Cursed Lines (A Peg Darrow Novel Book 2)

by Camille Douglass

  “You just don’t want to climb the stairs,” I said.

  “I am perfectly capable of climbing stairs, young lady. I am in peak physical condition, but since you’re here, you might as well get your youthful ass up the stairs.”

  I saluted her. “Aye, aye, captain,” and made my way to the staircase. I saw off the hallway from the kitchen.

  “Be careful, Miss Sassafras,” she called out behind me.

  Her warning stopped me from taking the stairs two at a time as I’d intended. Instead I watched every step, pulling on my magic to try to see if there were any surprises set. I wouldn’t be able to see everything, but some magics lingered. Either way, I needed to focus on my magic and my gut. The landing led was a hallway on both the right and the left to what I suspected were bedrooms. The center room was a bathroom, which I deduced with my mad investigator skills when I saw a toilet through the open door.

  I entered the bathroom and flipped on the light, since I couldn’t see anything in the windowless room otherwise. I looked around at the standard light-wood cabinets, beige towels, and fiberglass tub and shower unit. The most interesting thing about the room was a cutesy sign above the toilet that referenced someone’s aim to keep the bathroom clean and how your aim would help.

  I looked in the shower, but other than a half-used cake of soap, there was nothing. The trashcan stood empty as well. I opened the drawers in the vanity to find a few random bobby pins. The mirror opened to reveal an empty bottle for aspirin. The previous inhabitants had cleared out, but I still hoped to find something that would clue us in as to where they’d gone off to. I entered the bedroom to the right of the staircase and headed for the closet. I’d been about to put my foot down when a mouse scurried out from the slightly open closet door. I let out a small shriek and stepped back just as the mouse ran into the jaws of a magical trap.

  It let out it’s own shriek as it snapped shut. Briefly I could see the writings flare up on the floor to reveal a set of runes before the magic pulsed briefly a dark purple and faded away leaving a singed carpet and a dead mouse.

  “I’m sorry, Fievel,” I said, quietly naming the mouse who had unknowingly sacrificed himself for me. “Pammy!” I called out.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to need you to climb those stairs.”

  I heard a grunt followed by the stairs creaking.

  “In here, and be careful. You’re right. The place is trapped.”

  Pammy came in and stood next to me to look at the mouse. “Was this already like this?”

  “Nope, I’d been about to step into the closet when Fievel saved me.”

  She gave me an odd look. “You named the mouse?”

  I shrugged.

  “This is worse than I thought. I expected something, but death traps? What if a realtor or the owners came through? Can you imagine the uproar at a magical death of some landlord? We need to sweep the entire house.”

  “Weren’t we going to do that anyway?”

  Pammy rolled her eyes. “Yes, but not to the level that is now necessary. We’ll need to do a life force push.”

  “They went over them at the Boot Camp.”

  “Ever thought you’d need to do one?”

  “Uh, not really,” I said about the spell that involved taking a living being’s life energy and pushing it outward. Usually it entailed an insect or a plant. “You have a potted daisy or scorpion you brought to sacrifice?” I asked.

  “No, but I shoulda.” She glanced around the room.

  “There was a potted plant on the back porch. It might be dead.”

  “But if it’s even half alive, we could use it.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  We trudged back down the stairs, careful to follow the path we’d both taken earlier out the sliding door. Sure enough there was a brown plant sitting in a pot that would take two strong people to even shift. Upon further inspection, there was still some green to the plant that’s outer leaves had seen better days. A twinge of guilt twisted my stomach about giving the plant that was clinging to life its final push to the other side, but we needed to clear the house.

  “We don’t need to bring it inside do we?” I asked, my only experience with the spell theoretical.

  “Nope, which is good, since this sucker is going to take a lot of power, power that I’d rather not waste on moving it.”

  “What do I need to do?”

  “You’ll need to hold my hands and lend me your power.”

  I arched an eyebrow at her. Lending one’s power took a lot of trust. I would be lending my magical life force; if I left myself open, nothing stopped Pammy from taking it all.

