Secondhand Spirits

by Blackwell, Juliet

  “Yet another good-looking man in here,” said Maya as she handed me my mocha. “Things are looking up.”

  “Maya and I have a little present for you,” said Bronwyn with a smile. “We saw it in Sandra’s window—her niece is watching over the store—and we couldn’t resist.”

  “A present? For me?” I felt like Oscar when I gave him his pendant. When was the last time someone had given me a gift? Then I remembered Oscar, currently snoring contentedly on his purple silk pillow. I guess it’s true that the best things in life are accidents: My familiar turned out to be my favorite present ever.

  Carefully I untied the yellow ribbon and the pretty pink wrapping on the flat package. It was a bumper sticker.

  I couldn’t stop laughing. We carried it outside, where I proudly affixed it to the steel bumper of my vintage Mustang.

  It read: Rhymes with Bitch.

  “Oh, now, that’s funny,” a voice came from behind us.

  I turned to see Aidan walking toward us. Maya and Bronwyn said a quick hello, then scooted back to the store to give us privacy.

  “I’m glad to see you’re finally embracing your witchy self,” he said with a wicked smile. “Now, about that debt you’ve incurred . . .”

  Author’s Note

  Most of the spells used throughout this book are based on information gathered from practicing witches in personal interviews, but none should be repeated.

  The directions for creating a mandragora are found in a fascinating, massive collection of spells and incantations originally published by Paul Christian in 1870, and recently reissued: The History and Practice of Magic by Lida A. Churchill and Paul Christian, published by Kes singer Publishing, 1994. The directions are found on pages 401-402.

  Don’t miss the next spellbinding mystery in the Withcraft Mystery series by Juliet Blackwell

  A Cast-off Coven

  Available from Obsidian in June 2010

  “I need something to guard against ghosts . . .” whispered the young woman slouching at the counter. She cast a nervous glance around the shop floor, which was empty except for racks of great vintage clothes, cases of costume jewelry, and shelves jammed with hats. “A protective . . . thingamajig.”

  “A talisman?” I asked.

  “That’s it.”

  “Talismans don’t really guard against ghosts, per se—”

  “Whatever.” She shrugged. “It’s better than nothing.”

  Her feathery bright pink hair brought to mind a silly children’s toy, the kind one might win after stuffing ten dollars’ worth of quarters into the mechanical contraption at the Escape from New York Pizza parlor a few blocks down Haight Street. But from the jaded look in her heavy-lidded amber eyes and the multiple piercings along her left eyebrow, I suspected the overall effect she was after was more “aggressively alienated youth” than “cuddly stuffed animal.”

  “You’re a student at the San Francisco College of Fine Arts?” I said as I opened the back of the glass display case and pulled out the black velvet-covered tray that held my rapidly diminishing collection of hand-carved wooden medallions. There had been a run on them lately.

  “How did you know that?” Her eyes flew up to meet mine. “Can you read minds?”

  “No.” I shook my head and stifled a smile. “My assistant, Maya, goes to the College of Fine Arts. We’ve had a lot of students stop by in the last week, asking for protection.”

  “Did I hear my name?” Maya emerged from the back room. She was petite, had delicate features, and wore her hair twisted into thick black locks that ended in a series of beads that clacked pleasantly against the silver rings and cuffs adorning each ear. “Oh, hey, Andromeda.”

  “Um, hey,” the customer said to Maya with a nearly imperceptible lift of her chin. Pink hair swayed as she tilted her head in question. “Where do I know you from again?”

  “Sculpture class,” Maya answered. “We’ve met a few times.”

  “Oh, yeah—my bad. So, you’ve told her about the ghosts at the school?” Andromeda asked Maya. “The footsteps out in the hallways, the heavy breathing, doors opening and closing . . .”

  “As a matter of fact, I have.”

  “It turns out that the main building”—Andromeda leaned across the counter toward Maya and me, her voice dropping to a fierce whisper—“was built on top of an old cemetery.”

  “That’s mostly an issue in the movies,” I pointed out. “It doesn’t actually mean there are ghosts lingering.”

  “I’ve heard something, too, though, Lily, along with half the school,” Maya said.

