Witch at Odds: A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 2 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries)

by Juliette Harper

  I opened my mouth to really tear into my aunt, but before I could say anything, I felt Tori’s hand on my arm. My head snapped toward her, but she never so much as flinched. Lightning bolts could have been shooting out of my fingertips and Tori wouldn’t be scared of me.

  “Simmer down, Jinksy,” she commanded. “You’ll never forgive yourself if you hurt somebody.”

  Just like that, my anger was gone.

  This was the first time since my powers awakened that I’d come even close to losing my temper, which at most happens once or twice a year anyway. I’m like my Dad; we have super long fuses, but when we finally do pitch a fit, everybody and God knows it.

  “Sorry,” I said weakly. “I didn’t mean to get all scary on you all.”

  “No,” Aunt Fiona said apologetically, “I’m the one who should be apologizing. I shouldn’t have said that about you getting too big for your britches.”

  Beau cleared his throat. “If I may?” he asked.

  “By all means,” I said. “I’m open to any ideas at this point.”

  “If I am following the course of your narrative correctly, Fiona,” the Colonel said, “you and your associates were to guard the grave for signs of trouble, but you were not to act in the event of such an instance?”

  “Not exactly,” Fiona said. “If something were to happen, we were to consult Alexander Skea’s private diary.”

  Finally. Progress.

  “Great!” I jumped in. “So where’s the book?”

  Fiona hesitated. “That’s the part I haven’t wanted to tell you,” she said.

  I just looked at her, waiting.

  “The diary was buried with him,” she said.

  Okay. That wasn’t so bad. We could dig up a dead guy. In the greater scheme of things, we could be asked to do much worse. In fact, I think we already had done worse.

  “Fine,” I said. “So we dig. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Fiona said.

  Are you kidding me?

  “Fiona,” I groaned, “seriously?”

  “It’s not my fault!” she protested. “I didn’t tell Rita Louise Sorrell to choke on a peach pit.”

  Well, that explained everything. Not.

  Putting my hand over my eyes and shaking my head, I said, “In English, please?”

  “Only one member of the coven was entrusted with the location of Alexander’s grave,” Fiona answered. “That was Rita Louise Sorrell. She was supposed to pass the information to her daughter, but she didn’t have one, so Rita Louise was going to pick one of us, and before she could, she choked to death at her kitchen table on a peach pit. It was just awful, Jinx. Nobody found her for two or three days and it was summer time . . .”

  “Stop!” I ordered.

  The last thing I needed to hear about was the details of Rita Louise Sorrell ripening up in the summer heat.

  Aunt Fiona clamped her mouth shut and Darby put his hand up as if asking for permission to speak.

  “You don’t have to raise your hand, Darby,” I said, smiling in spite of myself. “What is it?”

  “Her Majesty told me that you have the power of sight?” he said, making the statement a question.

  “Yes,” I said, “ I can touch objects and see things in the past. Why?”

  “Couldn’t you touch something that belonged to Master Alexander and see his last days?”

  Well. Score one for the munchkin.

  “Darby,” I said, grinning, “you’re brilliant!”

  The little brownie fairly glowed with pleasure.

  “Okay,” Tori said, “how do we find Alexander Skea’s stuff? Assuming any of it is still around.”

  “It’s a long shot,” Fiona said, “but you might try the Briar Hollow Historical Association. They share space with the library on the other side of the square. The librarian, Linda Albert, is also the head of the historical association.”

  Perfect. I already knew Linda. She helped me find old copies of the Briar Hollow High School yearbook when I first came to town and had a teenage ghost with amnesia on my hands.

  It might not have sounded like the start of a grand adventure, but it looked like we were about to hit the books.

  “I’ll go over there in the morning,” I said, glancing at the clock and then remembering what I’d done to the hands. I looked at Tori. “What time is it?”

  She glanced at her wristwatch. “Not quite 1 o’clock.”

  I looked at my aunt. “Do you have anything else you want to tell me before we call it a night?” I asked.

  Fiona shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “You’re sure?” I pressed.

  “I can’t imagine what it would be,” Aunt Fiona said innocently.

  Please don’t think badly of me, but I didn’t believe a word of it.

  16

  The way I shared this last part of the story, it sounds like accidentally making magazines levitate and clock hands spin didn’t freak me out. Not so much. It’s just that with everything else that was going on, I had to keep it together until I got upstairs.

  After Aunt Fiona excused herself to “see if I can catch the girls in Reno,” and Beau went to check on his friends among the cemetery regulars, Tori and I were left in the storeroom with Darby. The little brownie looked up at me expectantly and said, “Mistress Jinx, may I have permission to clean and organize the basement?”

  Yeah. We haven’t talked about the basement yet. Right after I inherited the store, I opened the door to go down there, hitting the light switch from the top step. Think warehouse at the end of the Indiana Jones movie. Since I was already overwhelmed by the lack of inventory control up top, I had no interest in descending further into chaos — and chaos with the likely presence of spiders at that.

  “It’s all yours, Darby,” I said. “Do your thing.”

