“Yes, something like that. I used to go along with your grandmother. We had the very best of adventures together,” said Paws. “I like adventures.”
I scratched my head. Paws was a pain, but I couldn’t see the harm. “I thought you couldn’t leave the property easily.”
Paws snorted. “I can if you wear the necklace your grandmother left in your room.”
My grandmother had left the ugliest green necklace ever in my room, and there it had sat. The chain was bronze and the stone in the middle could only be described as a puke green. She had worn it all the time, and now I knew why. It was because the green stone matched the one around the ghost cat’s neck.
“I’ll wear the necklace if you explain how it works,” I said.
If cats could roll their eyes, Paws would’ve done so.
Not wanting to be late, I dashed back into the house, grabbed the necklace from where it was languishing on the dresser collecting a thin coat of dust, and hurried back outside.
Paws was already sitting on the front seat of my car. Presumptuous little thing. He was a cat after all, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. I put the necklace on and climbed in.
“Okay, spill, you can leave as long as it’s with me and a necklace?” I said. My mind was whirling with possibilities.
“It’s standard witchcraft, but difficult to perform,” said Paws. “I was your great-grandmother’s cat, originally, and so by the time your grandmother came around she didn’t think any living cats were as fun or helpful as me, and of course she was a wise woman. Evenlyn used some of the books she had in the attic, the ones you refuse to look at, and discovered a spell that attached my presence to the necklace instead of to the property. Now I can go where the necklace goes.”
“But does that mean someone else could put the necklace on and take you somewhere?” I said. I was thinking of Greer, but there were also more sinister implications.
Paws thought about it. “I suppose it does, but that’s never happened. Who the dickens would want to go anywhere with that thing on?”
“That sure is an excellent point,” I said dryly. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”
Paws shifted a bit, for the first time looking kind of guilty.
“I didn’t mention it before,” he said primly, “because I was hoping you’d just put the necklace on and I’d go along and surprise you.”
I gaped at him for as long as I could before I had to watch the road again. The white lines glowed in my headlamps, lighting my path. “What you’re saying is that you wanted to go along and terrify me.”
“Maybe,” said Paws. “It sure would’ve been fun.”
“Ghosts move around without witch help,” I pursued. He wasn’t explaining everything.
“They do, but only for short periods of time, then they have to return either to where they reside, or where they were buried,” said Paws. “You and Greer will still be the only ones who can see me.”
“I wish my grandmother had picked a cuter necklace,” I said looking down at the ugly old relic.
“It’ll come back into fashion,” said Paws. “Just you wait and see.”
I didn’t think that was true. I didn’t think that was true at all, but maybe it would, and I would see.
I just hoped Jasper Wolf didn’t hang out at this bar and see this tire ring around my neck. That would be beyond embarrassing.
The bar was a hopping place on a Friday night, and we had to park on the side of the road in a long line of cars and walk a bit.
Paws was very excited and kept yelling, “I’m free, I’m free!! Watch out, mice!!”
There were a few bikers hanging out outside the bar, smoking, but I had learned that for the most part, if I didn’t bother them, they didn’t bother me. Besides, the other couple of times I’d come to visit, Greer had made it very clear that I was a friend of hers, so I was to be treated with respect or she’d know why.
No one here knew that Greer was rich, or that she had learned bartending by begging the bartenders at her parents’ boring galas to give her something to do. The only expectation anyone had of her was that she pour them their drinks in a timely manner, and Greer liked that. She felt that she belonged here far more than she ever had among her parents’ friends. Needless to say, this attitude horrified her parents.
A man wearing a leather vest and nothing else to cover his chest held the door open for me. I went through with a murmured thank you, but he thought I was being weird when I went super slowly, which I had to do because Paws was hurrying to catch up with me after chasing a mouse into a dark hole on the side of the building.
“You’re being ridiculous,” I told the cat once we got inside. He glanced up at me and said, “I can’t hear you.”
