Witch Slapped (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 1) (3 page)

Okay, so when British guy relayed the name Zoltar to Belfry, maybe he
had
heard him correctly. Then again, maybe it was just a bizarre coincidence.

Still, there was an odd tingle in my belly, like the days of old when I still had an emotion to offer other than despair and defeat.

But I wasn’t so convinced yet. “Bel, c’mon. Listen, it’s not that I don’t believe you heard a guy ringing you up from the afterlife. You’re a familiar to a defunct witch. You still have your powers. It makes sense that you’d be some sort of weird channel to my old life and maybe even some residual ghostly chatter, but what does a British guy have to do with a psychic? Especially a psychic who named herself after the one in the movie
Big
? All human psychics are full of Twinkies. You know it, I know it.”

“No way are you not going in there, Stevie! No bleepin’ way. I know what British Dude said, and the name Zoltar was crystal clear. Not a chance in seven hells I’m not investigating this. If you won’t take me inside, I will climb right out of this musty old purse of yours and find a way in myself. Plus, I’ll strike up conversations with every single person who passes by. Once they’re over the shock of a talking bat, we’ll talk about the weather, the price of pork bellies, we’ll swap recipes and Facebook pages—”

“Okay fine!” I shouted, and then gave a surreptitious look around to be sure no one heard me yelling at my purse. “You settle down in there, Saucy Pants. Nowhere in this friendship of ours are you in charge. Got it? I’m only going in because you seem so certain this ghost is trying to tell you something rather than just testing out his afterlife voice.”

“Then after you,” he said with a grandiose tone.

I grabbed the handle of the glass door, hoping against hope I wasn’t making the biggest mistake I’d made yet.

The smell of incense wafted to my nose immediately, almost overwhelmingly, with the scents of vanilla and a hint of sage. The odor was swiftly followed by a dozen or so obnoxious chimes attached to the door, ringing out our entry.

Belfry squeaked a cough. “Egads, is she trying to hide the scent of a corpse?”

I lifted my purse and stuck my face in my familiar’s. “You pipe down,” I whisper-yelled from a tight jaw. “We cannot afford another problem. Now, we’re here, and I’m playing along, but I won’t play so nice if we end up in the psych ward for an evaluation because I’m talking to my purse.”

With a quick glance, I assessed the interior of the small store, littered with all sorts of freestanding metal shelves holding various-colored candles, each representing a meaning when you lit them.

And statues of Mary. Lots and lots of statues of Mary. One rack held healing crystals, most of which were bunk and wouldn’t heal a blackhead, but I reminded myself not to judge. Everyone had to make a living, and maybe this Madam Zoltar would be the first human I’d ever encountered who really could talk to the dead.

Who was I to say, being a former witch who really
could
make a caldron bubble? I had no right to talk.

I wandered past a spinny rack with postcards, and tarot cards, too, a wall of wind chimes and dream catchers, and a back room with a gauzy purple piece of fabric separating it from the rest of the store. The store itself was lit almost solely with LED candles that ran on batteries and one dim light bulb beneath a red lampshade with beads hanging like fringe around the edges.

As I looked around, Madam Zoltar’s appeared devoid of human life.

But another scent, one that rose above the incense, drifted to my nose. I knew I recognized it. I just couldn’t place it. Woodsy and expensive, the cologne or perfume—I couldn’t decide—lingered for a moment and then it was gone.

“Madam Zoltar?” I called out, hoping against hope she wasn’t home so I could end this wild goose chase of Belfry’s feeling confident I’d at least tried to humor him. I noted the employee bathroom and rapped on the door with my knuckles. “Madam Zoltar, are you in there?”

Nothing but silence greeted my ears.

I tapped the side of my purse with my nail. “See? Nobody’s home. Now can we go get lunch?”

“Not on your life, sister. Put me on the counter by the cash register and let me fly, baby.”

I set my purse on the glass covering the counter and shook my head. “You’re absolutely not getting out of my purse. So whatever you have to do, do it from in there.”

“Shh! I think I’m getting something.”

I fought a roll of my eyes and waited, crossing my arms over my chest.

Belfry gasped, a tiny rasp of air, but a gasp of surprise nonetheless. “I can hear him! Pick me up and face me north, Stevie. Do it now!”

“Belfry—”

“Now!”

