Spooky Moves: Supernatural Witch Cozy Mystery (Harper “Foxxy” Beck Series Book 8) Page 3

  "Danger from the past surrounds you, my dear," Madam Mystic said. "I'd be careful with what you choose to hang onto, if I were you."

  I blinked, shooting a glance at Wyatt. His face gave nothing away, but his hand had moved a little closer to his gun. Knowing his boss probably wouldn't like him shooting civilians, I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away. Madam Mystic watched us go, leaving the bones where they had fallen.

  "She's a con artist, Wyatt," I told him once we were safely out of sight. "Remember what you said about them?"

  "Right. A con artist." His hand was cold and clammy when I went to hold it.

  "She read you," I said with confidence. "People like her do it for a living."

  "Then she must be a millionaire, because I don't give anything away."

  I didn't have anything to say to that, because he was right. You couldn't read Wyatt when he had his guard up. And I'd tried.

  Refusing to believe that anyone calling themselves "Madam Mystic" could see the future, or the past, for that matter, I walked Wyatt back to his squad car. When I would've pulled away, back to my snooping, he dragged me against him until I could feel every line of his body.

  “I love you.”

  Grinning, I said, “Of course you do. My ass is dynamite.”

  ______

  With all the craziness going on, I decided I needed a little constant in my life, so I headed over to Vic’s house. She’d moved into the small, two-bedroom house just a few weeks ago, and there were still boxes everywhere.

  On my way in, I stepped around a large couch and two microwaves stacked on top of each other. I didn’t question why anyone would need two; Vic loves leftovers.

  When I called her name, she came bounding into the hallway. Back in our high school days, Vic had been a dainty cheerleader—exactly the kind of girl that I had hated with a passion. The feeling had been mutual. Now, after a kid, she was built more like a linebacker, and I found her much more agreeable.

  “I can’t find one tong in this whole house,” she seethed. “What is that?”

  “Maybe that demon spawn hid them,” I offered, and then looked around suspiciously. When you speak of the devil, you have to be prepared for him to appear.

  “Hope is at school,” Vic said, heading back into the kitchen with me close behind.

  Hope was Vic’s eight-year-old monster. Just to make sure everyone knew what I thought of her name, I’d taken to calling the kid “Despair.” It was far more fitting. She even frightened Cooper, and he had to deal with me on a daily basis.

  “I don’t know where the oven mitt is either.”

  Vic motioned to the potatoes cooking in the oven with a frown on her face. The sight of them made my stomach grumble even though I’d just had tacos a couple hours ago. Hunting ghosts is a calorie burning exercise, after all.

  “Just use two forks.” I jumped up to sit on the little square of unoccupied counter space.

  “What am I, a barbarian?”

  I reached into the box next to me and pulled out two utensils. “Do you want potatoes or not?”

  She did.

  We ended up devouring the whole baking sheet, the house smelling like garlic and butter by the time we were done. Vic told me about how Officer Kosher, my longtime rival and her new boyfriend, had been helping her with the boxes. I tried not to gag on my potato. It wasn’t the vegetable’s fault.

  “You’d better get to why you came over,” Vic said, mouth full and pointing her fork at me. “Hope’ll be home from school soon.”

  I shuddered. “Thanks for the warning. Have you heard anything about what’s going on around town?”

  “Sure. I went grocery shopping this morning and must have walked through half a dozen of those spooks.” She shook her head. “When you convinced me to move here, you didn’t say anything about ghosts. Might have changed my answer.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Vic had showed up on my doorstep, completely unexpected, right after we’d teamed up at our high school graduation to catch someone trying to kill my cousin. There had been no convincing on my part.

  But she was right about one thing. “I don’t think I would’ve moved here either if I’d known about them.” Even though I had been desperate with nowhere else to go.

  I laid my head down near the sink, suddenly exhausted and caught her up to speed.

  “So, you see,” I said finally. “I don’t know what to tell this woman. Ghosts aren’t really my thing.”

