Witch it Real Good

by Dakota Cassidy

  “Actually, we’re here because of me, Tally,” I volunteered. “And as much as I wish I could knit some of the beautiful things you have here in your store, I’m all thumbs. The reason I’m here is, I’m looking for someone. I was wondering if you could tell me if you’ve seen her.”

  “I can sure try,” she offered pleasantly. “Do you mind askin’ while I straighten the counter up? It was a madhouse in here earlier this morning. We had a knitting class today for the folks at the Sunset on the Hollow Senior Center, and you know what that’s like, don’t ya, Hal?”

  Hal chuckled and nodded. “Did Leo Boseman make one of those naughty covers for his male parts and try to pass it off as a finger warmer?”

  Tally sputtered, and I had to cover my mouth with my hand. “Nope. This time it was Garner Jorgenson and his sweater with four arms.”

  I laughed. “I don’t mind at all, Tally. Please, don’t let me interrupt.”

  She pulled on a pair of cat-eye-shaped glasses she had strung around her neck on a beaded chain as I followed her to the counter at the front of the store. “So who ya lookin’ for, Stevie?”

  I pulled my gloves off and rested the heels of my hands on the glass countertop while she began sorting scraps of yarn. “Well, she’s someone I’m sure I know. In fact, I’m almost positive I know her. We bumped into each other outside your store yesterday, but she got away from me before I could ask if she was who I think she is. She has beautiful, long red hair, green eyes, and she was wearing a white trench coat. My hope is, maybe she bought something here or mentioned her name or anything that might help me find her.”

  Tally paused a moment from straightening the counter. “You know, now that you mention it, I think I know who ya mean. Boy, she sure was fancy, huh? Who wears high heels in weather like this?”

  I pointed down to the rolled ends of the pant legs on my overalls and my yellow galoshes. “Definitely not me. So, she was in here?”

  Tally bobbed her head up and down, the tips of her hair shivering with the motion. “She sure was. I mean, if we’re thinkin’ it’s the same lady. Said she was lookin’ for a man drivin’ a black car.”

  My stomach seized up into a knot, but I forced myself to keep cool. “A black car? Did she say what kind or who was driving the car?”

  “Ah-yup,” Tally said with a dip of her head. “The lady with the red hair said he was a good-lookin’ fella, maybe six feet with dark hair. I tell ya, he was some looker, he was. Judging by the picture she showed me, but nobody like that’s ever come ’round here except for our resident cutesy-tutsey.”

  Well, that couldn’t have been any vaguer, could it? A good-looking man with dark hair and maybe six feet. But there was a picture…

  “Did she have a British accent?” I asked.

  Tally paused for a moment, but shook her head. “Nope. She sounded just like you and me.”

  Not that that meant anything. Miranda had played many roles. Maybe she hid her accent. “Did she mention anything else about this man? Or maybe about the details of the car?”

  “Oh!” she shouted in her exuberant way, clapping a hand on the counter. “Hang tight. I photocopied the picture she showed me to keep it near, so’s I could show it around to some of the other store owners on the off chance someone might have seen him.”

  She zipped off to the back room while I turned to find Hal. When I looked closer, I noted she was ghostly pale, alarming me.

  “Hal? Are you feeling all right?”

  She shook her head and held up a finger, but her pallor worried me. I reached out for her hand but she brushed it away. “Don’t,” she said tersely, and it was then I realized, she wasn’t really even seeing me.

  Her blue eyes had clouded over and her gaze was distant, almost blank. In fact, she wasn’t showing any emotion except for the frown lines on her forehead.

  Then two things happened at once.

  Tally rushed out of the back room, a copy of the picture fluttering in hand, and Hal began to walk toward the glass picture window as though in a trance.

  For no apparent reason, my heart began to thrash in my chest and my pulse pounded in my ears.

  A voice in my head screamed danger, but I didn’t understand why or what the danger could possibly be—until I realized Hal wasn’t stopping.

  If someone didn’t grab her, she was going to walk right into the glass window.

  Tally squawked a warning as she made a move toward Hal, but I held up a hand and reached out and touched her shoulder to guide her, rather than yank her away from the impending accident.

