Murder Ghost Foul: The Complete Mystic Springs Paranormal Cozy Mystery Series

by Mona Marple

  Ellie swallowed. Glory hoped the reference to the flying of sparks was subtle enough. Ellie made no effort to hide her fingers, so it seemed to be okay.

  “Do you have a question for me now?”

  Ellie shook her head and leaned back in the chair. Glory waited. She’d learned that no didn’t mean no. Give a person enough silence and they’d fill it. And enough didn’t have to be much. Ten seconds could feel like an eternity.

  They didn’t even get to ten seconds before Ellie cleared her throat, leaned forward again. “Which path should I take?”

  Glory raised an eyebrow.

  “If I’m at a crossroads, which path?”

  Glory smiled and closed her eyes, considered how to answer. She wasn’t a crook, for Christ’s sake. She liked to consider her role as a bit like Oprah’s. She listened, she asked questions, and she gave people the answer they needed. She knew fortune tellers who gave the answer they thought the client wanted, but Glory didn’t approve of that kind of behaviour. It was also the reason she got paid up front. No client of hers would decide not to pay because she’d predicted a difficult truth from the crystal ball.

  “I’m seeing a new path for you,” Glory made her voice as hypnotic as she could. She practiced using Youtube videos. A person could learn anything using Youtube videos. The new path was a stock line too. Anyone who saw a fortune teller because they were stuck between the same old routine and a new adventure just wanted permission to take the chance. “I see great excitement, but great challenge also. And in the end, I see that it will be worth it.”

  Ellie let out a breath she’d been holding and glanced down at her wrist, affording Glory a better look at the woman’s fingers. It looked like smoke damage, perhaps, but from what? They weren’t the fingers of a smoker, all yellowed and tobacco-stained. Curious indeed.

  “I’d better be going,” Ellie said with a smile. “Thanks for this. You were right about the serving people. I run the coffee shop in town.”

  Glory cocked her head to the side and gave her surprised look. “Is that so? That would drive me insane. People are disgusting.”

  Ellie gave an awkward laugh. “Some of them leave an interesting mess behind them, for sure.”

  Glory pulled a face. “Is that the new path or the old?”

  “Oh,” Ellie seemed surprised by the question, as if it broke some kind of client-fortune teller etiquette, which perhaps it did. Glory was fascinated by people, though, by their behaviour and their psychology. She was like a psychologist studying monkeys; they were interesting to research and watch but she wouldn’t choose to socialise with them. “I’ve had the shop for years. You should pop by. If you have chance, I mean.”

  “I might just do that,” Glory said. She was no stranger to a craving for a decent cup of coffee when on the road.

  “Well, alright then,” Ellie stood. She held out her hand, blackened fingers and all, and Glory did the same. As their hands met, a bolt of electricity passed between them. Glory snatched her hand away and took a step back as a smile crossed her lips. Ellie eyed her with suspicion, then gave a nervous giggle as she backed towards the door. “Oops! Static shock!”

  “Bye for now!” Glory called as the door slammed shut. She inspected her hand, half-expecting one of the burn marks to have been transferred to her own skin. That hadn’t happened, but Glory had no doubt about what they were. In fact, she realised many things at the same time, one of them being that she had just met a real life witch.

  3

  Violet couldn’t stand bad coffee. There were many injustices that she could tolerate in life - like her youth having lasted far too little a portion of her life and her sister being an attention seeking psychopath - but the fight against bad coffee was a hill she would die on. What was the point of it? Coffee so weak it may as well have remained water, or coffee laden with so much sugar that the person ingesting it should have had a donut instead.

  No, Violet had no time for such nonsense. She liked her coffee black with the tiniest dash of milk, so that the liquid transformed into a deep, sludge-like brown. A casual bystander should call it black coffee, so imperceptible should the milk content be.

