“I’m a swimmer,” he said. “I’ve been competing in Swan Lake for years. It helps to reduce friction.”
An amusing thought occurred to me. “So when you shift, do you look like a hairless dog?” I asked.
“Keep annoying me with your questions and I’ll show you,” he said in a menacing tone.
I took a step backward. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be intrusive.”
“Your presence here is intrusive,” Franco said. “You need to go.”
“Can I just get two minutes of your time? I need to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Me?” the werewolf asked.
“No, Franco.” I gave him a pleading look. “It’s important.”
The satyr’s nostrils flared with annoyance. “Fine, two minutes max.” He glanced at the wax strip in his hand. “Hold on. I need to get rid of these.” He placed it along the werewolf’s back, patted it down, and pulled.
The werewolf whimpered. “Never gets easier.”
Franco tossed the strip into the bin and walked around the table to speak to me outside the room.
“Now, what’s this about?” he asked.
“I understand you were seen arguing with Octavia Minor at Flower Power,” I said.
The satyr glowered at me. “So what? Who doesn’t argue with that crab apple? She’s the living embodiment of a pimple on your ass.”
Yikes. I wanted to dare him to say that to the harpy’s face. Maybe he did.
“Would you mind telling me what the disagreement was about?” I asked.
“Why don’t you ask her yourself? You’re her neighbor, aren’t you?”
I peered at him. “How do you know that?”
The satyr looked away, seemingly embarrassed. “Who doesn’t know that? You’re Emma Hart.”
“Just because you recognize me doesn’t mean you should know where I live.”
“Maybe not, but I took the tour with a few friends. We’d been out drinking and thought it would be a hoot.”
Tension creeped into my neck and shoulders. “What tour?”
He still refused to meet my gaze. “The one that takes you to the places around town that were connected to the curse.”
How did I not know about this? I tried to maintain my composure. “Who’s offering this tour?”
“The Valkyrie,” he said.
At least that narrowed it down. “Not the sheriff?”
“No, her sister. Brittany.”
“Britta,” I corrected him.
“That’s the one. Slow walker.”
That was true. Britta was never in a hurry. Her speed was set to leisurely.
“How did you find out about this tour?” I asked.
“My buddy picked up a pamphlet or something. Hold on.” He dug into the square pocket of his top and produced a folded brochure. “I wore this the day we went and haven’t washed it. Don’t judge me.”
“I have a baby at home,” I said. “I don’t judge anyone for not washing anything.”
He gave me the brochure. “You can keep it. I don’t need it anymore.”
“Thanks.” I glanced at the front image of the town square before stuffing the brochure into my purse and returned to the business at hand. “Tell me about the argument.”
“Octavia and I butt heads whenever we see each other. She was a customer for a few months and it ended badly.”
I squinted at him. “A customer of the barber shop?”
“Yeah. Remember how I mentioned waxing isn’t on the menu of services?”
“Oh.” I shuddered at the thought of waxing Octavia’s body. “Why would she come to a barber shop?”
“You know how salons are,” Franco said. “They gossip worse than anybody in town. Octavia knew I’d keep my mouth shut.”
“Why would anyone in a salon gossip about someone getting waxed? It’s one of their regular services.”
“Not where I’m waxing,” he said and circled his face with his finger.
For a fleeting moment, I wondered how waxing a harpy’s hair impacted their feathers when they shifted into full harpy mode. I quickly set the thought aside. I had to stay focused.
“Is that what your fight was about?” I asked.
He nodded. “She thought I squealed to a mutual acquaintance and was threatening to level me with those talons of hers.” He tugged at his neckline as though picturing the carnage. “I know she’s a tough bird, no disrespect intended, so I’d be crazy to rat her out. I’d never tell anyone anyway because it’s bad for business. Word gets out that I talk and I lose my clientele.”
“Like me,” the werewolf called from inside the room. “Can you get back here? There’s a chill in the air and it’s making the unwaxed hair stand on end.”
Franco rolled his eyes. “Listen, I need to get back to work. I don’t know why you’re asking about Octavia, but you can tell her that I didn’t snitch and she’s welcome to come back for a free service as a goodwill gesture.”
“Thanks, I’ll pass that along.”
And I’d be sure to do it now while she was still in a cheerful mood and unlikely to kill the messenger.
I left the barber shop in a hurry and ran smack into Mayor Lucy Langtree.
“Slow your roll there…” The fairy stopped talking when she realized it was me. “Hey there, stranger. Fancy seeing you…” She frowned. “Leaving the barber shop?”
“I had to talk to one of the barbers for a case,” I said. It was sort of true.
“I’m taking a break from the mountain of paperwork on my desk. Want to join me for a quick shopping spree? We haven’t been to the shops together in ages.”
Lucy was right. We used to shop together all the time before Diana was born. I didn’t want my friendship with Lucy to fall by the wayside now that I was a mother.
“Sure,” I said. “Where do you want to go?”
“I have a fancy-pants event next week and I need a dress that everyone in town hasn’t already seen a hundred times. Ricardo said he has a few pieces in stock I might like.”
