Would-Be Witch Read online

  I stole a glance at her exquisite face. With porcelain skin and high cheekbones, she was prettier than a china doll. She wore her sleek black hair bobbed, either straight or waved, depending on her mood and her outfit. Her lips were painted a provocative cherry red today. Rumor had it that Edie had inspired men to diamonds—and suicide. It was generally accepted in my family that one of her jilted beaus had murdered her, but she never shared the details of the unsolved 1926 New York homicide of which she’d been the star.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “I’m dead. How would you be?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. I had no idea. Was it hard being a ghost? Was it boring? She was very secretive about her life, er, afterlife.

  “What made you visit today?” I asked, still trying for polite small talk.

  “I heard you showed some backbone. I decided to visit in the vain hope that you might be turning interesting.”

  I frowned. Edie could be as sweet as honey on toast or as nasty as a bee sting. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “For a minute I forgot that this isn’t my life. It’s your entertainment.”

  Her peridot eyes sparkled, and she favored me with a breath-taking smile. “Maybe not so vain after all. Did I ever tell you about the time I stole a Baccarat vase from the editor in chief of Vanity Fair and gave it as a present to Dorothy Parker? I liked the irony. He fired her, you know.”

  “Who was the editor?”

  “Exactly,” she said with a smile. “Getting fired isn’t such a bad thing. You just need a present to cheer you up. As luck would have it, one is on the way.”

  “One what?” I asked, peering at her out of the corner of my eye. She couldn’t take a corporeal form, so there was no way she could pick something up from a shop or even call into the Home Shopping Network, which was really a very good thing. From what I knew of Edie, she had very expensive tastes. There was no way in the world I would have been able to pay for any “presents” she sent me.

  “What’s this?” Edie asked as she moved through the passenger seat to the back.

  “A cake,” I said.

  “It’s a Scottish castle. Eilean Donan. Robert the Bruce still visits there. You’re such a clever, clever girl. Only you have the bridge a bit wrong.”

  “I’ve never been to Scotland. It’s just a castle I made up.”

  In the rearview mirror, I saw her tilt her head and smile. “Did you see it in a dream perhaps?”

  “A daydream,” I said hesitantly.

  “It’s about time, isn’t it?”

  “About time for what?”

  “I’ll see you later.” She faded to mist and then to a pale green orb of light that passed out of the car and was gone.

  I was happy that she’d liked my cake, but troubled by what she’d said. I was afraid she was thinking, as she had before, that I was finally “coming into my powers.” She’d proclaimed as much on other occasions and had always been disappointed. No one in the history of the line had ever had their talents appear after the age of seventeen. Here I was twenty-three years old now; I knew I was never going to be a witch. In a lot of ways, it was a relief. Magic had always tempted my mother. She’d mixed a potion to help her track down a lost love, and she hadn’t made it home to Duvall in more than a year. Finally her twin sister, Aunt Melanie, had gotten worried and had gone after her. Now who knew where they were? And what about Edie? She was said to have had remarkable powers, but they hadn’t saved her life, had they? They may even have drawn something evil to her. Magic was dangerous, and I was glad I didn’t have it. Really, I was.

  Like a lot of things about our family, our home is more than it seems to be. From the street, it’s a Victorian cottage that yuppie couples find quaint and offer us lots of money for. But that’s because they can’t see over the big wooden fence. The backyard hides a darkly shaded Gothic alcove with a collection of brooding gargoyle statues and a garden of poisonous plants and plenty of stuff for potion-making. It’s the kind of place where Edgar Allan Poe would have felt right at home but that I try to avoid except for an occasional round of fertilizing. You’d be surprised how well witch’s herbs respond to Miracle-Gro.

  I was relieved to find a package on the front step. My friend Georgia Sue had remembered to drop off my Halloween costume for me. I was going to be Robin Hood this year, and had already been practicing getting my long red hair squished down under a short brown wig. I scooped up the box and went inside, only to remember I had left the cake in the car.

  I zipped back out and retrieved the cake. As I set it on the countertop, I noticed that the light on the answering machine was flashing and pressed the message button.

  “Tammy Jo, it’s me. I dropped off your costume. I thought you were going to be Robin Hood, honey? Well, at least it’s blue and green, and those are good colors for you with your hair. But hoo-yah, I don’t know what Momma’s going to say. And Miss Cookie. Tongues will be wagging. You know how the ladies of First Methodist are. Katie Dousselberg still hasn’t lived down singing that Britney Spears song on Talent Night . . .”

  I scrunched my eyebrows together, advancing on the box suspiciously. Georgia Sue’s voice kept going. I love her dearly, but she’s the sort of person who can’t see why anyone would say in one sentence what could be said just as well in three.

  “Did you hear about the sheriff’s house? There was a crazy traffic jam on Main, Tommy Hilliard said. If Zach told you anything, you better call me up. I want to have the best gossip tonight. I am the hostess, after all. Don’t hold out, sugar. Call me up.”

