Witchy Possessions (Witchy Fingers Book 3)

by Nic Saint

  “Tell us the truth,” Edelie said now. “What did you really think about Petunia Hudson?”

  Uh-oh, I thought. Here we go. But there was no stopping the process now. I fully expected the trio to start spilling all the hatred they’d harbored toward their lead singer. Instead, they all simultaneously burst into tears.

  “Oh, God!” bleated Corina. “Petunia was like a big sister to me. The only family I ever had.” She looked up at us, her black mascara now running down her face and making her look like Alice Cooper, after eating his daily bat. “I’m gonna miss her so much! This is the worst day of my entire life!”

  “She was like… my best friend,” hiccuped Yesenia. “My very best friend in all the world! I looked up to her so much. She was lovely—the loveliest person in the whole world. She was more lovely than my own mother, my own sister, my own daughter! There will never be anyone like Petunia!”

  “She was an amazing person,” muttered Dot between two heavy sobs. “She was the coolest person in the room—any room. And she was just so knowledgeable. She knew everything there was to know about music. She always knew just what to do when we were in here, recording our music.”

  Corina wiped at her eyes, smearing her mascara all over her face. “I’m gonna miss her so much! There will never be anyone like her! Ever! Hey, you guys” she said, turning to the others. “You know what we should do?”

  The others shook their heads, now also looking like scarecrows.

  “We should petition the pope to have Petunia declared a saint!”

  “I like that,” said Dot. “The woman was a saint. A real saint.”

  “She should get the Nobel prize,” said Yesenia. “For music!”

  It was obvious our spell had backfired just a little bit, though on the bright side, it had brought out The Blackguards’ real feelings about Petunia, and it was obvious from the way the tears flowed freely, that they’d never have done anything to hurt her.

  I shared a look of heartfelt compassion with my sisters. These women, they didn’t hate Petunia. They truly loved her. Like a sister. Like a friend.

  “Aww, this is so sweet,” Petunia’s grating voice sounded behind us. “I had no idea they loved me so much!”

  Well, they obviously did, and for the next ten minutes we listened patiently to the sobs and tributes, and it was obvious that whoever had put that ghoul inside Petunia, it wasn’t these three. So we finally left the room, for there’s only so much heartbreak you can stand when you’re not a country singer, and left Corina, Yesenia and Dot to their reminiscences of Petunia.

  “That was so sweet, you guys,” gushed Estrella, when we’d joined the wake again. “I hope when I die you’ll go to pieces over me just like them.”

  “You’re not going to die,” Edelie said.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked. “Don’t witches die like everyone else?”

  “Witches live a great deal longer than ordinary folks, didn’t you know that?” asked Edelie now.

  “No, I didn’t,” I told her. I watched as Slip was shooting the breeze with some of his rock idols, and wondered how this worked. Would we stay young forever while the rest of the world grew old? I didn’t know if I even liked it.

  “You mean I’m going to stay young forever?” asked Estrella, ecstatic at this prospect, as was to be expected.

  “If you wanted to,” said Edelie, who seemed to know a great deal about the topic. “But it would involve a type of witchcraft we haven’t mastered yet.”

  “And which Gran is never going to teach us,” I said.

  “Oh.” Estrella’s face fell. “That’s too bad. I want to stay young forever.”

  “Don’t we all?” I asked, watching all those rock stars, who all wanted to stay young forever. The Rocking Stones, for instance, a bunch of seventy-year-old rockers, chatting up girls young enough to be their granddaughters.

  “But why does Gran look older than us?” asked Estrella now. “I mean, if she really wanted to she could look an eternal twentysomething, right?”

  “I’m sure she could,” agreed Edelie, “but maybe she doesn’t want to.”

  “Of course she wants to,” said Estrella. “Everybody wants to be young.”

  “How old is Gran?” I asked. I’d never given this much thought before.

  We stared at one another. “I have no idea, actually,” Edelie confessed.

  “You guys, maybe she’s, like, thousands of years old!” exclaimed Estrella. “Maybe she’s been living, like, forever! Since the stone ages or even before!”

