by N. M. Howell
The catch in the old woman’s voice tugged at my chest, and on instinct I leaned over and squeezed Dot’s hand gently. “I’m sorry for your loss.” I turned my head to address Bianca. “Both of you.”
The tall woman stiffened in her chair and clasped her long fingers together tightly. “I’m afraid your sympathy is a little misplaced, Miss Jones. Agatha fell out with Dot and I, I’m afraid. We’d barely seen her in the months leading up to her death. In fact, she’d become quite the recluse, rarely left the building, and the people she did see claimed she’d become somewhat…fanciful in her thoughts. Delusional, even.” Bianca rested her elbows on the table and shrugged her shoulder. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you found a load of old scribblings full of her crazy ideas lying around. Frankie, her assistant, said she was declaring him of all sorts of nonsense before they parted ways. Of course, after the way everything ended between those two, it’s hard to know if he’s just talking out of spite.”
I eyed the cats warily out of the corner of my eye as Bianca finished speaking. Crazy Agatha falling out with her employees and pissing everybody off; sounded pretty accurate. And now I was talking to her ghost and hearing her cats speak. A knot tightened in my gut and I pushed my chair away from the table and started to clear the empty cups. “That’s really sad, the poor lady,” I said.
Dot sprang from her seat with surprising grace and started to pack everything away, clearly as anxious for the impromptu get-together to end as I was. Only Bianca remained seated. Her gray stare was trained on my face. “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to upset you. I wasn’t suggesting that her will could be overturned because of her mental state before her death.” My hand froze halfway to the faucet over the sink and I met her eye. She smiled sweetly, the elegant curve of her lips doing nothing to soften the sharp predatory nature of her gaze. “I’m sure nobody thinks that for a second.”
“I didn’t ask for this.” I turned my back to the sink, feeling the edge of the counter dig into my lower back. “I had no idea she was going to leave anything to me. I’m not some sort of social predator if that’s what you think. Anyone who has a problem with Mrs. Bentley’s will is more than welcome to take it up with her attorney.”
Dot shook her head so hard that her white curls bounced around her cheeks. “Oh, no, that’s not what we think at all. We don’t want any of Agatha’s money. I’ve got my shop and Bianca’s the wealthiest woman in town, and even if we weren’t, we wouldn’t want a cent from Aggy’s estate, right, Bee?”
“Of course,” Bianca replied, stretching her legs as she stood from the table.
“Bianca was just trying to warn you, is all,” Dot insisted. She grabbed hold of her purse and patted my arm gently. “There are always people who think they deserve more than they get in a neighborhood like this. Begrudgers, gossips, disgruntled employees—don’t you pay any heed to them. If you need anything at all, you’re always welcome at Bewitching Bites.”
Dot swept out of the kitchen before I could say another word and the ginger cat padded softly after her, purring. I watched as she took a final glance around the room. She pressed her hand to her lips and closed her eyes for a moment, and then she was gone. Bianca nodded to me and I followed her to the door of the apartment, glancing around anxiously for any sign of the old witch. On the doorstep, she turned and faced me—eyes sharp, lips narrow—but she didn’t say another word before she marched down the street after her friend. I noted that Bianca hadn’t told me where to find her should I ever need her help.
Chapter Six
By the time I hauled my tired bones back up the stairs to the apartment; Agatha had reappeared and was prowling around the hallway like a jaguar. She swivelled to glare at me as soon as I closed the apartment door. “Well, did you get any information from those old cows?”
“Information?” I burst through the bedroom door. I really needed some food. And a shower. No, I thought, a bath. I needed a long, hot bath.
The old woman stamped her ghostly feet in irritation. “Information about my murder. Did they do it? Well, not Dorothy, she doesn’t have a bad bone in her roly-poly body, but Bianca? Ha, she’d put a knife in her own mother’s back to make a quick buck.”
“Oh, come on, Agatha. She’d not that bad,” I said, Bianca’s warning about the old lady’s will slithering in the back of my mind. I screwed my face up. “Anyway, it’s all irrelevant.” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and flicked through the articles about Agatha’s death for the second time that morning before flashing the screen at her face. “You choked on a grape, sorry. Murder solved, no witchcraft necessary.” I raised my hands in a pleading gesture. “Now, could you please leave the room so I can get out of these filthy clothes and have a bath?”
