Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She's Dead (Toad Witch Series, Book One) (18 page)

Chapter Twenty

It didn’t take me long to drive through Devils Point. There was a small shopping district that included a mom and pop grocery store, an antique store, on old-fashioned diner, the movie theater J.J. had mentioned and a bookstore. There was also a mechanic’s shop that was right out of the fifties, with a gas pump out front and vintage automobiles for sale, a hardware store, a thrift store and a bait-and-tackle shop. It really was an adorable, old-fashioned slice of Americana, preserved in time.

As I kept driving, I found the school, library, post office, church and town hall along with a medical center, funeral home and the town cemetery. And set back in a little picturesque clearing, was a grand old house with a sign proclaiming
Auntie Mae’s B & B
out front.

According to J.J., if you were looking for any more action than that (or any action at all after sun-down, it seemed), the three-hour drive to Trinity Harbor was where you’d find it. Although, he’d said, winking at me, if you drove the way nature demanded and ignored the pesky road signs, you could make it in two.

“But that’s like, insanely far away. What if it’s an emergency?”

“We got the LifeQuest chopper. And Roy, over at Oldfield, runs a chopper service for people who just want to party. Fifteen dollars a head. Comes in handy in the winters.” He glanced out the store window at the parking area. “Good thing you’ve got an SUV. If you’re planning on stayin’, you might want to invest in a horse and a sleigh. Or ice skates and skis. The winters are a bitch. The roads here are nothin’ but ice and snow.”

So, after my tour of Devils Point, I headed over to Oldfield. Besides the airfield, they had a real gas station, with a mini-mart. I pulled into it, gassed up, and settled my nerves with a chocolate bar and a soda. But when I offered Grundleshanks the carb-laden, chocolaty bit of heaven, he turned his toady face away, in a silent lecture on the protein benefits of crickets.

The threat of impending sunset finally made me stop procrastinating. As I got behind the wheel, I unbuttoned the top of my jeans. Ah, well. The toad might have a point. If my jeans got any tighter, I wouldn’t be able to breathe. I sighed and tossed the rest of the candy bar out of the window and into the station trash.

Time to check out this mysterious cottage, even if it meant risking life and limb to become a tree. I figured it would be best to see it while it was still light, before my imagination could imbue it with any additional devilish powers. Besides, I kinda wanted to see the tree while it was still daylight. Seriously. How cool was that? A witchy cottage turning a wannabe arsonist into a tree? A cottage that ecologically proactive couldn’t really be evil, right?

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a great idea. Turning felons into trees would certainly make for prettier scenery than cement block prison buildings and razor-sharp, barbed wire-topped enclosures. And the prison over-population problem would be a thing of the past. I’d bet there were prisoners who would even prefer being trees, to being caged humans.

Cheered by the thought and feeling a little bit better about my possibly sentient cottage, I turned down Route 41 and headed to my new home. As I got closer though, I was hit by such a strong sense of
dŽjˆ vu
, I had to pull off onto the shoulder of the road.

I got out of the SUV to look around. The everyday noise of the woods — singing birds, buzzing insects, small noises in the underbrush — did their best to reassure me, but something was making my blood run cold. I walked up beyond the bend and found a massive, lighting-blasted oak tree next to the road. Suddenly, realization hit.

This was the same road I had seen in my dream, the same road Aunt Tillie had crashed on.
Goose-pimples raced across my flesh. I shuddered. I wasn’t going to need the map anymore. The path from this road to the cottage was seared into my mind.

I walked around the oak tree. It was centuries old and sturdy as a tanker, which is probably why it withstood the impact. The only damage seemed to be a large bite taken out of the bark on the southwest side.

I looked closer. There were bits of tree bark that were still dark with blood splatter.

A whisper went through my mind, nothing more than a sudden breeze, a wordless sigh.

Without really knowing why, I picked off a large piece of the stained bark and put it in my pocket. I had no idea what I was about to walk into, but I had a feeling that having something with Aunt Tillie’s blood on it might give me the leverage I needed to keep her cottage under control.

The sun was just starting to set behind the trees as I headed towards my new home. Despite the beauty and richness of the colors — the deep shades of pink, red and purple — I suddenly felt incredibly homesick for smog and a jagged line of mountains against the horizon. So I called Gus.

He picked up after three rings. “This better be good. I’m on a date.”

“How the hell do you find dates so fast? It takes me months.”

“My secret club. It’s a whole, incestuous, underground network that we don’t let you fag hags in on. A place for us who shine like a veritable sun to share our boy toys. And our Viagra.”

“You, share? When did that happen? You barely share with me, whom you have a deep and abiding love for. How can you possibly share with strangers?”

“Unfortunately, missy, you’re  missing the prerequisite body part. It’s all about recycling. Good for the earth, good for…”

“Okay, I got it. Spare me the visual.”

He laughed. The sound cheered me up. Gus had an infectious laugh. “And your second-hand boy toy is okay with us talking about him like he’s a used book?”

“He’s not here. He’s seeing a man about a horse.”

“He got you to go to the equestrian center? He must be hot.” Okay, in all fairness, I was distracted, so I was a bit slow on the uptake. But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I gave myself a mental headslap.

Gus snorted. “Oh my Gods! Get with it, girl. You’re gone from the city for a few days and you’ve already become a hick. What happened to your kitsch-o-meter? He’s pointing Percy at the porcelain.”

“Okay, okay. I get it. He’s in the bathroom, so we only have a few minutes. That’s fine, I’m almost at the cottage anyway.” I filled him in as quickly as I could.

Gus hooted with laughter. “A man tree?! Oh, you so have to send me pictures.”