  “That wouldn’t make her our gran then, would it?” I asked.

  “Maybe it would,” said Edelie. “Maybe we’re also thousands of years old, and Gran has simply messed with our memories or something.”

  “I doubt it,” I said, for I remembered most of my life, except those first few years after I was born, like everybody. “I think witches are just like normal folks,” I said now, sorry to burst Estrella’s bubble. “Though I’m sure we live a great deal longer,” I added, when she stared at me in dismay.

  “Oh,” she said.

  Skip joined us, a wide grin on his face. “You guys, you know what I just heard? That Sir Rupert is going to be publishing Petunia’s secret music over the next few years.” He gestured at the vault. “All tucked away in that little puppet over there. Is it true? Cause if it is, that would be really awesome!”

  I shrugged. “I guess it is,” I said, though I didn’t care one way or the other. I’d never been much of a Petunia fan, so if or when Rupert published a thousand more songs of hers, I wasn’t going to listen to them anyway.

  “This is so great!” exclaimed Skip. “We’ll be listening to fresh Petunia tunes for the rest of our lives!”

  Just then, I saw the three Blackguards exit Petunia’s recording studio. They were still crying their eyes out and supporting each other.

  “What happened to them?” asked Skip.

  “Don’t ask,” I muttered, and was feeling a little guilty now.

  “It’s fine,” said Edelie. “Better they get all that grief out.”

  “Yeah, bottling it up just gives you cancer,” Estrella stated knowingly.

  Rupert joined us, a glass of bubbly in his hand. He, too, looked sad, and was dressed in a black tux for the occasion. “So how did it go?” he asked. “The interview with The Blackguards?”

  “They didn’t do it,” I said.

  “No, they genuinely love Petunia,” said Estrella, touching her heart.

  Rupert stared at her. “I did not know that,” he intimated.

  “No, neither did I,” said Petunia now, staring at her bandmates with a puzzled expression on her face. “If I had, I might have treated them better. Or even mentioned them in my will,” she muttered, and then stalked off again to join her former bandmates, presumably eager to hear more outpourings of grief and praise. Rock stars never tire of that stuff, even when they’re dead.

  “So when can we meet Joanna Hudson?” asked Edelie.

  “Right now, if you like. I called her and she agreed to see you. I invited her to the wake, but she said there’s nothing to mourn over.” He shook his head. “I don’t think she loved her sister as much as The Blackguards did.”

  “What about Valerie?” I asked. “Have you arranged a lawyer for her?”

  “I did,” Rupert confirmed. “And a very good one. I hope he’ll be able to get her out of there. Though she will probably still have to go to trial. Murder is not something they let slide in the great state of New York, I’m afraid.”

  “Or anywhere else in the world, for that matter,” said Edelie.

  “And her daughter?” I asked.

  Rupert smiled. “I got in touch with social services, and they agreed to recommend me to the court as Sofia’s guardian. Apparently the report they made on Alex Knuckles, after a place visit, wasn’t very favorable. They don’t think the child should be in his care, just like Valerie herself has always intimated. So Sofia will be in my care while her moth
er is in prison.”

  “Where is Sofia now?”

  “She’s in good hands. As you can imagine I can’t very well raise her myself,” he said with a light chuckle. “Don’t worry, Sofia will be very well taken care of. Nothing could give me greater joy than to be responsible for Petunia’s grandchild. It’ll be a wondrous experience to watch the young lady grow up. Like a little piece of Petunia.” He sighed wistfully.

  His words had touched my heart, and I dabbed at my eyes now, and so did my sisters. Sofia was lucky to have such a great guardian, and so was Valerie. I knew that Rupert would take good care of her daughter. At least that was one thing less to worry about. Now if only we could sever the connection with the ghoul that possessed Valerie, we were well on our way to a real solution.

  Chapter 20

  Joanna Hudson’s place of business was at One World Trade Center, her office on the twenty-sixth floor of the famous building. Mogue, the fashion magazine she’d run for the past twenty years or so, wasn’t quite up to the same standard as Vogue, of course, but it came a close second.

