He tilted his head as if contemplating. I sucked in a breath.
“Nah,” he said. “This is more fun.”
Terrific.
I grabbed the ice bucket. The tune still pounding away from the jukebox. “Shipwrecked pirates claim their treasures in the sand / Sidewalk surfers ride the streets in super vans...”
Ponyboy stared at me as I poured the ice into the well. He was drumming the bar with a pair of straws, when Monique came back upstairs.
I swiped the straws from his hands and whispered. “Look, if you stay, you cannot touch anything, got it?”
“Why not?”
How could I explain to a ghost who didn’t think he was dead that random objects floating around the bar might spook the customers?
“Because you’re a wild card, and you’ll blow my cover.” I tilted my head toward Monique.
The young spirit’s eyes widened and he winked.
Monique said, “Who are you talking to, Justice?”
When I turned back, the stool was vacant and another song was playing on the jukebox. Runaround Sue.
I knew it was going to be the longest night of my life even before everything went to hell.
Chapter 33
An hour later, Monique and I had served up drinks to a few locals and several tourists when a flurry of Italians swarmed the bar followed by the Geraghty Girls. I was feeling a bit fuzzy by then, so I downed a shot of tequila as Cinnamon’s relatives carted in trays of sausage and peppers, chicken vesuvio, fresh bread, antipasto platters, mostaccioli, and of course, Angelica’s famous cannoli. They began pushing tables and chairs together in the backroom and I cued Monique to start opening the Chianti.
“Ah, Stacy, mi bellissima.” Mario kissed my hand. “Come, eat. The family wants to meet you.” His eyes were glued to Monique’s ass.
“Maybe later, Mario, I still have a few customers.”
I poured him a glass of Chianti and asked where Carmella and Bianca were.
Mario said, “Carmella likes to window shop. She’s making lists of all the things she want me to buy her.”
As far as I knew, Mario sold jewelry on the streets of Florence. He was a get-rich-quick schemer, but his schemes rarely panned out. From what I understood, his last trip here was paid for by Cinnamon’s mother. So how could he afford to toss money around like it he was rolling in it?
He thanked me for the velvety red wine just as Angelica walked up to the bar.
“Ah, Stacy, you’re a good girl taking care of Cinnamon’s place. My house is so small for this group, eh?”
Angelica lived in a cramped apartment above her bakery.
“No problem, Auntie. You know I’ve got my cousin’s back.”
She reached over and patted the bar. “I know. I can count on you.”
Angelica asked me to bring over some wine and water, so Monique and I loaded up two trays full of glasses, Chianti, and a pitcher of water, and delivered them to the expanded table. There was a lot of chatting, hand waving, scooping, and pouring, and we were coaxed to join them. I begged off, but Monique pulled up a chair and a plate and sat next to the sexiest dreamy-eyed guy in the room.
Ponyboy was back, sitting in a corner of the bar like he was on a stakeout. He winked and I winked back. As long as he didn’t touch or move anything, I was okay with him hanging around. Maybe someone he recognized would come in and he’d float home with a patron.
The Geraghty Girls were the only living people sitting at the bar at that time, so I circled around to the well and faced them. In front of each of them sat shimmery, glittery bottles draped in ribbons, and capped with crystal stoppers.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“These are gifts for the baby,” said Birdie.
She had glued a four leaf clover to the front of hers, the caption Leprechaun Gold for Luck, painted beneath it. The jar held tiny flakes of gold inside. I really wanted to get to the bottom of the whole leprechaun thing, but I figured this wasn’t the time.
Lolly’s bottle was taller, the glass blue, and it was labeled simply, Wishes. There looked to be dandelion puffs inside. Maybe even stardust, but that wouldn’t be visible to the naked eye.
The third jar was round and squat. Fiona’s gift read, Giggle Dust for Happiness.
The little one had her very own fairy godmothers. “Those are really beautiful. Cin and the baby will love them.”
Birdie said, “We thought it might be best if you delivered them to her, since we haven’t been ourselves.”
