Would-Be Witch (4 page)

I looked around and saw Bryn Lyons sitting on the back porch swing, talking calmly into his cell phone. I hoped he was hiring a band of mercenaries to hunt down the criminals. I hoped his people found the loot first and made the sheriff and his deputies look like fools. And I hoped really hard that he did it all before the twenty-fourth of October.

Chapter 3

The next afternoon, I stood by the ATM machine with a receipt in my hand that told me I had insufficient funds to make a withdrawal. I’d forgotten that I’d made the mortgage payment early before I’d lost my job.

I couldn’t ask Georgia Sue for money. She’d already maxed out her credit card to buy a new jukebox for the bar. And because I wasn’t taking charity from Zach, I’d given him the money to get the mechanic to fix my car. I regretted that now. I would need that money to buy spellbooks to help me get the locket back. Though I don’t have strong witch powers like the other women in my family, I do have a little psychic energy like most people—maybe more since I can see Edie and sometimes I can sense Bryn Lyons’s magic. It was only when I tried to cast the spells that Momma taught me that nothing happened. Still, it had been a long time since I’d tried, and I can follow directions pretty well. I didn’t think I’d be half bad at potions since, as a pastry maker, I’ve got measuring and mixing down cold.

Plus, there are spells that anyone can do, although they’re a lot riskier for the average person to try than for a witch, because a real witch can control the energy that goes in and comes out. So I wasn’t happy about having to try to do magic. There was a chance that things could go wrong, and I’d blow myself up or maybe create a really bad smell in the house. But with Edie’s soul at stake, what choice did I have?

The trouble was that when Momma left she took half the library of family spellbooks, and when Aunt Mel left, she took the other half. At the time, I didn’t object because I didn’t have any powers and wasn’t a witch wannabe. But now I needed them. Real spellbooks had some power in them, and that would help me. I wouldn’t get any boost from a Barnes & Noble dictionary of spells that had been handled mostly by teenagers working part-time to get discounts on CDs and mochas. Besides, most of the spells in those kinds of books were written by nonpractitioners and were just plain wrong.

I needed to take a road trip to Austin to the Witch’s Brew—a pagan gift and coffee shop where real witches went to get discounts on CDs and mochas—and to go into the back room to buy from the inventory of proven old spellbooks and charms. Unfortunately, those books would all cost upward of three hundred dollars. On my current budget, they might as well have been three million.

And I couldn’t wait until I could get the money together to buy one. I needed to do something now. I thought about Bryn Lyons. I just bet he’d have some fancy books, but they’d probably be full of mojo as black as his hair.

Bryn and his father were the only other magical family in town besides us. Too bad I couldn’t ask him for advice.

“Well, well, well.”

I spun around to find Jenna Reitgarten staring at me.

Great. Just who I wanted to see in my darkest hour.

“No money in your account?” she asked with a saccharine smile.

Hiccups for life. Hiccups for life. Hiccups for life.
I tried to hex her, but, of course, nothing happened.

“Well, maybe you just ought to use better judgment the next time you have a job. How long until you move?” She looked at her manicured nails while I glared at her. “I never did like y’all living here anyway. You and your aunt, divorced women, and your momma, who never even bothered to get married before she had a child? That’s not the kind of family values we want to promote in this town. But yours
is
a cute little house. Maybe I’ll buy it when you go and rent it out to some nice couple that’s planning a family and a
normal
life.”

“That’s a wonderful idea,” I said in my sweetest Southern belle drawl. “Except I’ll burn it to the ground and collect the insurance money before I sell it to you.”

“Then you’ll go to jail when I report you to the sheriff.”

“At least I’ll have a place to live rent free, with my house gone.”

She rolled her eyes, but I just smiled as she strutted off. Okay, so I wouldn’t really burn down a house, but I couldn’t let her walk all over me in her flowered, freaking Keds. And no normal people were going to live in my house. It was strictly for witches and women obsessed with spun-sugar sculptures.

Home was a couple of blocks away, and I headed there on foot. It was a nice sunny day, and the big Texas sky stretched out above me like a beach blanket. I waved absently at neighbors as I walked.

“Hello, Red!” Doc Barnaby called.

