A Witch's Handbook of Kisses and Curses (15 page)

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One not-so-special evening, I was searching through Jane’s sales records from two years ago and found a thread of old ritual items sold to a collector in upstate New York that looked promising. Gabriel was hanging another photo on the wall, a shot of a Halloween party in which Jane and Tess Maitland were dressed as Elvira and Wonder Woman, respectively. The Mistress of the Dark herself sat discussing new titles at the coffee counter with Andrea. Dick was absent. The girls claimed he was on another business trip, but given the way Jane’s mouth quivered when she said it, it seemed a little suspicious.

Neither Jane nor Andrea was thrilled with the news about my hiring at the clinic. The idea of my working seemed to make Jane feel guilty. She twisted a tea towel between her hands and shot Gabriel distressed looks as I described my evening at the clinic. “You’ve got too much
on your plate already, Nola. What if I gave you an allowance from your fair share of the shop?”

“I can’t take money from you, Jane.”

Jane scoffed. “Why not? This is money I wouldn’t have had without Mr. Wainwright leaving me the shop. And if he’d known about you, I’m sure he would have wanted you to have a stake in the store. I thought about it when your great-uncle Emery came to town, but he was a gigantic douchebag.”

“You mentioned him before,” I said as Andrea’s lips peeled back from her teeth in a growl. And after hearing Jane’s succinct explanation of my great-uncle’s time in the Hollow, I couldn’t blame her. The moment Emery had rolled into town, he’d started sifting through the stock, stalking Andrea, and generally annoying the hell out of Jane. They’d found later that he was a mole sent by another vampire trying to steal an important book from Jane’s collection. This vampire had turned him in exchange for his service, and he had kidnapped Andrea and turned her against her will. Jane had taken great pleasure in turning Emery over to the Council for punishment.

“Hell, if that was the precedent set, I’m surprised you let me through the shop door.”

Jane gave a sincere shudder, her mouth crimped into an expression of distaste. “The point is, you’re here doing something I’m sure Mr. Wainwright would have wanted you to do. There’s no way I’m going to let you spend valuable time waiting tables when you could be looking for these artifact thingies.”

“I’m working at a medical clinic. I’m hardly slinging drinks,” I protested.

Jane gave me an expression she called the “stink-eye.” I returned it with the bitch-brow. And we sat back and let the two expressions battle it out.

“What do we do now?” Andrea whispered to Gabriel.

“Stay still and try not to attract their attention?” Gabriel whispered back.

Eventually, Jane won the staring contest, because I’m pretty sure she never had to blink. I hated to admit it, but Jane had a point. I wouldn’t be making much at the clinic. In fact, I
would
make more money waiting tables, but it made me feel better to know that I was doing something I was (sort of) qualified for, and I was helping people. Also, it gave me something to think about besides the search. It couldn’t be healthy for me to obsess over it every minute of the day.

But I knew I would probably have to get another part-time job, in addition to the clinic, to make ends meet. It would be terribly convenient to spend those working hours here in Jane’s shop. I blew out a breath and thought about what Nana Fee would say. McGavocks had their pride. But if she thought that my pride was keeping me from fulfilling my purpose, she would probably whack me one with her walking stick and tell me to stop behaving like the back end of a mule.

I growled in defeat, holding up one hand and giving her a stern glare. “Agreed, but I’m keeping my job at the clinic and you’re not
giving
me anything. I’m
earning
a
wage. I don’t know what I’ll do for you, but it will be an honest day’s work.”

“OK, I hereby appoint you director of magical artifact location.” Jane shook my hand, her tone prim.

She gave me a “job” doing exactly what I was doing anyway. “You’re a smart-ass, Jane Jameson.”

I barely noticed Andrea’s grumbled “I will never be as smart as Jane Jameson-Nightengale” from the end of the bar.

“See, you’re adjusting to the corporate culture already,” Gabriel said brightly, tossing me a midnight-blue Specialty Books T-shirt.

“I’m glad we have that settled.” I sighed, leaning back in my chair. Jane gave my shoulder a little squeeze and handed me a cup of chamomile tea. “But it doesn’t get me any closer to finding the other Elements. And I’m running out of places in the shop to look.”

“Well, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” Jane said. “I thought we might try asking Mr. Wainwright.”