I didn’t believe that for a second, but the place really was loud, and I myself was having a hard time hearing over the noise. Music blared, forcing people to yell to be heard, and of course the yelling raised the decibel level even more. Wouldn’t it be so much easier to just sit on the couch with pizza and have a chat? I wondered. Why did people go to bars to talk? Whenever I asked Greer this question, she just gave me an incredulous look and shook her head.
The ceilings hung low, as did a haze that floated about the room from all the bodies and the dim lighting. Paws dodged between legs, heading for the bar. He beat me there, so before I had time to warn Greer of his presence he had hopped up next to where she was pouring a shot. Unfazed by the sudden appearance of the ghost, Greer intentionally put down the bottle she was holding right where the cat was standing. Then she turned around.
“Doesn’t even say a friendly hello,” Paws sniffed.
“Maybe she would if you had been polite about it,” I told him.
Paws sat down and gently started thumping his tail. The cat had placed himself between a giant man with a giant beard, who was speaking to a woman clad all in leather, both of them probably in their sixties, and a younger man in a black t-shirt and ripped jeans with perfectly wavy hair.
I smiled at Paws and decided that maybe he’d be useful after all. Greer had waved to me, then moved down the bar to serve the line of waiting customers.
“Is this seat taken?” I asked the young guy. He had a lot of tattoos, but he was cute in a bad boy sort of way.
He gave me a bewildered look and shook his head. “Nope.”
I sat down and tried not to fidget. Luckily, my phone brightened almost instantly to signal a text message, and I had an excuse to bury my nose in it.
It was Charlie, texting to say that she was running late but was on her way.
For my friend’s sake, I really hoped she changed clothes before she came here, but I had a feeling she wasn’t going to. Guilt had started to eat at me for not telling her my secret, and I had decided I had to tell her sooner rather than later in case Gracie wasn’t found and Mrs. Goodkeep went ballistic. With Charlie living right there on the property, she’d find out anyway at that point, and the longer I waited the angrier she’d be when she finally did.
“I’m Jeff,” he said, appearing to shake himself awake.
“Lemmi.” I awkwardly stuck my arm out sideways and he shook my hand.
Not knowing what to do while I waited, and growing increasingly self-conscious as Paws sat there judging me, I said, “Come here often?”
Again I got the bleary look from Jeff, but he didn’t act annoyed at me for talking to him, just confused.
“Yeah, pretty much,” he said. “It’s close to my place.”
Close around these parts could mean literally anything. The further north you went the longer the distance denoted by “close” might stretch. I had actually heard close referred to as forty-five minutes before. The reason I cared was that if I wanted to search this guy’s house for signs of Gracie, where it was located was obviously important.
“You come here often?” he asked when the silence stretched long enough that I was starting to feel awkward.
“Not that often,” I said, just
as Greer appeared in front of us. “Just to see my roommate.”
Greer grinned and put a mixed drink in front of me. Male patrons at the bar watched Greer, and I could see that they thought she was attractive. I could also see that she had made it clear that they weren’t to do anything about it. I had never had much of a head for alcohol, but I knew she was silently telling me I couldn’t sit there with nothing in front of me. I wasn’t that good a witch-sleuth, as it turned out.
“Oh, you’re Greer’s roommate?” This more than anything so far appeared to excite Jeff. “That’s awesome. I didn’t know Greer had roommates.”
“That’s because you’re usually too busy texting when you come in,” said Greer, laughing.
Jeff’s face fell, “Yeah, not tonight though.”
“Were you supposed to come here with someone tonight?” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to flirt with him, to use my womanly wiles, as Greer called them, to find out if he had a girlfriend and if that girlfriend’s name was Gracie.
“Naw, not anymore,” he said.
“Why not?” I said.
“She dumped me,” said Jeff.
Greer leaned over the bar and whispered in my ear. “He’s had a lot to drink tonight. Seems pretty upset.”
