Witch on First: A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 4 (The Jinx Hamilton Novels)

by Juliette Harper

  “Maybe we’re too literal,” I suggested. “If the ghost is trying to create music, the only pieces that look like notes are the pawns.”

  As bona fide band nerds, we can read music, but finding a possible meeting point between chess notation and a musical score felt more like code breaking.

  A chessboard is an 8 x 8 grid. The columns are labeled “a” through “h” from left to right. The rows are 1 to 8 from “bottom” to top. Since white moves first, the “bottom” is the white side of the board.

  In music, you have five lines and four spaces. At least in treble clef, the lines going from the bottom to the top are E, G, B, D, F and the spaces are F, A, C, E.

  Whoever designed the musical chessboard put a unique twist on both schemes. Our board has numbered rows, but the columns are marked C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C — the C scale.

  When I noticed that detail for the first time, the use of the scale seemed like another clever way to incorporate music into the board’s theme. The letters and numbers would never work to annotate chess moves, but maybe that wasn’t their intended purpose.

  We debated for a few minutes about how you could interpret the position of the pieces musically but drew a blank.

  “Could they be chords?” Tori asked.

  “I guess,” I said, “but how can a single chord send a message? And if the pieces were supposed to be chords, wouldn’t the sharps and flats be on the board, too?”

  The board’s designer used the sharp sign for the rooks and the flat for the bishops. Our ghost had four of each to work with, but we never found those pieces on the board.

  With no warning, Tori snapped her fingers. The sound echoed in the silent store. “Try your psychometry on the board right now!” she said. “If this is music, maybe you’ll hear the melody.”

  “Uh, now?” I asked weakly.

  “Can you think of a better time?” Tori asked.

  “In the morning?” I offered.

  “You are not serious!” Tori said. “You’re afraid to touch this thing? What kind of badass witch are you?”

  “The kind who was sound asleep in her bed and not thinking about ghosts until a crazy woman woke her up,” I muttered crossly.

  That got me the look again.

  For the record, Tori learned the look from her mother. No one argues with Gemma.

  “Okay,” I said, reaching out to lay both hands on the chessboard, “here goes nothing.”

  Except I didn’t get nothing.

  I found myself standing at the base of a cube, rooted in place under the sheer weight of the hellish dissonance rising around me. Rows of prison cells towered over my head. In each one, a trapped song strained to break rusty chains, their lyrics swirling into a mismatched cacophony of words and phrases. And in the heart of it all, a single voice screamed to be released, undulating up and down the notes of a tortured minor scale. Clamping my hands over my ears, I struggled to form a single thought, “Get me out of here.”

  Tori heard me.

  Her hands pulled mine away from the polished wood as her voice dragged me back toward our normal reality. “Jinx! It’s over! Look at me!”

  With effort, my eyes focused on her face.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “What happened? What did you see?”

  I tried to explain, but the words stumbled and fell out of my mouth in a confused babble. Off to my left, a door opened, and the sound of boot heels rapidly crossed the wood floor.

  Beau.

  “Miss Jinx,” he said, scanning my face with anxious eyes, “what has happened?”

  I tried to answer, opening and closing my mouth like a fish out of water. Tears filled my eyes. I shook my head and Tori stepped in.

  “Jinx tried to get a reading on the haunted chessboard,” she explained. “She touched it, and then suddenly her voice was in my head, telling me to get her out of there.”

  “Jinx,” Beau commanded quietly, “look at me.”

  I swiveled my head in his direction.

  “You must calm yourself,” he said. “You are quite safe here with Tori and me. Now breathe deeply and tell us what you saw.”

  Drawing in a shaky breath, I willed myself to settle down.

  “Good,” Beau prodded. “Now another.”

  On the third breath, he said, “Better?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  Tori squeezed my hands. “You don’t need to apologize,” she said. “Whatever you saw in there must have scared the hell out of you. Can you tell us now?”

