Acting Up

by A. A. Albright

  Acting Up

  Wayfair Witches Book Eight

  by A.A. Albright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  Text Copyright © A.A. Albright 2018

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

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  Website: https://aaalbright.com

  Table of Contents

  1. Emily Land

  2. Double Trouble

  3. The Blue Hue of Death

  4. Sweet Sixteen …

  5. No Comment

  6. The Sword of Sylvia

  7. What Should a Squirrel be Called?

  8. The Scheming Witch

  9. Eau de Wolf

  10. Come Scry With Me

  11. Prince Charming

  12. … and Never Been Kissed

  13. A Little Bit of Style and a Lot of Substance

  14. Bruno’s Brainchild

  15. Coming Clean

  16. Cyril

  17. Too Many Familiars Spoil the Breakfast

  18. This Time It’s Not a Rehearsal

  19. Inner Demons

  20. The Valley of the Wizard Finder Wally

  21. The We Hate Mandy Monday Club

  22. Do All Dogs Go to Heaven? Even the Really Annoying Ones?

  23. Memorial for a Monster

  24. Goody Two-Shoes

  25. You’ve Got Some Ugly on You

  26. Burying Bonbon

  27. Little Miss Sunshine

  1. Emily Land

  Morning showers were important to me. Not just to scrub-a-dub my body, but also to scrub-a-dub my mind. I treated my shower cubicle like a refuge, a private, watery room where no one could disturb me while I thought about the day ahead.

  Of course, far too often, my refuge wasn’t quite as private as I’d like.

  ‘Oh Wanda, witch of my life and most beauteous woman in all the world …’

  I turned off the shower, wiped a peephole in the condensation of the screen door and looked out. Dizzy, my bat familiar, was looking right back at me.

  ‘Jeez, Wanda! Put some clothes on! That phrase about bats being blind? Well, it’s not actually true. And it’s even less true for a Lesser-Known Mango Bat like me!’

  I stepped out and reached for a towel. ‘It’s nothing you haven’t seen before Dizzy – although I sincerely wish it was. But when you insist on bursting in on me when I’m in the shower almost every morning, then there’s a slight chance of nakedness.’

  The bat shuddered. ‘Yeah, but I keep forgetting that people are so … so…’

  ‘So what, Dizzy?’

  ‘So squishy looking! How do you cope with all the wobbling all day long? It’s got to get in the way of things, surely.’

  I took a deep breath. I mean, there was no rulebook that said your familiar was supposed to make you feel good about yourself, was there? Hmm. Maybe I should write one. ‘You called me out of the shower, Dizzy. What do you want this time?’

  Dizzy pulled his most innocent face. ‘Want something? Why ever would you say that, Wanda? I just came to say good morning to you before I head off to sleep for a few hours.’

  ‘Mm hm. And what else?’

  Dizzy flew to the shower door and hung upside down, tapping his wing against his chin as though he were thinking. ‘Well, seeing as you asked, there is a problem or two. Wolfie’s lost his pink squeaky ball – you know how he loves that pink squeaky ball.’

  I tickled his chin, then quickly towelled off my body and ran a comb through my hair.

  ‘I love how you look out for Wolfie, you gorgeous little bat. I’ll find his squeaky ball. Just as soon as I have enough clothes on to stop my wobbly bits from disturbing you so much. But you did say one or two problems, so I have the feeling there’s something else on your mind.’

  The bat scowled. ‘It’s Emily,’ he said in a lowered voice. ‘She’s out in the back garden. And she’s done something awful, Wanda. She’s taken away the shed. My shed! Now where am I going to go and make guano? And it gets worse, Wanda. Much worse.’

  I wasn’t sure how it could get worse. Lately, Dizzy had made the small area behind the shed his favourite spot to let loose, if you know what I’m saying. And Dizzy was the kind of bat who liked to keep these things regular, so I dreaded to think how he was going to cope. ‘What else has happened?’

  The bat shivered. ‘Wanda, she’s trying to make me eat a mixed fruit salad.’