“When did all this happen?” I asked him.
“About a week ago,” he said. “She told me I wasn’t good enough for her. Couldn’t believe I had ever thought I was. She had bigger and better plans and had only been dating me because she wanted someone on hand. But now I guess she doesn’t, so no texting.” He took a big long drink of the bottle in front of him and blinked slowly. “I thought she loved me. She said she did.”
“Women lie,” said Greer, “all the time.”
“I should have known that Gracie Coswell would never go for a guy like me. She said she liked my truck.” Jeff stopped midway through his rant and looked stricken. “I promised her I wouldn’t say I knew her. She made me promise, said her parents wouldn’t approve. I shouldn’t have told you two. Do you both swear not to tell anyone?”
“This guy’s ridiculous,” said Paws, looking disgruntled. “She wanted him to move something for her or take the fall for something nefarious that she was doing, then she found someone better and didn’t need him anymore. He should get a cat, then he’d know what real love is.”
“He needs to get an animal that would love him back,” said Greer, “like a dog.”
“Huh?” Jeff had heard Greer’s side of the conversation but obviously not Paws’.
“The TV,” said Greer, pointing to the TV, which was currently turned off. Jeff clearly didn’t want to try too hard to understand what Greer was talking about, so he just sort of nodded.
“Anyway, I knew it was too good to be true, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting deep inside. My heart hurts.”
“That is sooo poetic,” said Paws, who was cleaning his paws. Jeff had missed his opportunity to be in a rock band, of that I was sure. He had the brooding lover down pat.
Just then a blond girl with big hair came up and wrapped her bubblegum colored nails around Jeff’s biceps.
“Jeffy, want to buy me a drink?” she asked.
“Not tonight, Della,” said Jeff, shaking his head and wincing.
She pouted. “I thought you’d rather talk to me than this girl.” She was careful to avoid including Greer in her glare, but Greer acted like she had glared at her anyway.
“Scram,” Greer ordered.
The girl got even more annoyed. “You think you run this place! Where would you be without us loyal customers!”
“Relaxing on the couch with my feet up and some peace and quiet. Get lost or I’ll cut you off.”
Della tottered away on her very high heels.
“She don’t mean no harm,” said Jeff. “She’s a good egg. But anyway, you promise not to tell?” He looked pleadingly at both of us.
I had no idea how to divert his attention.
“Why did she dump you?” I said.
He shrugged. He was so upset, he didn’t seem to notice that I was interrogating him instead of flirting (I heard that’s what girls were supposed to do at bars). But surely he’d notice soon.
“When was the last time you talked to her?” I asked.
“Yesterday,” he said. “I asked her to have me back and she laughed at me.”
My mind raced. She’d been talking to Jeff, maybe right before I showed up?
“This was over the phone?” I clarified. Cellphones didn’t work in Mintwood, for the most part. Something about magnetic powers. If only they knew it was witch spells . . .
“Right,” he said.
I was just about to ask more about the phone call when Charlie showed up, turning most heads in the bar as she walked obliviously toward us with an excited look on her face. Once she got to Greer, a lot of the guys’ faces fell. Any friend of Greer’s was also probably off limits.
“This place is so cool,” she said, her eyes wide. I tried not to shudder when I saw that she was still wearing her white button down from work. She stuck out like a ghost in a dry cleaner’s. Charlie didn’t notice the biker dudes give her a strange look, then return to their beers with a shake of the head.
“Yeah, cool,” said Greer. “What are you drinking?”
“I couldn’t possibly,” said Charlie, waving the thought away. Greer didn’t push her. It was enough that I had a mixed drink, and anyhow, Charlie drunk wasn’t something we wanted to happen tonight. It would go one of two ways, either she’d be sad about Andy or she’d end up dancing on a table. Either way would be a headache for the bartender.
“This is a delightful place to spend an evening,” said Charlie, awkwardly bopping her head.