“The deceased Mr. Wainwright?” I asked while Jane cringed and nodded. “I swear to all that’s holy, you lot, if I find out that Mr. Wainwright is a vampire, or in the witness-protection program, or any condition other than dead, I will throw a hissy and destroy that very expensive display of crystal figurines over there.”

“See what happens when you hire people without a background check?” Andrea asked Jane.

“Shut it, you,” I retorted.

Jane was back to twisting the tea towel between her hands. “Look, I wasn’t quite sure how to tell you this, but your grandfather only moved onto the next plane a few months ago.”

“Next plane?”

Jane nodded, clearly trying to choose her words carefully. “He died here at the shop. I found his body a few hours later. His spirit was already haunting the shop. He said that he was far too interested in what was happening here on earth to move on just yet. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that part of ‘what was happening’ was his dating my aunt Jettie, who was also a ghost.”

I wouldn’t quibble with a vampire about the existence of ghosts. It seemed like a doomed argument. And Nana Fee had all but told me she would come back to haunt me if I didn’t accept her task. I sincerely hoped that she’d run out of postmortem steam with her otherworldly reminders and had moved on to the next plane.

“Wait, ghosts can date?”

“Apparently,” Jane said. “The pair of them stuck around for almost a year. Until they both decided that it was time for them to move on. They couldn’t define it, and I don’t want to try to explain it, but wherever that is, we aren’t supposed to be able to contact them.”

“So why are you telling me this?”

“We aren’t ‘supposed’ to be able to contact them, but that doesn’t mean we can’t. I haven’t tried yet because I wanted to respect their wishes. But I figured between a vampire mind-reader and a witch, we might have enough mojo to make a connection for an emergency call.”

I grimaced, thinking of my surreal chat with Mr. Wainwright in the panda dream. If that was the sort of conversation I could expect, I wasn’t sure I wanted to make that call. Of course, it might be different, since, ostensibly, we would be speaking to Mr. Wainwright and not my imagination’s version of him. I hoped it would be different. I didn’t think my imagination was being very kind to him.

Then again, Ouija boards weren’t something my family toyed with. We respected the life cycle. While it was often devastating, death was as much of the process as life, so it didn’t make sense to bother a spirit after the person had moved on. For Nana Fee’s sake, I hoped she’d moved on. I didn’t like the thought of her hovering around semirural Kentucky just in case I needed her. “So, what, we’re going to break out a Ouija board and leave him a voice mail?”

Jane shook her head vehemently. “No, no Ouija boards. The channel is too wide open. You don’t know whom you’re inviting into your emotional space. Plus, every scary story that ever started with a Ouija board ended in bloody, grisly death. Or getting in touch with Jim Morrison.”

“Does this conversation seem circular to you?” I asked Andrea. She shushed me.

“I think we need this.” Jane held up an oddly shaped hunk of red plastic.

Andrea tilted her head. “Is that a—”

“A twenty-sided die from my parents’ Scattergories game, yes,” Jane said. “I figured we would ask questions
while we roll the dice. We would have just as good a chance of getting a message spelled out this way, maybe without the spooky ironic death messages.”

“How is this different from a Ouija board?” I asked.

“Well, we’re not going to keep our hands in constant, sustained contact with this. Less chance of the wrong spirits getting a connection.”

“You just pulled that explanation out of your bum, didn’t you?”

“It’s a total rationalization,” she admitted. “But it’s all I can think of.”

“I’m leaving before one of us gets possessed by the spirit of an evil prom queen,” Andrea said, turning on her heel toward the door. Jane and I caught her through the elbows and dragged her back. Jane flipped the sign on the door to “Closed,” which made sense. I would hate to walk into a bookstore and find the staff trying to commune with the dead.

As we sat around one of the coffee tables, prepping the “board,” Jane turned off the lights and lit a few candles for the right ambience. Gabriel shared a commiserating look with me. “I’m only here because Jane thought it would be strange to leave a seat open at a four-person séance table. Which only goes to show that some of the etiquette lessons her grandma tried to hammer into her skull took root.”

“Bite your tongue,” Jane warned him.

“And I would like to go on record as saying this is a stupid idea and will only lead to trouble,” Andrea said.

“Noted,” Jane said, handing her a notebook. “Now,
you take down the messages. You have the neatest handwriting.”

Andrea grumbled, “Yes, because penmanship is going to make a huge difference when we accidentally contact that demon from
The Exorcist
.”

