Witch School Dropout: A Witch Squad Cozy Mystery #7

by M. Z. Andrews

  Taped to the HR Specialist’s desk was an employee phone extension list. I ran my finger down the list until I found the name, Misty Campini, Morgue. I quickly dialed her extension and listened to it ring twice before I heard her say, “Hello, Aspen Falls Morgue, this is Misty.”

  Sell it Mercy. “Yeah, hello Misty. This is – ” I glanced up at the nameplate on the door. “Fern Thomas in HR. We just got a phone call that your son Tyson is ill. They’re going to need you to pick him up ASAP.”

  “Oh no!”

  I could hear the panic in her voice, and I felt a tinge of guilt for putting it there unnecessarily, but this was a matter of life and death.

  “Well, I’m alone right now. I don’t have anyone else that can watch the desk. Can I lock up for a half an hour while I go figure out what’s going on with my son?”

  “Oh, no need, Misty,” I said. “I’m sending a gal from my office down. You can go ahead and leave. She’ll be there in just a moment. No need to wait for her, you just go tend to your son.”

  I heard the relief in her voice as she let out a puff of air. “Oh, thank you, Fern. I really appreciate it. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “No hurry,” I assured her. I cradled the phone, stood up, and headed for the door.

  A woman with frizzy brown hair wearing a brown plaid skirt and a white blouse stepped into the office just as I was nearing the door. “What are you doing in my office?” she asked.

  My stomach did a flip-flop. Think Mercy, think. “Oh, I – uh. Wanted to fill out a job application,” I lied.

  She smiled at me as she walked around to the other side of her desk. She pulled a clipboard off of the wall behind her. “Oh, for which position?”

  My eyes widened. Crap. “The janitorial one?” I said, non-committally.

  She frowned. “The janitorial one? We don’t have any janitorial positions open right now. Oh wait, did you mean the Director of Housekeeping position?”

  I suddenly had an urge to throw up. “Umm, sure,” I responded, not knowing what else to say.

  She eyed me curiously but remained professional with me. “That position requires you to submit a resume and three letters of reference from previous employers.” She pulled a business card from her desk. “Here’s my email address. You can send the required documents to me. We do require a Bachelor’s Degree for that position, just so you know.”

  I was pretty sure she added that last part because I didn’t look like the typical applicant for the Director of Housekeeping position. “Thank you – ,” I pretended to read her name off of the door. “Fern.”

  I took off before she could respond and hightailed it back down the hallway to my friends.

  “What took you so long?” hissed Alba. “Misty left a few minutes ago. What did you do?”

  I gave Sweets two hands and pulled her up off the ground. “I nearly got busted. We don’t have much time, come on. I’ll tell you later.”

  We reopened the glass doors to the morgue’s waiting area, and I pointed to Misty’s rolling chair. “Jax. You’re keeping watch.”

  Jax stomped down a foot. “What?! I don’t get to be part of the spell?!”

  “Spell?” asked Mr. Bailey curiously.

  My shoulders slumped forward. “Jax!” I denounced. I looked at Mr. Bailey. “Ignore her.” Then I looked at Alba. “Take Mr. Bailey, Regis, and the girls to the back. I’ll deal with the five-year-old.”

  Alba nodded and with her backpack clasped tightly by her side; she herded the group down the hallway to the body storage room.

  Once Mr. Bailey was safely out of earshot, I looked at Jax whose cold gaze was fixated on me angrily. “Listen Jax. We need someone to warn us when Misty comes back or if someone else shows up. You can’t help us with the spell anyway. It makes sense that you’re the lookout.”

  “But I wanna help Mr. Bailey!”

  “I know you want to help, Jax, but this is how we need you to help.”

  She stuck out her bottom lip. “Fine,” she growled.

  “Thanks, Jax. Just act like you belong here, okay? Answer the phones, greet incoming people, whatever it takes to make things look on the up and up.”

  “Fine,” she growled again like the petulant teenager that she was.

  I didn’t have time to make her feel any better and instead scuttled down the hallway to meet the girls in the backroom. I knew right where to go. We’d been in that room once before when Morgan Hartford’s body had disappeared.

