My heart picked up its pace. He really did listen. All those nights when I’d tried to explain how losing my powers was akin to losing a vital organ, Win had listened.
So I nodded. “What the dead guy said,” I offered woodenly. “I think you should go, Baba Yaga. If you want to check in on Belfry, which is your right as his ruler, feel free to do so. But please do it when I’m not here.”
“I trust you’ll watch over my Stevie, Crispin Alistair Winterbottom?” she asked. Making this visit seem even weirder than it already was. What did she care what happened to me? She’d all but let me be railroaded. She hadn’t fought to get my powers back. She’d ordered me to leave my home.
“I’ll always look after Stevie, Miss Yaga. That you can count on.”
Baba rose then, her beautiful figure outlined by the sun streaming in from the windows behind her. She looked at me again.
Looked at me as though she were preparing to leave someone she regretted leaving.
She looked at me with a brief flash of grief in her almond-shaped eyes before she raised her arms. “Goddess protect you always, beautiful Stephania,” she whispered, before she snapped her fingers—and then she was gone, leaving only the vestiges of a Debbie Gibson song and her signature neon-green smoke in her wake.
I let out a breath of air, releasing the tension so present in the room, and leaned against the only countertop I had at the moment. Sorrow tried to creep its way into my chest, but I wouldn’t let it.
Baba’s words had sounded like goodbye for good, but I’d said my goodbyes when I left Paris. I wouldn’t let this odd visit bring me back to the place I’d been a couple of months ago.
“I spoke out of turn. Are you angry?”
I inhaled again and let another whoosh of air rush from my lungs as tears stung my eyes. Thumbing them from my cheek, I shook my head. “No, Win. I’m not angry. You said what I so obviously was incapable of doing without gnashing my teeth. I appreciate it.”
“Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say!” Belfry chirped. “We don’t need that hag! Me and Cumberbatch-alike got your back, right, buddy?”
“Indeed,” Win murmured, his warmth pervading my bones.
I smiled, looking at the sturdy black picture frame I’d bought a few weeks ago, sitting by the microwave. The insert of a man sat inside, a dashing, incredibly handsome man with steely-blue eyes, a sharp jawline, and hair the color of a starless Texas night.
A stranger of course. Some model used to display the frame, but I’d decided this would be my frame of reference for Win. The model reminded me of the image that came to mind when I thought of my intrepid spy.
I crossed the plywood of our temporary kitchen floor and opened up the lone cabinet left on the wall until our new ones arrived next week, pulling out a box of Pop-Tarts.
“Stevie! What have I told you about a proper lunch? How can you become uber-spy if you eat like that? You must feed your body, not massacre it. It’s your temple, not a
7-Eleven
.”
I ripped the packaging and broke off a piece, stuffing it into my mouth and chewing. “I’m not going to become a spy. You do realize that, right, Win?” I asked the picture frame, holding it up in the direction his voice came from. “I mean, it’s Ebenezer Falls, not a Hellmouth. How often do you suppose I’m going to need to know how to torture a suspect with needle-nose pliers or bungee jump into a ravine? Like never.”
“How quickly you forget Madam Zoltar and my cousin Sal.”
“Like I could forget being tied up, clocked so hard in the face I almost broke my eye socket, and having a gun held to my head by an utter lunatic?” The memory was still quite fresh for me, thank you very much. In fact, I still got the occasional headache as a stark reminder.
“And do you remember your incredible aerialist act? You were bloody like Robin Hood, Stevie!”
“Do you remember how sore my throat was after that from screaming like I was on fire? Would really rather not repeat that. Like ever. Did you scream like a girl when you had to swing on a rope in order to catch the bad guys when you were a spy? I’d bet not. Besides, like I said, how often do you think I’ll need these skills I’m supposed to feed my body for, anyway?”
My cell phone rang to the tune of “Unchained Melody”, Win’s idea of hysterical irony after we’d watched
Ghost
, which meant there was a call coming in for Madam Zoltar.
I cleared my throat and accepted the call. “Good afternoon, this is Madam Zoltar speaking, here for all your afterlife needs. How can I assist you today?”
