Odd Stuff
Odd Series
By: Virginia Nelson
Published by Virginia Nelson
© 2014 Virginia Nelson
ISBN-13: 978-1500625870
ISBN-10: 1500625876
Cover Art by Virginia Nelson
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Note from the author: All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, vampires, organizations, fog monsters, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
To Justice, Fluffer Nutter, David and Ashton, for burnt dinner and, “Shhh, Mommy is writing!”
To Mom, for asking me, “Why not?”
To Jamie, for being my sis and creating three wonderful kids…one of whom is my Beastie.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Without the patience and unlimited supplies of coffee offered by my children and friends, I would not be able to finish a word of writing, so special thanks go out to Justice, David and Ashton, & Michelle and Jordan Brown. Heather Chandler read the story as it progressed (even including the outline at some points), so thanks for being a voracious reader.
Thanks to (in random order) Justy, Jfab, Henchie, Pixie for helping me write a realistic Vickie. Pieces of you guys are stuck all over her. Love ya.
Lots of love to Joanie and Danny Ashley—for food, love, Jeopardy watching and stories.
Thanks to my crit partners and betas for so many hours of reading.
Thanks to Christine Jacobs, for believing in this story (and me) before even I did.
Thanks to Tony and the Schommers. Tony for loving this story and reminding me constantly it would make a great movie and the Schommers for a lovely home and a safe place to raise my kids. (And an office. Because YAY I have an office!!)
Thanks to my writing groups, AWFUL and MUSE. Go get em, y’all.
Thanks to those I didn’t mention but who supported this story and me. Love you all. xoxo - Virg
Odd Stuff
Janie Smith always pretended to be normal. When her witch bestie gets tangled in a murder investigation, she finds it hard to stick to the mundane and save the day. Janie snarks her way through the paranormal world, fumbling again and again, determined not to give into temptation... But when your closest pal is suspected to have murdered a vampire, how do you prove she didn’t kill someone who has no pulse?
CHAPTER One
A very long time ago, I figured out historic is a pretty way to say old. Sometimes, historic meant whatever you looked at should have been razed, killed with fire, or avoided at all costs, but then again my memories of the Historic Ashtabula Harbor weren’t the best ones of my life. Marked by a lift bridge—one of only two left in operation—the area smelled of rotten fish and toxic water. Boats bobbed on the docks, some covered by protective tarps, most with their sails flopping in the wind off Lake Erie in an almost scenic view only slightly marred by the general sense of decay and poverty.
Vickie, my daughter, made exaggerated gagging noises from the backseat to further emphasize her already vocal protests of my choice to move back to my hometown. Trying to tune her out, I looked at old brick buildings, their facades worn by years of snow and lake winds, lined on top of each other like tired old women kneeling in faded ball gowns. The only parking available on the main road was in front of them, the cars like suitors lining up to offer favors.
The side streets, home to most of the available parking in the Harbor, wound up the hill to expensive residences with a fantastic view of the lake and the docked boats. I passed four bars and the Salvation Army before finally seeing the café next to my best friend Mia’s shop. One of the only alleys in the harbor district ran between the café and Odd Stuff, Mia’s store, so she had some of the best parking to be found. Turning at the café, I dodged in front of a SUV to slide into the slot next to her building. Putting the car in park and exiting my cell phone navigation, I read the sign Mia’d posted on the worn brick. In red letters, it read, Witch parking only. All others will be toad.
I grinned. I might hate the area, but I’d missed my Mia. Looking over the seat, I chirped, “We’re here!” Ignoring Vickie’s answering scowl, I turned back around and shrieked at the unfamiliar face pressed to my car window. The face put me in mind of Hulk, minus the green. Startled, my brain still recognized who he must be mostly because he squinted. Mia told me he was supposed to wear glasses and could not stand contacts. He must be Sven.
He smiled at me—a smile that would have come across less creepy if he didn’t have a face that even his mother would cringe at. Sven was Mia’s assistant, according to her letters, and she had mentioned she’d been off-put by his appearance when she first met him. He unfolded and stood outside my door, easily at the six-ten Mia had described. He opened my door and I got out and looked up…and up at him. “Hi, you must be Sven.”
“And you must be Janie Smith. I have heard so much about you!”
I felt my face scrunch into a grimace, then tried to turn it to a smile. Frequently, I’ve been accused of having a bitchy resting face. I shook his hand, his palm roughly the size of a small chicken. Dauntingly huge, Sven reminded me instantly of the giants in fairytales. His long hair hung to his shoulders in a soft brown cloud of waves I envied. He wore a pink fuzzy scarf and a leopard print blazer over a tee that read, And it harm none.
“Welcome home.” Releasing my hand, Sven pulled a set of keys with a huge chunk of quartz as a keyring from his jacket pocket.. “Mia had to leave already. She said to tell you that she hopes to return in a day or so. She was unable to await your homecoming and wishes me to tell you she will throw you a party when she is able to return. Follow me.” He passed me the keys and set off at a brusque pace.