  “Peg, if I wanted you dead, you’d be dead already.”

  Fair point. I held out my hands, and she grabbed mine. We stood on either side of the ceramic pot, our arms encircling the soon-to-be-dead plant.

  Pammy looked me dead in the eyes. “Do not name the plant, Peg.”

  I hadn’t been deciding between Dandy and Twiggy at that moment. Nope, no plant names from me.

  I closed my eyes and did a mental check of my power and all of the personal wards I’d built over the years through natural self-preservation and deliberate practice. It took time to open them to another person. I realized as I unlocked the final barrier how much I really trusted Pammy.

  She felt the magical click as soon as I was open to her and began a soft chant in what I believed to be Latin. Spells didn’t require a certain language, but if you learned it in another language, it wasn’t necessary to translate to your own mother tongue, and if you weren’t a scholar, it was also rather tedious. She continued on in the melodic chant. She spoke in a whisper, but her words boomed through my body as her and my magic blended together.

  The spell called to the plant, requesting a sacrifice. The plant responded, and Pammy gathered its life force. It floated between us, a juxtaposition of small and infinite. With a final powerful chant, Pammy used our force to propel the plant’s spirit into the house, pulling our own magic back so we wouldn’t suffer any adverse effects.

  We stood there, both still open, waiting for a response. The magic pulsed three times. Momentarily stunned, I heard a ringing in my ears. Pammy gave me a quick shake, and I immediately pulled my magic back to me, shutting and locking every barrier I had back into place. I let go of her hands and sat heavily onto the cement porch, light headed. Pammy produced a candy bar out of nowhere and handed it to me.

  I bit into the chocolate, peanut, and caramel goodness. Though my body was still shaky, my mind began to clear. I looked up and saw that Pammy was leaning heavily on the pot and was eating another candy bar.

  “You always keep candy bars on you? Wish I’d known. I’d come around more often.”

  “Ha. You mostly see me at Bump and Grind. If a coffee shop won’t lure you in, a candy bar certainly won’t.”

  I shrugged. “We need to get out of here soon. I couldn’t take on a five-year-old human let alone a family of drainers.”

  “They’ve abandoned this house. It’s doubtful that they’ll be back, but you’re right. It’s better to be safe.”

  We went inside the house once more to locate the three remaining traps. One was in the master bedroom downstairs near the closet just as the one had been upstairs. The second was in the second upstairs bedroom in front of a desk. The third was trickier to find, but we eventually saw the telltale scorch marks in front of the garage door. Glad we hadn’t come in that way.

  We did a final quick search, but there were no other clues left behind. They’d cleared house. I took out my phone and snapped picture of the different traps through the house and produced a baggie for the dead rodent now known as Fievel. I wanted to know the exact cause of death. If we could identify the specific death traps used, we might be able to detect them more easily in the future.

  As we left, through the front door this time, Pammy couldn’t help herself. “This has been a dead end, especially for the plant and your mouse.”
r />   I didn’t have the energy to laugh, but I gave her a small smile. “Can we stop by BBTT before we head back?” I asked, referring to the local witch crime lab and morgue, known as Boil Boil Toil and Trouble. The owners had a sense of humor.

  “To get your mouse autopsied?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good thinking,” She peeled away from the curb.

  Pammy parked right outside the front doors but waited in the car while I entered the squat brick building located on the outskirts of Phoenix. There were no signs advertising the building’s name although the two vans out front were labeled as BBTT because that was an innocuous enough business name to not trouble the humans. I walked up to the front door and rang the bell. It took a few moments, but a man in a rubber apron appeared at the door.

  Last time I’d seen Craig, he’d been picking up the body of a witch, so I was rather pleased that all I had to deliver today was a mouse.

  Craig unbolted the double glass doors and stuck his head out. “Whatcha want?”

  Pammy suddenly honked her horn, making me jump. “Craig why are you not letting my fortune in?” She called like a fishwife from her rolled down window.

  “Dammit, woman! I didn’t recognize her. Why are you making a scene?” He called back just as loudly as Pammy before turning back to me. “Sorry, Meg is it?”

