by Elise Sax
Miguel flinched. “What? He was?”
“You didn’t know? It’s all over town. The killer had aimed the bow at him, but Chris switched seats with Danny, so Danny got it instead.”
Miguel slapped the side of his head and groaned. “That’s just perfect. Here I was going after a celebrity story, and I should have been going after the killer angle. I’m such a loser. Oh, geez. This sucks. I don’t want to move to Canada. I don’t own any socks.”
He lifted his pant leg to show me that he wasn’t wearing socks.
“I think you need socks if you’re going to live in Canada,” I agreed. “What about the dispensary story? Maybe you can beat the television stations for that story and get hired.”
“What dispensary story?”
I finished my ice cream and turned to face him. I couldn’t wait to bounce my theories off on someone. “You didn’t hear this from me. You have to keep my name out of it. But there are two guys in pinstriped suits lurking around. You know what that means?”
Miguel blinked twice. “What’s a pinstripe?”
“Never mind,” I said. “Get out your notebook.”
Miguel dug his notebook and pen out of his pocket, and I told him about the stoned fishermen and the spate of hair loss, and Augustus’s suspicious behavior. Then, I added a little about the guys in the pinstriped suits and fedora hats.
“How do you spell fedora?” he asked, jotting down notes.
In front of us, the snakes made a U-turn, giving up on the women, and went after Quint. He beat his net on the ground, trying to scare them, but they wouldn’t be scared. “Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women!” he shouted at them.
We were very close to the snake action, and Miguel lifted his feet up and tucked them underneath him on his chair. Two more snakes came out of nowhere, and suddenly Quint was surrounded by them.
“Geez, they’re pack animals. Like coyotes or the ladies in my mother’s church,” Miguel said.
He was right. They were acting strangely, and even if Quint was an expert snake wrangler, he was outnumbered and outmatched. The snakes had a strategy, and Quint was outfoxed. He broke into a big sweat, and he was dripping onto the ground.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” I said.
I was worried about Quint, and luckily, I didn’t have a fear of snakes, so I decided to help him. I got up and sidestepped a snake to enter the circle next to Quint.
“You need help?” I asked him.
Quint whacked the ground again with his large net. “I know what I’m doing,” he insisted, but his voice was much higher pitched than normal.
“All right. I’ll leave you to it. By the way, these snakes aren’t poisonous,” I pointed out.
“You don’t think I know that? Don’t tell me how to do my job,” he growled in his raspy voice, at the precise moment a snake struck at him, its mouth open and its fangs out for everyone to see.
Quint screamed like he was a soprano at the Met. He jumped back, but he wasn’t fast enough for the much younger snake. Some instinct took me over, and I lunged for the snake as it flew through the air, intent on biting Quint. In a blur, my hand expertly found the snake in mid-strike. My fingers wrapped around its body right under its head, and I held it up, as it thrashed in my grip, still intent on attacking Quint.
Wow, the animals in Sea Breeze sure were pissed off lately.
There was a general applause from the people who surrounded us at a very safe distance away. I was filled with a sense of pride. I had saved a man, and that was the opposite of killing a man. I hadn’t run him over with a car. I had saved him from a snake. In a second, I had moved on from the woman who killed a man to the woman who had valiantly saved a man.
I was euphoric.
I was ecstatic.
I was oblivious.
The other snakes were hell-bent on revenge for their comrade and were approaching fast, breaking through the circle.
“Save yourself!” I yelled and slapped my hand over my mouth. What was I saying? I wanted someone to save me, not for me to save Quint again. How could I save him against a pack of wild snakes, furious that their friend was struggling in my grasp? Where was my savior? Where was my knight in shining armor?
Then, I saw him. John was running full-out toward me. Remington’s powerful, large body, running toward us like a freight train, was a sight to see. I was overcome with the understanding that here was my knight in shining armor. Here was my savior. Here was the man who would risk all to save me.