  When I slipped in the door, I could hear Regis growling already. He didn’t care for the peculiar smell in the room.

  I pulled the spellbook out of the backpack on the table and began flipping through the pages to find the right spell. I glanced over at Alba who was busily preparing for the spell with Holly and Sweets. “Is everything ready?”

  “Almost.”

  “Look, I know you want me to trust you, but now I think I need to know what’s going on here.” asked Mr. Bailey.

  Alba pointed at Sweets. “Sweets, figure out which drawer Mr. Bailey’s body is in and pull it out. We’re ready.”

  “Me? You want me to look through all these drawers of dead bodies?” Sweets asked nervously looking around.

  I pointed to a sticker on one of the drawers. “They’re labeled Sweets. It shouldn’t be that hard. Hurry. That woman could figure out we set all of this up and come back at any moment!”

  Sweets tentatively did as she was told and began to search.

  “This isn’t just about showing Regis my corpse, is it?” asked Mr. Bailey as he watched Sweets reading the labels on the stainless-steel drawers around the room.

  Alba poured the wolf powder and the black ash into the crystal bowl we’d brought along and handed it to me along with a small wooden pestle. “Here, Red. Press the garlic and the tomatoes into the powder. Mix it up good.”

  While I mixed the ingredients, she snapped her fingers and lit the candles around the room. She took a deep breath. Bouncing on her toes, she rolled her shoulders up and down and cracked her neck, like a boxer before a fight. “I think we’re ready,” she said, stepping back so she could survey the room.

  I heard a squeal come from behind me and turned to see Sweets pulling out a drawer. “Here he is, I found him. Oh!” she cried as she saw Mr. Bailey’s corpse slide out of the fridge. “Oh, Mr. Bailey,” she said sorrowfully.

  My heart sank as I saw him. His face was a pallid blue. I sure hope this works, I thought nervously. I glanced up at Mr. Bailey in the center of the room. He stared at his former body with eyes that wanted to cry but couldn’t.

  If Alba was affected by the sight of the dead body, she didn’t acknowledge her feelings. “You have to feed it to him. Two teaspoons,” she ordered in a stern voice, handing me a spoon that she’d brought along.

  My mouth fell open. “Feed it to him? But he’s dead!”

  Alba frowned at me. “I didn’t write the spell, Red. I’m just tellin’ ya what it says.”

  “Yeah, but how am I supposed to feed it to him?” I looked down at Mr. Bailey’s dead body in horror.

  “Open his mouth and stick it in there, for cryin’ out loud!” she cried.

  I winced. The thought made my stomach turn.

  Holly winced too, but she stepped forward. “I’ll help you, Merc.” She put her hand on his bottom jaw and closed her eyes. Without looking, she pulled his jaw back and I slid two spoonfuls into his mouth.

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  Holly opened her eyes and quickly closed his mouth. She pulled her hand back as if she’d been stung and wiped it on her pants. “Oh my gosh that was gross!”

  Mr. Bailey floated to the center of the room. “Now ladies, I’m going to have to insist that you tell me what is going on!” His tone was tighter than it had been up until then. He didn’t appreciate the fact that we were ignoring him. But we couldn’t chance him telling us not to do the spell. We had to make it work.

  I set the bowl down on the ground behind me and looked up a
t him with furrowed eyebrows. “We’re doing a spell,” I admitted. “And we have a very limited amount of time to do it. I promise to explain it all to you as soon as we’re done, but for now, we just need you to be still. You can’t move during the spell.”

  From behind us, Regis lowered his nose to the ground and with his butt up in the air, let out a low, rumbling growl as the pungent scent of the garlic based potion reached his nose.

  “Are we ready girls?” Alba asked, standing back.

  I nodded and took hold of her hand and reached across Mr. Bailey’s body to take Sweets’ hand who was standing on the other side of the drawer. Sweets and Holly joined hands, and then Holly and Alba finished the circle. When we were suitably in a circle, with Mr. Bailey’s body and ghost between us, we all took deep breaths and worked on the focusing techniques we’d learned early on in school. Behind me, Regis barked uneasily. I felt the same uneasy tension in the pit of my stomach, but I tried to keep it shoved down deep. Now was not the time for second thoughts.

