I paced my way to the windows by the kitchen table and stared out into the rainy darkness. “Hello, this is Stevie Cartwright. Your delivery guy Cory just dropped off a pizza to me.”
“Yep! The deep dish, right? Is something wrong?”
“No, no. Absolutely not. I was just wondering if you could tell me who ordered it, because I didn’t.”
There was a small pause and some clicking, and then the youthful voice said, “But you did, Miss Cartwright. You used your credit card, the one we have on file here.”
Chapter 7
I know the blood drained from my face because my nose went cold, along with the rest of my limbs. This had to be a message from Win. What else could it be?
“So the order was called in?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she answered, perky and light.
“And the person said it was me?”
I heard the flipping of papers and then, “That’s what it says. Is there anything else I can help you with, Miss Cartwright?”
Thanking the girl after explaining away the mix-up, I hung up and stared harder at the pizza as I made my way back across the kitchen.
Bel flew to the counter and landed by the box. “This is cuckoo, Stevie. Plain old nuts.”
“Dah. Wing-ed one is right. I do not understand this. Not one bit.”
“You and me both,” I commented, pulling a piece of the pizza from the box, inhaling the scent of gooey cheese, saucy meat, and mushrooms.
Then I frowned when I looked at it again. “I don’t think this is from Win. It’s deep dish, guys. Win knows I like thin crust. Not that it’ll stop me, because I’m starving, but this can’t be from Spy Guy.”
“Then who’s ordering you a pizza?” Bel asked dryly. “With your favorite toppings?”
As I took my first bite, which was delicious despite the thick crust, and made my way to the pantry to grab food for Whiskey and Strike, I shook my head. “That is curious. I mean, it’s not like I hide the fact that I like mushrooms and pepperoni on my pizza. It’s not a matter of national security, but who would impersonate me to order a pizza for me? It has to be Win. He has to have found a way to get through to us. What worries me is, if he’s going to attempt to hop into a body, and he succeeds but we’re not there to help him, anything could happen.”
My stomach rolled at the thought. As I said before, if he doesn’t remember who he is or was before he body hopped, he could end up in a world of trouble with no one to claim him, and that terrified me.
Bel flapped his wings. “Then we keep working under the assumption all the weird stuff going on around here is Winterbutt, or somebody helping Winterbutt, and we proceed as necessary. No way I’m going to let my buddy down if I can help it.”
Belfry and his loyalty never failed to make my heart warm. So I nodded my consent. “Okay, let’s go over this again, yes? I feel like we’re missing something, and if we find that something, maybe we’ll figure out the reason for the pizza. What do we have so far?”
“Imposter, rebirth, look for bath, and pizza. Deep-dish pizza, my jalapeno pepper,” Arkady ticked the list off.
I’d laugh if I didn’t want so much to cry, so I took another bite of the pizza before saying, “None of which makes any sense at all. Maybe there’s a clue missing? And why the heck is he sending us these disjointed clues? Wouldn’t it be easier if he had someone write something like, ‘Hey! I’m in Peoria. I need a ride home’ on the bathroom mirror instead of these half sentences and random items? I mean, what the heck does a deep-dish pizza mean anyway?”
“Where is this Peoria, malutka?”
I giggled and carried Whiskey’s bowl of kibble out to the kitchen, shoving the last of the crust in my mouth and reaching for another piece. “It’s not important, it was just an example. Here’s what’s important, why is Win doing such a hatchet job on these clues?” Then I paused and, once more, said something I didn’t want to believe, but for posterity’s sake, needed to be said. “Or…maybe it’s not Win at all…”
I dreaded that notion more than anything else. If this wasn’t Win, then the only connection I had with him would be gone. The nothingness of that made my heart ache.
“Of course it is Zero, Stevie. Of course it is,” Arkady said, but he didn’t sound at all convinced.
I looked up at the ceiling, my pizza suddenly tasting like cardboard. “Then why does it sound like you’re convincing yourself?”
Arkady’s silence said everything and nothing. He wasn’t so sure it was Win anymore, either.
