by Elise Sax
The zip ties broke open, releasing me. I stood up just as Kim turned around and lost control of her body, falling to the ground in a heap.
“What happened?” she asked, dazed on the floor, unable to move.
“Cnottan,” I said, and the broken ties rose in the air and found Kim’s wrists and ankles, tying them tightly together.
“What’s going on?” she asked, still disoriented. The crazy in her eyes had been replaced with fear. I didn’t blame her.
“You tripped,” I said.
“No, I didn’t.”
“You tripped and hit your head, so you don’t remember that you tripped.”
“My head feels fine,” she said, definitely afraid of me. I didn’t like to be the object of fear. My family had been the object of fear, and it hadn’t worked out well for us.
“That’s good,” I said.
“Get out of my way, jerko scooters!” I heard Frances yell from outside. My heart leapt at the sound of a friend nearby. “Eat my Deluxe Super Warrior Power Scooter Model EXL dust! I’ll make you respect the rules of the road if it kills you!”
“Stay here,” I told Kim and ran to the door. Opening it, I saw that I was in an abandoned store on Sea Breeze Avenue, not far from the Sea Breeze Inn. I called to Frances, and she stopped her scooter.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“I captured the killer, if she’s the killer,” I said and Frances followed me back into the store.
She stared down at Kim’s immobile body. “What did you do to her? Is she dead? You keep killing people, Agatha.”
“That’s exaggerated.”
“I’m not dead,” Kim said. “At least I don’t think so. There’s been a lot of weird stuff happening.”
“She hit her head,” I lied to Frances. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying, and she’s been seeing things, too.”
I hated lying to my friend, but I was forced to. The consequences could be life-threatening if word got out that I could immobilize a person with a word. Considering Kim’s crazy quotient, I didn’t think anyone would believe her stories of zip ties flying through the air.
“Did you kill Danny Avocado?” Frances asked Kim.
“I’m not talking. You can’t make me,” Kim said.
“Yep, she definitely killed him,” Frances told me. “I know a killer when I see one.”
Frances called John to come pick up Kim. He brought two police officers with him, and they hauled her up and arrested her.
“Don’t tell Chris yet,” I told John, when they were about to take Kim to the police station.
“Why not?”
“I don’t think we’re done here. I think it’s best to keep him under protection for now, and if he knows she’s been arrested, he’ll be back to Hollywood in a shot.”
John touched my face and looked deeply into my eyes, making my heart pound in my chest. “What’s in that head of yours, Aggie? I can see the cogs moving in your brain.”
“I’m not sure yet. It’s sort of a swirl of information, and I’m pretty sure I need even more before I can decide.”
“Be careful. Don’t kill anyone else,” he said and winked at me.
When he left with the police and Kim, I turned to Frances. “Do you mind taking an hour off from your deliveries?”
“Why? Are we going to get into trouble?”
“Probably,” I said, holding up a key card.
“What’s that?”
“Kim’s hotel key. I stole it from her.”
Frances smiled. “You’re on.”
Kim had been staying at a small hotel a couple of blocks away from the beach. Luckily, Frances’s scooter was big enough for the both of us. We rode to the hotel in style with the large umbrella up in order to block the attack seagulls.
“This is nice,” I said. “I like this better than Remington’s car.”
“It’s all right, but I’m tired of battling the other scooters. Not that they have a chance against me.”
“How are the deliveries going?” I asked, as she turned a corner.
“I think I’ve broken the record for the most deliveries in a week, but I’m not making minimum wage yet. Do you think the money will get better?”
I didn’t know anything about money or business. I wasn’t exactly Warren Buffett. I just made soup. But something told me that if Frances was working nonstop at a breakneck pace and still wasn’t earning as much as a paperboy, I had my doubts she could ever pay for her fancy scooter, let alone make a living.
“I’m not sure. I was sort of hoping the deliveries would go away,” I said.
