Witches Get Stitches

by Dakota Cassidy

  Jerry, infuriated, came up behind Win and yelled, “Get away from there!”

  But Win stumbled again headfirst into the casket, though he didn’t knock into it accidentally—he purposefully pushed it. At least, that’s what it looked like from my angle.

  “Win? What are you doing?” I whisper-yelled.

  The flowers in their vases tumbled over when the edge of the casket whacked into them, crashing to the floor and scattering water and petals everywhere. The gorgeous arrangement on top of the casket fell to the ground as Win held his hands out and bumped into anything in his path, crushing the flowers to a pulp with his filthy slippers.

  The crash of the vases was enough to alert Jerry’s brother, or the man I assumed was Jerry’s brother. He came flying around the corner, his face at first surprised then enraged. “Jerry? What’s going on?”

  “Could someone lend a mate a hand here?” Win called out as though he was in distress, but in the commotion he managed to grab his cane and tuck it under his arm.

  Jerry grabbed Win by the back of his sweater and hauled him upright to face him. “What are you doing?”

  “Jerry? Who is this? Is he a cop?” the other man asked, his face, strikingly similar to Jerry’s, wrinkled in worry.

  “Why do you think everyone’s a cop? He’s just an intruder, Jack,” Jerry drawled. “Nothing to be worried about. I’ll handle it.”

  Win reached out, putting his hands on Jerry’s face and running his fingers over it before he gave it a pat, which might have been comical if the man didn’t look like he was about to choke Win out.

  “Who are you and where am I?” he asked with that lost voice he’d used in the morgue, and then I understood.

  He was pretending to be blind—again.

  Jerry paused momentarily, but only long enough for a strange look to come over his face before something seemed like it clicked. He grabbed Win by the front of his shirt and gave him a hard shake—so hard, the flesh of his lean cheeks rippled.

  Win continued to pretend he couldn’t see him, but the way Jerry was looking at him made my heart race.

  Just then, Ritchie and his cohort raced into the viewing area, skidding to a halt when they saw the mess Win had made. “Holy… That’s him!” Ritchie yelled as he pointed at Win. “That’s the guy Aunt Louisa was talking about—he’s the guy we chased last night!”

  My throat almost closed up entirely. What was going on? Who were these people, and why were they instituting car chases and playing with ashtrays?

  “I thought so,” Jerry said as he gripped Win’s sweater tighter. “I recognized him from her description.

  “This is the man in the Ford Fiesta?” Jack asked incredulously. “How can that be? He’s blind!”

  “Unhand me!” Win demanded in his haughtiest British accent. “You heard the man, I’m blind, you heartless toad. How dare you treat me this way!”

  But Jerry wasn’t picking up what Win was laying down.

  He glared down at Win, his green eyes glittering with hatred. “He’s not blind, Jack! And you can forget it, pal. I don’t know who you are, but we’re onto you. You’re no blinder than I am. Boy, you sure made a mess of everything, didn’t you? What were you doing poking around that pawnshop last night anyway, and where’s your friend who was driving the car?”

  Never was I so glad Gooch had swapped cars with his friend.

  Win, his spine ramrod stiff, lifted an eyebrow. “Whatever do you mean, Jerry? Do explain.”

  My heart pumped so fast, I almost felt frozen on the spot, but I knew I had to do something. I jumped up from the bench and began to look around for a weapon or anything in the room that would help him get away.

  “Win, keep him talking while I try to locate something you can use to clobber them!”

  “Aw, he does so know what you’re talking about, Jer!” Ritchie whined, shoving his hands into his hoodie pocket. “Look at the way the kook is dressed. He was at the pawnshop last night, snoopin’ around, lookin’ for somethin’. He knows! He knows and we’re gonna get busted!”

  Knows? I punched a fist into the air in frustration. What did Win allegedly know?

  Win crossed his arms over his chest with clear arrogance, but I saw his jaw clench. Stumbling into that coffin had hurt him, and the effort to stand up was becoming harder by the second.

  Still, he looked Jerry in the eye, almost daring him to make a move. “What is it exactly that you think I know, gentlemen?”