I dropped the remainder of the slice on a napkin on the counter. “The pizza’s the clincher for me, too, Arkady. It’s thrown me off his scent. He knows what kind of crust I like. It’s the one glitch in our giddyup.”
“But that doesn’t mean the pizza doesn’t mean something. It doesn’t mean Win’s not trying to tell us something, Stevie. I’d bet my knickers this pizza means something important. So let’s break it down. Imposter means…?” Belfry coaxed in a hopeful tone.
I shrugged my shoulders, my thoughts growing fuzzier by the minute as I grew more tired. “It has to mean Win. He played roles throughout his career. Being a spy means he had to pretend to be other people. That’s an easy one.”
“Right,” Bel confirmed. “Rebirth means he’s hopping into a body and hopes to be reborn. That one’s easy, too. Next up is look for bath, which makes zero sense. I can’t even tie it to the other two clues.”
I ran my hands through my hair in sheer frustration. “Me either. But he did write it in the bathroom. Wait…” I muttered before my head popped up and a shot of adrenaline hit me. “Maybe there’s something in the bathroom? In the drain? How could he get something in the drain?”
I knew I was grasping at straws, but I’d try anything at this point, even if it meant taking some pipes apart.
“Maybe same way he do the rest? With help from spirits?” Arkady asked.
Slapping my clammy hands against my thighs, I shook my head. “But what spirits, Arkady? Where? What plane is he on and how the heck is he getting all this help?”
Now Arkady laughed. “One thing to know about Zero, he is very charming gentleman. If he can talk Mesopotamian Prince into giving up his spare palace in negotiation talks with cranky Saudi Arabian, he can do anything. Ooo-wee, that was bad, bad time. But he do it. The man, he is genius.”
I grinned. That was my Win. “Okay. So he’s good at talking people into doing things. No surprise. But spirits are a different breed altogether. They don’t always work or think the way people here on Earth do. They’re usually confused and disoriented.”
“I am not confused,” Arkady defended with attitude.
“But you’re a rarity. So is Win, for that matter. Still, knowing Win, maybe it’s not impossible. All that aside, it leaves our latest clue. Pizza.”
“Yeah. Pizza,” Belfry said into the silence. “Pizza with toppings you like and a crust you hate. If this clue is from Win, I’m telling you, when I get my hands on him, I’m going to give him bloody what for. All this indirect, run-around-the-mulberry-bush nonsense is for the birds.”
Would we ever get our hands on him again? I sighed as I began to head upstairs. “You and me both. All right, c’mon, guys. We have a drain to pull apart and an attic to canvass.”
I sent out a prayer to the universe that we’d find something, just a tiny hint, because I had this dreadful feeling deep in my gut we were running out of time.
Have I mentioned I hate my gut today?
I sat amidst the many fittings and pipes involved in putting together a sink (who knew it took so many?) and a bathtub and leaned my head back against the front of the toilet, and I didn’t even care if that was gross.
I was depleted.
“You’re exhausted, Stevie. You need to recharge,” Bel encouraged, as he wisped his wings over my face, brushing my bird’s nest of hair out of my eyes.
I held up the monkey wrench I’d used to bend one particular pipe to my will by beating it until it came
apart, and shook my head. “I won’t sleep, so I might as well be productive.”
“This is mess, malutka. This is not productive.”
I had to agree with him, the bathroom was a mess, and so was the attic, and we had nothing to show for it but a huge hairball and one of my earrings. “You’re right. It is a mess. I’d better get it cleaned up.”
“Oh, no. You’d better go to bed, or at the very least rest your overtired body, Stevie. It’s really late.”
Using my hands to push myself off the floor, I began moving things that looked similar into piles. Gosh, Enzo was going to have a cow when he saw this, and of course, there’d be questions about why I’d torn the bathroom apart.
I hiked up my sweats and eyeballed the tub, the bottom of it currently housing a lot of the hardware I’d pulled apart. “I guess I’m going to have to ask Enzo to come in and fix this, huh?”