  With profuse thanks, the little guy winked out. That’s when Tori and I took a minute to check the library’s hours on the county website. To our surprise, it was open on Sunday afternoons, but well after all local church services had concluded for the day and the lunch run at the cafe was over. We didn’t have to walk across the square until 1 o’clock.

  Tori was spending her first night in the new apartment. I walked her to her “front door,” which was actually just to the left of the door leading into the alley. In typical Tori fashion, she painted it red (with no objections from Myrtle) and put down a zombie apocalypse welcome mat. It features two footprints in a blood splatter and the caption reads, “Welcome to Tori’s. Bring Your Own Brains.”

  Giving my BFF a hug, I said, “Congrats on the new place. Don’t stay up half the night organizing your books in the Chick Cave.”

  “I won’t,” she promised. “This business of being up until all hours talking to dead people is starting to wear me out, too. At least we don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn in the morning.”

  As I turned away from Tori’s door to go upstairs, she called out my name in a questioning tone.

  When I looked back, she was leaning against the doorframe. “You gonna be okay up there by yourself?” she asked.

  “I have four cats,” I pointed out. “I am never alone.”

  Not even in the bathroom.

  My fellow crazy cat ladies will totally understand that statement.

  “You know what I mean,” Tori said. “That thing you did in there with the magazines and the clock was kinda intense. I know you.”

  Sometimes she knows me too well.

  Blowing out a long breath, I said, “Yeah, ya think? I had no idea that could happen.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  I shook my head. “I need to think about it for awhile.”

  “It’s not helping that getting intel out of Fiona is like pulling teeth with tweezers, is it?” Tori said.

  God, that was putting it mildly.

  “Do you think she’s being vague on purpose?” I asked.

  “I think she’s just being Aunt Fiona,” Tori said,
“using Aunt Fiona logic. She always has been an outside-the-box kinda gal.”

  I shook my head. “That was fine when it came to keeping a crazy inventory in the store,” I said, “but we’re playing with some serious stuff here.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Tori said with conviction.

  “How can you be so sure about that?” I countered.

  “Because we always do,” she replied.

  Yeah, I know. You read that and it sounds all silly and trite, but when you’re looking at someone with whom you share a lifelong history of “figuring it out,” an assurance like that can be pretty danged comforting.

  “Go,” I grinned. “I know you’re dying to alphabetize your Star Trek novels before you go to sleep.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You don’t alphabetize sci fi, Jinksy. You organize by season and episode arc.”

  I held my hands up in front of my face and backed away. “May the Force be with you,” I said.

  “That’s Star Wars, not Star Trek, dufus,” she said.

  I knew that, and she knew that I knew that, but sometimes you just give your BFF an opening for the heck of it.

  As I headed to my place alone, I admit I had a little anxious pang at the top of the stairs, but it wasn’t like I couldn’t go back down and wake Tori up if I needed anything. She was right, though. I was having a hard time turning my mind off.

  In the roughly two months I’d been a witch, a great deal of my time had been spent in (a) denial, (b) reluctant acceptance, (c) fear of hellfire and damnation, (d) meandering self-study, (e) all of the above.

  E. Final answer.

  See how easy it is to pass a multiple-choice test?

  Of all my abilities, I liked talking to ghosts the best. Before Brenna, I only had one scary encounter and that was with a girl who had been murdered by a serial killer and dumped in the woods. She had every right to be cranky.

  The telekinesis (moving stuff with my mind) was just downright handy. But truth be told, up to that point I had mainly used that one to avoid having to reach for the remote control. The psychometry, getting visions from touching something, still scared me a little. The power had allowed me to hear the voice of an ancient hickory tree, which was beyond cool but also completely life altering.

  I was just beginning to understand that “magic” is another word for what someone else might call “life force” or “universal intelligence.” The amount of information you can jack into with magic makes the Internet read like a fortune cookie. I’m an ex-waitress with a high school diploma. Sure, I’ve always had my head poked in a book, but there are moments when I seriously wonder if I’m smart enough to handle all this.

  There’s just so much to understand and try to remember! It should have occurred to me that my powers might get unpredictable if I was angry or upset, or really just exhausted and impatient. That’s a better description for what I’d been feeling downstairs.

  As these thoughts were roaming around in my head, I walked over to the front window to look out on the courthouse square. We hadn’t done anything to get the ghosts back in their graves, so it looked like the set of Night at the Museum out there for the third night in a row.

  That’s when I saw Howard McAlpin standing — or rather floating — on top of the cannon by the Confederate memorial speaking to a milling crowd of ghosts gathering below.

  Just. Freaking. Great.

  This guy simply would not get it through his thick, transparent skull that he’d run his last race. Or so I thought.

  I’d already changed into my favorite pajamas emblazoned with unicorns and rainbows, so I threw on the old denim shirt of my dad’s I usually reserve for Sunday TV binge watching on the couch. The sleeves are so long, I deal with a thick roll of fabric at each wrist and the tail of the shirt almost reaches my knees.

  I assure you that in no way did I look like either the voice of reason or authority when I charged out the front door of the store and marched over to the monument.

