The Old Witcheroo

by Dakota Cassidy

  Oh, I swear, if that no-good, smarmy, lying, over-the-pond dweller was mocking me, he was going to pay!

  Spinning back around—there was no one. Fakebottom had left the building, so to speak, and everyone else had returned to the business of their day.

  It had to be the heat. It must be the heat. It had somehow melted my brain into my skull and I was hearing things.

  “Hah! Bravo, my little malutka!”

  I froze as my eyes went wide. “Win?” Wait, since when did Win have a Russian accent?

  A hearty laugh followed my question. “No! It is I, Arkady Bagrov!”

  Oh, good goddess.

  Chapter 9

  “Listen, um, Arkady, is it?”

  “Da,” my new friend replied, low and casual.

  “Right. Um, Arkady. I’m not sure what’s going on here. I’m not even sure how I’m hearing you. How am I hearing you?” I’d finally summoned up the courage to ask, still fearing this new voice in my ear was a delusion created from too much sun.

  “It is the magic of the afterlife, my pretty American daffodil. Ahhh, this place! Filled with more wonders than a Russian brothel. No stress, no worries, no machine guns. Wonderful, I say!”

  What was going on and where the heck was Win? If this guy wasn’t some prankster from the realm, then he was Win’s rival. An enemy, so to speak. Did one remain an enemy into the afterlife? Though, Adam Westfield certainly had for me…

  I’d dropped Whiskey off at the house and changed into something more comfortable, sweating bullets the entire ride as this Arkady Bagrov yapped away in my ear, taking up where Win had left off.

  I’d remained silent for most of his one-sided conversation, because, hello. I’m hearing a ghost other than Win in my ear and I’m feeling a little off-kilter. I’m either going mad, was mad, or am well on my way to officially being diagnosed mad.

  I don’t know. I just know Arkady had plenty to say. “What adventure are we on today, my plucky petunia?” he asked, his rich voice resonating in my ear.

  “Hold that thought, would you, Big A? My afterlife skills are a little rusty since I’ve been incommunicado for a while. So let me adjust to hearing you, would you?”

  “Of course.” He offered those two words like a reprieve, as though he were magnanimously giving me a gift.

  Plucking a sleepy Belfry from my purse, I set him on my shoulder. “Psst! Bel, wake up! Are you hearing this?”

  He yawned in my ear with a groan. “Yeah, yeah. I don’t know why I’m hearing this. Come to think of it, I still don’t even know how I can hear Winterbutt, but I hear him. Remember the good old days, when you did all the talking and I was just your tiny but mighty sidekick? And now, I hear this dude, too, and all his vodka and AK-47 talk. Who is he?”

  That’s when I suddenly remembered the conversation Win and I had about plastic surgery. “Don’t you remember?” I whispered-yelled. “Win mentioned an Arkady—he was like a rival Russian spy or something.”

  “Oh, yeah!” Bel agreed, snuggling against my chin as I took a sharp right to head toward Sophia’s apartment. “Something about a nuclear missile, right?”

  “Yes!”

  Arkady cleared his throat, the scratchy noise jarring me. “I am still here, my tender filet of beauty. Why must you behave as though I’m not? It hurts me so.”

  I gripped the steering wheel and inhaled. I’m not hearing things, this was really happening. It took me a moment, but I was able to tap into my lost gift of afterlife communication without too much trouble.

  But where was Win? I’d been pretty rude to him by throwing out the Miranda card. He was right to have gone off elsewhere. Sometimes I went a little overboard with my female empowerment, and now I regretted it. I totally understood his fears for my safety—they really were justified. I wasn’t a spy. I wasn’t trained to deal with ruthless killers. I guess I just didn’t want anyone to tell me I couldn’t do what I wanted.

  “I’m sorry, Arkady. Forgive me. I just had to touch base with someone to be sure I’m not going crazy. I lost my ability to communicate with the afterlife a few months ago. So the fact you’re able to communicate with me is a little…well, exciting.” The tingle in my stomach said so.

  “I see,” Arkady drawled. “You are much different than all the others. When I talk, you do not scream and cry because you can’t see me. There is no, how you say, hysterical baby hugging in a corner. You are strong like Russian male bull!”

