Witchy Possessions (Witchy Fingers Book 3)

by Nic Saint

  “Better not to be around when the will is read,” Rupert advised. “They might recognize you and then the shit will hit the fan.”

  “Of course. But you have to promise to tell me all about it. And I want to see video of the funeral.” She grinned again. “I want to hear those eulogies.”

  I marveled at this. How would it be to be present at your own funeral? I didn’t think I could stand to watch my sisters and Gran weep bitter tears. I shivered at the mere thought, and then said, “What about a new identity?”

  “Well, you’ll have to take care of that. That’s what I’m paying you for.”

  I nodded, wondering how we were going to arrange a completely new identity… without anyone noticing. Then I got an idea: we could always ask Sam. He worked for the NYPD so he probably knew some people who knew some people who… I saw that Edelie’s mind was already working its way in this direction as well, for now she said, “We’ll take care of it, Miss Hudson.”

  “Petunia, but from now on you may call me Ursola. Ursola Deemster.”

  “All right,” I murmured, thinking hard now. “And then we need to organize a surgeon who can change your appearance, right?”

  “I can take care of that,” Rupert offered. “I know a very good one.”

  “Make sure we can trust him,” Petunia said.

  “And then we’ll have to organize your death,” said Estrella.

  “Yes, that’s something I’ve given a lot of thought,” said Petunia. “I want it to be spectacular. Something memorable. Something people will talk about around the water cooler for weeks, if not months or years!”

  Her eyes were glittering now, and I didn’t like it.

  “You mean a violent death?” asked Estrella.

  “Oh, yes, please,” Petunia said with a throaty chuckle.

  “I think it should be something discreet,” said Rupert, seemingly appalled by the violent death idea.

  “No! I want to go out with a bang, Rupert. A big bang!” She grinned to herself. “Like… a terrorist attack. Something that will rally the country behind my coffin. That will have me dominate the headlines and turn the funeral into the event of the year. I want the president at my funeral, Rupie, and the pope. I want the biggest show imaginable! My final performance.”

  “Oh, please, no, let’s not do that,” pleaded Rupert. “We don’t want an official police inquiry into your death, Petunia. That might screw things up.”

  “Why not? Let’s have a huge-ass explosion, the kind that obliterates my body so that there’s nothing left for the police to find! Not even a molecule! Which,” she added, holding up a manicured finger, “would solve the problem of the body.”

  “Problem of the body?” I asked, a sense of panic setting in.

  “Of course. How can I be dead without a body? There has to be a body.”

  Oh, crap. This was a little too much to handle!

  “Let’s… make it a drone attack,” she suggested, getting into the groove of the thing now. “Let’s say… I’m going for a walk in Central Park, one fine morning, with Lil’ Petunia—that’s my baby—”

  “You have a baby?”

  “Pekingese,” muttered Rupert.

  “—and suddenly, out of nowhere, a rogue drone appears in the sky and drops a bomb on my head. Boom! Only a huge crater is left.”

  “And Lil’ Petunia?” cried Rupert, aghast. “Does she have to die, too?!”

  “Nobody will die, Rupert,” she said reproachfully. “Get it?”

  “But how to do all that?” he asked. “It’s going to be a huge production. And Central Park is always full of people. Someone is bound to see you walking away from the scene of the explosion and take a picture.”

  She directed a keen look at us. “That’s why we hired the Flummox sisters, remember? You can arrange a tiny little drone attack, can’t you, girls?”

  I smiled feebly. “Of course,” I said, sounding more confident than I was feeling.

  “So a big explosion…” said Edelie, who was writing all this down. “A drone… no body… president and pope… Aruba… got it.”

  Rupert was still shaking his head, obviously not a big fan of this idea. Petunia now patted him on the back. “Cheer up, Rupie. When you come to visit me in my tropical paradise, carrying my bags of money from the royalties I’ll make off my posthumous hit records, you’ll feel a lot better.”

  “Posthumous hit records?” he asked, surprised.

