Witch at Heart: A Jinx Hamilton Witch Mystery Book 1 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries) (2 page)

T
he next morning
, a little after dawn, I woke up under the combined and forceful gaze of four cats who were used to being fed at 5 a.m.

“Come on,” I groused. “We talked about this. I don’t wait tables any more. There is no breakfast shift. The store opens at 9. You all can wait.”

The cats exchanged a communal look of resignation. Clearly they didn’t want to have to do this the hard way, but I was leaving them no choice. A silent vote was taken and Winston apparently drew the short straw. He shook his head as if to say, “It didn’t have to come to this,” right before he jumped off the bed. In seconds he reappeared on the dresser and lifted his paw in the direction of a porcelain figurine.

“You wouldn’t!” I said, outraged.

Winston nudged the knickknack toward the edge and looked at me. In the crowd at the foot of the bed, three heads swiveled toward me. My turn in this contest of wills.

“Winston,” I said sternly, “you get down from there right now.”

That was not only a useless statement; it was a serious breach of etiquette. Cats don’t like to be ordered around.

Winston fixed me with a sorrowful expression and that line from
The Godfather
shot across my mind.
It’s just business.
As I watched, he scooted the delicate figurine to the very lip of the dresser and looked at me without blinking. A long moment passed. I refused to be the one to break. Not again. Not this time. No sir . . .

Fur met porcelain.

I cracked.

Throwing back the covers in a panic, I exclaimed, “Okay,
fine
,” but it was too late.

The figurine teetered and fell. My hand shot out even though I was too far away to catch the fragile object. As I watched, the figurine slowed and hung suspended in mid-air. Without really knowing why, I brought my hand up, lifting the figurine with it. When the endangered breakable was once again level with the top of the dresser, I pushed forward very gently and watched as it settled safely back in place.

Winston observed the whole process with studied feline impassiveness. Once the figurine was settled, he sniffed it and gave me an imperceptible nod.
Well played, human.
Then he jumped down and the entire pack went into the kitchen. All they’d wanted was for me to get up and feed them; they really didn’t care how that was accomplished.

As for me, I stood rooted in place, my mouth hanging wide open just waiting for a fly to go buzzing right on in. I don’t know how long I would have stayed frozen there if the boys hadn’t started raising the roof with their yowling.

I shuffled in the kitchen, flipped the light on, and doled out the morning rations. With a line of dining cats at my feet, I shook my head. “Get a grip, Jinx,” I said aloud to myself. “That was nothing but a half-awake dream. Serves you right for eating Doritos at bedtime.”

Xavier looked up at me telegraphing his agreement. He’s a Cheetos man.

Talking to yourself qualifies as a major perk of living with cats. If anyone comes in the room, you blame it all on the fur balls. “It
must
have been a dream,” I continued, stubbornly reasoning with myself. “That’s what happens when you spoiled brats wake me up out of a sound sleep. Everyone knows you can’t just put out your hand like that and . . . ”

All the cats looked up when my self-justifying monologue morphed into a kind of choking gurgle that sounded very much like a hairball on its way north.

You see, I’m one of those people who can’t talk if her hands are tied behind her back. When I said the words “put out your hand,” I did just that, accidentally raising a loaf of Wonder Bread clean off the counter where it now hung peacefully suspended in air right beside the spice rack.

Cautiously I drew my outstretched hand toward my body and the bread followed. As it crossed the room, Zeke jumped straight up, making a grab for the plastic wrapper. On instinct, I jerked like I was pulling on a rope and the Wonder Bread shot at me like a guided missile, thwacking me in the face before landing at my feet, scattering cats right and left.

Curious to see if it would work, I crooked my index finger toward the loaf, using the classic “come here” motion, and darn if that bread didn’t obey me like a well-trained coonhound.

Standing there with the Wonder Bread in my hand, I asked the cats, “You all saw that, right?”

A voice behind me answered. “They saw it, and so did I, honey.”

It was my turn to jump like I’d been shot. When I whirled around, ready to beat off some attacker armed with nothing but a loaf of white bread, I found Aunt Fiona standing in the doorway leading out to the living room.

“Hi, Jinx,” she said pleasantly, before adding with just a hint of concern. “I think maybe you better sit down before you fall down, sugar.”

