Ghost Mysteries & Sassy Witches (Cozy Mystery Multi-Novel Anthology)

by Неизвестный

  His lean, muscular body tensed underneath me. Soon we were rolling, and he was on top of me. He pinned my arms and held me down as he nuzzled my chest through my clothes. I made a noise to let him know I liked it, but I hardly needed to. Golden sparks shot up from my body like it was the fourth of July.

  “Take me,” I panted. “I’ve waited so long, Arturo. I want it to be you.”

  He grabbed the front of my button-down shirt and yanked it apart, sending buttons flying. Then he kissed me all over as he removed the rest of my clothes. I writhed on the bed, somehow managing to find his shirt through the sparkly light show and rip it off. When our bare chests touched, there was an audible crackling, and then everything went still. The light drew back into our bodies, but I could feel it inside me, glowing.

  I looked up into his beautiful eyes and said, “I love you.”

  His face froze. “Zeb,” he said.

  I reached down and grabbed for the button on his jeans. “Keep going,” I said huskily. “Forget I said that. It was just the light show. Come on, get your jeans off. I want you to fire your love rocket inside me.”

  He pulled away and climbed off the bed. He backed toward the door.

  “Zeb, it’s too dangerous.”

  “Life is dangerous, Arturo. Get on the roller coaster. Don’t tell me you’re happy sitting on the carousel, going ’round and ’round, getting nowhere.”

  “The carousel? I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  We stared at each other in silence. I didn’t have Kenny there to hand me notes, so it took me a bit to gather my thoughts.

  Finally, I said, “Embrace the danger, Mr. J. You can sit behind your computer screens and sit behind your desk to teach your classes, but you can’t control everything.” I smacked the bed sheets next to me. “Now get your freakishly cute body over here and let’s have a look at your squeezables.”

  “I’m sorry.” He picked up his torn T-shirt from the floor, and turned his back to me.

  “I’m naked,” I said. “If you walk out of this room, you’ll never get to see all of this again. Not until I’m on the cover of Rolling Stone, with a guitar tastefully hiding all the good bits.”

  “I look forward to seeing that,” he said without the slightest hint of humor.

  “Joking!” I cried out. “My bravado is all an act. I’ll never be on the cover of anything, except maybe a coupon book for the mall, and even then, it would just be my hands. I’m nobody.”

  “You’re special.”

  I snorted. Here was the best professor at the college telling me I was special. It filled me with rage.

  “You’re special.”

  I started yelling, “Great! Now you’ve gone and filled my head with this magic stuff, plus you tell me I’m special, and now I think I might actually be someone. But you know what big dreams lead to? Big heartaches. And it will all be your fault when I fail. Damn you, Mr. J.”

  “Damn me?”

  “Damn you for seeing something special in me.”

  I would have cursed him out for a whole bunch of things, including sexual frustration, but he was already gone.

  I gathered up my things, gritting my teeth so I wouldn’t cry. Gritting my teeth didn’t work. I don’t know why people do it, because it only makes the crying more painful.

  He wrecked my blouse, so I searched through his closet for something to wear home. I picked out the blue shirt he’d been wearing the first day we met, and put it on.

  I left the bedroom and I found him in the kitchen, peeling labels off plastic storage containers and printing out new labels with a Dyno-brand label-maker.

  “Would you be okay if I borrow your shirt?”

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  He was okay? I didn’t want him to be okay.

  I scratched the back of my head and groaned like the dog did when it had fleas, because it seemed like the right thing to do after someone rejects you during a sex date.

  Arturo snapped his fingers to get my attention, and nodded to a business card that lay on the kitchen counter between us.

  Owl Plaza, Room #142

  Sundays, 3pm

  No peanuts or dairy.

  “That’s the local coven,” he said. “You should have registered with them your first day in town, but since you didn’t know, they’ll probably let you off with a warning.”

  “I’m not really a joiner, in case you haven’t noticed. I need to do my own thing. Is there a website or something where I can get the basics? When do I learn spells?”

