Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful (45 page)

With an admittedly devious idea forming, she shuffled back inside and punched the button for the elevator. She tapped her toe until the
ding
signaled arrival and the doors slid open.

A trio of residents stood inside the elevator. Seeing her, they tried to exit the elevator without making eye contact.

Gushingly, Demeter said, “Oh, Diane! I was just looking for you,” as she blocked them all with her bulk.

“Me?”

“And you too, Patty and Dean.” Demeter ignored their obvious suspicion and linked arms with Patty and Diane keeping them in the elevator. “Third floor, if you would, Dean.”

“But we were just—”

“Now, now. I’ve decided to have a party.”

Not taking no for an answer, she towed them to her apartment and insisted they make themselves comfy at her dining table. She quickly served them crackers, smoked sausage, and Colby cheese, with orders for Dean to do the slicing honors.

“I’ll be right back,” she said cheerily. Demeter paused to nonchalantly set her cigarette case on the table and smile at her company before proceeding into the kitchen.

While her apprehensive guests stacked meat and cheese on crackers, they whispered back and forth about how to politely make a hasty exit. With her sound amplification spell a constant, Demeter could hear every word, even when the aggressive side of the usually quiet and meek Patty showed through. “That woman is strange and gives me the heebie-jeebies,” she whispered. “I say we knock her over the head and run before she does something . . . evil.”

Friends or not, however, Demeter was sure that politeness would keep her guests deliberating for a few more minutes—more than enough time to get her spell together.

Demeter removed a clear glass saucer from the kitchen cupboard, followed by a strongly scented black pillar candle, and a Baggie of gray sand. After pouring a neat circle of sand on the saucer’s edge, she placed the candle in the center.

Next, she selected a bottle of thunder water—water collected during a thunderstorm and then blessed in a ritual to enhance the potency—and poured the water into the saucer until it reached the gray sand.

Finally, she took a vial of Dragon’s Blood essential oil and mixed drops of the oil and water in a shot glass. Dragon’s Blood bore a powerful scent and it gave serious
oomph
to any spell. Considering the size and scope of the Woodhaven Retirement Community, she added more Dragon’s Blood . . . and a few drops more for good measure.

After dipping her finger into the mixture, she rubbed it on the candle whispering,

“Dragon’s Blood on candle black

Draw forth their urge to smoke

Thunder water on and under

Infuse this candle as I invoke!”

Finished dressing the candle, she quickly whispered her way through the words of a ritual. When she mentally drew the circle for this spell-casting, she closed her eyes and envisioned the entire grounds of the Woodhaven Retirement Community. She lit the wick with a lighter from her pocket.

“All who live here are enticed,

From the top floor to the bottom.

React and share now as I say

Smoke ’em if you got ’em.”

Demeter carried her saucer from the kitchen to her still-open front door. Fanning the scent of the candle into the hall, she chanted the last line nine times. “So mote it be.” She placed the saucer in front of a return air vent, knowing it would get sucked into the ventilation and spread throughout the building.

When she reappeared at the table, her three guests had fallen silent. One by one, their gazes fell to the case she’d left on the table.

Nana reached out, reclaimed it, and opened it. Withdrawing a Marlboro, she placed it between smiling lips and lit it up. “Anybody else want one?”

Within minutes, the four of them sat at the table and each had a cigarette in hand. Demeter’s room was hazy with ribbons of smoke.

“I never smoked in my life—until now,” Patty said, taking an awkward draw on the filter.

Go on, Patty. It’ll work against those heebie-jeebies.

Diane giggled. “Seriously? Never even tried it?”

“Can’t you tell by the way she’s doing it?” Dean asked.

In answer to Diane, Patty shook her head side-to-side, then her face fell into a worried expression. Her color changed as if she was blushing, but more green than red.

Demeter stood and hurriedly grabbed a small garbage can and handed it to Patty.

“What’s this for?” As soon as she finished speaking, Patty started heaving up chunks of cracker, sausage, and Colby.

Demeter’s cigarette was pinched in the corner of her mouth as she spoke. “That.”
How’s that for doing something evil?
She reached out and nonchalantly lifted her cigarette case, slipping it back into her pocket.