  “I don’t think it’s just one ghost,” I said. “It’s like a prison in there. The whole chessboard is full of spirits. They . . . they’re screaming.”

  Beau and Tori exchanged a look.

  “What?” I said.

  “Late this afternoon I asked Miss Tori if she knew why you were so troubled last evening,” Beau said. “We shared a walk around the square during which she confessed to me her misapprehensions regarding Myrtle’s handling of recent events.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tori said, “but he’s kind of an expert in the ghost department. I was going to tell you in the morning.”

  “No,” I said, my voice still weak, “it’s good he knows. And there’s no question now. She’s lying about the chessboard.”

  “Do not be so hasty,” Beau said. “Why does your mind immediately go to an accusation of untruth?”

  “There’s no way that a being as powerful as Myrtle couldn’t detect whatever is living in that thing,” I said, looking at the board with a mixture of fear and horror.

  “Why not?” Beau asked reasonably. “All things fade with the passage of time, Miss Jinx. Is it completely out of the realm of possibility that Myrtle in truth cannot detect what resides in the chess set?”

  Tori said what I was thinking. “If that’s true, then we have a much bigger problem on our hands.”

  “Perhaps until we have a better understanding of its significance, the chess set should be removed from exposure to the public,” Beau suggested.

  “Good idea,” Tori said. “But what do we do with it?”

  “Miss Jinx, do you have an appointment with Barnaby in the morning?” Beau asked.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “I’m taking my mom up to The Valley to see Aunt Fiona, but now that Fish has turned up dead on our doorstep, I’m planning to find Barnaby and get his take on all this.”

  Tori frowned. “Chase isn’t back?” she asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” I said.

  “Well,” Tori said, “okay then.”

  Beau had the good grace to ignore the entire exchange. “Perhaps,” he said smoothly, “if Barnaby could examine the chess set, he might discover its true nature.”

  Tori nixed that plan fast.

  “That’s a bad idea,” she said. “This thing has to be a magical artifact. You can’t take it to The Valley. It’s not safe.”

  After some back and forth, we decided to move the board into the storeroom for the time being. I’d fill Barnaby in on everything that had happened with the gameboard and we’d take his advice.

  That’s when the problem got a whole lot more complicated.

  Tori tried to pick the chessboard up off the table, and it wouldn’t budge. I wasn’t about to touch that thing again, so Beau offered to help. Even working together, they weren’t able to lift the board. It wasn’t going anywhere. They couldn’t even pry the individual pieces loose.

  “I fear,” Beau said, “that we have made a tactical error.”

  “Huh?”

  Beau put his finger to his lips and shook his head. He pointed toward Tori’s apartment and motioned us to follow. Once we were inside, Beau closed the door, put his ear against it for a minute, and then said softly, “We should not have had that conversation in the presence of the chessboard.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Sometimes Tori catches on a lot faster than I do.

  “Because,” she said
, “it was listening.”

  7

  The sound of the door closing upstairs echoed through the empty store. The little witch waited, letting long moments pass until she felt secure enough to peel herself off the cup, breathe deeply, and reinflate. As always, the process disappointed her. Over and over again she tried to take in as little air as possible, hoping to make the best of her situation and at least be thinner. Instead, parts of her body stayed stubbornly flat until she gave up and sucked in more air. It was just her rotten luck. Even living as a cursed illustration on the side of a coffee cup, she couldn’t lose weight.

  Tori setting up that camera complicated things, especially now that there was a dead body to report. The little witch thought and thought about her problem, and came up with the plan of putting her broom over the lens long enough to move the chess pieces and send today’s message. She even waited until she heard the shower come on in the micro apartment so she wouldn’t get caught.

  Most of the plan worked, but they were too smart. After all these weeks hiding in the store and watching them, she should have known. Part of her wanted to be discovered, to come right off the side of that cup and introduce herself. To say out loud for the first time, “My name is Glory Green, and I don’t want to have to do this anymore.”