I had never been saved before, but it was well worth the wait. My body reacted to seeing John run to my rescue. My insides melted under the heat of his flexing muscles and his intent expression.
He was focused on me. He wanted to save me. He loved me.
This was so much better than cinnamon toast or hot chocolate or warm fires in the fireplace on a cold night. This was excitement, something that I had had precious little of in my life. I caught myself smiling ear to ear.
What I didn’t catch was that while I was fixated on my knight running to my rescue, the other snakes had turned their attention back to Quint and were crawling up his body and wrapping themselves around his legs.
He looked like a reptilian Michelin Man. He swiped at them, but it was no use. The snakes were wrapping themselves around his legs one at a time, until they were perilously close to his manhood. The crowd that had remained at a safe distance came closer, as if they were drawn into the horrible reality that Quint was about to have his family jewels bitten off.
John finally reached me, but his focus had moved from my safety to the fascination of watching the snakes’ organized behavior as they began to squeeze Quint.
“He can’t go down with three barrels,” Quint croaked, his raspy voice sounding pinched and strained.
“Someone get the snakes off of him!” I cried, still holding my snake.
“What did you do to him?” John asked me.
“Nothing! I was helping him.”
“She killed another one!” someone cried from the spectators.
“Yep, he was minding his own business with his net, and then she came around, and now he’s going to die for sure,” someone else called out.
“I’m not going to die!” Quint yelled, but he didn’t sound totally sure of himself.
“I was helping him!” I insisted.
“Doesn’t look like you helped. It looks like you angered those snakes, and now we’re going to be short one snake wrangler,” another person yelled out. He wasn’t wrong. That’s exactly what happened.
“You’re wrong,” I said. “That’s not what happened.”
“I don’t want to die like this,” Quint choked out. “I want to die with Jennifer Aniston on a yacht. Where’s my yacht? Where’s Jennifer Aniston?”
“This is going bad, fast,” John noted.
“You think?” I spat, waving the snake at him, which was still clutched in my hand, even though it was giving me a valiant fight trying to escape. “You think it’s going bad, fast? What gives you that idea?”
“Why Aggie, I like it when you got ‘tude. It gets my blood moving,” John said.
“Come on, Chief, this ain’t no Boy Scout picnic!” Quint cried out, as if he was being squeezed to death by a pack of lunatic snakes.
John picked up the net and helped me to put my snake in it. Then, we worked together to put the rest of the snakes into the net. It wasn’t easy because they were spitting mad and determined not to let Quint go, but after fifteen minutes, they were all captured and tied in a bag.
Once he was free, Quint coughed and gasped for air, trying to breathe normally again. When he realized that he was safe, he raised his hands in triumph, just like I had seen Danny Avocado do right before he was killed.
“See, townspeople?” he shouted. “I am the king of snake wrangling. No one’s better than me. Do not worry. I will wrangle all of the snakes until Sea Breeze is a safe place to live once more!”
The crowd cheered Quint
.
“That’s not fair,” I said to John.
“No, it’s not. He didn’t thank me at all,” John said.
“You? You? How about me?”
“You angered the snakes! You almost killed that man!” one of the spectators yelled at me, answering for John.
John laughed and put his hand over his mouth. “Don’t give me that look. The struggle is real, babe. I can’t help it if your rep is tanked. To me, you’ll always be a dope beast.”
“Wow, that was a lot of Remington,” I said.
“Right? I feel like a modern man. I texted for the first time today. Do you want to know what LOL means?”
Amy pushed through the crowd and hugged me. “Are you okay? I thought you were going to be snake food.”
“I’m fine,” I said, hugging her back. I was happy that someone was concerned about me and not accusing me of attempted murder.
“Chris is leaving tomorrow,” she said. “You have to stop him. The killer’s still out there. He’s in danger, Agatha. Do something. Find the killer.”
