by Madelyn Alt
“What’s up, Jane?” Mel asked, her face betraying a bright curiosity. The baby had awakened in midshuffle and was now making snuffly noises. On mommy autopilot in the way only very experienced mothers can be, Mel reached for the recently prepared bottle and plopped it in her mouth. “There you go, Isabella.”
Jane’s face displayed an avid excitement known to gossipmongers everywhere. “I know her, too. She and her husband are clients of the firm.” Jane “worked” at her husband’s law firm on a part-time basis. Mel had told me once that Jane did it gratis, solely for the benefit of having easy access to private information she might not otherwise be privy to. In other words, Prime Scoopage. “Greg might even have been the partner to handle their case last year,” she told Mel, “if I remember correctly.”
“Case?” Mel echoed.
My intuition kicked in. I had a sudden feeling as to where this was heading.
“Their divorce case.”
Yup, that’s what I thought. Greg was a divorce lawyer, a partner at the firm of Turnbow, Whitehouse, Churchill, and Craven, along with Jane’s husband, Phil. Young, smart, and very savvy, Greg had risen quickly through the ranks of the midsized law firm and made partner by virtue of his seemingly effortless ability to see his clients through one of the most emotionally difficult times of their lives without losing their shirts in the process.
The Watkins family had struck me as being very simple, down-to-earth people. Not the kind who would be overly worried about preserving all in a divorce case, because fairness and equity were a way of life to them. Not Greg’s usual type of client, surely.
“Divorce!” Mel exclaimed. Her eyes lit up at the scoop. “But how—”
“Obviously they didn’t go through with it,” Jane said. “Harry Jr. backed down soon enough when Frannie found out she was pregnant. By all accounts, his desperation to have a child played into the dissatisfaction with the marriage, so when that was taken out of the equation . . .” She let her voice trail off meaningfully and shrugged, leaving everyone to come up with their own conclusions.
Not so much of a scoop after all. I could see Mel’s interest waning.
And so could Jane. But her information wasn’t quite spent after all. She stood at the end of Mel’s bed, her hands clasped ever so piously before her. “Perhaps,” she suggested, “he wouldn’t have been quite so hasty if the private investigator’s report had been forwarded to him.”
Two pairs of eyebrows rose in response to Jane’s revelation: one set Mel‘s, the other’s, Margo’s. I was trying to remain neutral, rather than play into their need for scandal . . . but I will admit, I was paying attention. The only difference between me and Mel? Her interest in gossip and intrigue was purely for the titillation factor. Mine was to further my understanding of human nature. At least that’s what I told myself. The need to understand was strong within me; it always had been. Why people did the crazy, mixed-up, sometimes completely nonsensical things that they did. Inquiring minds (mine) want to know.
“He hired a private investigator?” Margo asked. The twin in her arms was beginning to snuffle and shift around, too.
“No,” Jane said. “We hired the private investigator. It is standard operating procedure in divorce cases at the firm for, shall we say, families of extended means. Since the Watkinses own all the gas stations in town, they have a significant amount of cash, property, and investments in their portfolio that needed to be protected.”
So the down-to-earth Watkins family was rolling in it . . . who knew? They certainly didn’t flaunt it. Unlike some people I knew. Case in point? I rolled my gaze dispassionately toward Margo, who had a brand-new Vera Bradley satchel purse at her feet, an expensively maintained manipedi, shoes and clothes that probably cost as much as a week’s pay for me, and who sported a fresh blow-out for her (cough, bleached, cough) blond hair.
“So, Jane,” Mel prodded, “what did the investigator find?”
Jane sat down again, stretching out her moment in the spotlight for as long as possible. “Well, I don’t know if I should say. It is privileged information, you understand.”
“You know us, Jane. It absolutely goes no farther than this room,” Margo told her solemnly.
I tried very hard not to roll my eyes. Trust me, it was a supreme effort.
Mel shot me a look. “Right, Maggie?” she demanded.