There was some static on the other end of the line and a pause before someone said, “Are you the lady I saw today in the parking lot? The one with the turban and the flowery dress?”
Instantly, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. So I answered with caution. “Who’s calling, please?”
“This is Bianca Bustamante.” Then she sighed, quite clearly a sigh of resignation. “My mother asked me to call you.”
My eyes flew open wide in surprise. “Oh, Bianca, I’m so sorry about your father. I loved Tito. He made the best tacos ever, and he was incredibly kind.”
“He called you a murderer.” She said the words like she’d dropped a bomb in the middle of my kitchen and relished the thought of it going off.
Now I frowned. But she was right. He had indeed. “But he made up for it. No harm, no foul. No hard feelings.”
“Good, because I need your help. Even if you’re a fake, which I’m sure you are, my mother is inconsolable.”
My heart tightened in commiseration with Maggie. She’d been beside herself in the parking lot, and I hated that, so I ignored the crack about me being a fake. “I’m not sure how I can help, Bianca?”
“Mama wants you to contact Papa.”
So soon? He likely hadn’t even settled into the afterlife yet. And even if he had, maybe he’d crossed over and couldn’t be contacted at all.
I fought the tightness in my throat and gripped the phone. “I’d be happy to try, but to be honest, he’s only been gone a few hours. That can make contacting him almost impossible.”
Bianca snorted into the phone. “Right. Listen, lady, I don’t believe in your hokey garbage. Not even a little. But if it makes my mother feel better, if it calms her down enough that we don’t have to worry she’s going to have a heart attack, then make it up as you go along.”
Phew. Talk about no-nonsense. But everything I believed in railed against the very idea of tricking Maggie. “No. That’s not something I can do, or would ever do. I’m not going to lie to your mother. She deserves better than that. I’m sorry. I wish I could help.”
“There’s a lot of money in it for you,” she enticed, as though I could be bought.
Now I bristled, planting my hand on my hip in outrage. “I can’t be bought, Bianca. I don’t talk to the spirits for money. Ask anyone who’s had a reading with me and they’ll tell you, I donate almost all of the cost of my time to several different charities.”
Her cynical laughter rang sharp in my ear. “Everyone can be bought. Listen, what do you need from me? An open vein? All I want you to do is at least try. But if the
spirit
moves you to make something up once you see how torn up Mama is, to help her recover faster, then all the better.”
Good gravy. Her father had died just a few hours ago and she didn’t even sound like she’d shed a tear since finding him at the food court. But if Maggie was in pain and there was a slim chance I could find Tito, and I didn’t have to lie about it, I’d do it for her—and for my Taco Man.
“Fine. I can fit you in tonight at eight. Please bring something personal of your father’s, like a piece of jewelry, a picture, something he held dear. Does that work for your
mother
?”
I stressed her mother due to the fact that Bianca appeared to want to get this over with as soon as possible. Maybe she had a hot date or maybe she just couldn’t be bothered consoling her mother, but she could have at least waited until Tito was buried before she skipped off to the next bit of business needing her attention.
“Yeah. We’ll be there. Make sure you warm up whatever gadgets you use to make the lights flicker—or whatever it is you do.”
A spike of anger sizzled along my spine. “I most certainly do not use a gadget, or
any
gadgets, for that matter. I’ll have you know—”
Suddenly, I was speaking to dead air.
“She hung up!” I yelped, dropping my Pop-Tart on the counter and brushing the crumbs from my hands to pick up the picture frame. “Can you believe the gall of that woman, Win?”
“I can’t believe the
form
on that woman,” Win remarked with a wistful sigh. “One swish of those hips—”
Snarling, I pointed at the face of the model in the picture frame. “Not helping, Win! You’d better get your spidey senses in gear and see if you can find a spirit to help us find Tito, because if that woman gives me one iota of grief tonight, I’ll show her just what kind of a fake I am when I cast a hair-loss spell to rival Rogaine’s regenerating properties!”
“I hate to break this to you, but your spell-casting days are over.”
Setting the picture frame down on the countertop, I smoothed my caftan over my stomach. “Then I’ll just pull it all out in big, silky clumps. Now please, see what you can see around there on Plane Limbo, would you? Maybe find that woman who contacted us not so long ago? While you do that, I’m going to go make a voodoo doll of Bianca and I’d like some alone time to do it.”