  I looked down at the spellbook on the table between us and slowly began to chant the saying.

  We call to you, god of Night,

  To hear our call and feel our might.

  Pull this soul from the long immortal road of darkness

  And into the mortal realm of life and light.

  Where there is darkness, bring light.

  Where there is death, bring life.

  Wind from seemingly nowhere whipped up around our ankles, spiraled around our bodies and threw Holly and Alba’s hair up around their head and shoulders. Sweets and I both had our hair pulled back, but I felt the air moving as if I were in the early stages of a tornado. Regis barked like crazy as the lights overhead in the room flickered and suddenly Mr. Bailey’s ghost was sucked into the vortex swirling in front of us and just as suddenly, the candles snuffed out.

  We continued to repeat the chant until the door burst open and Jax was at the door. “She’s coming back, Misty’s coming back!” she hollered above the wind. “She just pulled into the parking lot!”

  We all let go of each other’s hands, and the wind stopped instantaneously. We all looked around. My eyes widened when I realized that Mr. Bailey’s ghost was gone! We’d done it! We all gathered around the extended drawer and stared down at his body. He still laid there perfectly still. Unchanged. His signature bushy white eyebrows were unmoved. His expression was no different than it had been only minutes before.

  “Mr. Bailey?” Alba asked, poking the dead man’s shoulder with a single finger.

  “Yes?” said Mr. Bailey’s voice, plain as day.

  “Mr. Bailey!” Sweets said excitedly.

  Sweets could hear his voice? I looked down at his body once again, scrutinizing him more closely this time. Why wasn’t the body moving? Was he somehow throwing his voice? “Mr. Bailey? Can you hear me?” I asked watching for any signs of movement.

  “Of course I can hear you,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I be able to hear you?”

  Shockingly, his corpse still didn’t move. “Well, where are you then?” I asked curiously.

  “Over here.”

  All of our heads snapped towards the door where his voice was coming from. “Mr. Bailey?”

  “Yes?”

  With mouths agape, we realized Regis’ mouth was the one to move. His nose and mouth were smattered with the remainder of the garlic potion.

  “Mr. Bailey?!”

  15

  Jax stuck her head in the door one more time. This time her eyes were wild and her face pale. “Girls, she just got out of her car. She’s gonna see us! We have to go!”

  We didn’t have time to do anything but grab our stuff and go. Alba threw everything in the backpack. I grabbed the spellbook. Holly slid Mr. Bailey’s body back into the drawer, and Sweets scooped Regis up and tucked him under one arm.

  Our exit down the hallway was swift and uncomplicated. We picked Jax up at the end and were just about to the outer glass doors when we saw Misty coming back in with her purse clutched tightly to her side.

  When she saw us, she eyed us angrily. “What’s going on here?” She looked past us to the counter where she expected another hospital employee to be seated. “Where’s my replacement?”

  “Oh, that girl that was watching the desk while you were gone? She just ran down the hallway to use the restroom,” I said sweetly.

  Misty’s face prickled red with heat. “What are you doing back here? I told you I couldn’t help you.”

  “Yes, our dog forgot his hat though,” I said and bent over to scoop up the little bucket hat that had dropped to the floor in our haste to beat Misty to the lobby.

  “Oh,” she said before walking around the counter to stash her purse in a drawer. She let out a ragged breath as she plopped back down on her chair. “I just had the weirdest thing happen.”

  “What happened?” I asked innocently.

  “Someone called the Human Resources office here and told them one of my kids was sick at the babysitter’s and I needed to come home right away. I did, but the babysitter said everything was just fine. No one was sick! Isn’t that strange?”

  Jax nodded, her big blue eyes as big and round as silver dollars. “Oh wow, that is strange.”

  Alba joined Jax in bobbing her head up and down. “Yeah, we wondered where you’d gone when we got here. Your replacement said she had to use the restroom.” She hitched a thumb over her shoulder. “We’d just gotten here so we said we’d watch the counter for her while she was gone. We’re headed back out that way. Would you like for us to tell her you’re back?”

