Barely Bewitched (10 page)

Besides, Bryn’s differences with me aside, Duvall was his home, too.

“Okay then, don’t tell him I was here, but tell him the town’s in trouble. Maybe he’ll come out and see for himself. And can you see if Mercutio will come to the gate? I want to talk to him.”

“Your cat left right after you did.”

“Where’d he go?”

“Remember how he’s a cat? He didn’t say.”

“Yeah, they like their privacy.”

He barked out a laugh. “Yeah, right. Well, your secretive cat made a helluva racket in front of the gate, and Mr. Lyons said to let him out, so I did.”

Merc was out and hadn’t followed me to the park? I hung my head. All my friends were furious with me. An image of the shirtless Doc Barnaby popped into my head. They were probably only going to get madder before the night was out.

By the time I got back to the park, there were police cars parked with their flashers on. I glanced around. The faeries had all gone back into hiding, but the people hadn’t recovered. Zach and the other deputies were arresting anyone who refused to get dressed.

I guessed the dust hadn’t blown over to the police station because the cops were acting normal. That at least was one thing to be grateful for.

I didn’t approach Zach since it looked like he had his hands full. I did knock on the window of Doc Barnaby’s Oldsmobile. Doc rolled it down, and I saw that he had his shirt on and Mrs. Potts snuggled up next to him.

“Hello, Tammy Jo.”

“Hey there. Can I get a ride home?”

“Oh, sure. With two beautiful women in my car, I’ll be the envy of the whole town.”

Oh boy.
I got in the backseat.

As he pulled away from the curb, Doc Barnaby said, “Now, Tammy, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about those magical powers.”

For the love of Hershey!
“Um, Doc Barnaby? Remember how everything we talked about is confidential? Doctor-patient confidential?”

“Oh, I was already retired by the time we had our session. I let my license expire several years ago, of course. Besides, there’s no reason for us to keep it from Lela here. She and I don’t have any secrets.”

Hellfire and biscuits.

Twelve generations of witches were probably rolling over in their graves. In one foolish moment I’d exposed a line that had been secret for three hundred years.

Maybe I deserve to be cursed. They’d probably think so.

“You know, I’m pretty worn-out. Can we talk about this stuff some other time?”

“I don’t see why not,” he said.

“Would you like a malt, dear? We’ll be making some chocolate ones, just like in the old days,” Lela Potts said.

“I guess,” I said, about as thrilled as a girl offered a nickel to take a day trip with the devil. For once, it was going to take more than chocolate to cheer me up.

Chapter 14

On the way home, I remembered that my car was still in Old Town, and I had Doc Barnaby drop me off there to pick it up. When I got back to my street, I tried to ignore my rowdy neighbors who, under the influence of the faery dust, were having a block party like it was Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I shook my head at their offers to drink rum punch straight from the three-gallon bowl. Reba came on the stereo, and everyone went back to dancing around their lawns. I spotted various children asleep in lawn chairs.
No bedtime tonight.

I was so focused on getting in the house that I was completely startled when Mercutio jumped down from the front tree. I clutched my chest until my heart remembered how to beat.

“Hey there,” I said.

He cocked his head.

“I’m sorry about acting all stuck-up earlier. Being an elf went right to my head. I don’t know why they say, ‘He was down-to-earth’ for humble people. I couldn’t have been any further in the dirt than I was today and look what happened. ‘Down-to-earth’ should mean ‘Thinks she invented flowers and gave them perfume.’ ”

I took a deep breath and waited for him to swipe a paw at me or to give me a hiss, but he didn’t. “If I ever act like I don’t need your help, maybe you’d better just go ahead and bite me. Help to remind me what’s what.”

Mercutio darted up the steps and waited. Yep, that’s a true friend. Totally gracious in the face of an apology. He didn’t stay in the tree . . . or lock any gates, pretending he’d never heard of someone called Tammy Jo Trask.

I bent down and hugged Mercutio’s neck. “Thanks.”

He purred in my ear and put a paw on the door.

“You’re right. No time for sugar. Well, not that kind of sugar,” I said, opening the door.

I glanced around my filthy house, trying not to look too hard. In the kitchen, I tore open a new bag of miniatures and ate a handful while telling Merc about the faery dust situation.

I went out into the backyard, grimacing at all the stolen plants and flowers. What a mess it was going to be to return them.

Later. After the other priorities of saving my life and the town’s sanity are taken care of.

I put my hand on the tree, hoping that there was still a drop of faery magic left inside me, so that I could hear him.

“Hey there.” I waited. “I need some more advice and information, Mr. Tree.”

Nothing. All day long I couldn’t get the tree to hush up. Now I needed him to talk and what did he do?

I walked back in the house, leaving the sliding door open in case the tree decided to get chatty later.

“I don’t know what to do,” I told Merc as I filled a bucket with soap and water and washed the floor. “I’m trying to remember everything Momma said about faeries, but she didn’t say much stuff that’s practical to us right now. She mostly told stories, you know?” I sighed as I scrubbed.

Merc sat on the couch licking his paws. I dumped the water and refilled the bucket, squeezing a little lemon juice in it.

“Jordan said witches shouldn’t mess with fae magic. And the tree said Momma couldn’t use the dust as a witch, so now that I’m back to being a witch—sort of—there’s probably no chance that I’ll be able to control it again. You know what we need? A pixie. One of them would know how to turn off the dust effects. Only how do I get in touch with one? I can’t see the hobgoblins taking a message.”

I finished the linoleum and went to work on the countertops, appliances, and glass door.

“I saw some wood nymphs at the park before the police broke up the party.” I wrinkled my nose at the smell of ammonia. The chemicals burned my throat more than usual, and I opened the kitchen window to air things out.

