As I laid out my wet clothes to dry on the tub and went about the business of putting on my best interview facade, I tried not to think about Belfry’s broken communication with the British guy. There were times as a witch when I’d toiled over the souls who needed closure, sometimes to my detriment.
But I couldn’t waste energy fretting over what I couldn’t fix. And if British Guy was hoping I could help him now, he was sorely misinformed.
Maybe the next time Belfry had an otherworldly connection, I’d ask him to put everyone in the afterlife on notice that Stevie Louise Cartwright was out of order.
Grabbing my purse from the hook on the back of the bathroom door, I smoothed my hands over my skirt and squared my shoulders.
“You ready, Belfry?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Ready, set, job!”
As I grabbed my raincoat and tucked Belfry into my purse, I sent up a silent prayer to the universe that my unemployed days were numbered.
Chapter 2
I sagged against the brick fa?ade of the pharmacy and blew out a breath of defeat as I watched the pouring rain splash into a puddle-filled pothole in the middle of the road. “Okay, so that didn’t go quite as I’d hoped.”
Belfry scoffed from the inside of my box-shaped purse. “It didn’t go at all.”
“Jeez Louise. She was like a drill sergeant.” I referred to the manager of the pharmacy, who, in all her yellow-smocked militancy, had shot my application and me down like a skeet shooter.
“Uh-huh. I can’t remember the last time I saw such a sourpuss. She’ll need to set up camp in the laxative aisle if she keeps that up.”
“I feel a little like the fates are conspiring against me, Belfry. This is the ninth job I’ve been turned down for. I didn’t think the humiliation could be topped after yesterday’s rejection. I mean, if you can’t get a job at Weezie’s Weenie Hut, what’s left?”
“That’s not the fates, Stevie. It’s your resume. You have no resume. Humans in the real world have resumes. It looks bad that you’re thirty-two and have no job history. We need to create a human you. A reinvention of sorts.”
Now that really burned my britches. I did so have a job history, and I said as much when I managed to offend the manager of the pharmacy with my outraged disbelief.
Jeez. This was miserable. “I do have a job history, Belfry. I have ten years as a 9-1-1 dispatcher. Shouldn’t that count for something?”
“Well, it might if, in the human world, people were looking for an emergency operator whose specialty was talking psychopathic warlocks off the ledge of a spell.”
Yeah. Good times. I managed a snicker. “I was really good at that.” Then I frowned, annoyed by the memory. My job was the very reason I was in this stinkpot of toxic waste.
“You know what I say to this, Stevie? I say bollocks!”
Somebody’d clearly been influenced by the UK this morning. “Does the British guy say that, too?”
“No. Or I don’t know. I mean, he didn’t when we had that hacked-up communication out there on the cliff. I just imagine that’s the word he’d use for this mess we’re in. If it weren’t for your old job, you’d still be a witch. So again, I say bollocks and bull teats!”
“Bulls don’t have teats. They’re male.”
“Whatever. Why won’t you just listen to me and help me figure out a way to get your powers back? To prove you did nothing wrong? Then you wouldn’t have to worry about getting a crummy minimum-wage job. We could do it. You and me. Just like Rizzoli and Isles. We’ll find a way.”
Ah my Belfry, always my little champion. “Because who knows how long that could take, and in the meantime we have nowhere to live. Besides, what’s there to figure out? A council member stole my powers. Does it get any more definitive than that?”
Why was I allowing myself to be sucked into this conversation? No one wanted to relive the horror of that night less than me.
Belfry growled from inside my purse, rustling the napkin I’d tucked him into to keep him warm. “If I ever get my hands on that dirty bird council mothereffer, I’m gonna rip a hole in him!”
“With your big scary teeth?”
“Oh, shush. I can be scary.”
“No doubt. So scary the word ‘terrifying’ should be a hyphen on your name.”
“You’re avoiding.”
I nodded. You bet your bippy I was avoiding. “Yep.”
“So now that you’ve been usurped by a pimply sixteen-year-old who probably still plays with his X-Men dolls—for a job even someone like me, with no opposable thumbs, could perform—what are you gonna do?”
“Steal his X-Men dolls and burn them in effigy?”
Belfry did his impression of maniacal laughter. “Ooo, I like this plan, Dr. Evil. Tell me more.”