Ricardo, the town’s favorite wereferret, owned Ready-to-Were, the most stylish shop in Spellbound. If Lucy needed an eye-catching dress, that was the right place to find it. Ricardo had impeccable taste and his clothes were greatly admired by everyone in town, including me.
“That sounds good to me,” I said. “I can live vicariously through you.”
“Great. I can drive.”
My feet were still sore from the festival, so I didn’t object to driving the short distance. I’d forgotten how competitive Lucy could be until I was trapped in the passenger seat beside her.
“Ooh, excellent.” Her face glowed with the hue of impending victory. “There’s a spot right on the square.”
“Don’t feel like you have to park right out front. I don’t mind walking a little.”
“No way. That spot has my name on it.”
The jalopy lurched forward as Lucy pulled alongside another jalopy so she could reverse into the available spot.
“I always hated parallel parking,” I said.
“I love a good parking challenge.” Lucy glanced in her rearview mirror and frowned. “How annoying. This driver pulled right behind me so I can’t back in. Doesn’t he see my blinker?”
I craned my neck to look at the jalopy behind us. “Yikes. He’s practically kissing your bumper,” I said.
“He’s about to kiss more than my bumper.” She shifted the jalopy into idle mode. “He doesn’t know who he’s messing with.”
I bit back a smile.
The driver laid on the horn and Lucy stuck her head out the window. “Pipe down. You can go around me.” She waved her arm forward.
The driver honked again and Lucy reached into the glove compartment where a retractable wand was nestled.
“He’s going to regret this.” She elongated the sparkling wand and stepped outside.
The other driver got out of his jalopy and his eyes widened when they settled on the unhappy fairy. “Mayor Lucy
! I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize it was you.”
She fluttered toward him. “You thought I was some feeble fairy you could bully into giving up a coveted parking spot, didn’t you?”
The werewolf looked down at his feet. “I mean, I saw the wings, but…”
“But nothing. You were aggressive because you thought you could get away with it.” Lucy fluttered closer to him. “You’re lucky I don’t call for the sheriff and have her write you a ticket.”
The werewolf recoiled. “I’m sorry, ma’am. It won’t happen again.”
“Not with me and not with anyone,” Lucy said firmly. “It doesn’t matter that I’m the mayor, you shouldn’t be behaving this way with any driver, though I get the distinct impression that if I’d been a different species or a different gender, you might not have acted the way you did.”
The werewolf seemed sufficiently chastised. “Let me get out of your way, ma’am. I don’t want to hold you up. I’m sure you have important matters to attend to.”
Lucy’s hands flew to her hips. “I most certainly do.” She spun on her heel and returned to the jalopy with a satisfied smile on her face.
I leaned over and hugged her.
“What was that for?” the fairy asked.
“I’m just glad you’re you.”
“Well, I’m glad we’re in agreement on that.” The fairy glanced over her shoulder and backed into the spot with ease.
Ricardo was busy assisting another customer when we entered, but the wereferret gave us a bright smile and pointed to the dressing room.
“I put your dresses in there, each one in two sizes.”
Lucy blew him a kiss as we passed by. “You’re the best.”
I accompanied her to the dressing room and admired the selection of beautiful dresses—two green, one red, and one pink.
Lucy wrinkled her nose at the red dress. “No strapless. I don’t have the chest for it.”
“Do you want me in or out?” I asked.
“I could use a little help getting the dress over the wings without crushing them.”
“My hands are your hands.”
Lucy chewed her lip. “There’s probably a spell for that.”
I helped her out of her current outfit and into the pink dress. “Do you know anything about this Spellbound tour?”
“What tour?” she asked. She paused to admire her reflection in the three-way mirror, making sure to check the appearance of her bottom.
“Britta is running a tour of Spellbound and taking paranormals to all the relevant places involved in the curse. Apparently, she’s taking strangers past my house.”
“You saw her?”
“No, someone told me.”
Her nose scrunched. “How have you not noticed groups of strangers gathered outside your house?”
“I suspect she’s keeping a safe distance. If Gareth got wind of it, he’d charge out there and haunt the crap out of them.”
Lucy clutched my arm. “We should take the tour. See what they say about us.”
“I don’t care what they say about me.”
“You might want to reconsider. You know how Britta can be.”
“I adore Britta. She would never say anything hurtful.”
“Oh, I don’t mean she’d say anything malicious—the Valkyrie doesn’t have a mean bone in her body—but she’s not always the sharpest pitchfork in the shed.”
Lucy made a good point. “Maybe I’ll check it out,” I said. I’d want to make sure Britta wasn’t revealing too much of my personal information.
Lucy ran her hands along her hips. “What do you think? Too pink?”
I grabbed a hanger off the hook. “Try this green one. I think it’ll look better with your complexion.”
The fairy offered a grateful smile. “We need to make an effort to spend more time together. I’ve missed this more than you know.”
My heart swelled at my friend’s kind words. Lucy was like family to me, certainly more like family than my actual father, with the added bonus that I didn’t worry she’d ever destroy Spellbound.
I threw my arms around her and hugged her fiercely. “Me too,” I said.