“But it’s not true.” Agatha plonked herself down on the large bed and wrapped a weightless hand around the bars of the wrought iron frame. I slid my cell back into my pocket, taken aback by the ghost’s sudden deflation. I unzipped my bags and pulled out a robe, a bath towel, and some fresh clothes and underwear. I hid the royal blue lacy lingerie set under my towel to prevent Agatha from ranting about young people and their tiny underwear, but the old woman didn’t even glance in my direction as I shimmied out of my clothes and slipped into my robe. The tabby cat sat beside Agatha on the bed and grinned at me as I walked across the room, but the ginger cat hid his head under the comforter. The black cat appeared to have disappeared entirely. If getting undressed was all I had to do to make the cats vamoose, I decided I would happily take up naturalism. I was just about to close the door to the bathroom when the ghost spoke again. “I didn’t just choke on a grape. That couldn’t have been how it all ended. I wasn’t done with life. I wasn’t finished.”
Despite myself, I softened, unable to ignore the depth of sadness in her voice. Sadness, or perhaps, regret. I pressed my palm against the doorframe. “You don’t remember how you died?”
Like breaking a spell, the old woman was back to her usual, exasperated self. “Of course, I don’t remember how I died, you nincompoop. Who the hell remembers their own death? That’s why I need you, to work the memory spell and to avenge my murder.”
I snapped the en-suite bathroom door shut in Agatha’s face, but the old woman walked through it with a smug grin. Muttering under my breath, I twisted the taps and a flood of blessedly warm water gurgled from the spout and splashed into the huge porcelain tub. The bathtub’s clawed feet were beautiful, as were the ceramic tiled floor and the handcrafted wall unit, but I suspected the oversized room would be draughty and cold once winter came again. I made a mental note to figure out how to work the heat in the building, grateful for whoever had ensured there was warm water for my bath. My head was full of the buzz of tiredness and a creeping awareness that talking to a ghost felt more natural than I wanted to admit. “Listen, Agatha, I’m not a witch. I’m a normal, suburban woman. There’s nothing witchy or special about me; sorry to disappoint.”
“What coven do you belong to?” Agatha narrowed her eyes. “Has somebody told you something about me? They’ve told you not to work with me.”
“What? No,” I said. “This is ridiculous. More ridiculous than the darn cats. I don’t know how many times I need to tell you this, lady, but I’m not a witch.”
Agatha waved her hand dismissively. “Of course you are, you scented your letter of application with lavender oil.”
I rooted through the vanity and drawers, casting a glare over my shoulder. “I like essential oils. That doesn’t make me a witch.”
“I worked an overseer spell and I saw you drinking your green potions. I saw you trying to give one to that buffoon you were besotted with, too.” Agatha crossed her arms and raised one eyebrow. “Spelled love never ends well, any witch worth her salt knows that much.”
I snatched a bottle of bubble bath from a drawer and emptied it into the water. “Vegan smoothies.” I snapped the drawer closed. “Not potions, smoothies. Because I’m a business woman, not a witch.”
�
��Oh, for goodness sake, enough with this charade already. You think I don’t recognize a witch when I see one?” Agatha threw her hands in the air. “Fiddlesticks and pork pies, next you’ll be trying to tell me that boyfriend of yours doesn’t have a teeny-tiny piece of equipment.”
The tabby cat poked his head through the cat flap in the bathroom door and his whiskers twitched as he glanced from me to his ghostly owner.
“Ex-boyfriend,” I snapped, instinctively, narrowing my eyes. “And how would you know about my ex-boyfriend’s… anything? Were you spying on him with your spell, too?”
“Absolutely not.” Agatha held a hand over her chest as if the accusation offended her. “But if you insist on snivelling over your cell-phone thingy at night and flicking through pictures of him with his pathetic little—”
“Stop!” I clapped my hands over my ears and glared at the door. “Stop, stop, stop. Let me have my bath in peace, please.” I tipped my head at the tabby cat perched lazily on the side of the bath. “And take that hairball with you.”