  “Really?” She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “They seem like they’d be precisely your thing.”

  Point to her. “But the townspeople are happy. If I go poking my nose into their miracle….”

  “And when has their approval ever mattered before?”

  A pause. “It’s this thing with Wyatt. He clearly needs me right now. Should I just abandon him to go chase ghosts?”

  She took a long sip of her soda. I was annoyed. Usually, Vic didn’t play the role of the wise, and I was two seconds away from opening my mouth and telling her that “know-it-all” wasn’t a good color on her.

  “Harper, what’s the real reason you don’t want to take this case?” she asked. “The rest are just excuses.”

  The dam broke.

  “Ghosts!” I sprung from my seat, pacing in the small kitchen. “I hate ghosts. They’re—they’re unnatural! They don’t belong here and should just leave the living alone.”

  Vic sat back, clearly surprised. “Wow. Obviously, there’s more going on here, and I’d love to delve into it, but—“She nodded out the window to the yellow bus pulling up. “You’ve run out of time.”

  I crossed paths with Hope on my way out. She made a horrible face at me, and I told her if it stuck like that, she’d never get laid.

  After buying myself an ice cream cone for sticking it so thoroughly to a little kid, I walked around a little longer, my head in the clouds. Despite what I’d told Vic, it wasn’t just about how creepy ghosts were—and they were. Zombies, werewolves, witches, I understood. It was magic, more or less. Ghosts? There was nothing magical about them, and yet, they still scared the crap out of me.

  Mostly, when I saw a ghost, I was afraid of what—or who I’d see. When almost everyone you’ve ever known is dead, seeing a ghost can be a mixed bag.

  My mind wandered back to the infestation at the Funky Wheel, and I dialed Jeb. He answered on the first ring, cheerful as could be.

  “You’re not at the Wheel, are you?” I asked. “After I told you to stay away.”

  “…No, Miss Harper.”

  “Really?” I rested a hand on my hip, staring at my establishment down the street. “Because that looks an awful lot like your car in the parking lot.”

  He had the decency to pause with shame at being caught in a lie to his employer. “I was just cleaning up.”

  “Alone. With a ghost. An angry ghost!” I shook my head, though he couldn’t see it. “And Wyatt calls me reckless.”

  To distract me from my annoyance, my bouncer said, “I called the guy who wired the sound system and got a quote for the repairs. I’m sorry, Miss Harper.”

  “Yeah, well, I knew it wouldn’t be pretty. Tell him we’ll call him once this ghost business is cleared up. In the meantime, keep your distance. I’m not wasting any more bandages on you.”

  While walking back to where I’d parked the loaner car, I passed a small house in the heart of town. It was worn and well-loved, and I knew who lived there. Hastening to walk away quicker, I froze when I heard the inexplicable sound of laughter coming from inside. A man and a woman.

  “Oh, no.” Walking up the front steps, I knocked lightly and with more than a little reluctance.

  A halfway transparent man answered the door. Like his wife, he was short and muscular, a man of Asian descent. He smiled at me with the same warmth he’d had in life.

  “Miss Beck,” Leah Anthony’s late husband said, “what a pleasant surprise.”

  He invited me into the house where his wife was si
tting merrily at the kitchen table. Just yesterday, she’d been crying at his grave, and now she was beaming at me.

  I almost tripped on some oily boots on the way in, tracking in some of the muck. I didn’t feel too bad though; the Anthony’s worked at a factory, and the whole place was spotted with oil.

  “You must have heard about our miracle, Harper,” she said. “Just couldn’t resist coming by to have a look for yourself?” Her voice was full of good cheer, and it made me a little sick.

  “A miracle,” I said, numb. “A lot of people have been throwing that word around, that’s for sure.”

  “He came back to me.”

  I looked at Tom more closely. Slow, I said, “Tom, didn’t you die in a factory accident? Shouldn’t your figure be….”

  ‘Mangled’ was the word I was looking for. So mangled, in fact, that the town had to bury him without an open casket ceremony. The mortician said it would’ve been too upsetting for the townspeople.