  That raised a valid question about whether the milk was even necessary, and while Violet suspected it indeed wasn’t, she had to remember that she was an artist. Newspaper articles appeared about her more often than she’d like, and there was no headline in drinking black coffee. Drinking coffee that appeared to be black but was calculatedly white? Now that was a headline. The kind of tic that the public demanded of her.

  Not that she wanted a public. Oh, no. She’d suffered enough of a drama in that way thanks to her mother and then her sister, both utterly addicted to the notion of having celebrity status. Being a regular Joe had always sounded perfectly pleasant, Violet thought as she stood in line in Screamin’ Beans Coffee House. Her gaze turned towards the window seat that she had decided she would sit in. Just in time she spotted a balding man approach the spot. With a flick of her finger, she sent him a mild shock, not enough to kill him or even stun him, and then, like a collie herding sheep, she sent a repeated series of zaps to encourage him to change direction and select another seat.

  As he finally took a seat at one of those awful two-person tables right in the middle of the thoroughfare, he began to rub his head and look back at her window seat wistfully, and she stifled a giggle.

  “Playing nicely?” Ellie asked, an eyebrow raised.

  “Always, dear!” Violet announced. One of the many advantages of her age and profession was that she was allowed - almost expected - to be a little odd. “And how are you? Studies going well?”

  Ellie’s cheeks flushed. She was as reluctant a witch as Violet herself had been, and the question made her visibly uncomfortable.

  “Oh, love, don’t worry your head about answering that. I know you’ll be splendid,” Violet offered her a smile and then glanced down, saw the charred tips of Ellie’s lean fingers. She dropped her voice. “Ellie, you are being careful?”

  “Of course,” Ellie said. She gave a huge artificial smile. “There’s just this one… question… and I keep getting it wrong.”

  “Hmm,” Violet frowned. She’d been an industrious student herself, and had spent most of her time as top of her class. Many thought her an effortless witch, a natural talent, but the truth was that she was conscientious. If she had a spell to learn, she would darn well learn it. “Don’t overdo it. You have a tutor you can ask for help?”

  “Not really,” Ellie admitted. “He’s quite the showman. He seems to think anyone asking a question is a chance for him to take centre stage. I prefer to sit at the back and stay quiet.”

  “Ha!” Violet exclaimed. “He isn’t in fact a woman named Vera, is he?”

  Ellie gave a wan smile. Violet was prone to forgetting that a family’s drama was only interesting to that family and not people outside of it. Her cheeks flushed and she felt foolish for mentioning her sister. The two hadn’t seen each other in some time, much to Violet’s relief, and yet the woman had been on her mind more than normal over the last few days.

  “Well, anyway,” Violet opened her purse and set the two dollars on the counter. “A small Americano, please, with a dash of milk on the side.”

  Ellie busied herself with the drink and Violet noticed that she appeared to be alone. Her friend, the blonde heiress who treated her part-time job as a hobby, was nowhere in sight. Violet drummed her fingers on the counter then checked the situation with her table again. Empty. Good.

  She cast a glance at the line behind her, almost out the door!

  “Hello,” the woman next to her said, and Violet smiled without looking at her. Something in the periphery of her vision made her do a double take. The woman had thick dreadlocks piled on top of her head, and eyes outlined with thick strokes of black kohl.

  Violet gasped and brought her hand to her mouth.

  “Violet, are you okay?” Ellie asked, and before Violet knew what was happening, she wa
s being lead to a table - not even the one she’d chosen in advance. Ellie helped lower her into a high-backed chair, then brought her Americano across. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Is everything fine?”

  “Yes, yes,” Violet said, although she couldn’t take her eyes from the woman at the counter, who watched her with a look of confused amusement. “Have you seen that woman before?”

  Ellie turned and smiled. The dreadlocked woman gave a little wave. “She’s here with the circus. She’s a fortune teller. I think. Something like that.”

  Violet ignored Ellie’s fluster, her eyes fixed on the woman. “Cancel my order.”

  “What? You’ve already got it,” Ellie gestured to the steaming Americano on the table. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Violet had already stood up, brushed Ellie’s attentive hand from her arm. “Give it to someone else. Or throw it away. I’m fine, really. Must dash!”