  The trepidation in my assistant’s serious dark eyes gave me pause. Maya rarely asked for—or needed—anyone’s help, and she retained a healthy dose of cynicism about the world of the paranormal. So I had been more than a little surprised a few days ago when she had asked me for a protective talisman, and even more so when she brokered an unusual deal with the school’s provost, Dr. Marlene Mueller: If I could calm the students’ fears of ghosts running amok in the campus hallways, I could help myself to the contents of a recently discovered storage closet chock-full of Victorian-era gowns and frilly unmentionables.

  As a purveyor of vintage clothing, I leapt at the chance.

  But there was a fly in this supernatural ointment: I don’t know much about ghosts.

  I’m a witch, not a necromancer. Few outside the world of magick appreciate the difference, but trust me, the two vocations don’t involve the same skill sets. For some reason, my energy attracts spirits like flies to honey, but I can’t understand a cotton-pickin’ word they say. “In terdimensional frustration” is what I call it.

  One thing I do know is that all of us walk over interred corpses all the time. People are born; they live; they die. It’s been the same story throughout the millen nia, and the physical remnants of our earthly sojourns— our bodies—have to go somewhere. If simply walking across a grave were enough to incur a curse from beyond, none of us would live long enough to attend kindergarten, much less college.

  “We’re supposed to meet Dr. Mueller’s daughter, Ginny, at school tonight to take a look around,” Maya told Andromeda.

  “You’re trying to see the ghost on purpose?” Andromeda gaped at both of us for a moment, then shivered as though a goose had just walked over her grave.

  Looking down at the selection of talismans on the counter, she picked up a medallion, weighing the cool wooden disk in her hand. Each full moon, I make the talismans from the branch of a fruit tree, carving ancient symbols of protection on them and consecrating them in a ceremony of rebirth. However, just as in the natural world, there are few absolutes in the realm of the supernatural. The medallions are powerful sources of support, but on their own aren’t enough to stop a determined force of evil. It’s kind of like having a big dog in the house: He might not chase off every ne’er-do-well, but the average mischief makers go elsewhere.

  “Does it matter which one I get?” Andromeda asked. “Or are they all the same, protectionwise?”

  “They’re—” I began.

  Andromeda dropped the medallion and screamed, flattening herself against a stand of frothy wedding gowns. The clothes rack teetered under the pressure.

  “What the eff is that?”

  Oscar, my pot-bellied pig and wannabe witch’s familiar, snorted at her feet.

  “That’s Oscar, the store mascot.” Maya smiled. “He sort of grows on you.”

  “He won’t hurt you, Andromeda,” I said to the pink-haired young woman still cowering against the white wall of silks and satins. Clearly she wasn’t a pet person. Or maybe she just wasn’t a pet pig person. “Oscar, go back to your bed.”

  Oscar snorted again, looked up at me, rolled his pink piggy eyes, and trotted back to his purple silk pillow.

  Andromeda wiped a thin hand across her brow. “I’m a nervous wreck. Ghosts, now pigs . . . I just wish everything would get back to normal.”

  “This one should help,” I said as I held up a medallion car
ved with the ancient symbol of a deer and an Aramaic inscription. I had braided and knotted the cord from silk threads in five powerful colors: red, orange, turquoise, magenta, and black. It suited her.

  Andromeda bowed her head to allow me to slip the talisman on, and I couldn’t help but notice the pale, vulnerable curve of her slender neck. Her vibrations were clear as a bell—bright and frightened, almost tangible, and though I was only ten years her senior, I felt a surge of maternal protection. Like her mythical namesake, who had been offered as a naked sacrifice to a sea monster, this Andromeda had a lot on her mind.

  As we used to say back in Texas, she was scareder than a sinner in a cyclone.

  But not of a ghost, or even a pig.

  Andromeda was scared of something altogether human.

  “Don’t you need any, you know, ghost-hunting stuff?” Maya asked later that night after I managed to squeeze my vintage Mustang convertible into an impossibly small spot in front of Bimbo’s on Columbus Avenue. Proud of my parking finesse, I led the way up Chestnut toward the San Francisco College of Fine Arts. The cool night air was fragrant with a whiff of salt off the bay, the aroma of garlic from the North Beach restaurants, and a heady floral perfume—early blooming brugmansia and jasmine were my guess. San Franciscans did like their flowers.