  “Peg,” I corrected.

  “Right, like the pirate,” he mumbled, opening the door to let me in.

  “Sure like the pirate,” I mumbled right back.

  He went behind the front admittance desk. I stood in front of it and dropped the Ziploc baggie that currently held Fievel.

  He looked at it. “It’s dead, no charge.”

  “Yeah, I heard his death squeak. What I’m not sure of and don’t have the time to check thoroughly is what curse was used. There were four set up in a rental home, and as you can guess, the sheriff isn’t too keen on just letting some human moron get fried like this little guy. We want a full workup as to cause of death. If you can identify the specific curse used, even better.”

  “For a mouse?” He questioned me again.

  “Do you think Pammy would chauffeur me with a dead mouse to the outskirts of Phoenix right before rush hour if she didn’t want this done?” Really it had been my idea, but since she had in fact chauffeured me, I wasn’t bending the truth too much.

  “Okay, I’m billing this to the Arizona witches then?”

  “Yup.”

  “Time frame?”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “Fast means more expensive.”

  I was about to say we didn’t care about expense, but then I remembered I wasn’t in charge of the purse strings, so I marched back to the front door, opened it and yelled out. “How fast do we want it?”

  Pammy turned down the oldies radio she had been listening to. “What?”

  “How fast?”

  “As fast as they can get it done,” she hollered back.

  “Fast means more expensive,” I mimicked Craig.

  “You tell Craig I know how much shit costs, and if he tries to gouge me, I will be calling his mama or invoking the Benevolence Act.”

  “What’s that?” Any hesitance about yelling back and forth in a parking lot gone.

  “We’ll talk about it later. Go get your mouse sorted.”

  I turned and walked back to the counter. “Pammy said—”

  “I heard what Pammy said,” he cut me off. “I know it’s serious if she brings my mother into it. Pam is usually a very reasonable woman.” He took Fievel and had me sign a release form and provide my phone number for the results.

  “If you can’t reach me, please call Pammy. It’s important.”

  “I know, like I said, she doesn’t usually threaten to call my mother.”

  14

  After a busy morning and afternoon, I had Pammy drop me back off at my car. She headed back into her office at Bump and Grind. I hadn’t realized how exhausted I really was until she offered to buy me a coffee and I declined. Instead I went home, and after giving the fat orange tabby that greeted me at the door a scratch, I grabbed a blanket, a mechanical alarm clock, and opened the lid to George.

  Anyone not bonded with the safe would see a flat metal bottom. I saw carved stone steps. I laughed to myself as I descended into the depths of my plane. A month ago, descending the steps had filled me with trepidation. Made for a full-blooded goblin, the plane had been bitterly cold, and I’d nearly frozen to death the first time George had lured me in. Over time, the plane had gotten warmer. I still preferred going down in heavier clothing, but my sweater and boots along with the blanket would do.

  The plane was a vast space filled with gray stone cut through with veins of blues, purples, and pinks. The sky a never-ending violet seemed to be forever caught on the edge of dusk. I found my favorite rock. Yes, I had a favorite rock. Long and flat, it was where I always rested or meditated when I came down here. I figured I would eventually explore further out, but for now, we were still getting to know each other and working on building trust. After all, I now planned on napping in the depths of the plane.

  Time slowed on the plane, and it didn’t do well with electronics. In the back of a closet, I’d found an old mechanical alarm clock that my aunt had left behind from when she owned the house, and it worked perfectly. I lay down on the stone, wrapping myself in the blanket like a burrito, after I’d set the alarm.

  An hour later, the shrill clatter from the alarm clock woke me. I rose completely ungroggily, as if I’d had a triple shot espresso and hadn’t hit the jittery portion or the crash of the caffeine ride. Ready for round two, I stood up and blew a kiss to the air, thanking George for the pick-me-up, and climbed the steps with the energy of a Zumba instructor.

