by Scott, D. D.
Why the hell would Liza have any reason to mess with Adah?
The only thing I could think of was the pronunciation of her name. It sounds just like Ada, which is a palindrome - a word that can be read the same way backwards as forwards. And that was just the sort of oddity that appealed to Liza.
One of the books on my bookshelves, which Aunt Liza had recently borrowed and couldn’t stop talking about, was The Poisonwood Bible. One of the main characters in Kingsolver’s story was named Adah, and she was obsessed with palindromes. She even imagined an alternate, darker version of herself named Ada. Surely Liza wasn’t trying to tap into those kinds of energy fields too?
But dammit all of this is just plain crazy! Why was I even thinking about this? I swear, all of this Liza nonsense is really starting to drive me mad. Palindromes? I had to get a grip.
“Are you still there?” Adah asked.
“Yes. Sorry. I’m just in the middle of some damage control here.”
“What’s going on? Not another body, I hope.”
“No. Nothing like that.” Although, it certainly could have been. “Just cleaning up another one of Aunt Liza’s messes.”
“Say no more. We should have lunch next time you’re in Boston.”
“I’d like that,” I said, relieved that Adah hadn’t inquired any further into the nature of my aunt’s latest shenanigans. “Keep off that foot and get healed up quickly.”
“I will. Goodbye, Nick.”
I said my goodbye, unable to get off the phone fast enough.
“Liza!” I screamed, and I didn’t give a damn if everyone else in the house heard me.
“Yes, Nicky?” She said, using her most innocent-sounding voice as she stepped into my office from the kitchen.
“I just got off the phone with Adah.”
At the mention of my ex, the color drained from her cheeks. And that was all the confirmation I needed.
“How many dolls were in that explosion?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t jerk me around, Liza! How many?”
“Uhm…Three.” Her answer came out so softly that I couldn’t be certain of what she’d said.
“Pardon me? I didn’t quite catch that.”
“There were three.”
“Dammit, Liza! What the hell were you thinking? What did Adah ever do to deserve one of your hexes?”
“She broke your heart.”
I shuddered. She had me there.
“C’mon. You know we separated amicably. It just didn’t work out, and you know that. Try again.”
After a long pause, Liza hemmed and hawed until she finally came out with it. “The spell works best in threes.”
“Okay. Fine. But that still doesn’t explain why you would choose Adah.”
“Because she’s another ex. And that fact alone gave the spell the best chance to work. I did make her situation less severe than Hank and Darryl’s.”
“I swear, Liza. Sometimes, I don’t know what to do with you.”
“How is she?” She asked, even more sheepish than when I’d pried the truth out of her.
“She has some broken bones in her foot, but she’s going to be alright. For cripe’s sake…no more spells! And especially not on Adah or Hank. I know how much crap Darryl put you through. You have every reason to want to get back at him. Just leave everyone else out of it, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed.
Which surprised me, till I saw that familiar glimmer flash in her eyes. Not good.
“Does this mean that you won’t need to go through with the reverse mirror box binding spell?” She asked, with all kinds of misguided hope uplifting her voice.
Truly unbelievable. She really didn’t get it. Worse yet, she never would.
“Not a chance. As a matter of fact, I don’t want you leaving this house until we get back. You’re not going to screw this up too. Understood?”
“Fine.”
She lowered her head, muttered something unintelligible, grabbed one of my bottles of Templeton Rye Whiskey off of the bar right outside my office and moped back into the kitchen.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Under the light of the full moon, we gathered in the ancient graveyard located not too far from the creek that ran through the back of my property. There, amidst the crumbling tombstones of lost pioneers and Civil War veterans, we prepared to bind up Aunt Liza.
Sam took the reversing box she and the Captain had made and placed it next to the hole I’d dug with my backhoe.
Working with nothing but the light of a black candle that Sam explained had been dressed with a special kind of reversing conjure oil, we placed the Voodoo doll, with one of Liza’s shotgun shells wrapped around it, into the box and took turns sprinkling it with red pepper and sulfur powder.
As we sprinkled, the Captain read from the printout:
Here you are, Liza, and here you will stay,
and from this time forth, all the jinx’s you try to make,
and all the foul words that you use…
“Hey, what’s wrong with foul words?” Grams piped in.
“I agree. Why would we want to bind up foul words? The four-letter ones especially. I love those!” Sam said, making it two votes to…
Like it really mattered. None of us would ever be able to bind up Sam or Grams’ potty mouths.
“Okay…let’s try this again,” the Captain said unable to keep from chuckling.
“Here you are, Liza, and here you will stay,
and from this time forth, all the jinx’s you try to make,
and all the evil that you do will come back to you
as these mirrors reflect your image back to you…
and in this hell of your own devising
you will remain until God releases you in judgment. Amen.”
“God’s got his hands full with that one,” Grams said tossing in an extra handful of red pepper.
The Captain chuckled again as he proceeded to close the box and tie the lid down tight with heavy string.
“Can you please hand me the dime?” He asked Sam.