  ≈

  There are times in my life when I rush into the fray. And then there are times when the fray seems like it’s going to be so irritating, confusing and unpleasant that the best thing I can do is put it off for as long as possible. Seeing as this seemed like it might be the latter, I decided that I’d deal with the squeaky ball dilemma before I rushed out to the shed-less, fruit salad laden garden.

  I could have done a spell to find the ball, but I knew exactly where it was going to be. Melissa was staying at her boyfriend’s house, and Princess, her familiar, was there with her. But just because Princess wasn’t around didn’t mean she wasn’t responsible.

  I went into Melissa’s room, picked up the cat’s bed, and what do you know? There was a bright pink ball underneath. How very (un)surprising.

  Having retrieved the ever-so-valuable item, I headed downstairs and found the fawn-coloured Irish wolfhound behind the sofa. He looked as though he was suffering through the worst misery known to dog. Misery that a mere witch like myself could never understand.

  ‘You feeling okay, Wolfie?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve had a painful loss. I’m not ready to talk about it yet.’

  ‘Oh?’ I pulled my hand out from behind my rear and waved the pink ball in the air. ‘So this wouldn’t cheer you up, then?’

  Wolfie’s brown eyes turned big and round, and his mouth widened into a slobbery smile. ‘Ball!’ he said, wriggling out as quickly as he could. Given the enormity that was Wolfie, that wasn’t nearly as quickly as he would like. I had to move the sofa a few dozen inches to accommodate his escape. It was one of life’s little mysteries, I suppose, how he always squeezed in with ease, but broke out with a lot less grace.

  He gently took the ball from my hands and skidded out of the room, saying (in a somewhat garbled voice), ‘Max! Max, I found my pink ball!’

  Having a ball in his mouth was clearly affecting Wolfie’s sense of smell, because he thundered up the stairs in search of Max, when I knew for a fact that Max was already out of bed. I left him to discover his mistake for himself and made my way out through the kitchen and into our small back garden, and there I encountered the next problems on Dizzy’s list. These ones, though, would not be an easy fix, seeing as they weren’t caused by a missing ball. They were caused by an Emily.

  An Emily, in case you’re wondering, is a seemingly sweet witch who works in Caulfield’s Cakes and makes delicious chocolate treats. You think that an Emily is the loveliest, nicest thing in the world. Right up until she starts going out with your weredog housemate.

  Once an Emily does start dating your housemate, she becomes a controlling, paranoid woman who snores so loudly that you have trouble sleeping through it.

  But if given the right care and attention, Emilys can be returned to their former sweet and lovely selves, and Max had been working hard to make that happen. He had managed to convince Emily that he and I weren’t going to run off together and start a steamy affair. He’d been so convincing, in fact, that I’d been a
ble to spend time alone with him without Emily exploding at the thought. Now, instead of snoring in his bed every night, she only came over at weekends. In theory, it was all going much better. In practice … I was beginning to think that weekends arrived far more often than necessary.

  Today, for example, was the first day of a weekend. And Saturday had arrived with an Emily in tow. An Emily who seemed to have shaken the very foundation of my life once again. Well, she’d made some major changes to our back garden, but it amounted to the same.

  Max, Melissa and I had worked hard to cultivate a haven in which to survive the current heatwave. Yes, Ireland was experiencing some rare good weather, and despite the fact that we peaked at thirty-two degrees Celsius, you would think we were living in the hot and sticky depths of hell.

  There were water shortages, barbecue shortages, ice cream shortages, paddling pool shortages … it was Armageddon on the streets of Dublin.

  But being a witch comes with its advantages. In our lovely little semi on Westerly Crescent, we’d managed to erect a barbecue, a paddling pool, and even some lovely shading around the garden so we didn’t melt into a puddle whilst enjoying the too-hot-for-the-Irish sun.

  Our garden had become a happy little haven, one in which Max barbecued bean burgers and veggie frankfurters every night, while Melissa and I sat beneath the fairy lights we’d strewn everywhere and sipped our cocktails and beers. We did attempt to help with the barbecuing, but apparently that was something that only a vegan weredog could handle.

