A Witch In Time: Magic and Mayhem Book Three (17 page)

“Amen,” Bob shouted over his shoulder as he ran back to the men’s room.

Looking around the circle, I grew calmer. Roger, Simon, Wanda, DeeDee, Sassy, Jeeves and the chipmunks were ready to go, along with many of my other Shifter friends. Chad, Chip and Chunk had joined the cast and were playing acrobatic B-actors that performed in Joan’s films. Their excitement was palpable. They were fitting into Assjacket splendidly. It was getting easier to ignore the gum thing too—well, kind of.

“Alrighty people, let’s go!” Fabio saluted us and made his way out into the back of the house to run the sound. Simon followed to man the spotlight and we all got into our places back stage.

And the shitshow began…

CHAPTER 17

“Mother
fucker
! I think I lost part of my boob out there when I did the forward roll,” Sassy lamented as we stood in the wings and watched the chipmunks make a lopsided pyramid much to the delight of the crowd.

Sassy was correct. There was a large wad of toilet paper center stage.

“I told you to take that crap out of your bra,” I whispered as I waited in terror for my entrance.

The show was a hot mess, but the audience was loving it. Maybe Fabio was right. Just going out there and letting it rip would be fun.

“I got busy giving Jeeves a good luck hand job and forgot to take it all out,” she replied in a tizzy. “Should I zap it off the stage?”

“Goddess, no. You might catch the chipmunks on fire and cause a stampede to the exit. We need to have a show on record where no one gets maimed. Leave it. We can pick it up during our scene,” I told her as I tried to stop my lips from quivering in nervousness and block out the fact that Sassy had just told me she’d serviced Jeeves before the show.

“Good thinking.” She quickly removed another huge wad from her bra and tossed it on the prop table. “Do you know what the plungers are for?”

“No and I don’t want to,” I told her as I bent over and touched my toes.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” I snapped. “I’ve seen it on
Dancing With The Stars
. I figure this is what you do before you go out on stage.”

“Right,” Sassy agreed and touched her own toes. “Um, Zelda?”

“What?” I asked as I stood back up and grabbed onto the wall so I didn’t fall from the head rush I’d just given myself.

“You’re on.”

Shit. She was right. I was supposed to go out there and listen to my dad’s voice and mime the crap out of what he was saying.

Was I going to really going to do this?

Sassy gave me a smile, a hug and a hearty shove.

Yep, I was going to do it.

Great Goddess on high, Simon was correct. The spotlight was so bright I couldn’t see a single face in the audience. Unfortunately I couldn’t see anything at all and narrowly missed walking right off the front of the stage and into the unsuspecting arms of a patron. Thankfully Chunk was quick on his feet and pulled me back from the edge.

I’d be at loathe to admit it later, but I was having fun. The more I got into it the better it was and the crowd was hooting, hollering and applauding like crazy. I knew some of the noise was the alcohol talking, but it was fun to pretend it was for me too.

Sassy ran out on the stage and joined me as my dad droned on about how Mommie was too vain to get fat and have children and decided to adopt as a publicity stunt.

Was that actually true?

“Joan and her children, Christina and Christopher, posed for many pictures in every popular magazine of the time
!” Fabio’s voice boomed through the speakers.

“Bob, get your beaver butt out here. We’re on,” Sassy hissed under her breath as Bob stood frozen in the wings refusing to move.

“To the world Christina and Christopher had the perfect life with their loving Mommie, but was that really what was going on?”
Fabio’s recording crooned.

“Bob you little butt-brain, get yourself and your uni-brow out on this stage immediately,” Sassy demanded in what kind-of sort-of passed as a loud stage whisper.

Bob was still frozen like a statue and going nowhere fast. Whatever. We could do it with out him. I gave Sassy my best Joan Crawford eyeball and pulled her attention back to me. We posed and smiled as Simon blinked the spotlight on and off as if it were a giant camera. I was literally seeing spots by the time we’d done all twenty-five poses.

Bob was still in the wings looking like he was going to hurl. I knew I could whip up a little magical wind and blow his sorry ass onto the stage, but since the costumes were
on
loan
I didn’t want Bob’s bile to destroy them. I did this for Fabio to save him from going to jail. However, I also did it for myself because getting thrown up on wasn’t on my agenda for the evening.

And then every actor’s nightmare happened… or at least mine.

The audio went out. There was no more voice-over. No more Fabio telling the crowd about Joan’s farked up life and what a shitty mother she was. Nope, there was nothing but silence.

Horrible, heinous silence.

My heart thundered in my chest and I was certain it could be heard in the next county. My mouth went dry and I felt ill. Should I poof away and never come back? No. That was a weenie move, but what in the heck was I supposed to do?

Sassy looked up at me with huge eyes. She was on her knees pretending to be ten year old Christina and was as thrown as I was. I vaguely heard my dad freaking out in the back of the house as he tried to fix the sound system. The audience was still with us, laughing and thinking this was part of the show. Drunk patrons were a huge blessing. Goddess bless Wanda and her Long Island ice tea.

But this wasn’t part of the show—not even a little bit.

“Press the red button,” I heard Simon shout to my dad over the loud ringing in my ears.

“Where in the hell is the red button? I can’t see it,” My dad shouted back.

“I got ya,” Simon told him as he moved the beam from the spotlight off the stage to illuminate the back of the house so my dad could see.

This was bad—very bad. Not only was I on stage feeling more naked than if I was naked, I could now see everyone in the house—and they were staring at me… waiting.

Closing my eyes, I inhaled through my nose and blew it out slowly through my mouth. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, according to Kelly Clarkson. I was a witch that could take out the continental USA with a blink of my eyes. I had popped hundreds of evil honey badgers and I could heal head wounds and ruptured spleens with my bare hands and magic. Why was standing on stage in front of intoxicated Shifters making me want to melt into the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West?