“I can’t go back to real estate,” Frances muttered, more to herself than to me.
I felt sorry for her and realized in that moment how lucky I was to live in the security of home and family. Sure, I had to worry about being hanged and burned alive and turned into a slug by the coven, but I didn’t have to worry about losing the roof over my head or wondering where my next meal was going to come from.
“Maybe the deliveries will work out,” I said. “Or maybe you’ll find something else. Maybe you’ll find your passion.”
“That sounds good, Agatha. Passion. I wonder what my passion is?”
We arrived at the small hotel. The room number was written on the key card next to the hotel’s name, and we found Kim’s room without a problem. I unlocked the door, and Frances and I walked in.
“Good. We made it here before the police,” I said, scanning the room.
“You’re a bad, bad girl,” Frances said. “And I love it.”
The room was chaos, just like Kim Barry’s mind. The bed was unmade, and all of her belongings were strewn over the floor and the furniture.
“This girl should watch some minimalism videos,” Frances said. “One pair of pants and two blouses and call it a day. I’ve been thinking about doing that, but I can’t give up any shoes. That’s a non-starter.”
Frances looked in the closet, and I dropped to my knees and looked under the bed. “Eureka,” I said, pulling out a large bag.
I threw it on the bed and dumped out the contents.
“Holy crap. Kim is Rambo,” Frances said.
There were four pistols, a rifle, and assorted boxes of ammunition.
“Why does someone need this many guns?” I asked.
“I’m glad she’s behind bars. This is some crazy stuff. You did good, capturing the killer, Agatha. You’re going to get a reputation.”
I gnawed the inside of my cheek. There was something about the guns that troubled me. The whole thing wasn’t right. The guns didn’t make sense.
And there was another thing. Why did Kim use a remote-controlled weapon? Why didn’t she stay hidden in the trees? It wasn’t logical.
We left the hotel, and Frances drove me home. On the way, we saw Quint wrangling two snakes.
“I hope he gets them all,” Frances said. “I heard he found two in Doris’s toilet. She had to take a half of a bottle of Xanax after that.”
Frances dropped me off at the bottom of our road and waved goodbye. Before I got to the front door, it opened, and my aunts called to me to get into the house, quick.
“Hurry!” Auntie Ida urged. “Hurry before this all goes sideways.”
Chapter 13
“Everything must be taken into account.”
– Agatha Christie
“What’s going on?” I asked.
The gas lighting was off, and the house was filled with lit candles shining a glowing light in the room, as the sun began to set outside. Incense was burning, and the house smelled like something medieval.
Old and magical.
It should have made me feel comfortable, like I was home surrounded by what made the Bright women special. But it gave me a feeling of impending doom, like we needed to go to the extreme to save ourselves.
“Shut up, and come into the parlor,” Auntie Tilly ordered.
“Auntie Ida, what’s going on?” I asked, trying to get an answer.
&nb
sp; For once, Auntie Ida wasn’t wearing overalls. She was wearing a billowy, long black dress, and her beautiful red hair was loose, flowing down her back.
“We think we’ve got it, Agatha,” she said. “We think we can fix this before the coven comes. We’ve got one last chance. If this doesn’t work, we’re at a dead end. Literally.”
I followed them into the parlor, and my heart sank. John was lying on the floor with his arms and legs outstretched. I caught his eye, and I saw my sadness and desperation mirrored in his.
Yes, we owed it to Remington to fix this. Remington had the right to live his life. John had already lived his life hundreds of years ago. But that logic, that knowledge, didn’t help me. I was ashamed of myself, but I was filled with greed. I wanted my John. I wanted love and a happy ending.
As soon as I admitted that to myself, I felt a wave of shame. I was hundreds of years old. Why did I want more, now? I had already had more than most any being on the planet. I didn’t have a right to a happy ending, to decades of love with John. I needed to do the responsible thing, and I knew that John felt the same way. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have allowed himself to be here, lying prone.