But I couldn’t help it when my eyebrows stretched upward in disbelief. “You’re worried about me?”
She forced me to agree to those terms before she would allow Jane to continue.
“What they found,” Jane said in a voice that quivered with the excitement of the moment, “was that she had been having an affair.”
Mel sucked in her breath in delight. “And the husband didn’t know?”
“Not a clue. Evidently that wasn’t a contributing factor to their divorcing.”
Mel and Margo exchanged a glance, as though they were sharing thoughts telepathically. And maybe they were. There was almost an electric back-and-forth telegraphing of energy hanging in the air.
“Why were they getting a divorce?” Margo asked.
Jane hesitated—not because she was having second thoughts, but for effect. “Because he wanted a family and they were having trouble and he thought she was taking measures to avoid getting pregnant.”
The entire conversation was making me feel slimy by default . . . but there was a hint of something important lurking there.
“When was this, Jane?” Mel asked her.
“Hm. No more than a year ago, certainly.”
There was a moment of silence as four women, yes, including me, began counting backward. Because if a standard pregnancy lasted for forty weeks, that was ten months of the “no more than a year” right there.
“He called it off because they’d reconciled,” Jane said simply.
They’d reconciled . . . and all of a sudden, poof, baby. What fortuitous timing.
Or was it baby, then reconciliation?
“And someone at the firm made the unilateral decision to just file the private investigator’s report in his file for future reference. Just in case it ever came back to that, the report would be there.” She laughed. “The whole situation was so notable because of how it suddenly came to light, and because of how it just as quickly was tucked away into the closet again. It always bothered me, that the husband never had a chance to make that decision for himself... but that’s family law for you.”
Mel’s brow furrowed. “Well, I wouldn’t want anyone making that decision for me,” she said decisively.
Margo and Jane said nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a single murmur of agreement.
And all of a sudden I was hit by a strong, heavy feeling that completely distracted me from the gossip about poor Frannie and Harry Watkins. Completely unrelated . . . but not, somehow.
And that made no sense whatsoever.
Sometimes intuition can be frustrating. Visions, symbols, feelings—the “sign” language of Spirit—all are often given via a type of metaphysical shorthand. It would be much easier if one’s spirit guide could just make it standard operating procedure to appear before them and either speak in complete sentences, or hand them a scroll or even a computer printout or something. Instead, a message from beyond might come in any form and often must be interpreted according to the belief system and experiences of the recipient. Which made it a very tenuous process at best. Still, for every message that went undeciphered, the ones that made a real difference could not be discounted. I was grateful for every last one of them.
Of course that didn’t help me to understand how Mel’s situation could be in the least bit tied to Frannie Watkins. The two were shirttail acquaintances at best.
“I wonder who she was having an affair with,” Margo mused.
The rest of us seemed to be wondering the same thing.
“Oh my God!”
Melanie had slapped her hand to her forehead, jarring baby Isabella awake. The baby began drawing ag
ain at the almost empty bottle, forestalling any squalling that might have been about to erupt.
“What?” Jane asked, breathless.
“I had completely forgotten this,” Melanie said. “You remember I told you all I had met Frannie at Baby Bellies? Back before I had been relegated to bed rest?”
Margo and Jane nodded encouragement. I pretended not to be listening too closely, but I totally was.
Isabella had actually finished her small bottle. Mel turned the baby up onto her shoulder and began to gently pat and rub her back. “Well,” she began importantly, her eyes flashing, “a guy came early to pick her up one night. While the rest of us were in the middle of our mom-ified lunges and hippo squats, I could see her in the coatroom with him, thanks to the mirrors on the wall. They were arguing. He grabbed her arm, she pushed him away.” She paused then, a mischievous glint in her eye. “Cute guy, too. Dark and dangerous. Motorcycle hottie in a black leather jacket. Not my type, but Maggie here would like him well enough.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Margo surveying me with a sudden renewed interest. “Really? But I thought Maggie was seeing, oh, what’s his name? That bland sheriff’s deputy?”