  I pulled the wide cellophane plastic tape off the box and peeked inside, blinded for a moment by the reflection of a million little sequins.

  I pulled out the gown, which had some sort of stiff-spined train and a plunging neckline that would embarrass a Vegas showgirl.

  “What in the Sam Houston?”

  I shook out the dress and realized that the back was a plume. In this costume I would be something of a pornographic peacock. I tilted my head and wondered how I’d gone from a sprightly Robin Hood to this. Then I remembered Edie’s comment from the car. She’d sent me a present.

  Our town, Duvall, Texas, prides itself on having all the things that the big cities have (on a slightly smaller, but still significant scale), and one of our residents, Johnny Nguyen Ho, had created diversity for Duvall in several ways. He was our Vietnamese resident, our community theater director, and our not-so-secretly gay hair salon owner. Recognizing his talent for costume-making during his early play productions, most people in town sent him orders starting in February for their Halloween costumes.

  Johnny Nguyen, in addition to his other considerable talents, fancied himself a psychic. And crazily enough, Edie had found a way to be partially channeled into his séance room, a spare bedroom he intermittently converted for this purpose by using a lot of midnight blue velvet and a bunch of scented candles from Bath & Body Works.

  As I looked at the dress, I clenched my fists. There was no time to get a new costume, and I could not skip my best friend’s Halloween party.

  “Edie!” I called, wanting to give the little poltergucci a piece of my mind. But Edie is not the sort of ghost to come when called.

  “Edie!” I snapped, as a new thought occurred to me: Liberace had had less beadwork on some of his costumes—how much would this upgrade cost me? I didn’t need to be psychic to have a premonition of myself living on peanut butter and Ramen noodles.

  If Edie could hear me, she ignored me. “Typical,” I grumbled. One of these days all the people and poltergeists who didn’t take me seriously were going to need me for something, and I just wasn’t going to be there—or at least I wasn’t going to be there right away.

  Of course, my day of vindication would likely be sometime after Sheriff Hobbs, a serious churchgoing man, arrested me for indecent exposure. He’d probably give me a stern lecture on how short the path could be from poultry to prostitution.

  Chapter 2

  I
had done my best with strategically placed safety pins and double-sided tape to restrain my boobs from making any unscheduled appearances, but I still wasn’t making any sudden moves as I walked into Georgia Sue’s annual Halloween party.

  I was sure my face blushed as red as my hair when people turned to stare at my outfit.

  “Hey, y’all!” I said with a cheerful wave.

  “Hey there,” Zach’s brother TJ said, looking me up and down with a grin, while Mrs. Tabacki pursed her lips so tightly they turned white.

  Hellfire and biscuits. I am never going to live this down. I wondered how many of them had heard I’d been fired. Maybe I could chalk it all up to temporary insanity. I put my hand over Edie’s locket, which hung down the expansive front plunge of the dress. The starburst of diamonds under my palm was familiar and reassuring. I walked a little taller. I wasn’t going to let anything rattle me, I decided, and pushed through people as I tried to get to the kitchen, where someone would hopefully be making frozen margaritas or pouring tequila shots.

  Georgia Sue intercepted me before I could find a drink. She swooped in, pecked me on the cheek, and started right into things.

  “Well, you know what the traffic jam on Main Street was all about, don’t you?” Georgia Sue asked, her dark brown corkscrew curls bouncing.

  “Something to do with the sheriff. He’s okay, isn’t he? No heart attack or anything?” I asked.

  “No heart attack, though with all the steak and cheese the man eats it’s a minor miracle he got through the day without one. I’ve told Miss Marlene she really needs to watch his diet better. You just can’t let a man eat whatever he wants. You know Kenny would eat bacon with every meal if I—”

  “Georgia Sue! What happened?”

  “Well,” she exhaled, giving me a whiff of her crème de menthe breath. She’d had a grasshopper or two in the past hour. “Apparently while Miss Marlene was at her Friends of Texas Fish and Fowl fund-raiser lunch, burglars robbed their house in broad daylight.”

  “Someone broke into the sheriff’s house?” I asked, with a slight smile at the irony.

  “Yes, can you believe it? Waltzed right in, bold as brass, and stole that nearly original Thomas Kinkade painting they have, which is worth almost two thousand dollars. And they got into the safe hidden in the floor and took everything in there.”

  “What was in the hidden safe?”

  “The sheriff hasn’t said so far. But the thieves found it, so what does that tell you?” she asked in an urgent whisper.

  “That they’ve chosen the right line of work?”

  She giggled. “That too maybe, and the sheriff’s spitting mad. But how could they have found it? Unless they knew it was there? This was an inside job.”

  The use of the word job made me feel like we were in a 1970s movie like The Getaway with Steve McQueen. I just love old movies.

  I cocked my head. “ ‘Inside job’ means inside the house. You’re saying you think the sheriff or Miss Marlene set up a fake robbery?”

  “What? Oh, of course not! No more liquor for you—”

  “I haven’t had any,” I protested.