Sam did as she was asked, her hand shaking in the glow of the candlelight.
The Captain tossed the dime over his left shoulder.
“Please accept our offering, dear spirits of the graveyard,
and help us hold down our enemy.”
“They’ll do this kind of gig for a dime? Cheap-ass spirits for sure,” Grams said. “I’m thinkin’ we outta toss in an extra dime. I mean, c’mon…”
Sam took out another dime from her coat pocket and handed it to Grams.
Grams flung it over her left shoulder while the Captain and I lowered the box into the miniature grave. While I used the backhoe to fill in the hole, everyone stood silent.
“All right, then,” I said, “everyone turn away, do not look back, and follow me. We’ve got to take a different route back than the one we took to get here.”
What the hell had I gotten myself into? Then, I chuckled at the thought. The only thing I was actually guilty of was being related to Liza.
“Don’t we have to spiritually bathe and do more candle work when we get home?” Sam asked.
“Yes. Yes, we do,” I confirmed.
“Oh, good. That damn cleansing crap almost makes me high, and I love that feeling,” Grams said, so happy she almost skipped back to the farm by the light of the moon.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Walking into Nicky’s kitchen, following the bind-up burial, we found Liza sitting at the kitchen table.
“Kiss my ass. Kiss my ass. Kiss my ass,” Grams muttered under her breath.
“What are you saying that for?” I whispered into her ear.
“In German folklore, that’s supposed to prevent a witch from doing harm to you,” Grams said, returning Liza’s narrow-eyed stare.
“Can it, you old fool,” Liza said, but not with near the gumption she’d normally use.
“I need to borrow your broom, Bad Ass,”
Grams said marching right up to her.
Liza just shook her head and laughed.
“I’m serious. If I put your broom down in front of the door and tell you to kiss my ass three more times, we’ll all be better off.”
Liza never said a word, instead choosing to down another shot of whiskey. And it didn’t look like she had much left in the bottle to save her from Gram’s witchhunt.
“Fine. I can make this work without your broom,” Grams said, motioning for all of us to step aside and give her some room.
I’m not sure why, but we gave her the space she thought she needed.
She took six steps backwards, spitting right and left as she did so.
“John over John. John the Conqueror. They can’t hurt you,” she sputtered between spits.
“Give me those printouts,” I said. “All of ‘em.”
Grams, looking like a child who’d just gotten busted with something they weren’t supposed to have, handed over a wad of paper she’d had stuffed in her coat pocket.
“Well what are we going to do with her?” Grams asked. “There’s a witch in your kitchen for cripe’s sake!”
“You don’t have to worry about that. I’ve decided to just go back to talking to my plants,” Liza said.
At least I think that’s what she said. With that much whiskey flowing through her, the words were tough to decipher.
“Let’s hope you still think that way when you’re sober,” Nicky said, taking away what was left of the bottle of Maker’s Mark.
“I just wanted to get even with those dirty sons of bitches,” Liza stammered then pouted.
“Well, I can show you how to do that on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or whatever social media outlet you choose,” Grams said, taking a seat across from Liza. “I’m fairly talented in the virtual world.”
Fairly talented? My ass. She’s a genius. As in quant level, hacker extraordinaire genius.
“You mean I could publicly humiliate ‘em without having to physically hurt ‘em too?”
“Trust me, they’ll wish they were dead once I show you a few of my online tricks.”
“Okay. That’s enough, you two.”
“Why do y’all have to spoil the fun?” Grams asked, pouting right along with Liza.
“Because being stuck with a spell isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” I said, knowing for sure I’d never again want to dabble in any of this dark magic.
Talking to plants seemed to be my new limit too.
“Well, being stuck with a spell is certainly better than being stuck with a stiff,” Liza said, referring to the fact that it had just been a matter of days since we’d cleared Nicky’s name from the murder of the stiff found next to his chicken coop.
“Hell, Aunt Liza. Thanks to you, we just about ended up with three more stiffs,” Nicky quipped.
“Stuck with stiffs and spells. Whatever. At least life’s interesting down on the farm,” Liza said, swaying in her seat as the whiskey started to do a real number on her.
While she almost crumpled to the floor in her drunken stupor, Grams was, once again, digging through her coat pockets. Luckily, I thought I’d confiscated all of the Voodoo reversing paperwork Nicky had printed out.
“Ah. There they are,” she said, pulling out and holding up a small set of jingle bells.
She swung them through the air with wild, theatrical motions.
“Whoa. Wait a minute. You’re going to make us all deaf,” I said, trying to reach for the bells.
But she was too quick for me and continued swinging them with gusto through the air.
“What’s with the sleigh bells?” Nicky asked, coming up behind her and smoothly getting them out of her grasp while she wasn’t looking.
“You should be thanking me. I read that sleigh bells used to be used during Yuletide to give advanced warning of visiting family members.”
“I’m not following you,” I said, which wasn’t out of the ordinary when it came to listening to Grams’.