“If you ever want to take a shower in here again. Good thing we have four other bathrooms. Now let’s go to bed, Stevie. Please. You can’t be at your best if you’re not rested. We’ve been at this for two days straight with only a small break in between. Bedtime. Now,” Bel ordered in that authoritative tone he’d been using a lot of these past couple of days.
“Yes, chicken and dumplings, I must agree with wee wing-ed one. You look like cat drag you. Remember what we spies always say, rest when you can. Now is time.”
I waved a dismissive hand as my mind raced. If only I could rest, but despite my exhaustion, my body was a bunch of nerve endings all on fire. My inner turmoil was at its peak. The longer Win was silent, the farther away he felt.
Save the imposter.
The words kept running through my mind like an Indy racecar. I hadn’t voiced my fears about that particular phrase yet, but if this really was Win sending the messages to us, it meant he knew he needed to be saved.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, Stevie,” Bel insisted, landing on my shoulder to snuggle against my ear.
I sighed, and it was ragged and worn. Dropping the pipe into a pile, I steadied myself. “Those words. Save the imposter. Someone thinks Win needs saving…or maybe Win knows he needs saving.”
“Or maybe it’s all just jumbled-up information, Stevie. You know, the way spirits confuse stuff. You said so yourself.”
“But what if it isn’t, Bel? What if he’s in danger and he knows it and I can’t find him to help?”
I felt the first chink in my armor, that subtle but clear nagging feeling that maybe I’d never see Win again.
I’d ignored it so far. I’d dismissed it and tucked it away somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind to keep from dwelling on the worst possible scenario. But it was there, and tonight, when I was tired and feeling very alone without Win to help me solve this puzzle, it became magnified.
“We will find Zero, malutka. We will,” Arkady insisted, his voice sharp.
“Yep. We will,” I agreed with a smile, injecting as much enthusiasm into my tone as possible when I really wasn’t feeling it at all. “And now, I’m going to do as suggested and try to get some rest. So skedaddle, you two mother hens. I’m fine. Promise.”
I felt anything but fine, but fake it ’til you make it, right? So as I grabbed some pajamas, my toothbrush and my hand cream, and headed down our wide hall to the second of four bathrooms, absently looking at the framed art Win had personally chosen, I kept my chin up.
I wasn’t going to give in to fear and supposition yet. Not yet.
After I’d brushed my teeth and washed my face, I trudged back to the bedroom where Whiskey waited patiently, sitting on the braided throw rug in the middle of the polished hardwood, wagging his tail and panting in that barely contained, excited way of his.
His big body rippled without moving, his velvety-soft fur ruffled and his eyes went wide.
Huh. He only did that when he was super happy to see someone, like Dana or Bel—or when he heard Win’s voice…
A chill zipped along my spine as I knelt beside him. “Whiskey, buddy, what’s got you so revved up?”
His chocolate-brown eyes stared upward at the nightstand, making me frown—
And then I popped up from the floor, reaching for the picture of the fake Win with trembling fingers, and gasped.
Someone—or maybe I should say, some spirit—had drawn a dark mustache on fake Win’s picture.
And if I do say so myself, in the midst of all this turmoil, it was pretty darned hilarious.
Chapter 8
My mouth fell open in disbelief, and then I couldn’t help but giggle because the mustache, as crudely drawn as it was, truly looked pretty funny. It resembled, in a kindergarten kind of way, the sort a villain in a cartoon would twirl while he cackled evilly.
A villain…
Was that what he was trying to tell me? There was a villain involved? Or was that another one of my reaches?
Whiskey pawed my thigh, the excitement he’d managed to keep at bay before now gone. When he pawed my leg, it meant he was ready for sleep, and I should be, too.
I sat on the edge of the bed and patted it, indicating he should hop up. “If only you could talk like the rest of this ragtag bunch, huh, buddy? Is Timmy in the well? Is that what all that quivering excitement was about?” I asked, staring into the deep pools of his soft eyes.
But he only licked my hand and moved to the end of the bed, where he stretched out his lumbering body and closed his eyes.
“You decent?” Belfry called from the hallway.
