“We were trying to help. If you ask me, we all eat too much dairy and carbs in this town. We did the collective BMI a favor,” Pauline said.
“Well, the tainted potato salad didn’t do the trick. We need to go farther.” I wasn’t thinking clearly at the moment, anger clouding my normally more cautious approach to everything from wands to brooms.
“That’s right. We can sit on the sidelines and let Man Cave smear Tatum, maybe even railroad her to prison, or we can do what we were put here to do. Use our gifts,” Pauline said to Georgianne who seemed to be the only one with a tiny bit of hesitation.
I had to agree. We needed to battle against this, and I knew exactly which army I was in, the Witches of Widow’s Bay.
“So, it’s a curse then?” Georgianne said.
I had never knowingly cursed someone. Sure, a boil had broken out on Sam’s face, and I’d blasted his mistress, but to stir the pot so it dumped all over an enemy? To direct a curse to someone, on purpose? This was new territory. The choice to use a curse, against an enemy, was new for me. Even against Alvarado I’d only blocked curses, never actively participated in wielding one.
I thought about what these women meant to me. I thought about what they meant to the town, their families, and their businesses. I realized I didn’t have to think at all, really. I was ready to take on Man Cave or whoever else tried to hurt my friends.
“The universe gave us this power. Not using it to the fullest is a crime,” Fawn said, and that was it. Now was the time to do something more against the people trying to bring down Tatum and DLC.
“Okay, we have four. Candy’s out and so is Tatum. We really need to have six,” Georgianne said, and at that moment two more witches were at the door.
Carrie Heisenberg and Pam Ulmer.
“We saw the report. We’re in, let’s mess him up,” Pam said, and Carrie nodded.
“There’s our six,” Pauline said.
“Fine, let’s do it in an exam room. Easier to hose off if something goes sideways.”
We stood in a circle, this time with an exam table in our midst instead of a cauldron, but it was what it was. We were sort of in a hurry to shut down Man Cave Dot News.
“Have you done magic yet, successfully?” Georgianne asked Carrie.
“Yep, helped with getting a splinter out of Derek’s toe and stopped his lust for tomato soup, so I’m good to go.” Carrie’s husband apparently craved tomato soup not blood like a normal vampire. I shook my head. It was too weird to analyze.
Georgianne interjected with the business at hand, the curse of the day.
“Hurling a curse is a little different than conjuring a spell,” Georgianne explained to me.
“Look, we’ve all done a little cursing before. Hurry up, we’ve got Beltane stuff to do,” Pauline said, and I turned to look at her.
“I agree, let’s get on with it. Let’s see if we can shut Man Cave Dot News up for a day or two, okay?” Fawn said. I had the sense we all wanted to do this fast, before we lost our nerve.
“Yep. This time, ladies, we stand in a circle, palm to palm to palm.”
We did as Georgianne instructed.
“Fawn, we need a token, got anything?” Fawn placed a hat we’d seen the Buck members wear on occasion—I guess you could call it a fez—in the center of the circle.
“Pauline and Pam, you concentrate on focus and force.”
“Carrie, just support the five of us. Let the vibe we create be your vibe too, you get it?”
“I think so! This is so much fun! We didn’t do this many steps, we just sort of went WAP and hoped for the best,” Carrie laughed, and I cringed at the thought.
“All right, when the words come, say them.” I felt Georgianne silently communicate the words that need to be in the rhyme. Did she always do that, or were things different? Did cursing feel different? There was dark energy pulling our palms to each other. I had the sense I couldn’t drop my hands right now, even if I’d wanted to.
Words spiraled around in my head. Nothing felt natural. If the spells were in a major key, the curse was in a minor one. It was discordant, but it held us there, ready to do our worst.
“This is the way it’s supposed to be. We’re causing a little chaos so it will come to us in a chaotic form,” Georgianne said as I tried to pick out the right things to say. And it came to me without thought or plan.
“Your lips are moving
It’s lies you spew!
