Then he decided to swap the SIM card from my old phone into the new one. I told him I’d just restore the information from my computer backup, but he was adamant — I wouldn’t want him to get fired, would I? So he put in my old card, pushed the power button on the phone — and nothing happened. It didn’t even flicker.
He frowned, swapped the cards back, and tried again. No dice, the phone appeared bricked. He got another one out, checked that it powered up normally, and then swapped the SIM cards. That phone got bricked, too.
I bared my teeth in what could have been taken as a friendly smile. “How about you find a phone that works, hand it to me, and I restore the data from my backup, like I said?”
“SIM cards don’t work like this! It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Welcome to my world.” I waited patiently for him to get me a working phone and enter my new phone number into my account on the computer.
“I’m going to have to charge you an early cancelation fee.”
“Why can’t you just add the new phone to the current plan, and when the two-year cycle is up on the original, I cancel that one?”
“But then we’d be billing you for a phone you don’t have any more.”
“Which is what you’d be doing with the cancelation fee, too.” And he’d been doing so well.
“No, that’s for breaking the contract.”
“Because I don’t have the phone. I’d rather continue to pay for the phone, and if you charge me a cancelation fee, I will send a letter to your boss, the company’s CEO, and the FTC telling them that I specifically said I wanted to keep paying for the broken phone.”
“But I already—”
Of course he’d already entered it into the computer. Good thing I’d had the tea at brunch. Gripping the edge of the monitor, I leaned in as if to see what he was talking about. What I actually did was poke into the machine, sending a message to revert to the previously saved state. Thank goodness for backups.
He blinked, confused. “I thought—”
“Don’t worry about it.” I smiled at him and leaned back, releasing the computer. “Let me give you my credit card to pay for the first month on the new phone.”
I parked the car in the alley behind the coffee shop. I almost never used the back entrance, but short of double-parking, it was the only way to drop off the plants. The door buzzed when I opened it. The obnoxious sound was one of the reasons I preferred not to come in this way.
Rich almost immediately stuck his head in. “Pepper. You’re not supposed to be in today.”
Yet he looked happy to see me. That didn’t bode well.
“I got some plants for out front. Thought they’d look good with the new paint job, make us look more welcoming to passersby.” A frown crossed his face, and before he could reply, I added, “You don’t need to do anything with them. I’ll put them out, trim them, water them, and bring them inside. I wouldn’t want to add to your heavy workload.”
Now he smirked outright, and I wondered what was going on. I didn’t have long to wait.
“The plants can stay where they are for now, and we’ll see if you do anything with them later. Kendall’s been trying to get you on the phone. She wants to talk to you.”
I affected nonchalance, although Kendall wanting to talk to me and Rich being happy about it worried me. Had she made him manager already then? “All right.”
He followed me to Kendall’s office.
“You wanted to see me?”
Kendall looked up. “Good, you’re both here. Come in and shut the door. I was a little worried when I couldn’t get you on the phone; you never seem to be without it.”
“There was an accident yesterday. Just picked up the replacement phone. I’ll update my records with the new number.”
“See that you do.” She leaned back in her seat. “We need to be able to get ahold of the manager at all times.”
My mouth dropped open. I’d been certain she had decided on Rich.
Rich thought the same thing. “Manager? Her? Are you kidding me?”
“No. She was always my first choice, but she insisted you be given a shot at the position, too.”
He shot me a dirty glare. “Thanks for nothing.”
I couldn’t blame him. He thought it had been a level playing field. Hell, I had thought so, too, even though Kendall had started by offering me the position. And he’d done the tasks she’d asked of him much quicker than I had, a point that he was even now making quite loudly.
Kendall interrupted him. “Yes, you did exactly what you were told. Pepper didn’t. She went above and beyond. Every shift she’s been on this past week has had more customers. The artwork she commissioned for the coffee shop is gorgeous and is drawing in even more people, and her initiative in agreeing to showcase regularly changing art displays is going to bring people back to see what’s new. That’s what makes her management material.” She met my eyes. “I guess I was wrong about your lack of ambition. Good to know, as long as you keep it in check.”
I’d given up my ambition, afraid where it might lead, but she wouldn’t believe that. Hell, neither would Rich, who even now was convinced I’d deliberately set him up for failure.
All I said was, “I can do that.”
Especially since I couldn’t really take credit for anything she’d just said. Sure, there were more customers, people who started showing up like the coffee shop was a refuge once I’d set up the ward, but that was an unintended consequence, not a plan. The art was all Haris’s doing.
I’d probably get credit for the plants making the place more welcoming, too, which was fine, but that was again a side effect of my real goal, which was to have the flowers for my own personal use. It just happened to work out well for the coffee shop, too.
“Good.” She nodded at the door. “Rich, why don’t you get back to work? Pepper and I have a few things to go over for her new position.”
Rich didn’t want to let it go, and if I could see that, so could Kendall. He wouldn’t say anything more to her, but I was going to have to double-check everything he did for weeks to make sure he wasn’t sabotaging me. Or I could set up a standing hex so anyone who deliberately acted against me at the coffee shop wound up with something mild but highly annoying, like a can of whipped cream exploding in their face.
