Stuck with a Spell (7 page)

“
I swear, Liza. Sometimes, I
don’t know what to do with you.”

“
How is she?” She asked,
even more sheepish than when I’d pried the truth out of
her.

“
She has some broken bones
in her foot, but she’s going to be alright. For cripe’s sake...no
more spells! And especially not on Adah or Hank. I know how much
crap Darryl put you through. You have every reason to want to get
back at him. Just leave everyone else out of it, okay?”

“
Okay,” she
agreed.

Which surprised me, till I saw that
familiar glimmer flash in her eyes. Not good.

“
Does this mean that you
won’t need to go through with the reverse mirror box binding
spell?” She asked, with all kinds of misguided hope uplifting her
voice.

Truly unbelievable. She really didn’t
get it. Worse yet, she never would.

“
Not a chance. As a matter
of fact, I don’t want you leaving this house until we get back.
You’re not going to screw this up too. Understood?”

“
Fine.”

She lowered her head, muttered
something unintelligible, grabbed one of my bottles of Templeton
Rye Whiskey off of the bar right outside my office and moped back
into the kitchen.

U
nder the light of the full moon, we gathered in the ancient
graveyard located not too far from the creek that ran through the
back of my property. There, amidst the crumbling tombstones of lost
pioneers and Civil War veterans, we prepared to bind up Aunt
Liza.

Sam took the reversing box she and the
Captain had made and placed it next to the hole I’d dug with my
backhoe.

Working with nothing but the light of a
black candle that Sam explained had been dressed with a special
kind of reversing conjure oil, we placed the Voodoo doll, with one
of Liza’s shotgun shells wrapped around it, into the box and took
turns sprinkling it with red pepper and sulfur powder.

As we sprinkled, the Captain read from
the printout:

Here you are, Liza, and here you will
stay,

and from this time forth, all the jinx’s you
try to make,

and all the foul words that you
use...

“
Hey, what’s wrong with foul
words?” Grams piped in.

“
I agree. Why would we want
to bind up foul words? The four-letter ones especially. I love
those!” Sam said, making it two votes to...

Like it really mattered. None of us
would ever be able to bind up Sam or Grams’ potty
mouths.

“
Okay...let’s try this
again,” the Captain said unable to keep from chuckling.

“
Here you are, Liza, and here you
will stay,

and from this time forth, all the jinx’s you
try to make,

and all the evil that you do will come back to
you

as these mirrors reflect your image back to
you...

and in this hell of your own
devising

you will remain until God releases you in
judgment. Amen.”

“
God’s got his hands full
with that one,” Grams said tossing in an extra handful of red
pepper.

The Captain chuckled again as he
proceeded to close the box and tie the lid down tight with heavy
string.

“
Can you please hand me the
dime?” He asked Sam.

Sam did as she was asked, her hand
shaking in the glow of the candlelight.

The Captain tossed the dime over his
left shoulder.

“
Please accept our offering, dear
spirits of the graveyard,

and help us hold down our enemy.”

“
They’ll do this kind of gig
for a dime? Cheap-ass spirits for sure,” Grams said. “I’m thinkin’
we outta toss in an extra dime. I mean, c’mon...”

Sam took out another dime from her coat
pocket and handed it to Grams.

Grams flung it over her left shoulder
while the Captain and I lowered the box into the miniature grave.
While I used the backhoe to fill in the hole, everyone stood
silent.

“
All right, then,” I said,
“everyone turn away, do not look back, and follow me. We’ve got to
take a different route back than the one we took to get
here.”

What the hell had I gotten myself into?
Then, I chuckled at the thought. The only thing I was actually
guilty of was being related to Liza.

“
Don’t we have to
spiritually bathe and do more candle work when we get home?” Sam
asked.

“
Yes. Yes, we do,” I
confirmed.

“
Oh, good. That damn
cleansing crap almost makes me high, and I love that feeling,”
Grams said, so happy she almost skipped back to the farm by the
light of the moon.

W
alking into Nicky’s kitchen, following the bind-up burial, we
found Liza sitting at the kitchen table.

“
Kiss my ass. Kiss my ass.
Kiss my ass,” Grams muttered under her breath.

“
What are you saying that
for?” I whispered into her ear.

“
In German folklore, that’s
supposed to prevent a witch from doing harm to you,” Grams said,
returning Liza’s narrow-eyed stare.

“
Can it, you old fool,” Liza
said, but not with near the gumption she’d normally use.