  **

  Violet strode across town towards the mud-sodden fields, the dome of the big top visible from afar.

  WINDBANGER’S BIG TOP, the leaflets had announced. She’d seen them, pasted to street lights and litter bins and wads of them stuck inside her mail box as if she’d circulate them amongst her friends. She’d thrown them straight in the bin and ignored the itchy sensation in her fingers as she touched the leaflet. Whatever it was, she was better ignoring it.

  But that girl? Well, a woman really. A slip of a thing, with mischief in her eyes. More mischief than she perhaps realised. Violet couldn’t ignore her, no matter the consequences.

  She stormed right up to the big top and peered inside. Several people milled around, but he wasn’t there.

  A series of trailers were dotted around the field, and Violet eyed them all up. The largest would belong to Windbanger, of course, whoever he was. There was nothing much between the others. They all looked rickety, cold and completely impossible places to live. She hadn’t understood his decision when he was young enough to find such living space an adventure, and she certainly didn’t understand how it was attractive for an older man.

  Just as she’d decided she’d have to bang on each trailer in turn, he appeared. She was able to watch him as he unlocked the door of a trailer and went inside, shopping bags in each hand. With a deep breath, she trudged across the field and hammered on his door before she could lose her nerve.

  He recognised her right away, of course. She’d expected nothing less. “Violet?”

  “You know it is, you darn fool. Are you letting me in or shall we do this on the doorstep?”

  He swallowed and opened the door, stepped out of her way. The trailer was, surprisingly, homely. The kettle was boiling and he’d set out a china cup and saucer complete with what looked like gold leaf handles. A memory shifted in Violet’s mind but she couldn’t quite reach it.

  “Tea?”

  “Do you have coffee?” Violet regretted storming out without first enjoying her drink. It wasn’t as if Rufus was going anywhere, at least not until they’d finished the last night’s show.

  “Sorry,” he said after going through the pantomime of checking inside each cupboard. How ridiculous. In a kitchen so small surely he must know not just what he had, but how many. He turned to her, his own drink forgotten on the counter. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Hogwash,” she said, although the sight of him had taken some of the sting out of her tail. It had been, what? Thirty years since she saw him. Twenty more before that. She still couldn’t understand his disappearing act. He’d been completely enamoured with her - or her magic at least - until all of a sudden he wasn’t.

  “Still got that fighting spirit, I see,” he teased.

  “Still working for someone else, I see,” she retaliated, less playfully. “I thought you wanted your own show?”

  “Oh, this is mine,” Rufus said. “I bought into it. Equal partner.”

  “And yet your name isn’t on the flyer,” Violet said.

  He shrugged. “I was never interested in that part of it.” Annoyingly, she believed him. His had always been a pure love of magic, tricks and spells. “Dusty said it would confuse the customers to change the name. I didn’t believe him, but I just didn’t care. You know what that’s like, to not be in it for the attention?”

  She shrank back away from him, horrified by his knowledge of her. “You know why I’m here?”

  “No,” he said, but his voice rose an octave, as guilty voices tended to. He was the kind of man who would plead the Fifth right until he was backed into a corner.

  “I just met your daughter,” Violet spat at him.

  He let out a cough, transformed it into a hearty laugh. “Oh, you mean Glory? She’s my niece.”

  “You don’t have any brothers or sisters,” Violet was pleased to be able to use her own knowledge of him as a weapon. He wouldn’t fool her. Not again.

  “Big age difference,” he turned his back and clicked the kettle to make it boil again. “He was a complete surprise for my mother! I’d left town…”

  “Without saying goodbye,” she couldn’t resist.

  “… and a good job I did because my room was needed at home. He died. My brother. I took Glory in for him. Did she tell you I was her father? I can’t think why she’d say that. She can be a… a character.”

  “I knew she was your daughter the instant I saw her. How could you?”