  “Just go to the meeting,” he said.

  “Will you be there?”

  “No. I only go to the AGMs.”

  “AGMs? I’m dying of boredom already.”

  “Just go,” he said. “Promise me you’ll go. Your magic is powerful, and I’m worried someone could get hurt.”

  I grabbed the card from the counter and gave him a dirty look. “I’ll go to this stupid coven, and you know what else? I’m going to re-enroll back into your composition class.”

  “Good. Your songwriting is sloppy.”

  “Your kissing is sloppy.”

  He looked genuinely hurt by this. I would have apologized, but I was still stinging from his rejection, so I twirled on the ball of my foot dramatically and stormed out with my head held high.

  When I got home, I went straight for Kenny’s fresh-baked brownies, which I didn’t realize were laced with hallucinogenic mushrooms.

  I had eaten five and a half brownies when the wallpaper in the kitchen started to dance. I looked over at the dog, who was wearing a tuxedo, for no reason.

  “Why are you dressed up so fancy?” I asked him.

  The dog, who I thankfully hadn’t fed any brownies to, because I knew chocolate was toxic to dogs, answered my question with, “I’m wearing a tux because I’m taking you to dog prom.”

  “Dog prom sounds awesome!”

  “We have to decorate the house,” he said.

  I was glad for anything to take my mind off Arturo rejecting me, so I happily zipped around the house putting up decorations for dog prom.

  Two hours later, Kenny emerged from his bedroom to find me and the dog wrapped in toilet paper, sharing a bowl of canned dog food. The food was delicious.

  Kenny ran to the kitchen, did a quick count on the remaining brownies, then called the emergency poison control phone number to ask them a hypothetical question.

  I continued dog prom, blissfully unaware. All the elves from the kitchen wallpaper were dancing around me, and I was so happy. Everything was magic. Me. The wallpaper. Everything.

  Kenny gave me a glass of what he called “magical prom juice.” I glugged it back, not realizing it was syrup of ipecac. Much excitement ensued, most of it in the bathroom toilet.

  That night, Kenny showed me his true colors. His aura glowed with an orange-gold hue similar to my own.

  “Everything will be okay,” he said soothingly as he patted my back. “Things have a way of working out.”

  “You’re my best friend,” I said between heaves. “I’ve never had a best friend before.”

  “Me, neither. We moved around a lot when I was growing up, on account of my dad being a wizard.”

  I turned and looked up from the toilet. “Your dad’s a wizard?”

  “Yes, and so am I.”

  “Isn’t that supposed to be a secret? Why are you telling me?”

  “Zeb, you have sparks shooting out of your ears every time you barf. You didn’t mean to tell me, but you did. Fair’s fair.”

  He got me a glass of water, and we spent the next hour sitting on the floor of the bathroom, talking and giggling. I told him everything I knew about my witch status, right up to and including the disaster that was my sex-free sex date.

  Kenny grabbed a wash cloth and wiped down my chin.

  “Hang in there,” he said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “Sure. Yeah. I’m a witch and ever
ything, but I’m still going to be a virgin forever.”

  He grimaced. “If you let me look at some gay stuff on my laptop, I could give it a try.”

  “You’re the best friend a girl could have, Kenny.”

  Then I started crying, and he started crying, and the dog came in and demanded to know why we weren’t at dog prom. It would take another twenty-four hours for the mushrooms to leave my system, but the memories… the memories of that night would last a lifetime.

  7.

  On Sunday, I went to my very first coven meeting. The elders were cross with me for not registering with them immediately when I arrived in town, but when they found out who my great-grandmother was, they lightened up.

  I learned that my situation wasn’t that unusual. Lots of people don’t find out about their witch powers until their twenties. The families actually keep it from them on purpose, until the young witch is mature enough to handle the responsibilities.

  “That explains why nobody told me,” I said. “I’m the least mature person I know. Shouldn’t you guys cast a forgetting spell on me? For everyone’s protection?”

