Wizard in a Witchy World (9 page)

I held my hands up defensively.

Gabriella placed her hand gently on the woman's forearm. "Mari, I'd like to introduce you to my friend, Felix."

Mari made no attempt to greet me and stood her ground. "We'll serve no Left Hand here," she said. To the right, I felt a presence descend the stairs. At the same time, a third woman pushed through saloon styled doors at the back of the house, her face orienting on me as she emerged.

Many of the restaurant's patrons turned to look at us, drawn by the attention.

"Felix is not Left Hand," Gabriella replied, in a hoarse whisper.

"Time out. No need to get hostile," I said. "I'll leave quietly."

"No, Felix." Gabriella put her hand out to stop me. “This is a misunderstanding."

I dared a look up the stairs and found myself looking at a woman similar in age to Mari with her wand already drawn.

"Step out the door and bother us no more," Mari said. Her simple incantation pushed me toward the door. I wasn't about to cause a fuss, so I allowed the inertia of her spell to propel me.

"His aura is shrouded, but I sense darkness." This from the woman who'd exited the kitchen.

"He is not a witch! Stop it," Gabriella said.

"What do you mean?" Mari asked. "I see his mystical energy as clearly as I see your face."

"Felicia will back me on this. She has read him, as have I," Gabriella said.

The mention of Felicia seemed to sway Mari and she lowered her hand. As she did, the urge to walk out the door diminished, although honestly, I hadn't felt overly compelled.

"What are you then? You are no warlock," The shapely woman from the stairs pushed her way past Mari. Of the three of them, she was the youngest and most dressed up.

"I should get business cards that read 'Felix Slade – Wizard' and right beneath that, 'I don't know my lineage, so don't ask!'" I retorted.

"So you claim. There hasn't been a wizard around here in decades." Mari elbowed her way back to the front of the group.

"So I claim!" Gabriella declared, taking a step forward.

"Girls. If Gabriella vouches for him, then that’s good enough for me to make him breakfast. Mr. Slade, do you promise to behave while you're here?" the older of the three asked.

"Depends on the service, I suppose," I quipped.

She held my gaze for longer than was comfortable, then laughed a short bark, "Fair enough. Big plate of huevos rancheros, in that case. You've already met my sister Marigold, the ironically named Willow is my other sister and I'm Bluebelle, although most people call me Belle."

I held my hand out to Willow, who eyed me like I was trying to pass her a rattlesnake. I pulled my hand back, holding it up in defense. "Fair enough. Nice to meet you all," I said.

"Back to your breakfasts," Mari announced to the handful of people still watching us. "How about a nice private booth in the back?"

"Thank you, Mari. If I'd thought there was going to be a problem, I would have called first," Gabriella apologized.

"Your boy here reads like a police blotter," she said.

"I know, right?" Gabriella slid into a booth that looked over a large garden within a greenhouse. The restaurant separated from it by a glass wall.

Mari allowed me to pass and I slid into the other side. "I'm right here, you know," I said.

Mari patted the top of my hand. "You sure are, sweetie. Gabriella, would you like your usual?"

"Yes, please."

"I'll be back with drinks," she said and turned away.

I watched her leave with a look of surprise on my face.

"How does she know what I want?"

"Belle already offered to make you huevos. It would be insulting if you asked for something different," Gabriella said, pulling the leather book we'd brought along. "What's the title of this?"

"Taxonomy of Extraordinary Creatures," I translated. "Or that's pretty close."

She leafed through the pages to a section on werewolves. "These pictures are amazing."

I tapped an ornate heading with my finger. "You need to learn Latin."

Mari returned and placed empty cups, a silver pot, and a tin in front of Gabriella. Before I could say anything, she poured delicious smelling coffee into my cup.

"You didn't even ask if I wanted cream," I said, catching Mari's eye.

"Certainly. Would you like cream with that?" she asked and walked away without waiting for a response.

I stared after her retreating form.

"Do you take cream with your coffee?" Gabriella asked.

"No."

"She's a witch, Felix. This is her life - think about it. She doesn’t have to ask," she said.

I nodded in understanding. "Right. Good point," I sat back in the booth. It was the most comfortable I'd been in several days.

"You look tired," Gabriella observed.

Her eyelids looked as puffy as mine felt. "I am, but I'll get over it. How are you doing with all this? You have to be under a lot of stress."

"I'm scared for Clarita. Killing Victoria was one thing, she was a powerful witch who had enemies. I could almost understand the past catching up with her. But Benita? No way. She wasn't even a particularly powerful witch. The only reason she was allowed in the coven was because she was Victoria's daughter," she said.

