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.
Chapter 5
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
“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.
Chapter 5
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
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