Agatha tutted. “Don’t call him a hairball, Pussy is a beautiful cat.”
“Pussy?” I almost choked on the name. “You called a male cat Pussy?”
“Don’t have such a filthy mind, child,” Agatha drawled, but I could tell from the gleam in her eye and the twist of her lips that the humor wasn’t lost on her.
The tabby cat arched his back and stretched his paws before pouncing onto the floor with a toss of his head. “Don’t be like that, sweetheart. You’re just feeling a little tense. Maybe a little time with a man who’s packing more than a shrimp-sized—”
I grabbed the empty bottle of bubble bath and flung it as hard as I could. It sailed through Agatha’s stomach and smacked off the walk above Pussy’s head. “Get out, you psychopaths. Please.” Agatha opened her mouth, but I cut her off. “No! Get out, get out, get out!”
With a roll of her eyes, Agatha vanished, leaving me alone with the smarmiest looking cat on the face of the earth. I a hair brush threateningly and glared at him. Pussy stretched once more before he sauntered away. He looked over his shoulder as he approached the cat flap and blinked with one eye. “Have a nice bath, sweetheart. If you discover you have an…itch you want licked—“
The hair brush bounced off the door as his tail disappeared.
Chapter Seven
“Sleazy little furbag,” I muttered as I dipped my toe into the bubble-filled bath. “Ouch.” I recoiled from the scalding heat of the water and glared at the door. “Great, made me run my water too hot as well.”
Grumbling, I made my way back into the bedroom to unpack my stuff while I waited for the bath to cool a little. I emptied my bags and placed my folded clothing into the dresser drawers in the airy bedroom. A bedroom, I suddenly realized, that had probably belonged to Agatha only days before. I stared at my belongings in the old woman’s drawers and wondered what I was doing. Why was I unpacking? I wasn’t sure if I was going to stay in the house with its cats and its ghostly witch. Hell, I wasn’t sure if I was going to stay in Salem. I closed the drawer with a shove. “No sense making any hasty decisions, Price.”
I grimaced at my reflection in the dresser mirror and made my way through the room. The décor screamed old woman, but with a few tweaks it wouldn’t be that bad at all. Vintage chic was all the rage these days and something about it appealed to my inner old lady. Reminded me of a time before cell phones and social media and constant accessibility—a cell phone that buzzed with endless messages and calls from people who didn’t really care if I lived or died.
There was a large window overlooking the back lane, which perhaps wasn’t the most peaceful of views, but somebody had painted the back wall with bright splashes of colour and hung flower baskets of artificial flowers amongst the fairy lights strung along the crumbling brick. I smiled, imaging Agatha and her old friends eating bologna sandwiches and drinking tea in the lane on warm summer evenings. “What a strange little place.”
I plucked my jacket from the floor and hung it on the back of the door, emptying my keys from the pocket. I opened the drawer of the bedside table to tuck them in for safekeeping, and sitting in the drawer was a small diary, a thin layer of dust covering the front cover. I carefully picked it up and blew off the dust, revealing the name Aggy on the front. I couldn’t help but cast a guilty look over my shoulder as I flipped open the front page. It wasn’t any of my business going through someone else’s diary, but the old woman was dead, so what harm could it do, right? And she’d snooped into my life with her spell, watching me try to win Gerard back, spying on my photos of— “Nosey little busybody.”
I clutched the diary between my stiff fingers and marched back into the en-suite, tossing my robe onto the floor in a disgruntled heap. Still gripping Agatha’s diary, I dipped my foot into the water. It was hot but bearable, and I slowly submerged my feet, followed by the rest of my body, inch by inch. The water against my skin felt invigorating, and I let out a soft sigh as I sunk down to my neck and floated in the massive tab. The surface was coated with bubbles and the scents of lavender and citrus filling my nose. I closed my eyes and relaxed, relishing in the therapeutic benefits of the hot tub. Peace at last. Time to reconnect with Dr. Lee and find my Zen. I’m a leaf, floating on a gentle current—
“What’s she doing?”
