Curse Strings

by Rebecca Regnier

  I had no idea what indie Beltane Bash would even entail.

  Georgianne sat next to me and continued to study something arcane on her phone. That was her jam.

  “I still think it’s important that I learn more about curses. It’s the one area we really haven’t explored, witch wise,” Georgianne said, more to herself than the group. “It couldn’t hurt to know more.”

  Covering a story, good news or bad, was my jam, and it looked like the battle of the Testicle Festival versus the Beltane Bash would fit that bill.

  Pauline and Candy had a civic event to plan, Georgianne had her research, Fawn her animals, and Tatum—wherever she was—could most certainly come up with a brew for the occasion.

  All the witches had a project to complete and no newts were harmed in the making of it. Yet.

  Chapter 4

  My part was easy, really: getting the word out about a community event. Even if it was indie and impromptu, I could make sure people knew about it.

  I pondered how to share the message as I pulled into my driveway.

  I turned off my car and looked up to see a familiar figure on my porch. I had to admit, it spiked a little thrill in my chest to see Etienne Brule waiting up for me.

  I got out of the Jeep and took in the concerned look on his face.

  “I noticed you performed a rolling stop at the corner of Blackstone and Lynwood Streets.”

  “Really?”

  “I cannot watch over you all the time, but when I do, and you take traffic safety lightly, I must caution you.”

  “Ha, well, vampires, trolls, travelers, and whatnot, but four-way stops, that’s what’s going to get me?” I smiled at him though; it was sweet.

  “Alvarado could take advantage of your loose standards in regard to traffic laws. There is no way to know when he will strike again. I am concerned that I have not heard from him lately.”

  “Well, maybe the balance is exactly right at this moment.” I walked to the door and kept it open for Brule to enter as well. My house was becoming more my house these days, and the inhabitants—my cat Agnes, and my dog Bubba Smith—were becoming more accustomed to Brule’s presence at odd hours. They mostly ignored him, though Agnes let me know she thought I should work harder on my personal grooming, maybe even get some Botox, if I wanted to keep up with the handsome undead billionaire that I’d been…dating.

  Honestly, dating was the hardest part of that sentence to swallow. I’d never thought dating was in my future. But divorce after twenty years of marriage had put me back in the dating pond, and the pond, in my case, was stocked with Yooper Naturals.

  They don’t write dating advice books on how to navigate that romantic situation.

  Brule was protective, that was true, but he was hard to read, not easy to relate to, and we’d yet to find a consistently comfortable flow of just hanging out. But maybe that was good: my happily ever after marriage had turned very comfortable, and then it turned into a pumpkin.

  “Have you eaten food today? Or just coffee?”

  “I can’t quite say. Between showing my boss around town and trying not to eat fried bull testicles, well, probably I didn’t eat.” Brule did not flinch at the testicle comment.

  “I shall make you a plate.”

  I smiled. It was an amazing thing, having someone worry about you and try to take care of you. I had been the caretaker of the kids, the husband, our house, my job, for so long, I didn’t have much experience being fussed over.

  “Go sit in your den, I shall join you dans un momente.”

  “Merci.” I kicked off my shoes, hung up my coat, and enjoyed the un momente. It was rare, since I’d moved here, that disaster wasn’t barreling toward me or one of my friends or my currently sleeping pets.

  “Here, put your feet up.” Brule handed me a plate of cheese and bread and proffered a glass of wine. He sat next to me on the loveseat, in my favorite room of the house, the den, my little sanctuary. And we talked. It was relaxing after a long day. Maybe there was hope yet for us to get into a groove on just hanging out.

  “Your coven is not jazzed up about the festival.”

  “Nice slang. No, not at all, but they’re going to work on having their own, uh, soiree, so to speak.”

  “Nice French.”

  We sat, I relaxed, and somewhere along the way, I cuddled up to Brule and fell asleep. His cold skin was the perfect complement to the hot flashes that typically kept me up at night. I’d recommend all women in menopause to get a vampire boyfriend.