Bland? I was insulted, on Tom’s behalf.
“Tom Fielding,” Melanie supplied, ever so helpfully, as she patted her daughter’s back. “But that’s over.”
That would be Special Task Force Investigator Tom Fielding to you. And why was she helping Margo out with my business, anyway?
“Well, that didn’t take long,” Margo said.
A little unkindly, I thought.
All the things I would like to say to her but shouldn’t started boiling in my brain. I stared at her. I fumed.
Perhaps sensing my supreme annoyance, Mel handed Isabella off to me—I accepted, gratefully, happy for the distraction—and then motioned to Margo to bring Sophie to her.
“So. Maggie.” Margo straightened in her chair and smoothed her now wrinkled linen capris, the light in her eyes making her resemble a viper on the make. “Who are we seeing now?”
“Marcus Quinn,” Mel supplied, laughing when I gave her the Evil Eye. “Quite the hunk-o’-honey. Tall, dark, very good-looking. A little bit of the bad boy, I think, though. The last time I saw him, he was wearing his hair tied back at his neck and a pair of black leather pants.” She nodded at their horrified faces. “Seriously.”
And who should choose that very moment to knock on Mel’s closed door? Your favorite bad boy and mine, although I sometimes had a hard time thinking of him that way these days: Marcus, of course.
He popped his head in, a hand covering his eyes just in case. “Okay for me to come in?”
I can barely express how happy I was to see him just then. All the events of the day came crashing in on me at once, and they expanded outward in one great big bang worth of emotion. “Marcus!” I squeaked. I didn’t even care that Mel and her cronies were watching on in amusement. I was holding Isabella, so I couldn’t roll my wheelchair over to greet him properly. I had to wait until he found his way over to me.
“Brought you something,” he told me.
I giggled. He was holding his hands behind his back, but ... “Er, I am so not noticing the length of crutches stretching south of the border there.”
“What?!” He spread his legs just a bit and glanced downward between his knees. “Oh, that’s cheating, Maggie May-I.” His blue eyes sparkled with good humor into mine as he leaned down to kiss me. “Just had to be sure it was the crutches,” he teased with a wink. Then he glanced down at the baby in my arms. “Cute baby.”
“Speak of the devil,” Mel interrupted conversationally. “We were just talking about you.”
“Were we?” Marcus glanced back and forth between me and Mel and the others. “All good things, I hope.”
Jane’s gaze was still parked in a southerly direction. “I’ll say.” The last ended on a swiftly indrawn breath as Margo’s elbow connected with her ribs. “I mean, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
For once I was glad he wasn’t wearing the black leather pants which were so vintage Marcus. After all, they were what had originally caught my eye. Well, that and the hair that waved just so around his nape. And the playful glint in his eyes. And then there was that first kiss that neither of us saw coming, and . . . well, yeah. With Margo’s track record and Jane’s obvious appreciation? I felt both my pride and my protective nature kick in simultaneously. That’s right, girls, he’s all mine.
A smile slid into place on Marcus’s face, as though he had been reading my thoughts. And for all I knew, he had been. Drat him.
“Uncle Lou and I just got back. Did you get my text?”
“Oh!” I had forgotten to plug my cell phone back in, and it was nowhere near charged enough even to blip a new message warning. “No, sorry. Dead cell phone battery.”
“No probs. Aunt Molly had a pair of crutches out in the garage from the time she sprained her knee last winter, so I brought them along just in case you didn’t have any yet.” He glanced around the room. “Um, do you?”
“No, I haven’t had a chance to get out yet,” I told him with an appreciative smile. “Actually I haven’t even had a chance to figure out how I would be getting home. I can’t exactly drive Christine with this monstrosity, now, can I?” I tried lifting my ankle, but honestly? I was starting to get a bit tired, and I had an idea that the shot for pain they had given me when they casted it was starting to wear off, because the whole thing was beginning to throb.
