Spirited Blend

by Kennedy Layne

  “Good morning, dear hearts,” Elsie called out, still holding the door for Wilma. The two women were in their seventies and usually only came into the store on Monday morning, after their standing hair appointments. They really liked their scheduled routine, so something must be amiss to have them out and about on a Wednesday morning. “Raven, could you grab Wilma some chamomile tea? She needs something a bit calming after last night.”

  The old biddy might be onto something, Raven. Can you spike mine with some of my premium organic catnip? I need a little something to take the edge off. Preferably something that makes me fall into a coma for the next forty-eight hours to avoid the nightmare that I’m bound to have fighting off Heidi. I wonder if I can bribe Skippy to pretend to be me for a day. That would solve all my problems.

  “What happened, Wilma?” I asked, sharing a concerned look with Heidi.

  “It’s more like what didn’t happen,” Elsie exclaimed, shuffling her way over to the tea leaf section. She squinted as she read the labels. “Wilma has recently taken to seeing things that aren’t there, and I think it’s because she drank a cup of that dandelion tea Pearl gave her as a birthday present last week.”

  Great. You’re going to have all the elderly patrons hyped up on caffeine in this town. As if we didn’t have enough problems as it is.

  Well, there was quite a bit of caffeine in that type of tea blend. Having said that, there wasn’t nearly enough to cause hallucinations. Pearl Saffron hadn’t been able to get enough of the tea blend, and she’d been suggesting it to all her friends. She claimed it put a skip in her step.

  Speaking of Skippy, I think I’m going to skip on out of here, Raven. All this commotion around All Hallows’ Eve is probably what’s got those spirits all riled up. I don’t want to be around when that bell rings in the next doomsday.

  I hopped off my stool and took the paper towel that Heidi had all but shoved in my hand. Wiping the excess coffee from my fingers, I made my way over to where Wilma was fiddling with a button on her jacket.

  “Wilma, what happened last night?” I asked gently, wondering if there was some enchanting tea blend I could whip up in the back that might help Wilma with her hallucinations. It could have simply been a side effect of mixing her daily medications or maybe not getting enough sleep. Nan had a holistic remedy in the back room for such a problem. “Maybe I can help.”

  Wilma shot Elsie an irritated glance while motioning for me to come closer. Once our faces were two inches apart, she finally confessed what had taken place last night. Considering she’d done so in the faintest of whispers, I’m pretty sure I’d heard incorrectly.

  “Could you repeat that?” I asked after clearing my throat. Please, please convince me that I’d heard wrong. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at Leo, whose left eye was undoubtedly bulging while one of his crooked whiskers ticked back and forth uncontrollably. “I think I misunderstood. It’s probably because I haven’t had enough coffee myself.”

  “I saw my dead husband, Raven.” Wilma gave up the pretense of whispering, apparently not caring anymore that her best friend thought she was losing her marbles. “Elsie doesn’t believe me, but I’m telling you…Merle was standing right in the middle of our living room, handsome as could be and even wearing his favorite golfing hat I always hated. I buried it with him, you know.”

  There’s a simple explanation to this, Raven. I’m not quite sure what that is, but you’re going to figure it out without causing us any more problems. I’m ready. Right this second, Raven. Explain away. I’m waiting.

  “Maybe an overload of caffeine wasn’t the best idea to have so late at night,” I said cautiously, grabbing onto Elsie’s theory. There could very well be substance to such an excuse. “Right, Heidi?”

  I should have known better than to ask Heidi her opinion on such matters. As much as Heidi might have wanted Leo and me not to focus on the bell, she absolutely loved the excitement provided by these side mysteries we always seemed to find ourselves involved in. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she dealt with numbers all day. It had to be boring. I honestly didn’t know, but she quickly stepped forward and joined us before I could distract her from asking any more questions.

  “Did Merle talk to you?” Heidi asked, her blue eyes sparkling with interest. “Could you see through him? Tell me all about it.”

  Sweet angel of mercy, my beloved Heidi is going to be the death of me. You know, I’ve heard that about platonic love. It makes one reckless. I want you to know that if she ends up sending me to the afterlife, you’re all coming with me.