“Hi,” I called back.

“Come sit a spell,” he said.

I hesitated. Dr. Barnaby was our hearty seventy-two-year-old retired psychiatrist. He’d lost his wife in March and had been pretty lonely since. He had an excellent selection of Chinese teas, so I sometimes made pastries and dropped in to see him, although I hadn’t been by lately. A year ago, I’d paid him five dollars and a strawberry cream torte to get my head shrunk for an hour. He’d have listened to me for free, of course, but I’d paid to get the doctor-patient confidentiality so I could tell him about my life. I felt like I was a disappointment to my family of witches for lacking the gift, and asked him whether he agreed that it was unfair that they didn’t appreciate me for my cherries jubilee and my chocolate lava cake. Halfway through a plate of chocolate coconut drops he’d agreed completely with me. I had a rare and valuable gift he’d assured me.

“What are you doing? Come on in,” he called.

I thought maybe a few minutes on his sofa and some tea might help me feel better, so I went.

Inside the sunroom, I nestled into the cream-and-yellow cushions and felt more cheerful. He had a nice tape of chirping birds playing in the background, and as I sipped tea I began to feel very relaxed. And then I began to feel sleepy. And then I began to feel dizzy.

He smiled at me and murmured some comforting words, which were so distorted that all I heard was wa, wawas, wama wa.

“Somethin’s wrong,” I slurred. Then I slumped over.

He got up and patted my head, still smiling. I tried to speak, but my jaw was stuck shut as if super-sticky peanut butter had glued my tongue to the roof of my mouth.

It turned dark. I struggled to get up, but my body stayed limp. What was happening? I tried to keep my eyes open, but the lids felt like they weighed twenty pounds each.

Help me. I’m schick. I’m sick.

Something bit my finger. I heard a faint garbled moan. My heart pounded, and a mosquito bit my head.

Oh, Dr. Banaslee. You poishinned me. Evilin. If I live, I’m telling Zash on you.

It was dusk when I woke up with a monstrous headache and found myself in a hammock in Doc Barnaby’s backyard. I pushed the crocheted afghan off me and tried to get up. I fell out of the hammock, banging my knee.

“Kiss my behind,” I said to the rotten universe.

I stumbled to my feet and wove my way to the wrought-iron gate. I didn’t know why Dr. Barnaby had poisoned me, and I didn’t care. I was pissed off, and it was making my head hurt worse. The gate was unlocked, and I staggered forward, stopping to get my balance. I turned toward the house for a moment and shook my fist.

“You son of a gun.” It was the best I could do. I was too sick to confront him.

I marched—well, shuffled—home. I stopped near the hedge to have some dry heaves, feeling like someone was hammering “I Wish I Was in Dixie” on my skull.

I couldn’t manage the three steps to my door. I didn’t remember them being so steep. So I crawled up them, grabbing the door handle to hoist myself to a standing position. I panted from the exertion and fought another wave of nausea.

“Thank you, door,” I mumbled, resting my forehead against the cool wood and feeling slightly better.

Several beats of a police siren sounded and then stopped.

“Now what?” I grumbled.

“Tammy Jo, I should whip your ass,” Zach’s voice boomed from somewhere behind me. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Poisoned.”

“So I see. Where the hell were you drinkin’? I looked all over town after Doc Barnaby called. You’re lucky the man didn’t have a heart attack, or I’d be charging your sweet ass with man-slaughter.”

“Wha—?”

He pulled me aside, maneuvered my key in the lock, and then scooped me up.

“He did it.”

“Who did what?” Zach said, carrying me to the couch and setting me down.

“He gave me poison tea.” I held up my hand and turned it this way and that about three inches from my eyes. There was a Band-Aid on my index finger. “He poked me.”

“What are you talking about?”

My arm was too darn heavy. It fell with a thud onto my chest. “I told you. He did it.”

Zach squatted down next to me and sighed heavily. “Jo, we’ve been through a lot together, and I’ve got to tell you, darlin’, I’m worried about you. You don’t have to tell me where you been, but I wish you would. I know none of your girlfriends have seen you ’cause I talked to all of them. And I know they wouldn’t dump you on your front step in this condition. Only a man, and not much of one, would leave you like this. It wasn’t Doc Barnaby; you were already drunk and out of it when you called him.”