Chapter Fourteen
I arrived home feeling energized from my outing with Mayor Lucy. I played with Diana, which basically involved a cycle of me setting up blocks and her knocking them down and laughing. I felt like the mom version of Sisyphus.
She was already yawning by the time I put her down for a nap and I worried that she’d start crying. The healer had told me if she was already showing signs of fatigue that I’d waited too long to put her down.
I took a few careful steps backward and waited outside the nursery for an objection.
Silence.
I did a fist pump and hurried downstairs to squeeze in a bit of homework before dinner. I set the flower-filled vase on the desk in Gareth’s old office and tried to focus on their vibrational energy.
“What are you doing?” Gareth asked.
I looked up at the vampire ghost. “What does it look like? Communing with the spirit of the flowers.”
He frowned. “Aren’t I enough for you?”
“You’re more than enough. Unfortunately, I have a homework assignment that demands I connect with more than you and Sedgwick.”
He flicked a glance at the flowers. “They’re half dead as it is.”
“And you’re fully dead. What’s your point?”
He shrugged. “I suppose they’ll cross over soon enough.”
That thought hadn’t even occurred to me. Maybe I’d have better luck connecting with dead flowers, although it wasn’t very practical. What good would it be to communicate with the spirit of a plant that had nothing to offer? If I was in a dire situation in the woods like Juniper suggested, a dead plant wouldn’t be much help.
“Do plants actually cross into the spirit world?” If that were true, I would expect to be haunted by an entire greenhouse by now. They’d probably given me a name like Emma the Terrible or the Slaughtering Sorceress and scared younger plants with stories of my reign of terror.
“Aye, if they have spirits too, why not?”
“Have you come across any in your travels on the spiritual plane?”
“No, but I haven’t tried either.”
I turned back to the flowers. “I need peace and quiet to practice.”
“I’d like peace and quiet too, but no, I have to share my house with you and Cloud Hopper, your baby, and a rabid owl.”
“And Magpie.”
He lifted his chin. “Magpie’s no trouble to anyone.”
Daniel’s laugh interrupted us as he stepped into the office. “Did you see what Magpie did to the marshmallows? He must’ve thought we were making s’mores.” He held out a bowl filled with blackened, gooey marshmallows.
I gave Gareth a pointed look. “You were saying?”
“He was only trying to help,” Gareth insisted. “Who keeps a bowl of marshmallows on the counter anyway? That’s negligence or, at the very least, an attractive nuisance.”
“No need to put your lawyer hat on, Gareth. Those days are over.”
“You needn’t remind me.”
I turned to Daniel. “What were you planning to do with those marshmallows?”
“You mentioned that recipe you used to like when you were a child,” Daniel said.
I perked up. “Which one?”
“The sweet and crispy one. I went to the Wish Market and bought a box of Rice Krispies so I could make them.”
My spirits lifted. “You’re my favorite today.”
“Not anymore.” The angel wiggled the bowl of charred marshmallows. “I only had one bag of these.”
“You can use that,” I said. “Burnt marshmallows are still delicious.”
Daniel’s face rippled with relief. “Are you sure? They’re not like toast.”
“Absolutely. Go for it.”
He noticed my notebook. “What are you doing in here?”
“Homework,
” I said. “I have to try to master attunement.”
“What’s that?” the angel asked.
“It’s where I experience the energy of a plant, or, in this case, flowers.” I gestured to the vase.
“If that doesn’t work, you can always make potpourri,” Daniel joked.
“I’d be satisfied if I could just tune in to their energy vibrations,” I said. “Gareth, can you please bring me a bowl?”
The vampire ghost scoffed. “Do I look like your manservant?”
“No, but you like to practice your poltergeist moves and I figured this was a good opportunity.”
“Fair enough.” He floated to the wall and disappeared.
“Here’s a question for Spellbound’s director of tourism,” I began.
A look of alarm crossed Daniel’s features. “Why do I get the sense this isn’t a question I want to answer?”
I pinned him with a thousand-yard stare. “Do you know anything about a tour of the town?”
He blinked in rapid succession. “Uh, sure. There’s the one about historic Spellbound…”
“No, not that one. This one’s about the curse. Apparently, Britta offers a guided tour of Spellbound in her spare time that takes paranormals around to the sites connected to breaking the curse.”
“They walk all the way to Curse Cliff?” he asked.
“I don’t know the details, but I thought you might.” And I was pleased to learn that he didn’t. If he knew and didn’t tell me, he might need his will drafted sooner rather than later.
“Whatever she’s doing, it isn’t sanctioned by us,” Daniel said.
The tightness in my chest loosened. “I didn’t think so.” Still, it was nice to have it confirmed.
Sedgwick flew into the room and perched on a nearby coat hanger. What are you making?
“Not food if that’s what you’re hoping.”
I heard a cracking sound and a stream of curses. A moment later, Gareth rounded the corner with a ceramic bowl in his hands.
“You tried to bring the bowl through the wall, didn’t you?”
He placed the bowl on the table in front of me. “Maybe.”
I inspected the bowl for cracks or fissures. “Do I add water?”
If you put your hand in a bowl of water, you’ll need to pee before you finish.
Halo Effect Page 12
