Something Wicked, page 12
“How about you, hon?” Lyla was probably a good ten years younger than me, but she still gave off the comforting cozy vibe of an old-timey diner waitress, so her calling me “hon” didn’t feel forced or weird. I kind of loved it.
“I’ll get the cheeseburger, add caramelized onions, hold the relish, side fries, and a strawberry shake.”
“Comin’ right up.” Lyla wrote my substitutions down and left the table.
“Strawberry?” Rich said.
“Yup, there’s absolutely no better milkshake flavor on earth—I don’t care how fancy the options are. Why? What did you get?”
“Oh, I’m a purist. Vanilla all the way.”
“And you’re making fun of me for ordering strawberry?”
“What can I say, I’m a man of refined tastes.”
I snorted, unable to help myself. I was being extra-elegant on this … was this a date? I wasn’t sure what to call it. It was certainly two old friends connecting, but if I had still been a teenager, I would definitely have assumed that milkshakes with a cute boy was a real date.
Of course, I was thirty-five, not fourteen, like I was when I’d last been friends with Rich, so things got a little more nuanced the older we got.
Lyla returned with our milkshakes, and as I was making room in front of me for mine, my elbow knocked my glass of water off the edge of the table.
I panicked, reaching for it reflexively, and everything seemed to move in slow motion. But as I resigned myself to knowing I wouldn’t be fast enough to catch the glass, something unusual happened. For a moment I was so fixated on the glass that I barely realized it, but things didn’t just seem to be going in slow motion: they were actually frozen.
I got hold of the glass, a splash of water frozen in place over the lip like a little mini wave, and I replaced it on the table, letting out a little whoosh of relief.
Then I noticed Lyla was literally immobile, her face locked in an expression of surprise as she watched the glass fall. Rich, too, was frozen where he’d been when I knocked the water over, half out of his seat, like he thought he might be able to catch the glass from there. Around the restaurant, all the diners were motionless, burgers halfway to their mouths, or stuck midsentence in whatever they’d been saying.
Outside, a car on the street was paused in the middle of the road, just … not moving. It wasn’t parked; it had simply stopped moving.
I released my hand from the glass and let out a long breath to steady myself. As I withdrew my hand, the world around me started to move again, going from frozen to live action, just as it had been before. It only took a second or two, but it was wild to see the change happening. The noise returned, and Lyla’s reaction shifted from surprise to confusion, as did Rich’s.
“I thought …” He didn’t finish his sentence, just looked from the floor to the table, and realized the glass was sitting there safely.
“Wow, those are some good reflexes,” Lyla said once she regained her composure.
I stared at the glass and at my hand, still trying to process what had happened.
Had I just accidentally stopped time?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Since I couldn’t exactly run screaming from the restaurant after my frozen-time moment, nor could I ask Rich or Lyla if they had seen what I had—because neither of them seemed especially keen to suggest they had—I continued through the rest of dinner like nothing had happened.
Rich must have sensed the shift in my mood, though, because I had definitely stopped making jokes or poorly flirting with him. I’d even stopped wondering if every other thing he said was an indication he was secretly a killer and that I should stop flirting with him immediately. He soon stopped asking so many questions, and the meal took on a more rigid and formal feel.
I ate and enjoyed my burger, but nothing was the same. I felt like I was in a waking dream where none of this was real, and I couldn’t understand what was happening. First there were the Truth Be Told scones, which I’d been willing to write off as a fluke and to think that perhaps Dierdre had just decided to overshare a little that day.
But there was no easy way to explain what had just happened to me without magic being real. Either magic was real, and I might be a witch, or else I was going nuts, and I didn’t really like option B. Option A was a hard enough pill to swallow, but at least then a lot of the stuff I’d been experiencing since arriving in Raven Creek would make a bit more sense.
Emphasis on a bit because not a heck of a lot was making sense here in general.
