by Julia Mills
Oh! And I almost forgot, our dear leader, the Baba Yaga, entered the building riding on a wave of glowing purple smoke, combined with sparkling blue bubbles that exploded in a cloud of raining rainbow sprinkles while mystical winds that made the Santa Ana’s look like a blow dryer whipped our witchy asses around willy-nilly. So, to say that I respect the power of the Baba Yaga or the witch next in line to be the Baba Yaga is a total understatement. I will bow down and kiss Carol’s lime-green, patented-leather, four-inch, opened-toed stiletto-heeled sandals if she wants me to just to stay on her good side.
Now, where was I? Oh yeah, I was shaking Zelda’s hand and thinking, “Wow! She is nothing like Carol.” I mean, I wasn’t dissing on the Baba Yaga, but the witch standing in my house was young, thin, and quite the looker. Her clothes were in style, her auburn hair cut to perfection and her nails painted a gorgeous light pink.
Looking back to her face, I knew I’d been busted checking her out when she winked, her green eyes sparkling and laughed, “You were expecting Carol 2.0, right?”
Embarrassed, but letting it slide, cause, hey, she caught me looking, I nodded, “Yep, I sure was.” Then letting go of her hand and pushing the door closed as she walked on in, I quickly added, “And there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Laughing out loud, Zelda patted my arm, “Oh, girl. Never fear. I’ve been trying to introduce our beloved leader to twenty-first-century fashion forever, but she’s just not having it. And since she’s the boss,” Zelda shrugged, “I just let Carol be Carol.”
“Good plan,” I agreed with a chuckle.
Taking off her shoes and curling up on my couch, Lola did a little ‘hello there’ move with a wiggle of the fingers of her right hand and conjured a pitcher of margaritas with 3 frosty glasses, salted rims and all. “Voila, refreshments are served.”
“I see your spell-casting lessons are going well,” I commented, raising an eyebrow as I sat down in my old, ratty, extremely comfortable recliner.
“Oh, yeah, Lola remembers all the rules and can whip up whatever the hell she wants, but ask her to clean up a mess or Goddess forbid, help with diaper duty, and the goofball ‘forgets’ everything I’ve ever taught her.” Zelda rolled her eyes as she took a sip of her margarita.
“Whatever,” Lola shook her head. “I’m not that bad. I did promise to babysit, after all. You and that hunky mate of yours definitely need some alone time. Your little jaunts to the Floating Nookie Hut just aren’t cutting it anymore.” She fluffed her hair. “And besides that, your Twinkie wrappers are everywhere.”
“Leave my Twinkie wrappers out of it,” Zelda demanded then pointed with the index finger that was wrapped around the stem of her glass. “Sure, you offered to babysit, but only if you can bring Vlad and Vanessa along.” She sat down on the far end of the couch and crossed her legs while leveling her irritated look at Lola. “Which means you and Vlad will be sucking faces, along with other things,” the redhead tilted her head and gave my friend a knowing look. “While Vanessa, the poor dear, gets to chase the twins.”
Sticking out her tongue at Zelda, a sure sign she knew she was losing the argument, Lola, one of my oldest and dearest besties, who had just recently become a witch after being the alter ego of a lawyer-turned hellhound (totally a story for another time), flipped her long dark hair over her shoulder, turned to face me, completely dismissing Zelda and said, “Alright, kiddo, you put out the witchy S.O.S., what’s the problem?”
“It’s Auntie Dot and Sam. I can’t get rid of them.”
“Wait a minute,” Lola stopped mid-drink, the rim of her glass touching her lip and said, “Auntie Dot is dead. I was at her wake.” She cocked a single eyebrow at me. “And who the hell is Sam?” I was just about to answer when she added, “And, more importantly, why am I just hearing about this now? The old bird’s been dead for almost six months.”