For this town improving
Needs no more rumors untrue.
Let lies be trapped in your throat!
Let all ears hear only the bleat of a goat!”
A swirl of hot air circled us, raised our hair, and had us swaying back and forth. The strange sensation wrapped around us three times.
“Take that Yooper Man!” I yelled. I hadn’t planned to yell it. Spells didn’t require it, but something about the curse incited an urge for me to punctuate it.
There needed to be an exclamation point.
Fawn looked at me and mouthed “take that” as she raised one eye. I shrugged in response. I had no answer for my impromptu addition.
The air calmed and whatever magic tie bound us loosened.
“So, did it work?” Pam asked. She was good at curses, that I knew. She had, in fact, reduced her full-sized grown son into a baby for a few weeks.
Whether this curse worked, I had no idea.
But it felt like it did.
Time would tell.
“Okay, we have one more magical thing to check off our list before we disperse.”
Pauline had planned, Georgianne had researched, Fawn had collected materials, and Candy, from her office, had done all she could to make sure the fire department didn’t shut down our Beltane fires on the beach tonight.
“What’s that?” Georgianne asked.
“It’s time to make sure that everyone on Facebook sees my next story about Beltane.”
“Ohh, so do I get a hair of Mark Zuckerberg, or add some special herbs when we hit like?” Carrie asked and I wasn’t sure how she thought we were going to get a hair of Mark Zuckerberg.
“No, uh, actually what I need is cats. Lots and lots of cats.”
“Well, you’re in the right place,” Fawn said.
With Savanah’s help, we were set up in Fawn’s waiting room in no time. On short notice, they’d come up with five kittens and three fully grown cats.
Fawn had also given me some catnip to hide in my hands.
I set up my phone and pushed the live button.
For a few minutes, I let the live feed record the kittens, nothing but the kittens. I watched as five, ten, then one hundred people had joined. Excellent!
I saw a message pop up from Justin Lemorre, my assignment editor. “What the heck is going on, has a gang of kittens stolen your phone?”
I ignored it. If I knew one thing about the internet, it was that if there were kittens involved, it went viral. I’d been viral once before and it was more a catfight than a kitten video. I didn’t want to repeat that performance, so I waited.
The counter read three-thousand people viewing the live stream.
I decided it was time to deliver to my report.
“Marzie Nowak here, coming to you live from Dr. Fawn Campana’s Veterinary Clinic to announce an event set for tonight on Widow’s Bay Beach.”
I gave the pertinent details of when, where, why, and what people could expect from the Beltane Bash. I also brought in Pauline for an interview. She sold it like no one’s business.
All the while, kittens crawled all over the place.
As live reports went, it was bananas, chaos, randomly hilarious, and did I mention there were kittens?
At one point, as I outlined that all the food, drink, and entertainment was going to be free and that it was in honor of Frances Corey, a kitty hopped up on my shoulder and nuzzled my cheek. I couldn’t have timed it any better.
“The events start at sunset, and all the kittens you see here
will be available for cuddling, courtesy of Dr. Fawn Campana’s Veterinary Clinic.
Reporting live, Marzie Nowak, Your U.P. News.”
I looked at the live stream views. Over ten thousand people were watching live.
And the video, now living on the Your U.P. News Facebook page, was being shared at a fast clip.
“That was the oddest thing I’ve ever seen,” Georgianne said as a kitten tugged at her skirt.
“I guarantee that everyone in a four-county radius will know about Beltane Bash though,” I replied while nuzzling the ear of a little tabby who looked so much like my Agnes I had to resist the urge to put her in my bag and take her home.
My phone buzzed. It was another text from the newsroom in Sault Ste. Marie.
“I have no idea what that was about, but it’s already got more views than anything we’ve ever posted.”
Justin Lemorre appreciated the method to my madness.
And I’d come up with a way to get maximum exposure for Beltane Bash without using a wand.