“Yes, dear, we’re afraid the magic may fade if we keep them any longer,” said Fiona.
“Or that we’d drop them and they’d break,” said Lolly.
“No problem.” I grabbed a clean towel and carefully wrapped each jar, locking them inside my bag in the office. I stopped, noticed Cinnamon’s emergency labor bag was again under her desk, so I thought better of it and placed the gifts inside that.
When I returned, the Geraghty Girls had their heads together in deep discussion. Fiona was still in casual attire mode wearing a pair of leggings and a long sweatshirt. Lolly had on skinny jeans and a knit top. Birdie was still wearing her usual skirts and bangle bracelets, although she was also sporting a newsboy cap.
They adhered to Rule Number One and ordered colas. I poured those as they pulled out the notebook that had been in their magic chamber earlier.
Birdie leaned forward. “We did some digging for you,” she said conspiratorially.
“Oh?”
Fiona said, “Yes, we used the Intercept.”
“Internet.”
“That’s what I said.”
Lolly said, “Did you know you can Foogle someone’s name and find out things about them without using any magic at all?”
“Google.”
“Exactly.”
I rolled my eyes.
A few customers walked in and I motioned that I’d be right back. I poured a few drinks and I noticed the man Monique had cozied up to was leaning over the jukebox. Ponyboy was keeping a close watch on him.
I slid back over to Birdie and the aunts and said, “What have you got?”
There were six names on the list—all people who had attended the drunken football game—and we went over them one by one. Mario, they learned, was on a few dating sites, and they’d found Facebook pictures of him with Carmella in different parts of Europe, looking blissfully happy. They hadn’t found any dating back more than a couple of weeks, which I thought was suspicious, but he could have just met her. Whirlwind romances happen, I suppose, although I still thought they went together about as well as peanut butter and hot dogs. Mario had come into some sort of windfall, but they didn’t know the source. Just that he’d Tweeted about it.
Next up was Rocky, the hottie Monique had her eye on. Rocky had been in the leather business since he was ten years old. Nothing seemed odd about him except for the fact that he’d taken a shine to Monique, but hey—when in Amethyst.
There was another woman-Angelica’s cousin, Lisa, who had no online presence whatsoever. Fiona pointed her out to me. She looked young—mid-thirties, with a sassy short hairdo reminiscent of old Hollywood.
“It’s a bit unusual, isn’t it? Not to be on the line for someone so young.” Fiona asked.
“Online.”
“That’s what I said.”
I stared at Lisa, who was laughing with Angelica. As if she felt my gaze on the back of her neck, she swiveled her head, catching my eye. She smiled and waved. I waved back.
The last two men were Angelica’s uncles, twins who owned a trattoria together in Palermo.
I thanked them and tucked the notebook in a sleeve by the register.
“Did we help?” asked Lolly.
“Very much. You saved me a lot of time.”
They really had.
Birdie said, “I’ve been trying to reach Tabby all day, but she won’t return my calls. I’ve scoured the bylaws of the council and it seems that what she said is true. They can strip you of
the Seeker role.” She looked crushed and my heart twisted into a knot. This was all she ever wanted for me, to become my true self. I reached over and grabbed her hand. She jolted.
“Ouch.”
“Sorry. I don’t know why I keep shocking people.”
Lolly said, “I do. You’re tuned to your magic now more than ever, and you’re feeding off others who have it or who are connected to your power.”
“Well then do me one more favor, ladies.”
Birdie said, “What’s that?”
“Scour the Blessed Book and find a way to reclaim your gifts.”
The three of them exchanged glances. Fiona said, “All in good time, Stacy. You can’t harness magic. It travels where it’s needed.”
With a rustle of bar stools, they stood as a unit and sauntered over to the feast, chatting up their house guests and Angelica. I watched them mingle like only Geraghtys can, laughing, smiling, and charming, all the while scrutinizing for the rat in the pack.
So who was it? Was the shifter in this room?
I was just about to pour myself a glass of wine, debating on if I wanted to tell Birdie about my mother and my uncle, when my youngest aunt caught my eye. It was the briefest of looks but it held a lifetime of meaning.