  The offices were brand-new, and looked pretty spiffy, as far as an office can ever look spiffy. It reminded me of the offices of the law firm where I used to work: beige carpeted floors, lots of glass, plastic and aluminum, stunning views of New York, and cubicles. Lots and lots of cubicles, and a lot of stressed-out worker drones staring at computers occupying those cubicles.

  And as we passed through the maze, Estrella caught sight of a rack of clothes, and her jaw dropped. She quickly tripped over, and fingered the items tentatively and with rising excitement. “You guys!” she hissed. “This is… Valentino! Oh, and look! Lagerfeld! Diane von Furstenberg!”

  “Uh-huh?” I asked, not very interested. “That’s just great, Strel.”

  So we walked on, leaving Strel to gush over this great little find.

  Editor-in-chief Joanna Hudson was a name to be reckoned with in the world of fashion and haute couture, and when we arrived in her office, with an incredible view of the city, she was bent over a mock-up of the next issue of Mogue, ready to go to press. Her office was pretty sparse and bare. Not what I’d expected from the woman who ran a fashion magazine. I’d expected more something like Bridget Jones’s office, but hers looked really spartan.

  It was probably what was en vogue these days. So we knocked tentatively on the door, which was open, and walked in when Joanna cried, “Come!”

  It was just Edie and me. We’d left Skip at the party, because we hadn’t the heart to tear him away from shooting the breeze with the Rocking Stones, and Petunia from spending some more time with her friends and bandmates.

  Joanna looked up sharply when we stepped inside her office. She was younger than her sister, and dressed more conservatively, and handsomely. She was wearing half-moon reading glasses and inspected us over them. “Ah, you’re the private detectives Petunia hired before she croaked. Rupert said you’re investigating her death. So you don’t think she killed herself?”

  It was obvious this woman was sharp as a tack, I thought as we took a seat in front of her wide desk, littered with mock-ups and designs.

  “Yes, no, we don’t think her death was a suicide,” I confirmed.

  “Why?” she asked, planting her hands on her sides and still staring at us over her glasses. I felt as if we were seated in front of the school principal, being punished for releasing a herd of white rabbits during physics class.

  “Um, well, for one thing, she hired us to set up a new life. A life of leisure,” I said, not seeing a point in hiding this now that Petunia was gone.

  “A life of leisure? You mean retirement? That doesn’t sound like the Petunia I know.”

  “She wanted to move to a tropical paradise. Leave the world behind,” explained Edelie.

  “Is that right?”

  “She had lots of plans for the future and wanted us to help shape them.”

  “So it doesn’t seem likely she would kill herself after discussing her future in so much detail with us,” added Edelie.

  “No, I can see that,” said Joanna, removing her glasses and steepling her fingers on her desk. “She didn’t strike me as the suicidal type either, but then I figured, with a life of drugs and rock and roll, anything was possible. I hadn’t spoken to her in years, you see. We had a falling-out a few years ago, and didn’t exactly see eye to eye. Which is no secret,” she added.

  “Rupert told us that your relationship wasn’t a very warm one,” I said.

  “Which is why you think I might have something to with her death? Is that it?” she asked smoothly.

  I shrugged. “We’re just here to find out what happened to her.”

  “You were there when she died, right? You saw what happened?”

  Edelie said, “Yes, we were there.”

  “So you know that I didn’t push her,” Joanna pointed out.

  “Nobody pushed her,” I said. “But she was under the influence of something when we saw her. She wasn’t acting like herself.”

  “And whoever gave her that substance is probably responsible for her death,” said Edelie.

  “I see. Well, that rules me out, then,” said Joanna, holding up her hands. “Like I said, we hadn’t spoken in years. I’d never even been inside her new apartment—that penthouse suite of hers. The last time we met she was still living in the Village, with those creepy Blackguards. The last couple of years she locked herself up more and more, isolating herself from the rest of the world and her own family. She didn’t even speak to her daughter!”

  “Yes, we know about Valerie,” I said.