  “Wiiin,” I warned, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, it was so dry. “Please don’t poke the beast! You’re not in double oh seven shape. I know I keep saying that, but I don’t do it to hurt your feelings, I do it to keep you grounded. I’m begging you, please don’t play this game!”

  “Enough!” Jerry’s brother Jack finally growled as he approached them. “Enough of this! Do you have any idea the kind of trouble we’ll be in if he tells people the woman he met at Granny’s wasn’t Granny? That means there’s a living, breathing witness to our crime. And it’s all because of you two numbskulls! Why couldn’t you two just do what you were told and come back here instead of hunting down bodies? You’re idiots! The real Granny never would have seen you putting that woman in your car if you hadn’t gotten so greedy!”

  Ritchie blanched, but the other man, still nameless, grew angry. It was evident in the way he yanked his hoodie from his bald head and stormed up to Jack, hovering over him, his nostrils flaring, his teeth bared.

  “We thought we were doing you a favor, Uncle Jack! She was already on the side of the road by her car and deader n’ a doornail! Nobody cared. Nobody stopped to help. So we took her. That means no paperwork, no morgue, and that dipstick Egan, who can’t tell his elbow from his butt, doesn’t have to pretend he’s doing an autopsy before he sneaks the body out of the morgue—and that also means we don’t have to wait a month for the cash. It was instant money!”

  Without a sound, Jack pulled his arm back, clenched his fist and punched the man right in the face. He hit him so hard, the crack reverberated in the room.

  And then he went after him, grabbing him by the hoodie, seething and spitting mad. “You fools! We had to kill someone because you dimwits thought you could just grab any old random dead body and bring it back here like you were going to get a finder’s fee? Someone is dead because you’re so brainless, you morons! I didn’t get into this to kill people!”

  The other man growled his anger, and now that he’d recovered from the punch to his face, he was about to latch on to Jack when Ritchie stopped him by grabbing his arm.

  “Knock it off, Donald! Let it go, and let’s get this handled before Aunt Louisa gets back. She ain’t gonna like seein’ this nut,” he said, hitching his thumb at Win.

  Donald pressed his wrist to his mouth, wiping away the blood. Apparently, the mere mention of Aunt Louisa struck terror in the hearts of her minions.

  Jerry had clearly had enough. He’d stayed firmly planted in front of Win while the men fought, but now he pointed at him.

  “Ritchie, Donald? Get rid of him, and do it now. We can’t afford to mess this up. Take my gun. Understood? No more screwups.” He yanked Win by his sweater and threw him at them, almost knocking him to the ground with the force, but Win managed to grab hold of a chair with a single hand to right himself.

  I saw him hook his cane over his forearm in the blink of an eye, then he looked down at his hands and, with a white-knuckled hold, he grabbed onto the back of the chair.

  “Wiiiin,” I warned. “There are too many of them, and they have a gun somewhere in this building. You have a purse!”

  In one fluid, almost balletic motion, he totally ignored me, lifted the chair up, swung around.

  There was no sound. There was nothing but the sound of the chair smacking against skin when he hurled it at Jerry’s smug face with everything he had. His grunt was so loud, it pained me to hear it because I knew it pained him.

  Flipping the cane upward from his forearm, Win wrapped hi
s fingers around the handle and as Jerry doubled over, he rammed the end of it into the funeral director’s stomach.

  Jerry yowled, and I was so busy being impressed, I didn’t see what happened next.

  “Zeroooo! Duck!”

  Chapter 16

  “Win! Win, wake up. Please wake up!” I yelled as tears began to flow down my face.

  I have to tell you, seeing things from this perspective is all fine and dandy when you’re not watching someone slam your already broken beloved into a chair, tie his hands and feet with zip-ties, and stuff a sock in his mouth.

  In an embalming room surrounded by a couple of dead bodies, no less.

  Though, I can say, I’m not sure what a room like this smells like with all its white tiled walls and floors and gadgets and doodads that must be used to suck your organs out—or whatever—but I was glad I couldn’t smell it.

