I watched him as he seemed to process my response. I heard him clicking his tongue ring against his teeth. It felt like hours but had only been a few seconds when he finally responded. “Thank you. As much as I would’ve preferred you calling me, it’s nice to know you put my feelings first.” He smiled and kissed the corner of my mouth so quick, I barely had time to register it. “You’re finally figuring it out, bit by bit.”
I didn’t get a chance to ask him what he meant before he disappeared. I hated when he did that. And what was up with all his cryptic words nowadays.
I looked over to Turk, who had sat and was languidly munching on some chips with a wide-eyes and a look of pure amusement on his face.
“Seriously? Where the hell did the chips come from?” I asked him.
“Watching your love life is like watching one of those trashy, reality TV shows. So much drama. I can’t wait for the next episode.” He slipped a huge handful of chips into his mouth.
I growled at him and snagged the chips from his hand. “We’re not talking about that right now; we’re going to talk about why you’re not in the shop running it.”
“It was a slow day and your poltergeist kept throwing shit like it was Mardi Gras. I figured it was best to just close up and wait for you. I was worried and didn’t know what else to do.”
Fuck. Button. I’d forgotten all about him.
Nine
“That’s Not My Body”
I threw the bag of chips at Turk and raced from the kitchen and downstairs into the shop.
“Button?” I shouted for him. “Button, I need you to come out now.” Still no answer. What was wrong with him? “BEAUREGARD ARLINGTON!” I shouted, getting aggravated with his silent treatment.
I jumped back and shrieked when he appeared in front of me, leaving next to no space between us.
“How many times do I have to tell you not to do that? I swear, if you had a body right now, I’d kick you in the nuts.”
A dimple appeared in his cheek when he smiled. “You scare easily. You sure that cat of yours isn’t just mimicking you?”
“Ha. Ha. Very funny. Why were you throwing shit earlier? Turk closed because you decided to go postal. What gives?”
He slipped his hands into his pockets and floated backwards. “Nothing.”
Ha! Really? He never missed a chance to hear himself talking. If the men in my life thought one-word replies would get them anywhere with me, they were dead wrong. I internally blanched. Nope. Button is not a man in my life. That’s just weird. Nope.
“I don’t buy it. You were perfectly fine earlier. You were the one talking me down when I was…ohhhhh.” It suddenly hit me why he was throwing the ghost equivalent of a tantrum. “You were worried about me, weren’t you?” Let’s be honest. I was totally going to rub this in his face.
“Pfft. No. If you wanna be stupid and die from a simple-to-fix hex, by all means. I couldn’t give two shits what you do.” He wasn’t looking at me as he said this. A huge indicator he was lying out his ass.
I stalked closer; my hands behind my back and lips curled in tight to keep from smiling. “You sure? Cause, you didn’t start throwing shit until after I told you I wasn’t going to do anything about the hex. Sounds an awful lot like giving a shit to me.”
His brows were lowered, and a frown marred his face. “Crafty, drop it.”
I held my hands up in surrender, figuring I’d poked the bear enough. “Fine. Dropped. So why are you out here sulking now?”
He scoffed. “I’m not sulking. I was thinking about something.”
I walked behind the counter and slumped down onto one of the stools. “Alright. I’m listening. What were you thinking about?”
He looked at the floor and rubbed a hand through the ends of his beard. “I was thinking about how your mother said she’d send you to my parents to try and gather more info on what happened to me. Now, I know my parents. They aren’t going to give you straight answers if they don’t know and trust you and will most likely lie through their teeth. I’ve memorized their tells. I can help you sift through what’s a lie and what’s truth.”
I nodded. “Okay, well I figured you’d float along for the trip anyway.”
He shook his head. “That’s not the part I’m worried about. I don’t like the idea of you going alone.”
A Cheshire grin overtook my face. “You do care!”
“No one likes you and your funeral will be vacant, whore!” Shakes shouted from his perch.
