again. And the whole time he asked questions that weren’t insulting but seemed genuinely curious, showing an appreciation for her crazy little town that Jenny, quite frankly, hadn’t been expecting.

  More than once the thought crossed her mind: Maybe this could work.

  Was she being stupid? She didn’t know, but a small hope began to grow inside her. The hours passed with ease, and Colin never seemed to get bored, or tired, and the people he met in the shops and the restaurants and the tasting rooms all appeared charmed by him, whether they were witch-folk or civilians. For some strange reason, it was almost as if he fit in, as if the strange little town suited him far better than the hustle of Tucson.

  Or maybe she was thinking that because it was what she wanted to believe. That this would be a magical — pardon the pun — weekend where everything would go perfectly and he’d turn to her, declare his undying love, and say that he wanted to quit his corporate communications job and go to work for the local chamber of commerce or something. How that would even work, Jenny really didn’t know, because the “chamber” in Jerome was her cousin Pete and a civilian named Rosa, with whom he’d been carrying on a casual affair for at least ten years. But they must have a chamber of commerce down the hill in Cottonwood….

  “…where do they do the ghost tour?”

  “What?” Jenny blinked, all too aware that she’d been woolgathering. Luckily, they’d stopped at one of the numerous overlooks around town, and Colin had been busy taking pictures with his phone, so maybe he hadn’t noticed her distraction.

  “It’s a quarter to six,” he said, showing her the display on the phone. “I was just wondering if we should head over there or not. I don’t know how much of a hike it is.”

  Since they were down on Hull Avenue, just a block past Spook Hall, where all the town’s large gatherings were held, they would have a bit of a climb to get to Frankie’s office. It was located nearly at the end of Main Street, just on the other side of Rachel McAllister’s store.

  “It’s a ways,” she confessed. “You’re right — we probably had better get going.”

  He smiled at her and slipped his phone into his pocket. “Show me the way.”

  They headed up Hull Avenue and then hung a left so they could go past the Spirit Room on the way to the Jerome Ghost Tours office. Although they’d already gone by once before, Jenny couldn’t help noting the way Colin cast an appreciative eye at the row of Harleys and Indians in front of the bar.

  “You ride?” she asked, a teasing note in her voice. He was hotter than hell, and she loved being around him, but he didn’t seem much like the biker type.

  “No,” he replied, a note of regret in his voice. “That is, I had a friend in college who did, and he taught me. I thought about buying a bike, but it just never seemed to be in the budget.”

  Jenny thought of his old Honda Accord, several years past its expiration date, and tried not to wince. No, she guessed he probably didn’t have much spare cash for extravagances like motorcycles, not while paying off an expensive divorce. She did her best to dismiss a wild fantasy of Colin moving up here and her giving him a Harley with a big red bow on it for his birthday.

  Come on — she didn’t even know when his birthday was.

  “The Spirit Room is kind of a hangout,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “Especially on the weekend. These mountain roads are really fun to ride when the weathe
r is good.”

  “You’ve done it? Ridden up here, I mean.”

  “A little. I mean, I had an ex-boyfriend who had a Road King. He loved that thing.” A lot more than he loved me, she thought with some bitterness. Of course, she left off that particular tidbit.

  But Colin still seemed to pick up on something. He half turned toward her as he walked, one eyebrow lifted slightly as he glanced down at her for a few moments. To her relief, however, he didn’t say anything except, “Well, if the road up over the mountain is anything as twisty as the one to get here to Jerome, I can see why people would have fun with it.”

  Jenny didn’t quite let out a breath. “It is pretty gorgeous. I like it during monsoon season. Not when it’s actually raining, I mean, but just because everything turns so green around here at that time of year.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that. We green up a little in Tucson, but it’s so hot that things have to be pretty robust to survive.”

  She wasn’t a fan of even the more moderate summers here in Jerome, so she really didn’t want to think about how hot it must be down in his part of the state. They passed Rachel’s store, and Jenny caught a glimpse of her cousin inside, beginning her ritual of tidying up as the closing hour of six o’clock approached.