"What about Clarita. Is she a witch?" I asked.

Before she could answer, we were interrupted.

"Hope you're hungry. Belle packed your plate about as deep as I've seen it," Mari said, sliding a platter filled with diced fried potatoes, green peppers, onions and four eggs over easy, all slathered with a pile of white gravy. "Belle nixed the ranchero sauce. Apparently, you're more of a cream gravy guy."

I nodded my head in appreciation. She was right about that.

The plate she placed in front of Gabriella contained a single pancake and a side of strawberries.

"Thank you, Mari," Gabriella said.

"You bet. And the hot sauce is behind the napkins," she said and bustled off.

I reached behind the napkins, pulled out my favorite wooden-topped, glass bottle of hot sauce and sprinkled on a liberal dose. The food smelled so wonderful, I forgot about Gabriella for a few minutes.

I finally paused long enough to take a big drink of coffee. Gabriella hadn't eaten a bite of her pancake yet and was staring at me, horrified.

"What?"

"Do you always eat this much?" she asked.

"There's bacon in these potatoes. Do you want to try some?" I asked, ignoring her question.

"Vegetarian." She picked up her knife and sliced a small hunk from her pancake.

"No syrup?" I asked.

"I hope you were just guessing about Clarita," she said.

"Guessing what? That she's a witch? That's not much of a guess. Magic follows blood lines," I said.

"Not always for witches," she said. "But Clarita is a very special little girl. She will possibly be the most powerful witch of her time, certainly within Leotown."

"You can tell this already?"

"Yes."

"How many people know?"

"It's a well-guarded secret. Which means just about every witch in Leotown knows. Victoria was proud of her grand-daughter. It was like she felt like she'd failed with Benita, but Clarita redeemed her."

"That's a lot to lay on a little girl. How old is Clarita?"

"Six years."

"Ugh. I was six when I was abandoned," I said. "I don't remember my parents, other than some feelings."

I sat back and put my fork down. I couldn't believe I'd actually told her that. Besides Judy, I'd never shared it with anyone.

"I'm sorry, Felix. This must bring back some bad feelings," she said.

"Was Clarita home when her mom was killed?" I asked.

"Yes. The police have evidence that suggests that."

"Like what?"

"Her bare footprints were in the blood."

I gritted my teeth. The callousness made my blood boil. "That's heinous."

"Will you help us find her, Felix?"

"I'm not exactly a favorite with you witchy types. How does Felicia feel about my involvement?"

"She doesn't like it, but I'd make a deal with the devil if it'd get Clarita back."

I nodded. She might just be doing that.

"We should get going," Gabriella said. "I love the sisters, but they're unrepentant gossips."

"Place has a nice feel," I said. "Judy would like it."

"Going so soon?" Mari asked, appearing at our table. "Was something wrong? You've hardly touched your plates."

"It was delicious," I said. I'd eaten well over half of the food on my plate.

"Tell Belle we're sorry, but events of the last week have made eating hard," Gabriella said.

Mari placed her hand on Gabriella's arm. "Be careful, child, you’re in a precarious position and are making decisions that will endanger many." Mari's speech wouldn't have been particularly creepy if her eyes hadn't fogged over as she warned Gabriella.

Gabriella didn't even bat an eye, however, and patted the older woman's hand. "Thank you, Mari. I'm afraid we can't turn back. A girl's life is at stake."

Mari's eyes turned back to normal. "Quite so, Gabby. My visions are not clear, only the danger to you and those around you. I cannot help but feel that Felix Slade is fuel to this fire," she said, looking pointedly at me.

"What do we owe you?" I asked, trying to get Mari onto a different subject.

"Belle won't accept payment. She says I was rude."

"Not at all," I said. "You're protective of your friends. Hardly a fault."

"Aren't you the charmer." A smile crossed her face.

As subtly as I could manage, I dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table and followed Gabriella out of the home, turned restaurant. I wondered how many of the other patrons were witches and how many were just here for the atmosphere.

"Sorry about that," Gabriella said once we were driving out of the parking lot. "I hadn't expected such a bad reaction from Mari. They’re generally so nice."

"Tell me about the attack on Benita," I said. "Amak said it was lycan."

"The police blocked access to her apartment," Gabriella said. "We tried to go over, but there's police tape all over the place."

"No ransom note for Clarita? A call or anything?"

"Who would they call? Victoria was Benita's only family and now they are both dead," she said.

