Stuck with a Spell (4 page)

This was starting to sound more than a
little creepy. The queasiness I’d felt after hearing about Hank’s
choking incident was back wreaking havoc. I was beginning to wonder
if I should have ever opened up this can of twisted
worms.

But, I was also relieved that I always
carried with me a small bottle of Holy Water. My psychic had
suggested I do so, and for this trip, it might come in
handy.

“
I take it the darker parts
of the spells that you used to mess with Darryl and Hank come from
the Santa Muerte tradition?”

“
Yes. Look, Samantha. I can
tell that this is making you uncomfortable, but you have to
remember that I never really wanted to hurt anyone, not even
Darryl.”

“
I believe you, Liza. On the
Hank front. Not so much where Darryl’s concerned though.
Regardless, I’m just trying to understand what went wrong so we can
try to fix it.”

“
Gotchya,” she
said.

But her voice indicated she was way too
excited about all of this to be taking it anywhere close to as
serious as I was.

“
So, anyway, before we
separated, I took some hair from Darryl. I just cut off a big wad
while he was sleeping. And that’s what I use on the dolls. I need
something that’s connected to a person in a significant way. It
could be a piece of clothing, a lock of hair or...”

“
Or a wedding ring,” I
added, suddenly feeling my own throat constrict.

“
That’s right. Speaking of
which, I think I know what might have gone wrong with Hank’s spell.
I put the ring around the doll’s neck, and I can only assume that
has something to do with why he ended up choking.”

That was not exactly the breakthrough
I’d hoped for. Even I could figure out that’s why Hank damn near
choked to death.

“
You didn’t think something
like that could happen?”

“
To be honest, I thought he
might get a sore throat or something.”

“
Well, he certainly has a
sore throat now.”

I’d said it in a rather snotty way, and
probably shouldn’t have if I wanted to keep her on my good side.
But sometimes, I couldn’t contain my New York City snark,
especially when I was being pushed to the end of my
patience.

Not that it mattered that I’d been
rather catty, because it appeared she’d missed my zinger
altogether. She had her head cocked to one side, listening intently
to something. And whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t me. After
a few moments, she nodded her head ever so slightly and then
refocused her attention on me.

“
I’m sorry, Sam. She doesn’t
mean to interrupt. Now, what were you saying?”

“
I said...” But now I
couldn’t remember what I’d said. “It was nothing. So, who were you
listening to instead of me?”

“
Oh, it was just my
rhododendron reminding me that it’s time for her monthly watering.
The old gal’s gettin’ thirsty, and we can’t have her shrivelling
all up and wasting away. I mean, I’d feel just terrible if anything
ever happened to her. We go way back.”

“
Y
our rhododendron?”

Here I am trying to get to the bottom
of the fact that she damn near offed our exes, and she’d rather
talk to her plant?!

“
Yeah. Right over there,”
Liza said, pointing to a bushy plant with purple flowers in the
corner of the room. “Actually, I’m surprised you didn’t hear her
too. After our talk at the lake house, I just assumed you also
communicated on a horticultural level.”

Ah, yes. That. With all of the
confusion of the past few days, I’d all but forgotten about Liza’s
plant whispering.

We still hadn’t spoken about the
talking bushes at the lake house, but now was not the
time.

“
I’ll tell you what...how
‘bout we get your Voodoo spell issues resolved first, then we’ll
talk to, I mean about, your plants,” I offered, really worried that
none of this mess seemed to be affecting Liza in the horrid way it
was me.

And just wait till I tried to explain
this to Nicky and all of our guests. That thought gave me a
splitting headache along with my queasy stomach.

My cell phone rang, so I excused myself
for a moment to check the screen, hoping like hell it wasn’t the
hospital telling me that Hank had bit the big one. I’d promised
myself I’d someday be the cause of that, and I’d be damned if I was
gonna let Liza steal my moment. Just joking...sort of.

Speaking of the devil, and no, not
Hank, this time. It was Nicky calling.

“
What the hell is going on
over there?!”

Nicky shouting in my ears was not
helping matters at all.

Before my head spun out of control, I
motioned to Liza that I’d be stepping outside a moment. I needed to
get some fresh air as well as be out of her earshot so I could clue
in Nicky. She seemed as relieved as I was to take a break from our
conversation and left me to my call as she disappeared into the
kitchen with our tea cups and saucers.

“
We’ve got some big-time
Voodoo doll hell. That’s what’s going on! And do you have to scream
at me?” I asked, holding my head in my hands, while my teeth
started to chatter.

“
Sorry. But, you mean to
tell me that’s all the further you’ve gotten? We already know we’ve
got doll hell. I’m sitting here looking at their charred
remains.”

“
Put those things down,” I
said, totally unsure whether or not he should be touching
them.

“
Whatever you say. There.
Just tossed ‘em in the trash can.”

Shit. I hope that didn’t
mean Darryl or Hank had just taken a nasty tumble too. Thinking
about the possibilities that they’d each just sustained new
contusions, I shook in my snow-covered rocking chair.
Brrr
. Also, I’d forgotten
to put on my coat before coming out onto Liza’s porch. But maybe
the ice cold chill is what I needed to make sense of all
this.

“
Those dolls were supposed
to be Liza’s ex...and my ex.”

“
Whoa! No way! She roped you
into her crazy ass spell casting too? I thought you were smarter
than that, Sam.”

I swore I heard the son of a bitch
laughing. If my teeth weren’t chattering so bad, I’d have let him
have it.

“
Listen, asshole. Darryl and
Hank are now both in hospitals. Darryl was damn near decapitated,
and Hank just about choked to death.”

“
Oh. That’s not
good.”