Vickie and I raced to keep up with him. “Good God, that is one big man,” she mumbled and I nudged her to shut her up.
Sven chuckled, obviously overhearing my less than subtle child, and led us around the building to the front stoop. The sign over the door read, in large red curvy print, Odd Stuff. I opened the door using the key marked front door in masking tape and a wave of incense-scented air hit me. To some, it might be overpowering, but to me, it smelled like Mia.
Vickie sneezed, and on that note, we entered.
Odd Stuff was the perfect name for Mia’s shop. She specialized in all things weird. Just inside the doors, spinning holders offered spell books and books on UFO abductions. Wall displays housed candles and incense beneath framed art that ran mostly toward Gothic or new age in style. As I entered, dust and burnt sage filled the air around me, glittering in the light from the front windows. I moved further into the room, running my hand along a glass counter filled with various crystal and jewelry items, from dainty fairy charms to a dog collar studded with skulls. I tapped the glass idly as I noticed an amazing array of supposedly magic wands, some traditional black sticks with a white tip, but some intricately woven with dangling crystals and bits of herbs.
Cabinets and racks showed off bumper stickers and T-shirts, mostly with witch slogans or Gothic pi
ctures, but some were—to my untrained eye—weirder. One read, I brake for werewolves. Another proudly proclaimed, Type O Positive, want a taste? Toward the back, through a bead curtain, a round table covered in a star tablecloth displayed an assortment of crystal balls in every color of the rainbow. A white board hung on the wall nearby announced both the upcoming psychic fair and circles on all of the cycles of the moon. I walked back toward the front, Vickie trailing behind me, feeling myself relax a little for the first time in a very long time. My life might be a complete mess, but being surrounded by Mia’s things brought me some peace. As we proceded through the store, Sven flipped the sign on the door to open.
I had asked Mia if I could stay with her for a while, hopefully to give Vickie and me time to recover from the divorce and acclimate to the new surroundings. She agreed easily at the time, but yesterday she’d called and said she was leaving town. When she asked if I would mind taking over the shop and some of her regular activities for her while she was gone, my answer was a quick yes, but I wished she hadn’t left. I’d missed her more than I realized and being in her space made me see just how much.
As my thoughts darkened, my brows furrowed. I reminded myself to smooth them back out. Now that I was over thirty and leaning toward the big four oh, I tried to remember not to scrunch my face.
Easier to worry about wrinkles than to consider the failure of my marriage or the fact I’d run back home with my proverbial tail tucked between my legs. Who wants to admit that their husband married a blond podiatrist named Buffy? Or Muffy. Or whatever the hell her name was. Yup, focus on the wrinkles.
Sven looked at me expectantly. “So, I am taking off for today. Mia said I was to be here in the morning at seven so that you could register the rugrat—”
“Hey!” interrupted Vickie.
“For school. Um, who is babysitting while you go to the cemetery tonight? Or is she old enough to be home alone?”
I blinked at him and tried not to look as confused as I felt. “Why am I going to the cemetery?” I can be forgetful, especially with everything that’s been going on, but I think I’d remember if someone died.
“Oh! I almost forgot to give you your notes. Thanks for reminding me.” He walked to the counter, arms moving in a dainty, effeminate way that was amusing on such a large, physically masculine man. “This is from Mia. She wrote my cell phone number on here for you, but she said not to call her cell, something about GPS—?”
“Global Positioning Satellites?” muttered Vickie under her breath, looking to me for answers I didn’t have.
“Yeah, she can’t afford to be traced so she is, like, turning hers off till all of the smoke dies down.” He nodded to himself as if this made sense. It didn’t.
“Anyway, she wrote down some pricing and stuff for the shop, and she left you an itinerary of her other activities. Tonight, you need to go to the cemetery from, let me see…”
He flipped through a few pages of a spiral bound notebook and pointed at the page headed by today’s date. “You need to wait for the terrible trio to meet you here. I’m guessing sometime around midnight. You will go to the cemetery with them, and don’t forget to take a camera. You’ll probably get back here sometime between four and five—”
“In the morning?” I sputtered.
“Yeah. I mean, the witching hour is three-thirty.”
I nodded. What in the hell is he talking about?
“Let me get this straight. Mia wants me to go traipsing around in a cemetery in the middle of the night with someone you call the terrible trio?”
“Ghost hunters, honey. They’re ghost hunters.”
Slowly shaking my head, I tried to think of a good reason to go ghost hunting and couldn’t come up with a single one.
He rolled his eyes. “Mia is an important member of a lot of groups here. Since she can’t be here and you needed a place to stay, she said you were going to cover for her. I mean, if you don’t want to…”
Important groups. Well, she mentioned community activities. It was my own fault for assuming she meant things like, say, a church bake sale. For Mia, an appointment with ghost hunters made a lot more sense, come to think of it.