"First things first, then. I take it your coven doesn't have a good way to locate Clarita?"

"Do you?" she asked.

"Not without her blood, but I have an idea. We need to go to my lab," I said.

Mrs. Willoughby was out back when we arrived.

"Is that trouble?" Gabriella asked.

"Could be. Most landlords don't like it when cops destroy property because of a tenant," I said. "I'll talk to her."

I walked up to the stoop where she sat in a padded vinyl kitchen chair.

"Hi, Mrs. Willoughby," I said when I got close enough for her to hear.

"Felix. We need to talk," she said.

"I understand," I said. "I'm sorry about the police breaking down the door."

"Second time in as many weeks. I know my home doesn't look like much, but it's all I have. I can't have it destroyed, no matter how much I like you."

"I'll set things right, Mrs. Willoughby. The police let me go because I didn’t do anything wrong. They shouldn't have broken in like they did," I said.

"I don't know what you're mixed up in and I probably don't want to." She looked up at me with something akin to pity. "I need you to move out, Felix."

"One more chance, Mrs. Willoughby? I'll get the doors replaced. The apartment and garage will look better than they did before," I said.

"I don't know, Felix." She was wavering and I felt horrible putting her in this position.

"One month. If I don't have it fixed to your satisfaction, I'll leave," I said.

Mrs. Willoughby dropped her head and thought. "I suppose I can live with one month. But if you bring any more trouble here, I'll be forced to ask you to leave."

"Fair enough," I said.

I walked back to where Gabriella was leaning against her Civic.

"How'd it go?"

"I've a month to fix everything and clean up my act," I said.

Gabriella nodded. "She's scared. You can't blame her."

"Agreed." I pulled open the overhead garage door. I ordinarily used the side door, but at the moment, it consisted of a sheet of plywood nailed to the siding. The police had sawed through the frame when my protection spell prevented them from breaking the door down.

"A nice job of rearranging, courtesy of Leotown’s finest," Gabriella said.

"I’m looking for glass jars with snippets of black cloth in them. When I was being questioned by the police, Lt. Dukats told me they'd found them. I hope they missed at least one," I said.

Gabriella helped clean up the mess as we searched. "You picked all this from Chamber’s County Rec area?" she asked while shelving the last of the tubers.

"I’d have had a lot more if I’d brought a bigger bag. I don’t think anyone is harvesting there. Just look at these Cortinarius mushrooms. I’ve never seem ‘em so big," I said.

She furrowed her brow at me. "I don’t even know what you’d do with a Cortinarius."

"Maybe I’ll show you someday." I placed large chunks of broken glass into a box. "They really did a number on this place."

"Maybe you left them in your apartment?”

"We can look. But I know I brought them down here to preserve them," I said.

"Then the police probably took them. If they even suspected blood, they'd take them all in for testing," Gabriella said as we exited the garage and ran up to the apartment.

I pulled the plywood back so Gabriella could enter and flipped on the lights. I sighed, the apartment was still pretty hopeless. Fortunately, my everyday filing system wasn’t all that exacting, so I had that working for me. The two of us picked up most of the mess, searching as we went. I found my stash of empty specimen bottles, but none contained Lozano’s blood.

"What I can't wrap my head around is why your coven is being attacked by lycan. Do you really think it's all about Clarita?" I asked.

"I don't know. We're down to three witches in Whyte Wood coven and that's not enough for us to hold our territory," Gabriella said. "Kelli has a family and she's scared. I'd be surprised if she doesn't move to another coven."

"She can do that?" I asked.

"Of course. Felicia would hate it, but you can't blame Kelli. If this is a territory grab, she'd be safer in a larger coven. Whyte Wood weakened as Victoria got older. I loved her like my grandmother, but she drove younger witches away," she said.

"I didn't even know witches had problems like this. Judy's coven was so warm and friendly," I said.

"But, they made you leave," Gabriella said. "Every coven has its warts, Felix."

I'd struck a nerve and in response she'd punched back.

"You don't know anything about it," I said. "No one in Judy's coven was committing murder."

"You can be an ass. You know that?"

"Me?" I asked. "Your coven starts a war with god knows who and now you want me to help bail you out."

"Fine. We'll solve this by ourselves. Felicia didn't want me talking to you anyway" Gabriella shook her head in disgust and stood.

I stood up with her. "Wait. Don't go. I want to help find Clarita," I said, grabbing her elbow.

She pulled her elbow free from my grasp. "You've got a dumb way of showing it."