“What do we do?” Sassy whispered in a panic.

“Um… ” I stuttered as I took in the sea of faces who were beginning to wonder what was going on.

I spotted Mac looking concerned, but as supportive as ever. His wave of encouragement was nice, but it wasn’t his ass up on stage. It was mine and my daughter Christina’s. Maybe I should just grab a stack of wire hangers and pass them out and it could become an interactive show. No. Bad idea. Wire hangers and sloshed Shifters equaled the loss of many eyeballs.

Fabio said to just make it up if something went wrong. I was good at creating fairy tales. Maybe I could do this too. I’d just leave the sex part out.

As my own internal panic attack continued, something oddly familiar and uncomfortable washed over me. I glanced out at the audience and my eyes landed on Baba Yaga who was smiling at me and urging me to continue. She was dressed like a Madonna extra from a 1980’s music video. That didn’t surprise me. Her taste was appalling, but she was always on my side. As much as I bitched about her, I knew she wanted the best for me. She was odd in her methodology, but she was consistent.

No, it wasn’t Baba Yocray-cray that unsettled me, it was the woman seated next to her. Why was she here? Who on the Goddess’s green earth thought that bringing her here was a good plan? Did my father know she was in the audience? I never thought I would lay eyes on the woman again in my life. The lead ball of fear in my stomach disintegrated and was replaced by butterflies of insecurity.

Slowly I walked to the edge of the stage keeping direct eye contact with the woman who bore me. She stared back with no expression on her face whatsoever. She wasn’t angry or resentful. Was she happy to see me?

No. She wasn’t happy. However, she wasn’t trying to kill me either. She was somber and detached…

Sassy was breathing hard and mumbling to herself but I barely heard her ramblings as I was totally focused on my mother. I knew my pseudo daughter was talking, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Everything in the room disappeared for me except my mother’s emotionless face. And then I heard Sassy speak.

“Mommie,” she cried out dramatically. “Why don’t you love me? What did I do wrong?”

An unpleasant laugh left my lips as I realized the irony of what was unfolding. I’d asked the same horrible question repeatedly my entire life and had come up empty every time… but maybe tonight I could close the chapter.

Turning my back on my mother and the crowd, I looked at Sassy kneeling on the floor beseeching me to answer her. But I didn’t see Sassy. I knew she was there, but she had turned into someone else—someone who wanted the same answer she did. I saw me as a little girl. I realized I had the chance to change history right in front of the woman who had burned my worthlessness into my brain. I could tell myself as a child that I was loved and cherished and that I was a lovable little witch.

My mother could take me in her arms and hug me and kiss me. She could tell me she was proud of me and that I would be a wonderful mother just like her some day. She could tell me that I was her good little girl and she would do absolutely anything for me.

It would be so perfect… but it would also be a lie.

Roger had made it clear that at a certain point, I had to make a choice. I could live in the past and let it shape my future or I could make my own future.

I was going to make my own future.

Right now.

“Christina, I don’t love you,” I said coldly in a voice I didn’t know I possessed. Was Joan’s spirit living in her freakin’ clothes and was I channeling her?

“You don’t?” Sassy whispered brokenly with very real tears in her eyes.

“No. I don’t,” I continued, looking away from her tear stained face that reminded me far too much of my own as a child. “You see, I’m not capable of loving you. I’m not capable of loving anyone. Maybe something happened in my life that hardened me or maybe I was so consumed with having power I forgot to care. It doesn’t really matter, but you’re correct. I don’t love you.”

A hush fell over the audience and the laughing and whispering ceased. They were riveted and had sobered up quickly.

“And as much as it may hurt you to know I don’t love you, it’s important that you accept it. Nothing you do will ever make me love you. I can’t feel it and I don’t want it. It means less than nothing to me. However, there is one thing that you should remember. It’s probably the only real truth I will ever tell you.” I paused and an eerie calm came over me. It was a feeling of closure and an omen of a new beginning.

Sassy stared at me in shock and I gave her a real Zelda smile. Her return smile went straight to my heart.

“It’s not your fault that I don’t love you. You did nothing wrong. Sometimes life doesn’t follow natural order. Sometimes mothers don’t love their daughters… but it’s not your fault. I promise. It’s not your fault.”

The clapping started slowly and then became so frenzied I could feel it in my stomach like a bass drum. I didn’t care. There was only one person I wanted to see and she was seated next to Baba Yaga.

I turned and raised my eyes to those of my mother. I didn’t expect her to magically love me anymore. Her eyes held no more emotion than they had before my speech, but she gave me a gift. The most important gift she’d ever given me.

Without altering her expression, she nodded at me—once. It was small but it was very clear. I expected my heart to shatter into a million pieces, but it didn’t. The emotion that consumed me was relief. It wasn’t my fault. It had never been my fault. I was lovable, but just not to her. There was nothing I could have done to make her want me, but it didn’t mean that others in my life would feel the same way.

Baba Yaga’s posse of icky warlocks took my mother by the arm and escorted her to the exit as the Yaga watched the exchange between mother and daughter. The audience still roared, but I barely heard them. The most powerful witch of them all had a hand in this. I was certain of it. Baba Yobusybody meddled in everyone’s lives. And right here, right now, I was grateful she had meddled in mine.

I didn’t need therapy anymore… well, I didn’t need it to deal with my Mommie issues anymore. Roger would be relieved to go back to once a week sessions. I was quite sure I needed head shrinking for about a million other things, but that was fine by me. I was by no means perfect, but the piece of me that I’d been searching for was now mine.