  “Why would you bring that up?” Leah’s good cheer was gone, and I suddenly felt like I’d overstayed my welcome.

  My work for the day wasn’t over, however, because as soon as I stepped out the door, my phone rang. It was an unknown number, but I answered anyway.

  Fate greeted me frantically on the other line. “Miss Beck, you’ve got to come! Quick!” She gave a startled yelp, and there was a crash.

  “Where are you staying?”

  Without hesitation, she told me the name of the motel—the only one in Waresville. I sprinted to my car and broke the sound barrier on the way over there.

  The door of her second-floor room was wide open when I got there, swinging from the hinges. I charged through, but stopped dead after taking in the situation.

  The woman was levitating.

  “Oh, good,” Fate said meekly a couple feet from the ceiling. “You’re here. Think you could get me down? Please?”

  A couple of chairs and a table were knocked over, seemingly when she tried to grab onto them to step her ascent. I moved around these, trying not to touch anything, because I hadn’t figured out the cause yet. Individually wrapped red candy littered the floor and crunched under my shoes.

  Latching onto Fate’s leg, I tried to drag her down to my level. Whatever was holding her up had different ideas though. I felt something grab my ankle, trying to pull me away from Fate. I held fast, and that turned out to be a mistake.

  The force that was levitating Fate took hold of me, and before I knew it, I was levitating right next to her. We looked into each other’s eyes for awhile, floating there and locking arms to keep the other close.

  “You’re good at this,” she said finally. “So glad I’m hiring you.”

  “Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.”

  “What now?”

  Reaching around, I fished my cell phone out of my jeans. “Now, we call for reinforcements.”

  Chapter Four

  Wyatt walked through the motel’s door and raised his eyebrows at us. If he was surprised to see us floating there—I hadn’t explained that part of the problem to him on the phone—he gave no indication.

  “Got yourself into a bit of a pickle, didn’t you dear?” he asked, maneuvering around the knocked down furniture.

  “I’m just so over the moon about marrying you I can’t keep my feet on the ground.”

  “Charming.” He reached for me, but as soon as he got in range, the force that had been holding us disappeared.

  I crashed into the table, while Fate fell into a chair. The table cracked under the pressure—just like my ribs. Groaning, I grasped my side with one hand and grabbed Wyatt’s outstretched with the other.

  He ran his hands over my side, checking for actual fractures. Only when he was satisfied I was in one piece did he move onto Fate. She skidded away from him at first, shy. Eventually, he wore her down—a brief summary of our relationship.

  “So,” Wyatt said conversationally. “Ghost power?”

  “Unclear at the moment.” I kicked aside some of the candy littering the floor, tired of staring at it.

  Fate, clasping her hands out in front of her, came to stand by me. “Does this mean you’ll take on my case?”

  “Unclear at the moment.”

  ______

  The next morning, I headed over to the Wheel and rolled my eyes without much surprise when I saw Jeb’s car parked there. Sometimes, I wondered who the real owner was here.

  When I went inside, he was cleaning up some glass that had broken when the ghost attacked our sound system. Glancing up, he smiled at me and then went back to his work. I took a seat to watch, luxuriating in the fact that I was the owner and not the employee for a moment. Then, I got off my ass and gave him a hand.

  “You know, Miss Harper, I’ve been thinking.”

  “Should I call ahead to the emergency room?”

  “Why would someone break the sound equipment and not anything else?”

  I shrugged. “It’s easily the most valuable thing in the place— as the rest of it was made in the last century.”

  “If they were looking for damage, they should’ve gone after the light system,” he said, proving he was strong and intelligent. “With all the wiring and how much of it there is—even if the system’s old—it’d cost a fortune to replace.”

  Raising an eyebrow, I asked, “More than the fortune I’m going to spend fixing the jams?”

  “Much more.”

  “Maybe I should just count myself lucky, then.”