  With a light nudge, I steered her away from harm. “Hal, honey. Listen to me. It’s Stevie, and you’re going to walk right through glass if you’re not careful. Let’s go this way.”

  As I directed her away from the window and toward the back of the store, where more cubbyholes filled with colorful skeins of yarn awaited, her eyes suddenly popped wide open, and it was obvious she was back with us again.

  Instantly, she reached for something to hold on to, almost falling forward but for my body blocking her. And then she was clear-eyed once more, looking at me in total surprise before her eyes flashed an apology.

  “Vision,” she whispered raggedly, taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

  Tally rushed up to her, the paper flapping in her hand. She put her palm to Hal’s back and began to rub in a circular motion. “One of those migraines comin’ on again, honey?” she asked, her face riddled with sympathy as she turned to me and shook her head. “Poor kid gets real bad headaches. Had ’em all her life and never has figured out what to do to stop ’em. But we know how to look out for our girl, don’t we, Hal? Keeva taught us everything we need to know if we’re ever around her when she has one of her attacks, didn’t she?”

  What a wonderful woman Hal’s mother had been. In order to protect her daughter in a world full of humans, she’d engaged the humans and taught them to help her without anyone ever realizing she was having visions, not migraines.

  “She sounds like a lovely lady,” I commented. “I wish I could have met her.”

  Hal gripped my hand, her skin clammy and cold. “Me, too. She would have loved you, Stevie. Now, just give me a sec and I’ll shake it off.”

  As she spoke the words and began to take steps back toward the front of the store, Tally held up the photocopied picture.

  “Here you go, young lady. That’s the man she’s lookin’ for. Handsome as the devil, ain’t he?”

  I took the paper from her—and my eyes went wide in shock. I tried to hide it, but I’m pretty sure I did a crummy job, considering my hand began to shake and the blood drained from my face.

  Because the picture I was looking at, which was pretty detailed for a photocopy, was a picture of none other than Win.

  How do ya like them apples?

  Chapter 11

  “I don’t think that’s me, Stephania.”

  “How do you know? Maybe you were undercover? Maybe you don’t remember having the picture taken? Maybe you weren’t even aware the picture was being taken?” I said in protest.

  Win narrowed his eyes and scanned the picture again. “I suppose that’s possible, but memory hasn’t been my issue thus far. My issues have been mostly motor-skill related.”

  I nodded. That was fair, but—

  Hal held up a finger. “Can I interject here?”

  “Of course, Hal,” Win offered cordially. “We welcome any and all brainstorming when discussing my murder.”

  Hal snickered, but then she straightened her spine. “You know, I heard in the case of someone taking a host body, they lose their memories. Maybe you really don’t remember, and it has nothing to do with you as much as it does taking over Balthazar’s body.”

  I wholeheartedly agreed. “What Hal said, Win. It’s not a crack at your memory at all, but a side-effect of habituating someone else’s host body.”

  Yet, Win blustered and frowned. “But this doesn’t even look like something I’d wear, Stephania. For
example, look at his clothes. I would never, not in a hundred lifetimes, wear gold chains in multiples anywhere upon my person.”

  “Then who is it? Let’s theorize. A close family member, like a cousin? I know lots of cousins who look a lot alike, especially if their mothers or father are strikingly similar. So who else would look so much like you? Your biological father, maybe?”

  Win frowned again at the picture of himself, or fake Win, or whoever the heck it was. “He looks much too young to be my father, Stephania. That feels a bit of a stretch.”

  I squinted at the picture and decided he was probably right. The man in the picture was leaning his right shoulder against a brick building, a building cut off in the photo by the photographer.

  His hand was deep in his pocket, which made him almost look like a model posing in GQ. Except for those gold chains. They were excessive to say the least and more Italian mob than high fashion.

  It was a black-and-white photo, so there was no distinguishing much of the detail of his clothing, but he wore a pair of dark dress shoes I’d almost swear were Ferragamos, due to the buckles on the front.