  I couldn’t help but bark a laugh. “I think you mean crying in a corner while in the fetal position. And do know, nothing makes my day brighter than being compared to a Russian bull. Anyway, is there something I can do for you? Help you in some way? That’s usually why ghosts contacted me back when I was still in closer touch with the Great Beyond.”

  “Bah!” he barked back. “Arkady Bagrov needs no help. I just need company from time to time. You, my deliciously plump cherry, are good company. You are strong of spirit and quick of wit!”

  I laughed. “Well, thanks.”

  “Also, a little something you should know. That man pretending to be Zero is no Zero. There is only one Zero! In case you wondered.”

  Zero? “Oh! You mean Winterbottom?”

  “Who is this Coldbackside? What is this name? You Americans. All so strange.”

  Zero Below had been Win’s code name. Holy cow. This man knew Win’s MI6 code name?

  “How can you be so sure that’s not, uh…Zero?”

  “I know a fierce opponent when I see him. This imposter is too soft at the knees, too slow in his stride; his jaw isn’t quite as square. The differences, they are subtle, but my trained eye knows. You trust Arkady, he knows that’s no Zero.”

  “You know what this means, right, Boss?” Bel asked.

  Yeah. If there’d ever been any doubt about Win being a spy, he had backup.

  Now the question remained, where was Win?

  * * * *

  “You are veeery crafty, my sumptuous dandelion. You somehow manage to get past the woman with the glare of daggers and greasy boy hair. You do an old Russian spy proud!” Arkady praised me as I made my way down the hall of Sophia’s apartment building.

  As luck would have it, I knew the woman with the glare of daggers and greasy boy hair. Her name was Jory Sprug—the building’s manager. She’d come into Madam Z’s a month or so ago, hoping to connect with her uncle Argo. Thankfully, we’d been successful and she remained grateful.

  I told her I wanted to gather some pictures for Sophia’s memorial service tonight. She’d given me a key to Sophia’s apartment with the promise I wouldn’t disturb anything, because the police had warned her they were due there later today to conduct a search.

  I pulled on my crime-scene gloves and jammed the key into the door, popping it open as a swell of muggy heat greeted me. Entering the tiny hallway leading to the small living room, I inhaled.

  Sophia’s favorite floral scent was everywhere—she was everywhere. In every muted, elegant color choice, in every floral watercolor picture hanging on her walls. Soft and subtle was the best way I could describe the apartment. She’d made this her space, and seeing her calming color choices, the small personal touches, brought more tears to my eyes.

  I scanned the pale lemon wall by the tiny outdated television set to find a shelf brimming with books. Crossing the room, passing a glass-top coffee table with a basket of fake lilacs and a conch shell, I went directly for the books in the hopes they would tell me something about her. Something more intimate than just the foster kid story she’d told Dana.

  Running my fingers over the spines, I made note of several James Bond books, a couple of Tom Clancy, and even a historical romance or two. I wanted to sift through them all, hoping maybe she’d left a bookmark with something written on it or a scrap of paper, anything that would tell me who Sophia was.

  But I didn’t have time right now. The memorial was in less than three hours and I still had to get back and change. So I went to work immediately on surface i
tems, beginning in the living room. I lifted the cushions of her light beige couch with tieback covers she’d obviously handmade, if the sewing machine and bolt of fabric in the corner were any indication.

  I worked my way into her tiny bathroom, where she’d hung pale pink and alabaster decorative towels. One small shelf held her toiletries, her perfume, her hand lotion and moisturizer. I scoured the cabinet beneath the sink and her medicine cabinet, where I found a prescription for Xanax and some aspirin.

  “I wonder if Dana knew she was taking anxiety meds?” I muttered to myself.

  “What did she have to be anxious about, ya think?” Bel muttered back.

  She was always so serene. I had a hard time believing that happened via meds. “Well, the bottle’s still pretty full. I don’t have time to count them, but it doesn’t look like she took many.”

  “Guess you never really know what’s happening on the inside,” Bel remarked somberly.

  The bathroom connected to the bedroom, another soft, pale expression of Sophia. Muted pale pink comforter, matching throw pillows in ivory and various shades of pink, with a fuzzy white teddy bear square in the middle of it all.