  “Of course! You didn’t think I’d do this without some forethought, did you?”

  It was obvious this was exactly what Rupert thought, and I had to admit I’d also seen Petunia Hudson as something of a flibbertigibbet before now.

  “I’ve been saving up songs, Rupie! Hundreds of them! They’re all in my vault. I’ve got maybe a thousand hit songs in there. We’ll be able to feed the world Petunia hits until long after I’m gone.” She looked up dreamily. “Have you never noticed that artists make the most money after they’re dead? That’s exactly the kind of thing I want: the benefits of being dead without the drawbacks.”

  “You really thought this through,” he said, sounding surprised.

  She slapped his arm lightly. “Of course I did! I’ve been dreaming of this day for years, honey. Positively years!” Her smile turned wistful. “Ever since Mother died. She took the sunshine out of my life when she passed away.”

  There was a momentary silence, and I thought about Gran. I hoped we’d have her with us for a long, long time. Life without her wouldn’t be as much fun as it was now. Who would drag me out of bed in the morning? Or castigate us if we used witchcraft when we weren’t supposed to?

  The meeting concluded after that, and we said goodbye for now, but not before Petunia and Rupert once again admonished us to keep our mouths shut. They even made us sign a non-disclosure agreement, which we took in our stride. They obviously didn’t know we harbored an even bigger secret.

  Once we were riding the elevator down to the lobby, we stared at one another, and the awful truth dawned on us: how could we ever pull this off?!

  Chapter 7

  “I just want you to bring my baby home to me! She’s not safe with that woman!” the man shouted, and Sam had a hard time holding on to his equanimity. The NYPD detective and his partner Pierre had been summoned by Alex Knuckles, the ex-husband of Valerie Gabby, whom he accused of attempted murder and kidnapping of their baby girl Sofia.

  He’d just told them an elaborate tale of how his wife had tried to kill him not once but multiple times, before he kicked her out to save his own life.

  “It’s a miracle I escaped unscathed!” he now cried as he pounded the living room table with his fist. “And you guys never even bothered!”

  They were seated in Mr. Knuckles’s living room in his small apartment in the Bronx, an elevated train rattling by from time to time, shaking the entire building. How people could live like this Sam didn’t know. The place was a mess, with Domino’s Pizza boxes littering the floor and cans of Coke and beer and Big Mac wrappers strewn about the sofa and coffee table. Alex Knuckles was obviously not much of a stickler for cleanliness.

  “So your wife tried to kill you?” he asked. “That would be… Valerie?”

  “That’s right. She came at me with a knife one day, then used a tenderizer on me the next. I never knew what she was going to do!”

  Knuckles wasn’t lying. He’d filed several reports, and so had the neighbors when they heard the altercations. There had been reports of domestic violence, though the officers who’d arrived on the scene had described Mrs. Knuckles as a docile and frightened woman, and her husband as the one most likely to use violence. Which is why, when push came to shove, the judge had awarded her custody of the child.

  “We’ll look into it,” he told the guy. He wasn’t going to open up an old case, and as far as the kid was concerned, that wasn’t up to him. The guy would have to get a lawyer if he wanted to fight his ex-wife for custody.

  “I want her locked up and I want
her locked up right now!” the man said, stabbing his finger at the table and then pounding it again for good measure.

  “Yes, you already stated that,” he said tersely. He was running out of patience. This was such a waste of time…

  Knuckles rolled up his shirt sleeve. “Look at this,” he said. “This is where she cut me. See that? Now tell me again I’m making this up!”

  “I’m not telling you you made this up, Mr. Knuckles.” He stared at the very small scar on the man’s elbow, which could easily have been caused by just about anything. A mosquito bite, maybe. “Yes, sir,” he said. “That looks… pretty serious.” He suppressed an urge to roll his eyes.

  “Horrible scar, sir,” said Pierre in his soft-spoken manner.

  “Yeah, well, it looked a lot bigger before. And then there’s this,” he said, grabbing a lock of his hair and shoving his forehead in Sam’s face.

