As to how we got to the hospital that night, meaning Baba Yaga, I hadn’t heard a peep. There’d been no word from that part of my life. So I felt pretty sure I should keep my mouth shut while I counted my blessings and remain silently, eternally thankful.
I could never repay Baba for what she’d done, and I didn’t know if I’d have to, but for now, I was going to focus on Win’s recovery and figuring out how we were going to deal with this new path our lives had taken.
“Man, he’s gonna be on the cover of GQ for all the sleep he’s getting, huh? Did the doctor say this was normal?”
“Well, I didn’t exactly ask him what to expect when you’ve possessed a body. The doctor says Balthazar was in a coma for almost a week while he remained unidentified. In human terms, it’s going to take a little while for him to build up his strength. But I hear through the grapevine, a.k.a. Winnie, it takes a lot of rest to recuperate after a successful possession.”
“I keep peeking in to see him when Nurse Ratched isn’t looking because I’m afraid he’s going to disappear. He’s just like I imagined. Tall and fancy and a little rough around the edges, but with a hoity-toity accent.” Bel chirped his glowing endorsement. “Can you even believe he’s here, Stevie? It’s amazing. Just fekkin’ incredible.”
No. I still couldn’t believe it, but every second he slept, every moment we were in the same space together, I spent cherishing his presence. Even from all the way upstairs in the guest bedroom, I felt his strength, his integrity, his determination.
“Nurse Ratched didn’t see you, did she? We do not need that kind of chaos, buddy.”
The nurse Win had hired via Belfry was like the Gestapo. Her name was Gloria, and she kept me from that room the way a cage fighter keeps his opponent at bay because according to her, I was a distraction to Win’s recovery. Which, by the by, made me secretly blush almost as much as I’d groused.
“Nope. I was like ninja bat. Swear it.”
I chuckled, scooping him up in the palm of my hand and dropping a kiss on his little yellow snout before tucking him against my shoulder. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Belfry. I never could have made it through this without you. And you either, my favorite Russian,” I whispered, looking up at the ceiling.
“Ah, malutka. I am so happy for you and my Zero. We still make good team, dah?”
My heart tightened in my chest in gratitude. “I never could have taken on Adam without you, Arkady, and I never want to. We’re always going to be a team for as long as I have any say in the matter.”
Nurse Ratched…er, Gloria, poked her head into the kitchen, her glowering face and stout body filling up the entryway. She tucked her purse under her sturdy arm, smoothing a hand over her taupe skirt. “I’m sorry? Did you say something, Miss Cartwright?”
I waved a hand and gave her a sheepish look, covering Bel with the palm of my hand. “Oh, nothing. Just mumbling to myself.” Gosh, this woman was a better spy than Win and Arkady put together. I can’t tell you how many times she’s snuck up on me in a mere two days.
She gave me a curt nod, her lips thinning. “Good enough. I’m off to take my lunch break, Miss Cartwright. I’ll see you in exactly one hour.” And she meant it, too. If she said an hour, it wouldn’t be a second longer.
As Gloria left to take her afternoon break, and I heard her cute compact car zipping out of the driveway, a sudden crash and a weird screech from upstairs had me taking the steps three at a time to head toward Win’s room.
I whipped around the corner on the opposite end of the hall from my bedroom, where his den of recuperation was located, and skidded to a halt.
My mouth fell open as I stuck my head into Win’s room, where he sat amidst a mountain of deep blue and rust-colored pillows. The shades were up, the sheer curtains falling gracefully to the floor, allowing him a view of the snow.
Whiskey lay at his feet, and Strike was in the corner of the room by the gold and burgundy settee under the bay of floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Dove?”
I gulped nervously, jamming my index finger between my teeth as I winced. “International Man of Mystery?”
“Should I be overjoyed to see you’ve regained some of your powers? Is that what this is?” He pointed to the heavy teak mantel above the fireplace.
I folded my hands together behind my back and winced as, from the vicinity of the fireplace, pieces of a plant flew through the air.
“I don’t think I’ve regained my powers. Not totally, anyway.”