“Define that word when referring to me,” I quipped, hoping to keep my continually rising anxiety to myself by deflecting with jokes.
“Always a funny girl,” he retorted, flying into my room to land on the bed.
“What’s up?” I asked as I crawled under my thick comforter.
“Nothing. I’m just checking on you. That’s what familiars do. They hover and annoy and in general make sure their charges are taking care of themselves.”
I smiled, staring out the round window next to my built-in bed at the foggy night. “Look at the picture of fake Win and tell me what you see.”
There was a light pause, and then he harrumphed. “What the hasenpfeffer’s going on? Is that a clue? What kind of clue is that, for the love of kiwis?”
I closed my tired, grainy eyes and moved my head from side to side. “I don’t know. When I came into the bedroom, Whiskey was behaving strangely. You know, doing that excited thing he does when Dana or Enzo drop by. Or like when Win speaks to him…”
“Do you think Win was here, that he did this?” he squeaked, zipping around the room. “But how, Stevie?”
“Something was here, Bel. Something Whiskey wasn’t at all apprehensive about. Was it Win? No clue. But we know for sure it wasn’t Dana or Enzo. If Win found a way to appear as a spirit, I couldn’t see it, right? Because I can’t see or hear them anymore, but maybe Whiskey can.”
“So I suppose you want to dissect this? Analyze it until our eyeballs cross?”
What I really wanted was some time to myself to do those things. I needed a break from everyone telling me I needed to rest.
“There’s nothing to discuss, really. It’s kind of a shoddy clue, don’t you think?” I looked up at the ceiling and shook my finger. “Hear that, Spy Guy? If you’re hovering around here somewhere, Win, I hope you heard that. Your clues stink!”
Both Bel and I sat silent for a few seconds before he asked again, “You sure you don’t want to talk it out?”
I wondered if I should mention the bit about the villain mustache, but decided against it. One of us anxious was enough. “I think I’m too tired to dissect.”
Hopping onto my chest, Belfry looked down at me with his thickly lashed eyes (I’m so jealous of his eyelashes. They really are long and thick. Wasted on a bat, if you ask me) and sighed. “I can’t figure this out, Stevie. I just don’t get it. The only thing I do get is Win would never leave you unless he was taken or there was a good reason. Period. There’s no in between.”
I swallowed hard, my eyes burning. Those notions aside, there was something weighing far heavier on my mind than pizza and body hopping, and I had to share before I burst.
“Bel?”
“Yeah, Boss?”
“What if…” I inhaled and exhaled to keep my fleeting composure in check. “What if he really is…gone, and I didn’t tell him how…how I feel?”
“Don’t you think he knew, Stevie?” Belfry asked softly, his voice hushed and gentle.
How could he? I’d never spoken a word about it to him. “I don’t know. I never said…”
“Because you didn’t want him to feel any pressure to stay on Plane Limbo if what he really wanted was to cross. I know that, Goose.”
My throat ached with the threat of tears I fought to keep at bay. “I never believed something like this was even a possibility. Not a real one, anyway. I mean, I know body surfing happens, but it’s so rare. I should have known Win would find a way. But I didn’t want him to stay on Plane Limbo if crossing over was what his heart told him to do.”
“You’re a good soul, Stevie. You’ve always been kind and thoughtful, but I need you to trust me on what I’m about to say, okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered into the darkness as a hot tear slipped from the corner of my eye.
“Win knew. He knew, and for the same reasons you didn’t tell him, he didn’t tell you how he felt, either.”
“I wish…”
“I know, Stevie,” he murmured, brushing my cheek with his wing.
“If I ever get the chance, caution be darned, I’m going to tell him, Bel.” I whispered the promise to myself.
I vowed right then and there the next time I heard or, with any luck, saw Win, I was going to spew my guts up—I was going to tell him everything in my heart.
Everything.
“Good girl, but for right now—because Arkady’s right, you do look like something the cat dragged in—please try to get some rest and we’ll start fresh tomorrow. Do it for me.”
Witch Way Did He Go? Page 7