My lip quivered. I could not believe this.

“He’s a liar,” I slurred.

Zach stroked my hair. “C’mon, Tammy Jo, you’re on somethin’. Whyn’t you just tell me what? You know I’m not going to arrest my ex-wife. Just tell me who gave it to you.”

“Barnaby.”

“Uh-huh. Remember that time June got you to try pot in high school and you thought Earl was Skeletor from the
He-man
cartoon? You almost drowned trying to get away from him, and yours truly had to fish you out of the lake. Next day, even you said that you can’t take any of that stuff. Some genetic thing that makes you hallucinate, you told me. Your momma was the same way.”

I squinched my eyes shut and tried to keep the tears from escaping. Doc Barnaby had poisoned me and made me look like a fool and a drug addict. He wasn’t going to get me to cry, too.

“It’s one of two reasons that you aren’t telling me who you were with. Either you can’t remember because you were too messed up, or you’re protecting whoever it was because you’re worried about what I’ll do. Well, I’m here to tell you, I’m gonna find out. And when I figure out who it was, I’m going to kick the ever-lovin’ shit out of him.”

I felt him kiss me on the forehead.

“Anybody leaves my baby like this
is
going to answer to me,” he said, picking me back up. He carried me to the bedroom and tucked me into bed.

The tears dripped from my eyes. Not because I was mad at Barnaby, the finger-stabbing, poison-pushing bastard, but because Zach’s country boy, he-man routine does it for me every time.

To find Zach when I woke up, I followed the sound of Toby Keith singing. Zach was on the phone but hung up when he saw me. A yellow legal pad of notes sat next to a half-eaten pizza and empty Bud bottle.

“How you feelin’?”

“Like a cement smoother rolled over my head.” My stomach grumbled. I took that as a sign that, despite the poison, I wouldn’t be staring up at a tombstone or living in a locket any time soon.

“Wanna tell me who you were with?”

“I did,” I said, pulling a slice of pizza free and taking a big bite.

“Uh-huh.”

“Barnaby poisoned me.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. I’m a pastry chef. Detecting is your job.”

“You
were
a pastry chef. Miss Cookie told me you quit.”

“Miss Cookie fired me for not letting Jenna Reitgarten serve me my pride on a cake plate.”

“Jenna again? I thought you were over that.”

“I am,” I said, pulling the legal pad to me. At the top, there was a list of the stolen items and their estimated values. I realized that they were listed in terms of importance, and my locket was at the bottom of the list.

The yellow diamond ring and Mrs. Faber’s Jag were at the top. Two pendant necklaces, a pair of earrings, and Bryn’s Rolex were next. Then Edie.

“Where’s all the other stuff? Everybody was putting stuff in the bag,” I said.

“Yeah, but most of the stuff was fake jewelry for their costumes. Not really valuable.”

“Oh. Did they take money?”

“They got a few wallets and purses. Not too much cash from any one person.”

“They were trying to pretend it was a show for the party by wearing those costumes. As Georgia would say, an inside job. Inside the town, that is.”

“Mmm-hmm. We did think of that, but thanks for the help,” he said, sliding the pad back over to him.

I frowned. I wasn’t in the mood for sarcasm. In fact, I wasn’t in the mood for much of anything, except, it seemed, pizza. I devoured another slice.

“I’ve got to get back to the station.”

“Any new information? Do you have any idea who did it?”

“Nope,” he said, getting up. He leaned over me and stole a kiss. “Stay out of trouble.”

Nope.
I planned to get right back into trouble the minute he left.

Chapter 4

There are some spells that I know pretty well from having seen my momma and Aunt Mel do them. They were always losing their keys and things and scrying for them instead of looking around.

I sat for nearly an hour with my face over a bowl of water trying to scry for the locket, but I could only make out watery shadows. It’s an advanced technique that requires deep energy and concentration, which, let’s face it, I don’t have. My head was back to throbbing, so I put a cold washcloth over my eyes for fifteen minutes and ate a handful of Hershey’s Kisses to fortify me. Then I got up and collected some odds and ends from around the house that I needed for my next try at a spell.