  But I didn’t. Because I’d never been lucky a day in my life, and that wasn’t about to change now. If the ghost hadn’t gone after the light system, there was a reason. Which, unfortunately, meant we were dealing with something that had the ability to reason. Creepy to the max. I didn’t like things that could think when you couldn’t see where they kept their brain.

  “Jeb,” I said suddenly, switching gears. “You’ve been through some stuff, right? In your life?”

  He stopped sweeping for a moment. “Haven’t we all?”

  “I mean, traumatizing stuff. Violence. Do you ever talk about it?”

  Jeb began to sweep again, though his mind clearly wasn’t on it. “I don’t suppose I do much, Miss Foxxy. Do you talk about your personal trauma?”

  “Point taken,” I said, leaning against the purple half wall. “This is about Wyatt. Not that you asked.”

  The only sign that he recognized the name was stiffening in his body. From day one, Jeb hadn’t liked Wyatt. That probably had a lot to do with the fact that Wyatt arrested him for a murder he didn’t commit—and a lifelong mistrust of law enforcement that came with growing up on the wrong side of the thin, blue line.

  “He was a soldier. Did I tell you that?”

  My bouncer snorted, surprising me. “Even a dumb man could smell the Army on him.”

  “Smells like discipline and blind obedience.” I paused. “I want to get him to open up about something. Any suggestions?”

  Jeb shrugged. “Sometimes a man just wants to keep things to himself.”

  It wasn’t the answer that I wanted, but I let the matter drop for the moment. I’d made a pact with myself a long time ago never to ask about Jeb’s past or pry. We were heading into dangerous territory here, and I needed to pull back or risk breaking that pact.

  “Dudes.” Stoner Stan burst from the bathroom, smoke flowing out behind him. “You’ve gotta see the walls in here. Wicked trippy.”

  Stan was a relic left over from my father’s days. He’d started on at the Wheel at eighteen back in the 90s and had never left, living it up in the disco era forever. He was a bit of a screw up, and he never did any real work, but I was loathe to fire him. The man rolled a mean joint.

  Even though we’d been burned by Stan’s hallucinations before, Jeb and I followed him into the bathroom. The smoke in there was overwhelming, and Jeb started coughing. Blinking, I stared at him for a minute, realizing that whatever else my mystery bouncer might be, he wasn’t a user. I filed it away and kep
t on trucking.

  The walls, though partially obscured with smoke, were worth seeing. Carved into them over and over again were two chilling and familiar words: Get Out. They were on every surface, including the mirrors. It was like a thirteen-year-old’s doodle notebook. Only a lot more menacing, if that’s possible.

  Then, right before our eyes, the smoke in the room started pooling in front of the mirror, becoming concentrated. Stan’s eyes looked like they were going to bulge out of his head, and his pupils had completely disappeared. It must’ve been some trip.

  The smoke twisted and turned, forming shapes and then letters. Soon, it was clearly readable, even to the highest among us. ‘Harper Beck’

  “You’ve got to appreciate the personal touch,” I said. “All the best decorators have it.”

  Jeb was quick to shuffle us all out of the bathroom and lock up for the night. For some reason, when it was my booty on the line, he was all about quarantine. We all promised—heartily on Stan’s part—to stay away from the Wheel until we could figure out this ghost thing. And by we, I meant me, and Jeb meant the police. Stan probably meant the higher power of alien government that he was sure was watching us all the time. I was with him on that one.

  The ride home was boring, because the loaner car didn’t squeal the way my bug did when I put it through its paces. By the time I stepped up to the Victorian, I was in a horrible mood. Both my business and car had been taken from me in the same day.

  Wyatt was sitting at the table, enjoying a cup of coffee. Throwing myself in the chair next to him, I filled him in on the ghostly presence at the Wheel. The past few months, I’d been working on including him more in my problems—before they blew up in my face. Plus, I really needed to moan about it to someone.

  “So, the Wheel is closed,” I said, “until I can find someone to chase away a hooligan ghost for me.” I sunk down in my chair. “At this rate, I’m gonna have to go back to instant noodles for every meal.”