  “It doesn’t look like she slept in her bed the night she was murdered. So what made her leave here after Dana dropped her off, Bel? Or was she murdered here and moved, which just doesn’t seem likely, considering the sound a gunshot would make?”

  “Well, there’s always a silencer, but if this guy’s a pro, he wouldn’t do it here. I think it’s like you said, she knew whoever did this, Boss.”

  That pained me far greater than a stranger. A stranger killing her meant it wasn’t personal, not necessarily anyway. But if she knew her killer? It meant someone had beef with a woman who was just shy of perfect.

  “I’m going to see if I can get a feel for her emotions, so hold tight, Bel,” I requested, perching on the edge of her bed. I reached for the soft white teddy bear with a pink nose and held it to my chest, closing my eyes.

  Warmth flooded my chest, invading all my limbs in coursing waves of happiness. This bear had been given to her by someone she cared a great deal for—my guess would be Dana. It looked very similar to the ones the carney had been giving away at the carnival back in the spring.

  But then there was a hint of trepidation tied to it, too, a quickening of my heart in fear. Was that because this bear had left her with a bad memory? Or was this memory associated with Dana, and the rapid pulse of fear was about telling him something that obviously pained her?

  I squeezed it without realizing, almost as though I might wring the answers I needed out of an inanimate object—and that’s when my fingers found a small pocket on the back of the bear’s plumply stuffed body. My eyes popped open as I skimmed the ridge, slipping my index finger inside.

  I’m not sure why I thought to investigate that tiny pocket, but I was grateful I had.

  Inside that pocket was a picture of a woman who looked eerily like Sophia, right down to the dark hair and heart-shaped face. The only difference being, this woman’s eyes were brown and Sophia’s were blue, and the woman was maybe just a little older. She wore a puffy down jacket with a fur-trimmed hood attached, and a pair of fashionable black boots I’d swear were Chanel.

  Her hands were up in the air, as though she’d been victorious at something and she was grinning from ear to ear as the cloudy skies cast a gray shadow above her. Whoever she was, she was standing in front of what I was almost sure was the Sears Tower, which was in Chicago. Right in line with what Chester saw when he found Sophia crying at the library.

  A rush of adrenaline shot along my spine, tingling the entire journey until my head spun. So was Sophia from Chicago? And who was this woman? Sophia’s mother? She didn’t look old enough to be her mother, but in this day and age, everyone looked much younger than they were.

  I fingered the picture, creased from having been folded and very obviously hidden. “Bel! Do you see?”

  “Yep, Boss. Looks a lot like Sophia. So ya think she lied about not having any family?”

  My adrenaline rush crashed. There was that possibility. If she’d lied to Dana about her past, I had to believe it was for good reason. Pulling out my phone, I took a picture of the photo to show Dana and tucked it back into place as I’d found it.

  The rest of the search produced almost nothing. I checked every dresser drawer, every closet, every nightstand. Her fridge had lots of fruits and vegetables in it, and yogurt, along with some leftover baked ziti and bottled water. But I found nothing in her cabinets or kitchen drawers, and there were no pictures of Sophia other than one of her and Dana with the Puget behind them in a selfie.

  No laptop. No phone. Nothing at all personal.

  So what did that mean? Hadn’t Dana wondered why she had no pictures of herself when she was younger? Memories from New York?

  Sighing, I groaned in defeat as I locked Sophia’s apartment back up and made my way down the long hallway.

  “Do not sound so defeated, my little love bug.” Arkady finally chimed in his support. “Pretty girls should never have sad faces. It makes with the wrinkles.”

  Remembering to press my finger to the Bluetooth, the guilt of talking to one of Win’s archenemies finally hit me with clear realization. “Listen, Arkady. I’m not sure if we should be talking at all. Weren’t you and Win…um, I mean, Zero, enemies?”

  “So?” His response was clipped and short. “It does not mean we can’t be friends now, does it? Death changes this game we’ve played for so long.”

  Okay, this was a tough spot. How did I know if Win didn’t hate this guy’s guts? I mean, there was talk of nuclear missiles and plastic surgery and all sorts of spy-ish betrayals.

