by Mary Bowers
“But you are a witch,” Lily persisted. “And you do make potions. I’ve seen your formula book.”
“I know,” Arielle said, sloe-eyed but not too angry. “I felt it in my book – that it had been handled by somebody else.”
“And you’ve been using it lately,” I added, “on us. Or at least, on Teddy. Did it work?”
Caught, she put on a stiff dignity. “Obviously not. He left.”
“Was it a love potion?” Lily asked. “In those Bloody Marys that tasted a little off so Teddy didn’t actually drink much?”
But Arielle wasn’t so amused about this part of her witchery, and she didn’t answer. Instead, she reached down and picked up her cat. Bella hadn’t slept with Michael and me the night before, which signaled to me in an odd way that the episode of the demon teacup really was over.
I reached across the table and tickled Bella under the chin. She tolerated it, but she settled disinterested eyes on me as if she didn’t know who I was.
“Goodbye, little Bella,” I murmured. “You’re a very good kittycat. Go back to your white witch now, and be a good girl, okay?”
Bella didn’t answer, and Arielle hugged her closer, watching me with unreadable eyes.
* * * * *
We packed up and got ready to leave after that. Then Michael, Ed and I walked to Duval Street one more time, with Arielle tagging along.
When we got to the shop, we found Oswald closely supervising Darrien, (as in driving him crazy), and Helena affectionately watching them both. I got the feeling that Darrien would be turning the shop back over to Oswald by the end of the day and going back to his lovely home.
“I didn’t thank you for visiting me in the hospital,” Oswald said, coming towards us. “That was very nice of you.”
“It’s wonderful seeing you back on your feet,” Michael told him, shaking hands.
Ed was already heading across the shop purposefully. When he reached the locked cabinet, without turning around, he called out, “Key, please?”
Oswald shrugged. “May as well. My friendly family witch says it’s not infested anymore.”
“I can confirm that for you scientifically, if you’ll just give me one moment,” Ed said.
He already had the full-spectrum clarifier on his head, and seeing him in it, Oswald blinked and slowed his steps. He complied with the key, though, and Ed carefully lifted the lavender teacup and saucer out and set them on a nearby end table.
The rest of us walked away so he could concentrate.
“When he’s done with it,” Oswald said to me, “it’s yours. I don’t want it anymore, and if anybody has to be stuck in that cup, I figure it should be you. You’ll be able to deal with it.”
I made the usual noises about not being able to accept such a lovely gift, according to the code of conduct hammered into me by my mother long ago, but in the end, I accepted it with thanks because I really did want it. It was a lovely thing, and even getting close to it had convinced me that it really was just a teacup now.
“You’d like to make your own observations, of course,” Ed said, handing the Full-Spectrum Clarifier to me.
“Thanks, but I’ve made my observations in my own way, Ed. I’m satisfied.”
He smiled primly. “Then I am too.”
“I hear you sold this, um, work of art,” I said, moving toward The Rape of the Sabine Women sculpture.
“It’s scheduled to be crated tonight,” Oswald said, coming up with Helena by his side. “It’s too disruptive a job to do during business hours. Oh, I’m going to miss it!”
“Me too,” Helena said with a different inflection. “I know it’s beautiful, but . . . .”
The logistics of transporting the thing boggled my mind, but Oswald took it all in stride.
I watched him standing there, gazing up at the classical sculpture with an arm around his little lady, a wizened old man with a deep appreciation for art, and tried to see him as a necromancer, as Camille had labeled him. I wondered how he’d react when he read that part, because being a native Key Wester right in the center of things, he was bound to get his hands on a copy sooner or later.
Necromancer my left elbow, I decided. And in little increments, I was beginning to believe that I was a pretty good judge when it came to that kind of thing.
Darrien came to me and handed me a nicely wrapped package, saying, “Your teacup and saucer.”
I thanked them again, and after that there was nothing for us to do in Key West but say goodbye and hit the road.
Chapter 32
Home is always such a wonderful place to arrive in that I always wonder why on earth I ever leave. Even though it was late in the day when we got home, I ran out to the kennel, flung aside the barn door and hollered, “Did everybody miss me?”
People and dogs, both, erupted, excited and happy that I was back, but not as happy about it as I was.
One of my steady old volunteers came up and asked, “How did you like Key West?”
Leveling my eyes at him, I said, “It’s a very strange place, Lester. The side of it that I got to see, anyway. Right off the bat, on my first stop at a bar, I discovered that I didn’t have my I.D.,” I began, and the other volunteers gathered around me as I gave a fast-forward account of the trip, playing it for laughs, as much as I could. I glossed over the deaths, because I still wasn’t ready to laugh about them. I never will be.