  I don’t know much, but I do know a pair of designer shoes, and those buckles on them looked so familiar—but above all, they looked current. Like a pair I might have seen recently, skimming the Internet for shoes. If they were a pair of current shoes then Win was right. The man in the picture didn’t look at all old enough to be his father.

  That thought made me look again for any signs he might be an older man. His hair was a little on the longish side, brushed back and parted at the side, but as thick as Win’s, the light blazer over his dark shirt draping open, revealed a slender waist.

  His trousers were sharply pleated down the front just the way Win would have had them pressed. Yet, there was really no way to tell how recent the picture was. The hairstyle and clothing weren’t distinguishable enough to be outdated, but just indistinguishable enough to have come from another time.

  Except for those dang shoes. I’d bet those shoes were from this year. But after a quick skim online, I couldn’t seem to find them.

  The harder I looked at the picture with Hal’s magnifying glass, the more convinced I became Win wasn’t a twin, but quite possibly a triplet. The man in the picture, if not Win, sure looked about the same age as him.

  I held up the picture Tally had given me as we all sat around Hal’s dining room table, sipping wine before dinner. We’d gone to several more stores before everyone closed up early for the Ice Carnival, but no luck. There was only Tally who’d seen Miranda.

  “You know, that you haven’t had any memory loss is a miracle, Win.” Hal said, thwarting my thoughts. “I’ve never witnessed a real reincarnation, but I have heard the rumors, and the reincarnated almost always say they suffer memory loss if not completely forget who they were altogether.”

  He shook his head. “Well, of course, there’s no one to attest to that, but I can recollect as far back as my elementary years. Thus, if I had to place money on it, I’d say no. No memory loss.”

  “You truly are an unbelievable testament to the power of love and sheer determination, Win,” Hal complimented. “It’s incredible.”

  I tapped the picture with my fingernail. “Okay, so if we go with the fact that this isn’t you, maybe you’re not really a twin. Maybe you’re a triplet. Like, part of a set of triplets who were cryogenically frozen, and this one was hatched apart from you and Balthazar? Is that more in line with what you’re thinking? Because that sure as heck looks like you and good ol’ Balthazar.”

  He ran a tired hand over his hair. In fact, he looked very tired. There were lines of strain around his eyes and his mouth, but he was probably right. He’d likely rather wear a cocktail dress and hose than wear so many gold chains around his neck.

  “She is right, Zero. This look exactly like you.”

  My finger shot up in the air. “Yeah, it does. And yes, he’s wearing a bunch of chains around his neck, which isn’t like you, but look at his face. It might not be the clearest picture, but he looks identical. Maybe this was taken back in your spy days? When you were pretending to be some sleezy car salesman kind of guy and you just forgot?”

  Win chuckled. “I’ve portrayed many different types of people, Dove, but not a sleezy car salesman.”

  I sighed in frustration. “If it was taken recently, which those shoes suggest, it can’t be Balthazar because you’re Balthazar, Win. And if it wasn’t taken recently, how often do you suppose Balthazar ran around in a pair of Ferragamos?”

  “Is that what they are?” Win asked, eyebrow raised. “That cinches the deal. I’d never wear Ferragamo. They’re woefully uncomfortable. I’m a Berluti man, myself.”

  “Stop fooling around. Listen, a two-thousand-dollar pair of shoes is a two-thousand-dollar pair of shoes, Spy Guy. Either way, they’re expensive, and if this is a fake Win, he has the same expensive tastes as you. If you have another one of you running around out there, the shoe choice alone would certainly add a nail to the coffin’s theory that you’re somehow related.”

  But Win scoffed, which seemed to be the norm when it came to my theories these days. “Balthazar was known to pilfer, Stephania. It’s not as though he’d led a puritan’s lifestyle. Maybe he stole them?”

  I rolled my eyes and sniffed a dismissal of the notion. “Oh, sure. Not. Balthazar was a petty-crime, assault-and-battery kind of guy. But I feel like a heist somewhere in an Italian shoe store is a real reach. He was a grifter, a liar, and sometimes violent, but he didn’t have any finesse at all. Not enough to grift someone right out of their shoes.”