“It’s not all that tough, Ace. Once peeps heard the sound of the bells from approaching sleighs and wagons, they could decide if they’d rather deal with their relatives or run out into the snow, before they got there, and die of exposure.”
“I see,” I said, trying as hard as I could not to burst out laughing due at her latest line of reasoning. “So which have you decided to do?”
“Well…for now, I’m staying put. It’s damn cold out there. But I’m hanging onto these bells, just in case. This family is totally whacked.”
Being stuck with sleigh bells sounds a whole lot better than being stuck with Liza’s spells. Even though both have the potential to leave us stuck with stiffs.
And yes, I had to agree with Grams. Our makeshift family was totally whacked. Just ask the rhododendrons.
THE END
NOTE FROM D. D. SCOTT
Welcome to my new series…The Stuck with a Series!
I hope you’ve gotten a kick out of Book Two, Stuck with a Spell.
For all of you superfab Castle fans out there…
The Stuck with a Series is – Castle gone-country, now with a bit of Bewitched tossed into the mix
And each of the Stuck with a Series Books releases first in Serial Format!
What does that mean?
Think D. D. Scott and David Slegg do Charles Dickens.
Okay…
I know what you’re thinkin’…
Who’s David Slegg?
And what do D. D. Scott and this David Slegg have to do with Charles Dickens?
David Slegg is my new Co-Author. He’s the Castle to my Beckett.
You can get the scoop on him on his website:
http://davidslegg.com
Now then…about D. D. and David and Dickens…
Charles Dickens began his writing career by publishing his novels in Serial Format, which meant that each month, another installment (aka chapter) was released.
How fun is that?!
One of the questions I’m asked most by my readers is:
“How long do we have to wait for the next book?”
Mind you I write damn fast – it takes me about three months to write a full-length novel – but, I know, that’s not fast enough, right?! LOL!
But “what if” I treated you to a new bit of D. D. Scott-ville, along with David Slegg’s down on the farm, each week?
As in…one or two new chapters per week?
Ala Dickens!!!
Each week then, just like Dickens did each month, David and I treat ya to the next chapter in our Stuck with a Series books.
For just $2.99 per year, you can subscribe to our Stuck with a Series Subscription Service and receive your weekly installment of our next book.
We plan to release at least two books in this series per year, with some fabulous short stories too.
So, you’re getting two full-length novels and more for just $2.99!!!
Simply send a PayPal Payment of $2.99 to the following address:
dd(dot)scott(at)live(dot)com
And, we’ll subscribe you to our Stuck with a Series Group, where you can continue your Stuck with a Series experience with a weekly, chapter-by-chapter peek at STUCK WITH SLEIGH BELLS, our first Stuck with a Series Christmas Novella, along with two more Stuck with a Series novels coming in 2013.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scottandsleggstuckwithaseries/
Happy Ereading!!!
And Welcome to our Stuck with a Series of Serial Ebooks!!!
The Best of Ereading Wishes —
D. D. Scott & David Slegg
P.S. In the mean time, I’ve also got another super-sonic thrill-ride of a Cozy Cash Mystery comin’ soon – THE ROYAL DIGS (Cozy Cash Mystery #4) – featuring Samantha’s cousin Zoey Witherspoon and her for-real prince-of-a-mate Roman Bellesconi.
And in case you’re brand new to my Bootscootin’, Cozy Cash and Samantha Aldredge Stuck with a Series Mystery Worlds, start with my Amazon and Barnes and Noble’s Top 100 Bestselling B
oxed Set, which includes my first 6 books for just $2.99!
ABOUT D. D. SCOTT
D. D. Scott is an Amazon and Barnes & Noble Top 100 Bestselling Romantic Comedy and Humorous Mystery Author. She’s a Writer’s Go-To-Gal for Muse Therapy, plus the #1 Amazon Bestselling Author of Muse Therapy: Unleashing Your Inner Sybil and the Co-Founder of The WG2E – The Writer’s Guide to E-Publishing – your destination site for Everything E-Publishing, and Founder of The RG2E – The Reader’s Guide to Epublishing – the destination site for all-things Ereading. You can get all the scoop on her, her books, her Muse Therapy Online Classes and Live Workshops, plus juicy tidbits too from her website D.D.Scott-ville.
Full Bio
D. D. Scott’s bestselling romantic comedies are all about sexy, sassy, smart, career-driven women and the men who complete them. They’re a bit chick lit with a gone-country twist…and now a humorous mystery, comedic caper twist too. Her Bootscootin’ Books - think Sex and The City meets Urban Cowboy – debuted August 2010, on Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and at Smashwords, with BOOTSCOOTIN’ BLAHNIKS, followed by STOMPIN’ ON STETSONS and BUCKLES ME BABY. Now, The Bootscootin’ Characters are gettin’ “cozy”…as in Comedic Caper cozy, with the release of THUG GUARD, LIP GLOCK and CARATS & COCONUTS, Books One, Two and Three of her new, Cozy Cash Mysteries, featuring all of your fave Bootscootin’ characters plus tons of quirky new characters too.
