Dewitched (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 3) (26 page)

“You have the most immature palate I’ve ever encountered, Stephania Cartwright. How can you eat such atrocities when there are leftover goat cheese and fig wraps?”

I made a gagging noise, making Whiskey plow down the stairs to meet me at the foot of them as Bel snored softly from my shoulder.

“I’d rather lick a toilet bowl, Spy Guy.”

“That’s vile, Stephania Cartwright—”

The gong of the doorbell thwarted Win reading me the riot act about my taste buds.

My finger shot up in the air. “Save the foodie sermon just a minute more. Maybe Mom forgot something. Like the spare husband she had stashed away in the closet.”

Win’s laughter rang in my ear as I grabbed the door handle and looked out the stained-glass window.

As you all know, I have really bad luck when answering my door, but I was pretty sure it was Sandwich who said he’d drop off Bart’s personal effects around this time.

Popping it open, I felt the warm breeze blow in, but Sandwich wasn’t who was on my doorstep. A very handsome gentleman in a crisp suit, probably in his early thirties, with dark hair and even darker eyes, looked back at me.

“Stevie Cartwright?” he asked in a cultured British accent.

I smiled and nodded. “In the flesh. You are?”

He paused for only a minute, his eyes intensely scanning mine, before he said, “My name is Winterbottom. Crispin Alistair Winterbottom…”

(For now, but don’t miss the excerpt below for book four of the Witchless in Seattle Cozy Mysteries, titled
The Ol’ Witcheroo
—coming in August of 2016! I so hope you’ll join me to find out who this man claiming to be Stevie’s beloved Winterbottom is, discover more clues about Win’s mysterious life and death, and help the gang solve another murder! Until then, happy reading!)

Witchless In Seattle Mysteries, Book 4

I
frowned at the man. “Say again?”

“I said, I’m Crispin Alistair Winterbottom. You
are
Stevie Cartwright, correct?”

“Maybe…” I offered, my eyes avoiding his. What in sweet Pete was going on?

“You already told him who you were, Stephania,” Win chastised in my ear.

“Might I come in and ask you some questions?” he inquired, his eyes penetrating mine.

“How do you know who I am?”

“You were easy enough to find,” he said affably, the breeze lifting his hair and ruffling it in ripples of deep chocolate.

“Stevie? That is
not
me. Do you hear me? He’s an imposter. I repeat, he’s an imposter!”

Yeah, yeah. I’d heard Win. But here was a guy standing on my doorstep, wanting to talk to me, claiming he was my Spy Guy. Not a chance in the deep blue sea I was passing up this newest mystery…

A Paris, Texas Romance, Book 1

“
I
’m warning you, Winnifred Foster. If you say or do anything today that sends our asses back to the pokey, I’ll zap you bald and give you a cold sore that makes you look like you have three lips,” her best friend Zelda groused as she futilely tried to snatch a pair of scissors from Winnie’s hand to prevent her from giving herself bangs.

Winnie hopped on the sagging mattress of her cot, looking down at her partner in crimes of abusive witch magic and current cellmate in witch jail with an accusatory glance.

She held the scissors up in the air. “I’m sorry, me? As in moi? If I say anything? Er, wasn’t it you who told Baba Blah-Blah she was wearing the wrong color leg warmers for that wart on her nose? Or was I just imagining things?”

Zelda swiped for the scissors again. “It’s Baba Yaga,” she corrected, reminding Winnie she’d purposely twisted their jailor’s name out of spite, and it was one of the reasons they were in magic jail to begin with. “You’d better get that right at Council so we appear respectful.”

“Call her whatever you like, Z, but you insulted her, not me. I love you, and while I totally agreed with your fashion assessment, and she did look hideous, I bet pointing out Baba DooDah’s flaws aren’t going to win us favor at Council today. She’s an elephant, my friend. She remembers everything.”

She hopped back off the cot when Zelda stopped trying to make a grab for the scissors. She was worried. They were up for review for parole today and she didn’t want anything screwing that up. She wanted out of this rank-smelling cell with its gray concrete walls and equally gray sheets.

She wanted to go to parties and laugh and drink champagne like they used to.