“I know. How cool is that?” I pulled up in front of the cottage and my jaw dropped. “Holy crap!”

“What? Don’t keep me in suspense!”

“It’s here. Ol’ One-Eyed Jack is a rowan tree.” Maybe there was something to the old legend, after all.

“Are you kidding me?”

“No!” I couldn’t believe it. Standing right in front of me, big as life, was an old rowan tree with a knothole where an eye would be, a smooth patch on the other side, a gnarled growth for a nose and a hollow for the mouth.

“If I add an eye patch and a bow tie, it will totally freak the kids out at Halloween.” I took a picture on my cell phone and sent it to Gus. I could hear him chortling on the other end. “See what I mean?”

“You better not piss off that cottage. I am not flying all the way up there just to water you.”

“Screw that,” I said. “You’re gonna fly out here, just ‘cause you’ll be so jealous.” Behind the rowan tree was a cottage that looked like it belonged in the pages of a fairy tale. “I can’t believe no one wanted to buy this place. It’s incredible.”

And it was. The cottage was adorable. Fading antique pink with cream-colored trim, riots of late-blooming roses and Old Jack in the front yard. There was even a front porch with an old-fashioned swing. And no neighbors to get all up in your grill. Just plant life and trees.

I couldn’t believe it was mine. And I didn’t have to pay any rent or any mortgage. It was mine, for the cost of upkeep. And given what I was able to save before I left L.A., and what was left of the money that Tillie had left in her estate, I actually had about an eight-month cushion, for the first time in my life. And a retirement account. It was almost like I was turning into a responsible adult.

I briefly wondered if I had died and no one had told me. It was just so weird to suddenly get everything you want.
Thank you, Aunt Tillie
. And thank you to your lawyers for finding me. Although, really, I guess thanking someone for dying was a bit morbid.

I know it sounds odd, but by that time, I was starting to enjoy this adventure. I was embarking on a whole new life, one that had a house and a savings account. I could finally afford to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. These were all luxuries I never had before. Looking back, I should have heeded the warning signs and run in the opposite direction. But I had no idea what was about to happen. The cottage, Aunt Tillie and the horrors that were about to be unleashed were so far outside of the realm of even my reality, the possibility of their existence had never entered my imagination. Even if someone had sat me down and warned me about the hell that was about to become my everyday life, I wouldn’t have believed them.

Chapter Twenty-One

As I got out of the car, still talking to Gus, a movement in the upstairs window caught my eye. I looked up. “What the…”

“What’s going on?” his voice vibrated in my ear piece.

“I thought I saw someone in the attic window.”

“Someone? Or something?”

“I don’t know. I’m probably imagining it.” I said, doubtfully. “It’s just… I could have sworn there was a woman standing in the window.”

“Lucky you. You have a cottage and a ghost.”

I sighed, exasperated. “Most people don’t actually get off on finding Casper in their homes.”

“You’re so antisocial. There are people all over the world who’ve had to kill to get a ghost and you’re complaining about one you’re getting for free?”

“Go figure.”

He laughed. “It was probably just a cat.”

I hesitated. “Do you really think so? Maybe you’re right. Maybe it was a cat.” Maybe I was just imagining things. “Old ladies have cats, right? It’s not like I’m moving into the Hellmouth, right?”

“Guess you’ll have to go into the cottage and find out.”

“Right.” I paused.

“Well? What are you waiting for? Go introduce yourself and see what comes at you.”

Like I was going to rush right in, for his entertainment.

“What if it’s a ghost? What if it’s my Aunt Tillie? What if she doesn’t know she’s dead? How am I supposed to tell her she’s dead?”

He hooted with laughter. “Could you web-cam that heart-to-heart for me? Or keep me on speaker-phone. I’d love to hear how you break the news.”

And with that, my phone died. Damn. I should have plugged it into the charger while I was driving.

I looked up at the window again. The breeze slightly ruffled the curtain, but there was no face. I probably imagined it. Aunt Tillie must have left the window open when she had gone out and since she had never come back, there hadn’t been anyone to close it.

Yeah, that’s what it was.

At least, that’s what I hoped it was.

Unless it was some backwoods killer waiting for me in the attic. That’s the other problem with being a witch — a wildly overactive imagination.

I plugged the phone into the car charger and picked up Grundleshanks’s travel tank. “Man up, Grundleshanks. Time to go claim our cottage.”

I took a deep breath and walked up to the cottage. But as I reached the front porch, I was hit with an unmistakable urge to turn back. And the closer I was getting to the front door, the colder it seemed to be getting.

“Cold. That’s not a good sign. Cold’s never a good sign.”

Temperature drops tended to accompany ghostly visitations. So much for Gus’s cat theory. I rubbed my stomach to get the knots out and glanced at the toad. I could have sworn even Grundleshanks was shaking his head at me. But whether he was telling me to stop being an idiot, or whether he was telling me to turn back while we still could, I had no idea.

I reached out with my mind and felt the energy around the cottage. The protective wards around it were so strong, they were almost palpable, like a vise around the cottage. No wonder the cottage had a reputation of protecting itself with magic. It probably did.

“Don’t take this personally, Grundleshanks, but right about now, I’m wishing Gus was here with me instead of you.”

He blinked at me, giving me a slit-eyed toad look.

“But you definitely run a close second.”

He settled back down in his mud, mollified.

Gus would be having orgasms over the thought of living in a haunted cottage. Me, not so much. But I had to admit, it was a beautiful home — at least, from the outside. As I put my hand on the doorknob, goosebumps raced down my arms. I let go of the doorknob, took a deep breath and… chickened out.

I detoured down off the porch and took Grundleshanks for a quick recon around the property. Might as well see it all while there was still light, right?