Win’s laughter followed me out of the kitchen and up the stairs, a project that was still a work in progress.
And that’s when something else hit me.
While BY was busy flirting with Spy Guy, I’d never once used his full name. I’d only called him Win.
So how had she known his full legal name?
Things to ponder while I dug out my old Barbies and jabbed their tiny waists and pointy plastic toes with straight pins.
I
’d cooled down a bit since this afternoon and my phone call with All-Business Bianca, but still not enough to not want to clock her in her perfectly double-chin-free jaw.
As I set up Séance Command Central at the store, lighting candles, making sure the tablecloth was free of wrinkles, I once again thought about Baba and how she knew Win’s full name.
I, crazy as this sounds, even considered calling her up and asking her how she knew, and if she’d tell me anything about him.
But I quashed that like a bad habit. Win had asked me to respect his privacy, and I was trying to do just that. I hadn’t once Googled his name or even the word spy—but knowing Baba perhaps knew something I didn’t was a little bit disconcerting.
Of course, she’d been around for hundreds of years. And she was a witch—the supremo witch of all witches. She had every power each witch in every coven had, times three. Naturally, she could contact the afterlife just as I once did.
I’m sure she’d hunted down all the information she needed about where I was in my life now before she ever poofed herself into my house. That tweaked me. She had no right to my life anymore.
And then I got over it. I had to begin to really separate myself from my old life if I hoped to successfully transition into this new one. I couldn’t cling to the hope I’d get my powers back.
It would stall all the good things happening right now, leave a door open for doubt and possibly keep me from doing something that would fill my soul just as much as being a witch once did. I wanted to embrace what I knew I had. That was Ebenezer Falls and performing Madam Zoltar’s duties in her stead. Those things were certain.
Madam Zoltar had once told Win just before her passing that she knew she couldn’t truly contact the dead, making
his
contacting her a dream come true. He’d contacted her because she was open, because her heart, if not her reality, was pure.
But what MZ was good at, what she excelled at doing during her time as a fake medium, was comforting the bereaved, giving them the nudges they needed to let go and move forward.
She wanted her clients healthy, and most of all, she wanted them to live.
I wanted that, too.
So I set BY from my mind and concentrated on tonight and seeing Bianca and her mother.
My eyes scanned the interior of the store, chock full of my personal things I’d finally been able to afford to take out of storage, thanks to Win. My healing crystals sat on all the newly installed shelves by the dozen, scattered in order to protect the health of the store and the people who entered.
My collection of snow globes—the ones Win had teased me were as bad as my addiction to thrift-and vintage-store clothing—sat amongst the crystals, each with a special memory attached.
We’d decided not to sell the typical psychic/medium fare tourists seemed to eat up with a spoon, simply because most of the stuff didn’t really work anyway. But mostly because I took this very seriously, and while the way I dressed in honor of Madam Z was a little hokey and stereotypical, I was not.
Win’s presence appeared out of thin air, the vibe in the room going from introspective to energetic.
“It looks smashing in here, Stevie. A perfectly soothing setting. For someone who exists on Pop-Tarts and tacos, I’m impressed at your attention to detail.”
I still wasn’t quite over his Bianca-and-her-hips-don’t-lie comment, which, if I’m brutally honest, also niggled me. Why should I care if he found Bianca attractive? A eunuch would find her attractive. She was gorgeous. There was no denying that.
“I just want Maggie to be comfortable. She should be at home resting, grieving, figuring out what to do next now that Tito’s gone, not here having a séance to ease the stress her daughter seems so callously unable to handle.”
“I’ve given this some thought, Stevie. Would it hurt to tell a white lie if it makes Maggie’s grief lighter?”
Hands on my hips—which I assure you, are absolutely not as enticing as Bianca’s—I let my displeasure show. “Shoot no. I’m never going to agree to that, Win. I’ll never lie to someone about a dead loved one. That’s just bad karma all around. It can come back to haunt you.”
“Has something like that come back to haunt
you
?”
“Nope, because I’d never do it. But remind me to tell you about a witch named Mercy who—”