Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She's Dead (Toad Witch Series, Book One) (9 page)

If I took the left fork, I knew beyond doubt the path would take me to the stone cottage. It lurked there, on the edges of my subconscious, like an unspoken threat, beckoning to me.

I decided to try the path to the lake for a change. As I walked to the center of the road, a Volkswagen Cabriolet appeared out of nowhere, speeding towards me. The top was down and the driver, an old woman who looked half-corked, was happily singing along with the radio. She seemed completely unaware of me as the car sped up.

My feet were rooted into the road, I was unable to move. As the car was just about to hit me, a large screech owl soared down and flew directly into the windshield. The woman screamed and twisted her steering wheel.

But the owl shattered the windshield, its bloody body hitting her squarely in the face, like a feathered missile. The sheer force of it pushed the woman’s thin facial bones through to the back of her skull. Death was swift and merciful.

The car continued on its trajectory, until it slammed up against a lightning-blasted oak tree, blood spattering everywhere.

The front end of the car crumpled and the woman’s corpse fell forward. Her lifeless body hit the horn on the steering wheel, a last cry of protest, her head falling to the side.

Disturbed by the noise and motion, a flock of crows rose up from the tree. They circled the ravaged flesh that would soon be their dinner. One of the more adventurous crows leapt through the busted-out windshield and, reaching quickly and carefully with his sharp beak, dug out what was left of the woman’s right eye. For one stomach-turning second, the crow turned and faced me, the eye speared in its beak, the pupil looking at me.

I sat up with a gasp and clicked the bedside lamp on. 4:00 a.m. I reached for the glass of water next to the bed, took a sip and held the glass to my forehead. The beads of moisture felt good against my hot flesh.

At some point, I must have fallen asleep again. Because the next thing I knew, it was morning. The sunlight pierced through openings in my blinds and I could hear birds arguing over stray pieces of bread and a dog across the street, yapping its little lungs out.

I was just nodding off again when Mrs. Lasio walked past my bedroom window, loudly chastising her youngest daughter, Lupe, over the latest boyfriend fiasco. In the short distance to their car, accusations of “
putana
” and “ashamed in front of God” and “that nice priest” echoed through the courtyard.

I buried my head under my pillow to muffle the cacophony. And it almost worked. Until Gus burst through my bedroom door with all the force of a tidal wave.

“Wake up, sleepy-head!” he said, jumping onto the bed and bouncing up and down.

I groaned. “How did you get in? I locked the door. I put garlic over the windows. Are you even supposed to be out in daylight?”

“I’m the mighty, the invincible, the immortal Count Gusula. C’mon, wake up! We’ve got things to do.”

I groaned again. “Weren’t you just here yesterday?”

“And if you’re lucky, I’ll be here again tomorrow.” He got off the bed, opened up a green duffel bag he had brought with him and dumped his dirty clothes on me. “Come on, woman. Rise and shine. Laundry’s not going to do itself, y’know.”

“Ugh,” I opened an eyelid. “Get your stinky ass sweat socks off me.”

“Get out of bed and make me. I brought quarters,” he said helpfully, raining them down on the pile of laundry.

“
Ow
!” An errant quarter hit me in the head. I swept off the covers, sending clothes and quarters flying, and sat up. “I see,” I said in a chilly voice. “Since I own a broomstick, you’ve obviously mistaken me for your maid.”

“Jumping Cernunnos, woman, but you’re cranky in the morning. And here I was being generous.”

“How do you figure?”

“I brought enough quarters for both of us.”

Gus gave me his best little boy smile while I contemplated flushing his quarters, and his head, down the toilet.

I clenched my teeth together into a smile. “How thoughtful. Maybe next time, you could also bring your mother. I’m sure she’d love to spend her weekend doing your laundry.”

“Is this your everyday, general crabbiness? Or is it that special time of the month?”

“You don’t value your life much, do you?”