She stepped back, took my hand, and yanked me away from the snakes and the crowd. “So, what are you doing to find the killer?” she demanded.
What was I doing? Not much. “I’m working hard, but there’s no sign of his stalker. No one knows where she is.”
Amy clenched her fists. “I wish I could get my hands on her. I’d wring her neck. Creepy hag thinks that my Chris will love her. My Chris is holding out for Ms. Right. He doesn’t have time for regular, subpar women.”
“Really? He’s not married?”
“Oh, no,” Amy said happily. “Chris doesn’t believe in divorce. He’s old-fashioned. You could really see that in his starring role in Vampires of the Holy Trinity from Hell. It was so spiritual. When he gets married, it’s going to be forever. He’s very devoted. Isn’t that romantic?”
I nodded. Of course, I had experience in loving for centuries, so I could relate to Chris.
“No girlfriend?” I asked.
Amy shook his head. “Sure, he goes out, but he doesn’t have a girlfriend. I told you, he’s old-fashioned. That’s why this stalker is so ridiculous. Like he would ever want her. Puhlease.”
“We haven’t found her, yet. Maybe she left town,” I said, even though I had the sensation that she was still there.
“What about the other suspects?” Amy asked.
“Other suspects?” I had no idea who else would want Chris dead. As far as I could tell, everyone loved a man with perfect bone structure.
“Who would want him dead?” I asked her.
“Who wouldn’t? He’s the most handsome, most perfect man in the world. Jealousy, Agatha. Good, old-fashioned jealousy. That manager of his is probably jealous because he has to stay behind the scenes while Chris gets all the limelight.”
That sounded like a stretch to me.
“And what about the other two movie stars who came for the taco-eating contest?” Amy continued. “Jealousy, Agatha. Mark my words.”
“Nice work there, soup girl,” someone called to me, as he walked by. “You almost killed that guy.”
“And you made the snakes angry,” another person yelled at me. “I got kids, you know! You made the snakes angry at them!”
“I was helping!” I insisted, loudly.
“You’d better get out of here,” Amy said. “The last time I saw folks this angry was at the Game of Thrones final season.”
“I’ll go find that killer,” I said. “Maybe I can talk to the jealous manager again.”
We hugged, and I waved goodbye to John, who was talking to Quint about what he should do with a net full of snakes.
I turned back toward the Sea Breeze Inn. A couple blocks ahead of me, a woman was running from a seagull. I watched as she ran into the Sea Breeze Inn. I noticed that the press was still staking out the front of the inn. I wondered if I should go back and warn Miguel about them. I turned around for a second, debating with myself if I should return to the young intern, even though I really didn’t want any more crap from the locals about me trying to kill their precious snake wrangler.
The thought passed through my mind for less than a second.
It didn’t have time for more than that. Because as I stood there, something or someone hit my head hard, and I lost consciousness right there on Sea Breeze Avenue.
Chapter 12
“I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog, too.”
– Wicked Witch of the West
I was drowning in inky blackness. I spun round and round in unconsciousness, fighting to get out of it. On some level, I knew that my life depended on waking up. The longer I was unconscious, the more danger I was in.
The battle inside me lasted a long time before the blackness started to recede, and a sliver of light filtered into my mind and traveled behind my eyes. I willed myself to open my eyes, and finally I blinked my way to consciousness.
My first thought was that my head hurt. I wasn’t used to pain or being sick, and I grew angry at the pain. My second thought was that I couldn’t move. I was hog-tied. My hands and feet were bound tight with zip ties, cutting my circulation off. As much as I struggled against them, I couldn’t break them or slip them off.
I urged myself not to panic. If I was going to get out of this, I would have to think clearly, I told myself. First thing first, I needed to figure out where I was. Nothing looked familiar. I was in a large, nondescript, empty room.