  While we did our thing, Wolfie frolicked in the plastic paddling pool, looking every inch the happy dog, while the coloured fairy lights twinkled down upon his enormous hairy body. Dizzy had found a shady spot behind our (his) shed in which to poop and hang upside down, and Princess had decided that the sand we’d arranged around the paddling pool (so we could pretend we were at the beach, naturally) was a whole lot of fun to dig a hole in.

  But now … now it was all gone. Our back garden was no longer a happy little haven. Instead, it was Emily Land. And in Emily Land, there were no garishly coloured fairy lights – oh no, there were only white lights now. There was no hastily erected shading, and no badly constructed barbecue deck either. And – the biggest travesty of all – there was no paddling pool.

  The whole garden had been made over. Our herbs and daisies had been replaced with tall, ornamental grasses. Even our homemade beach was gone, sandcastles and all. Where the pretend beach had once straddled the paddling pool in all its plastic glory, there was now a small, elegant pond filled with shimmering fish. There was a gently trickling fountain running into the pond, too, making me feel the sudden urge to pee.

  Ah, but there was one imperfection in amongst the new garden – the sign above the pond that said, ‘Coy Fish Pond.’

  ‘Coy fish?’ I said in confusion. ‘Shouldn’t that be Koi with a K? Maybe you should return the whole lot to the shop, Emily. Right now.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Emily waved a hand at me as though I’d just said the silliest thing ever. ‘It’s the right spelling. Coy fish are completely different to the fish you’re thinking of. All the fashionable people have these ones. They giggle a lot. It’s so much fun.’ As she spoke, one of the fish peeped a head out of the pond and, as if on cue, began to giggle.

  ‘You’re talking about us, aren’t you?’ said the fish, its cheeks turning red. ‘Oh, you!’

  The fish disappeared beneath the water, and a moment later I saw about twenty more fish surround it, all whispering, giggling, and giving us ever-so-coy glances while they powwowed.

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Coy fish. They’re very … giggly. The whole garden is so different, Emily. I suppose we ought to thank you.’

  She waved a hand again, giggling like one of the fish. ‘Oh, it was nothing. No trouble at all. And look at the new table.’

  Instead of the plastic table and chairs we’d bought to eat our dinners at, there was now some expensive-looking wrought-iron furniture, laid with elegant teacups, plates, and pretty little bowls of muffins and fruit.

  Emily beamed at me. ‘Doesn’t it look like something out of a magazine? And this is just the first in a long line of surprises I have lined up for Max’s birthday next week.’ She pulled him in for a quick Eskimo kiss before speaking again. ‘I had to get some of my friends to help me magic the sophisticated stuff over here and magic your tacky old stuff out, but … it looks so much better, doesn’t it?’

  My urge to pee was accompanied by maniacal blinking. Yes, it looked better. Our garden had been the tackiest, most ridiculous garden in the history of gardens. But it was ours.

  Wolfie, having searched the entire house for Max, skittered outside with a drool-soaked ball in his mouth. And then he dropped his precious pink ball, and stared. ‘Max?’ He turned his worried eyes on Max. ‘Max, where’s my paddling pool? Max!’

  Max patted the dog’s head, a strained look on his face. ‘Now we’ve got a brand new sophisticated pond instead,’ he said with a slightly high-pitched voice. ‘Isn’t it … lovely?’

  Wolfie walked carefully to the pond and looked in. A moment later, he recoiled. ‘Coy fish! Jasper has Coy fish! I hate Coy fish!’

  All the little fishies poked their heads from the pond, and one of them said, ‘It’s a dog. Shush – don’t let him know how much we’d like to play with him! We don’t want to come on too strong!’

  Wolfie whimpered, moving away from the pond. ‘They’re weird, Wanda. I don’t like them. Jasper said I could eat the ones in his garden. But I don’t want to eat them.’

  Emily seemed oblivious to a word the dog was saying. She was far too busy fussing around at the new table.

  ‘Can you get Dizzy down here, please?’ she said, handing me a cup of tea in a small, delicate cup. ‘I’ve made him a fruit salad. He really needs to start expanding his diet. It can’t be healthy, eating nothing but mangoes all day long.’

  I placed the cup on the table. ‘I … I have to pee.’