  The detective stared at the pale skin where it was now visible between two greasy locks. “Um… what am I looking at, exactly, Mr. Knuckles?”

  “Don’t you see it? The starburst?”

  If he looked very closely he did see a tiny scar in the form of a starburst.

  “Tenderizer,” said Knuckles with a knowing nod. “Nasty wound.”

  “Terrible ordeal, sir,” said Pierre, clucking his tongue sympathetically.

  Knuckles narrowed his eyes at him. “Are you making fun of me? Because if you are, I can tell you that I’m not laughing!”

  “Oh, no, sir,” Pierre assured the rather berserk man. “I wouldn’t dare. I actually feel for you, sir. Being attacked by one’s wife is a terrible thing.”

  “Yes, well,” he said, casting suspicious glances at Pierre, “it wasn’t very nice of her, that’s for sure, especially since I love my wife tremendously.”

  “You love your wife, sir?” asked Sam, tucking away his notebook.

  “Yes, I do. In spite of everything. She’s a great lady, and we were together for twelve years, which isn’t something to thumb your nose at.” He glared at Pierre again, having taken a dislike to the kindhearted cop.

  “That’s a long time to live with a murderess, sir,” said Sam, intrigued.

  “She wasn’t always like that,” he said. “She changed a lot. She used to be the sweetest, kindest woman you can imagine, until…” He pursed his lips.

  “Until what, sir?” prompted Pierre.

  “I don’t know what the hell happened. One day she was fine, the next she started having these violent outbursts. Whole thing started two weeks ago.”

  “Did you take her to see a specialist?” Sam asked.

  “A shrink? Sure I did. But the day we went to see the guy she was her usual self, wasn’t she? It was only when we were alone that she went nuts.”

  Sam shook his head. Typical case of domestic abuse, he thought. Husband beats his wife, she hits back one day so he accuses her of being the instigator of the violence. He was pretty sure that when they talked to Valerie she’d have a completely different story to tell. So he got up, and so did Pierre. He didn’t feel like staying here for one second longer.

  “We’ll have a chat with your ex-wife, sir,” he said curtly.

  “You do that,” he said. “You tell her that for the sake of our child…” His voice broke, which surprised Sam. So far Alex Knuckles had displayed all the hallmarks of a real brute. But when he looked into the man’s eyes now, all he saw was raw despair. “Just… get Sofia out of there. Before it’s too late.”

  Chapter 8

  “I don’t like this. I don’t like this one bit,” I said, shaking my head.

  “What don’t you like about it?” Edelie asked. “The fact that we have to pretend to kill a famous rock star celebrity or the fact that we don’t have a clue how to do it?”

  “Both,” I said. We’d convened in one of Manhattan’s thousands of coffee shops and were seated on stools by the window, overlooking the street where passersby were plentiful and apparently as preoccupied as we were feeling.

  “You know, this is not so hard to pull off,” said Estrella, striking the discordant note.

  We stared at her. “Not difficult to pull off?” I asked. “We have to fake a famous person’s death, make sure nobody finds out about it, relocate her to some tropical island we’ve never even set foot on and make sure the entire production goes off without a hitch. It can’t be done, Strel. It’s that simple.”

  “It’s madness,” Edelie agreed. “Pure madness. The woman is mad,” she added, in case we hadn’t understood her the first two times.

  “I don’t think she’s mad,” I mused. “Though she is slightly eccentric.”

  “Eccentric? She wants to pretend to be dead so she can sell more records! That’s not eccentric. That’s venturing into the realm of madness!” Edie said.

  “I don’t think so,” I argued, though of course I didn’t have a degree in psychology so perhaps I was out of my depth here. “Actually I think a lot of people would like to do what Petunia’s doing, especially after having had a career that spans four decades. She’s entitled to some peace and quiet.”

  “I still think she’s mad,” Edelie insisted, harping on the same theme and taking a sip from her coffee.

