Roses & Rye (Toil & Trouble Book 3) (10 page)

“Wait.
You can see me?”

She stomps a slippered foot. “Of course I can, dearie. I’m crazy, not blind.” She reaches out a hand and dumbly I try to grasp it, but of course it goes right through her flesh. She blows out a breath, fluttering the one lank strand of yellow-ochre hair that has made its way free of her curlers.

“Up, dammit. I always forget I can’t touch you young ones.”

I get to my feet, still feeling blindsided. “Mrs. Rudd, what’s going on?”

“’What’s going on?’ she says.
What’s going on?
I ask you.” She seems to roll her eyes at someone I can’t see, before turning back to me. “I really wish you would’ve come to me earlier. We’re cutting it terribly short now.”

“Cutting what short?

She gives me a surprisingly stern look. “Don’t you think it’s about time you stopped skulking around and got to work?”

What?
I’m still trying to process the fact that someone can actually see me, not to mention whatever the hell just happened with Jack. “Mrs. Rudd, I am a ghost. What am I supposed to work on?”

Her chortle is as richly amused as her words. “Coming back to life, of course. And we have to do it by Beltane or you’re a ghost forever, girlie.”

“Beltane? You mean my birthday?”

“Well, it was one before it was the other, you know. Self-centered goose. Now come in and have some tea. We have plans to make.”

She opens the door as if I’m alive, and I float over the threshold, still trying to catch up. One thing makes its way up through the flotsam and jetsam that is my mind at the moment.

“What plans? And how did you know what I was doing with Jack?”

She laughs. “There’s not much the dead get up to that I don’t hear. It’s kind of a side effect of being psychic.”

“That must be—“

“Entertaining. Oh it is, dearie. It is.” She shuts the door and leads me farther into the dim interior.

“I was going to say awkward, but whatever.” I stare around the room. I’ve never been inside Mrs. Rudd’s house even though we’ve lived next door to her ever since I can remember.  It’s not exactly decorated the way you picture an old woman’s home. There are posters of KISS and Styx (the band, not my sister’s boyfriend) on the deep emerald-green walls. A couple signed photos of various Green Bay Packers players are also displayed proudly, including a grinning Brett Favre that has, “Janice, thanks for everything, B” scrawled across the bottom. The ‘everything’ is underlined.

Good god.

All in all it looks like the house of an aging groupie, not a woman who can apparently see the dead. There are no crystal balls, no beaded curtains or tarot cards. Just a lot of rock-n-roll memorabilia, including…

“Is that a plaster cast of Gene Simmons’s tongue?”

“It was worth immortalizing, dearie,” she chortles. “Believe you me.”

Ugh.

“Mrs. Rudd. Why am I here?”

“Well, when a person dies…”

“No, not
here
in the existential sense. Here as in your
house
, here. What did you mean about Beltane and being late?”

“Oh that. Well, your mother and I had a plan, you see. For just such an emergency.”

“My mother knew I was going to die?”

“In a manner of speaking,” she says evasively, opening the door to a closet overflowing with boxes and bags. A poster from
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
is on the back, Tim Curry in all his fishnet glory. “She’s always believed in being prepared, your mother. Now where is that package? Speaking of which, your man has quite a nice—“

“Mrs. Rudd. Please don’t go there.
Please
.”

She mutters something about parochial witches and comes out of the closet with a small box in hand. “Here it is.”

“You know about us being witches?” And ghosts. Which is more than I ever did. I had no idea the afterlife was real until I became a part of it. “Are you some kind of FTC?”

She laughs and thrusts a small velvet pouch into my hands, which of course falls to the ground immediately. She sighs and picks it back up, shaking it at me like a wagging finger. “I’m not one of you, no. I was your mother’s best friend. A very long time ago. I was kind of a naughty little thing, you see, and it got me into trouble. Accused of being a witch. Comes of being able to see things you shouldn’t. Imagine my surprise when I found out Oriane really
was
a witch.”

She scratches under her hat at a cockeyed curler, looking pensive.

“I was little bit furious to be honest. Called her the devil’s spawn and worse. Until she took me to 1969. Then I got over everything in rather a hurry. Lovely year. Lovely men.” She sighs. “You haven’t lived until you’ve given Mick Jagger the full reverse cowgirl on—“

“Alrighty then, Mrs. Rudd, if we could just focus, please?” For the love of god and my all too vivid imagination.

“Well, that’s what you have to do, of course. Focus.”

I give her a blank look.

“Stop fighting the memories, child. Focus on them. How do you think you pulled off your little BJ act tonight? The more you practice, the better you’ll get. On both accounts.”

I sit for a second, pondering this. Then I glare at her. “There is nothing wrong with my technique.”

She shrugs. “If you say so.”

I catch myself just as I’m about to say something that will take this conversation further. I don’t want to take this any further. Its gone way too far as it is, even for me. Back to the ghost thing. “But I take it focusing is not going to be enough to bring me back to life?”

“Of course not. But it’s enough to make you corporeal when we need you to be. And you’re going to need to be for this to work. You have to be able to cast.”

I blink at her. “Dead witches can’t cast.”

She shakes her head. “Is that so?” Then she nods. “Well, actually it is. You can’t cast your own magic, but you
can
activate spellwork. At least a particular one. One that your mother created just for you.”

“Is this it?” I stare down at the bundle in her hands.

“That’s part of it,” she says evasively, grabbing a box of sidewalk chalk from a shelf that also contains some dusty jars of jam, an old boom box and a vinyl cover of Deep Purple’s
Made in Japan
. “Open it up. I think she left you a note.”

She sets the bag down at my feet.

“Um. I can’t.” I’m excited though—something from my mother. At last. A warm tingle is filling my chest, which is probably my imagination, but I don’t care. I miss her. Despite everything, I really, really miss my mom. I reach for the bag again.