I didn’t want to do that, mostly because I didn’t trust a spell to judge intentions. The magic worked based on my intentions, not others’. If Rich did something, I might retaliate, or I might see if I could turn it to my advantage, but I wasn’t going to put a metaphorical bucket of water on top of the door.
I was glad to finally get home and collapse on the couch. It had been a packed weekend, and I needed a few minutes to recharge before worrying about what I was going to feed the kids for dinner when Matt brought them back or whether I had remembered at any point to visit an actual grocery store. I was seriously going to have to set up an account with Instacart or Peapod. I’d gotten a bit of a raise; that should cover the price mark-ups. I hoped.
Meanwhile, I needed to sync my phone with my computer, log in to my various accounts to make sure calendars and the like were available, and go through my contacts to give them all my new cell number. Of course, I’d left my laptop on the kitchen counter. So much for relaxing in comfort.
When I opened my laptop, a reminder popped up that I was expecting a text from Beth. I’d forgotten all about her weekend out with Clay. She might be worried if she had been trying to call my old number. Rather than starting the phone to syncing yet, I went to call Beth but stopped, stumped after the first three digits. You’d think as often as I saw it, I would remember it, but I realized I only knew it to recognize it, not to dial it. I looked it up on my computer and called. No answer.
Maybe she was still in transit. She had said to only worry if I hadn’t heard from her by the evening, which gave her a couple of hours yet. I’d try again after I got the phone set up properly. First step, set it to syncing, and while it did tha
t, I could bring up the boxes from the car.
My shoulders drooped at the prospect. Now was when I could use the help. It wouldn’t even do me any good to borrow a dolly from the restaurant, as there wasn’t a good way to get it up the stairs. Oh, sure, if the boxes were strapped to the dolly, I could painstakingly wheel it up one stair at a time, but that meant getting the furniture straps — and I wouldn’t have any idea where to look for those — and then making sure I had the strength necessary. I’d be better off just carrying the boxes, one laborious trip after another.
Even with frequent pauses on the stairs, I finished bringing the boxes up before the phone had synced. They got stacked on the wall next to the television because there was really nowhere else to put them. I even brought up the second honeysuckle, which I placed next to the windows. If I had a window box, I’d use that. Instead, it was an inside plant.
While I waited for the phone to be ready, I moved one of the boxes over next to the couch. If I was going to go through them, I was going to be comfortable doing it. This first box had a pile of composition notebooks on top and books of world mythology underneath. No titles specifically related to the ocean.
One on Greek mythology caught my eye. Should I read up on the muses, see what it had to say about Terpsichore? So tempting. I set the book aside to look at later. It wasn’t like I would find anything specifically about Haris, after all.
A hefty three-volume encyclopedia seemed more likely to have information about possible sea-related patrons, but that wasn’t going to have anything about the relation between the patron and the witches. I wasn’t going to find that in any mass-produced text; I was going to have to look through the notebooks to see what I’d written down from comments Maggie had dropped or my independent studies with Carole.
The laptop chimed, indicating that it had finished syncing with the cellphone, and I headed out to the kitchen to finish setting up my accounts and getting into touch with everyone on my contact list, starting with Beth, assuming she was answering her own phone.
She wasn’t, so I switched to text. “New phone. Note the number. Give me a call to let me know you’re okay.”
I was sure she was fine, and her phone call would bring me many more details about her weekend with Clay than I wanted to hear, but since I had said I would check up on her, I felt obligated to do so. I was rethinking my certainty when she still hadn’t so much as texted me two hours later when Matt showed up with the kids.
While he helped the kids settle their bags of stuffed animals and books in their rooms, I tried sending Beth another text, but this time, I added a little pulse to it, just enough to reassure me that Beth was near her phone, even if she wasn’t answering. The text had no response, and the pulse attenuated with distance, fading to nothing, forcing me to admit that she wasn’t within whatever range my magic had.
Frowning at the lack of either response, I did a quick search to find Clay’s number. He’d probably tell me Beth had dropped her phone into the bay or something, then hand the phone over to her.
Except he didn’t. “Pepper! What a surprise to hear from you. Beth? No, I dropped her at home hours ago. Maybe she’s just too tired to answer right now.” A manly chuckle. “Give her a day or two to recover.”
No, wherever Beth was, she wasn’t at her place, collapsed on her bed with the phone tossed casually on the table next to the door. The distance between me and her phone was greater than that. A frisson crawled up my spine. I was being targeted. What better target to draw me in than my best friend?
I had to get to her.
Matt had just stepped from the twins’ room into the hallway. I looked at him pleadingly.
“Can you please stay here with the kids for a bit? I’ve got to go check up on Beth.” Good thing I’d gotten the key made for Benjamin and Wei’s car. I was going to need it.
Chapter 31
Matt, unpredictably, balked. “You can’t just drop the kids like they don’t matter, leave them when they’re not convenient for you. They just got home, they need food, a bath, and bed. You’re their mom, and whether I like it or not, they need you, too.”