  For some reason, Colin cast a curious glance up at the storefront as they went by, his brows pulling together as if trying to process something he halfway recognized.

  “What is it?” Jenny asked. “Did you want to go in?”

  He didn’t quite startle, but his shoulders did give an odd little twitch, right before he smiled at her and shook his head. “No. It just looks kind of familiar to me. I think I might have gone in there when I came up here that one time in college.”

  She wondered what would have happened if they’d bumped into each other all those years ago. But no, that wouldn’t have worked at all. He was just enough older that she probably would have still been in high school during his one and only visit to Jerome.

  “Rachel’s been running the store a long time,” Jenny said lightly. “So yeah, you probably did go in there. Anyway, here we are.”

  Even as she was reaching out to open the door to the tour’s office, Colin moved past her to push on the handle and let her in. “Ladies first.”

  She had to grin and shake her head at his unexpected chivalry. Having guys open doors for her wasn’t something she expected, but she had to admit that she kind of liked it. “If you say so.”

  They headed in, and saw that there was already a group of four people waiting in the space just outside Frankie’s actual office. Two couples, both of whom looked to be in their late forties or early fifties. Definitely tourists. One of the men wore a notable frown, which meant he’d probably been dragged into going on the tour and wasn’t too happy about it.

  Colin noticed the man’s expression as well, it seemed, because his mouth quirked in that way he had when he was desperately trying to hold back a smile. And then, probably because he knew that standing there and trying to avoid eye contact would be even more awkward than making an unprompted introduction, he said, “Hi — I’m Colin, and this is Jenny.”

  The woman standing next to the scowling man looked almost pathetically relieved. “Hi, there. I’m Barbara, and this is Alan.”

  Alan’s scowl decreased a fraction. “Nice to meet you.” The words were just barely above a mumble.

  The other couple chimed in, saying they were Dennis and Kathy from Lincoln, Nebraska, and how it was very nice to meet everyone. Jenny could tell that Alan had his own opinion about that, but right then Frankie emerged from her office, carrying a stack of the EMF readers she used for her ghost tours.

  “Hi, everyone,” she said briskly, ignoring the side-eye Alan gave her magenta-hued buzz cut and the big turquoise feather earrings she had hanging from her ears. “I’m Frankie Lynch. I’ve lived in Jerome my whole life, and believe me when I tell you that I have seen a lot of crazy stuff go on around here.”

  As she delivered that line, her laughing blue eyes met Jenny’s, and she didn’t quite wink.

  Oh, no, Jenny thought then. You’d better leave me out of this, Frankie.

  But Frankie, being Frankie, wasn’t going to miss her opportunity for a joke. “And I’m not the only one,” she went on. “You can ask Jenny here as well. She’s seen her fair share of, shall we say, phenomena.”

  “Oh, are you from Jerome, too?” Kathy from Lincoln, Nebraska, inquired.

  “Um, yes,” Jenny replied, knowing she was blushing. “But Colin wanted to go on the tour, so….” She trailed off then, praying that he wouldn’t point out her lie. After all, it had been her idea for them to go on the ghost tour, not his.

  From the glint in his eye, he was amused by her discomfiture, but had decided he’d better play along. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I wasn’t about to come up to Jerome and miss out on a chance to see some of its famous ghosts.”

  “About that,” Frankie put in, moving from person to person so she could hand them their EMF meters. “Jerome is a very haunted place — we like to say the most haunted place in America, although New Orleans is close. But in terms of ghosts per square yard, I think we have them beat. Anyway, these EMF meters read electromagnetic energy, which spikes when we’re in the presence of spirits, ghosts, entities…whatever you want to call them. However, the ghosts are on their own schedule, and they appear when they want to. This isn’t a séance, and we aren’t calling them to us.”

  “Sounds like an excuse to me,” Alan muttered under his breath, but Frankie pinned him down with a quelling look.