His tone was so urgent, I decided there was no reason to upset him if there was no one to witness his shenanigans. I scooped him into my palm and held him facing north when he suddenly stiffened.

“Do you hear him?”

Was that some kind of joke? “No, I don’t hear him. I can’t hear anyone from that plane anymore and you know it, Bel. Stop being cruel.”

“Sorrysorrysorry. It was just instinct to ask. Forget that. He’s here, Stevie. He’s here!”

“Yay.” I wanted to be excited for Belfry, because his excitement was infectious. Yet, I couldn’t help but instead feel a pang of jealousy, and I didn’t like admitting it.

Belfry burst out in a fit of giggles, making me feel incredibly left out.

“Hey, I wanna hear the joke, too.”

“Oh, so now you wanna play, Mopey Gus?”

I shook my head, knocking off my raincoat hood. “No. I don’t want to play. I want to eat lunch. Finish up with British Guy and let’s get out of here before Madame Zoltar comes back from her lunch break and we get caught.”

“I was laughing at his name.”

My ears perked. “Which is?”

“Winterbottom.” And then Belfry laughed again, his munchkin-like chuckle spurring my own laughter.

A giggle escaped my lips. “Winterbottom? Was he a butler?”

“Mate? Give me one second. My mean friend is making fun of your name.”

I seesawed my hand, giving him a little shake. “Traitor,” I muttered under my breath.

“Shhhhhh! I’m trying to hear what the fudge he’s saying and he keeps fading in and out.”

I let my eyes fall to the floor, a cold slab of concrete painted gray. “Sorry.”

“Argh! Hold your palm up, Stevie, and your right leg. The signal’s weakening.”

“I will not.”

“Do it!”

I reluctantly held up my right leg, noting my galoshes had seen better days.

“Say that again?” Belfry requested, his tiny body rigid with the effort to hear British Guy. “Oh boy.”

Belfry’s tone sounded ominous. “What’s happening?”

“Just one more sec…” he trailed off as he strained forward, his wings at full mast.

My right leg began to wobble and cramp. “Can’t hold on much longer, Belfry!” I gritted out.

“Just a little longer, Stevie!”

The moment Belfry begged for reprieve was the moment I tipped backward, the burning in my calf finally getting the better of me. As I toppled, I tried to hold my hand up to keep Belfry from harm.

Which was when I completely lost it and crashed into the spinny rack, knocking it over and falling against the sharply pronged wire postcard holders. “Ow!”

Postcards exploded in every direction as I rolled away from the prongs poking into my skin, but in the process somehow managed to catch the unstable metal shelf full of candles.

There was a small rumble like distant thunder before everything just collapsed in a screech of metal. One candle after the other dropped in a domino effect, some knocking me in the head, others splitting into chunky fragments.

I howled a word I can’t use in polite company as the candle meant to bring your true love back to you whacked me on the noggin. Stumbling blindly from the sharp sting, I attempted to scramble upward, only to stand on a cylinder-shaped candle and, like some demented log roller, lose my footing once more.

“Stevie! Lookout!” Belfry shouted from somewhere above me.

The problem being, he shouted too late.

Head over heels, I plowed face first toward the rack housing crystals near the back room with a yelp of dismay. I managed to cover myself only in time to keep my face from smacking the edge of the shelving unit.

I lay in the pile of my rubble, a bit dazed as the dust settled, and Belfry swooped downward to land on my chest.

“Twinkle Toes?”

I began to sit up with a groan, my head aching. “Yes, Belfry?”

“If you can manage to do it without the effort resulting in an emergency brain transplant, turn around.”

I blew at a strand of hair stuck to my mouth. “If I do what you ask, what will happen? Will the store fall into a sinkhole?”

“No, no. It’s much, much worse.”

His somber tone had me—and obviously my better judgment—sitting up straight.

As I took in the room behind the purple gauze material, my gasp echoed, the noise flying from my mouth, making me cringe and press my fingers to my lips.

I closed my eyes and gulped as Belfry climbed up my jacket and settled on my shoulder. “
Please,please,pleeease
tell me that isn’t Madam Zoltar.”

“I’ve only been saying as much for nigh on three hours now. Blimey, you Americans are slow.”

Enter British Guy.

Jolly good show.

“
B
elfry? Why can I hear but not see a British guy?”