  I slept—peacefully, deeply, but I wasn’t sure how long—curled up next to my vampire boyfriend. There had to be a better word for someone that was in her forties, dating someone in their 400s?

  But I was startled awake.

  “Mom! Open up! We drove all night!”

  I looked at Brule with confusion at first. The banging noise was coming from the back door.

  “I believe your children are at your door.”

  I promptly panicked.

  “Oh my gosh, they said they were coming—I thought it was going to be next week.” I stood straight up.

  “You have to go, like now.” I brushed my hair back.

  “What? But there is nothing to be ashamed of. We are two consenting…”

  “Oh, uh, I know. It’s just, I haven’t told them at all that I was uh, seeing someone, much less that you’re a vampire or the first European to set foot on—” I stopped myself and looked around to see if there were any telltale signs that I’d had an actual life since I’d left Detroit.

  The back door rattled.

  “Oh my gosh, they’re coming in the back way!”

  “Goodnight, do not worry, they’ll not see me.” Brule hugged me, and I waved him off.

  “Get going.”

  I felt suddenly like I was the teenager and my parents were catching me. What had gotten into me? My heart raced. I didn’t know if the boys were ready to think of their mother dating, but I knew I wasn’t ready to explain it all.

  I hadn’t prepared myself to deliver the big reveals that I’d have to do with my sons about the life I’d created here in Widow’s Bay.

  “Go, go!” Brule walked to the front of the house, as far away from the back door as I could get him.

  “I can properly introduce—”

  “Ah, no, not ready. I need you to go poof, like you do.” I made a hand motion to indicated I needed poof, and I needed it fast.

  Brule headed for the door and I tiptoed to the kitchen.

  I looked back to see the front door quietly close shut and the kitchen door swing open.

  “MOM!” And there they were, Joe and Sam, my twin college boys—well, men now.

  And I had a lot of explaining to do. I just had no idea how to start.

  “Sam! Joe!” They looked twice the size as when I’d dropped them off at college in the fall. Somehow the puppy man child looks were gone.

  At twenty-one they were both men—young, sure, but there was a broadness of shoulder, a solidness, that I’d never seen before.

  I hugged them, kissed them, and was relieved that I could see them in person, instead of on FaceTime or Skype. I’d been busy the last few months; almost too busy to notice they weren’t in my daily life. Seeing them reminded me with a little pang.

  “Come in!”

  “Wow, you’re really pulling this place out of Grandma’s 1980s look!”

  “Yeah, mauve is out.” They both dumped giant garbage bags into the laundry room.

  “Ah, you brought me presents from college.”

  “No, we’ll do it, right Joe?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Sam said, and I shook my head. Sam looked like his dad, blonde, All-American. Anchor material for sure.

  Joe had my darker hair. They were fraternal twins, but they shared their dad’s height, both clocking in at just over six-feet tall, and they shared their dad’s strong jaw.

  They also shared the dog and cat, who trotted into the kitchen at the familiar commotion that came along w
ith twin sons. Agnes leaped onto Joe’s lap and Bubba, who did not jump, plopped himself at Sam’s feet for a belly rub.

  “What’s this? Mom said she was putting you in a Tutu! Not on our watch! We’re here now, Bubba,” Sam said, and Bubba was in heaven. In the hierarchy of favorites, Agnes was number one in Bubba’s eyes, Sam was number two, then Joe, then a tennis ball, and then me. Not that Bubba Smith didn’t love me, but he REALLY loved Sam and Joe.

  “Uh, not that I’m complaining, but you’re here about a weekend before I thought you’d be.” I’d received the surprising call that the boys were spending the summer with me, but I had anticipated them a bit later.

  “Yeah, the post gaming thinned out fast. We decided to surprise you!”

  “Great, post gaming?”

  “You know, the party after exams.”

  “How did those go?”

  “Great, we’re both killing!”

  “Glad to hear that. Are you hungry?”