Button laughed. “Only a bit more than he does. But not by much, though.”
I chuckled and rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Shakes loves me.”
“Really? That’s love?” He looked at my cursed skull then back at me with a ‘whatever you say’ kind of look on his face.
“I could get Milo to come with?” I suggested. He immediately shot down the idea.
“They’ll know he’s a Warden the minute he steps foot in. I wouldn’t suggest Turk either because they hate pixies. Too ‘frivolous’ is the word my mother uses.”
I sighed. “Well, Orrin is a big no. He’s too busy being cryptic and disappearing on me. It would be a fuck ton easier if I could just take you with me physically without them knowing it was you.”
The words had barely left my mouth when an idea struck me. I jumped off my stool and rocketed up the stairs. Button floated behind me, calling my name and asking what I was doing. I ignored him as I continued going up until I was in the attic.
I swept over to my grimoire that sat on a small podium surrounded by crystals and candles. I ran a hand down the black worn leather of the cover, unlocking the clasp that held it closed with my touch. Grimoires only opened to those it was bound to. All a witch had to do was run a hand down the center of the cover, and it would open. If another supernatural were to touch it, they’d receive a shock so violent, they wouldn’t be able to move for weeks.
I thumbed through the cream-colored vellum pages, searching for a spell I’d seen before. One that would allow Button to accompany me to his parents as a living, breathing person, but not be himself at the same time.
When I found it, I shouted in excitement. “Aha! I knew I’d seen this spell before!”
I felt the chill of Button’s presence as he glanced over my shoulder.
“Uhhh, Crafty…that looks like a complicated spell. Not to hate on your powers or anything, but are you sure you can handle that?”
I laughed and began to memorize the hand movements depicted in the book. The thing about spells, was that there were two different ways of doing them. Hand movements, or actual incantations. I was never very good with incantations. My ability to speak a different language was pathetic. I could barely learn the Spanish words for all the colors, let alone Latin. So, hand movements it was. The problem with using hand motions for spells, was not only did you have to get the motions precise, but you had to clear your mind and think about your intentions with all your might. I was great with hand motions. Bad with clearing my head. Probably another reason I sucked at magic.
When I felt that I had the movements down right, I turned and sifted through my box of crystals until I found the one I needed. A jagged chunk of Lepidolite. It was a crystal in shades of mauve and white that was used for transformation. Whether of the mind, body, or spirt.
“I can handle this, Button. Don’t you worry. I still have this weird buzz of power going through my system from being with Milo. Should be enough to do this.”
He didn’t look convinced. “And where exactly do you think we’ll get the most important part of this spell?” His brow was raised, and his eyes were wide with worry.
I smirked. “Oh, I got this.”
“No. No, no, no, no. Just no. Why are we doing this? This just seems like a really bad idea. I don’t wanna go in there.”
I shook my head at Button’s display of unwavering bravery. Pfft.
We’d waited until night time and pulled up outside the city’s local morgue. The spell I’d found was
called an Animator Spell. It would allow me to put Button’s spirit inside a fresh, dead body temporarily. Basically, it was necromancer magic, but on a lower scale. The transition would only last about three days before his spirit would be pushed out of the body. We just had to find the right one. Hopefully, we could get in with his parents before the spell wore off.
This was why he was freaking out like a big ole baby. Apparently, the dead guy was afraid of other dead people. I wondered if there was a word for that.
“Stop whining. This is the only way you can come with me to your parents to help me. You aren’t happy with just being your lovely, ghostly self, so this is our only alternative. You can pretend you’re there to protect me from them, while also not being you.”
He crossed his arms and glowered at me. “I don’t like this.”
I slipped out of the car and crept towards the back door. “No one said you had to like it. It’s this, or I go it alone at your parents. Your choice.”
He groaned. “Fine. But you better not put me into a kid. Or an old dude.”