Or at least, not the powers I’d once had, because I can assure you, my old powers would not have produced something like this—and they wouldn’t have produced it days after I’d cast the spell.
It had to be some weird, cosmic fluke. I think. I hope…
Oh, dear.
I didn’t know what this meant.
“Ahh, pity that,” he said over a loud screech coming from the direction of the fireplace, wearing an amused smile. “Then care to explain what’s on the mantel of the fireplace I so lovingly chose brick by brick, and how you propose we shall tell the lovely Nurse Gloria?”
“There’s nothing lovely about her,” I drawled and wrinkled my nose.
He waggled a lean finger at me in admonishment, his handsome face full of reproach. “Now, now, Stephania,” he chided in the way I’d missed so much. “She gets the job done. Isn’t that why we hired her? To whip me into shape?”
I made a face at him. “You hired her, and she gets the job done if you like forty lashes with your bread and water for dinner.”
He chuckled, deep and rumbling, a sound I was growing fonder of each minute he was here. “Never you mind. She’s the woman who’s going to have me on my feet in no time flat. I quite like a rigid bout of training.”
It had been hard to get Win to come to terms with the idea that he was no longer in the condition he’d once been. Sure, Balthazar’s body was in great shape, but it probably wouldn’t have the muscle memory and reflexes Win had. In other words, James Bond was going to have to slow his roll when he was finally on his feet.
I clucked my tongue. “First of all, even Nurse American Horror Story said it’s going to take time for you to build up your strength, ex-spy. Secondly, this isn’t training. You’re not in the body of a spy anymore. You’re recuperating. There’s a difference.”
Sighing, now he rolled his eyes at me. I’m sure he’d had it up to his snooty British eyeballs with us insisting he rest, but that was too bad. He was here, and I wasn’t going to risk losing him again. Ever.
“That’s not what we’re here to discuss, Dove.” He waved his hands once more in the direction of the mantel. “Now, are you going to explain?” he asked, then winced at the loud howl of sound filling the bedroom.
I waited for the screeching to come down a notch before I asked, “Explain? As in, tell you the details about how that ended up in your room?”
“Yes. That,” he answered dryly, one eyebrow raised. “That being a lesothosaurus, for your information. A compact little bugger of a dinosaur at about three feet tall with bloody sharp teeth—an herbivore, to be precise, and bi-pedal, in that he runs on two feet.”
I blinked as I stooped to pick up the pieces of the plant the small dinosaur was spraying about as he gnawed on it with voracious glee. “Wow. You sure know your dinosaurs, huh?”
Win winked at me with one luscious eye. “I was nothing if not a scholarly boy.”
“He’s actually kind of cute, don’t you think?”
“As in Whiskey cute, Stephania? Nay. Nay, he is most certainly not cute, and I don’t suggest getting him a heated bed and a bowl with his name on it.”
I gave Win my best pouty look. “Dinosaurs need love, too.”
The lesothosaurus let out another screechy howl, but he appeared content to chew on the Christmas cactus on the mantel—for the moment.
“Ah, but do they need the kind of love we can give them, Stephania?”
“Aw, c’mon, Spy Guy. He�
��s not so bad in a lizardy sort of way.”
He peered at me with one eye, the other narrowed as he popped his lips. Lifting his square jaw, he said, “Stephania, enough soft shoe. Details, please.”
I winced again, tucking my hair behind my ears in a nervous gesture. “Got a minute?”
Win patted the space next to him on the bed with a grin that grew stronger every day. “I have all the time in the world, Dove. Do share with the rest of the class.”
I giggled as I slipped into the room and perched on the edge of his lush king-size bed. “So, it went something like this. There’s this little thing called a time-travel spell…or maybe it was the conjuring spell… I can’t say for sure, but I tried ’em all—gave ’em heck, I did. I can’t believe you missed that part of the show while you were plane hopping. Anyway…”
And as I explained, with our fingers intertwined, and the soft pitter-patter of the snow prancing against the windows, Belfry flew past the guest bedroom, whistling the tune to “So This is Love.”
And I thought, yes.