  Chapter Two

  “I’ve got to get to the office,” Heidi said reluctantly after glancing at her watch. “Monty wanted to go over the fiscal numbers for the hardware store before the end of the year.”

  Heidi and Wilma had spent the last twenty minutes talking about her encounter with her dead husband. Leo hadn’t moved from his spot near the coffee station, not having quite made it to his pillow in the display window where he normally perched. He was still giving Heidi a lethal sideways glare. He technically hadn’t even moved a muscle since Heidi had encouraged Wilma to share details about her ghost encounter, with the exception of his recurrent facial tic—a bent whisker still twitching every now and then.

  I was ringing up Elsie’s order of chamomile tea, which she was purchasing for Wilma in her time of need. The two older ladies were practically inseparable, best friends forever, and I could just imagine how worried Elsie was about her companion.

  You’ve given me hope, Raven.

  “Call me later?” I asked Heidi pointedly, wanting to lecture her about opening up another spiritual can of worms.

  My ability to do magic was getting better and better with each passing day, but former dead husbands coming back from the dead? Not so much. I avoided necromancy and everything connected to it, with the one exception being Leo.

  I can breathe a little bit easier now. It’s very commonplace for elderly humans to become senile and hallucinate toward the end, you know. This is a simple case of the lights being on, but no one is really home. Be nice to the old lady, Raven. I’m sure your time will come soon enough when you’re nothing but a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic.

  “Isn’t she just darling?” Wilma came to stand next to Elsie at the counter, bumping elbows. “I bet Raven would believe her friend if she said she saw her dead husband. I mean, if she ever has one.”

  Ouch. Good thing my beloved Heidi didn’t hear that slight dig about her social life.

  I agreed with Leo, especially since Heidi’s relationship with Detective Jack Swanson was in a wonderful place right now. Heidi and Jack had basically been dating for as long as Liam and I have, and I’d never been happier.

  “You had too much caffeine before bedtime, Wilma.” Elsie handed over a twenty-dollar bill with a sniff. “Merle has been long dead for well over a decade now. It’s not like he suddenly got up and crawled out of his plot at the cemetery to come visit you.”

  “I agree,” Wilma replied, causing Elsie to nod in approval. Her frown deepened when Wilma continued with her train of thought. “It was my Merle’s spirit from the other side. His body is long gone by now. He must have something to tell me, maybe something I missed after he passed over. I’ve watched television shows about these types of occurrences on the Discovery Channel. They’re quite real, you know. Come to think of it, the show might have aired on the Travel Channel. I’m not sure, but maybe I should give them a call and see who can look into things like this. They can send out one of their paranormal teams to find out what unfinished business Merle has here. He always did buy those lottery tickets. Maybe he left behind a safe deposit box I don’t know about.”

  Elsie actually seemed to be considering Wilma’s explanation, while Leo and I could only stare at them in horror. This situation was getting out of hand. Had I been one hundred percent sure that Merle hadn’t visited Wilma, I’m positive I would have had a good laugh over the antics of these
two best friends.

  Busybodies. That’s what they are, and it’s your job to set them on the straight and narrow path, Raven. Fix this before our quaint little coastal town is overrun by camera crews and overzealous paranormal investigators who might just stumble upon something that could end up outing us on national television. Oh, I feel an asthma attack coming on. Where are my edibles?

  “I never thought about that, Wilma.” Elsie held out her weathered hand for her change. “Did you ever check the tickets that Merle bought right before his heart attack? Maybe that is why he collapsed.”

  “I never could bring myself to open his wallet,” Wilma said, sneaking a candy corn from the dish. She chewed it slowly before opting to take another one. “It still sits on top of our dresser, rest his soul.”

  “You really need to get over that type of sentimentality, Wilma.” Elsie was the more practical of the two, so it didn’t surprise me that she was ready to cash in on some theoretical winning lottery ticket. “We could take a lot of cruises with that type of money, not that we don’t have enough already.”

