Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She's Dead (Toad Witch Series, Book One) (15 page)

 I thought of my dad and could see his bright blue eyes, aquiline nose and tanned skin as if he were standing in front of me. “My dad died of a broken heart. That seemed a good enough reason to quit.”

“Sounds like real love. Or real commitment.” Gus started toweling off. “Or someone who should have been committed because of love.”

Devil’s Point, Wisconsin. Even the name sounded like a warning. I slugged down the rest of my Jack and thumped down the glass, suddenly resolved. I knew what I had to do. I stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“To give the Devil back his due,” I said, over my shoulder, as I walked out.

Gus half-ran, half-hopped out of the bathroom, pulling his pants on, as he ran after me.

I grabbed the Fed-Ex package and shoved everything back in.

“Mara?! Wait!”

“I’m getting rid of this,” I said, tossing the package in a small, metal trash can. I got a box of matches out of a drawer and I lit one, ready to send this gift from the grave back where it belonged.

Gus blew out the match and grabbed the box from me. “Are you nuts? This is important stuff, Mara. You can’t just burn it. This cottage could hold the key to what happened to your mom. Don’t you want to see if Tillie had any pictures of her? Any memories she may have written down?”

I turned away from him so he couldn’t see my eyes starting to tear up. I couldn’t understand why the thought that my mom might actually be dead, felt so painful. It was easier to think of her as being out there, somewhere, living a life that had nothing to do with me.

“Besides, I’m sure they have duplicates. Burning it isn’t going to make it go away.” He took the package out of the garbage and handed it back to me. “So stop being a girl and man up. This solves a lot of your problems. Aunt Tillie couldn’t have picked a more fortuitous time to kick the bucket. Don’t run away from your gift horse.”

“I bet the people of Troy heard the same speech and look where it got them.”

“You’re about to be homeless. Can you really afford to be indulging your paranoia, looking for some kind of psychic ambush?”

I sighed.

“Stop worrying,” he continued, buttoning his wild-colored shirt. “If date night bombs, I’ll be back for some comfort food and one-on-one freak-out time. Just try to hold it together until then, okay?” He kissed me on the cheek. “And don’t hog all the bourbon.”

“And if it’s a great date?”

“I’ll call you after breakfast and you can go off on me then. I’ll promise to listen to all your paranoid delusions without laughing.”

“As a best friend, you kinda suck.”

“Tough love, baby. Tough love. Okay, are we good?”

I nodded, reluctantly.

He stuck a pair of heavy silver earrings through his oversized ear piercings, put on his Celtic man jewelry, and strode off in a cloud of amber and patchouli.

Later that night, it was just me, the Fed Ex package and a rapidly dwindling bottle of bourbon. Between the yard sale and the packing, the apartment felt denuded and strange.

I took another swig and paced the living room, trying to ignore the package. That didn’t quite work, so I gave it the hairy eyeball and walked gingerly around it, expecting it to leap off the table at any second.

I turned on the TV, but I couldn’t concentrate longer than thirty seconds. I tried putting in
Murphy’s Romance
, one of my favorite old-time movies with Sally Field and James Garner, (okay, so I’m a sap for happy endings), but that didn’t help either.

It was odd how fate worked. I spent the last few weeks preparing to move, even though I didn’t have a place to move to. I’d sold off as much as I could and I’ve been packing up the rest. I’d made all the preparations, without any destination. And now the destination just magically dropped in my lap. It was like the universe intervened and brought me a new home. But at what cost?

It did what you asked it to. Magic follows the path of least resistance.

“Who said that?!” I looked around, but I was the only one standing in my apartment. I eyeballed the bottle of bourbon. Could bourbon make you hear things?

I had to think logically. Maybe Gus was right. What if the cottage had been haunting my dreams because my subconscious was somehow aware that it was going to be my new home? I tried to shut down my fear and calm my emotions.

Or maybe your fetch did its job too well and killed an old woman so you could have a place to live.

“Shut up!” I said, reaching for the rest of the bourbon and pouring myself another shot.

I looked around, daring the voice to say something else, but it was quiet.

I picked up the package and slowly went through the documents. Deed of Trust, pictures of the property. The pictures looked enough like the cottage in my dreams to make my spine tingle. But it was also different. It was bigger, fancier, nicer. Maybe it was just a dream after all. Maybe I was getting all worked up over nothing.

There was an envelope with a copy of Tillie’s Last Will and Testament along with her Living Trust. There was also a folder with a Death Certificate.

Chapter Seventeen

“Mara, Mara, wake up!”

The voice seemed to be coming from a mile away. I tried to grab onto the sound and crawl towards it.

“Mara! You get back here right now. Two more minutes and I’m throwing you into the pool. And let me tell you, that water’s damn cold at night.”

I tried to make my lips to say “no” but my will and my body seemed to be disconnected.

Cold. Icy. Wet. Salty. I reached up. My face was wet and salty. I opened my eyes. Gus hovered over me, an empty water pitcher in one hand, a container of sea salt in the other.

“Rude,” I croaked.

“Rude, my ass.” Gus said, placing a chunk of sea salt in my mouth. “Do you have any idea how much you scared me?”

I tried to spit out the salt, but he forced my mouth closed.

“Stop fighting me. You need to ground out whatever this is.”

 I made a face at the way the salt burned, but I swallowed it. He handed me a bottle of water and I gulped it down, trying to wash the taste of salt away.

“Aren’t you… on a date?”

“I was. I was having a great time, too. Until you called.”

I looked up at him in confusion. Then I looked down at myself. I was on the floor, propped up next to the couch. The portable phone was about a foot away. The contents of the package were scattered on the floor.

“Do you remember calling me?”