I shook my head at him as I waved my hand at the lock, smiling when it clicked and unlocked for me. I wonder when Milo’s little power zap will wear off.
“This isn’t a shopping trip, Button. You get the freshest body, no matter who it is. Was. Ew. Okay, I hate this as much as you, just so you know. Breaking into a morgue and stealing a corpse for you to wear is not my idea of a fun night out.”
“I don’t know. When you put it like that it sounds like a party,” Button deadpanned.
“Just shut up and come on.” I waved him inside, making sure to close the door behind me in case any cars happened to drive by.
“Oh, like someone will hear me? Yeah, sure, I’ll be quiet.”
“I meant so I could concentrate. Ass.”
“You know, you have these moments where I think you’re actually pretty nice. But then you open your mouth and I have to completely reevaluate everything,” he snarked, floating next to me with his body parallel to the floor, facing upwards, and his hands behind his head. Like this was just some kind of messed up vacation.
I chose to ignore him and lit up my phone to show me the way as I silently padded along the green and brown checkered tile. The hallway was dark, and the smell of disinfectant and formaldehyde burned my nose. It was better than smelling the dead, but not a huge step up.
Button began to hum another one of his many show tunes as we finally located the door leading to the actual morgue. He still floated lazily along on his back. I slowly turned my head to look at him, sending him a glare of aggravation.
“What the hell is up with you and show tunes? It’s like all you sing or hum.”
He righted himself and grinned. “The fact that you know they’re show tunes, means you like it, you just wanna pretend you don’t.” From the way his eyes looked me up and down, and the way his lips curled into an even bigger smile, I knew he didn’t mean the music.
“I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer, because by the look you’re giving me, I know this isn’t about the stupid music you sing.” We came to a set of double doors with glass windows. I pushed through and flipped on the light switch to the room. I turned off my phone’s flashlight, then made my way towards the cold lockers where the mortician stored the bodies.
He shrugged. “Believe what you want, Crafty. I’m only here for the body.”
We both stopped and glanced at each other.
His disgusted expression mirrored mine. “Yeah, that sounded bad to me too. I’ll shut up now.”
I let out an exaggerated sigh. “Thank the Goddess! I thought you never would.” Then I started checking through the filing cabinet next to the freezers, hoping I could figure out the best option.
It took some digging, but after about ten minutes, I was able to narrow it down to two candidates. The problem with this kind of spell, was not only did the body have to be relatively fresh –usually only dead for no longer than a day or two – but they also had to have minimal physical trauma from their deaths. I very well couldn’t put Button into a body that had a bullet hole through the head or half his body blown off. They had to be right, or the spell wouldn’t work.
He wasn’t going to be very happy with the only two who qualified. One was an overweight male aged thirty-six, that died from a brain hemorrhage after a fall. The other was a petite, young woman, aged twenty-five. She died from asphyxiation after a bad car accident.
I slid open their drawer for the male, figuring he’d much rather be slightly overweight than a female.
“Here you go. There’s your body.” I grabbed the hem of the white sheet and dragged it down to the middle of the guy’s stomach, folding it down gently, then waved my hands over it like Vanna White revealing a letter in a game show.
He stared down at it in horror. “That’s not my body. Please find something else. I worked hard to be as fit as I was when I was alive. This is torture.”
I gave him an irritated expression. “It’s this or a girl. Penis or vagina. Boobs or…bigger boobs.” I giggled. It was so much fun torturing him, even just a little.
He grimaced at the body, then looked upwards as if praying. “Fine,” he groaned, looking back at me. “I’ll take the dude. But have fun convincing my parents to let this guy in.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Your parents are way too judgmental. Seriously. First pixies and now big guys? Oh, and speaking of pixies, I know it isn’t because of what they are that they don’t like. It’s the free love thing, isn’t it? Turk wouldn’t have been allowed in because he’s gay.”
“Can’t choose your parents, Crafty. You know that better than anyone.”