Back in high school, Mia was the girl every one whispered about. Not that she’d ever cared what anyone had to say about her, but still… Lately, her letters had gotten more strange, which was saying a lot for Mia. She’d even said something about vampires in some of her last messages. At the time, I assumed she meant someone who was a bit of a leech. Then again, maybe she knew someone who thought they were a bloodsucker? Didn’t Angelina Jolie go through a phase like that? Anyway, I spent most of my life so far trying to stay away from crazies. If someone Mia knew a vampire, well, I didn’t want to meet them. There were reasons I was happy to move away from Memory Lane, the strange and unusual population were at the top of the list.
“Um, well, what time does the shop close?” I decided to think about everything else later, my usual response to problematic situations.
“Eleven, honey. We are open from four to eleven.” Sven leaned on the counter, waiting.
“Well, could you come back at about eight-thirty, then? I could take Vickie over to stay the night at my mom’s, I guess.”
“Yes!” Vickie pumped a fist in the air. She adored her grandmother almost as much as I loathed the old bat.
“Better yet…” Sven paused, tapping his chin. “Mia has the spare room done over for Miss Vickie. She planned to put you in the guest room, but you could stay in Mia’s room and I could stay in the guest room tonight. Then you might have a shot at a few hours of beauty sleep before facing the norms at the school.”
I smiled at him gratefully, relieved I would not have to face my mother yet. Not to mention sleep. Sleep would be good. I hadn’t been sleeping well since my husband and I split, which got even worse since the actual divorce. Maybe running around a graveyard in the middle of the night with some loonies would wear me out. “That works for me, Sven.”
“Want me to hang around a few, so you can get the little one settled in upstairs?”
Again, I gave him my attempt at a grateful smile. Using the key ring with the heavy chunk of quartz, I unlocked the door in the back of the shop marked Employees Only in large red block letters. The spiraling stair behind the door, I knew from visiting Mia once a few years ago, led to her apartment above the store. I ushered Vickie up the stairs, pulling her small suitcase behind me and listening to its plastic wheels screech on the iron steps.
Now that we were here, I had some apprehension about the move. I’m very good at second guessing myself and, as usual, I questioned my wisdom. Should I have yanked up our roots and moved us three hundred miles north, smack dab into the middle of the snow belt? Scanning my daughter, I searched Vickie’s face for signs of nerves, fear, or exaustion. She clung to her stuffed animal pillow and tablet case and began to complain as if she realized she had my full attention.
“Mom, why can’t I stay at Grandma’s tonight? It’s only fair that since you have to… we’ll call it work, I guess, that I go someplace that makes me happy. I vote you send me to Grandma’s rather than leave me with Big and Hairy. I mean, really, do we know he is not an axe murderer? What about a kidnapper? What if he kidnaps me?”
“Lock your bedroom door and keep a phone in your room. This is the least we can do for Mia for putting us up until I get a job.” I didn’t mention that I’d rather pry out my own teeth with a spork than call my mom.
“Mom, this is silly. We left a perfectly good house and perfectly good school to come here to what?”
I bit my lip. Looking over my shoulder, I caught the telltale glitter of tears in her cobalt eyes. “This is hard for me, too, sweetie. But we needed a fresh start.”
She glared at me and her tears turned to ice. “Did we? Or did you?”
Ah, the little ones learn quick how to stab deep. I was pretty sure this decision was the best for both of us. Her grades were slipping, and she had dropped out of softball and
cheerleading. Everyone locally knew about our ‘troubles’ and she had to face the kids at school—far crueler than adults, or at least more open about attacking when they saw blood in the water, the little sharks. She’d been struggling back in Pennsylvania, too. Still, it was hard to leave friends behind and start a whole new life. If this didn’t work out, the house back in Connellsville was paid for another six months through my divorce settlement, so we could go back.
But if we didn’t move, we would never know if we could leave. I would have to find work and start saving immediately to make the mortgage payments. No one back there would help us if we failed. Here, we had my mom—much as I would hate to ask her for help. Here we had all my friends and family if we needed them.
Back there we only had Vickie’s dad. He had told me, in no uncertain terms, that it would be better if we left. Apparently, starting a new family was complicated if the old one hung around like stale leftovers. He had mentioned, as if he was being a pal by offering, that I couldn’t take care of Vickie, then he and the happy foot doctor would be happy to let her use the spare room.
I was not giving up my daughter to be raised by Fluffy. Or Susie. Or whatever the hell her name was. My daughter didn’t need to ‘use’ a room in her father’s home like a lingering house guest. We were going to make it on our own if it killed me.
With all of that in mind, I bit back any sarcasm I might normally have replied with, instead reaching to touch her hair. “Look, could you try to like it here? Give it a shot. If it doesn’t work out, then, fine, we will go back to Pennsylvania, but try while we are here. Make the best of it, for me, okay?”
Rolling her eyes, she pushed past me and opened the pink door that led to Mia’s apartment.
Well, at least she isn’t near tears anymore.
Mia’s apartment was…eclectic. Jewel tone paints of ruby and sapphire coated her walls, dotted with varied works of art leaning, of course, toward Gothic. Oversized furniture made the room comfortable while candles and statues of mythical creatures decorated her tables. Thick, soft carpet muffled our steps as we invaded.
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