Before I could answer, a thick plume of pale-pink smoke swirled in from the hall. Whooshing around the room, the cotton-candy-colored cloud spread instantly popping bubbles the color of fresh cut grass in its wake that added the sweet scent of Chantilly perfume to the whole theatrical scene. Appearing before us, my infamous Auntie Dot sat on the wide, walnut mantel, blowing lilac-colored smoke hearts at us as she puffed away on her cigarette and in a raspy snicker announced, “The stories of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Then glaring at Lola, she went on, “And I take great offense to being called an ‘old bird’, thank you very much.” Being her usual manic self, my auntie immediately barked with laughter at her own joke, adding, “And let me tell you girls, my afterlife is turning out to be one helluva party.”
Downing her margarita, Lola sat on the edge of the couch, looked at me and then back to Auntie Dot before deciding to explain the finer points of my dilemma to my favorite relative. “Harmony had you cremated. Performed the Ritual of the Dead perfectly. Even had a new carton of your ciggys, a bottle of Chianti, a carrot cake from Morrelli’s Bakery and purple petunias on your altar. I mean, come on, it was all your favorite things.” My best friend jumped to her feet and shook her finger at my aunt. “So, what gives Ermengarde Dorthea? Why the hell didn’t you cross over?”
Now, I knew the shit was about to hit the fan when Lola used Dot’s given name. To say she hated it was the understatement of the year, and I guess I understood. Who wants to have a name that sounds like a nasally pronunciation of oh-my-God? It was easy to see why she’d been known as Dot her entire life.
But, the big surprise came precisely two seconds later when the old gal started to cry. Then sob. Then wail like Brown & Williamson had stopped making her cigarettes and there was a worldwide shortage of lighters. Auntie Dot never cried. I mean, never-ever-ever shed a tear. Not even when she sneezed or yawned.
Still wondering how the old bird, as Lola had called her (I like it. I’m keeping it. Lola won’t care.) escaped her ‘time-out’ urn in the basement, I snapped my fingers, blissfully muting my auntie’s tirade, then blew out a long breath as I huffed, “Now, you see why I haven’t been returning your calls and I sent out the witchy bat signal.”
Looking as if she might just chuck me, my house, and every tiny bit of my special brand of crazy into another dimension, Zelda plastered on a rather manic smile, reached into her large, black leather Kate Spade bag with silver star-shaped studs across the handles, pulled out an old, moldy-smelling leather-bound book and laid it on the table. Pointing at what I recognized as a grimoire, she nodded, “Yeah, looks like you’re in a pickle, Sister, but I can tell it’s a pickle of your own making. You…”
Holding up my hand, palm out, (You know, in ‘talk-to-the-hand’ style.) I interrupted, “If you’re going to say that I have to want the ghosts gone to get them gone, I think I’ll just snap my fingers and become a bat. Hanging upside-down and sucking blood has got to be better than this.”
“The sucking part really is…”
“Zip it, Lola,” Zelda and I scolded in unison.
Enjoying one brief second of silence, I slowly shook my head before quickly apologizing to Zelda. (Mostly because the bright rainbow colors of her magic were turning to a shimmering gold which I knew meant she was getting super pissed and I really didn’t want to be a bat. I had just let my temper get away with me, ya’ know? And, I wanted to keep the next Baba Yaga as a friend.)
Shrugging my shoulders, I nodded, “I know you’re right and I really do want them to leave. I mean, come on, how does it look for a witch who’s a Level 1 Medium, Auror and Necromancer to have two ghosts roaming around her house?”
“Well, I haven’t known you for long, but from what I see I have faith that you’ll figure it out.” The powerful, red-headed witch pointed back to the book she’d left on the table. “Use that. I’m sure it’ll help.” She walked towards Lola, who already had the door open with one foot on the porch and went on, “You can do this, Harmony. You just have to want to do it.”
Stopping with her hand on the doorknob, Zelda looked over her shoulder, her eyes pa
nning the hallway to the kitchen, and chuckled, “And it looks like you’ve got more than enough help. Good luck.”
Standing in the middle of my living room with Auntie Dot still in her cone of silence, Sam standing in the doorway looking at me with his dreamy brown eyes while Festus and Wendy crept closer and Ernesto sang out ‘All About That Bass’ from upstairs, I did the only thing I could think of. I walked to the couch, threw myself face-first onto my mountain of decorative pillows and screamed until I lost my voice.
