Witches and Ghosts Supernatural Mysteries

by Angela Pepper

They kept kissing.

  11.

  Danielle and Carter kissed under the snowy elephant, and went on to live happily ever after.

  Their shared life was not without hurdles. The first major issue was that they lived in different cities, and Carter loved his career, while Danielle had quit the high-stress corporate lifestyle for good reason. They enjoyed a long-distance relationship for the first few months while they got to know each other, and then gradually met in the middle.

  Danielle finished the winter season at the resort, then moved to the city to live with Carter on a trial basis. He had a big house with a guest cottage, and Danielle’s friends from the resort took the couple up on their invitations to visit any time.

  With the help of Danielle’s friends, Carter learned how to relax and unwind on evenings and weekends. He didn’t get fully relaxed every single weekend, but he managed to participate in a prank or two.

  Within a year, they were getting married, and the dressmaker had to let out the waistline of Danielle’s beautiful wedding gown to accommodate the new family members.

  Danielle would give birth to beautiful twins, a boy and a girl. They would grow up to become the best of friends, both with each other and with their loving parents.

  Their favorite games would be the ones they made up themselves, using all sorts of dice, decorated with numbers as well as colors and animal symbols.

  Each of the twins’ parents would assume the other parent had provided the special dice, as an in-joke, but the truth was the dice had been left behind during the baby shower, by a woman some people described as short and young, and other people described as tall and wise.

  As for the woman, the Dice Witch, she continues to cast her magic. Sometimes she gets a little help from her friend, the Weather Witch.

  If you look around for signs of magic, you’ll spot good luck everywhere—the work of witches.

  For example, you might be thinking of someone you haven’t spoken to in a while, and then suddenly get an email from them. That’s the blessing of an Email Witch. Or you’ll be in a new city where you don’t know anyone, walk into a cafe, and feel right at home, like your soul has been there before. That’s the work of a Hospitality Witch.

  These little moments of connection or recognition may be pure coincidence… or they might be something else.

  If you find yourself in the middle of one of these spells, try to work with the magic, not against it. Let your heart be open and your eyes be closed as you lean in for the kiss. And may love always fall down upon your head.

  Love Singer

  A Supernatural Love Story

  Originally published under

  the pen name Mimi Strong

  1.

  Growing up, nobody told me I was a song witch, but they did say my singing was magical. My great-grandmother told me the “gift” had skipped several generations before resurfacing in me. I thought the “gift” she spoke of meant my ability to turn insults into compliments and make any situation more hilarious.

  She promised to tell me more on my eighteenth birthday, but she didn’t live long enough. What she did do, bless her heart, was leave me Piglet, her Volkswagen van, freshly painted a custom shade of hot pink. She paired that gift with enough money so I could travel for a year after high school, playing my music around the country.

  Life is your school, her letter read.

  After a year of traveling, I got another letter from her lawyer.

  Now school is your school, the new letter read, in my great-grandmother’s beautiful handwriting. You’ve experienced life on the road, and now it’s time to develop your fundamentals. It won’t be easy, but this is the best school in the country for someone with your talent.

  She signed the letter with her usual lipstick smudge of a kiss. Once I dried away my tears, I packed up the van and headed west, to the music school, where I was already enrolled. Her letter had arrived late, so I arrived on campus two days late for the semester, but fifteen minutes early for that day’s first class.

  The van was in dire need of a tune-up, and making blat-blat noises as I pulled into the school’s parking lot. People turned and stared at the hot-pink Volkswagen, but not for long, because it was far from the most unusual vehicle there. The parking lot was full of art cars, decked out in jewels and doll heads, plus not one, but three hearses.

  Unfortunately, the parking lot was truly full. With no spot for me to park near the school, I would be late for my first class. I was steering toward the exit when I noticed one of the hearses leaving. Obeying the painted direction lines on the pavement, I circled around for the spot.