  Win shrugged his shoulders with a nonchalance I couldn’t figure. “Maybe MI6 botched a batch of cyborg batter and Balthazar was the result. It took making me to perfect things.”

  “Aren’t you a real laugh riot today?” I asked, worried about the subject of Miranda, which was surely right around the corner.

  “He definitely does look like you,” Hal murmured. “I sure wish Tally had thought to ask more questions. That might have helped, but if I know Tally, she was too busy trying to figure out why someone ‘so fancy,’ as she puts it, was here in Marshmallow Hollow. The way she described this Miranda, you’d think she was a movie star. I mean, I saw her when she bumped into Stevie, too, and she wasn’t that pretty.”

  I reached over and patted her hand, silently thanking her for her girlfriend power solidarity. “How are you feeling, Hal? Are you all right now?”

  She patted my hand in return and smiled warmly. “Oh, I’m fine. It’s like I said, sometimes a vision just happens, and it’s intense, but it doesn’t debilitate me for long.”

  “How wonderful to have a cover story like migraines. Your mother was a smart woman,” I complimented, wishing I could have met her.

  Hal’s smile was small, but warm. “She always protected me no matter what. I can’t believe anyone actually believes I have migraines, but they do, and they’ve always been really careful about how they handle them, and me.”

  “What sheer genius on your mother’s behalf to concoct such an explanation,” Win said with a smile as he swirled his wine around in his glass.

  I peered over the rim of the laptop at her, my gaze hesitant. “So about the vision. Tell me again what you saw. If you don’t mind, I mean. I know I’m getting annoying and repetitive, but I want to be sure I ask all the right questions and that I don’t miss anything. ”

  She tucked her hair behind her ear and shook her head. “I don’t mind at all. It’s a relief to talk to someone about them when I’ve had to keep them a secret for so long.” Hal paused a moment and sipped her glass of wine before she said, “Same vision, only this time there was a woman in this one. A beautiful chestnut-haired woman. She had her hand on the shoulder of the man with the snake tattoo, and she was behind him. I still can’t see much more about him other than his arm and the tattoo. Her mouth was moving, but there was no sound. Still, I sensed distress in her facial expressions. But there’s one thin
g I’m sure of, when she was yelling, she was yelling the name Winterbottom. I saw her lips move clear as day, Stevie.”

  I swallowed hard, but I tried not to let my fear and confusion show. Keep a steady grip on the wheel, Stevie Cartwright.

  “So first, do you think the woman you saw was Miranda with her hair dyed, maybe?” I asked.

  And I didn’t care what Win said. He could poo-poo all he liked, but nothing was impossible at this point. I wasn’t sure how Miranda would fit into that scenario if the woman was behind the person with the tattoo—because last I knew, Miranda had been on top of Win, and she had a gun they were fighting over, not to mention her hair was red.

  Maybe he’d simply remembered the night of his death wrong (though try telling Mr. Memory that), but I wanted all the facts, whether Win liked it or not.

  Yet, Hal shook her head as she ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “Not unless Miranda is older. Maybe in her sixties? Despite her age, she was gorgeous. Like, probably in her youth, she was drop-dead gorgeous. She had blue eyes and really red lipstick on. Made even redder by how pale her skin was.”

  “Does she sound familiar, Win?”

  “Not to be glib, Dove, but her description could fit any number of women whose paths I’ve crossed. My job brought me into close contact with a variety of women.”

  So now there was possibly another woman in the mix? Maybe a female spy who wanted revenge? Maybe the person who paid the thirty million dollars to Miranda to rat out Von Krause?

  “And you’re sure you didn’t see Win in this vision, Hal?”

  “Absolutely not,” Hal confirmed, her lips a thin line of conviction. “The hand with the snake tattoo definitely belonged to a man. We’ve already discussed that, and I guess he was bending over and maybe that’s why I can’t see his face? And then there was the stunning woman with the red lipstick behind him. I swear. I never would have known it had anything to do with Win if not for that feeling I got when I was with Hugh and had the first vision. That she was saying Win’s name, and she looked distressed, only makes the vision that much more mystifying.”