  One of the elders said, “Good idea,” and started thumbing through a tiny notebook.

  “No forgetting spells,” Kenny said. “Zeb can handle it. She’s somewhat competent in other areas of her life.”

  I gave Kenny a sweet smile, thankful I had such an amazing best friend to lie for me.

  The meeting went on for two hours, mostly politics, then we broke for snacks, and the other witches asked me to play a song for them.

  I didn’t have my guitar with me, but another woman loaned me hers. She was also a song witch, and I would become her apprentice shortly, but as of that moment, we were still sizing each other up.

  Her lovely guitar was perfectly in tune—the first spell I was to learn under her instruction—so I began to play one of my original songs, about a girl whose husband is shipping off to war.

  The witches and wizards all listened, and were polite enough, but they seemed even less interested than my worst audience.

  “Sorry,” I said after I was done. “My mojo is gone. This wannabe song witch has no mojo.”

  “That’s because you’re playing cover songs,” a bald, jovial-looking man said. “I know you wrote that song yourself, but it’s still a cover song. Zeb, you’re not a woman whose husband is leaving her for the front lines. You don’t have three hungry children.”

  “But I’m an artist. I’m supposed to put myself into other people’s shoes. Right?”

  The woman whose guitar I’d borrowed answered by humming a melody. There were no words, but I saw a picture in my mind as she sang. In the dream-like image I saw a girl, feeding cows in a field. Her boots got stuck in the mucky pasture. She got one foot free, and fell backward into the cold mud. She didn’t get up right away. She lay there, because the damp earth was fragrant, and she missed someone, but the scent of the new life in the mud made her feel better.

  The whole experience of seeing the shared vision gave me chills and goosebumps from top to bottom. It was magic.

  “Very nice,” said the bald man when she was done.

  She smiled at me. “Yes, we can put ourselves in other people’s shoes. And we should. But first, we must crawl before we run. Begin with the truth, Zeb. Can you do that?”

  I looked down at the guitar in my hands, then quickly strummed a chord progression. I strung together some words, “Got mushroomed last night, took a dog to the prom, hey, that’s the way it rolls.”

  She nodded for me to keep going, and I did.

  I played a song I made up on the spot.

  I, Zeb, wannabe song witch, played for a coven of witches, and it was the worst. Not just my worst performance. But the worst performance. Of any singer, in any venue, ever.

  And they ate it up.

  They ate it up with a spoon, and asked for more.

  And that was how I learned to stop pretending to be someone else, and play music as myself.

  Just Zeb.

  On the tiniest bit of ‘shrooms still left in her system.

  But mostly just Zeb.

  8.

  When I saw Arturo at school on Monday, back in his composition class, he acted like nothing had happened between us over the weekend.

  I waved my hand in the air and asked him a stupid question about homework. Everyone laughed, and we were back to normal.

  Almost.

  Sometimes when I caught his eye, I noticed a gleam of amethyst. Magic occasionally sparked between us when he walked past my desk.

  Regular people couldn’t see our fireworks, but they were as real as his blue shirt—the one I’d borrowed from his house and now used as a pillow case. Whenever I climbed into bed at night, after a long day of studying either music or basic beginner-level song witch spells, I would rub my cheek against his shirt and pretend my pillow was Arturo’s chest.

  If anyone asked, I would deny this, of course. I told Kenny I used the blue shirt as a pillow case because the thread count in my sheets wasn’t high enough, and scratched my face. When Christmas came, my other roommates chipped in and gave me luxurious new linens, so from that point on, I had to keep my Arturo-pillow hidden in the closet during the day.

  The roommates would ask me who my new songs were about. I had been tapping into my honesty and writing about my feelings for Arturo—some good, some bad. He had lifted me up when he said I was special, but he also dropped me. Hard. Right on my heart.

  “The lover is a composite character,” I told people. “He’s an archetype. The one who slipped away.”