  “I saw more of Valerie than Petunia herself did,” explained Joanna.

  “You did?” asked Edelie, surprised.

  “Oh, of course. I was there when she was in the hospital to deliver. And when she left that good-for-nothing husband of hers—what’s his name…” She snapped her fingers irritably.

  “Alex Knuckles,” I supplied.

  She pointed a finger at me. “That’s the one. When she left Alex I suggested she come live with me for the time being, but she chose to move in with one of her friends instead. I’m Sofia’s godmother, too. Oh, yes,” she confirmed when we stared at her with raised eyebrows. “So you see, I was closer to Petunia’s own flesh and blood than she herself was. Pity she’s gone now, and will never know the joy of being a grandmother.”

  “That is a pity,” I said, wondering why Joanna hadn’t been put forward as Sofia’s guardian. Not that Rupert was a bad choice, of course, but she was the girl’s aunt, after all.

  “I have no children of my own, you see,” Joanna went on. “Never married.” She had risen from her chair and was gesturing at the open door of her office. “I married Mogue. This is my baby,” she added, pointing at a stack of copies on the edge of her desk. “So Valerie and Sofia are both very close to my heart.” She suddenly whirled around. “So you’re telling me foul play was involved? My sister’s death wasn’t suicide at all?”

  “Someone murdered her,” I said. “We’re certain of it.” I couldn’t tell her why we were so sure, of course, but she gave me a look of grave concern.

  “Petunia had enemies,” she said musingly. “Any woman who’s as successful and rich and famous as Petunia has them. But if she died from a substance she took it must have been someone who was very close to her. Someone who had the opportunity to put something in her food or her drink.” She gave us a scrutinizing look. “If I were you, I’d talk to her staff. Her housekeeper, her cook, her personal trainer… These are the people who had access and, perhaps, out of sheer spite and jealousy, might have resorted to this kind of horrible thing. Or perhaps they were bribed by a third party.”

  “The only people who stand to gain are Rupert, as the trustee of her estate, and her daughter Valerie. And Sofia, of course,” I said, puzzled.

  “But we don’t think Rupert was involved,” Edie was quick to add.

  “Or Valerie.”

  “No, of course not. Valerie wo
uld never hurt her mother. And Rupert has been a loyal friend for years. Valerie’s been arrested, Rupert told me, and Sofia is now with him.” She shook her head. “It’s a tragedy. A real tragedy.”

  “Sorry for asking, Miss Hudson,” I said. “But why isn’t Sofia with you?”

  Joanna smiled. “I’m not maternal material, Miss Flummox. Even though I love my niece dearly, I don’t think I’m exactly the best choice to raise her daughter.”

  I nodded. I could see that. As she said, the woman was married to her work. And now that we’d spoken to her, I didn’t think she was involved with Petunia’s death. So who was? Her advice to tackle Petunia’s staff was good, though I couldn’t imagine they’d acted of their own accord. Besides, we weren’t talking about someone slipping something into Petunia’s food.

  Someone had cursed her with a ghoul. It had to be someone well versed in the paranormal. Someone who dabbled in black magic. Someone who wanted to make sure that both Petunia and Valerie were out of the way. And as usual, we had to discover who had the most to gain from this. Sofia, obviously, or the person who thought they would be appointed her legal guardian… Suddenly the name Alex Knuckles flashed through my mind. He would have had reason to assume that with his wife out of the picture, and Petunia dead, he’d get custody of Sofia… and control over Petunia’s millions.

  I only needed one look at Edelie’s face to know she’d come to the same conclusion. We both got up, and just then, Estrella came charging in, her face flushed and her eyes sparkling. “Oh, this is all so wonderful!” she gushed. “You have the most amazing job, Miss Hudson!”

  Joanna laughed. “Why, thank you. I’d like to think so.” She now directed a serious look at us. “Please find whoever is responsible for my sister’s death. We may not have been close, but I did love her, and whoever did this deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law.” Her eyes were glittering when she spoke these words. “Or even beyond it, if you catch my drift.”