“Hey, are you okay?” Rich asked finally. “I thought we were having a pretty good time at first, but now I feel like you want to be anywhere else but here. Did I say something?”
I blinked at him a few times, as if I’d forgotten he was here at all, I’d been so lost in thought and worry over my potential newfound powers.
“No, you’ve been great—I’m so sorry.” I struggled to find an explanation for my behavior that wouldn’t send him running for the hills or get me locked up in an institution. “I’m just feeling a little off. I keep thinking about what happened at the shop.” This wasn’t entirely a lie but also wasn’t even remotely the whole truth.
“I know what you mean.”
This gave me an unprecedented opportunity to ask him a bit more about the murder, which hadn’t been my intent, but I wasn’t about to hold back and not ask a few questions. I didn’t want Rich to be the killer, but I couldn’t just let him off the hook because I thought he was cute. I sort of wished I’d brought one of those Truth Be Told scones along with me to see if they worked on everyone or if Dierdre had just been a special case.
“Were you home when it happened?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I work weird hours, so I probably got home not long before the police called you.” He must have registered a question on my face that I hadn’t asked out loud, because he added, “You showed up about fifteen minutes after I did. I could hear you talking to the detective from upstairs.”
I let his words process for a moment while taking another bite of my burger. Now that I’d distracted myself, I could actually really taste the flavor, and it was incredible. “I don’t think I ever asked you what it is you do. I know the first time we bumped into each other, you were leaving for work as I was finishing at the shop. Do you have an overnight shift somewhere?” He’d been pretty nicely dressed at the time, as he was now, in a button-down white shirt and nicely tailored pants.
Rich gave a half-hearted smile. “I get the feeling if I tell you now, it’s just going to lead to more questions.”
At that remark, my brow rose in uncertainty. Why should he be worried about more questions? “It’s not illegal is it?”
He’d been taking a sip of his milkshake when I asked, and almost choked on it as he started to laugh. “No. Well, not usually anyway.”
Red flags popped up all around him in my mind. “I hope you don’t think you can answer the question like that and then not elaborate.”
Rich sighed. “I’m a private investigator.” He stole a fry off my plate and popped it in his mouth. “It’s a hard job to explain because the second I tell people what I do, they either think I’m Sam Spade from The Maltese Falcon or the dad from Veronica Mars.”
“You could have just said ‘Veronica’ if you wanted to be cooler.”
“I am many things, Phoebe, but I think we can agree I am definitely not cool.”
I would probably argue otherwise, especially now that I knew he was a private detective. “Is that why you were poking around in the back alley when I bumped into you the other day?”
“To be fair, that’s where I park my car. But yes, I was trying to see if there might be anything lying around the police had missed. It’s not every day someone gets killed right outside your house, you know?”
“Or right outside your store.”
“So, you can understand, then, why I might have a bit of an extra interest in it? That and it’s second nature to me at this point. I was a cop for about ten years before I decided to go solo. You seem to be mighty interested in the case yourself, for a civilian. I heard you basically told Dierdre Miller she had done it?”
I scoffed. “Did you hear that from Owen?”
“No, I heard it from Dierdre and pretty much everyone Dierdre saw that day. Guess you aren’t in too much of a hurry to make friends around here.” He laughed, but the words stung a little. Between him and Owen, I was feeling guilty, but anyone with the tiniest bit of common sense would have thought Dierdre was connected. I still wasn’t ready to say she was innocent, frankly. Her behavior toward me since I’d gotten into town had been suspicious, to put it mildly.
“She said she’d never met him before—the victim, that is. But they were together in front of my store the day he died, so I’m not really sure how I can believe her.”
“Did she have an explanation for that?”
“She claims Ox—that’s the victim—”
“I know.”
“You know?”
He nodded. “Yeah one of the officers mentioned they figured out his name. I know some of the guys from the local PD pretty well from my time working in a neighboring precinct.”