The floor was cement, and the ceiling was high with a few hanging fluorescent lights. I rolled to my side. There was a door at the far end of the room. Somehow, I needed to get to it. Still tied, I scooted on my back toward the door. It was slow going. I got a few feet when my captor let herself be known.
“You’ve been out for a while. I might have hit you too hard,” I heard.
I rolled to my other side. A young woman was sitting cross-legged on a table, watching me.
“My head hurts,” I told her.
“That’s because I hit you with this,” she said, holding up a wrench.
“A wrench? You could have killed me with that.”
She shrugged. “I had to knock you out ‘cause you wouldn’t have gone with me if you were awake.”
“I wouldn’t?”
“No.”
She was young and pretty with red hair and long, fake eyelashes. She used a lot of makeup, and her lips looked like they had been injected with something to make them unnaturally plump.
“You’re Kim Barry,” I guessed.
Her eyes widened in surprise. “Very good. How did you know?”
“I’ve been looking for you. The whole town’s looking for you.”
“Liar. I know what you’ve been doing. You’ve been trying to get my Chris. You love him and want him for yourself. Well, you can’t have him. He’s mine.”
I sighed. My head was throbbing, and I didn’t have patience for the deluded woman. “Trust me, I’m not interested in your Chris. I have a boyfriend.”
When the words left my mouth, I wondered if they were true. Did I have a boyfriend? And if I did, how long would I have him? If my aunts managed to free Remington, John would probably disappear forever. The thought made my head throb even worse.
“Liar! Everyone wants Chris. He’s perfect,” she said.
“He’s short.”
“He is not. Take that back,” Kim said. She slid off the table and stood over me.
“No. He’s not as great as you think. You should let him go. Who cares if he rejected you? Someone better is just around the corner.”
Kim kicked me. “Chris didn’t reject me. He’s just...confused. He didn’t know what he wanted.”
“He’s old-fashioned,” I supplied, echoing Amy’s words.
“Exactly.”
Kim had crazy eyes that spun around in their sockets. If I stayed bound and under her control, I was sure that it wasn’t going to end well for me.
“But he was confused,” Kim continued. “That Bebe bitc
h had him confused.”
“That’s terrible,” I said, but I was focused on my escape plan. I could easily get rid of my bonds with a few words, but that wasn’t strictly kosher. I could get in big trouble for doing that, and since we were already in trouble with the coven back East, I didn’t want to add to that.
“I mean, she’s dead,” Kim continued. “She’s been dead for over two years. It’s time to move on. And besides, he never really loved her. He just thinks that he loved her. You understand?”
“Men are so stupid,” I agreed.
“Not Chris!” Kim shrieked. “Chris is perfect.”
I sighed again. I was sick and tired of women calling Chris perfect. Nobody was perfect. Why didn’t these women set their sights on a regular man?
What was I thinking? I hadn’t set my sights on a regular man. I had set my sights on a dead man in a live man’s body.
Maybe I had judged Kim too harshly.
“That sucks about Bebe,” I said. “She was his girlfriend?”
“Fiancée. A drunk one. Careened her car into a tree. Do you think someone like that deserved Chris?”
I shook my head. “She sounds like a real loser.”
“Thank you!”
“He deserves someone like you,” I said.
“Don’t bullshit me. I know that you want him,” she said. Her crazy eyes were back with a vengeance, and she kicked me again.
That was it. I was fed up. Tied up, kicked twice. That was enough. I didn’t care if I got in trouble. I didn’t care if the coven put me in witch jail or turned me into a slug.
I didn’t care about any of that. It was time for payback. It was time to get free.
“Who’s that over there?” I asked Kim, nodding in her direction. It worked. She looked behind her. “Freodome. Freodome. Waelstowe,” I murmured under my breath quickly while her back was turned.
It was good to say the words. I felt the sleeping power within me wake up. From my core, it filled me and did my bidding. It was a huge relief to use the power. It was like I was finally free and natural, doing what I was born to do.
It was better than taking my bra off after a long day.