  Glory Green.

  Her name gave that awful man the idea about how to punish her.

  How Glory wished she’d never seen his business card.

  “Mr. I. Chesterfield, Antique Acquisitions. No request denied.”

  But that wasn’t really her fault because Miss Shania Moonbeam gave Glory the card in the first place.

  Glory relied on Miss Shania’s psychic advice for years and thought she could confide in her. Glory told Miss Shania the truth. She didn’t want to be a file clerk at the state archives anymore.

  Which was good, since that uppity Leroy Percy informed Glory that her job was “in transition,” right along with the files.

  Glory didn’t care if “IT” was supposed to stand for “information technology.”

  When she went to school “i” and “t” spelled “it,” and that’s all Leroy Percy was, an “it” — and a suspicious it at that.

  Glory didn’t know what “World of Warcraft” was, but she didn’t like the sound of it one little bit. Leroy was always talking about “missions” and killing people.

  Well, Glory watched Homeland. She’d learned a thing or two from Carrie. Leroy was some kind of terrorist or something. He just wanted to get rid of Glory because she knew where all the real records were. The ones printed on paper like they were supposed to be.

  As far as Glory was concerned, Leroy Percy could just engineer the downfall of the government. Her taxes were too high anyway and nobody up in Washington, D.C. gave a flip about people like her. Glory had a bigger goal in mind. She was finally going after her dream — to follow in the footsteps of the King himself and take to the Vegas stage.

  Glory wanted to be a singer just like Elvis Presley.

  That’s why she confessed to Miss Shania because there was just one little problem with her plan.

  Glory couldn’t sing.

  Miss Shania listened, nodding sympathetically, and said all Glory needed was a “talisman.” Miss Shania knew a man, Mr. Irenaeus Chesterfield, who could get Glory a lock of Elvis’ hair that would make her sing just like the King.

  Very earnestly, Glory asked Miss Shania if she should trust a man named “Irene,” so that was the first thing they had to get cleared up.

  All the way to the shop, Glory practiced saying Mr. Chesterfield’s name the right way. “Ear-ren-a-us.”

  It was an awfully silly name, but then Glory had a cousin named Little Bighorn Custer in honor of that general the Indians killed, so she wasn’t one to judge.

  Anyway, when she got to the shop, she said the name the right way and explained everything to Mr. Chesterfield.

  She thought her heart would burst in her chest from excitement when he said he knew how to get the lock of hair, and that she should come back the next day.

  Glory stayed up all that night dreaming dreams — and doing some worrying.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor of her retro-chic apartment that she’d created by pausing Mad Men episodes and taking notes on the decor, Glory leafed through her Elvis memorial scrapbooks. She hoped no one would expect her to do those karate moves. She did have a little touch of sciatica from a failed attempt at Zumba, and she wasn’t sure she had the hips for glittery jumpsuits.

  But Glory had faith. All that would get worked out once she had her new voice.

  People at work told her that she was too young to like “old” things, but Glory put them right in their place.

  “The average age of an Elvis Facebook fan is 35,” she said, countering her critics with cold, hard facts.

  Of course, Glory didn’t actually have a Facebook account, and she was only 33, but those were just irrelevant details.

  Besides, the 1960s weren’t such a long time ago, and everyone then was so much more elegant than people were in the Eighties. Glory had done a very extensive comparison of big hair from both decades. There was no doubt in her mind that women in the Sixties were much more expert in their use of hairspray.

  Glory fell asleep that night watching Frankie and Johnny — the real one from 1966, with Elvis and Donna Douglas, not the other one with Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer. Glory just loved Donna Douglas, whose signature role was Ellie Mae Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies. It broke Glory’s heart to think that same awful cancer took Donna Douglas and Patrick Swayze.