  There were a bunch of bottles on a steel table at the front end of the room and cabinets on the wall above it. There was a scale and some silver trays with the tools of the trade, I suppose, and a picture of the human anatomy on the wall. The sink on the far right wall had a hose in it, and I’m here to tell you, I don’t want to know what it’s used for.

  But worst of all, there were two dead bodies on the two tables, waiting for whatever they did to them down here, and right next to the two tables was another counter.

  Guess what was on that counter?

  My purse. Uh-huh. And they’d torn the handle on it. Do you have any idea how much a Saint Laurent envelope purse goes for? Obviously, the person who’d handed it off to the vintage store I’d bought it from had no clue. I’d nabbed it for a steal at thirty bucks, and now it was ripped.

  “Zero, you will open your eyes now! Do not shame our kind this way!” Arkady demanded, dragging my thoughts away from the possibility I was on one of those tables.

  Finally, after what felt like days, Win groaned. Blood dripped from his forehead and his lip grew fatter by the second. The moment his eyes opened was the moment he began pushing at the sock in his mouth. They hadn’t done a very good job of shoving it into Win’s mouth.

  In fact, they hadn’t even bothered to tape it, which is what I would have done. But even if he did manage to get it out, no one would hear him yell all the way down here. There were no windows and only one way in from upstairs, and nothing but a door off the embalming room that led to who knew where.

  “Zero, use tongue muscles. Push, Zero, push!”

  I would have laughed at Arkady yelling push, because it sounded more like Win was having a baby, but his encouragement helped Win to the finish line.

  The sock fell to the floor and landed at his feet. “Stephania?” he called out. “Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

  That he’d wake up after being knocked unconscious and ask if I was all right made my heart clench. “Am I all right? Are you crazy? I’m fine! Are you all right?”

  Arkady made a weird sound at the back of his throat and scoffed. “She is not fine, Zero. She is almost all gone.”

  Win looked upward. “Where are we at, on a scale of one to Stevie totally disappearing, Arkady?”

  “Her nose. My malutka has disappeared up to the top of nose. We must find her body soon. You must get loose and find her before they come back!”

  While Win had been passed out, Arkady had told me where I was in my transparent state, but that didn’t worry me as much as waking Win had. Also, while he’d been passed out, Ritchie and Donald had filled in all the blanks for us as they berated one another for their stupidity when dealing with Jerry. We didn’t even have to try and get the information.

  “What did they do to me?” he moaned as he appeared to shake off his grogginess.

  “They ganged up on you is what they did,” I said. “But you put up a heck of a fight, fake James Bond. A heck of a fight. I mean, you lost, but it was still a heck of a fight.”

  “It was like old days, Zero!” Arkady said on a laugh, slapping his thigh. “It was beautiful to watch. You were like beautiful ballerina in Bolshoi ballet but with ugly bad guys and no tights. You fight hard. You remember many things from spy days. I am so impressed. Still, there were too many bad guys and you are still too shaky. Alas, they win.”

  “Let’s focus, good man, yes? Do we know where those two bloody fools are?” Win asked, letting his chin hang to his chest to allow the blood pouring from his forehead to drain away from his eyes.

  “They went to get the transport ready for Mellie, and I think me, Win. I don’t know what that means, but I do know they have to wait until everyone is gone to get you out of here. I guess there’s only one exit from down here in the basement. Oh, and I…I was the body they found yesterday. The freelance job. Whatever that means.” I bit the inside of my cheek.

  “It means you must have collapsed by your car when your soul left your body, due to that haywire spell, and those two blokes found you. Seeing as they’re in the business they’re in, they decided you would garner some cash without any fuss.”

  “Okay, first, why don’t I remember leaving the store?”

  Win shrugged his shoulders. “Why don’t you remember your soul leaving your body? Who knows, Stephania. I think we’ll have to chalk this up to another paranormal mystery.”

  “Okay, then number two on my list. Maybe I’m just freaked out or something, but I don’t get it, Win. I can’t put this together because I can’t think straight. Why would I bring in some cash for those two goons?”

  Win began wriggling his fingers, tied behind him with zip-ties, to try to get loose. “They’re selling body parts, Stephania. They’re selling Mellie’s body parts and they’re going to sell yours.”