He had me there. I bobbed my head in agreement, dropping the subject.
“Okay, so now what?” He asked, staring down at the dead guy with a sickened frown.
I blew out a slow breath and fished the crystal out of my black, hoodie pocket, setting it down in the middle of the guy’s chest. “Just stay close. It’s a pretty straightforward spell. When you see the crystal light up, grab onto the guy.”
“But I can’t actually grab him,” he argued.
“You don’t have to. Your hand will go through him, but you’ll kinda – I don’t know – stick to him, I guess. It’s not a requirement for the spell, but I’d rather you at least touched the guy. Maybe it’ll help. I haven’t done this before, remember?”
He made a sound in his throat like he was going to gag. “Yeah, sure. Just grab the dead guy. No problem.”
“It’s your turn not to be a chicken, Arlington. Man up.” I stood to the side and hovered my hand over the crystal, closing my eyes to begin concentrating. Just as I was about to start the hand motions, Button opened his mouth. Again.
“Will this hurt?”
I dropped my hands to my side with a huff. “You’re already dead, Button! Now will you just shut up and let me work? Goddess!” I rolled my eyes at him and hovered my hands once again, taking a few deep breaths in and out.
I felt the warmth of my power; it’s essence just beneath the surface inside of me, glowing and pulsing, waiting to be used.
I closed my eyes and began my hand motions; circle, palms together, circle, hands outstretched to the side, circle. I repeated these motions on and on, slowly pulling at my power and pushing my intention into the crystal. It felt like hours that I did this as my body began to exhaust.
I felt a rush of magic fly out of me and heard Button give a slight gasp. My eyes shot open in time to see the crystal’s glow begin to wane. And Button was nowhere in sight.
A spell of dizziness hit me as the last bit of magic from my time with Milo fluttered out completely, making me clutch the edge of the table. I shook it off, needing to focus and make sure the spell had worked. I grabbed the crystal and shoved it back into my pocket, then began tapping the big dude’s face lightly.
“Button? You in there? Button answer me.” When he still didn’t move, I decided on one last ditch effort and gave
him the back-hand slap of the century. Still nothing. Well, fuck. Where’d you go?
A very feminine scream rang out, just before a loud bang, then a groan of pain. I realized it had come from one of the drawers, and my eyes widened. Shit. I guess the big guy had more interior damage than I thought.
I slowly crept to the drawer the girl I’d chosen was in and unlocked the hatch, before cautiously easing it open.
And there she was. Color began to flood into her pallid skin, the autopsy scar began to heal and disappear from her chest, and her milky white eyes stared up at me in confusion as they steadily changed to a bright, hazel blue. Her hand rubbed at her head where she’d undoubtedly hit it.
“Christi? What the fuck did you do?” She screeched at me.
Not her. Button.
I smiled really big and held my hands up innocently. “Whoopsie.”
“Whoopsie? Whoopsie?! I’m a fucking girl!” She shouted. He shouted.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Even knowing it was his words, didn’t help the fact they sounded so fucking hilarious coming from a girl, whose voice might I add, was a few octaves higher than mine. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I just kept laughing.
“Ha, ha, ha; yeah, it’s really funny. Do you realize I chose the big dude over the girl for a reason? I don’t know how to be a girl!”
“But…you’re so…pretty! That’s good…right?” I got out through my laughter. This was just too great. It was probably mean to be laughing like this, but I’d never been so happy about a spell mess up in my life. This was so worth breaking into the morgue.
Button wrapped the sheet around his torso tightly, doing his best to avert his eyes as he slipped off the steel table. He began to stalk towards me but stopped suddenly. The action had me finally steeling my breath and calming the tidal wave of laughter.
“The guy was probably a lot more damaged than the mortician thought. He hasn’t gotten to his autopsy yet, so he’ll figure it out. The spell probably knew that and ricocheted off him to the girl instead.”
Jinxed_Toxic Bitchcraft Book One Page 10