It may not have been the most mature answer to my problems, but it was a damn sight better than drinking the rest of Lola’s margaritas and drunk texting the cute, young warlocks at Boo U.
Just a little better…but better none the less…
Chapter Three
After getting Auntie Dot settled down enough to speak in coherent sentences, I found out what had brought on the waterworks and boy-howdy was it a doozey. Apparently, my dear old aunt, the woman who not only changed my diapers, but also taught me to curl my hair with a snap of my fingers and trip the mean girls at school with no more than a wink of my eye, had fallen in love with a cute sailor in Her Majesty’s Navy when she was much younger. The sad part of the tale is that she left the poor sap at the altar. (I know. I was shocked, too. I didn’t even know the old bird had been to the UK.)
“You did what?” I looked at her like she had just sprouted three heads and a tail. “How did I not know about this? You always said you’d never married because no man could catch you.”
“And the same still holds true,” she sniffed, obviously miffed at my shock and awe, thinking that I was surprised a person of the opposite sex wanted to spend all of eternity with her. (That wasn’t it at all what I meant, but there was no the time to explain. She wouldn’t have listened anyway. Did I mention Dot lives to have all eyes on her?) “He didn’t catch me. I was a runaway bride.”
“And…” I rolled my hands over one another like the baker’s man rolled and rolled in the Patty Cake song.
“And… it’s just like it sounds. I didn’t go to the Chapel. I packed my bags. Bought a ticket. Jumped on a ship and came here and well…that’s where I stayed.”
“And you never heard from him again?”
“Um…well…I got a few letters that were forwarded from my old address, but I never opened them.” She floated across the room and looked out the window. “I guess I was scared. I hadn’t told him I was a witch and he was going off to war and…”
I could tell Auntie Dot had really cared about the guy, so I asked, “Is he still alive? Can we track him down? I’m guessing this is your ‘unfinished business’ and you have to make things right with him so you can cross over?”
She kept staring out the window, acting as if she hadn’t heard me when I knew damn good and well she had.
“Am I close? Hot? Cold? Warm? Can I buy a vowel? Throw me a bone here, Dot.” Tapping my foot, trying not to be impatient, but quickly losing every bit of my cool, I was just about to stand up and demand answers when Sam appeared at my side.
“Give her a minute,” he whispered. “She’s been trying to figure out how to tell you for years.” He pointed over his shoulder. “Dot’s afraid you’ll think less of her because she ran out on her own wedding.”
“You have got to be kidding me?” I whispered back. “Hell, at least she got asked. I’m heading towards thirty with a house full of bat-shit crazy that no man would dare come near.”
“I wouldn’t say no man.”
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to find out what Sam meant by his comment because at that precise moment Auntie Dot decided it was time to tell all. Wouldn’t ya’ know? I was about to find out more about Sam besides the fact that he was dead and ‘haunting’ my house and we have to play This Is Your Life, Ermengarde Dorthea Starshine. (Do not laugh at her last name, cause just like John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, it’s my name, too and I will snap my fingers and put fuzzy ears on your head and a tail on your butt. Ya’ get me?)
Sitting back and getting comfortable, I waited as Auntie Dot got settled in her place on the mantel and began to recount her tale of woe. It wasn’t long before Festus, Wendy, and Ernesto, who was begrudgingly allowed out of his cage and trying to behave but failing miserably, came in and sat on the rug in front of the fireplace to listen.
With her cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, (Hey, you have to give her credit, she does have style.) Auntie Dot began to tell the tale of her lost, or thrown away, however you look at it, love.
“It was June Nineteen Fourteen, and the first World War was just about to begin. I’d met Nigel at the local pub where I told fortunes. He was so tall and handsome, the son of some oil man who’d moved to England from the States to find his roots. I’d seen the handsome young man eyeing me from the bar, but it took until his fourth consecutive visit for him to come over and ask me to do a reading.”