  Is there a reason you’re not fixing this dreadful calamity? Now is not the time to hesitate, Raven.

  “I think a lottery ticket purchased that many years ago would have expired,” I said as gently as I could, given the circumstances. Wilma clearly still loved her husband, but it was very doubtful that he’d visited her about a lottery ticket. There was one way to find out, though. “Um, Merle wasn’t still hanging around at the house when you left this morning, was he?”

  I hadn’t realized that Leo had finally made his way to his bed in the display window, but his loud gasp of horror resounded in my ears.

  Why would you ask such a thing? Take it back, Raven. Right now, because I don’t have enough edibles stashed away to handle this kind of delusional behavior…on their part or yours.

  Even Elsie blinked a few times, as if it hadn’t occurred to her that Merle still might be lingering around the house. Depending on the answer, I might actually have a way of making them pull back on their ghost-believing reins.

  “Well, no,” Wilma replied with confusion. She pointed the candy corn she held in between her shaking fingers my way. “Merle stayed for a bit, but when I looked again after calling Elsie…well, he’d simply disappeared.”

  “There you have it,” Elsie exclaimed, snatching up the tea blend I’d put into one of the shop’s logo-stamped bags. “You never should have believed Pearl when she said that the dandelion tea blend gave her a boost of energy. She always overstates things. Don’t you remember when she had you try that face cream she discovered in that stylish New York beauty parlor? You lost both your eyebrows, and now you have to draw them on your face.”

  Well, that explains a lot. I thought good ol’ Wilma had gone to clown school back in her day. Remind me to stay far away from Purple Pearl’s recommended beauty regiment.

  Pearl had thought she was going for a shade of silver, but she had more of a purple sheen to her hair now. Cindy, the only professional hair stylist in town, had tried to rectify the problem. Unfortunately, Pearl was a bit colorblind and was completely in love with the results of the dye job.

  “Don’t you worry none,” Elsie reassured Wilma with a pat on the shoulder. “Tonight, you’ll drink the chamomile tea and fall right to sleep. You have a good day, Raven.”

  Wilma momentarily snuck back to get a few more candy corns, appearing a bit more relieved now that she was considering that her husband’s ghost was nothing more than a side effect from overindulging in too much late-night caffeine.

  Was it possible?

  Could Elsie be right about the dandelion tea blend?

  Anything is possible. Now that the dead husband turned ghost crisis is over, I’m going to finish my edibles and take a much-deserved nap before I go searching for Skippy and his band of ninja misfits. You’re on bell duty. Don’t let it ring. It’s all up to you now.

  I rolled my eyes as I tossed the soiled paper towels I’d used to clean up the coffee into the small wastebasket behind me. More coffee was needed stat. Grabbing my cup, I walked around the counter toward the shop’s coffee station.

  “It’s not like I have control over the spirits, Leo,” I said, carefully pumping the lever on top of the carafe with the exact amount of pressure so that I wouldn’t spill a drop of coffee. “Ted spoke with Ivan when we first heard the bell ring. Nothing unusual happened at the cemetery back then, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have Ted ask again at tonight’s poker game.”

  Ted was actually a wax golem made in the form of TV’s Lurch from The Addams Family. Seriously, we have a wax museum at the entrance to our small town. Anyway, he had the signature whitish blond hair, somewhat square features, quite a few chipped teeth, and stood about six and a half foot tall. Nan had wanted someone to keep her company and help with gathering material components for spells, so she’d cast a series of animation object incantations to bring him to life. He currently lived at the back of my inherited property in a small house.

  Shed, Raven. It’s a shed. A Ted-Shed. The Crayola actually lives in a box.

  Okay, it might be a shed, but I’m pretty sure the interior was magically sublime. I mean, Ted was able to get his hands on the rarest ingredients that naturally came from faraway locales. It’s not like he had Leo’s ability to become invisible and teleport himself to faraway places other people couldn’t drive to on a daily basis.