“Fawn, can you get that one off my back?” Fawn helped me remove a kitten that had snagged itself on my sweater. Snags were a small price to pay for viral exposure.
Take that Pure Liquid Testicle Festival Presented by The Benevolent Order of the Bucks.
Chapter 14
While I felt confident that we’d shut up Man Cave Dot News, I still had no answer for who killed Tommy Strayhorn.
There was no solution to why my friend was in jail while we planned Beltane. She should be with us, and so far, I didn’t have a clue as to who killed Tommy Strayhorn.
In fact, almost every vendor I’d talked to that day had kind of liked the guy.
I hadn’t found an enemy or a motive for why someone had shot him.
I also didn’t understand why our spell had revealed it to be Tatum. I couldn’t believe it. But I had no alternative.
With my part complete—getting the word out about Beltane—I could at least do what Tatum had asked and stop by The Frog Toe.
The Frog Toe was uncharacteristically slow, and I found Mario in the back.
Normally, he lurked in a corner nearest to Tatum. He kept guests in line. He had her back. She could handle rowdy customers if they were plain vanilla beer drinkers, but the shifters, trolls, and vampires had added an extra element. Mario was there for that. Brule had sent him to be sure the bar was safe. He’d stayed because Tatum had him wrapped around her finger.
It was sweet, it was something she didn’t talk about, and it made two of us dating vampires. My life had gotten so weird.
But Mario was nothing like Brule. Mario always sported leather and a motorcycle mixed with Rockstar vibe. There was a dangerous quality to him, except right now. When I found him, several members of The Frog Toe staff were verbally abusing him.
The cook, a waitress, and a dishwasher surrounded him.
“No one took the chicken out of the freezer; they’re supposed to do that the night before. There will be no wings. I told her not to sell the customers chicken wings.”
“I have three bar tops that insist. I needed to know that before I went out there.”
“The dishwasher isn’t getting hot. It could be a code violation.”
Mario took a step toward the dishwasher and hissed. His white teeth flashed, and all three employees took a step back.
I surged forward, between the pointed vampire teeth and the night shift.
“Okay, you and I need to talk.”
I assessed the current needs and did my best to triage.
“Go tell your table they can have sliders, on the house, right?” I looked at the cook.
“Yes, we do have that.”
“And Mario will deal with the heat issue in a minute. Let the dishes stack until then, it’s not that busy.” The dishwasher shrugged.
“I am going to rip their throats out if they ask me who has the weekend off one more time. There is no weekend off this is a bar!” Mario roared toward the now fleeing staff. Roar was not an exaggeration.
I’d just heard Mario say the most consecutive words I’d ever heard him utter, times ten.
“Look, Tatum needs you to hold down the fort.” I handed him a list of things that Tatum had asked me to tell him to do. I had wanted to get it here sooner, but my day had been unprecedented.
“This is a long list.”
“Well yeah, it is. Focus on that instead of puncturing the necks of her waitresses.”
“I am not a restaurant manager,” he said the word manager like it was obscene, maybe to rock star vampires it was. I mean Lestat, Line Cook of the Damned? Yeah, didn’t work.
“I get it, you’re a hot vampire boyfriend who provides protection and sexiness. But right now, Tatum needs you to make sure her business doesn’t collapse.”
I put out a hand and squeezed his shoulder. I could feel his cold skin even through the leather. It was like he was made of marble. I didn’t really know how this would go over, but I was doing my best.
Mario’s teeth retracted and the red in his pupils receded.
“Yes, I must serve her well.”
“That’s the spirit.” Impulsively I pulled Mario into a hug. “You can do it, oh, and you’re going to need to get half a dozen or more kegs down to the beach for the Beltane Bash, by tonight. I mean, pretty quickly. Tatum’s orders.”
“Grrrr.” The fangs started to descend.
“Uh uh uh! What Would Tatum Do?” I patted that shoulder again.
Mario’s fangs retracted again, and he put a hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. It hurt.