Clenching my teeth, I turned to see the three cats standing beside the bathroom door, cat flap swinging. The large black cat jumped up to the toilet seat and then onto the cistern, watching me from a safe distance with narrowed eyes the color of blue glass. The ginger cat sprawled in the middle of the floor and stretched out while the cheeky tabby, Pussy, sauntered around the tub, as if unsettled in the steamy room.
“What are you doing here?” I asked them. I should have locked the cat flap. If cat flaps could even be locked. In the event that I did stay, I mused, I’d have to seriously weight the benefits of keeping the creepy fur balls or giving them away, perhaps to a neighbor or shelter. I was allergic, after all. My lips twitched up at the thought.
“She acts like she wants us to leave, but she’s smiling. Women are so confusing.” The ginger cat’s voice was softer than the tabby cat’s, less refined. I frowned at the cat’s green eyes. Something about the bright stare reminded me of Gerard’s best friend from grad school, a former quarterback and all-state superstar-turned-business-major. He’d asked me on a date once, before Gerard and I got serious. He’d told me I could do better than Gerard. Guess I should have listened. The ginger rolled into a crouch. “Guys, she’s staring at me. Why’s she staring at me?”
Before I could answer him, a deep, gravelly voice filled the room. “She’s not deaf, Muffin.” The ginger cat’s face swivelled in the black cat’s direction and then back toward me, before he covered his eyes with a soft paw. The black cat’s chuckle was so low it was almost a growl.
Pussy padded across the floor and rolled onto his back beside the ginger cat. “Fluffy’s right, Muffin. She’s not like the other people on the street, kid. Price is the new Agatha.”
“I’m not the new Agatha,” I snapped, glaring at the tabby cat.
Pussy’s mouth stretched wide and pointed teeth flashed at me. “Sure you’re not, princess. You just let out all that anger out.” His eyes glinted in the sunlight. “Agatha always liked to talk things out in the tub, too.”
I suppressed a scream of frustration and crossed my arms under the bubbles, turning my head away from Pussy and his infuriating grin. What the hell was I doing talking to a cat? Letting a cat get under my skin? A cat. I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe deeply, but I had a hard time relaxing as the thoughts of the strange old woman’s words ran through my head. I had the hardest time convincing myself that she was real, but at the same time, how could she have known those things that I had no way of knowing myself? Could my brain work like that? Maybe I’d imagined her walking through the wall, and perhaps she was a real person that had simply followed me home from the park. But no, that cou
ldn’t be right. My hand had gone right through her. I’d seen it. There was no way in hell I could be that crazy. Could I?
“She doesn’t look like she’s all that relaxed,” Muffin’s voice said from the side of the tub.
I jumped, splashing water over the side of the bathtub and onto the floor. This was simply getting out hand. “Stop talking! You’re a cat. I know you’re not real. It is all my head.”
“Give her a break, guys.” The black cat’s slow, smooth voice slid across the room. “She didn’t know about any of this stuff—witches, spells, ghosts. She needs time to adjust.”
I raised my hands to my ears and sunk deeper into the tub. “La, la, la.”
Pussy prowled along the edge of the tub and pressed his nose closer to my face. “I don’t know, Fluffy, she mightn’t be able to handle it. She’s got a bag in the other room that says ‘Peace, Love, and Yogalates.’ What kind of crap is that?”
“She’s a hippie, that’s for sure,” Fluffy said.
My eyes flew open at his words. I turned to face the black cat and glared at him. “Who are you calling a hippie?”
“You,” the black cat replied. “Come on, I bet you have hemp smoothies for breakfast and avocado toast for brunch, am I right?”
I stared at him for a long moment, contemplating whether I was going to play into the whole crazy thing and argue with the stupid, blue-eyed cat. I finally decided I had already reached the maximum threshold of crazy; I might as well give in to my failing brain. “You don’t have breakfast and brunch on the same day, idiot.” I flashed him a smug grin, certain that would shut him up, but I swear the cat rolled his eyes at me. “Besides,” I added. “Hemp smoothies are extremely nutritious and avocados are underrated.”