I looked at the living room carpeting. Mud, grass, jam, honey, and more fruit juice than you’d find at a Welch’s factory were ground in, soaked in, and probably there to stay forever. “I guess I’m going to have to spring for new wall-to-wall.” I leaned against the counter, feeling plumb tuckered out, but I could afford to relax like I could afford a marble floor, so not so much.

“I’ll just have a shower, then we’ll go try to find us some pixies.”

Merc and I searched for them, but the mission was a bust. In fact, not a single member of the fae came out to talk to me, despite my rustling the plants and leaves and sending Merc up in the trees to have a look around while I asked them to come out for a chat. I even offered them cookies. Nada. The honey snaps I brought were pretty insulted.

Back at home, I got a message from Zach. He was calling to check on me. Apparently, they’d made a record number of arrests, even after letting more people go with a warning than they probably should have. All the deputies would be on overtime until further notice.

I sighed heavily and left Zach a message in return, telling him I was fine. Luckily there wasn’t a lying curse on me anymore, or by morning I would’ve been sporting pointed ears again. Then I got out my spellbook and started rereading it. Unfortunately, it’s not written like a storybook. It’s more like a recipe book, which explains why trying to read it in the middle of the night put me right to sleep.

I woke up on Wednesday the twenty-ninth to find Merc standing on my chest, dangling a piece of paper an inch above my face.

“Wha?” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes and pulling the paper off the claw he’d speared it with. I turned the crayon drawing right side up and squinted. It was a map of Duvall that one of the miniminions had drawn the day before.

“You want I should put it on the fridge?” I asked, closing my eyes. Merc bopped my nose with his paw. My garbled response had a couple of four-letter words I hoped that, as a baby, he didn’t know yet.

I sat up and blinked until my eyes were focused, then looked more closely at the picture. Yep, definitely Duvall. In the north-west corner, there was Old Town, and, following Corsic Creek as it headed south, Glenfiddle Whiskey’s faux-castle factory was on the east bank and Armadillo Ale across the water was on the southwest.

I smiled at the detail. On the opposite side of Duvall, on its eastern border, were the tor and the Amanos River. The map wasn’t exactly to scale though. Some of the neighborhoods weren’t drawn, but there were smatterings of trees and flower gardens and a bunch of squirrels, rabbits, and birds.

Hold on.

I brought the map nearly to my nose and gasped. Brownies, pixies, water nymphs, goblins, and a troll under the bridge. In the corner, scrawled in crayon, the artist had signed her work, “Abby.”

I looked at Mercutio. “If I’ve thought it once, I’ve thought it a hundred times. Merc, you’re a genius.”

I shuffled to the fridge and pulled out a small carton of heavy cream. I filled a bowl to the top and set it on the floor. Merc darted up and went to town on it.

“You know, I don’t think we can rule out the possibility that you should be in charge. I could put the utilities in your name and get one of those little chauffeur’s caps for when I drive you around.”

Merc, in his characteristically cool approach to life, didn’t show any enthusiasm for lording it over me. I stroked his sleek fur for a couple minutes, then had scrambled eggs for breakfast to keep my strength up.

“Abby’s at school this morning,” I said, munching a piece of bacon and giving half to Mercutio. “I think I better go learn some stuff from Jordan Perth while I’ve got time. Hopefully, the town will sleep and stay out of trouble until I can find out what to do about the faery dust. You think that’s likely?” I asked.

Merc batted the air with his paw.

“Nope, me either. Well, we could go back to bed and hide under the covers, but that’s not really the Texas way, is it? You from Texas, Merc?” I asked.

He just blinked.

“You sure act like it. I guess if you’re not, you got here as soon as you could. Davy Crockett wasn’t born here either, you know, and look what a hero he was at the Alamo.” I munched before adding, “Yep, I guess if we’re going down, we’ll go down fighting.”

I didn’t make it more than two steps outside my front door before my feet stopped, shocked still. The first time I made a chocolate ganache I charred the chocolate pretty darn bad, and that was what my front yard smelled like. My neighbors on either side of me used to have trees centered perfectly on the plots of grass across the sidewalk from their front yards. But now, like a smile with missing front teeth, there was a startling gap. I walked closer to where Jolene’s maple tree used to be. There wasn’t even a stump left. Only smoky-smelling soot and ash in a perfect ring where the tree had been. None of the grass had been burned. So not a regular fire, then. A magical one.

I glanced back at the houses that were only twenty or thirty feet from the site. The houses could have been next, and I’m sure that was just what Incendio wanted me to catch on to with his act of horticultural terrorism. I balled my fists in fury. If he thought he could intimidate me by roasting the local foliage, well, he was kind of right, but that didn’t make me any less mad about it. I couldn’t talk to the trees at the moment, but that didn’t mean I was going to stand by and let him level them with his flaming trigger finger.

I opened my car door and gagged at the rank metallic smell. The seat was covered in congealed blood, and painted on the seat back was a five-letter word beginning with
B
and ending in
itch
, which I’d rather not use. I staggered back, noticing a bit of gray ish white fur on the door frame.

Every muscle seemed to seize up with fear. I stumbled onto my front lawn, retching, and landed on my side. I rolled onto my back and lay there, staring up at the light blue sky, taking deep breaths. If the body of what was probably a rabbit was somewhere in my car, there was no way I could stand to be the one to find it. I might have to junk my car and ride a bike. I ran my hands over the grass, trying to calm down. It worked. Kind of.

If he killed a bunny to vandalize my car, I’m going to make him pay. No matter how long it takes or how much work and magical training, I’m going to make him sorry.

And, while I wasn’t normally one to tattle on people, if I ever came across Incendio’s boss, I was going to tell him that Incendio needed some serious help, like a nice long prison term.