Drown herself in luxury and forget Ben…

Their cell was barren of any modern conveniences, especially those they could perform magic with—like mirrors. Locked up in Salem, Massachusetts, like serial killers in an old hotel built in the early 1900s that had been converted to a jail for witches.

Cellblock D was designated for witches who abused their magic as easily as they changed their underwear. Witches like her and Zelda.

It wasn’t hardcore like Cellblock X. That was a nightmare of mastermind witch criminals who didn’t just whip up a stack of money to spend at Neiman Marcus like she and Zelda were known to do—but real freaks who’d put the A in apocalyptic Armageddon.

From the outside, the hotel was glamoured to look like a charming bed-and-breakfast, complete with climbing ivy and flowers growing out of every conceivable nook and cranny. Inside it was barren, cold and ugly, and guarded heavily with magic, keeping all mortals at bay.

At the moment, it was just the two of them in Cellblock D. Just Winnie and Zelda and the humor-free staff of older-than-dirt witches and warlocks guarding them.

Zelda made a face, running a hand through her gorgeous red curls. “So, for the sake of our parole, let’s hope Baba Lamadingdong remembers our good behavior. Like the time you taught Big Sue Moses how to make eye shadow out of baby oil and cigarette ashes. Or when I selflessly gave Chi-Chi Gonzalez my extra Kotex pads so she could make some slippers for those Sasquatch-like feet of hers.”

Winnie smiled at her despite her worry about their sentencing. They’d tried. “We made the best out of our stay, didn’t we?”

Zelda twirled a long curl of hair around her finger as though she wasn’t worried, but her next question was riddled with concern. “Do you think we’ll get parole today?”

Winnie avoided the question—one she’d been avoiding since they found out they were next up on the chopping block. She didn’t even want to consider not getting out of this hell today.

Instead, she pulled her bangs forward again, and murmured, “Look at my hair. It’s touching my nose, Zelda. My nose. I can’t be seen like this if we get out. I’ll just do a little.”

Zelda rolled her eyes. “Winnifred, you’ve never done anything a little. Remember the last time you cut your bangs?”

Winnie winced and mumbled into her collarbone. Okay. Sometimes when she was angry, things happened. “That was years ago. They rebuilt the building, and no one was hurt.”

“Fine,” she snapped. “Cut your bangs, but don’t come crying to me when you look like the dude from Dumb and Dumber.”

It was her nerves. She knew it was her nerves, but she couldn’t help herself. “You know what?” Winnie shouted, brandishing the shears under Zelda’s nose. “We’re in jail because of you! I wouldn’t have had to teach that beast Big Sue anything if not for you. And we’d have Kotex pads for days because guess what? We wouldn’t be in jail having to share anything if not for you!”

Zelda planted her hands on her hips. “Um, no. We’re in here because of you.”

Winnie’s mouth fell open. “No. It was definitely you.”

“You.”

“Nope, you.”

“Oh, my goddess!” Zelda yelled. “I didn’t sleep with Baba Yaga’s precious nephew. That was you!”

Oh the guilt. And the heartache. But she wasn’t going to tell Zelda how much it still hurt to think about Baba’s nephew Ben.

She’d call her an idiot. And she’d be right.

So she shot Zelda a coy look and batted her eyelashes to hide the hurt. “First of all, we didn’t sleep. We did plenty of things, but shuteye never came into play. And it was amazing. Probably the most amazing sex I’ve ever had. Second of all, how the hell was I supposed to know he was Baba’s nephew?”

Zelda’s eyes went wide with disbelief. “Um, well, let me see…did the fact that the man’s name was Benny Yaga not ring any fucking bells?”

“He prefers Ben and he used Yagamawitz—not Yaga,” Winnie defended, though he didn’t deserve defending.

But she still wasn’t sure if Ben not changing his last name to avoid the notoriety attached to the name Baba Yaga, the most powerful witch in the world, would have stopped her from falling for him.

Zelda nodded, her fiery hair falling around her shoulders. “And with good reason. Who’d willingly admit that throwback-to-the-eighties of a beast was related to them?”