I shook my head. “What did I say?”

“You screamed.”

“What did I scream?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t understand you. The machine picked up, I heard you screaming and the line went dead. So I rushed over here. What happened?”

“Oh…” As the salt worked to ground me, memories started to return, bit by bit. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

Gus picked up the empty bottle of bourbon. “I do. Now what’s this all about, Mara? I was in the middle of an after-dinner blow job, so it better be good. I’ve never deflated so fast in my life.”

The package. I kicked at it and papers went flying. “That…” I pointed at the package. “That’s what happened.”

“Yes, we went through that before.”

“You missed something,” I croaked. I crawled over to the pile, scrabbled through the papers and handed him the newspaper clipping and the autopsy report.

“Gruesome.” He said, flipping through it. “Especially the pictures. What idiot put these in here? Damn, when I die, no autopsies please. Even if it is foul play. Just toss me on a burning pyre. After you cut off my head, of course.”

I snatched the envelope back from him. “Don’t you get it?” I held up the newspaper clipping. There it was, in black and white. A small, Volkswagen Cabriolet crunched into a tree. Perched on the hood of the car was a large, black crow. Behind it was an autopsy photo showing a ravaged corpse with a missing eye.

Looking at the clipping again, I started hyperventilating. “I dreamt Aunt Tillie’s death. The whole thing. In excruciating detail. Remember? The glass with gray water? The dead crow in the bathroom? I killed her!”

“That’s ridiculous. Dreaming it doesn’t mean you’ve caused it.”

“She swerved to avoid me. This is all my fault.”

“Breathe. Slow down. Deep breaths. You weren’t really there.” Gus put his hands on my shoulders. “Come on, work with me here, I don’t have a paper bag and I’m running out of salt.” He slowed his own breathing and projected calming energy into me.

“You don’t understand. I… Killed… Aunt Tillie…” I gasped.

“You can’t even swat a spider. You always make me relocate them outside. How on earth could you have killed a person?”

I got up and paced the length of the room, holding the clip. “I killed the last of my mother’s family and I’ve never even met her. How rude is that?”

“Miss Manners would have a field day. You should always meet your victims first.”

“I’m not joking!”

“Mara, you need to calm down. Seeing something happen and making it happen are two different things.”

“Semantics. Does it happen because you see it? Or do you see it because it’s going to happen? It’s the same thing. They feed into each other. Oh my god, I’m a killer. A stone-cold killer.”

“Relax and breathe. This isn’t you. This is the bourbon talking.”

“I was standing in the middle of the road. I was the reason she swerved into the tree. I have to turn myself in.”

“Trust me, you’ll be laughed out of every police station in the country. You weren’t actually there, Mara. Read the article. It says an owl hit her windshield. Not an astral-projecting witch.”

I gave a strangled sob and collapsed on the couch. “I was too lazy to do things the real way. I had to use magic to get what I wanted. Magic takes the path of least resistance. I wanted a new home. Now I’ve got it. Yay, me, right? I dreamt her death into being and all for what? Just because I needed a place to stay?”

He put his hand on my arm, but I shook him off.

“I’m going to take you to the hospital. You obviously have a concussion.”

I started rocking back and forth. Gus grabbed me, stopping the rocking motion.

“You are not responsible for this. Seriously. Do you think you’re such a great witch that you command the Queen of Fate for everyone else?”

“No…” I sniffled, tears running down my cheeks.

“All right then. Stop taking the blame for what happens to other people. The only person under your control is you. Got it?”

I nodded.

“Now, for whatever reason, this cottage was fated to come to you. You’ve been seeing it because you were meant to get it. Even you being evicted played into it.”

“But what about Aunt Tillie?”

“What about her? It was her time to die. You were given a gift of sight. You got a chance to see her before she kicked it. You got to spend a stolen minute with her. You did not kill her.”

I nodded. I wanted to believe him. I really did.

“You’re really freaked about this cottage, aren’t you?”

 I nodded again. “It’s been keeping me up nights and now it’s turning my life upside down.”

“You know, there’s only one thing to do,” he said, looking deep into my eyes.

I stared at him, hoping he had the answer.

“You have to decide. Are you going to let your fears rule you? Or are you going to be the master of your own destiny?”

I groaned. That was not what I was hoping to hear.

He smiled at me to soften the blow. “Start packing, little grasshopper. Your new home awaits. You are going to honor the memories of Tillie and your mom, and every female in that MacDougal line, by claiming that cottage and making it your own.”

I tried to smile, but my stomach had morphed into a large Celtic knot, lubricated by fear.

“Besides, if the cottage is so desperate to get you there that it killed someone to make it happen, don’t you want to find out why?” Gus asked.

“Hell, no!” I protested. But as much as I wanted to deny it and run screaming from the apartment, I couldn’t quite silence the voice inside of me that agreed with him. The one that wanted to go face down the bogeyman and bring it to its knees.

In the sober light of day, the idea of moving to the cottage was as enticing as it was horrifying. Probably because Gus had been working overtime to sway me to his way of thinking. Despite my residual guilt and depression about Tillie, (and a nagging fear that Gus was wrong about his version of what happened), I was actually a little excited about the idea of starting a whole new life in Devils Point, Wisconsin. It was just a stone’s throw from the Canadian border — if you could throw really well, over water. And it was across the harbor from Devils Island, with its infamous lighthouse.

The excitement was tinged with a cold layer of fear, but it was excitement nonetheless. A small, obviously suicidal part of me was not only curious, but a little eager to see the real-life cottage face-to-face and get to the bottom of what was going on. That was the part of me that I could never quite hide from Gus. Although it made me wonder which morbid DNA marker I carried, that turned facing my deepest fears into a rush.