  Before I could pull in, some jerk in a convertible raced in from the opposite direction and stole my spot. I rolled down my window and said sweetly, “Excuse me, but I was parking there.”

  He stepped out of the convertible and took off his sunglasses. I got a pang of envy. Not only was he wealthy, by the look of the car, but he was also very attractive, with glossy black hair and ocean-blue eyes.

  “Sorry, but I don’t want to be late for class,” he said with fake sincerity.

  “Don’t say you’re sorry if you’re not. That’s my spot, and you know it. Back your jalopy up before I step out of this van and make you.”

  Yes, it should be noted here that when I first met Arturo, whose name I would find out shortly, I really did call his pricey convertible a jalopy, and I did threaten him with physical violence. You should also know that I’m a girl, and a petite one at that, so it was one of those empty threats one makes after being on the road for fifteen hours straight, surviving on a gas-station-supplied diet of caffeinated liquids and barbecue meat sticks.

  Arturo, however, didn’t yet know about my hilarious sense of humor, and took me at my word. He rolled up his shirt sleeves and raised his fists like a boxer.

  “Come get some,” he said. “I’ll let you have two shots at me before I make a move.”

  He was grinning, but I wasn’t laughing.

  The guy was lucky I didn’t yet know I was a witch, or I might have lobbed a day-ruining, pants-soiling spell at him.

  Time was ticking by, so I slammed the gas pedal and attempted to whip the van around him, letting my tires squeal with my contempt.

  The Volkswagen had its own style, though. Her name was Piglet, and true to her name, she guzzled greedily at the fuel as she slowly circumvented Arturo, making an undignified blat-blat karputta-putta-blorp-blorp noise. Piglet’s engine was loud, but not loud enough to drown out the rich jerk’s laughter.

  2.

  I parked five blocks from the school and sprinted all the way to the building where I had my first class. I was already two days late for the semester, and another ten minutes wouldn’t have killed me, but I’d driven all night, and it was the principle of the thing.

  Or maybe it was my stubbornness.

  Like my soon-to-be-discovered magical powers, stubbornness was another trait I inherited from my great-grandmother.

  So, I got to the classroom, breathing heavily, and scanned the room for a free chair. There were a few available at the back, but the one I wanted was in the front row. I’m not really a front-row student, but this chair was irresistible, because it had been staked out by Mr. Rich Jerk.

  With his back to the classroom door, he sat on the edge of the desk, talking casually to another person. A stack of music books and sheet music sat next to his butt cheek on the desk. It was clearly the desk he planned to sit at when class began.

  My competitive streak kicked in. This is the same personality trait that made my seven brothers and sisters draw straws to determine who had to be my partner for games of charades. The funny thing is, for the longest time, I thought the person with the short straw was the winner, and got to be my partner. The day I found out the truth, life became a little less sweet.

  Stealing Mr. Rich Jerk’s chair would be sweet, though.

  I slid into place just as the bell rang.

  He got to his feet, turned around, fixed h
is dreamy, ocean-blue eyes on me, and said, “I believe that’s someone else’s spot.”

  I shrugged. “Someone else’s spot?” I pushed the chair back and patted my thighs. “Sorry, but I didn’t want to be late, so I took the first empty chair I saw. There’s always room right here on my lap, big boy.”

  He smirked, then looked up at someone standing behind me, and said, “You heard the lady. Take your seat. Class is about to begin.”

  He went to the board at the front of the room and began writing his name: Professor Arturo J—

  I didn’t catch his last name, because a shaggy-haired young man in a plaid shirt took his rightful seat in his chair. On top of me. Like I was nothing more than one of those wood-beaded seat covers retirees install on the bucket seats of their motorhomes.

  A normal girl wouldn’t find herself in such a situation, but if she did, she would probably excuse herself and take another seat at the back of the room.

  Not me.

  I decided to sit through the entire class that way. I even managed to wedge my notebook between my face and the seat-owner’s back to take notes.

