Wicked Souls (5 page)

He’d said Keisha and my other friends could
be in danger if Gabe returned.
If that were the case, I had to send
Keisha back downstairs to the shop.
Get her out of harm’s way.
When
she returned to the living room, however, all I could think to say
was, “Did you see Rachel’s shoes in that last segment?
Wonder if
they come in purple?”

She gave me a weird look.
Oops, my brain
must have shorted out again.
“We’ll check Piperlime after the show,
okay?”

I was about to agree when the doorbell
ding-donged
behind me.

This time, Emilia stood on my doorstep.
She
held up a wreath, decorated with spring flowers, in one hand, and a
bag of potpourri, made from herbs out of her garden, in the other.
“Spring has sprung,” she said, much too cheerfully.
“Time to spruce
up your place.”

Emilia still felt guilty for trying to kill
me and my Witches Anonymous friends at Halloween the previous year
even though it was really Gabriel’s fault, since he’d been using
her to destroy humankind and set himself up as a god.
She’d been
the reason Luc and I broke up as well, but she was happy I was no
longer with him, and even though she was horrified that
she’d
slept with him, she’d sort of blanked that part out.
Since her return at Christmas, she’d been doting on me like a
mother, bringing me everything from casseroles to her handcrafted
soaps and lotions.

Taking the old wreath off my door—one she
had created as well—she hung the new one up.
In between the purple
hyacinth and white irises, I noticed heather, marjoram and
asafetida.
Protection herbs.
“There,” she said.
“What do you
think?”

I thought my sister was on a mission to try
and protect me in her own Wiccan way.
Which was sweet, but how had
she found out I needed protection?

Keisha peeked over my shoulder, the source,
no doubt, of my angel news.
“Wow, Em.
That’s beautiful.
Can you
make me one of those?”

Apparently I wasn’t the only one afraid of
unwelcome angelic visitors.
I had my doubts, though, that any herbs
could offer that kind of protection.

“Of course.”
Emilia pushed her way through
the door, set the old wreath on the floor and did a quick scan of
the living room.
“I need a couple of bowls for the potpourri.”

She took off for the kitchen, Keisha
following her.

I started to shut the door, when a familiar
voice said, “Hello, Amy.
How are you feeling?”

Father Leonard’s face was flushed and he was
breathing hard, as if he’d run up the steps to my apartment door.
“Father?
What are you doing here?”

“We didn’t get our session in and I was
worried about you.
I did some research on soul taking.
It’s…complicated.”
He handed me a manila file folder and shrugged
off his coat.
“Remember what I said about the soul being tied to
free will?”
He didn’t wait for my answer.
“Whoever controls your
soul controls your freewill.
If your soul is halved, things could
spin out control pretty fast.”
He took the folder back and smiled.
“Got any coffee?”

My mind was overflowing.
My small coat rack,
kitchen and living room as well.
While I put the coffee pot on,
Father Leonard spread his papers out on the kitchen table, Keisha
spread her protection spell to every window and door, and Em lit
candles and hummed under her breath as she scattered potpourri
everywhere.
Cain and Abel hid under my bed.

I was starting to think they had the right
idea.

As I sat down to listen to Father Leonard’s
take on my soul situation, the doorbell rang for the second time.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” I muttered.
“Excuse me, Father.
I’ll be
right back.”

This time, it was Liddy on the other side of
the door, Hathor, her magical familiar in her arms.
Tiny lightning
bolts were zinging around her head.

Crud.
Lightning bolts equaled high stress.
“What happened, Liddy?”

“Oh, Amy, I’m so sorry.”
The lightning bolts
zigzagged strong enough, Hathor meowed and jumped from her arms,
running into the apartment and crouching behind my legs.

My stomach fell.
Closing my eyes for a brief
second, I wrestled for patience.
“Just tell me what happened.”

She reached into her coat pocket and held
out a yellow paper.
“The health inspector.”

My stomach dropped another notch.
A big
notch.
I didn’t need to look at the paper to know the details.
“You
brought Hathor to the shop, didn’t you?”

She gave me a solemn nod, a child who knows
she’s in big trouble.
“She goes everywhere with me.
I tried to keep
her hidden in your office, but…”

“But what?”

“She escaped.
And she didn’t like the health
inspector much.”

I glanced at Hathor, now preening herself as
if she didn’t know we were talking about her.
The cat was a good
judge of character, but when she didn’t like a human, she let them
know in no uncertain terms.
No uncertain
cat
terms.
She
usually scratched the bejesus out of them.
“Please tell me she
didn’t.”

Again the solemn nod and big pleading eyes
from Liddy.
“She didn’t know any better.
Honest, Amy.”

The health inspector wasn’t due for another
month.
Why had he shown up early?
I glanced at the yellow violation
paper and down at Hathor, who gave me a half-lidded look back.
The
muscles in my stomach cramped.
The health inspector had shut the
ice cream shop down for three days upon which time he would be back
to reinspect the place.
He’d also fined me a week’s worth of
profits.

I wanted to swear.
Loudly.
But I couldn’t
stand the hurt in Liddy’s eyes.
Drawing her inside, I put my arm
around her shoulders.
“It’s okay.”
I raised my voice so the others
could hear me.
“I’ll take the fine out of Keisha’s paycheck.”