  The next morning, Glory woke up bright and early and set out for Mr. Chesterfield’s store with all the money from her annual bonus in cash in her pocket. He hadn’t mentioned a price, but really, how much could one little lock of hair cost?

  Just in case it was expensive, Glory had taken the precaution of putting off going to the Dairy Queen to get her usual Wednesday night blizzard.

  So just imagine her shock when Mr. Chesterfield said he wanted $10,000.

  Glory almost dropped dead right there at the counter.

  That’s when a kind of desperation came over her like she was watching her last chance to be something special disappear right in front of her eyes.

  Without stopping to think what she was doing, she snatched up that envelope with the King’s hair and dashed for the door. She would have made it, too, but then she tripped over some big old ugly urn thing made of something called “alabaster.”

  As she lay there on the floor trying to get her breath, she saw Mr. Chesterfield looking at her with cold eyes. He put out one hand and all of a sudden Glory couldn’t breathe. Then he said the oddest thing. “Glory Green, is it? Green, my dear, is the color of greed, and a most fitting shade for your punishment.”

  Everything around her began to get bigger and bigger. Her skin started to crawl, and when Glory looked down, her pretty spring dress was gone. She was wearing some kind of awful black robe, and her hands had gone green.

  Glory remembered how Mr. Chesterfield loomed over her as she begged and tried to apologize.

  He laughed, a sound so hideous she scrambled backward until she ran into a cabinet with a glass front. That’s when Glory saw herself. She looked just like the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz — and she knew how that story turned out.

  “Are you going to throw water on me and make me melt?” she’d asked in a trembling voice.

  It came out like the squeaking of a terrified mouse.

  “Oh, no, my dear,” Chesterfield said, reaching for her with his massive hand. He caught the back of her robe and dangled her in front of his face like a bug he’d plucked off the floor.

  “I am going to put you someplace nice and safe until I have a use for you. Perhaps when you’ve had an opportunity to witness more of my dealings, you’ll realize that offending me in even the slightest regard is not in your best interest.”

  Just like that he’d plastered her on the side of a coff
ee cup and set her up on a dusty shelf where she could see the whole store. And there she sat for a year, watching Mr. Chesterfield conduct his business, growing more terrified with the passing of each day.

  Glory thought he must be in league with the devil himself because Chesterfield could whisper strange words, move his hands and make things happen. He bought and sold artifacts with all kinds of powers, and he kept company with people who frightened Glory even more than Chesterfield himself.

  Like that red-headed woman named Brenna Sinclair, who had wanted so much to get inside this store and hurt Jinx and Tori because of something their families did. Glory didn’t really understand what that was all about, but she knew a blood feud when she saw one. Anger and jealousy filled that Brenna woman, and she wasn’t going to let go until she ruined these people.

  But it was because of Brenna that Mr. Chesterfield finally took Glory down off the shelf, wiping away the dust on her body and peeling her off the cup.

  “Take deep breaths,” he instructed, which she did, blowing herself right back up like a little balloon.

  “Very good,” he said. “Now, are you prepared to be a good little witch?”

  “What are you going to do to me?” Glory asked, her voice rough from a year of disuse.

  “I have a job for you in the line of espionage,” Chesterfield said, peering down at her malevolently, “and if you do exactly what I tell you to do, I might be persuaded to restore you to your former self and set you free. I trust I will not have to convince you to accept my instructions?”

  Glory felt cold dread snake out through her veins, but she couldn’t turn down a chance to win her freedom.

  “No, sir, Mr. Chesterfield,” she’d said dutifully. “I’ll do anything you want.”

  What he wanted brought her to this store and put her in a position to kind of “meet” all these people even though they had no idea she was alive. And now she was in just the most horrible fix.

  Glory liked them all so much. The store felt more like a home than any place she had been since her Mama died.

  True, Glory was still spending most of her time sitting up on a shelf, but the people Glory listened to now weren’t scary; they were interesting and kind. Watching them showed her that good magic existed.