Yes. This is love.
The End
(Thank you for joining me for yet another edition of Witchless in Seattle Mysteries—I so hope you enjoyed the newest journey for Stevie and Win, but hang on to your Cheez Whiz, because it ain’t over yet! Come back in 2019 for more crazy adventures, more twists and turns than a roller coaster, but most of all, just come back now, ya hear?)
Preview Another Book By Dakota Cassidy
Chapter 1
“So, Sister Trixie Lavender, how do we feel about this space? Open concept, with plenty of sprawling views of the crumbling sidewalk from the leaky picture window and easily room for eight tat chairs.
“Also, one half bathroom for customers, one full for us—which means we’d have to share, but there are worse things. A bedroom right up those sketchy stairs with a small loft, which BTW, I’m calling as mine now. I like to be up high for the best possible views when I survey our pending tattoo empire. A tiny kitchenette, but no big deal. I don’t cook anyway, and you sure don’t, if that horse pucky you called oatmeal is any indication of your culinary skills. Lots of peeling paint and crappy plumbing. All for the low-low price of…er, what was that price again, Fergus McDuff?”
Short and chubby, a balding Fergus McDuff, the landlord of the current dive I was assessing as a candidate for our tattoo parlor, cringed and visibly shuddered beneath his limp blue suit.
Maybe because Coop had him up against a wall, holding him by the front of his shirt in white-knuckled fists as she waited for him to rethink the price he’d quoted us the moment he realized we were women.
Which was not only an outrageous amount of money for this dank, pile-of-rubble hole in the wall, but not at all the amount quoted to us over the phone. It also looked nothing like the picture from his Facebook page. I know that shouldn’t surprise me. He’d probably used some Snapchat filter to brighten it up. But here we were.
A bead of perspiration popped out just above Fergus’s thin upper lip.
Coop’s dusky auburn hair curtained his face, but his stance remained firm. “Like I said, lady, it’s three grand a month—”
Cutting his words off, Coop tightened her grip with a grunt and hauled Fergus higher. His pleading gray eyes darted from her to me and back again in unadulterated fear, but to his credit, he tried really hard not to show it.
Coop licked her lips, a low hum of a growl coming from her throat, her gaze intently focused on poor Fergus. “Can I kill him, Sister Trixie Lavender? Please, please, pleeease?”
“Coop,” I warned. She knew better than to ask such a question. “She’s just joking, Fergus. Promise.”
“But I’m not. Though, I promise I’ll clean up afterward. It’ll be like it never happened—”
“Two thousand!” Fergus shouted quite jarringly, as though the effort to push the words out pained him. “Wait, wait, wait! I meant to say two thousand a month with all utilities!”
That’s my demon. Overbearing and intimidating as the day is long. Still, I frowned at her, pulling my knit cap down over my ears. While this behavior worked in our favor, it was still unacceptable.
We’d had a run-in with the law a few months ago back in Ebenezer Falls, Washington, where we’d first tried to set up a tattoo shop. Coop’s edgy streak had almost landed her with a murder charge.
Since then (and before we landed in Eb Falls, by the by), we’d been traveling through the Pacific Northwest, making ends meet by selling my portrait sketches to people along the way, waiting until Coop’s instincts choose the right place for us to call home.
Cobbler Cove struck just the right chord with her. And that’s how we ended up here, with her breathing fire down Fergus McDuff’s throat.
Coop, who’d caught on to my displeasure, smirked her beautiful smirk and set Fergus down with a gentle drop, brushing his trembling shoulder with a careful hand to smooth his wrinkled suit.
“That’s nice. You’re being nice, Fergus McDuff. I like you. Do you like me?”
“Coop?” I called from the other end of the room, going over some rough measurements for a countertop in my mind. “Playtime’s over, young lady. Let Mr. McDuff be, please.”
She rolled her bright green eyes at me in petulance and wiped her hands down her burgundy leather pants, disappointment written all over her face that there’d be no killing today.
Coop huffed. “Fine.”