“No,” I said, starting to back up. “Not only no, but hell no. I am not going to be seeing dead people.”

“You’re not seeing just
any
dead people, Jinx,” Aunt Fiona said soothingly. “I’m your kin.”

By this time, my back had hit the refrigerator and I had no choice but to stop. When I didn’t say anything, Aunt Fiona went on. “You’re squishing that bread, honey. Put it down.”

My mother raised me to mind my elders, so I did as I was told, staring at Aunt Fiona all the while. My deceased aunt couldn’t have looked more like herself. Her long, gray hair was tied back, and she was wearing her usual “uniform” -- baggy jeans and a loose peasant blouse -- which was odd since we buried her in a nice pink polyester pantsuit.

When I said as much, Fiona actually glared at me. “That’s a bone that needs picking with you, Jinx Hamilton. Why in tarnation did you let your Mama put me in that God awful git up?”

Like I had any control over what my mother got in her head was “fitting and proper.”

Setting my own mouth in a firm line, I said, “And just how was I going to stop her?”

Aunt Fiona let out a disgruntled “harrumph,” which I took as a sign of begrudging agreement. My mother was her baby sister, the last of nine children, and, according to Fiona, mom couldn’t help it that she had a stick up her . . . well, you get the idea.

This was not happening. I needed to hit the reset button on this whole thing.

Without saying a word to my Aunt Fiona, who simply
could not
be there, I marched myself downstairs in my pajamas, stepped out on the sidewalk, took several deep breaths, and said, “Okay. Now. You’re awake. That was a dream. Go back up there and start this day over.”

Just then a man walked by and gave me an odd look.

I said good morning and then caught sight of myself in the front window of the store. I was wearing pink bunny slippers and my pajamas were covered in unicorns and rainbows. Okay then. Crazy lady on Main Street. Great. Just great.

Sheepishly, I went back inside, climbed the stairs, walked into the kitchen, and there sat Aunt Fiona.

No more beating around the bush. I looked Fiona right in the eye and said, “Aren’t you supposed to ‘go into the light’ or something like that once you’re dead?”

Aunt Fiona sighed. “You’ve seen too many movies, honey. Have you had your coffee?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, make yourself a cup,” Aunt Fiona ordered. “You know you can’t think straight without some caffeine in your system. Use that fancy coffee maker of mine. The little k-thingies are in the cupboard up there on the left.”

Still on obedient auto pilot, I made my coffee and joined Aunt Fiona, who had installed herself at the kitchen table. I didn’t realize ghosts used furniture, but there she sat, dangling a little piece of string for Yule, who was swatting at it happily.

“The cats can see you, too?” I asked, sitting down warily.

“Animals are a lot smarter than humans,” Fiona said. “I thought you knew that already.” She let Yule steal the string and turned her full attention to me as he galloped off into the front room. “So, do you like the apartment?”

“Aunt Fiona,” I said, “I
have
been here before.”

“I know, honey, but it’s yours now,” she said, looking around wistfully, as if she missed the place already. “Now don’t you go being sentimental about my stuff,” she added. “Throw it all out if you want to. This is your home now.”

I had the good manners to say, “thank you” before blurting out, “What in the heck is going on, Aunt Fiona?”

She regarded me with surprise. “Just exactly what you asked for.”

“What I asked for?” I said, dumbfounded. “What exactly did I ask for?”

“Before you went to sleep last night you asked me to give you my magic,” she said brightly. “So I did.”

The words were hardly out of her mouth before I had both hands up in front of my face trying to ward off what she was saying. “No, no, no, no, no,” I chanted adamantly. “That’s not what I meant. Not at all. No. Really. Thank you, but take it back. Please.”

Aunt Fiona’s smile wilted a little at the edges. “But, honey,” she said, “I can’t. Once your powers wake up, they’re yours for life. It’s not like returning something at Sears & Roebuck.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You’re kidding me, right?” I finally asked weakly.

“Jinx,” she scolded, “I would never joke with you about something this important.”

Letting that sink in for a minute, and with no small degree of trepidation, I tried to get more information. “Why am I just hearing about this witch thing now?”