  “You’re not making sense, Violet. She’s my niece,” Rufus protested. He gripped the counter so hard his knuckles had turned white.

  “She has powers,” Violet said. He spun around to face her. “I don’t believe she knows. Do you?”

  “No,” he said, perhaps the first honest word he’d said since she’d walked in. He slid into the compact booth seat that no doubt transformed into a bed, and stared down at the table, his tea abandoned for a second time.

  “You’ve been lying to her all her life,” Violet said. “You were always so desperate to be around magic, and now you have a daughter with powers and are too thick-headed to realise. Where’s the mother?”

  “She isn’t my daughter,” he said, but his denial was weak, his voice barely a whisper.

  “Where’s the mother? She’s clearly a witch you’ve had a dalliance with while the circus was in town.”

  Rufus buried his head in his hands.

  “This is intolerable!” She exclaimed. “She can’t be your little prisoner, Rufus, held captive so you can see whether she would have her mother’s magic! It’s not right! You must tell her the truth at once!”

  “I can’t,” Rufus pulled on her sleeve to prevent her storming out. He had no magic powers at all, much to his regret, but he could occasionally read a mind pretty well.

  “You’ve got her working here as, what? A fortune teller? How could you not realise she had powers?”

  “She doesn’t,” he said. “I gave her that job because she was in a bad way. Run-ins with the law. She can’t tell the future, Vi, she just knows how to watch a person and give a good reading. It’s not magic.”

  Violet frowned. “That may be so. That industry’s certainly full of enough charlatans as it is. But that’s beside the point. You need to tell her the truth. Tell her you’re her father, and tell her who her mother is. It’s vital for a young witch to be around the source of their magic.”

  “That isn’t an option,” he couldn’t meet her eye. “Her mother abandoned her with me when she was a baby. I had no idea she was pregnant until she appeared with Glory and then took off again. I swear, I didn’t set out for any of this to happen. I was left in an impossible position.”

  “Then why tell her you’re her uncle?”

  He shrugged. “I thought it would reduce the pressure. I’d be the hero for taking her in, you know? Anything I did after that would be enough.”

  “And your poor brother?”

  Rufus groaned. “There is no brother.”

  Violet tutted and shook her head. “You must tell her. Her mother’s alive?”

  Rufus
looked at her and swallowed, gave a nod. “I thought she was you.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Violet asked. A chill passed across her neck and her whole body switched to high alert. Every hair on her arm stood to attention. Run, her body seemed to be telling her, and yet she felt grounded to the spot.

  “It was thirty years ago,” Rufus said. “The first time I’d seen you since I left town. I thought I’d be in such trouble with you, but you were pleased to see me. I should have known then that something was wrong.”

  “I was not pleased to see you! I avoided you the whole week the circus was here!” Violet exclaimed as a feeling of dread took over her body.

  “It only happened the once,” Rufus said. “And I swear I thought it was you. I mean, she told me she was you. I didn’t just make a mistake. As soon as we’d done, we lay there in bed and she looked right at me and said, you do realise I’m Vera?”

  Violet’s breath caught in her throat. She could believe that her sister would do such a wicked thing, but what would be the point if she didn’t use it to gloat about? It had no power as a secret.

  “I was annoyed with myself,” he continued. “But I can’t pretend I was heartbroken. I used you, Violet. I always had. I’d followed you around obsessed with your magic and it drove me crazy that you wouldn’t share it with me.”

  “We were going to marry!” Violet exclaimed. She’d never been closer to a man than she had to Rufus, and hearing that he had moved on so quickly caused a stabbing pain in her sternum.

  “I was never going to marry you,” he said. “I was always going to follow the circus. You had to know that? It was my passion.”

  “You crept off in the early hours without so much as a goodbye. Just disappeared from my life.”

  “I know,” his voice grew low. “I’ve grown up and I realise now that I should have been more honest with you. I was young, and foolish. And when Vera revealed herself to me, I knew she was going to tell you and I was stupid enough to think maybe you deserved that pain. For not letting me in to your powers.”