“Oh. Well, she said he was an old friend of Eudora’s and had been asking about the shop. She claims he was interested in seeing it, and she just showed him the way.”
“And you don’t believe her?”
“I knew my aunt pretty well, and I have a hard time imagining her with a BFF who’s a former con named Ox—you know what I mean?”
Rich shrugged. “I don’t think you give your aunt enough credit. She did a lot for the people around her, especially those who might have a hard time lifting themselves up. She actually made it a pretty common habit to give jobs to people whose criminal records could impede them from getting work elsewhere. The guys don’t normally stick around too long, but Eudora had more than one former inmate help her stock the shelves at The Earl’s Study over the years.”
This news hit like a ton of bricks being dropped on my head. I had made an assumption that Ox was there to break in, but if he had been a former employee of Eudora’s or knew of her through someone else who had worked there, then there was a chance he was there for help.
Which meant I now had to wonder if a truly innocent man had been killed behind my shop.
“You’d never seen him before, though? Not while you were living over the shop?”
Rich shook his head. “No, Eudora hadn’t had any former cons working for her in the last couple of years, not after her health started to fail. I don’t recall her ever mentioning Ox, or Carl, specifically, but there’s a chance she might have known him personally, or he heard of her from one of the other guys she helped. The cops I talked to said there was no local address for Ox, and when they showed his picture around to local businesses, a few people mentioned that he looked familiar, but no one recognized him or knew him by name. I expect he was just passing through, and maybe when Eudora wasn’t there to help him, he decided to help himself.”
Most of what Rich said mirrored my own thoughts, except his conclusion wasn’t as generous as mine had been. He thought being turned away had driven Ox to try breaking in, while I had to wonder if Ox had just been at the wrong place at the wrong time.
All of which made me wonder: Why would someone want a former convict dead?
Just who had Ox been, and what had he really wanted from The Earl’s Study?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I had plenty to think about when Rich and I walked out of the restaurant, and a huge part of me wanted to go home, brew up a pot of Eudora’s Slumber Party, a chamomile blend with valerian in the mix to help send you off to dreamland. But as we left the diner, I notice the little new age shop down the block still had its open sign lit.
“I appreciate the dinner and your giving me a little food for thought as well,” I said.
“Puns. Oh, Phoebe, I was really starting to have a little crush on you until you used a pun.”
I arched a brow at him, trying very hard not to giggle like a fourteen-year-old at his use of the word crush. “I’m sorry, if you can’t appreciate a good pun—and that one was actually entirely unintentional—but if you’re anti-pun, this thing between us would never work out.”
Rich smirked. “I’m sure I could learn to like a little word play.”
He stared at me, and a warm breeze shifted my hair. He reached out and pushed one of the long dark strands back behind my ear, and for a moment I was absolutely sure he was going to kiss me. My pulse hammered and I considered making a run for it, but then he let his hand drop and stepped back a few inches.
I was equal parts disappointed and relieved. I hadn’t kissed anyone, or even thought about kissing anyone, since my divorce, and I wasn’t sure I should start with someone I had recently believed might literally be capable of murder. I also hadn’t kissed anyone but Blaine in a decade and honestly wasn’t sure I’d be very good at it anymore.
“Do you want me to walk you home?” Rich asked.
“My car is at the store, still.”
“Then do you want to walk me home?”
My gaze darted to the new age shop, New Moon. I had no way to know if they were real witches or if they could answer any questions about what had happened to me earlier, but if there was even the slightest chance they could help me, I didn’t want to wait another minute longer.
“I think I’m actually going to go check out that shop over there. I’ve been working late every day to get the Earl opened, and I haven’t seen any of the other stores in town yet.”
“You need some crystals and incense at six?” A smirk played at the corner of his mouth.
“Maybe they have some sage so I can do a little cleansing ritual of all the bad vibes around the shop.”
He held his hand over his heart, pretending to be wounded. “Ouch.”