  Anyway, Ted attended a standing weekly poker game with the groundskeeper at the cemetery. We previously had no idea that the older gentleman’s body had been inhabited by a grim reaper. Don’t worry. Apparently, the real Ivan had crossed over to the afterlife long ago and our friendly neighborhood reaper was just making use of his physical body. With that said, Ted and Ivan were buddies who played poker every Wednesday night, much to Leo’s chagrin.

  Go ahead. Rub it in my face that I’m not invited to join the only local supernatural poker game hosted by a grim reaper. My day just keeps getting better and better.

  “We didn’t realize it then, but Ivan is allergic to cats,” I gently reminded Leo as I sprinkled a bit of cinnamon in my coffee. Not wanting this cup to go to waste with my clumsiness, I chose one of the proper-sized lids and secured it firmly to the rim. “Not the actual grim reaper, but the body he has borrowed. I wonder if allergy medicine would work on a dead body that’s been reanimated to serve the reaper’s purposes.”

  You just have a special knack for inducing headaches, don’t you?

  “I’m trying to rationalize for you here, in case you didn’t notice.”

  Instead of walking back around the counter to sit on the stool, I crossed the floor closer to Leo so that I could get a better look out the display window. I couldn’t prevent the smile that crossed my lips when I spotted Liam talking with Eugene. The older gentleman was best friends with Albert. The two of them played chess in front of Monty’s hardware store every afternoon.

  Wake me up around noon. I should have enough energy by then to go searching for Skippy’s hibernation hideout. Those ninja squirrels always steer me away from a certain acorn tree, but I’m onto them this year. I’ll rain destruction upon their squirrelly plans.

  Trust me, Skippy and his friends had nothing to worry about concerning their upcoming hibernation season. Leo wasn’t capable of climbing high distances due to his weight, and Skippy was smart enough to make sure his hideout was well out of reach.

  My smile did begin to fade when I noticed Liam put his hand on Eugene’s shoulder in reassurance about something that must have been bothering the older gentleman. Once the conversation was finished, Eugene slowly made his way to the diner where he had breakfast with Albert every morning. The two friends were inseparable, much like Elsie and Wilma.

  Had something happened with Eugene that the gossip queens hadn’t gotten around to knowing about? Or had Elsie and Wilma been too distracted with Merle’s ghostly sighting to inform me of the town’s latest chinwag?

  The palm of my
right hand began to heat up just a tad, warning me that not all was as it seemed. I cautiously looked over my shoulder to where the cesaral spirit bell sat next to the cash register. It remained silent, but ominously so.

  You’re making it very hard for me to get some shuteye, Raven. In case you’ve forgotten, you’re holding a cup of hot coffee. Now, go away and do some inventory or something equally stimulating.

  Leo settled deeper into his cat bed that I had strategically set inside the display window so that he could take advantage of the sun’s rays. The day was a bit overcast, but that wouldn’t stop Leo from catching some well-deserved zzzs.

  Was Leo right? Had the sudden warmth in the palm of my hand come from my coffee cup? I opened and closed my fingers, hoping the heat would dissipate now that I only held the cup in my left hand.

  You see, I utilized energy from the earth to cast spells. The elements surrounding me made it possible to generate magical incantations. I also had the ability to perceive when danger or a threat was near me by unconsciously harnessing the energy in the palm of my hand as a defense mechanism. Granted, I was still getting used to understanding exactly how my abilities worked, but I was slowly getting there.

  You tossed an energy ball at a bumblebee last month. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t presenting any real danger to your life, which tells me that you still have quite a lot to work on in the witchcraft department.

  “Hey, the little stinker was dive bombing me,” I said defensively, remembering that day like it was yesterday. I’d started swinging my arms a million miles an hour. Unfortunately, I’d inadvertently sent an energy ball hurtling through the air. Thankfully, the bumblebee was very good at avoiding threats to its existence. “Besides, that bumblebee was very good at ducking in midair. He was fine, though I do wonder if he’s planning his revenge with another ambush.”

  Leo adjusted himself on his pillow, rolling himself onto his back with his munchkin legs sticking straight up toward the ceiling. It wasn’t until he fell asleep that the light snoring began and his tongue slipped out to dangle from the side of his mouth. He was the very picture of relaxation.