“But, guys, I gotta get back to the house,” I said finally. “Dr. Darby-Deaver is still there. He and his assistant, Dobbs, dropped by on their way back to St. Augustine, and I don’t want to keep them waiting around.”
Back at the house, the men were hiked up at the breakfast bar having iced tea.
I noticed that Dobbs had brought his spy satchel in with him, and I wondered why. It’s a very expensive, rugged-looking messenger bag that Ed had given to him, and I knew he took it with him wherever he went, but bringing it into the house while he was just saying a quick good-bye didn’t make sense.
Bastet, my cat, was with them, going from one man to another and looking up at them. When she saw me, she came sashaying over and I picked her up. I held her in my arms like a baby and kept on holding her for a long time.
“Looks like she’s going to get back to normal, now that you’re home again,” Myrtle, our housekeeper, said. “She’s been really weird since you’ve been gone.”
“She’s normally kind of weird,” I said.
“Exactly. And while you were away, she wasn’t weird. That was what was weird. She acted like . . . well, like a cat.”
Ed was quivering, the way he does when he sees something that gets his paranormal hopes up. I warned Myrtle with a glance not to encourage him and quickly said the first thing that came into my mind: “What’s with the satchel, Dobbs?”
He suddenly looked a little shy, which is not the Dobbs I had come to know.
“I had something to show Ed, and I thought I could use reinforcements,” he said, looking at Michael and me.
He lifted the satchel to the breakfast bar and pulled a bound copy of a document out of it.
“I meant to give this to Ed in Key West, but everything was so up-in-the-air while we were there, I never got around to it.”
“You mean you chickened out,” I said, taking the document.
“It’s a proposal,” Dobbs said.
I read the title aloud. “Paranormal SWAT.” Then I began flipping through pages. “A proposal for what?”
Dobbs sucked up his courage and faced Ed, who was sitting right beside him. “I’d like to propose that we become a team, sir. Form a corporation. I wasn’t going to try to hijack you from the show; this would have been a side-venture, but now that you’re free . . . .”
“Swat?” Ed asked sniffily. “A rather informal term, Dobbs, don’t you think?”
“It’s an acronym, Ed,” I told him, still reading the proposal. “It stands for ‘special weapons and tactics.’”
“Oh.” Ed seemed impressed, in spite of himself. “Well, we do
have special, self-created instruments. And of course, I’ve honed my tactics over a lifetime. They are uniquely mine.”
“We worked really well together in Key West,” Dobbs pressed eagerly. “We handled Teddy’s hoax like a couple of pros, didn’t you think?” He looked around for affirmation. “Didn’t you all think that went well?”
“I certainly did,” Michael said dryly, “after I came down off the ceiling.”
Myrtle, who doesn’t like Ed much and is uneasy about paranormal talk, gave us a dark look and busied herself in the kitchen, pretending she wasn’t listening.
“Teddy was never your style,” Dobbs told Ed.
“You got that right,” I muttered.
“Being the same style was never the point,” Ed told him. “We were supposed to be opposites. Although setting up a team of opposites can definitely have its drawbacks, and I think over our time together, Teddy and I managed to find them all.”
“With somebody young like me, someone eager to learn, you can mold me, pass your skills and researches on to a new generation, make sure your knowledge doesn’t die with you.”
I could see that Ed was weakening. Greater men than Ed had succumbed to the worship Dobbs was heaping on his head.
Taking the proposal from me and giving it a quick look, Ed told Dobbs, “I’ll study this and get back to you.”
“Sure, excellent, take your time. By the way, it’s a long drive back to Chattanooga. Mind if I crash with you for the night before I go on?”
Dobbs’s use of the word “crash” affected Ed visibly. Ed’s house is his sanctuary – no, his monastery – and he doesn’t like having houseguests. Still, he agreed. “For the sake of safety,” he said. I wondered if, deep down in his solitary-man heart, Ed wasn’t beginning to like Dobbs.
And why not? Dobbs was adorable.
Well, at least we’d gotten him away from Lily, I told myself. Ed would never approve if Dobbs began his career as Ed’s partner by breaking somebody’s heart.
I hugged Bastet closer, but apparently the thrill of seeing me again had worn off. She wanted down. I set her on her paws and let her go.
She turned her tail up to me and went across the kitchen to Michael.
Everything was back to normal.
The End