Baba Yaga loved anything that had to do with the eighties—loved it so much, she piped in Take on Me through the prison speakers as their wakeup call every morning at six sharp.

But Winnie wasn’t the only one responsible for getting them locked up, and she was happy to remind Zelda. “Well, you ran over your familiar. On purpose,” she accused, combing her bangs forward again in preparation for blast off.

“I did not run over that mangy bastard cat on purpose. The little assmonkey stepped under my wheel.”

Winnie let one eyebrow lift in that way she did when she was making a point. In the way she knew would make Zelda crazy. “Three times?” she inquired politely, batting her eyelashes again.

Zelda clamped her lips shut for a moment then conceded, “Fine. We’re both here because we screwed up. But I still think nine months was harsh for killing a revolting cat and screwing an idiot.”

Winnie’s gaze became distant and thoughtful. The way it always did when that night with Ben Yaga was mentioned. “He wasn’t an idiot…but I agree. We’re both guilty,” she replied as she went for the first snip.

Zelda held her breath and blew it out when Winnie put the scissors down and changed her mind with a shrug of her shoulders. “I really need a mirror.”

“In an hour you’ll have one, unless we do something stupid,” Zelda soothed.

Without warning, the magic level in the B&B changed drastically—the stench of centuries-old magic drifted to Winnie’s nose. She grabbed Zelda’s arm, her eyes wide.

“Do you smell it?” Zelda whispered, her eyes alert.

Winnie wrinkled her nose, looking around their cell. “I do.”

“Old lady crouch.”

“Old lady what?” Winnie bit down on her lip. Hard. “If you make me laugh, I will smite your sorry ass when we get out of here. What the hell is old lady crouch?”

Zelda’s grin threatened to split her face. Her fear of incarceration was clearly outweighed by her need to make Winnie laugh.

They needed to laugh again. Like they used to before they were subjected to soap-on-a-rope and thicker-than-cement bland oatmeal for breakfast.

“You know, the smell when you go to the bathroom at the country club…powdery old lady crouch.”

“Oh my hell, Zelda.” She giggled and punched Zelda in the arm. “Now I’ll never get that shit out of my head.”

“Only a lobotomy can erase that one,” she said proudly, knowing full well it would take at the very least a lobotomy to rid her of the visual.

“Well, well, well,” a nasally voice cooed from beyond the bars of their cell. “If it isn’t the problem children.”

Enter one of their jailors. The one and only Baba Yaga.

She had to be at least three hundred if she was a day, but witches aged slowly—so she really only looked thirty-five-ish. The more powerful you were, the slower you aged.

And Baba was powerful, beautiful even with a wart on her nose, and had appalling taste in clothes.

She was dressed right out of the movie Flash Dance, complete with the ripped sweatshirt, leggings, and headband. It was all Winnie could do not to clang a cup against the bars and demand to see the Fashion Police.

Baba was surrounded by the rest of her spooky posse, an angry bunch clearly not happy to be in attendance.

“Baba Yaga,” Winnie said respectfully.

“Your Crouchness,” Zelda muttered and received a quick elbow to the gut from Winnie.

Baba Yaga leaned against the cell bars, her torn-at-the-shoulder sweatshirt dipping over her creamy skin. “Zelda and Winnifred, you have served your time.”

Yay!

“Although, upon your release, you will both have a task to complete with limited magic.”

Boo.

Winnie gasped and Zelda paled. WTF? They’d done their time. Tasks? Limited magic? What did that mean?

Winnie held up a finger. Hold that thought right there. “But…um, Miss Yaga. That’s not exactly fair. “We paid our dues. I did give Chi-Chi Gonzalez all of my Kotex pads.”

“Quiet!” Baba Yaga hissed, waving a freshly painted nail at them in admonishment. “You two are on probation, and during that probation, you will be strictly forbidden from seeing each other until you have completed your tasks.”

“Tasks?” Winnie muttered, girding herself.

Baba Yaga nodded. “Tasks. Selfless tasks. And before you two get all uppity with that ‘I can’t believe you’re being so harsh’ drivel, keep in mind, this is a light sentence. Most of the Council wanted you two imbeciles stripped of your magic permanently.”