“
Oh. You’re right.
It’s
not
good. And
aren’t I lucky that that’s about the limit of your
intelligence.”

“
Ouch! Don’t bite my head
off. It’s not my fault both of your exes about lost theirs,” he
said.

And damn it if he didn’t start laughing
again.

“
I’ll tell ya who’s gonna be
next, smart ass. Did I happen to mention that she has a doll in her
collection that looks an awful lot like you?”

That shut him up.

“
I kinda figured she would,”
he said in his best awe shucks, golly gee tone.

“
Listen to me. You’ve got to
find out everything you can about reversing her spells, while I
stay here and try to figure out if she has even the slightest clue
how to fix things.”

“
How the hell am I supposed
to do that?”

“
Just Google it for cripe’s
sake. Use your head.”

“
Right. Before she
does...”

“
Would you stop it with the
head jokes? Damn it! This is serious stuff.”

“
No worries, Allwitch. I’m
on it.”

If he wasn’t careful, I’d be the one
taking his Voodoo doll likeness out of the case and using
it.

T
he
thought occurred to me that I could make a nice living writing
about Aunt Liza’s stupid-ass stunts. I wouldn’t have to use any
creativity. You can’t make this shit up.

For instance, I’m now taking a huge
stock pot I normally use to concoct my famous chili - because, no,
I don’t own a cauldron, and I’m not about to ask Liza to borrow
hers - and using it instead to whip up some kind of spiritual bath
soak I just read about on Google.

According to what I’d read, if the
“enemy” is in your family, and constantly uses spells to hurt you,
you can’t simply cleanse and do a basic protection spell. You’ve
got to attempt a reversing maneuver. And what that boils down to,
pun intended, is now bubbling in my stock pot.

And damn, is this costing me a small
fortune.

The Captain and I had to make a quick
trip to Chicago to pick up all of the ingredients. We certainly
don’t stock this stuff in our local tractor supply store, and I
didn’t have time for Amazon to deliver what I needed tomorrow. That
said, I’d gone ahead and ordered all of this crap in bulk from The
Zon, next day delivery. So, from now on, I’d always have plenty of
reversing supplies on hand.

Listen to me, I sound as if I believe I
can fix Liza’s latest disaster. Truth is, I have no clue if my
concoctions will work, but we have to try something.

Hopefully, with the combination of the
spiritual bathing, house cleansing and floor washing potions I’m
beginning to mix up, we’ll be able to not only reverse Liza’s
spells here on the farm, but maybe help poor Darryl and Hank
too.

Come to think of it though, I wonder if
I can bottle these witchy brews and ship ‘em to the up shit creek
exes. Once it’s been bottled, does this stuff even work? Guess I’ll
have to research that too. Otherwise, the schmucks might remain
hexed.

I checked the list I’d made of what all
I need to do. Shit! Good thing I’d gone back. Before I continued
with my stock pot reversing stew, I needed to light all the crazy
candles we’d bought.

I was now the proud owner of one
hundred specially made, free-standing jumbo candles, in a variety
of colors, that I’m to burn on a mirror. Doing so is supposed to
send bad luck and trouble back to the person who sent
it.

With each candle now lit, placed on its
mirror, and sitting in every window in my farmhouse that looked out
toward Aunt Liza’s farm and property, I was set on that front. Let
the bad juju bounce back.

“
We should probably go ahead
and mail a box of these candles and mirrors to both Darryl and
Hank,” Captain Allen said, after finishing lighting the last
one.

“
I suppose you’re right. But
can you imagine the cost to send the package to Switzerland? Fuck
me,” I said, shaking my head and returning to my reversing
stew.

“
So what all you got cooking
in there?” the Captain asked, sitting down at the table, evidently
not wanting to get any closer to my pot.

I checked my recipe so I could recite
the ingredients in this first potion.

“
Let’s see, in this one,
we’ve got sea water, salt, minerals, herbs including Damiana,
raspberry leaves, rue, eucalyptus, agrimony and cinnamon chips,
roots and various tree barks. Oh, and some chamomile flowers
too.”

“
I’ll have to admit, I don’t
know what half of that stuff is but it smells damn good,” Captain
Allen said, evidently not afraid to inhale.

No way was I telling Liza or Sam what I
was cooking up for their exes. Since they’d damn near killed ‘em, I
doubt they’d be into making their lives full of all kinds of
positive stuff. And from what the recipe said, not only would
bathing in this special juice put an end to the adverse conditions
Liza had created, it would bring all of us more love,
attractiveness, money and fewer bad habits and evil
companions.

Hey, it was the best thing I could find
on short notice.

Since I’d been appointed the new
anti-witchcraft chef for this family, they’d just have to live with
the awesome sauces I cooked up.

“
Do we use the same crap on
the floors too?” the Captain asked.

“
Oh no. Are you kidding? We
couldn’t be that lucky,” I said and laughed.

I searched through the gazillion
recipes I’d printed out, looking for the floor wash
formula.

“
Here it is. For the floors,
we’re mixing up salt with added saltpeter, washing soda, ammonia,
turpentine, lye, some kind of herb called Devil’s Shoestring and
diluted urine.”

“
Whose urine? Or do I even
want to know?” Captain Allen asked, picking up his tea cup, looking
at the contents, then putting down the cup without taking a
drink.

Guess he decided he wasn’t
thirsty.

“
I know I don’t want to
know. Thank goodness that came in a bottle too,” I said.

And it was a damn good thing I also had
several bottles of Templeton Rye Whiskey to get the Captain and I
through this crazy ass chaos.

“
Good point. How ‘bout I go
ahead and get started with placing the protective
charms?”

“
Good idea. And I suppose we
should prepare boxes of those to send to Darryl and Hank too,” I
said.