  Oh.

  Oh. My. Heavens.

  Man, did I feel stupid. So stupid.

  When I could finally speak, I still wasn’t grasping the full picture. “But why? Who buys such a thing?”

  Win began to rock the metal chair as he spoke, still explaining. “Companies who do medical research, Stephania. It’s why Mellie’s legs were missing. They lie to the families and tell them the cremains they’re giving to them are those of their loved ones. In reality, they’re giving them fake ashes, like the ashes from the ashtray Ritchie spoke of. Likely, they’re animal remains, and then they sell the parts of those people to a laboratory. My guess is, Egan Joseph would suggest Vera Brothers Funeral Home to the grieving who’d come to identify their loved ones, and then he’d sell the bodies to Jerry and Jack. It’s insidious.”

  I wrapped my hands around my stomach and rocked forward as the impact of his words hit me between the eyes. “All those spirits in the store…”

  Win nodded. “Yes. I’d almost guarantee they were in this very embalming room at one point and their bodies sold off.”

  My stomach rolled and my heart clenched. “How awful! If you get out of this, Win, you have to tell the police. For Mellie’s sake.”

  “We’re going to get out of this, Stephania. We’re thinking of you and only you. Now, your body can’t be far, I’m rather certain, as you said, they meant your body for this transport. Have we any idea where your body is?”

  I inhaled, but I didn’t have to say anything because Win quite suddenly snapped his head up, his vision impaired by that stupid hat on his head, but he zeroed in on the direction of the two bodies.

  “Do we know if one of those is you, Dove?”

  I had the willies just thinking about it. “I don’t know. There’s no way we can know unless we look.”

  “Which leaves us in a pickle, doesn’t it, Dove?”

  “I’ll say. If I jump into the wrong body, I can’t even begin to list all the bad things that can happen, but I’m sure you’re aware of the dangers.”

  “I am. And Belfry? Where is he?” he asked, continually rocking and making his way toward one of the countertops. Inch by agonizing inch.

  My stomach lurched again. I was terrified for Belfry, but I had to remember he was smart and easily hidden.

  “They
took your purse, Zero. But you leave phone in purse, and they do not see. Our best hope now is he get away from bad guys. We told him stay quiet as mouse and if he has chance, call for help on phone.”

  Win’s jaw tightened, but he kept rocking that chair until he got closer to the counter. “Has anyone seen this Aunt Louisa? I get the impression she’s the conductor of this train,” he said, twisting his fingers over and over as he moved the chair ever closer.

  “No, but they sure are afraid of her. Especially Donald. He told Ritchie they need to clean this up or she’d have them all killed.”

  “Zero, easy!” Arkady warned as Win almost tipped over. “Steady, Zero, like when we diffuse bomb in Bangladesh. No sudden moves.”

  Win barked a small laugh. “You’re right, old man.” Sweat beaded his brow, the hat now hung almost entirely over his eyes, and his legs strained to the point of his veins pushing against his skin.

  But he was almost there. “You’re almost there, Win!” I cheered with hope. “Another couple of hops and you’ve got it!”

  When he finally made it to the counter, he positioned the chair beside it and asked, “I can’t see clearly with this bloody hat. Tell me what’s on the counter that’s sharp, Arkady. Anything sharp will do.”

  “Scalpel, Zero. Big scalpel in tray,” Arkady responded in a voice so calm, I found myself in awe because I continued to have trouble finding my voice at all.

  “Direct me, good man. Lead the way,” he said, his words terse. Using his head, he butted it against the silver dish.

  “Slow again, Zero. Tip over slow so they do not scatter.”

  I held my breath and Arkady’s hand as Win knocked at the dish with his head and managed to tip it over, spilling the contents of it at the edge of the counter. Then he stood up and used his knees to move the chair out of the way by bending them and nudging it with his kneecaps.

  When the metal scraped against the floor, I cringed and looked around and toward the staircase, but we appeared to still be all clear.

  “Now turn around, Zero. Back to counter, stand on tippy-toe and listen to Arkady.”