“Because you wouldn’t have believed it before,” Aunt Fiona said, not unkindly. “You can be rather . . . literal, dear.”

I mulled that over and grudgingly had to admit Fiona was right.

While I wasn’t exactly ready to
believe
the witch thing now, something was clearly going on. “Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath, “what exactly are these so-called ‘powers’ anyway?”

“I have no idea,” Fiona said with happy enthusiasm. “You can certainly use telekinesis, that’s moving things with your mind. And you can see me, which means you should be able to see other spirits, but from there, your powers will be what you make of them. They’ll come about a little bit at a time according to what’s right for you. I remember when it happened to me, it was like getting a surprise birthday present every day. You’ll love it.”

That I doubted seriously. “Look, Aunt Fiona, I really appreciate the, uh, thought, but even if you can’t take these powers back, I’m not going to use them.”

Aunt Fiona seemed to be struggling to find a diplomatic way to say what came out next. “They don’t like to be ignored, Jinx,” she said finally. “Trying to stifle your powers won’t work out the way you think it will.”

This was really getting to be just too much. I stood up and started pacing back and forth in the kitchen, jabbering without any real thought about what was coming out of my mouth. “I am not going to have this,” I said. “I’m the only person who runs my own life. Just because somebody gives you a gift doesn’t mean you have to use it or like it or . . .”

“Jinx,” Aunt Fiona said sternly, “stop! You’re making me dizzy.”

I stopped, took a breath, and plopped down in the chair. There had to be a way out of this, I thought, concentrating on not hyperventilating because passing out didn’t seem like a good option at the moment. Lord only knows what I’d wake up to given how the day had started off.

Neither one of us said anything for a minute, and from the expression on Aunt Fiona’s face, I was starting to realize that I might actually really be stuck being a . . . witch. That idea left me feeling a little dizzy myself. I looked at my aunt and said, imploringly, “But you’ll be here to help me, right?”

Aunt Fiona leaned over and put her hands on my face, or at least it felt like she did because I wasn’t exactly sure a ghost could touch someone who was still alive. Her eyes met mine and she said, “Jinx, ever since you were a little girl, you’ve always known what was right in your heart. You’re going to figure this all out. If I didn’t know that in
my
heart, I never would have given you the powers in the first place. You just be you and everything will be fine.”

And with that, she stood up as if she were going to leave.

“Wait!” I cried, suddenly panic stricken. “You’re not leaving are you? You can’t leave! You have to stay here and tell me what to do next.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Fiona, answered crisply, as if admonishing me to go forth and do battle. “I have a brand new afterlife to lead. You’ll catch on fast. I’ll try to pop in and check on your from time to time, but I have no idea what my schedule will be like.”

Schedule? Dead people have schedules? Before I could ask what in the world she would be doing, Aunt Fiona started to fade out right in front of me. “Hey!” I cried. “Wait a minute! Really! You can’t go.”

“Sorry, honey,” Fiona said, her voice started to grow more distant. “I have to run. I just wanted to check in and congratulate you on getting your magic. Enjoy running the store. Sorry I left things in a bit of a mess. Oh, and there’s a very nice rat in the storeroom. His name is Rodney. Now don’t you dare hurt him. He only takes what he needs.”

Seriously? All of this
and
I get saddled with a rodent named Rodney?

“Aunt Fiona . . .”

But it was no use. She was gone.

New super powers. A ghost. And a resident rat. All before 6 o’clock in the morning. Go me.

S
o that’s
how my new life got started. I
really
wasn’t ready to embrace the idea of being some kind of witch no matter what Aunt Fiona said. In truth, I needed to put the idea completely out of my mind. I figured the best option was to get to work in the store and put off the complicated thinking for later. The cats were all settled in on the sofa sound asleep. I closed both doors tight behind me and went downstairs.

Beyond the fact that I didn’t want the boys getting out, I also didn’t relish the thought of them finding Rodney the Rat. Aunt Fiona said he lived in the storeroom. If we were going to be roomies, introductions were in order. Gingerly reaching around the doorframe, I clicked on the light and said, hesitantly, “Hey, Rodney. You around?”