Just then, in the hall, someone screamed.

Demeter eased away from her guests and shuffled toward the door. Just as she opened it, a wrinkly, giggling old man streaked past—wearing only his black nylon socks.

If not for the ability of paper to adhere to something slightly damp, Demeter’s cigarette would have fallen from her lips.

In a frail voice Diane asked, “Was that Emmet Johnson?”

“I think so.”
What the hell is he doing?
Demeter blinked repeatedly, having stopped in her tracks. Patty continued to heave and vomit behind her. Another scream resounded as she stepped into the hall. She gazed in the direction the naked man had taken. With the Marlboro once more firmly between her lips, she frowned at his jiggling pasty-white ass as he strutted onward, his arms open wide and his laughter echoing.

Emmet was a doddering and dirty-minded old fool, but he’d never done anything like this. She wondered what might have brought it on.

Then the smell hit her: burning rope.

Incredulous, she whispered, “Weed?”

Demeter started walking toward Emmet’s room. She had to make a turn near the elevators. Peering through his open door, she looked across the room, gaze stopping on the coffee table on which sat a strangely shaped, blown-glass vase. No, not a vase . . . it was one of those pot-smoking things. What were they called?
Bongs.

With an angry frown, she entered the apartment. Next to the bong there was a plastic pill bottle. Demeter picked it up, read the label, and learned that Emmet had a prescription for medicinal marijuana.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” She knew Emmet had glaucoma; she hadn’t known he smoked pot to treat it.

From behind the closed door of the room on the opposite side of the hall, she detected a boisterous round of laughter. With a twitch of her finger she adjusted the spell that allowed her to amplify sound. She replaced the bottle and left Emmet’s room to listen at the other resident’s door. She could make out three distinct voices whispering and giggling.

Could they be smoking weed too? She reached down and turned the knob slowly, then opened the door just enough to peek in.

Inside, the two old women she’d seen earlier returning from their stroll were sitting on either side of Gerald Clampet, the third floor’s not-so-secret Viagra dealer. This room also smelled of burnt rope and rings of smoke billowed around them. One of the ladies put her hand on Gerald’s chest and puckered up. He leaned into her.

“No, Gerald, kiss me first!” The other woman grabbed his chin and turned him toward her.

“No, me, Gerald!” The first let her hand fall to his crotch.

Demeter shut the door in disgust and backed five shuffling steps away from it.

Smoke ’em if you got ’em.

She snorted.

I didn’t know there were any folks here who had medicinal pot.

She was still staring at that door, trying to figure out what to do when screams sounded again. She spun to see Emmet Johnson’s “Johnson” flopping this way and that as he strutted back toward his apartment.

“Demeter!” His arms spread wide in greeting.

“Damn it, Emmet, where are your pants?”

“In my room, of course.”

“Put them on before one of the nurses sees you!” With all the dour humorlessness of a cross school marm, Demeter jabbed the air to point Emmet toward his door. This was not what she’d wanted to happen. Not at all.

“Help me get my pants on, babe?”

“Get your ass in there and keep it there, you dirty old man!” Demeter grabbed him by the arm and shepherded him over his threshold. “And put your damn pants on.” She shut his door with a bang and headed down the hall as fast as her waddling steps could carry her.

She leaned against it, panting.
I have to redo the spell. I have to re-word it to specify tobacco and
not
marijuana. What rhymes with tobacco besides
whacko
? What about marijuana? Hmmm . . . 
share-a-sauna
? Neither would make a good spell rhyme.
Cannabis
?
Man-abyss
?
She groaned again as she made the turn at the elevators—and stopped dead in her tracks.

“What in Hell . . . ” she mumbled.

Lost in her own thoughts she hadn’t noticed the music, but as she made the turn it was impossible to ignore Sly and the Family Stone’s “I Wanna Take You Higher” or the throng of people filling the third floor hall. Most were dressed as they always were, but some had dug out tie-dyed shirts. A few had donned black turtlenecks and berets.