  The answer was a twin, “Yes.” It was always a yes when food was involved. I stood up and started to try to figure out what to serve them. I hadn’t gone grocery shopping or really prepared at all yet for the invasion of the Nowak Twins.

  Gonna tell ‘em about your new vampire boyfriend?

  Agnes was enjoying this already, that was clear.

  “It’s too soon.” I shot back at Agnes, and the boys looked at me like I was talking to them.

  Not only did I have a vampire boyfriend, but I also had a psychic cat and, oh yeah, I was on the leadership team for a coven of witches.

  “What’s too soon? Oh yeah, the year being over. It was fast man,” Joe said. Sam gave Agnes a quizzical look. But then shrugged it off.

  I gave Agnes my version of the evil eye. She was way better at it and shot a smirk in my direction while getting ear scratches from both of the boys.

  She hopped on Bubba’s back and they retreated to their place in the dining room.

  “Mom, your fridge is frigging empty. Where’s the cheese? Maybe eggs? Lunchmeat? Milk?” Sam said as they both rummaged through the place like an invading army.

  “I didn’t have time to go to the store, and here’s some of the cheese I have.” I hustled into the den, retrieved the half-eaten tray Brule had made me, and plopped it on the kitchen table.

  They dug in. I watched in amazement for a moment. I had forgotten how much food was going to be needed to keep them fed. I also wondered, for the first time, how I was going to afford it. My grocery bill had been nearly nothing. It was going to be off the chart now that my two human garbage disposals were back.

  I had, at least, gotten new sheets on the beds upstairs in preparation for them.

  “Uh, so there are six bedrooms in this place, if you remember. I’ve taken over grandma’s at the far end of the hall. You guys can pick any other two you want, but I have had two on the other end of the hall painted, so that’d be what I recommend.”

  “Cool, oh, and we’re going to pitch in.”

  “Music to my ears.”

  “This is your first summer, without dad. We’ll mow the lawn, bring in the garbage cans, stuff like that.”

  “How about pay for food?” I said as they polished off the French bread from the Frenchman they’d eventually have to meet.

  “Yeah, that—we both have jobs!”

  “Well, that’s great. I thought you were working at GM and you were working at WXYD?” Sam was the future sportscaster and Joe was the future engineer, or so I thought before they went away to college.

  “Yeah, the thing is, Dad, and his lifestyle…just not a lot of room for us there,” Joe said, and I felt sad to hear that.

  “Not that he doesn’t want us there, but he’s dating, and it’s…just gross. One of his girlfriends was like a year older than us.” Well, my boyfriend was 500 years older than all of us, I wanted to say, but held my tongue.

  “But you already got jobs, here? What about sportscasting, and engineering?”

  “Oh, thanks to Aunt Dotty, we’re set up!” They gave each other high fives.

  “You’re set up? You talked to Aunt Dorothy?” I was relieved that they’d be working, but also had no idea what Dorothy had hooked them with.

  A buzzing noise interrupted my next question, which was just what would they be doing?

  I walked over to my phone. It was the newsroom in Sault Ste. Marie.

  “Marzie here.” Justin Lemorre, my assignment editor was on the other line.

  “Hey Marzie, there’s a dead body on Main Street.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, scanner traffic alerted us, calling for investigative units. Better get going, you’re headed for the middle of Main Street.”

  “Yep, on it.” We ended the call. I started rummaging for shoes, my coat, and my bag. Shoot, the boys, I needed to tell the boys. Amazing how fast I’d gotten used to not reporting to anyone when I needed to go to work.

  “Uh, boys, I have to go, there’s a murder downtown.”

  “No biggie, we’ll unpack. See you in the morning!”

  I hugged them both and head out the door. Details about summer jobs and my ex-husband’s dating life would have to wait.

  And though most nights I might have grumbled about having to leave at this hour, for work, in that moment a little distance from my sons, and a second to figure out how to introduce them to my new life, was a good thing.

  A dead body on Main Street just bought me time. I chastised myself for that dark thought.

