Another burp rumbled up, sending me to the other side of the room, while Gus opened his mouth as wide as he could, to let out the smell.
“Oh, that’s horrible,” he gasped.
“Are you done?”
“I sure as hell hope so. But just in case… where’s the fireplace lighter? And your cell phone? You start filming and next time I burp, I’ll light it up and it’ll be like I’m breathing fire. How cool will that look? I’ll be a YouTube sensation!”
“I’m not filming you lighting your face on fire. Forget it.”
“Wuss. Go on, get your phone.” He geared up for another burp.
“Stop! Please!”
“I’m trying! This isn’t exactly fun for me, either. Where are the antacids?”
I got a bottle of Tums out of the cabinet and tossed them over.
His gut started growling again before he could open the container.
“Maybe if you think about something else. What were you about to say?”
“When?”
“Before your gut became a volcano of ick.”
“I have no idea.”
“Something about Grundleshanks?” I suggested.
He thought about it. “Maybe. I was probably going to do an ‘I told you so’ dance. I hadn’t exactly formulated the sentence before my gut attacked.” Another burp hit, making him grimace. He started pawing through our junk drawer. “Where the hell’s a lighter when you need one?”
“Told me so about what?”
“The toad bones are almost ready,” he said, his face lighting up with joy. He closed the drawer and pointed at me. “Oh, ye of little faith. I told you the weather magic was absolutely the right call.”
My blood ran cold.
The process has already begun. The dominoes are starting to fall.
Was Gus’s gut distress part of it?
“Don’t do it, Gus. Please.”
“Why not?” He asked, mystified. “Because of your Aunt Tillie? You know what I think about her cockamamie warnings.”
Another growl and a massive burp ripped out of him, sending Gus into a spasm of “Icks!”
“No! Because I’m not ready to lose you!” I said, covering my mouth and nose with the top of my shirt.
* * *
Gus spent most of the night in the upstairs bathroom. I tried to go to bed, but the smell on the second floor was so bad, I gave up. I opened all the windows, but there was barely a breeze to shift the cloud of stink.
Since Gus was still awake, I texted him on my phone: It had to have been the plum. I told you, you’d regret eating that plum.
Gus texted back: Shut up. I know.
Me: I’m sleeping downstairs. We may need a hazmat team to come in and clean up the second floor, when you’re done.
Gus: Very funny. I hate u.
Me: You love me. You just can’t handle the truth. Feel better.
Gus: Trying.
Me: Will check on you in a.m., make sure you’re not dead.
Gus: You’re 2 kind. With this much compassion, you could be next Mother Theresa. Ugh. Worst food poisoning ever.
Me: Want me 2 take u 2 hospital?
Gus: No. Now leave me alone, so I can rot away in peace.
I spent the night downstairs, on the couch. My brain must have been working overtime because, in the middle of the night, I woke up with a brilliant idea.
The Internet.
Everything’s available on the Internet, right? And since, according to my mom and Aunt Tillie, the problem seemed to be that it was Grundleshanks’s bones, I could just order some anonymous toad bones and swap them out for Grundleshanks.
I jumped on the computer. Amazon had a toad skeleton, but it was glued to a base. After another hour of clicking around, I finally found a loose skeleton from a toad farm in China. I hit ‘buy’ and went back to sleep, pleased with myself.
Now all I needed to do was find Grundleshanks’s bones, get rid of them, and distract Gus from doing the ritual until the new bones got here. I wondered how long shipping from China was going to take.
* * *
In the morning, I fed the puppies and let them out for their morning run in the back yard. When they were done, I brought them in, poured myself a cup of decaf and looked at the stuffed toad in the aquarium.
“Where are your bones, Grundleshanks? Did Gus put your remains back under the dolman?”
Grundleshanks, very slightly, tilted his head—at least, that’s what it looked like.
“What the heck?!” I tilted my own head and looked at the toad.