A rustling noise answered my question, and then a pink nose flanked by luxuriant white whiskers peeked out between two ridiculously large cans of horse liniment. When Fiona said rat, I was expecting a kind of four-legged street thug with a file tail and an eye patch. Instead, I was looking at a black and white domesticated rat that must have decided to strike out on his own. Intelligence gleamed in the dark eyes and he showed no fear over my presence.

“Well,” I said, “look at you, all handsome and everything. Are we going to be friends?”

The rat’s nose twitched and he stepped farther into the light, eyeing me expectantly. I saw a tin of crackers on the small worktable. I opened it and offered Rodney a saltine. He very politely reached out with paws, as agile as any human hands, and delicately accepted the gift, munching on it efficiently but neatly as I continued to study him. That’s pretty much all it took for the little guy to steal my heart.

When he was finished with his snack, I asked curiously, “Where do you live?”

Rodney turned around and started back in the shadows, but paused and looked over his shoulder as if beckoning me to come with him. Cautiously I pushed the two large cans aside and was greeted by the sight of a tidy cage complete with a running wheel and nest box. The water bottle hanging from the bars was almost empty.

“I’m sorry, Rodney,” I said, unclipping the bottle. “Aunt Fiona just now told me about you.” As I carried the bottle to the deep utility sink on the far side of the room, I could feel the rat’s eyes on me. When I returned and installed his fresh water supply, he stood up on his hind legs and rested his front paws on the edge of my hand. The message was clear. I would do just fine.

“Pleased to meet you, too,” I said softly. “I have to go to work now, but I’ll come clean out your room later. Okay?”

Rodney seemed to be in perfect agreement. He ambled back to his bachelor pad and made straight for the nest box, apparently intent on taking a nap.

The rat turned out to be the best part of the morning.

Although I had long been aware of Aunt Fiona’s spontaneous approach to stocking her shelves, I never guessed just how eclectic her inventory really was until I began to go through it all.

My best guess was that back in the beginning, the business had been a general store or maybe a hardware store, with Fiona adding herbs, soaps, and essential oils. It seemed that a lot of the odd detritus supported those kinds of products, but then out of nowhere I dragged out a brand new sausage grinder in a dusty, but unopened box.

For just a minute I panicked. What was I going to do if someone walked in the door and asked me to find something? Then it dawned on me. I’m the boss. If I don’t want to open, I don’t have to. Rummaging around until I found a black marker, I carefully lettered a sign on a piece of white cardboard and taped it to the front door.

“Closed for Inventory.”

It might as well have said, “Closed for Dumpster Diving.”

Surveying the retail jigsaw puzzle in front of me and refusing to be defeated, I opted for a thematic approach based on the sausage grinder. Hardware stuff first.

Two hours later, after crawling under tables on my hands and knees and surviving several episodes of precarious ladder balancing, a haphazard pile of items sat near the foot of the stairs: the sausage grinder, 15 sets of jumper cables, assorted copper fittings, six green garden hoses, various cans of paint in lurid colors, and countless boxes of nuts, bolts, screws, and nails. All of that was just from the left side of the center “aisle” that more or less divided the store.

In the process of “categorizing” that little heap, I’d also found a hookah pipe, four Ouija boards, an inflatable Frosty the Snowman, and a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica from 1957.

I needed help.

The lighted refrigerator behind the counter hummed efficiently and emitted a blast of cold air when I opened the door. I took out a soda and twisted off the cap, taking a long pull of carbonated goodness. There were some sandwiches in those triangle-shaped plastic boxes on the top shelf. Squinting at the expiration dates, I decided all of them were well within non-lethal range, so I pulled the plastic back from a ham and cheese on white, plopped down on the tall stool behind the cash register, and chewed contemplatively.

Aunt Fiona made the store work by the sheer force of her personality and what appeared to be a memory that would put an elephant to shame. Until I cultivated my own “presence” as a shopkeeper, I had to have a better plan than faking it. Surely there was a way to both preserve the “eclectic emporium” vibe
and
come up with a more coherent selling point to bring people in the door.

The fact that Fiona had drinks and snacks was good. I could ace the state test, so going for an old-fashioned soda counter wasn’t a bad idea. I found a yellowed pad of paper on a shelf under the cash register along with a stubby pencil. It was time to make a list.