  Slung over the shoulder of my vintage dress was my trusty Filipino woven backpack, and on my feet were easy-to-flee-in Keds.

  But no legitimate ghost-hunting stuff.

  “Oops,” I said. “Guess I left my catch-a-spirit kit in Hong Kong.”

  “Very funny. Seriously—you don’t have any special equipment or anything?”

  “Like what? Stakes and crosses?”

  “Those are for vampires,” Maya pointed out.

  “Right, I get that mixed up. Stakes would be immaterial. Get it? Immaterial? Like ghosts?”

  Maya gave me a pity smile. “The guys on that TV show haul a lot of equipment around with them. Mostly electronic stuff.”

  “They no doubt bought most of it at Radio Shack’s annual clearance sale. Just how do they expect to capture energy on film?”

  “I’m just saying.” Maya shrugged. “You should get cable. It’s very educational.”

  “But if I watched TV, when would I find the time to traipse around town looking for phantoms?”

  Besides, I thought to myself, I already know darned well that ghosts are real.

  We arrived at the campus. Our footsteps echoed off the ochre stucco walls of the covered walkway as we trod upon red saltillo tiles worn down by the feet of thousands of nuns, and now art students, for more than a century. The San Francisco College of Fine Arts was housed in a gorgeous example of Spanish revival architecture, complete with red-tiled roofs, intricate plasterwork, graceful arches, and a bell tower. So far the vibrations of this convent-turned-art school felt largely positive, with just enough negative thrown in to prove its claim of being a historic building.

  After all, bad stuff is a part of life. Shadows are necessary, if only to emphasize the light.

  “Just remember, ghosts aren’t usually malevolent,” I said after Maya and I met up with Ginny Mueller, the provost’s daughter. “They’re just remnants of a past life, or trapped energy from someone who used to be just as human as the next person. There’s really nothing to fear.”

  Ginny snorted. “Have you tried to find the essence in a hunk of stone at three in the morning with a ghost breathing down your neck?”

  “Can’t say that I have,” I conceded.

  The place was as quiet as the proverbial tomb as the three of us climbed the broad, tiled staircase that swept up to the second floor. On the landing waited a tall young man wearing a security guard’s uniform and a badge that read KEVIN MARINO.

  He stood ramrod straight, shoulders back and chin lifted, the very model of a rough, tough security guard prepared to protect the womenfolk. I wasn’t sure how he intended to do that since as far as I could tell the most threatening item in his possession was his rusty tin badge. Still, I gave him points for effort.

  “Hey.” Kevin greeted us with a lift of his chin. He focused on me. “You the ghost buster?”

  “Sort of. I’m Lily Ivory.” We shook hands.

  “Kevin.” He paused. “Where’s your, uh, ghost-huntin’ stuff?”

  “She left it in Hong Kong,” Maya said.

  “Oh. Well, all’s quiet so far. There was a heckuva lot goin’ on last night, though. Moaning, doors slamming . . . Thought it might be one o’ them poultry heists.”

  “Someone’s stealing chickens?” I asked, confused.

  Maya nudged me. “He means poltergeists.”

  “Ah.” No wonder I couldn’t talk to the dead, I reflected. At times I could scarcely understand the living. “My mistake.”

  “Where’d you want to start?” asked Kevin.

  “Let’s start with the area of greatest activity,” I suggested.

  Kevin stared at me.

  “The noisiest area,” I clarified.

  “Hmm. Lots o’ those. Lots o’ those, indeed.”

  “Which one’s the worst?”

  “Well, now, that’s hard to say. Darned hard to say.”

  “Surely the noises emanate from somewhere?”

  “Like I said, there’s lots o’ places like that.”

  Either Kevin was a dim bulb or he was stalling. Was he lonely and wanted to hang out with us? Was he afraid?

  I forced myself to smile. “Pick one.”

  “The bell tower?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Do you think . . .” Maya said hesitantly, her face looking pinched in the dim light of the hallway, “maybe we could start with the studios?”