With that one look, Angelica said simply, “We’re family.”
Chapter 34
When a goddess personally pays you a visit to tell you there is a target on your back and you may or may not have one week to live, you react in one of two ways. Either a quiet calm washes over you like a warm waterfall and you accept your fate come what may, or you run around like a piñata stuffed full of Mexican jumping beans.
I was a jumping bean kind of woman.
The first bar fight wasn’t so bad. A couple of twentyish jerks full of too many drafts raging over a football game. I tried the whole “knock it off, boys” and Monique threatened to call the police, but when one of the idiots lifted a stool to clobber the other one with, things got serious. I took the liberty of catapulting over the bar and swiped his knees out from under him with a swoop kick. He dropped the stool and it wavered in the air for a second before I caught it and set it down behind me. The other idiot took that as a cue to pounce on the man down, which was a dirty play in my book. I jammed my thumb into a pressure point in his neck t until I felt him grow limp. He slumped off his opponent to the floor, and their friends hauled the two guys out .
Luckily, Ponyboy didn’t jump into the mix. He just cheered me on from the sidelines with shouts of “kick his ass” and “you go, girl”.
An hour later, two women got into a heated argument. I have no idea what that was about, but after the first drink was tossed, it was two hellcats going at it. Claws were out, hair was pulled, and they ended up locked together in some sort of earring-caught-on-the-sweater situation.
After I untangled them and sent them to separate corners so I could call the cab, they decided I was the problem. They lunged at me—one from the left, the other from the right, swinging with more precision than they had on each other. I bobbed and weaved around them for a minute, not wanting to hurt them, before my patience was completely exhausted.
I considered using the poison pen clipped to my vest, but the tall blond aimed a left hook at me before I could grab it. I caught her wrist in my left hand, twisted her arm behind her back with my right, and slammed her, stomach down, on a table. I pinned her there with one of the knitting needles from my hair just in time to see the stocky burgundy-haired woman coming at me with a broken beer bottle. I ducked around her and she crashed into the table her friend was splayed across with no help from me. The bottle clinked to the floor and I yanked out the other knitting needle, pinning them together by their shirts on the table until Gus came to haul them away.
This was all after Cinnamon’s family had left for the evening, and I made the executive decision to close up shop before I ended up dead at the hands of some nutfugget who didn’t know how to hold her liquor.
That would be even more embarrassing than the naked-in-the-bathroom scenario I couldn’t shake from my brain.
I texted my mother a few times, but she didn’t respond. Ponyboy must have slipped out after the last fight, because I couldn’t see him any longer, and the jukebox was finally silent. Monique and I were packing up the leftover food when Cinnamon came waddling through the door.
A glow like burning embers shaded my cousin’s face. “Did you really have two fights in one night?” she asked, eyeing my attire.
Monique didn’t say anything, just finished bagging the food and left it on the table. She trailed around the bar to count tips.
“Well it’s not like I started them, but yes. It was handled.” I went to put a pot of coffee on as Cin took a seat on a stool.
Three of Angelica’s cannoli were sitting on the bar on a plate that Lisa had brought over earlier. “I saved these for you,” she had said.
It didn’t cross my mind at the time, because I was busy serving drinks, but now I wondered how she’d known Cinnamon was coming?
The coffee started brewing and I grabbed three mugs.
“It was handled? That’s all you’re going to say?” Cin asked.
I shrugged. “You probably would have handled it better.”
Cin grunted. “How about you, Henrietta Harlot? How was your night?”
Monique parked a hand on her hip. “Hey at least I can see my feet, Teletubbie.”
I put the mugs on the bar, along with milk and sugar, next to the cannoli, ignoring them both. I was in no mood to play referee again.
Monique finished dividing the tips and handed me my half. I stuffed the bills in my bra and offered her a cannoli. She grabbed a napkin and bit in. Cinnamon helped herself to one, and I reached for the third.
Cinnamon looked around the bar. “Well at least nothing’s broken.”