“This girl has no clue,” said Paws, looking at Charlie and shaking his head.
“I haven’t seen that necklace before, have I?” said Charlie, leaning in to look at my grandmother’s green necklace.
“Probably not, because I don’t go out shrouded and in darkness,” I said, trying to sound casual. “She left it for me, but I haven’t really had many occasions to wear it.”
Charlie gave me a sympathetic look. “Yeah, it sucks how buried you’ve been and how you’re just trying to get by. It would have been nice if someone could help you repair the house.”
“Yeah, that would’ve been great,” I said.
The truth was, the house was so close to being condemned, it was a wonder I was even allowed to live there. Not only that, but here I was letting roommates move in. Greer paid a bit of rent, she had insisted, and Charlie had mentioned doing the same thing, but none of it would be enough to cover the expense of fixing the house as much as it needed. I would never be able to afford good construction work, so I just tried not to think about it.
“Who’s your friend?” With Charlie’s arrival I’d forgotten all about Jeff.
“Oh, sorry, this is Charlie,” I said.
“Jeff,” he said, reaching sideways. Charlie shook his hand vigorously, as if she was performing a fascinating social experiment that involved meeting someone at a bar, and also like she thought she was making a great pass at fitting in.
He looked ready to keep talking, but I had found out everything I was going to from him. No way did I want him to realize I was snooping.
“Sorry, but we really have to get going,” I said. Then I grabbed Charlie’s arm and started to propel her away.
“But we just got here,” Charlie complained.
“Sorry, I’m tired,” I said.
She shrugged. “Oh well, okay. Somehow I don’t think this is my scene anyhow.”
You don’t say.
“Thanks for the information,” I said, looking back at Jeff, who nodded and looked bewildered again.
Charlie and I told Greer we’d meet her at home and headed out. Paws complained, but he had no choice. If he had to go where the necklace went, then he was coming with me.
“I wish we could ride together,” said Charlie. “I’ll see you at t
he house?”
“Sure,” I said.
Just as we were getting into our cars, a couple of Charlie’s coworkers pulled in and held her up. Thinking it might be a good idea if I hurried home, just in case there were any wayward ghosts acting up, I waved and drove off.
I reached home before Charlie and breathed a sigh of relief to see that even Mrs. Goodkeep wasn’t waiting for me. Mr. Bone must be keeping her in line, I figured. I meant to wait up so I could talk to my new roommate, but I was too tired. I dragged myself upstairs and threw myself into bed, hoping I had another night of Charlie not knowing my secret.
I needed my rest. I had a lot to think about.
Chapter Eleven
I spent the next day around the farmhouse. Charlie was already gone when I woke up and Greer was still sleeping, so I had cold cereal for breakfast.
Charlie had left the Gazette on the kitchen table, and I flipped through it idly while I ate. There was no mention of Gracie’s disappearance, and I thought that was very strange. But there was something else that was interesting: an article about the string of robberies. There had been another one the night before, this time at a sporting goods store called Mintwood Mountain Mucking. The robberies were steadily moving closer to the Costume Shop, and Liam had threatened to buy a gun, but I knew he’d never really use one. It made me nervous to think about what he might find to stop the robbers instead.
The sun was high in the sky, so there was no point in trying to talk to any ghosts. When Greer finally did wake up she asked what I’d thought of the conversation with Jeff.
“He was a nice guy, but not Gracie’s type,” I mused. We sat on the porch, enjoying the warm breeze and the fact that the lawn was clear of ghosts – for now.
“Do you think he was lying about dating her?” said Greer.
“I didn’t get that impression,” I said. “He was pretty upset about something.”
“What are you going to do next?” said Greer.
“I’m going back to Gracie’s tonight,” I said. “There have to be other ghosts around her property that saw something or know something. Hank wasn’t there when she disappeared, but I bet another ghost was.”
Witch Way to Mintwood (Witch of Mintwood Book 1) Page 8