  I reminded myself that humans—normal humans, that is—aren’t as sanguine as I am about the supernatural. All structures hold some ghosts, the whispery vestiges of the souls who have passed through. Most consist of little more than residual feelings and fleeting emotions, not the apparitions of lore. And most aren’t a problem. They tend to keep a low profile, noticed only by those who, like me, are . . . different. A ghost’s main impact on the human world is to lend its vibrations to a place, making it warm and welcoming, or cold and off-putting.

  As someone who has lived a mostly solitary life, I revel in these vibrations, which make me feel connected to the past, to those who have gone before. The same feeling drew me to old clothes, which also carry a fragment of the energy of those who had worn them. Most people go through life unaware of the overlay of the past, which is just as well. On the rare occasions when they make a connection to the beyond it scares the you-know-what out of them.

  “Has there been activity in the studios?” I asked Maya.

  “Not really.”

  “Then let’s not bother. Straight to the bell tower, I say. I want to get to the bottom of this. But listen—no need to come if you don’t feel comfortable. I’ll do my best to slay the critter and meet you in the café for a nightcap. No sweat.”

  “I’m coming.” Maya wasn’t the type to back down.

  “Me, too,” said Ginny.

  “Yeah, we got your back,” said Kevin.

  I smiled, but I had to admit that our foursome was one sorry excuse for a ghost-hunting team: two jittery students, one security guard whose chief virtue was that he was not carrying a gun, and one bona fide witch who could not communicate with the dead if her life depended on it. And nary a ghost-catching electronic device to be found.

  “Okay. Let’s go see if we stir up anything at the bell tower,” I said, heading down the corridor, which ended in a T a few yards in front of us.

  Suddenly I heard something: the muffled sound of a girl weeping.

  I looked back at my companions. “Do y’all hear that?”

  “Yeah,” Ginny said, “but that’s not what we usually—”

  I gestured for my companions to flatten themselves along the wall and wait, then carefully stuck my head around the corner. A young woman leaned up against the wall, w
eeping. Pink strands swayed with the shaking of her shoulders.

  “Andromeda?” I said, approaching her. “What’s wrong?”

  She sniffed, wiped her arm over her wet face, threw her shoulders back, and looked up at me, as though she weren’t sobbing a moment ago.

  “Nothing’s wrong. Hey,” she said to the others with a slight lift of her chin.

  “Hey,” said Kevin, mimicking her chin raise.

  “Hey,” repeated Ginny.

  “Hey,” echoed Maya.

  I gritted my teeth. I’ve been in California for only a couple of months, so perhaps with time I’ll take to the local manner of exchanging heys instead of actual greetings. But would a simple “How are you?” or “Pleased to meet you” kill these people?

  “I gotta go,” said Andromeda as she hurried past our group. “See you guys later.”

  We all watched as she beat a hasty retreat down the corridor and disappeared around the corner. After exchanging curious glances, we continued on our way.

  “This way to the tower?” I asked.

  Kevin nodded. “Straight ahead and to the right. Almost there.”

  I was beginning to wonder whether we’d find anything at all. From the students’ stories, I expected to sense something supernatural from the moment I set foot on campus, but so far this evening the actions of the humans were the only odd behavior of note. Maybe it was the spooks’ night off, or maybe the students had managed to freak themselves out with the combination of too little sleep, too much caffeine, and forlorn tales of lost loves. A potent brew, I knew from personal experience.

  We turned the corner.

  Ginny screamed.

  About the Author

  Juliet Blackwell is the pseudonym for a mystery author who, together with her sister, wrote the Art Lover’s Mystery series. The first in that series, Feint of Art, was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Juliet’s lifelong interest in the paranormal world was triggered when her favorite aunt visited and read her fortune—with startling results. As an anthropologist, the author studied systems of spirituality, magic, and health across cultures and throughout history. She currently resides in a happily haunted house in Oakland, California, where she paints and writes and fends off the overly zealous attentions of her neighbor’s black cat, who seems to imagine himself Juliet’s new familiar. Learn more about the author at www.julietblackwell.net.