  The loving greeting I received when I first arrived home was replaced with an affronted yowl when I exited the chest. Cheddar hadn’t appreciated that I’d A) not invited him to nap time and B) failed to feed him after the affront of not being invited to nap. He could always tell when I napped without him. I glanced down at him guiltily, but I wasn’t even sure if it was possible or safe for him to enter the plane. I’d ask Deval when I saw him next.

  Thinking of Deval immediately sent butterflies to my stomach. I pushed away the feeling because it wasn’t the time. Instead I fed Cheddar a can of tuna, a habit of mine that he’d become much too accustomed to. I’d begun to suspect his affronted yowls were really just his way of tricking me into giving him stinky fish. It worked. Cat placated, I headed out the door.

  Dusk had come to the mortal realm along with traffic as I headed to a townhouse development in the heart of Chandler. I managed to keep my spirits up despite the awful traffic and found myself in front of a security keypad a whole forty-five minutes later. I punched in the code and hit the pound sign. A breath of relief escaped me when the shrill beep indicated the gate was opening. I hadn’t really thought that Lola would have the code changed on me, but apparently I’d been worried because I held my breath.

  I pulled into the grouping of three-story condos that seemed somewhat exotic in a place that mostly held one- or two-story homes. After pulling into covered visitor parking, I approached the seafoam-green condo that belonged to Lola. Although she denied it, I still teased her that she’d chosen the color to match her eyes. I rang the doorbell and waited. Then I waited some more. After a few minutes, I rang it again.

  Normally, I wouldn’t just barge into my best friend’s home despite having her key, but these were difficult days, and after visiting the McAllisters’ rental, I no longer held any hope that they might have an actual soft spot for Lola. No one who was willing to set death traps for any unsuspecting person, or mouse as the case may be, had enough empathy to have a soft spot for someone. So I took out my keys and searched through the jumble for the pink sparkly number that she had gifted me. We’d both laughed at its gaudiness, but it was damn easy to find.

  I unlocked the door and felt for her wards. I’d helped her
lay them, and like with the gate, I was happy to find that she hadn’t rekeyed them. A silly thought after only three days, but I’d never seen her act so erratic. I stepped inside and called out for her, but there was no answer. I walked through her home, very aware of the traps I’d come across earlier in the day, but if there were any, I didn’t manage to set them off as I trekked up and down the three stories.

  Lola enjoyed her shabby chic, and if it was white, pastel, distressed, overstuffed, tufted, or had an image of a flower on it, she probably owned it. After searching her whole house, I plopped myself on an overstuffed sofa only to have a fleeting idea. I walked up to a hall closet where I knew Lola stored her luggage set because I was too cheap to buy my own and had borrowed it from her on several occasions.

  Opening the door, I pulled out a huge wheeled bag large enough to hold me. When Lola had first bought the lovely blue set covered in English roses, we’d drunk a bottle of wine, tucked ourselves into it one by one, and rolled each other around oohing and awing over how easy the spinning wheels made it to move a body. No, we weren’t closeted serial killers. If you couldn’t be weird with your best friend then who could you be weird with?

  I laid the large bag on its back and unzipped it, knowing that the smaller bags in the five-piece set nested inside like a Russian doll. Opening the first suitcase, I found my answer. The second largest piece that could fit someone either very petite or under the age of fourteen by our estimation, was missing. Further unzipping found the smallest bag, a makeup case, also gone.

  The missing luggage both relieved and terrified me. Relieved, because this meant that Lola surely hadn’t gone unwillingly, since a kidnaper wouldn’t be prone to letting a victim pack mascara and a curling wand. Worried, because now I really and truly had no idea where my best friend was. I looked at my watch. Seven p.m. on the dot. It’s seven p.m. Do you know where your best friend is? No, I didn’t.

  I zipped the bag back up and returned to the sofa to “my” spot whenever we had a movie night. Lola would curl up on the other end of the sofa, and if we’d been kind enough to invite Bruce to watch whatever horrendously girly movie we’d chosen, he’d take the overstuffed wingback chair with the tufted ottoman. Unsure of what to do, I continued to sit there as the dusk turned to dark, waiting for the doorknob to turn.