  “Just setting expectations, Mr. Lundquist. The ghosts in Jerome do tend to be sociable sorts, so you’ll usually see some evidence of their presence, whether it’s the EMF meters spiking, or a sensation of cold, or something brushing past you — ”

  “You mean they touch you?” Kathy from Lincoln asked, a slight quaver in her voice.

  “I’m not sure if ‘touch’ is the right word,” Frankie said. “They’re moving in their own world, and most of the time they’re not really thinking too much about those of us still here on the physical plane. But that doesn’t mean some of them don’t have a sense of humor.” She paused there, her eyes meeting Jenny’s for a moment before flicking away. Jenny wondered if her cousin was thinking about Angela, their prima, who really could see ghosts just as if they were people, and talked to them like they really were standing right in front of her. Angela did tend to refer to Jerome’s ghosts as if they were just another group of residents in the small mountain town.

  For herself, Jenny had never seen an actual ghost. Felt them, sure. Cold spots, and air moving when it should have been completely still. None of the town’s spectral inhabitants seemed to do anything, though, and ghosts had been such a fact of life for her ever since she could remember that she’d long since given up being afraid of them.

  All the same, she’d fervently prayed that Roslyn had moved on, hadn’t stayed to haunt the shabby apartment where she’d been murdered. Angela had actually gone there at the clan’s request, just to make sure, and she’d said she hadn’t sensed anything, hadn’t seen or heard from Roslyn or anyone else. That had been the end of the matter, but even so, Jenny had awakened from nightmares more than once where she swore that her sister was calling out to her, begging her to release her from her earthly prison.

  A shiver went through her, and Colin gently touched her arm with the hand that wasn’t holding the EMF meter. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” she said tersely. That was a subject she definitely didn’t want to get into here.

  Or anywhere, actually.

  He nodded, but his expression still looked troubled, as if he could tell there was something she was keeping from him.

  If Frankie had noticed the tense little moment, she didn’t say anything. “All right, so these EMF meters are pretty basic. They’re already switched on, but you can adjust the gain when we get to a hot spot — so to speak. And have your phones and camera
s ready, because you’ll probably be able to get some good orb pictures, too.”

  “Orbs?” Dennis asked, speaking for the first time.

  “We’re still not entirely sure what they are,” Frankie replied. “But they do seem to manifest in places where there’s spectral activity. And they do show up nicely on camera. Just make sure to turn off your flashes. You won’t need them. It’ll look as if you’re shooting into the dark…but you aren’t.”

  After delivering that remark, she paused and surveyed everyone, a broad smile on a mouth painted almost the same magenta as her hair.

  “All right, then. Let’s go find some ghosts.”

  12

  Colin didn’t really believe in any of this stuff. Pretty much all so-called “ghostly” phenomena had its basis in science, if you drilled down and took a hard enough look. But it would be fun to walk around Jerome in the gathering dusk, and the tour promised some fun historical facts, so he didn’t mind spending an hour or so pretending to look for ghosts.

  Something was troubling Jenny, though. While they were surrounded by a group of tourists certainly wasn’t the right time to ask her what was wrong, so he put the matter aside for later. Maybe during dinner. After she had a glass of wine, maybe she’d be more willing to tell him what had made that shadow pass over her face while they were listening to Frankie give her spiel about ghosts.

  Jenny definitely hadn’t been kidding when she’d told him that Jerome had been lousy with brothels back in the day. It seemed as if almost every place they stopped used to be a brothel at one point in its existence. Many of them were now hotels — all right, a few rooms above a storefront, in most cases — or restaurants. At the inn attached to the Mile High Grill, everyone swore they could sense something moving around their legs — supposedly the former proprietress’s ghostly cat — but Colin didn’t feel a damn thing.

  The little group made its way down to a vacant lot dominated by an old, old, oak tree, now nearly bare. Frankie explained how the lot had been the scene of a shootout between two quarreling miners, and that they were known to haunt the place.