I was still in job-history shock. When a teenaged high school student has more work history than you do at thirty-two, a reevaluation’s in order. It wasn’t like I could tell the manager of the pharmacy I had more people skills than the cruise director on the Love Boat as a 9-1-1 operator for the paranormal.
I’d stopped my fair share of spells gone awry, earthquakes, one tsunami, two almost-shifts in the equator, countless wand lashings, a broom landing on the moon, not to mention hundreds of witch vs. warlock domestic disputes—just to name a few. Believe me, when a wand and a binding spell are involved, it’s a hundred times worse than your average human 9-1-1 call.
But none of that counts anymore and if I let the pot with all my emotions about my current situation sit on the burner too long, it was sure to boil over. So I’d taken to compartmentalizing my anger and only letting it out when I couldn’t feed off the energy of Belfry’s rage.
He only encourages me to ball my fist and raise it to the sky in anguish. For now, that isn’t helping us. Once I manage to figure out this new half of my life, I fully intend to let ’er rip.
Until then…
Pushing off the side of the building, I huffed a determined breath. “I say we go grab some lunch off the dollar menu at that food cart with the guy who makes tacos out of recycled something or other and rethink our plan of attack.”
I began to walk along the cracked sidewalk, staying dry by ducking under the awnings of the various locally owned businesses that had cropped up since I’d been gone.
I wouldn’t admit it to Belfry, but I’d missed the scent of Puget Sound, the tang of water in the air, the colorful sails of the boats in the harbor, and the mountains peeking at me when the skies were clear. I loved Seattle. I never would have left to begin with if not for the job offer in Paris.
The squawk of seagulls darting through the parking lot across the street was like music to my ears. A parking lot for a fresh-fish market that hadn’t been there when I’d left Seattle. Still, Ebenezer Falls was as charming and quaint as ever.
Multicolored awnings decked out each storefront, and though it was February now, the spring would bring with it spots of dappled sun and tulips by the dozen, anchoring each store’s door in bright clay pots the size of barrels.
Bicyclers would stream through town in an array of festive Lycra, the streetlamp posts would sport hanging pots brimming with purple petunias and daisies, and the curbs would be lined with wrought iron tables for diners who were willing to brave the chance of rain with their alfredo.
Despite my circumstances, it was good to inhale cool, tangy air again.
As I made my way down Main Street, blinking lights from a flashing pink and green neon sign caught the corner of my eye, making me slow my roll and look upward at the twinkling bulbs, racing around the perimeter of the sign.
I stopped dead in my tracks, my galoshes splashing into a small puddle as I looked again.
Shut the front door.
Belfry rustled around in my purse, pulling himself up until his little yellow ears poked out of the rim. “What’s the holdup, Boss? I’m starving,” Bel asked, until he, too, read the sign on the store.
Our reflections in the big picture window mirrored one another’s for a moment and then he went silent along with me.
Before he exploded. “I told you the British guy was on the up and up! Told you, told you, tolllld you!”
I reread the flashing sign. Madam Zoltar’s Psychic Readings. Medium To The Heavens. Séances—Palm Readings—Tarot Cards.
Okay, so when British guy relayed the name Zoltar to Belfry, maybe he had heard him correctly. Then again, maybe it was just a bizarre coincidence.
Still, there was an odd tingle in my belly, like the days of old when I still had an emotion to offer other than despair and defeat.
But I wasn’t so convinced yet. “Bel, c’mon. Listen, it’s not that I don’t believe you heard a guy ringing you up from the afterlife. You’re a familiar to a defunct witch. You still have your powers. It makes sense that you’d be some sort of weird channel to my old life and maybe even some residual ghostly chatter, but what does a British guy have to do with a psychic? Especially a psychic who named herself after the one in the movie Big? All human psychics are full of Twinkies. You know it, I know it.”
“No way are you not going in there, Stevie! No bleepin’ way. I know what British Dude said, and the name Zoltar was crystal clear. Not a chance in seven hells I’m not investigating this. If you won’t take me inside, I will climb right out of this musty old purse of yours and find a way in myself. Plus, I’ll strike up conversations with every single person who passes by. Once they’re over the shock of a talking bat, we’ll talk about the weather, the price of pork bellies, we’ll swap recipes and Facebook pages—”