It wasn’t even real—not in any actual sense of the word. It was stuffed. The skin was real, but that was all. The inside was some kind of plastic form. How could it possibly have moved?
Was it Grundleshanks’s spirit I was seeing?
Or was I hallucinating?
The process has already begun.
Remembering those words caused a chill to run down my spine.
I rinsed the cup out and put it in the dishwasher. Time to go check on my roomie, and make sure he had survived the night.
I went over to the stairway and hollered Gus’s name.
There was no answer.
I cautiously walked up the stairs, expecting to be incapacitated by stink, but the smell had dissipated.
I walked down the hall and knocked on his bedroom door.
Nothing but silence.
I slowly opened the door.
There was no sign that Gus had been there at all. The bed was neatly made, and everything looked untouched.
I checked my bedroom and both bathrooms, halfway expecting to find Gus dead on the floor, but they were also devoid of human occupants.
Where could Gus have gone?
* * *
I quickly looked through the rest of the cottage. He was nowhere to be found. I was torn between worrying about him and rejoicing at the unexpected opportunity.
But I figured he would have woken me, if there was anything to worry about—if he had gotten worse or needed a ride to the hospital.
So, opportunism won.
With Gus away, I could find those bones, conveniently lose them and blame the dogs. The puppies were always getting into stuff.
I gave his room a quick once-over, eyeballing it. It didn’t count as actually searching, unless physical touch was involved, right?
But there were no bones conveniently sitting out for me to find.
Not on his personal altar.
Not on his dresser.
Not on his nightstand.
Damn it.
* * *
I took the Dobies with me to the cemetery. I decided to start there, just in case Gus had returned to his original plan and the remains were at the cairn.
When we got there, I found the plate for the dead had been licked clean by whatever animals had been out roaming last night. I looked around until I spotted the small stone cairn and dolmen Gus had erected for Grundleshanks’s remains.
I lifted the stones, but other than some smears on the ground and a bunch of ants, there was nothing. Since the stones had been undisturbed before I got there, I didn’t think an animal made off with the bones. Gus must have stashed them somewhere else.
I ordered the Dobes to look around and find the bones, but they just tilted their heads and looked at me, tongues hanging out, panting. Their grasp of English seemed to be limited to commands like, outside, treat, come, sit, stay, walk. Too bad. I could really have used find in their vocabulary right about now. I made a mental note to start training them on it.
I picked up the plate from the grave and headed back to the house. I put the dogs in the run, where they made a beeline for their water bowl and then flopped down in the shade.
If I was Gus, what would I have done with the bones?
Maybe they were inside one of the many decorative containers on his personal altar? Or tucked away in one of his drawers? I sighed. Normally, I would never snoop through Gus’s stuff without asking. But this was an emerge
ncy.
Chapter 26
In the kitchen, I called out Gus’s name, just in case he had returned. But the cottage was as silent as a tomb. I walked upstairs, down the hall and knocked on his bedroom door.
Nothing.
I slowly opened the door and slipped into Gus’s room.
I was starting to feel guilty about my plan to trash the bones. Maybe trash was too harsh a fate. If I could find them and stash them somewhere, Gus still wouldn’t be able to do the ritual—at least, not until the new bones arrived. And I could give Grundleshanks’s bones back to him when he was an old man and no longer obsessed with toad bone lore.
Hating myself a little, I searched through the drawer in his nightstand and then went through all the drawers in his dresser. I was worried about putting the contents back in order but, unlike the room’s neat facade, the inside of the drawers were such a mess, I didn’t think he had any idea what order his stuff was in.
Which was good, because I was going to have to dig through everything. So much for trying to pass off finding the bones as anything other than me snooping.
Once I started digging, I couldn’t stop. I looked in every drawer, through his pants pockets, through his collection of man bags, under the bed, in the back of his closet, on top of shelving units. I found a key in the bottom of his sock drawer that unlocked a trunk stashed under his bed, and I even looked in there. But all I found was sex toys that made me shudder.