  My audiences believed me, and they liked it, because they could imagine the person in my song as someone who slipped away from them, or someone whose time hadn’t yet come.

  I mostly told the truth at shows, because of my new strategy to embrace honesty, but I kept the identity of Arturo to myself. I didn’t want the whole city to know that Zeb, singer and songwriter extraordinaire plus fun girl-about-town, was carrying a torch for her uptight composition professor.

  * * *

  By the time summer came, and school was finishing up for the year, I had achieved a solid B average, which is great for someone like me, whose wild spirit is difficult to funnel into final exams.

  Kenny had mostly Cs, but an A+ in composition. He was really good at composition, when he wasn’t too high. I had a C- in composition, but thankfully I still passed and wouldn’t have to take Mr. J’s class the next semester, assuming I returned.

  Things with the coven were going well, and by well, I mean fabulously. My new mentor was teaching me singing techniques I didn’t imagine were possible. We played together on occasion as a duet, and she always outshone me, but I was gaining ground. I worked hard to make her proud.

  My new song witch powers made performances even more interesting. Sometimes I would just be playing in a coffee shop, caught up in my own thoughts, and I’d start pulling threads from the audience and twisting them together, playing around, and things would happen without me even trying. One night I was thinking about what might have happened if Arturo hadn’t walked out of the bedroom that night, and I heard some strange panting and moaning in the audience.

  Before I realized what was happening, I’d given three ladies and one gentleman a spontaneous pleasure spasm.

  The tips were good that night.

  9.

  Graduation day came, and the whole music school gathered in the auditorium for a ceremony. The school offers a multi-year program, but many students only take the first year of fundamentals, which is a complete program on its own. (Listen to me, I sound like a brochure for the college. Honestly, I don’t get any kickbacks, I swear.)

  As of that day, I wasn’t sure if I’d be back for a second year. Kenny and I planned to hit the road for the summer, to see where the road took us.

  First, we had to survive the ceremony and a bunch of sloppy, emotional stuff.

  I try not to be all sappy and maudlin, but seeing everyone in t
he auditorium hit me hard. It was like high school graduation, only minus all the jerks. It’s going to take you a few minutes to even imagine something that special. I’m writing a song about it, actually. I’m having a hard time coming up with words that rhyme with douche-canoe.

  Moose renew?

  Tush lasso?

  Anyway…

  In my bag that day was a freshly-laundered and folded blue shirt. I planned to return the garment to its rightful owner, but was too nervous to approach Arturo before he took his place on the stage for the ceremony.

  I waited until my name was called and crossed the stage to receive my first-year diploma. After getting the rolled-up paper, I proceeded through the line, shaking the hands of all my professors.

  When Arturo’s palm swept into mine, sparks shot up. He looked into my eyes, and I nearly had one of those spontaneous pleasure spasms. I looked around nervously, even though I didn’t need to. Regular people can’t usually see the sparks flying off witches and wizards, and other than me and Arturo, Kenny was the only other wizard at the college.

  “I need to see you,” Arturo said.

  “You had your chance and you walked away. That was almost a year ago. A lot has happened since then, Mr. J. I turned twenty, and I grew up. A lot. I know all about dryer sheets now. Did you know they’re not just good for preventing static cling? You can put one in the bottom of your kitchen trash container, and your bin will stay smelling fresh.”

  His blue eyes danced with amethyst lights. “You’ve changed.”

  “I’ve also moved on. For the record, you can’t have your blue shirt back. The dog actually ate it. Sorry.”

  He murmured a string of numbers, and tattletale gold sparkles flew from my mouth, down to my shoulder bag.

  Busted. I unzipped the bag, grabbed his blue shirt, and handed it to him, grumbling, “You math wizards and your arcane truth spells.”

  “Shh,” he said. “Later. Tonight.”

  He tossed the shirt on the chair behind him and turned to shake the next student’s hand. Orange sparks shot up from their hands, because the next student was Kenny.