“The yellow looks good on you.”
“Aw, thanks. I think.”
“And I brought my truck.”
“Thank you times two. Now if you have a solution to the housing issue I am facing, I’ll be yours forever.”
He winked at me, and I had a feeling any reticence had everything to do with our keen listeners. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
Now that he was here, I was enjoying a resurgence of hope that he would rescue me. Did I mention hospitals were not on my list of favorite places? Between the sticky, plaquelike energy, the weird night, the broken ankle, and now Mel’s so-called friends, I knew I was approaching the top of an empathic volcano that was reaching maximum pressure capacity. I could feel it building within me, and if I didn’t find a way to release it soon, the energy migraine I felt encroaching on the fringes of my consciousness would be a best-case scenario. I needed to get away from this place, from these people, before things got any worse.
Despite my weariness, I sat up a little straighter, a little prouder as I faced them. “Ladies. As you might have guessed, this is my boyfriend, Marcus Quinn.”
“Marcus was the one who came out to my house a couple of months ago when we had that . . . problem. You remember, Margo,” Mel reminded her. And then she looked at her askance. “Of course, you did leave awfully fast.”
I groaned, though I did my best to school my expression into neutrality so as to betray nothing to the others. The incident Mel had referred to so casually was one of the most frightening, most otherworldly experiences of my life to date. And of Mel’s, I should hardly need to remind her. It was not something to be taken lightly.
Mel had been ordered to bed for the bulk of the summer due to complications with her pregnancy, and like any dutiful sister, I’d had no choice but to honor my mother’s request that I help out. Certainly Greg wouldn’t have been able to handle Jenna and Courtney, a houseful of cleaning duties and responsibilities, and a more-than-full-time career as a hotshot family attorney, so Mom and I had done our best to fill in. But I’d never expected to find that the strange paranormal occurrences in Stony Mill had wormed their way into one of the newest and most highbrow subdivisions in town, and after discovering that it wasn’t solely relegated to the psychic abilities of my two young nieces and their protective spirit guides—whom Mel and my mother liked to refer to as their “imaginary friends”—but in fact was a dark entity of unknown origin and significant power that reached far beyond the re
alm of my limited experience, I knew then that I had little choice but to call for reinforcements. In other words, Liss and Marcus, and their magickal Bag O’Tricks. The two of them had come out to Mel’s house without question, without protest, without a thought as to previously scheduled plans or inconveniences. Together they had pooled their considerable energies and talents in order to send the dark spirit packing, back to the nebulous existence he had come from, and they had worked to ensure that whatever portal he had used would not be utilized by others of his ilk. All simply because it was I who had asked them for help. Because they knew they were needed.
And how had Mel chosen to repay them for their generosity of spirit? By exposing them as witches and purveyors of paranormal pastimes. And as you might guess, around these parts where Sunday morning church service attendance almost—almost—beats out attendance at the bars and strip clubs on Friday nights, no witch is a good witch, no spirit is a good spirit, and anyone who partakes of such deeply disturbing offenses must therefore be no good by default. Popularly held beliefs and traditions are hard to fight . . . especially when the town newspaper gets in on the act. Before you could say “String them up, stake them down,” word had spread around our small, provincial town. Liss had been turned away from City Hall for a permit she had been trying to obtain, and business at Enchantments was down. Way down. And as much as Liss would have liked to blame it on the blistering summer weather, we both knew the truth of it.
Mel knew nothing of this. Mel was as oblivious to any sense of wrongdoing in the matter as she was to the nature of the spirit she had allowed into her house through ill-advised and uninformed use of a Ouija board with the very same friends who were sitting with her in this hospital room today. To Mel, the spirit had been taken care of. Vanquished from her home and banished from her responsibility, and along with it went her fear.
It was never good to get so used to the spirit world that you let your guard down. An open channel was the metaphysical equivalent of leaving a master key hanging from the brass door knocker on your front door, along with a sign that says, “Come on in, help yourself.”