On top of his dresser, there was a framed picture of Gus and the dapper, grinning Forrest (which also made me shudder), a dollar eighty-five in change, fifty-eight dollars in bills, and a handful of receipts.
No bones.
Damn it.
I put everything back, but as I was about to leave, Aunt Tillie appeared, scaring the bejeezus out of me.
I jumped, knocking over the picture of Gus and Forrest.
“Geez, Aunt Tillie. Can you wear a bell or something?” I asked, clutching at my chest and focusing on slowing down my heart.
“Did you stop him?”
“I’m trying.” I snapped, as soon as I could breathe normally. “He’s more stubborn than you are.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
I picked the picture up. The glass had a long, jagged crack. Damn, how was I going to explain that to Gus? Earthquake? Train? Poltergeist? The vibrations from a semi-tractor-trailer driving down the road?
I left the picture facedown, hoping he would think he knocked it over without realizing it.
I turned to Aunt Tillie. “I still don’t understand what’s so bad about Grundle—”
“—Hush. Words have power. If you don’t want an entity to become aware of you, don’t go around speaking its business,” Aunt Tillie said, frowning.
“What entity?” I asked, mystified. “The toad? Or Gus?”
“Think with your head, not with your mouth, girl.” She snapped at me. “Or is the baby sapping your brain power?”
“Would you stop? I don’t have the patience to spar with you today. Gus was sick most of the night, so we didn’t get a lot of sleep.”
Aunt Tillie shook her head. “Adele was right. It’s already started. It’s too late.”
“What are you talking about?” Suddenly, I had an epiphany. I narrowed my eyes. “Death doesn’t confer omniscience, does it, Aunt Tillie?”
“That’s not what I said,” she snapped.
I continued to stare at her, starting to get pissed off. “Right. It’s all code for You Don’t Know. You’re freaking me out and making me jump through hoops and you don’t even know what, if anything, is going to happen. You’re making educated guesses like the rest of us. If you knew, you and mom would be on the same page. But you’re not.”
She glared at me. “Trust me, we have more information than you have guesses.”
“Then give me something concrete to work with. You keep saying this ritual is anathema, and using Grundleshanks is forbidden, but why? All I’m asking for is a clue. Something I can use to get through to Gus. Give me something quantifiable or if anything goes wrong, it’s going to be on you. Not me. I’m trying. You’re the one holding out.”
But if anything, she got even tighter-lipped.
“You keep making that face, it’s going to freeze that way,” I snapped.
“You stupid, obstinate child,” she said, giving me a look like I was the dumbest person alive. “There are rules against willy-nilly telling Breathers what’s going on in the Otherworld.”
“No, there isn’t. Witches look into the future all the time.”
“There is a significant difference between you getting visions of the future—or potential futures—and me waltzing in here and laying it out, exactly.”
I growled. I so needed my tarot deck. I put it in a time-out after my adventure with Lisette. I had been counting on it coming back when I needed it to, but it was still nowhere to be found.
Gus! Gus had a tarot deck. I had seen it, in one of the cubbies on his headboard. I quickly pulled out the black velvet bag with the silver pentagram, and dumped out the cards. They all seemed to be there.
“Fine. I need to see it for myself? Then that’s exactly what I’m going to do. You can go back to wherever it is you vanish to.” I told Aunt Tillie. “Hell, Purgatory, Summerlands, Heaven, wherever. Bye.”
She ignored me. As usual.
I shuffled the deck and laid out three cards on the bed.
Devil, Devil, Devil.
“That’s impossible,” I muttered.
Aunt Tillie stood there, looking smug.
“Stop it!” I told the cards. “Show me something else.”
Death. Three of Swords. The Tower.
Transformation. Sorrow. Change through destruction. Boy, those cards sure as hell were familiar.
“Seriously? We are not going through that again. That was so four months ago,” I said. “Show me what’s going on now.”