  ≈

  When I came out of the bathroom, Max was sitting on my bed. Before I could say a word, he spoke.

  ‘I only saw it three minutes before you did,’ he said. ‘Honestly. I’m barely awake. I had no idea she was even in our garden this morning, let alone what she was doing out there.’

  I sat down beside him. ‘It’s very elegant.’

  ‘It is. Very grown up. Changing the coloured fairy lights for those little white ones was a sophisticated touch.’

  ‘So … you like it?’

  His eyes widened. ‘Are you kidding? I hate it. I hate fish in tiny ponds or tanks. I’ve seen those Coy fish at Jasper’s and told him as much. I hate bone china cups, too. And I want our paddling pool back. How the heck is Wolfie going to drown us all in water now? And you know he is going to eat those fish. It’ll be by accident, while he’s trying to get his ball out of the water, but he’ll eat them all the same. That’s if Princess doesn’t get to them first. Oh, and the cat is not going to be happy that her beach is gone.’

  Dizzy peeled an eye open. ‘And what am I? Chopped liver? The shed is gone too, Max. The shed. I hung out behind there. I did my business behind there, too.’

  ‘I know, Dizzy.’ Max reached up and stroked the bat’s chin. ‘I’m really sorry. I can’t believe Emily’s done this.’

  I looked at him curiously. He and Emily had officially been a couple since February, and they’d been an unofficial couple long before that. But other than the fact that he liked her chocolate and her baked goods, I’d yet to figure out what they had in common. Maybe opposites really did attract.

  ‘She’s been much better though, hasn’t she?’ Max went on. ‘I mean, y’know, until this morning.’

  I reached up and ruffled his light-brown hair. ‘As long as you’re happy, I’m happy. But our rickety old shed is going to have to make a return soon, for Dizzy’s sake. And he’s not going to eat fruit salad either, no matter how fancy a bowl it’s sitting in.’

  ‘No,’ said Dizzy, launching himse
lf from the ceiling light and landing on my lap. ‘He’s not. You have to tell her to give me back my mangoes.’

  ‘Wait.’ I stared down at my familiar. ‘What do you mean give you back your mangoes?’

  Dizzy hid his head inside one of his wings, and in a small, squeaky voice he said, ‘I left that bit out. Sorry. Emily decided that the best way to make me eat something other than mangoes was to … well … throw out all my mangoes. She’s even binned the frozen ones.’

  For a moment I just stared at the little bat in shock. But that moment passed quickly, and I stood up, shaking with anger as I laid Dizzy gently on the bed. I was just about to march downstairs and demand the return of Dizzy’s mangoes, when my phone began to ring. Finn’s name popped up on the screen.

  Seeing as Finn was my boss in the Major Crimes department, this was a call I was going to have to take. I gave Dizzy an apologetic glance and answered the phone.

  ‘Everything okay?’ I asked. Seeing as we weren’t supposed to be in work today, I knew my question was a stupid one the second it was out of my mouth.

  Finn sighed on the other end. ‘No. It’s not. That actress you hate – Mandy Parker? Well, she’s been murdered.’

  2. Double Trouble

  If a witch ever tells you that she doesn’t believe in prophecies, then she’s either lying or she’s stubborn as mud.

  Well, I’m Wanda Wayfair, I’m a witch, and it seems that I might also be as stubborn as mud. But to be fair (to me) this was the first element of Christine’s crazy prediction that had come to pass.

  It was spring when Christine woke me up in the creepiest manner possible and forced me to watch visions of my future in her scrying bowls. Months later, I was still waiting for any of what she had envisioned to actually happen.

  Had an irritating little poodle come to tell me his witch was dead? No.

  Had the poodle’s equally irritating witch actually died? No.

  Had I kissed Will Berry in the Longest Library? Well, that was the biggest no of all. I hadn’t kissed Will Berry. I hadn’t seen Will Berry. I hadn’t spoken to Will Berry. And it wasn’t because I was avoiding him just to make extra sure that none of Christine’s visions could actually happen. Not even a little bit. It was just that he hadn’t been around. Not through any of the madness that had been the summer so far.