Where the hell had that come from?
“You make it sound like I’m running away from them.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No. I’m seriously worried about Beth. There have been—” Conscious of the kids listening, I modified what I had been about to say. “—many women missing and hurt. I’m afraid she’s going to be another.”
“So call the police.”
I just stared at him, willing him to acknowledge how stupid that suggestion was. Instead, he doubled down on it.
“You can’t, can you? You have no evidence, nothing to give them, no reason to think she’s in any danger. Or at least none that any sane person would admit to.”
I wasn’t entirely certain whether he was saying that I wasn’t sane — because of what I was suggesting, because of what I was, because of magic — or if he was saying sane people wouldn’t believe me. It didn’t matter.
“Well, then, if you’re the sane one and the twins’ mother is crazy, maybe you should watch them, shouldn’t you?”
His eyes narrowed at the way I twisted his words back on him. “Maybe I should do more than that.”
“What, you want proof?” I decided to ignore his empty threat. He wouldn’t take the kids with him and head back home because it would disrupt his morning schedule to take them to school, and he couldn’t take them to work.
“Do you have any? I heard the phone call. Clay said he dropped her at her home.”
“Even if he did, she’s not there now.”
“What, you have some kind of magical surveillance system?” He rolled his eyes, then did a double-take. “Do you have some magical surveillance system?”
“It’s called a webcam, and I can probably hack into hers to check on her.” We both knew that hacking wasn’t how I planned to take control.
“That’s illegal,” Gavin informed me from the hall.
“Weren’t you listening? She’s worried about Aunt Beth. Duh!” Tina told him.
“Doesn’t make it right.”
Great. We were going to boil this down to boys against the girls.
“Fine. Take my spare key to her apartment. Go, knock, ring the bell, whatever, then, when she doesn’t answer, go in and see for yourself that she’s not there.”
“And if she is? She’s going to think I’m a creep.”
“Tell her the truth. I was worried, and you didn’t believe me.”
“Fine. After she finishes screaming at me, I’ll tell her to call and scream at you.” He held out his hand for the key, and I walked over to where it hung and got it for him — Beth’s key, not the keyring with the ghost trapped inside. I still needed to figure out what to do about her, as well as the ghost in the hanger at my parents’ house.
“After you realize I was right and she wasn’t there, you’ll come back here and watch the kids while I go look for her.”
“And how are you going to—? No, I don’t want to know.” He hugged the kids and looked at me over their heads. “Like I said, I’ll have her call you.”
I let him have the last word. It was going to be hard enough on him when he came back to watch the twins.
Meanwhile, I had to feed the two rascals. “All right, tell me now — what have you had to eat today?”
“Chocolate chip pancakes with peanut butter whipped cream!” “Grilled pizza burgers with pineapple!” “Lots of chocolate!”
“Nothing for it, then. Bread and water for dinner after all that rich food.”
“Mooooooom!”
I took pity on them. “All right. Salads, then.”
“Can we at least have ranch dressing?”
“We always have ranch. I want Thousand Island!”
“You can both have the dressing you want.”
“You’re just saying that so you can have what you want, too.” Gavin’s narrowed eyes looked entirely too similar t
o his father’s.
“I think you’re missing the point, kiddo. I can have whatever I want anyway. It’s only because of my generous nature that you’re not getting Roquefort dressing, too.”
“That, and you say it’s hard to find,” Tina said.
“This is true. Blue cheese dressing just isn’t the same.” I nudged them in the direction of the bathroom. “Go wash your hands so you can help while I get everything ready in the kitchen.”
They dutifully headed off, but Tina paused and looked back at me. Her eyes were big, and my heart ached at her having watched Matt and I fight. Before I could figure out what to say, though, she surprised me by asking, “How come Dad said ‘magical’ like that?”
“Like what, honey?” I knew what she meant, knew why he’d said it with such venom in his voice, but I wanted to hear what she had to say.
Behind her, Gavin scuffed back down the hall to stand behind her, unwilling to be left out of the conversation.
Tina said, “He hates that word. But you told us magic is special.”
Gavin added, “Is that one of the things you fight about?”
Oh, ye gods and little fishes, why was I having this conversation now? I ran my hands through my hair, but that didn’t help clear my thoughts any. I sighed. “Yes. It’s a major point of disagreement.”
Almost our only one, but if I told them that, I’d have to tell them so much more. No matter how upset I was at Matt right now, I would not do that yet. Save my frustrations and worry for finding Beth.
Gavin snorted and turned back to the bathroom. “He better not tell Ama, then. She’s on your side.”
I had no doubt that Matt’s grandmother, as well as his mother and father, agreed with me on the existence of magic in the world. That had been clear since the beginning. One more thing for him to resent, one more way his family sided with me rather than him.
Tina moved to follow her brother, but she hesitated long enough to say, “I think it’s special, too.”
That hit like a baseball bat to the gut. (Thank you, Jason, for that memory.) Those quiet, deep pools of theirs that I assumed were untouched — were active? Matt was going to kill me when he found out.
Ghost Garages_A Boston Technowitch Novel Page 21