Monique snorted. “Yeah except maybe a man’s pride and a bitch’s nose.”
Cin’s eyes widened. “You broke someone’s nose? What the hell happened?” She took a bite of the cannoli.
I did too, so I wouldn’t have to relay the story, but Monique was more than happy to oblige.
“Holy shit, Cin, you should have seen it,” she said. “Your cousin kicked some serious ass.”
Cinnamon leaned forward. “Really? What did she do?”
“I’m right here, guys.” I said, sucking on some filling.
“Yeah, but you should have seen it from my angle, Stacy. You were too close to it.” The entire night rushed out of her mouth in one breath and several hand gestures in which she mimicked the action.
Cinnamon looked at me as I poured the coffee. We each grabbed a mug.
“You did all that without a sword?” she asked.
Monique said, “She has a sword?” She sipped the coffee and took another bite of the Italian pastry.
“Just a little one.” Now, anyway, after seeing Tisiphone’s.
I sipped my own coffee and Cin said, “No way. That thing is huge.”
Monique pouted. “Damn, I want to see it. Can I see it?”
“Sure, I’ll show it to you. Come over sometime. We’ll get some wine.”
Cin pouted now. “Wine? Oh, you gotta wait until this kid is out of me.”
“We can do that.” Monique knocked back some coffee.
“Hey that reminds me. The three wise women brought gifts for the baby. I put them in the bag in your office.” I took another hearty bite of the pastry. Its creamy filling stuck to my fingers and I licked it off. “I’ll get it.”
Monique finished off her cannoli and wiped her hands. “I’ll clean the tables.” She grabbed a towel and got busy as I trotted off to the office.
“There’s a lot of food left, if you’re hungry, Cin,” Monique said.
“No thanks. Tony’s mom stuffed me silly.”
I gathered the bag, my things and Monique’s and locked the office door. I headed back over to drop all of our stuff on the bar and to finish closing up. The air was lighter
, cleaner, like a fluffy white cloud was passing through.
Monique said, “So do you have any baby names picked out?”
Cinnamon said, “Not really. I want to see her first, you know? Choose a name that really suits her.”
The smell of cotton fresh from the dryer, gumdrops, and daisies.
Monique lifted a bar stool onto a table and grunted. “I know what you mean. I hate my name.”
Cinnamon said, “Oh no. I think it’s pretty. Monique. It sounds like boutique where they sell pretty things. By the way, I love your outfit.”
“Gee, thanks.” Monique looked down. “It was on sale.”
Cin said, “So cute.”
I stood there for a moment, absorbing the scene before me. I had never heard these two speak kindly to each other in all my life. In fact, as I recall, their first meeting ended a lot like the bar fight I had broken up earlier. I dropped the bags and my mouth at the same time, two thoughts stinging me like frantic mosquitoes.
Are we all getting along? Being nice to each other?
And what the hell was in those cannoli?
Chapter 35
Monique left, and a trail of sunshine chased her out the door. Cinnamon went around to the register and tallied up the night’s receipts. Her back was to me as she said, “Hey, show me what The Geraghty Girls brought the baby.”
I reached into her bag and pulled out the three bottles wrapped in the towel. That’s when I noticed a fourth. I scooped it out and examined it. It was round and fat like a Christmas ornament, made of thick black glass with a shadowy gray etching scrawled across the front in a fancy script. It read, Nightmares.
I quickly shoved the bottle into my own bag before Cinnamon turned around.
Who would do such a thing? Why would anyone want to give a child nightmares? A creepy-crawly sensation spidered up and down my back. The keys had been near me the entire night. I hadn’t seen a single soul slip into the office, but then again, I was pre-occupied. It made me wonder what kind of witch I was dealing with. A dark arts practitioner? Someone from Angelica’s family? Or one of the women sitting around the table in Evelyn’s house? And why would anyone want to harm the baby? Unless...were the nightmares supposed to be for Cinnamon?
Phantom Quartz: A Stacy Justice Witch Mystery Book 6 (Stacy Justice Magical Mysteries) Page 15