A hush fell and then Keisha said,
“What?”

“You were the one who hired Liddy to watch
the shop.”

She hustled into the living room, hands on
hips.
“And?”

I handed the yellow paper to her and watched
her eyes widen.
“Oh, shit.”
She slapped a hand across her lips,
checked over her shoulder for the priest.
Sighed when she didn’t
see him.
“Why is the health inspector visiting us in April?”

I shrugged, helped Liddy get out of her coat
and threw it on the nearby chair since there was no more room on
the rack.
“Em and Father Leonard are in the kitchen,” I told her.
Once she’d disappeared into the other room, I did my best John
McClane voice from
Die Hard
as I glared at Keisha.
“What
could go wrong?
Business is slow.
She’ll call if she needs
help.”

Keisha narrowed her eyes at my sarcastic
tone and shook a finger in my face.
“You need to work on that
attitude.”

“Maybe you should have worked your
protection voodoo on my shop, instead of my apartment.”

She started to smart off to me again, and
then dropped her finger.
Her face scrunched in thought.
“Maybe
you’re right.”

A new thought made my cramping stomach
liquefy.
Since the fire last Halloween burned down the building
where we met for Witches Anonymous, the group had been meeting at
the ice cream shop.
“We can’t have the Witches Anonymous meeting
tomorrow night at the shop now.”

“Why not?”

“Everyone will be expecting to eat ice cream
like they always do, and we can’t serve food or beverages of any
kind until the inspector passes us again.”

“Hades Ladies.”
Keisha knew how important
the ceremony was to me, and she rallied fast.
“Don’t worry.
There’s
got to be somewhere else they can hold it.”

But where?
We stared at each other trying to
jog our collective memory to come up with an ideal place.
It
couldn’t be too public, and we had to be able to reserve it without
telling anyone the nature of the meeting.
Ex-witches typically
preferred to keep their status on the down low, hence the reason
for the anonymous part of Witches Anonymous.

As if on cue, Father Leonard, Em and Liddy
walked into the living room.
“Too crowded in there,” Father Leonard
said, motioning to the kitchen with his full mug of coffee.
“Thought we’d move in here.”

Hope flitted through me.
I showed the yellow
paper to him and explained the situation.
“Could we possibly use
the church?”

He hesitated, shrugged.
“Why not?
Nothing
else going on tomorrow night so you’ll have your privacy, and I’m
sure God won’t mind if your counterparts don’t.”

At least one thing was going right.
I threw
my arms around him and gave him a hug.
“Thank you.”

He blushed, made a couple of
garumph
noises low in his throat, and overdid balancing his coffee cup
trying not to spill any.
“Yes, well, uhm… you’re welcome.”

Keisha shut off the TV and everyone huddled
around the coffee table where my favorite priest set up camp, a
definite gleam in his eye, whether from my emotional outburst or
from having an audience to share his findings with, I wasn’t
sure.

He’d given us a rundown on the theology
behind a soul when a loud rap sounded on the door.
“Amy?”
a high
pitched, demanding voice called out.
“Are you in there?”

Marcia.
My nemesis in Witches Anonymous.
A
busybody, a know it all, and super competitive when there was no
competition, she was always looking for a way to make me look
bad.

I glanced at Keisha for support, annoyance
twitching in my semi-empty chest cavity.
“You’ve got to be kidding
me.”

Keisha made a face, giving me her
oh-shit-what-does-she-want response.
My thought exactly.

“Amy!
I can hear you talking.
I know you’re
in there.
Open up!”

I motioned at Father Leonard to hide the
papers, but he gave me one of his patient, don’t-be-silly smiles.
“Marsha’s a friend, Amy.
She’ll want to help with this if she
can.”

The good father had been bowled over by the
WA president from the moment he’d met her at Keisha’s winter
solstice party.
The two couldn’t have been more different in
personality, but sexual attraction didn’t care.
While the priest
ignored it as much as possible, Marcia was a different story.
He
was off-limits, but that didn’t stop her from flooding him with her
saccharin charm and blatantly flirting with him every chance she
got.
Another competition in her book?
Maybe.
She couldn’t stand it
that Father Leonard was my sponsor and not hers.

Hauling myself to the door, I cracked it
open.
“What do you want, Marcia?”

She pushed the door open and brushed past me
as if I wasn’t standing there.
When she spotted her crush, she
stopped and beamed.
“I’m here.
You can start.”

With that she threw her coat at me and went
to sit on the couch next to her crush.
He flushed, tugged at the
collar around his neck, and adjusted himself away from her ever so
slightly, and yet sat up straighter and gave her a glad-you’re-here
nod.
I rolled my eyes so far back in my head they nearly got stuck.
At the same time, I made a gagging sound in my throat, but no one
heard me since they were all laughing at something Father Leonard
said.

As he brought Marcia up to speed on the
state of my soul, I dropped her coat on the floor.
“Oops,” I
muttered under my breath.

This day had gone from good to bad to awful.
Gabriel had tried to kill me and stolen a piece of my soul.
I’d had
an uncomfortable encounter with my ex.
My ice cream shop was shut
down, and the one person I couldn’t stand was huddled up next to my
confidant and sponsor—who was not entirely immune to her overt,
demanding, flirtatious ways.
What next?