“Hormones, hormones, lovely little hormones,” Gus sang. “Give ‘em chocolate, give ‘em salt, give ‘em a credit card and let them sort themselves out. But you never give ‘em a gun. Hormones, hormones, lovely little…”

I gave him the hairy eyeball, then flopped back down on the bed and put my pillow over my head.

Gus shook my arm. “It’s no use sleeping your life away, Goldilocks. Time marches on and you’ll still have to move.”

I shifted the pillow so I could glare at him. “I’m starting to understand why you have no friends.”

“I’m so charming they can’t take the competition.” Gus grinned.

I snorted. “I have an idea. Why don’t you take the quarters and you do all our laundry, while I sleep?”

“Step back, you evil daughter of Eve,” Gus held up two fingers in the shape of a cross to ward me away. “Spinning, weaving and laundry is woman’s work.”

“Oh, it is so on.” I thwapped him in the face with my pillow and soon we were rolling around on the bed, tussling like children, until he pinned me in a wrestling hold.

“Come on, give it up. Say it. Gus is the King of the Witches.”

“In your dreams.” I got an arm free and elbowed him in the stomach. He tried to pin me back down and with all the strength of my pre-caffeinated morning irritation, I punched him in the arm.

“Ow!” He swung my arms behind my back and knelt on my hands. “Gus is Master of the Universe. You can do it.”

With a loud grunt and a determined effort, I reared up and flipped him off of me. He fell off the other side of the bed and landed face-first on the pile of dirty clothes. “Give up yet?” he asked, his voice muffled.

I had to laugh. What a goof.

Gus climbed back on the bed. “At least you’re hitting like a boy now, instead of that girly-girl slappy shit. I’m having a positive influence on you.”

I got out of bed and stretched through an even bigger yawn. Gus leaned against the headboard, interlocking his fingers behind his head and stared at me.

“What are you doing?” I asked, irritated.

He grinned. “Enjoying the view.”

I rolled my eyes. “If you don’t stop looking at boobs, the West Hollywood boy’s club is going to revoke your pink panties.”

“What boobs?” he asked with mock innocence. “I was looking at your tattoos. Zane does incredible work.”

I laughed. Trust Gus to take the sexuality out of naked bodies. I pirouetted in front of the mirror. On my back, there was a huge tattoo of a human morphing into a winged dragon. On my thigh was an elaborate Tudor rose, with the vines snaking into a knotwork legband. There was a crowned skull with a serpent slithering out of its eye socket on my belly and an intricately shaded, Celtic knotwork armband with a triple horse motif around my upper arm. It really was nice work.

“When you die, I want your skin.”

I stopped, arrested by a visual of myself as a rotting, skinless corpse. “Why?”

“Book covers, drumheads. Can’t let that kind of artwork go to waste.”

“You just want an excuse to pound on me all day.”

“It’s a bonus,” he admitted with a grin.

I snorted. “You want any other parts, or can I keep the rest?”

Gus thought about it for a second. “Well, your head, of course. Can you imagine? You would make one hell of an oracular skull. And your bones. Femurs, fingers… I can make all sorts of things out of you. Bone flute, bone grail, bone walking stick. The list is endless.”

“So pretty much, you’re just going to dig me back up and recycle my entire body.”

“Sacrilege, woman. Bones become fragile when you bury them.”

“They become really fragile if you cremate them.”

“Much better to put a few dozen beetles in the casket with you and let them do their work. Above ground. After I skin you, of course.”

Ick. This post-mortem imagery of me was a bit much, first thing in the morning.

“You know who’s carrying caskets now?” he continued. “Costco. I can even get one delivered. How great is that?”

I was starting to feel decidedly queasy. I rubbed my stomach, “Whatever happened to talking about things like politics or religion or what I want for breakfast?”

But Gus was still thinking out loud. “This kind of thing is impossible when you live in an apartment complex. Could you give me a six-month warning before you kick the bucket? So I can rent a house?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll put it at the top of my to-do list. Freak.”