I wrote “Store Ideas” on the top of the sheet, drew a line under it, and then penciled, “soda fountain.” The herbs and essential oils scattered around on random shelves were all in great shape and should sell well, especially if I brought in some nice soaps and maybe some natural scents. Aunt Fiona stocked an astonishing array of crystals, some loose and others set in jewelry. Lots of people believe those things have powers . . .

My mind flashed back to the day Aunt Fiona gave that grieving widow the rose quartz. Oh my God. What if that necklace really did have some kind of power attached? Was all this mess just a cover for a magic shop? Were the people who came in here going to expect me to do the things for them Aunt Fiona did? What the
heck
did Aunt Fiona do?

My heart started racing again. I didn’t just need help, I needed somebody to talk to who wouldn’t freak out when I announced, “Hey, by the way, I’m a witch.”

I dug my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans and speed dialed my best friend Tori. She answered on the fourth ring. “Have you lost your mind?” she hissed by way of greeting. “If Tom catches me on the phone during the lunch hour he’s gonna pitch a fit.”

I glanced at the clock and winced. “Sorry, I didn’t look at the time. Isn’t this your weekend off?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m a free woman come 5 o’clock.”

“Want to spend it with me and the boys?” I asked hopefully.

Tori must have heard the strain in my voice. “Are you okay, Jinksy?” she asked.

Nobody but Tori calls me Jinksy.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “There’s some weird stuff going on over here.”

In the background I heard Tom bellow, “Tori! Order up!”

“I gotta go,” Tori said. “I’ll throw some stuff in a bag and drive over after work.” She started to end the call and then said, “Whatever’s going on, Jinksy, we’ll figure it out like we always do. Okay?”

“Okay,” I answered, relief flooding my system. Tori always had my back.

The two of us had been “figuring stuff out” since our moms brought us home from the hospital three days apart, plunked us down on the floor together and declared that we would be best friends just like they were.

My mom, Kelly, is into Marilyn Monroe, and Tori’s mom, Gemma, has a thing for Tallulah Bankhead. They were BFFs, emphasis on the “forever” part, and it never occurred to them that Tori and I wouldn’t carry on the tradition. The moms raised us like sisters, but I think that’s how Tori and I would have felt about each other anyway.

Everybody needs that one friend who just “gets” them. If I had called Tori and said, “Bring a shovel,” she wouldn’t have asked if we were planting roses or burying a no-good boyfriend, she’d just show up ready to dig.

Since Tori couldn’t possibly make it to the store earlier than 6 o’clock, I decided to walk down to the corner grocery and get a few things for the weekend. Snacks were in order -- as in chocolate and wine. I went upstairs and put out fresh dry food for the cats. They had already staked out their observation posts of choice in the front windows. In a few days, they’d know the routine on Main Street like the fur on their own paws.

When I came in the night before, I tossed my bag on the end table just inside the door, but now my keys were nowhere to be found. “Damn it,” I muttered, scanning the flat surfaces in the living room. I must have put the keys down in an absent-minded moment. I did that with my sunglasses once and it took me three days to find them -- in the dishwasher.

Zeke gave me an inquisitive “Meow?”

“I’m looking for my keys,” I answered. “I don’t want to waste time hunting for the darn things.”

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than a merry jingling sounded from the top of the bookshelf by the fireplace. My keys came dancing toward me, sailing through the air with a happy little rhythm that sounded vaguely like a bossa nova. (Dance class. Eight years. I know these things.)

The keys stopped, suspended in front of me at a convenient level, my lucky four-leaf clover keyring standing straight upright as if held in place by an invisible hand. Since I didn’t know what else to do, I reached out and took hold of the keys, half-expecting to feel . . . something. I might as well have just been lifting them off a nail on the wall.

Okay. I had to admit that was kind of . . .

“No,” I said aloud. “Not cool. Not cool
at all
.”

Four furry heads swiveled in protest as if to say, “We’re not doing anything!”

“Not you guys,” I clarified crossly. “No to magic. I am not using magic.”

I was still chanting that little refrain when I closed the second door and started down the stairs. Every time my foot hit a step I said “No to magic” under my breath.

Of course, there was just one problem. Since I didn’t know how I was doing any of these things in the first place, how was I going to stop doing them?