"I'm just saying…"

"You're just saying everyone needs the help of the mighty wizard," she said.

"Shit. Why does everything get so damn complicated with you? I want to help because there's a little girl who saw her mother get killed. I'm just pissed that everyone in this damn town is using me as their punching bag," I said.

She turned back to me, but I could still feel a wave of hurt and rejection rolling off of her. I stepped forward, placed my hands on her waist and pulled her to me. She resisted for a moment and our eyes locked. I wondered if I'd misread the situation. A smirk played across her face and she wrapped her arms around my neck as we kissed.

"You really can be an ass," she said, her warm breath caressing my face.

I was star-struck by the moment we were sharing and wouldn't have cared if she had called me a hippopotamus. I sighed and leaned into her again, not wanting to lose the moment.

Twenty minutes later, we'd moved to the couch and she finally pushed me away.

"What would Felicia say about that?" I asked.

"Moons of the equinox," she said with a deliberate eye-roll. "You suck at being romantic."

"Sorry. Right. I should just keep my mouth shut."

She placed a finger on my lips. "That's probably for the best."

I playfully grabbed her hand, then stopped, distracted by her painted fingernails. "What do you know about Benita?" I asked.

"We've been friends a long time, she was a lot better than Victoria gave her credit for," she said.

I held her hand up so that she was looking at it as well. "She'd fight back, wouldn't she? If anyone were trying to hurt her and Clarita, she'd fight back, right?"

"Of yeah. She was hot-tempered. She'd have gone down fighting," Gabriella said.

"She'd have her attacker's blood under her nails."

"Probably."

"If I could get enough material, I might be able to track them. That's why I took Lozano's blood. I was hoping I'd get some of Shaggy's spit too, but the cops took care of that," I said.

"Her body has to be in the morgue."

I stood up and held my hand out to her. "Road trip."

"They won't let us in."

"It's Sunday. How many people could there be?"

"Seriously?"

"What's the worst that could happen?" I asked.

"We get arrested and put in jail," she said.

"It's where I started the day. And do you think they'd really lock us up for visiting a friend who's passed?"

She looked at me like I was nuts, but took my hand all the same.

As I pushed open the plywood, she stopped for a second, looking at the jagged opening.

"You might consider a lock next time," she said.

"Didn't stop your sisters. So if you think about it, this is your fault," I said as I hid a smile.

"Don't push it."

"Seriously, any chance you'd call Kelli and see if she'd ask Andy to come back? I told Mrs. Willoughby I'd fix the doors," I said as we walked down the stairs.

She pulled out her cell phone and pinched it between her shoulder and chin as she unlocked the Civic. The woman’s driving terrified me. She backed the vehicle out at high speed, caught the phone in her hand, switched to drive, and sped down the hill.

"Andy will come by tomorrow after work. He has a line on a matching door, whatever that means," she said and tossed the phone into her purse. A few minutes later she pulled into on-street parking.

"How do you know where the morgue is?" I asked.

"Started out in the district attorney's office," she said.

"Started out?"

"Job didn't fit my personality," she said.

"That sounds like a story."

"You'd have the same problem. I can read people and wasn't willing to prosecute the innocent. Turns out that’s not how the system works." She pointed to a ramp that led to a lower level of the building we'd parked next to.

"In the basement?"

"Service entrance. No cameras down there," she said. "Hope the door's unlocked. Sometimes they leave it open if they've had intake."

"How many people will be on staff?"

"No idea. Skeleton crew on Sunday night, though," she said.

A chill wind passed through me and I became intimately aware of the fact that we were approaching a morgue. I'd never seen a ghost before, but I also knew better than to look into the mystic plane next to a place where so many dead bodies had been.

The basement doors looked much like the entry to an emergency room. Wide sliding glass doors stood closed and the lights were turned down.

"Doesn't look too busy," I said and walked up to a steel door ten feet from the glass ones.

"Where are you going?" Gabriella whispered loudly.

"Why are you whispering?"

"I don't know," she whispered back.

I pulled on the door. It was locked. I waved my hand across the deadbolt lockset and pulled the door open.

"After you," I said, gesturing at the opening with a smug grin on my face.

The hallway we entered was well-lit and we followed it to the end. We stood next to the only other door and listened to make sure the coast was clear. Opening the door, we entered another, wider hallway.

"This way," Gabriella said, turning to the right.

"Hey, what are you doing down here?" It was a man's voice from behind us.

"I've got this," Gabriella whispered and turned around.