I looked at her with my stern ex-nun’s expression as a clear reminder to remember her manners. “Coop…”
She pouted before holding out her hand to Fergus, even though he outwardly cringed at the gesture. “It was nice to meet you, Fergus McDuff. I hope I’ll see you again sometime soon,” she said almost coquettishly, mostly following the guidelines I’d set forth for polite conversation with new acquaintances.
Fergus brushed her hand away, fear still on his face, and that was when I knew it was time for me to step in.
“You do realize she’s just joking—about killing you and all, don’t you? I would never let her do that,” I joked, hoping he’d come along for the ride.
But he only nodded as Coop picked up his tie clip and handed it to him in a gesture of apology.
I smiled at her and nodded my head in approval, dropping my hands into the pockets of my puffy vest. “Okay, Fergus. Sold. Two grand a month and utilities it is. A year lease, right? Have a contract handy?”
Fergus nodded and scurried toward the front of the store to get his briefcase. It was then Coop leaned toward me and sniffed the air, her delicate nostrils flaring.
“This place smells right, Trixie Lavender. Yes, it does. Also, I like the name Peach Street. That sounds like a nice place to live.”
I looked into her beautiful eyes—eyes so green and perfectly almond-shaped they made other women sick with jealousy—and smiled, feeling a sense of relief. “Ya think? You’ve got a good vibe about it then? Like the one you had in Ebenezer Falls before the bottom fell out?”
And you were accused of murder and our store was left in shambles?
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from bringing up our last escapade in a suburb of Seattle, with an ex-witch turned medium named Stevie Cartwright and her dead spy turned ghost cohort, Winterbottom. It was still too fresh.
Coop rolled her tongue along the inside of her cheek and scanned the dark, mostly barren space with critical eyes. Any mention of Eb Falls, and Coop grew instantly sullen. “I miss Stevie Cartwright. She said she’d be my friend. Always-always.”
My face softened into a smile. I missed Stevie and her ghost compatriot, too. Even though I couldn’t actually hear Winterbottom—or Win, as she’d called him—Coop could, and from what she’d relayed to me, he sounded delightfully British and madly in love with Stevie.
Certainly an unrequited love, due to their circumstances—him being all the way up there on what they called Plane Limbo (where souls wait to decide if they wish to cross over)—and Stevie here on Earth, but they fit one anoth
er like gloves.
Stevie had been one of the best things to ever happen to me; Coop, too. She’d helped us in more ways than just solving a murder and keeping Coop from going to jail. She’d helped heal our hearts. She’d shown us what it meant to be part of a community. She’d helped us learn to trust not just our instincts, but to let the right people into our lives and openly enjoy their presence.
“Trixie? Do you think Stevie meant we’d always be friends?”
I winked at Coop. “She meant what she said, for sure. She always means what she says. If she said she’ll always be your friend, you can count on it. And I miss Stevie, too, Coop. Bet she comes to visit us soon.”
Coop almost smirked, which was her version of a smile—something we worked on every day. Facial expressions and body language humans most commonly use.
“Will she eat spaghetti with us?” she asked, referring to the last meal we’d shared with Stevie, when she’d invited her friends over and made us a part of not just her community, but her family.
“I bet she’ll eat whatever we make. So anyway… We were talking the vibe here? It feels good to you?”
“Yep. I can tattoo here.”
“Gosh, I hope so. We need to plant some roots, Coop. We need to begin again Finnegan.”
We needed to find a sense of purpose after Washington, and this felt right. This suburb of Portland called the Cobbler Cove District felt right.
Tucking her waist-length hair behind her ear, Coop nodded her agreement with a vague pop of her lips, the wheels in her mind so obviously turning. “So we can grow and be a part of the community. So we can blend.”
“Yes, blending is important. Now, about threatening Fergus…”
Her eyes narrowed on Fergus, who’d taken a phone call and busily paced the length of the front of the store. “He was lying, Trixie Lavender. Three grand wasn’t what he said on the phone at all. No, it was not. I know what I heard. You said it’s bad to lie. I was only following the rules, just like you told me I should if I wanted to stay here with you and other humans.”
Witch Way Did He Go? Page 15