  “By ‘inside,’ I mean inside the town. Must have been.”

  “Hmm,” I said, chewing on the thought. The sheriff and his deputies were considered a pretty competent outfit. They didn’t always arrest people for causing trouble, but they always knew who deserved arresting. No one in town would be hot to tangle with the sheriff once he was good and pissed off.

  “Why would someone from town steal the painting? Not like you can hang it or pawn it around here without someone knowing,” I said.

  “That’s right. You’re absolutely right. See what good it did you being married to Zach? You guys should get remarried. You’re already sleeping with him again, for pete’s sake.”

  “I don’t like being married to him. When we start fighting, I have to stay over at someone’s house, carting my pots and pans all over town, people shaking their heads at me like they saw it coming again. This way when he starts bossing me around too much, I can just throw his clothes on the front lawn and be done with it,” I said.

  She giggled. “You know you love that man.”

  “Love is most definitely beside the point,” I said. Married and divorced before we were twenty, Zach and I had probably set some kind of Duvall record.

  I needed to stop messing around with him, but old habits die hard, and I’d been crazy in love with him since I was ten. Emphasis on crazy. I looked around, wondering if the reason he hadn’t shown up yet was because he was still busy with the case at the sheriff’s house.

  I froze in place when I saw Edie. She was sitting on top of the armoire next to Georgia Sue and Kenny’s big-screen TV. She was wearing a large black-and-white hat and a drop-waist dress. She held a martini in one hand, looking flawless and elegant, and not at all out of place among the pinstripe-clad gangsters with plastic tommy guns hovering near the buffet table. She waved with her free hand, and I wondered: where did she get gin and olives in the afterlife?

  “. . . and there’s going to be a big surprise later,” Georgia Sue was saying, giving my arm a squeeze.

  I wondered if the party would turn into a murder mystery. She’d done that one year, and it had been fun. I’d gotten to play a gumshoe.

  “. . . mingle and have a good time before Zach gets here and has a fit about that dress.”

  I pursed my lips defiantly. “Zach can’t tell me what to wear. I’ll wear what I want to.” Or whatever I’m forced to by a manipulative ghost and her sequin-sewing sidekick.

  “Uh-huh,” she said, not sounding convinced. Then she was off to greet some more people.

  “Hello, Tamara.”

  The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I shivered. Very few people call me Tamara, and only one of them has a deep voice that’s sexy as sin and smooth as molasses. I turned to find Bryn Lyons. With his black hair, cobalt-colored eyes, and Edie’s martini as a prop, he could have passed for the real James Bond. Tonight, he was dressed as Zorro.

  “Hi,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, trying to cover up as gooseflesh rippled over my arms. “I’m surprised you’re not at the mayor’s party.”

  “Care for a drink?” he asked, handing me one of Georgia Sue’s fancy wineglasses with magnolias hand-painted on the side. “Chambord margarita.”

  I took a sip. Delicious raspberry flavor burst over my tongue, and then I felt a strange reverberation coming from Bryn’s direction. Magic. He’d been using tonight. I was surprised that I could tell since, as a nonpractitioner, I can’t usually detect magical energy.

  “What have you been doing?” I said.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Well—” I paused, leaning closer to him. He inclined his head, which I suppose was to let me whisper in his ear rather than to get closer to my barely covered body. Still, my heart hammered with sexual heat. Bryn had always been dangerously gorgeous, but he’d never sought me out. He tended to import his girlfriends in from Dallas. They were often tall, tan, and too perfect to have been born looking the way they did. I don’t think he worked any glamour on them, but maybe he paid for their plastic surgeons. He was certainly rich enough to afford it.

  “I didn’t know you were active,” I said.

  “Active in what way?” he asked. His teasing voice had that faint Irish lilt that I sometimes detected. I wondered again where he was from. He and his father had moved to Duvall when Bryn was around thirteen. Being six years younger, I didn’t meet him right off. Our paths crossed by accident for the first time when I was sixteen, and I’d been curious about him ever since. Momma, Aunt Mel, and Edie had immediately shut down my questions though and forbid me from talking to him, but I always listened with interest to anything they said about him and his father, Lennox.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Never mind,” I said. “I really can’t talk to you.”

  “Why is that?”

  I took a gulp of my margarita to stall. I couldn’
t tell the truth: that for reasons I didn’t understand, I’d been made to memorize Lenore McKenna’s List of Nine. Lenore was my great-great-grandma and Edie’s twin sister, and she’d written down nine last names that a McKenna girl was never supposed to associate with. Something to do with the family being destroyed for all eternity. On Lenore’s list, Lyons was smack-dab in the middle at number five. But since the list was a secret, I didn’t know what to say to Bryn about why I couldn’t talk to him.

  I guess I could have blamed it on Zach, saying he’d get jealous, but Bryn would probably think my getting involved with Zach again was as stupid an idea as, well, it was.

  “I can’t really say, but it was nice seeing you.”