  The class was about composition, which is the fancy music-school term for the part of songwriting that isn’t the words. And it was a great class. I would never have admitted it to Arturo’s face, of course, but he was a magnificent instructor.

  All of his parking-lot jerkiness translated into confidence and passion when he spoke about music. He kept talking about how songs are the most powerful form of magical spells in the modern world, connecting hearts and minds in a way nothing else can.

  “Are you getting all this?” he asked. “You. Yes, you. Underneath the gentleman in plaid.”

  I leaned around the student using me as a chair cozy. “Magical spells… connecting hearts and minds… blah, blah. Hey, Mr. J, will all your deep thoughts be on the exam? Or will there also be some questions about actual composition?”

  The students around me giggled. Arturo’s blue eyes grew wide and his eyebrows rose out of respect for my honesty and insightfulness, or so I like to think.

  He crossed over to his desk and ran his finger down a sheet of paper there. “Your name is… Zebrina?”

  I cocked my free hand into an imaginary pistol and fired bullets of awesomeness his way.

  “You got it, Mr. J! My friends all call me Zeb, or Zebbie, or even Little Zebbie, on account of how I’m so little and sweet.”

  He frowned, failing to enjoy the additional entertainment value I brought to his composition class.

  I kept going, “You can call me anything, just don’t call me late for curtain.” I fired two more imaginary bullets of awesomeness his way. “Just some showbiz humor. Sorry. I’ve been touring the last year. It’s a lifestyle. I’ll just stop talking now and let you teach your class, Mr. J.”

  “Thank you,” he said solemnly, then he flicked on the projection screen and got back to the heavy stuff.

  I took notes at a furious pace, trying to keep up.

  The rest of the class flew by quickly, and when it was done, the professor gave us a stack of homework, then packed up his things and left without a word.

  The shaggy-haired young man in plaid who’d been sitting on me got up, glanced back at me, then did a double-take.

  “You’re real!” he exclaimed.

  “Of course I’m real. Did you think you were hallucinating me? Are you high?”

  He grinned wide enough to let me know his answers to those two questions were yes and extremely, yes.

  That was how I first met Kenny, who later became my best friend and roommate.

  He actually became my roommate that first night, when I confessed to him I had nowhere to sleep except inside Piglet.

  Kenny upgraded to being my best friend five weeks later, when he held my hair and soothingly patted my back while I chucked up half a batch of his experimental mushroom brownies, which I had mistakenly assumed were drug-free. We share the blame for that particular debacle equally, because while I did ask Kenny if they were pot brownies, he denied it and forbade me to eat them. But he should have known I can’t resist chocolate, and I should have known that Kenny doesn’t bake anything drug-free.

  All of that may seem like it has nothing to do with what happened between me and Arturo, but it actually does. You’ll see.

  3.

  The way I saw it, Arturo and I were arch-nemeses, like Batman and the Joker. Or like someone else and Catwoman. I don’t really know comic book stuff, but please picture me as Catwoman in this metaphor.

  He would try to teach music composition, and I’d offer him constructive feedback during class. I would always raise my hand and wait until I was called on, of course. I’m not an animal.

  I thought he was enjoying our witty repartee, honestly. Some days I’d be tired from staying up all night studying or working through a new song, and I’d sub-contract out some of my material to Kenny. He’d scrunch his forehead and stick out his tongue, the way he always does when he’s in deep thought, and write down interesting questions for me to ask Mr. J.

  I’d wave my hand, wait to be called on, then ask whatever Kenny passed over to me. Sidenote: Kenny’s handwriting looks like a robot’s.

  On my third week in class, the question, as handed to me by Kenny, was a two-parter: “Mr. J, those are some really sweet jeans you’re wearing. Do they come in men’s sizes as well?”

  The class laughed pretty hard, thanks to my top-notch delivery.