My aunts each took one large white candle and one large black candle and handed me the same. Once the candles were all lit, the room was filled with a different kind of scent. I had never given birth, but I understood immediately that this was the scent of birth. The very aroma of life.
We surrounded John, each of us holding a candle in each hand.
“Are you going to do the incantation, or should I?” Auntie Tilly asked Auntie Ida.
“Oh, you do it, Tilly,” Auntie Ida said. “You’ve always had the best voice in the family.”
I could’ve sworn that Auntie Tilly blushed slightly. She cleared her throat and started to sing. The words came out in Old English. Not regular Old English. This was older than that. This went back before the blue people, before the forest people, even before the Lady of the Lake. The words were more ancient than the trees, and only slightly less ancient than the dirt. I knew on a fundamental level that using these words, even knowing that these words existed, was a dangerous and powerful gift.
For a moment, I watched John’s face. There was no fear there, just a resigned determination to do the right thing. That was completely John’s personality. Resigned determination. If it was right or if it was wrong, if he believed it was his duty, he would do it. No matter the loss to himself or to others.
Boy, life sure was complicated.
Auntie Tilly’s voice sang out, rich and beautiful. The words had a life of their own once they left her mouth and swirled into the ether and even the molecules of the room. My eyes closed, as I felt them swirl around me, gathering up my powers, as well as the powers of my two aunts. It built and built, until the magic was so strong within the room, that I understood that we could do anything. There was nothing outside of our abilities.
Once the power had built to its apex, we blew out our black candles and let them drop to the floor. The flames of our white candles built and grew so high that they almost licked the high ceiling.
Then, it was time for all of us to say the words, and even though I had never studied them, somehow I knew what to say. This Old English, the ancient tongue even before there were people in the land, came out of my mouth, and as tears flowed down my cheeks, I recited them so that John would leave me forever, and Remington would have a chance at life.
Once the incantation was over, my aunts and I fell to the floor in an exhausted heap, and the candles were snuffed out. We sat in the darkened room for a couple of minutes, with our heavy breathing the only sound in the room, as we tried to regain our strength.
But even weakened, I couldn’t just sit around, wondering if my John was gone. I struggled to stand and lit the gas lights in the room. John or Remington was still lying on the floor.
“Remington, is that you?” I asked, terrified of the answer.
He shook his head from side to side, slowly. “No, my sweet Agatha. It’s still I, John. I’m so deeply ashamed. I didn’t want to go. It’s my fault.”
“Of course, it’s not your fault,” Auntie Tilly said. “There was no way that your will could overturn our words.”
“This is bad. Really bad. Super big bad,” Auntie Ida moaned. “They’re going to come for sure.”
“I agree, Ida,” Auntie Tilly said. “This sucks donkey dicks.”
We spent the night in the kitchen. The four of us were ravenous, spent by the exertion of trying to fix Remington. My aunts cooked for hours, and we all ate meal after meal after meal. It seemed that no amount of sugar could refill our energy wells.
By three o’clock in the morning, I gave up trying. I took a quick bath and changed my clothes. John asked to walk with me to the soup shop, and I gladly accepted.
We walked in silence. I imagined that we were both deeply ashamed, that when push came to shove we did our duty, but not with a full heart. I was racked with guilt about my feeling of relief that I still had John with me, that I still had the possibility of a happy ending and a life filled with love.
As we approached the shop, John took my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. I felt his warmth, but I knew that it was Remington’s warmth, and that made me feel even more guilty.
There was a noise to our left by the pier, and we both looked to see the man in black running on it. John and I stopped in our tracks.
“It’s him,” John breathed, excited. “The man in black. I’m not going to let him get away this time.”
He rocked back on his heels and then ran for all he was worth to the pier. I ran behind him, not as fast, but just as determined. There were more than a few mysteries happening in town, and I hadn’t solved any of them. If I could at least figure out who the man in black was and what he was dumping into the ocean, it would give me at least some satisfaction.