  If there was one thing my boys were used to, it was mom tracking down breaking news.

  They’d grown up with it.

  Chapter 5

  The lights were out on Main Street. It had to be one in the morning. There was still a faint smell of fried food in the air. But mostly, downtown Widow’s Bay was quiet.

  A red and blue flashing light could almost be mistaken for the glow of a holiday display, except for the blue. The blue let you know it wasn’t Christmas: it was something else, something bad.

  I drove up and parked as close to the crime scene as I could without getting in the way or being asked to move. I needed to dig in and get to work.

  There were no gawkers, no traffic tie-ups, or even any bystanders to direct my questions. There was Detective Byron DeLoof, writing things down in a notebook and staring at a dead body on the pavement.

  There was crime scene tape on the road, to keep whatever random car may drive by a good distance away. But the sidewalk was open, so I approached.

  A man in his late thirties was on the pavement. He wore an apron with the logo Tommy T’s Good Ole Boy Brews logo on it. Except for part of it was obscured because the man had been shot in the chest. Blood had stained his apron and ruined his company logo.

  I recognized the man from earlier; he was the one Tatum had gotten into a shouting match with earlier. It was Tommy T himself!

  “Hey Marzie,” DeLoof said. He was distracted, rightly so, and focused on the issue at hand.

  “What’s safe to print?”

  “Well, the relatives have been informed. This is Tom Strayhorn. Owner of the Tommy T’s Good Ole Boy Brews, based downstate, in Bay City.”

  I scribbled notes and got out my phone for an on-camera interview.

  “Any ideas? Motives?”

  “No money in his cash drawer, and no deposit bag on him, so probably money was the motive. Just can’t know for sure. He could have already gone to the bank.”

  “Who found him?”

  “Several people called in that they’d heard gunshots. The festival stuff was long over, but there were still people awake, as you can imagine. We arrived to find the victim already deceased.”

  “Suspects?”

  “Not at this time.” I looked around; it really was quiet right now in downtown. It was conceivable that no one saw a thing.

  “Loof!” One of Byron DeLoof’s officers called out to him from the other side of the man’s beer truck.

  “Excuse me, Marzie.” He walked toward
the officer. I took a few pictures, not of the deceased, but of the scene itself. Then I put my camera down and looked closely—as close as I could—at the victim.

  I was no expert, but someone had shot him straight on, right in the chest. I guessed that he probably saw who’d shot him.

  I looked around for anything out of place, anything that could tell me who, or why this had happened. Nothing stuck out. I turned my attention to Loof.

  He was patting his officer on the back and looking down at another spot on the pavement. I walked over and soon discovered what was so interesting.

  “What’d they find?” I asked.

  There on the sidewalk were bullet casings.

  “We need to get some measurements,” Loof told his officer. Loof crouched down and looked closely the metal debris.

  “Bullets casings on Main Street. You’d say these are from the gun that killed Tommy T?”

  “I’d say yes. For the record, gunshots in downtown isn’t a common occurrence.”

  I looked at him and blurted out the obvious.

  “Are you nuts? We’ve had a murder a month since I got here.”

  “Ever think it’s just you?” DeLoof cracked. I ignored the comment.

  The officers were running a tape measure from the victim’s body to the casings and taking pictures.

  “Will you be able to match the bullets to the gun?”

  “Should be able to, and hopefully quickly.”

  “Seems stupid if you ask me, to shoot someone in the middle of the street. I mean, there have to be witnesses right?”

  “My officers are canvassing as we speak.”

  “What’s next?”

  A van pulled up, the Twin Reapers, who’d become like my second family since I’d moved here. Their job was to transport the body to the coroner’s office.

  “Let’s get the official interview, really quick, okay?” One advantage of being the only reporter in town was I could get my story and get going.

  I’d almost forgotten. I wasn’t the only reporter in town anymore. A familiar and grating voice slicked through the respectful silence of the crime scene.

  “Loof! Let me get in on this too.” And there he was, Weston Redman—Yooper Man—