“Winterbottom,” a smooth voice whispered against my ear, sending a cool chill along my spine. I knew that chill. Oh yes, I did. British Guy was a real live ghost. That much of Belfry’s story was true.

How could this be? I was a mortal now. No mortal I knew could
truly
talk to the dead. “Bottom who?”

I squinted and looked around the store, just as I did back in the good old days when a ghost made contact, hoping against hope I’d see him appear just the way ghosts always did in the past when they came to me for help. But there was nothing. No filmy, transparent glimmer of anything. Just a store trashed courtesy of yours truly.

What the heck was going on?

“I’m Winterbottom. The name’s Winterbottom,” the disembodied voice repeated.

I wasn’t sure where to begin. With what I saw in the room behind the purple curtain, or the fact that I was hearing the voice of a ghost even though I technically shouldn’t be able to hear anything from the afterlife.

I decided to attack the unclear first, before I sank my teeth into the obvious. “Okay, um, Bottom’s Up, how can I hear you?”

“
Winter. Bottom
,” he enunciated, dry as a bone, sounding a lot like he’d stepped right out of an episode of
Game of Thrones
. “And it’s a bit of a tale for the
X-Files
. A tale we don’t have time to indulge in, but I’d be chuffed to pieces to share with you later. As you can see, we have far more pressing matters.”

A warm breeze wafted past me and ruffled the gauzy material, revealing problem number two.

My eyes slammed shut and my fingers spread over my temple to pinch off the ensuing headache. “Madam Zoltar, I presume?”

“It is indeed. No need to check for a pulse, she’s dead.”

The desert my throat had become made it difficult to swallow. “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. That’s why
you’re
here. To help me figure it out.”

“So all this trying to talk to Belfry was to get me to come here?”

“That wasn’t the original intent.”

“What was the original intent?” I asked.

“Forget that for now. As I was saying, you are, as they say here in the afterlife, the best in the biz. They also say you have a big heart, you’re tenacious, you cry at Hallmark movies during Christmas, you’re unbelievably gifted at finding bargain designer clothes from consignment shops and the like, you love a good mystery and are rather proficient at solving them, and you have a lovely shade of gray-blue eyes—of which I’d quite agree.”

My cheeks flushed red. “That’s very kind of them, and you. The problem is, I can’t help you or anyone from the afterlife anymore.”

“Mmm. I’ve heard. That’s neither here nor there.”

I stared up at the direction the voice came from and made a face. “No, that
is
here. Did the afterlife gossips fail to mention I’m not a witch anymore and all my medium powers are gone?”

“Yet, here you are, talking to me. They couldn’t be gone entirely, because I truly
am
gone from this plane and still we communicate…um, sorry. What’s your name?”

“The afterlife didn’t tell you my name?”

“They’re all quite vague here. As though you’re some secret family recipe for Yorkshire pudding they aren’t willing to share. They had the absolute audacity to tell me to get in line. Though, they did mention your very annoying familiar. Their words, not mine.”

“Hey!” Belfry chirped. “I’m right here, you know. And it’s Belfry, BTW. As in ‘bats in the’.”

I plucked Belfry up and tucked him against my chin, where he clung to the lapel on my jacket. “I’m Stevie, as in Nicks, the singer. Stevie Cartwright.”

“The pleasure’s all mine. Anyway, as you can see, we have a problem.”

“Are you sure she’s dead?”

“Positive.”

When I’d assisted souls from the afterlife, they’d never sent me to help with a dead body. Still, I couldn’t stop myself peeking around the corner of the purple material to assess the situation.

Madam Zoltar was flat out on the floor on her back in the mostly sparse space. Compared to the outer portion of the store, the back had no clutter at all. There was only a water cooler at the other end of the room in the right corner with some cone-shaped cups.

There was a wooden chair tipped over next to her, her body crumpled as though she’d slid from the seat she was sitting on at the round table and collapsed to the floor.

A purple tablecloth just touching the floor looked as though someone had yanked it half off the scarred table.

Madam Z must have grabbed it when she fell backward, which explained why the tarot cards were scattered over the top of the table and on the floor beside her still body.

She wore a turban made of some sort of white clingy material, with a big green jewel in the center, but a tuft of her graying hair poked out from beneath the edges by her neck. Her dress was flowing and multicolored, a caftan was how I’d classify it, with a matching jewel-encrusted neckline revealing her ample décolletage, and a scarf tied around her neck.