“Hey, if you hear bad vibes and immediately assume I’m talking about you, that sounds like a you problem,” I countered.
“Fair play, fair play. Well at least let me walk you over there.”
I wanted to argue that it was only a hundred feet away, but if I protested too much, we’d bypass flirting and go right into rejection, and I really didn’t want to do that. I liked him, and I wanted to know more about him. I needed to know more about him if I was going to be able to trust him.
He walked me to the door of the shop, and once again we had a moment, a long, lingering stare that felt like the weight of every expectation was hanging on it. I wanted to grab him by the jacket and kiss him, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for that yet. I let out a little sigh, and the moment broke.
“I had a really nice time tonight,” I said instead of kissing him. And that, at least, was mostly true.
“Me too. I’ll see you around?”
“I’m pretty unavoidable. You’ll owe me rent in a couple weeks.”
Rich laughed and headed back in the direction of Main Street. Meanwhile, I turned my attention toward New Moon, making sure they weren’t about to close, as it was almost six o’clock. The hours on their door proclaimed they were open until seven, alleviating any of my guilt about going inside.
Maybe I was looking for an excuse not to.
My heart raced as I pushed open the door and like at The Earl’s Study a little bell overhead announced my arrival to whoever was working. The interior of the shop was dimly lit, but that gave the space a welcoming, homey feel. The scent of incense was heavy in the air and reminded me a lot of Eudora’s house, though in a much smaller space, which made everything more concentrated and intense.
The little shop was crammed wall to wall with display cases and heavily laden tables showing off their various wares. Little bowls of crystals were everywhere, their polished beauty shown in their best light, with black velvet tablecloths. In the locked glass display cases were more crystals, but these were much bigger and glittered impressively under overhead lights. A giant amethyst caught my eye. Its beautiful colored interior seemed to have a hundred different shades of purple trapped in each jagged facet.
I wasn’t sure what was responsible for the change, but now that I was inside the shop, my nerves seemed to be vanishing with each passing second. My anxiety felt like a distant memory. I had never put a lot of faith into crystals as being capable of any real healing, and certainly I’d never charged them in moonlight or anything, but if something in here was able to chase off my very real anxiety, I would buy twelve of it.
“Hello.”
I almost jumped out of my skin, completely forgetting that someone else would have to be in an open store with me.
I turned around to see that a young woman, probably younger than me even, was standing behind the glass and wood display counter. She definitely hadn’t been there when I walked in. She was beautiful, with light brown skin and an Afro clipped short to her head and dyed an almost white blonde. A smattering of freckles covered her cheeks and nose, and the gold hoop earrings she wore were so large they almost touched her shoulders.
“You’re Eudora’s niece, aren’t you?” she said.
I started, wondering if she was psychic. “H-how did you know that?” I asked, hating the nervous stammer in my voice.
The woman smiled. “Because I knew Eudora very well, and you look exactly like her if she had been able to age in reverse.” Her voice was melodic, like she was constantly on the verge of a light, breezy laugh. “Phoebe, right?”
I nodded, still not completely convinced she wasn’t psychic. Being so new to town, it was hard for me to believe that everyone always knew who I was, and I was also at a constant disadvantage not knowing who any of them were. Sure, the names rang a bell from Eudora’s calls and letters, and I’d likely met some of them when I was a child, but at the same time, so many of the people in Eudora’s life seemed to be total strangers to me but acted like I was an old friend of theirs.
“I’m Honey,” she said.
Without realizing it, I must have made a face, because this time she actually did laugh, and the sound was like a light breeze through wind chimes. “Don’t worry—I get that reaction all the time. My parents decided well after the hippie movement that they were going to live in a planned off-the- grid community, and so, you guessed it, they were hippies, just without all the free love and drugs of the seventies.” She made a little peace sign with her fingers. “And I got saddled with Honey Moonbeam Westcott as a name.” She shrugged. “Guess no one was really surprised when I opened a place like this.”