  As I came within earshot, I heard Howard say, “Do you want to be like those mindless spirits in the graveyard following the leadership of a slave-holding tyrant and a traitor to these great United States? I am campaigning on a platform of afterlife emancipation. We did not give up our fundamental rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness just because we died.”

  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the oxymoron of the century uttered by a political moron. American politics at its best.

  “Howie,” I hissed sternly, “you get yourself down here right now.”

  McAlpin’s expression turned to one of self-righteous triumph. “You see, ladies and gentlemen? There she is. The unholy agent of the repressive dead.”

  What did that even mean?

  The spirits turned toward me, a kind of anxious, half-angry muttering rippling through their glowing forms. I was so not in the mood for this. Remember that one angry ghost I told you about? Well, in dealing with her, I had learned a little trick. I could reverse my telekinesis.

  As the specters moved toward me, I raised my hand and focused my thoughts. A circle of blue light formed about six inches in front of my fingers. I pushed a little and it expanded into a sphere.

  “Back. Up.”

  The order came out of my mouth with just the right amount of bitchy terseness.

  Most of the ghosts stopped, but one guy, who just had to have been a Baptist preacher in life, kept coming.

  “I will not be cowed by you, you evil Jezebel,” he said.

  Okay. Jezebel. Cool movie. And you’re gonna think “cow,” buddy.

  I didn’t even hit him hard. It was just a little metaphysical love tap, but down he went — and immediately started scrambling back on all fours, which was pretty funny since he had no solid physical form. He stopped about six feet back with a fire hydrant sticking out of his chest.

  “I said, back up,” I repeated. “Do I have to tell you again?”

  The guy shook his head so hard it looked like a whirling gray funnel cloud.

  “Good,” I said, turning to the others. “Now, break it up. Howie is done for the night. You all go find something else to do.”

  As I watched, the spirits all floated away, some of them casting worried glances back at me. When I turned my attention toward the monument, Howard McAlpin was standing in front of me.

  “You cannot intimidate my constituency that way,” he said. “It’s voter intimidation.”

  Un-freaking-believable.

  “As much as I hate to ask this question, Howie,” I said, enjoying the way he flinched when I used the nickname, “exactly what do you think you’re doing?”

  Puffing himself up like a preening rooster, he said, “Democratizing the dead.”

  Clearly this guy had no concept of voter apathy.

  “Uh huh,” I said. “Democratizing them to do what exactly?”

  “To oust that Confederate traitor from his dictatorship at the cemetery,” Howie replied with carefully crafted faux indignation.

  I took a step toward him. “You say one more word against Beau Longworth and you’re getting a lightning bolt right up your ectoplasmic backside.”

  From behind me I heard a thinly disguised chuckle, followed by a clucking sound. “Now, Miss Jinx,” Beau said, “remember your manners.”

  “I am not feeling like a paragon of Southern womanhood at the moment, Beau,” I answered, without looking back.

  The Colonel floated up beside me and regarded McAlpin. “Good evening, Mr. Mayor,” he said pleasantly. “That was quite a rousing bit of political oratory.”

  “Oh, sure,” McAlpin snapped. “Don’t pull that gallant Southern gentleman thing with me. No wonder those ghosts have been trapped in that graveyard all these years. You like having your slaves, don’t you, buddy?”

  I was pretty sure Howard McAlpin had never given the history of civil rights so much as a thought until it could be a political tool for whatever the heck he had in mind, but before I could say anything, Beau spoke.
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  “Upon the death of my father,” the Colonel said gravely, “I emancipated our people and gave them parcels of land so they might support themselves. I did not participate in the Late Unpleasantness in support of slavery. While I understand that you could not have known these facts prior to this conversation, I would appreciate the cessation of attacks upon my character.”

  Even Howie couldn’t come up with a wise ass crack in the face of that one. Some things do endure after death. Integrity is on the list. I’ll give the bombastic runt this; Howard did have the grace to apologize.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, even though it looked like he was about to choke on the words. “But I still think the ghosts of Briar Hollow are in crying need of real leadership.”

  What the ghosts of Briar Hollow — or at least most of them — really needed was a good long nap. Like for eternity.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but Beau interrupted me. “May I have a word with you in private, Miss Jinx?”

  We stepped away a few paces and the Colonel lowered his voice. “Let Mr. McAlpin have his fun,” he said. “He can do me no harm.”

  “He’s a rabble rousing little . . . ” I started.

  “I do not disagree,” Beau said, “but that is all he can do, and this ridiculous campaign is keeping him occupied.”

  Oh.

  Which meant one less thing I had to deal with.

  Good point.

  Before I could answer, McAlpin called out to us. “You two can conspire all you like,” he said, “but this is America, and I will not be silenced.”

  Putting on my best “concerned citizen” face, I said, “You’re absolutely right, Howard. Who am I to try to deny the dead their civil rights?”

  I don’t know what shocked McAlpin more, the fact that I didn’t taunt him with the detested nickname or that I seemed to be agreeing with him.

  “Well,” he huffed. “Well, that’s . . . more . . . like it.”

  With witty repartee of that quality, no wonder this guy went into politics. But Howie wasn’t done yet.