I laid out three more cards.
Devil, Devil, Devil.
I flipped over the entire deck and spread it out.
All the cards were Devil cards.
“Now do you understand?” asked Aunt Tillie. “Gus is courting one powerful enemy.”
“But what does the D—”
She shot me a look
“—bag,” I hastily amended, “have to do with our toad?!”
“I can’t tell you. I didn’t even tell you this much. You figured it out on your own.”
Ugh. I felt like I was beating my head against the wall.
“I tried warning him,” I said, exasperated. “Gus doesn’t buy it. He doesn’t even see you anymore—or any spirit for that matter. He thinks I’m lying to him. Why can’t you make him see you?”
“Knows everything, does he?” Her eyes glittered. “He’s going to bring trouble you don’t need.”
“That may be, but we’re stuck. He’s tied the rituals together, so he has to go through with it. If he doesn’t, we’re looking at permanent summer. Talk about a global warming nightmare.”
“You have to find another option.”
“I’m trying to swap toads on him, but I have to find Grundle’s bones, or the jig is up. Help me at least find the bones. I don’t know where they are.”
“I cannot continue to put myself at risk, to cure the two of you of your case of the stupids,” she said. “I’m already pushing the boundaries.”
“Are you kidding me?! You’ve barely been any help at all!”
She pointed at me. “Gus is only my concern insofar as he affects you. You stay out of it, you hear me? If you can’t stop him, then leave him to his fate and step away. Don’t try to save him.”
As she vanished, I heard a floorboard creak downstairs. I quickly put the tarot cards back in their bag, returned it to its cubby and slipped out of Gus’s bedroom, hoping he wouldn’t realize I had been snooping through his stuff.
But when I turned around, he was standing right there, holding an enormous carrier bag and glaring at me.
&nbs
p; Crap.
Chapter 27
“Gus! You look better. Are you feeling better? I was worried about you.”
“Is that why you were in my room?” Gus asked, his eyes so cold, I involuntarily took a step back.
“Yes… and no. I was talking to Aunt Tillie,” I said. And then mentally kicked myself for not just going with yes. After all, it was true. Just not all the way true.
“In my room?” he repeated.
“We were talking about you. She still wants you to call off the ritual.”
“Not a chance.” Gus snorted. “What were you really doing?”
The enormous carrier bag started moving.
“What’s in the bag?” I asked. And promptly sneezed.
“I asked you first.”
“I answered you. I was talking to Aunt Tillie.” I sneezed again. “Are you going to tell me what’s in the bag or not?”
“A fur-covered favor. You can talk to your Aunt Tillie anywhere you happen to be. Care to elaborate on why that had to be in my room?”
The bag started meowing.
“Are those… cats?” I kept my eyes fixed on the carrier—it was better than looking at Gus. That must be why I was sneezing.
“Two sweet, innocent kittens. Barely a few months old.”
“Two kittens, my ass,” I said and sneezed. “That bag’s big enough to fit an entire litter of Dobe puppies.”
“They’re big kittens.” They moved around again, the bag sagging under their weight.
“Where’d you get them from? Chernobyl? Three-mile island?”
“You exaggerate, Miss Thing.”
“Look, I don’t care if they’re giant, genetically-modified cats, a gang of hairless Chihuahuas or two small miniature ponies, they can’t stay here. I’m pregnant and I think I’m allergic to them.”
“What the hell kind of witch are you?” Gus frowned. “You can’t be allergic to cats. Witches are simpatico with cats. Besides, you’ve never been allergic to cats before.”
I sneezed again. “Guess there’s a first time for everything. Why are they here at all? You can’t just unilaterally decide to bring home giant mutant cats.”
“They’re not mutants. They’re sick and Forrest can’t have pets at his place. I’m taking care of them until his stepsister can take them.”
Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie We're In Trouble! (The Toad Witch Mysteries Book 2) Page 11