  “I think it’s easy to pull this off,” Estrella insisted, checking out the male barista who’d just brought her her latte macchiato with an added wink.

  “Estrella, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said curtly.

  “Yeah, you’re just saying this because you’re a fan of Petunia’s,” said Edelie. “If this were just some unknown I’m sure you would think differently about the crazy assignment she saddled us up with.”

  “We can still pull out,” I said. “Tell her we changed our minds.”

  “No, we can’t,” said Edelie. “We’ll ruin our reputation if we do. Petunia and Rupert will spread the word that Flummox, Inc is a bunch of unreliable losers and fakers who have no follow-through and where will that leave us?”

  “Unemployed.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You guys,” Estrella tried again. “This is so easy! Listen!”

  “Or we could simply subcontract out the heavy lifting.” I said. “We take care of the coordination and we ask one of the big boys to do the rest. You know. The ones who operate in Iraq and stuff. They have the drones and the manpower to pull this off. And I’m sure they can provide a dead body, too.”

  “We signed a non-disclosure agreement, Stien,” Edelie pointed out. “We can’t use a subcontractor or discuss this arrangement with anyone.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, and slumped again, staring out across the street where the hustle and bustle indicated life in the big city never stopped. What would all these people think if Petunia Hudson suddenly died? Would they stop to listen to the news or would they simply not care? I had the impression it would probably make a big splash, and it would make an even bigger splash if it were revealed the whole thing was a setup and that we were behind it. It would ruin our newfound business faster than we could say ‘Aargh…’

  “Aargh!” Strel said with perfect timing. “Listen to me, will you?!”

  We both looked at her. “What’s wrong, Strel?” I asked.

  She flapped her arms. “We’re witches, you guys!” she hissed.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Edelie asked a little irritably.

  “We can make Petunia disappear! Poof!” said Estrella cheerfully.

  We stared at her. It was an aspect of the matter we hadn’t considered.

  “We’re witches. We don’t need drones or bombs. We can use witchcraft!”

  “We can’t just make her disappear,” I said. “We need her dead, not gone.”

  “Yeah, there has to be a body,” Edelie said. “Some human remains.”

  “And these remains have to be Petunia’s, or else the police will figure out someone’s been playing games,” I added.

  In the old days you could probably pick up a body from the morgue or dig one up
at the local graveyard, but in these days of CSI and DNA and digitalized dental records it was probably very easy to identify a body, even though it might be blown to bits by an accidentally overflying drone.

  “Where are we even going to get a drone?” I asked now.

  “And is that drone going to do what we think it’ll do?” Edie chimed in. “I don’t think a drone will obliterate a body to the point it’s unidentifiable.”

  “Well, there has to be some form of identification,” I added. “How else is the police going to know it’s Petunia who’s really dead?”

  “And if we use any other body than Petunia’s the police are going to know.”

  “Oh, God,” I groaned, burying my face in my hands. “This is a nightmare.”

  “We can do it!” Estrella insisted, sounding like a broken record.

  Her chipper personality had never jarred on me more than it did now.

  “We can’t pull this off, Estrella. We just can’t,” I insisted.

  “No, but we can! We use witchcraft. We spirit a drone out of thin air—no need to travel to some US Army base to steal one—and then we produce a duplicate of Petunia and blow her up! Easy peasy!” she added as she held up her hands, then took a sip of her hot drink, softly humming with delight.

  “Make a duplicate?” I asked suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

  “Easy!” she repeated, and if she was going to say it one more time I was going to smack her. “We simply produce a clone. And that clone has to die.”

  “A clone,” I said dubiously. “You want to clone Petunia and kill it.”

  “Her,” corrected Edelie. “Even clones have rights, Ernestine.”

  “Right,” said Estrella with a smile. “You see? Easy peasy.”

  I groaned. “There’s something you’re forgetting, Strel.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re the world’s worst witches! We suck at witchcraft. If we try to do this with witchcraft there are about a million ways this could backfire.”