John caught up to the man in black easily. He grabbed him by the back of his shirt and pulled him down to the ground. The man was wearing a black ski mask, which John ripped off in one swift movement.
I gasped when I saw the man. It was Augustus Flannery III, the owner of the marijuana dispensary.
I took the bag he was carrying from him and opened it. The bag was filled with marijuana. “What on earth are you doing?” I asked him. “Why are you dumping marijuana into the ocean? You’re making the fish stoned. And the fishermen are stoned too. Are you trying to get business this way? Is this a marketing plan to make everybody stoned? Everyone on land and everyone in the ocean?”
August arched an eyebrow and seemed to think about that for a moment. “Yeah… Sure. Let’s say that’s it. It’s a marketing plan.”
A group of fishermen on the pier walked over to see what was going on. They noticed the bag of weed and got angry. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Augustus was the reason that they were all seeing pink elephants.
“It’s bad enough that we have to contend with sewage. Now we have to contend with you?” one of the fishermen yelled at Augustus.
“I don’t want your stupid marijuana. I like gin rickeys when I want to get high,” another fisherman yelled.
The group was turning into a mob, and I worried for Augustus’s safety. Augustus seemed worried too.
“Okay! Okay!” he shouted over the din of the mob. “It’s not a marketing plan. I’m not trying to make the whole ocean stoned. You’re going to find out anyway. The feds are after me. The governor of California is threatening me.”
“Spit it out, man,” John ordered. “Why are you dumping? Like you said, we’re going to find out anyway. Or would you prefer I just let the mob loose on you?”
Augustus shook his head, vigorously. “Don’t do that. Okay, I can’t hide it any longer. I’m not licensed.”
“The dispensary isn’t licensed?” I asked. “How’s that possible?”
“Anything’s possible. If you got the cash, anything’s possible.”
“So the dispensary isn’t licensed,
so you’re tossing the product into the ocean? That doesn’t make sense,” John said. He was right. It didn’t make any sense. The ending to the Sopranos made more sense than this.
“Spill the beans, or I let the mob loose on your ass,” John threatened.
Augustus shook with fear. “The marijuana has got banned pesticides in it. That’s why everyone’s losing their hair. That’s why the fish have gone crazy. It’s some toxic shit, man. It’s like DDT and PCP had a baby and made my discount hot gummies. I had to get rid of the evidence. Don’t you see that?”
We all took a step back, as if Augustus himself was filled with banned pesticides and was poisoning us just by being near him.
“Wow, that was a lot worse than I expected,” one of the fishermen said.
“He was poisoning the whole town. My Aunt Faye thought she was in a reality show and jumped out her window because of your toxic crap,” another fisherman said.
“What’s going to happen to me? I’m going to be all right, won’t I?” Augustus asked.
John took handcuffs from his belt and cuffed Augustus behind his back. “My guess is you’re going to jail for a long time.”
At this comment, the fishermen erupted in applause. Any thoughts of violence dissipated in the early morning air. Since they spent most of their days standing still and watching a line in the water, I didn’t think they had enough energy to tar and feather Augustus. They let us leave peacefully with John holding on to Augustus’s arm, as he walked him toward the police station.
“Wow, this has been a helluva morning,” John said. “I hope the rest of the day is quiet. I’m pretty tired.”
“Me too. But I have a feeling it’s going to be quiet. I don’t think anything more is going to happen. You should come to the soup shop later. Some hot soup will set you right. Today is million-year soup day.”
“Million years? That’s sort of funny.”
We laughed at the thought of John living another million years. If he did live a million years, would we ever actually do the dirty deed? Would I ever see Remington’s naked body?
As we walked, I could see Doris and Irving waiting for me at the soup shop across the street. I was about to cross, and John was going to continue walking on the police station with Augustus. But before we took another step, Quint appeared and warned us to stand still.