Jane ignored her. “OK, Nola, have you ever done any meditation or visualization exercises?”

“No.”

“Oh, good.” She sighed. “They’re for hippies. What we’re going to do is close our eyes and clear our minds.”

Andrea rolled her eyes but complied with Jane’s instructions. I exhaled slowly through my nose. I tried to picture myself standing in a bright, white room, empty of people, colors, and sound. But I kept thinking about Jed, about my grandmother, about the Elements.

Jane cleared her throat. “Clear your head, Nola.”

“I am,” I whispered.

“No, you’re not. I can tell, remember?”

I harrumphed, which made Andrea snicker.

“I want you to picture Mr. Wainwright. His gray hair is all frizzy and standing off of his head like he’s been struck by lightning. He’s smiling, because he thought he’d lost his glasses again, but they were just stuck on top of his head. Can you see him?”

I nodded.

“So talk to him.”

“I feel silly,” I whispered.

“Mr. Wainwright has seen us do far stupider things than this,” Andrea muttered. “Someday we’ll show you all the pictures from the Halloween party.”

“Gilbert Wainwright,” I called. “This is your granddaughter. I need your help. Please, wherever you are, please come closer to this place, where you used to spend so much time, and speak to your friends.”

I sighed and rolled the dice several times. The letters spelled absolute nonsense. Sheepishly, I told Jane, “I feel ridiculous.”

“G.R.F.K.B.,” Jane said. “Maybe it’s a Klingon ghost?”

Andrea buried her face in her hands and dropped her forehead onto the table. I giggled and took the die. “Please,” I whispered, completely sincere. “I really need help. I don’t know what I’m doing. Anything I’ve managed to accomplish is the result of blind stinking luck. I could really use a clue or a hint or something.”

“K.J.O.W.P.L.,” Jane said as I rolled the die.

“Come on!” I cried. “My grandmother made a glowing moon appear against my ceiling. You can’t play a silly word game with me?”

“S.O.R.R.Y.,” Jane read, grinning widely and jostling Andrea’s arm while she bounced up and down in her seat. “Mr. Wainwright? Thanks for talking to us. We miss you. Is Aunt Jettie OK?”

“L.O.V.E.”

“Aw, that’s nice,” Jane said. “Tell her I love her, too.”

“Very sweet,” I agreed. “It’s nice to, uh, meet you. Mr. Wainwright, I’m sorry to cut to the chase, but I’m afraid we could lose this connection any second. I need to find the objects Nan—Fiona gave you.”

“N.O.T. G.I.L.B.E.R.T.”

Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up, his hand gripping Jane’s even more tightly. “
Not
Gilbert?”

“I told you!” Andrea hissed. “This way leads to pea-soup vomiting and madness.”

“Who are you?” Gabriel asked.

“N.A.N.A.”

“Nana Fee?” I shouted.

I couldn’t seem to find words or air. I’d missed my grandmother so much, and here she was, talking to me through a silly party game. Even though I’d had time to prepare for her death, there were still so many things I wanted to say to her. I felt the tears trail down my cheeks. Jane slipped her arm around my shoulder and squeezed me against her side.

Jane rolled the die again. “M.O.T.H.E.R.”

“My mother’s dead,” I whispered to Jane.

“Maybe it’s mother as in my mama?” Jane said.

“Well, your mother had the candle. Maybe she’s referring to that,” I said. “Yes, Nana, we know Jane’s mother’s had the candle. Do you know where we might find the other three?”

“M.O.T.H.E.R.,” I said after we rolled the dice and it spelled the same word.

“G.” Jane said. “A.G.A. Was your nana a Lady Gaga fan?”

Glaring, I took the die and rolled. “D.E.S.K.”

“Mother Gaga desk?” I said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“L.O.V.E.,” Andrea said, after rolling the die. “Aw, that’s nice.”

“Love you, too,” I told her. “And please, don’t stick around this plane for me. I need to know that you’ve moved on to a better place. And that you’re happy.”

Gabriel rolled nothing but As over the next few minutes.

“It would seem your grandma took your advice,” Andrea said, nudging it with her pen.

We tried rolling the die again but ended up with more nonsense Klingon words.

“I think that’s all we’re going to get out of her. I’m sorry I put you through all this, Nola. I don’t think we got a lot of usable information,” Jane said, pushing up from the table.