  Misty nodded. “Yes, that would be very helpful. Thank you so much, girls!”

  “No problem,” said Alba with a smile as the five us walked back towards the front door.

  We had almost gotten to the double glass doors when Misty called out. “Wait!”

  My mouth went dry, and my pulse began to race. Slowly I turned around. “Yes?”

  “You forgot to grab the hat!” she said with a giggle.

  I looked back down at the floor. Sure enough, it had dropped to the ground again. I tried to chuckle casually. “Oh no. We’d forget his head too if it weren’t attached.”

  “Apparently,” she said with a smile. “You girls have a nice day!”

  “You too,” we all called back as we rushed out the door.

  The minute we were outside Jax sucked in her breath. “Can you believe someone played that prank on that poor woman?” She shook her head as we rushed towards Sweets’ car.

  I elbowed her in the ribs.

  “Ow! What was that for?”

  “I made that call, Jax.”

  “Oh! Well, that was rude.”

  I palmed my face as I slid into the backseat of Sweets’ car.

  Alba opened the rear passenger door. “Get in the car, Shorty,” she growled, her lips barely moving across her teeth as she shoved Jax into the backseat before putting herself in the front passenger seat.

  No one said a word until we’d driven away and then the pandemonium began.

  “Did that really just happen?” asked Holly, staring at the dog.

  “Oh my god! We put Mr. Bailey into Regis’ body!” cried Sweets, fanning herself while sucking in rapid lungfuls of air.

  “You did what?!” screeched Jax in her most annoying high-pitched elf voice.

  Alba remained silent in the front seat, while I felt myself hyperventilating in the back. “Oh my god,” I breathed.

  Regis’ frail body shook nervously as it bounced around on all fours on my lap. “You put me in the dog’s body!” Mr. Bailey cried. His small head wearing the army-green bucket hat with slits for his pointy ears to poke through looked downward at his hairy body in a mixture of shock and disgusted horror. “I – I have fur all over my body!”

  “Mr. Bailey, we’re so sorry!” said Sweets from the front seat.

  “What were you trying to accomplish?!” he demanded.

  Alba turned around to look back at him.
“We were trying to bring your body back to life!”

  His black eyes widened. “You were trying to resurrect me?” he asked incredulously. “Those kinds of spells have consequences girls! You can’t just go around resurrecting people! There’s always an equal and opposite reaction to spells like that. Mother Nature always expects her due.”

  I lowered my head. “Just like weather spells,” I whispered.

  “Yes! There’s a reason witches and wizards who can control the weather don’t do it. It always comes back around again. Sometimes two-fold!”

  Sweets gripped the wheel so tightly that her knuckles started to turn white. “We’ve got to figure out how to get back into that room and undo the spell!”

  Regis stood up on his hind legs and put his paws on either side of my face. “How did things go so wrong? What were you thinking? Oh my word, my Char is going to have a heart attack when she sees me like this!”

  Alba splayed her hands out in front of herself. “I – I don’t know how it happened! We did everything exactly like we were supposed to!” she said more to herself than anyone in the car.

  I covered my forehead with one hand and dropped my head. “Except we substituted cherry tomatoes for the tamarillo fruit.”

  Regis’ beady black eyes seemed to bug out of his skull. “You used a substitution in a spell? What have they been teaching you in witch college? Hasn’t anyone taught you that it is not okay to use substitutions in spells? That was the first thing I learned in wizard school.” I’d never heard Mr. Bailey talk to anyone in anything other than a jovial tone, so hearing him freak out was enough to send shock waves of panic surging through my body.

  Sweets let her head fall back against the seat rest and blew out a breath from the back of her throat. “You guys used a substitution? Why didn’t you tell me that? I could have gotten us what we needed through the restaurant. Bailey’s has access to all kinds of weird potion ingredients.”

  Alba threw up her arms. “Now ya tell us.”

  I shook my head weakly and stared out the window. “Yeah, but it wouldn’t have been here in time. We had to get the spell done before the autopsy. Otherwise you’d have been all cut up, Mr. Bailey.”