“Great. So, my domestic little goddess, you get on the laundry and I’ll go pick us up a couple of lattes.”

I thought about it for a second. I really didn’t have anything else to do. “Get me a pumpkin scone with that latte and I’ll think about it. Any other wifely chores you have in mind though, you’re on your own.”

“Just me and my hand, as always.”

“Really didn’t need that visual.”

As I was about to walk into the bathroom, Gus picked up a glass of thick, grayish water from my nightstand. “Gross. How long has this been sitting here?”

Ewww. I looked at it and cringed. Did I actually drink from that glass last night? “It didn’t look like that when I went to bed.”

“You must be having some interesting dreams.” He held the glass out to me like it was full of nuclear waste. “Please, take your spirit scum away from me.”

I grabbed the glass from him, planning to dump the water down the toilet. “Why are you still here? Get moving, barista boy. Quad shot, half and half, extra foam. And I want it like ten minutes ago.”

“Four shots? Are you sure…” as I glared at him, he hastily revised what he was going to say. “I shouldn’t make it six? Maybe seven? After all, why stop before you go into cardiac arrest?”

My eyes narrowed and my upper lip curled over my teeth. Gus did what any self-respecting male witch would do — he beat a hasty retreat.

I could hear a muffled trumpeting sound and an off-key rendition of “Off Gus goes to save the day!” as he walked through the living room. I laughed and shook my head. Who could stay mad at someone as goofy as him?

But as soon as I opened the bathroom door, everything went to hell.

I heard an ear-splitting scream rip through the room.

Chapter Ten

Gus came rushing back in from the living room. “What in the world… ?”

But then he saw it.

Laying in a shower of glass on the tiled floor, was the bloody, beat up body of a crow.

“One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth,” he muttered.

One for sorrow.
I couldn’t stop shaking. I wondered if this was the same crow that had been hanging out in the courtyard all week. The thought that it probably was, was making me hyperventilate.

“Breathe, Mara. Slow breaths. Slower. What is wrong with you? I’ve never seen you freak out like this. It’s just a crow.”

I took a deep breath and it all came out. From the nightmares to the vision of my dad and his warning to stay away from magic before some mysterious curse finds me, to the weird hallucinations and my secret late-night ritual, to the too-vivid dream that wrenched me awake and the crow on my bathroom floor.

And then I started smacking Gus.

“What?! What did I do?!” he asked, trying to dodge the blows.

“This is all your fault. You and your
what kind of witch are you
bullshit. I was right. Just because someone can do magic, doesn’t mean they should. Now look what’s happening!”

“Are you kidding?! I wish something like this would happen to me. Color me jealous.”

I wanted to shake him. “Of what? That I’m cursed and living on borrowed time? Or that I’ve got a brain tumor?”

“You are such a hypochondriac. You don’t have a brain tumor.”

“So you think I’m cursed. Thanks.”

“You’re not cursed.”

“Oh, my God. What if I killed someone in my sleep?!” Every option was just getting worse.

Gus laughed. “You’re not a God. You can’t kill people in your sleep.”

“You didn’t see this dream!” Okay, so maybe I was being a little hysterical, but still…

“Are you kidding me? You can’t even swat a bug without sending up a prayer for its soul. Maybe this is just a sign from above that you should open a pagan pet store.  You can call it
A Murder of Crows
and we can specialize in selling familiars.”

I sat on the toilet and buried my head in my hands. I could hear Gus sighing. I knew he thought I was being a wuss, but I couldn’t help it.

 ”All I’m trying to say, is you’re maturing into a full-blown witch. How cool is that? Most people don’t get that option. They’re all WYSIWYG. What you see, is what you get. You, on the other hand, have layers. Like a parfait. Next time you want to do a spell, call me. I’m dying to do magic with your new, improved, witchy self, if only for the visual effects.”