Just then, the elevator
ding
ed. She twisted around as it opened, and two women she recognized as first floor residents maneuvered their wheelchairs from the elevator. “I haven’t heard this song in ages,” one said to the other.

Demeter backed away to let them pass. She had enough to deal with. She couldn’t let more people get to third floor. She hurried to the elevator, kicked her tennis shoe off, and shoved the toe into the track of the doors, wedging it deep. She watched the doors roll almost shut, then pop open again.

Satisfied, she pressed through the crowd, advancing toward her apartment. She heard snippets of conversations, mentions of anti-materialism and Dali paintings, of Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan. Some man incredulously asked another, “You’ve never read Aldous Huxley’s
The Doors of Perception
?”

She narrowly avoided getting slapped as Emmet Johnson, now wearing pants—but only pants, threw his arms wide and declared, “Hell, Irene, I was wading shirtless in the Reflecting Pool in D.C. at the 1970 Honor America Day Smoke-In!”

A few feet from her door, she encountered Diane and Dean. Patty stood between them with her fingers clamped on a half-smoked joint. There was a lazy look of bliss on her face.

Diane asked, “Don’t you feel better now?”

“Oh yeah. I sure do,” Patty said slowly, drawing out the word
do.
“I Scooby-doobie-doo.”

“It always helps with nausea,” Dean said. “I used to smoke it when I took chemo.”

“It always made your mouth dry, though,” Diane added. “And you were always so hungry.” She noticed Demeter. “Oh
there
you are. We wondered where you ran off to. Your party idea was fantastic! How did you get the whole floor involved?” Her arms lifted as she spoke and she started dancing. Was that The Twist? A moment later she stumbled and sidestepped. There was the sound of a clattering dish as she plopped down on the floor.

Patty burst out laughing.

“Are you okay?” Dean stepped forward.

“Yes, just help me up!”

Dean wrestled her onto her feet. She turned to see what she had bumped. “Who put a candle in the hall?”

The bottom of Diane’s shirt was on fire.

Demeter rushed forward and began smacking Diane’s rump to put out the flame.

Diane shrieked. Dean grabbed Demeter by the arm. He jerked her backwards. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Demeter pointed at the flames.

Dean bellowed and started smacking his wife’s behind. “Hold still! Hold still!”

Patty remained motionless the whole time, shoulders jumping in mute laughter.

The shouting caught the attention of those nearby. Curious heads turned and, except for the music—which had changed to “Everyday People”—silence settled into the hall.

Demeter threw her arms up and shouted. “This party is over. All of you go back to your apartments!”

Patty wedged the joint in the corner of her mouth and put her hands on Demeter’s shoulders. “Go to
your
room, you old bat. We’re having fun.” She shoved Demeter so hard she backpedaled over the threshold.

Demeter stood in her living room, stunned, as her three former guests traipsed merrily down the hall.

It’s my spell. It’s running amok.

She thought back over her wording. “Smoke ’em if you got ’em,” was, to her, not only clever but a good way to get around the rules of magic. A practitioner was never to cause harm to or to interfere with the free will of another person. She had assumed that if there were other smokers on the premises they would not harm themselves further, nor would this interfere with their free will as they were already smokers.

Sharing was fair game, too, as people would only accept the offered cigarette if they were inclined to do so under normal circumstances.

But she
had
purposely placed the tempting cigarettes in front of the people she’d dragged to her room. Patty had admitted she wasn’t a smoker. Even so, Demeter had encouraged her and allowed her to try. She’d even been elated when the woman had tried them and gotten sick—though that had more to do with a vengeful urge over the “evil” comment.

But Demeter had messed with people’s free will.

Independence of thought was not something to take lightly. Ever. The repercussions tended to be of an unexpected nature. Such as quiet, meek Patty—whose mean side had been confined to verbal bitterness—suddenly manifesting physical aggression.

Demeter returned to the hall and scooped up the plate and candle and hurried back to her kitchen with it. Diane had squashed the candle, but she could work with it. She could either break the spell and start over—not as likely to work with the effect so riotously underway, or she could weave in a modification to the one in progress.