  “So, he’s my friend, Big A. I’m not a spy or anything. I just mean he’s my friend-friend. I don’t want to betray him by talking to you. I mean, if you need my help with something, I’m happy to try. But I’m not sure why you chose me to talk to in the first place. How did you even know I’d be able to hear you?”

  His sigh was ragged. “Someone you know here sent me to you. He said you talk to dead people all the time. I think he was mistaken. Because I am dead and you do not want to talk to me. Maybe you only talk to Zero? This is a lonely place, my malutka. Sometimes, even dead spies need comrades.”

  My senses went on high alert, making me stop at the staircase leading back out to the parking lot. “Who sent you to talk to me, Arkady?”

  “Let me think on this and see if I can remember. It had to do with a direction of some kind. I’m not good with names. Ummm…”

  He paused while I tried to breathe, praying to the goddess it wasn’t who I thought it might be.

  “West. Yes! It was Westfield. A man named Westfield.”

  I swallowed, the lump in my throat like a rock, the cold chill on my arms raising the hair on them. “Adam Westfield?” I squeaked.

  “Dah!” Arkady chimed. “That was him, malutka. He asked me to send his regards.”

  Chapter 10

  I was still trying to breathe without panicking as I showered and dressed for Sophia’s memorial. Why was Adam Westfield taunting me like this? Was it just to let me know he was capable of watching everything I did? Did he send me a rival of Win’s to prove a point?

  I needed to talk to Win. I also needed a whole lot more than concealer to hide the state of my nose. I peered into my bathroom mirror and cringed. I was purple and yellow and my nostrils were so swollen, if I managed to actually sniff, I’d suck up all the sand Whiskey leaves on the entryway throw rug after a trip to the beach.

  “Ugh, Bel. Would you look at my nose? No amount of foundation’s going to cover this up.”

  “I don’t think a nose replacement could cover that up, Boss,” he retorted with a giggle.

  Pressing gentle fingers to the side of my face that hurt the most, I stuck my tongue out at Bel. “Ha-ha, funny cotton ball bat.”

  “But you’re having a good hair day. Very shiny and sassy. Love the new cut and how it
frames your face. Still think you should see the doctor. But whaddo I know?”

  Leaning on the pedestal sink, I straightened the straps on my navy sundress and smoothed my hair behind my ears. “So…”

  “So?” Bel buzzed back.

  “Has Win talked to you?”

  “Maaaybe.”

  I sighed, closing my eyes to stave off the throb in my temples. “Is he angry with me?”

  Bel buzzed upward to perch on the banana plant he called his playground. “Why don’t you ask him yourself? I’m not getting in the middle of this one, Boss. You’ll always come first, but Win’s my friend, too, and I can tell you when I think you’ve used your words as weapons because you forgot to turn your censor to sensitive.”

  I cast my eyes to the tiled floor in guilt. “You’re right. I’m not a trained spy like Miranda and it was grossly unfair of me to make that comparison.”

  “It ain’t me you should be tellin’,” Bel chirped, snuggling into the underside of his leaf.

  Applying a bit of peach lip gloss, which of course was useless—considering the size of my nose, you almost couldn’t see my lips at this point anyway—I added a gold bracelet to my wrist and prepared to eat crow. I really deserved it.

  Picking up my discarded caftan and slipping into my sandals, I called out, “Win? You there?”

  Not a peep. I looked up at the ceiling. “C’mon, Win. Don’t be like that. I was wrong, okay? I said something in the heat of the moment because I was angry with you for agreeing with Forrest. I felt a little ganged up on at that moment. It’s not like I go and find these killers and confront them. They just find me. If you think about it, it’s not that different than the work I do at Madam Z’s. Ghosts get mad at me, too. I mean, just look at my nose if you need proof—or my snow globe collection. I’m not going to stop doing what I do, Win. I can’t. Though, I promise I’ll try to be more careful.”

  “That’s good to hear, Dove,” Win said, his warmth seeping into my very bones.

  “Yay!” Bel cheered. “Mom and Dad are back together!”

  I giggled, running my finger over his wing. “You comin’ with us, buddy?”