“I will protect this place. Thank you for reminding me that Tatum needs me.”
He smiled, sort of? I wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t about to rip my throat out.
I stepped back and swirled around to get out of The Frog Toe and on to the next item on my To-Do List.
I had to trust that Tatum’s trust in Mario was well-founded.
I crossed my fingers that he could run her business and that we’d get her out, soon, and this would be behind us.
I was moving fast and was distracted and so, admittedly, I wasn’t looking where I was going.
I collided with a woman, dressed not too differently than Mario. We both crashed to the cold hard restaurant floor.
“I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking,” I said. I think her name was Amanda; she was one of the newer waitresses at The Frog Toe, I thought.
“No kidding.” She had blonde hair slicked back into a tight ponytail and a row of bangs that were ruler-straight. The leather matched her carved cheekbones. She was pretty, except her lips were drawn into a scowl just now.
“Are you okay?”
“Just get out of my way, you understand?”
“Yeah, I understand. Jeez, lighten up.” We stood up and she stared at me like I’d stabbed her, not accidentally run into her. Man, if this was the new level of hospitality from The Frog Toe wait staff, Tatum had a lot more to worry about than being out of chicken wings.
I hustled out of The Frog Toe. I felt zero confidence that Tatum would recognize the business she came back to.
“Pretty amazing numbers.”
I had almost forgotten about Garrett DeWitt. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I had been moving so fast that I had hadn’t tried to reconnect with him after he’d run off.
He looked a little better than he had earlier. But still, I was vaguely worried that there was something wrong with him.
I had driven home and was about to head inside to get ready for Beltane when we finally reconnected.
“Whoa! Stranger, where you been?”
“I, uh, just stomach issue.”
“Oh, I did think you looked a green earlier.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. But back to work, your live shot was, uh, weird, but oddly effective at getting views.”
“About that—” I knew it was weird, I knew it was a cheap way to get views, and I also knew I could be fired for it.
“Look, I ge
t what you were trying to do. Man Cave Dot News has been all over us. They’re playing dirty, so you played cute. I’m not angry. I just think maybe, in the future, fewer cats and more, uh facts?”
“Sure, just trying to outsmart Facebook!”
“Impossible, but here’s something that will help.”
Garrett opened a bag to produce a snazzy new camera, and it wasn’t a phone camera!
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying for now, tonight, I’ll be your photographer. Let’s see if we can get great coverage if you’re not doing everything on your phone.”
“That is so great!” I was about to ask a few more questions when we were interrupted by my neighbor.
“Marzie!” Chet was dragging a huge rolling cooler behind him.
“Hey there, Chet, whatcha got there?”
“I saw your report. We’re all heading over to Beltane! I have over two hundred walleyes, thawed, breaded, and ready for the bonfire!”
“Wow.” Chet lifted the lid and I peered in to look at his neatly stacked portions of walleye.
“That will be a huge hit.”
He closed the lid.
“Chet, this is my boss, Garrett DeWitt.” I looked over at Garrett and his face did not look right.
“Hi,” he said and doubled over his stomach.
“Chet, I’ll see you there, my friend’s got a bit of a bug.” Chet shook his head and wheeled his cooler out to his truck.
I turned to Garrett and put my hand on his elbow. He was in serious distress.
“I need to get out of here. I—”
Garrett Dewitt dropped the camera he had just purchased for my little bureau. It crashed to the ground.
“Garrett!” I followed as he stumbled toward his car. He put out a hand to me to stop me from touching him.
“Stop, don’t come any closer.” But the last bit was guttural, and his eyes were pained.
“What’s happening?” I said the words, but really, I already knew. I had seen something like this before. Except it didn’t look like such torture when I’d witnessed it.
“Run,” he said. But I was transfixed by what was happening in front of me.
The air around Garrett DeWitt shimmered and popped. And then his skin did the same. His nose elongated, his back broadened. And the man who was standing dropped down to four legs.
Curse Strings Page 9