My fingers swipe right through the bunched top. Nothing. Not even the hint of softness.

“I told you to focus, remember? You want to read the note, you’re gonna have to get it yourself.”

“This is a test, isn’t it?”

“It’s
practice
.”

“I’d rather practice some more on Jack,” I mutter under my breath. “Or have him practice on me.”

She chortles. “Wouldn’t we all?” Then, just as I’m about to slap her, “But you can’t let him see you yet. Absolutely
not
.”

“Why? Is that part of the spell?” I say while she busies herself rolling up one of the carpets to expose the old hardwood floors beneath. For a chubby old bat, she’s pretty spry. She also doesn’t look nearly as dowdy as she did fifteen minutes ago.

“No. It just wouldn’t do. Your man would get distracted.
You
would get distracted. We need focus, remember?”

“Fine, fine, Yoda. Keep your panties on.”

It scares me, letting the memories in. Even though I just did it with Jack. It was much easier to distract myself from that awful falling-apart feeling with him there. Without him, there’s no net. I’m afraid the memories will eat me whole.

It’s a good thing ghosts don’t need to sleep. Two hours later, I finally hit upon the right memory. Mom wasn’t very traditional, but every once in a while she’d go hog wild about one holiday or the other. This one time it was Christmas. I think I was about seven. I came downstairs—this little witch who’d never seen a Christmas tree up close except at the mall. Next to it (because they wouldn’t fit underneath with the train right out of
The Polar Express
going round and round, whistling merrily) was a pile of presents nearly as tall as I was. It took me over an hour to open them all. Hell, maybe two. Jett got me a sword. My first one and my last. I can feel the paper beneath my fingertips as I open it, the string loosening…

The cord loosens and the bag at my feet opens. “I did it!”

Mrs. Rudd looks up. Her arms are covered in chalk dust up to the elbows. She’s been drawing happily all over her floor the entire time I’ve been struggling. Both couches are pushed against the wall. The gorgeous hardwood floor is covered in pastel mandalas. What the h—

“Never mind me, read the note.”

Despite myself, I’m excited, so excited I can’t quite manage to hold the tiny piece of parchment that covers two rolls of spellwork, one bright pink, the other a vivid yellow, both tied with cobalt string.

What are my mom’s first words to me in over three years? Are they sweet, sad or sappy?
I love you more than life, sweetheart, so here’s how to get yours back.
Perhaps wise and noble?
Death is not the end, merely the next step to a well-organized…

Wait, I think that last is J.K. Rowling. Anyway,
no
.

None of the above. It’s just typical Mom. Demanding and a bit vague.

Seph,

If you’re reading this, do everything Janice says. Only don’t eat the brownies. No matter how good they smell. And could you check on the peonies? I don’t think anyone’s deadheaded the poor things in years.

Mom

That’s it?

“I’m gonna slap her.” I don’t realize I’ve said the words aloud until Mrs. Rudd, a.k.a. Janice, lets out a chuckle.

“Oriane has that effect on people.”

“Even dead ones, apparently.” Mom being even more scatterbrained than usual. She should know the stupid peonies don’t bloom until June. I toss the note aside. Well, I give it a pansy-ass brush with the edge of a finger and it flutters down to the floor. I still can’t really ‘feel’ it, not like normal. Certainly not as clearly as I felt things with Jack. But moving anything feels pretty damn empowering, until Mom’s note. So I reach for the Technicolor rolls of spellwork, only to have Mrs. Rudd snatch them away.

“Hey! That’s not very nice, Janice. What kind of name is that for a woman from medieval France anyway?”

“Normandy, dearie. And it isn’t my Christian name, not that there’s much Christian about me anymore.” She snorts again. “My given name was Heloysis.”

“Oh, that’s rather—“

“Hideous? I know,” she says cheerfully. “That’s why I changed it when she brought me forward. Janice seemed very hip at the time. Though I suppose it dates me now.” She gives me a pensive look. Didn’t she have more wrinkles before? And does her hair seem lighter around those curlers?

Be nice to the woman who’s trying to bring you back to life, Persephone.
“Nah, it’s cool. Kind of a retro vibe.”

“Don’t try and butter me up, dearie. I know you’ve never liked me.”

Can ghosts blush? “It’s not that I didn’t like you. It’s that you terrified the shit out of me.”

“Oh?” She straightens, her lips curving almost proudly. “Really? Ha. I guess Oriane’s plan worked too well. Play the batty neighbor well enough and the kid buys it, too.”

“Why did she want you to playact in the first place? And why did she never tell me who you were?”

“She never told anyone. She’s trying to keep me safe. I’m just a proper human, you know. Well, except for the ‘seeing dead people’ gig. It’s a rare talent and she told me it was better no one in your world knew about it. Or that we were acquainted from way back when.”

“Why?”

She shrugs. “Hell if I know, but I was already tied to a stake when your mom rescued me. They were about to light my fire in a very un–Jim Morrison kind of way. So if Oriane tells me to keep mum about something, mum’s the word. Now let’s get busy.”

I eye the colorful scrolls in the box that she tucks away in the bottom drawer of a built-in cabinet right under old Gene’s tongue. “I’ve never heard of a spell for raising the dead.”

“Mmm, of course not. There isn’t one.”

“What?”

She looks up and blinks owlishly, locking the drawer and dropping a tiny key into her robe pocket. “Oh. What I mean is, there isn’t one that’s
generally
known. It’s your mother’s secret recipe, so to speak. And I’m about to gather the first ingredient.” She gestures at her scribbles with a proud smile, her blue-flowered robe spotted and streaked with chalk dust in kaleidoscopic bursts. “Just a few more finishing touches and it’ll be ready to go.”