The old bird sighed, smiling a dreamy smile that made me grin, as she continued, “From the moment I took his hand in mine, I knew we were meant to be. There weren’t just sparks but a whole big bang of fireworks shooting all through me.” Auntie Dot unconsciously shivered, her voice taking on a faraway tone. “He asked me out on a proper date and after dinner walked me home. It was just perfect. When we got to the boarding house I lived in, we couldn’t part, so we ended up sitting on the stoop and talking for hours.
Stopping, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting her next words flow as she slowly exhaled. “Our first kiss was magical. I heard music and bells and felt butterflies in the pit of my stomach.”
Opening her eyes, Auntie Dot looked all around the room, everywhere, that is, except at me as she continued, “Every free second was spent together, and just three weeks after our first date, Nigel proposed. I was the happiest girl in the world.”
Her expression darkened, her eyes got sad, and the corners of her mouth turned down. “Then that bloody world war started, and everything went to hell in a handcart. Nigel enlisted and wanted to get married before he shipped out. It was all so fast. He knew nothing about me except that I had a sister, my parents were dead, and I told fortunes for a living.”
She flew off the mantel and circled the room, her words coming faster and faster. “I was a hundred and twelve years old, and a witch and the man I loved more than life itself had not even the slightest idea. I’d planned to tell him before the wedding, but when the date got moved up there just wasn’t time. It all happened so fast and…and…and…”
And that’s when the waterworks started again. Only this time, my dear old aunt wasn’t able to contain her magic, so when she started to cry, so did my house, that had been her house, that was connected to all the Starshine magic. No. I am not kidding. The house literally shed tears. Think sprinklers, like the ones you see in office buildings, but instead of being spaced a couple of feet apart, they are all lined up like tiny little soldiers, all over my freakin’ ceilings and pouring gallon upon gallon of water on my head.
Screaming over Dot’s wails and the deluge soaking not only me but all my possessions, I nearly lost my cool in a most monumental fashion when I turned around and there standing in the center of the chaos was Sam, laughing out loud, holding out his hands and asking me to dance.
“Come on, Harmony, let’s dance in the rain. Dot’s already flown off to parts unknown, and the others are hiding under the dining room table to keep dry. Time to forget your troubles and have some fun.”
The twinkle in that damned man’s, ghost’s, hotties…oh, damn, whatever he is, chocolate brown eyes and the way his longish, dark curls kissed the line of his jaw was too much to resist. Closing the distance between us, I walked into his arms and laughed and danced until the storm passed.
And yeah, I know, another not-so mature decision, but it was fun, and it kept me from killing, whoops! make that re-killing my aunt. At least give me credit for that.
Chapter Four
“Harmony and Sam sitting in a tree…”
/> “Stop right there, Dot. “I glared. “I know that look in your eye and that shit is so not happening.”
“Whatever, I know what I saw. That’s all I’m sayin’.” She fluffed her gray curls and sniffed, putting on an Academy award-winning pout as she poo-pooed, “You don’t want to be like me – still regretting the one that got away…”
“You left at the altar,” I corrected.
“Heartbroken and all alone…”
“Dead, haunting your niece while surrounded by the ones you love,” I sighed.
“Doomed to an eternity of roaming these empty halls…”
“Having just as much fun and raising just as much hell as you did when you were alive,” I interjected.
Throwing back her head and laying her hand on her forehead, giving one of the best Scarlett O’Hara impressions I’d ever witnessed, Dot batted her heavily mascaraed eyelashes and moaned, “Being heckled by my favorite niece…”
“Only niece,” I shook my head and rolled my eyes. “Chill your boots, Moaning Myrtle,” (Yes, I absolutely LOVE Harry Potter and Mona was one of my favorite characters. Thank you, J.K. Rowling.) “Ya’ dadgum good and well know that I’m gonna do my best to summon up your long-lost love. I just have to get these checks in the bank.” I shook the stack of uncashed bank notes in her semi-transparent face. “Since I have no vehicle, Festus is gonna show me how to deposit them on the web.” I stood and walked around my aunt, (Because walking through her, or any ghost for that matter, gives me the creeps and makes me feel like a witch-flavored popsicle – can you say yuck?) and headed for the door, adding, “So, please stay out of my office for a little while. I really need to get this done, and you know very well that all technology in the world hates me.”