  Arturo clicked off the projector and took a seat on the edge of his desk, arms crossed. I started laughing along with the class, because I hadn’t, until that moment, realized how narrow Arturo’s hips were. He wasn’t the tallest guy around, and it suddenly occurred to me that he could actually be wearing jeans from the boys’ department.

  “Zeb, you do a lot of talking, and not just in my classroom. You talk between your songs. You were at the Depot last night, weren’t you? For someone who bills herself as a singer, there wasn’t a lot of singing going on, was there?”

  Everyone stopped laughing. The previous night’s live performance had been a disaster, and a few people knew it.

  “Were you there?” I asked.

  He jerked his head, tossing back his dark wavy hair. His blue eyes glinted with malevolence.

  “You saw everything,” I breathed. “I was having an off night. Everyone has off nights.” My insides clenched, and not in the good way.

  “You’ve lost it,” he said. “This morning, you came into my classroom and started in on me because you’re afraid. You’ve lost your mojo.”

  “No!” As soon as I answered, I realized that by yelling the answer, I’d pretty much admitted it. He was right. I had lost my mojo.

  He continued, “Your first show after you showed up in town… wasn’t bad. But you’re off, Zeb. Out of your league and off your game.”

  “You’ve been coming to all my shows?” I shook my head furiously. “That’s not fair.”

  “Of course it’s not fair. To be fair, I would have sat up front and heckled you.”

  The class collectively sucked in its breath, then let out a low chuckle, laughing at me instead of with me. The traitors! Even Kenny was smirking. I reached over and flicked his ear. He responded by flicking my ear twice as hard. Kenny didn’t get the memo about not hitting girls.

  I sat there, my ear stinging from being double-flicked and my face burning from being called out in front of my classmates.

  I had to do something, so I looked steadily into Arturo’s blue eyes, and pleaded, “Can you help me get my mojo back?”

  “I’m a composition and mathematical genius, Zeb. I can do anything.”

  “I particularly like your modesty.”

  “That’s the first time you’ve ever said anything nice to me. You’d better not say anything else for the rest of class and ruin it. See me after school today, and we’ll talk about your mojo problem.”

  I mimed zipping my lips, and nodded in agreement.

  Class took
forever, and keeping my mouth shut was painful. Finally, the bell rang, and everyone packed up for their next class.

  During my other classes, I asked my teachers if they thought I’d lost my mojo. None of them knew what I was talking about, let alone had come to see me perform.

  “You know, the mojo,” I tried to explain. “When you hit the notes just right, and you feel like you’ve threaded a needle with a gossamer beam of light from everyone in the audience. You can move the needle through the tapestry however you want, through sorrow or joy, and everyone’s right there with you. If you tug the thread from two people, and look them in the eye while you sing the notes, you can make them fall in love.”

  My last teacher of the day, a white-haired woman who kept three pairs of glasses on a chain around her neck, laughed and told me I had a wonderful imagination. “You young people,” she said. “Always wanting to believe in the mystical rather than play your scales or learn your triads.”

  I left her classroom and hustled back over to Arturo’s usual room. I found him at the piano, playing a melody. The notes swirled around, the rhythm intoxicating.

  I slipped quietly into a chair. He kept playing, and I unbuttoned my blouse to let my skin breathe in the notes.

  “Zeb, I know what you are,” he said without turning his head my way.

  “It’s just us, Arturo. No need for insults. Can you help me with my mojo, or what?”

  He kept playing the sexy notes, and my temperature kept rising. I was thirsty, but not for water. I wanted his sweet mouth on mine. The desire was so powerful, I could barely keep myself seated.

  He turned and looked over his shoulder at me. “Show me your basic deflection charm,” he said.

  I snorted and gave him a hand gesture I usually reserve for bad drivers who cut off Piglet.

  He stopped playing and turned around on the piano bench. “You don’t have to hide who you are around me,” he said. “I’m a wizard.”

  I rolled my eyes. “And a math genius. I know.”