“
I need to borrow your
broom, Bad Ass,” Grams said marching right up to her.

Liza just shook her head and
laughed.

“
I’m serious. If I put your
broom down in front of the door and tell you to kiss my ass three
more times, we’ll all be better off.”

Liza never said a word, instead
choosing to down another shot of whiskey. And it didn’t look like
she had much left in the bottle to save her from Gram’s
witchhunt.

“
Fine. I can make this work
without your broom,” Grams said, motioning for all of us to step
aside and give her some room.

I’m not sure why, but we gave her the
space she thought she needed.

She took six steps backwards, spitting
right and left as she did so.

“
John over John. John the
Conqueror. They can’t hurt you,” she sputtered between
spits.

“
Give me those printouts,” I
said. “All of ‘em.”

Grams, looking like a child who’d just
gotten busted with something they weren’t supposed to have, handed
over a wad of paper she’d had stuffed in her coat
pocket.

“
Well what are we going to
do with her?” Grams asked. “There’s a witch in your kitchen for
cripe’s sake!”

“
You don’t have to worry
about that. I’ve decided to just go back to talking to my plants,”
Liza said.

At least I think that’s what she said.
With that much whiskey flowing through her, the words were tough to
decipher.

“
Let’s hope you still think
that way when you’re sober,” Nicky said, taking away what was left
of the bottle of Templeton Rye.

“
I just wanted to get even
with those dirty sons of bitches,” Liza stammered then
pouted.

“
Well, I can show you how to
do that on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or whatever social media
outlet you choose,” Grams said, taking a seat across from Liza.
“I’m fairly talented in the virtual world.”

Fairly talented? My ass. She’s a
genius. As in quant level, hacker extraordinaire genius.

“
You mean I could publicly
humiliate ‘em without having to physically hurt ‘em
too?”

“
Trust me, they’ll wish they
were dead once I show you a few of my online tricks.”

“
Okay. That’s enough, you
two.”

“
Why do y’all have to spoil
the fun?” Grams asked, pouting right along with Liza.

“
Because being stuck with a
spell isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” I said, knowing for sure
I’d never again want to dabble in any of this dark
magic.

Talking to plants seemed to be my new
limit too.

“
Well, being stuck with a
spell is certainly better than being stuck with a stiff,” Liza
said, referring to the fact that it had just been a matter of days
since we’d cleared Nicky’s name from the murder of the stiff found
next to his chicken coop.

“
Hell, Aunt Liza. Thanks to
you, we just about ended up with three more stiffs,” Nicky
quipped.

“
Stuck with stiffs and
spells. Whatever. At least life’s interesting down on the farm,”
Liza said, swaying in her seat as the whiskey started to do a real
number on her.

While she almost crumpled to the floor
in her drunken stupor, Grams was, once again, digging through her
coat pockets. Luckily, I thought I’d confiscated all of the Voodoo
reversing paperwork Nicky had printed out.

“
Ah. There they are,” she
said, pulling out and holding up a small set of jingle
bells.

She swung them through the air with
wild, theatrical motions.

“
Whoa. Wait a minute. You’re
going to make us all deaf,” I said, trying to reach for the
bells.

But she was too quick for me and
continued swinging them with gusto through the air.

“
What’s with the sleigh
bells?” Nicky asked, coming up behind her and smoothly getting them
out of her grasp while she wasn’t looking.

“
You should be thanking me.
I read that sleigh bells used to be used during Yuletide to give
advanced warning of visiting family members.”

“
I’m not following you,” I
said, which wasn’t out of the ordinary when it came to listening to
Grams.

“
It’s not all that tough,
Ace. Once peeps heard the sound of the bells from approaching
sleighs and wagons, they could decide if they’d rather deal with
their relatives or run out into the snow, before they got there,
and die of exposure.”

“
I see,” I said, trying as
hard as I could not to burst out laughing at her latest line of
reasoning. “So which have you decided to do?”

“
Well...for now, I’m staying
put. It’s damn cold out there. But I’m hanging onto these bells,
just in case. This family is totally whacked.”

Being stuck with sleigh bells sounds a
whole lot better than being stuck with Liza’s spells. Even though
both have the potential to leave us stuck with stiffs.

And yes, I had to agree with Grams. Our
makeshift family was totally whacked. Just ask the
rhododendrons.

THE END

Welcome to my new series...The Stuck
with a Series!

I hope you’ve gotten a kick out of Book
Two, Stuck with a Spell.

For all of you
superfab
Castle
fans out there...

The Stuck with a Series is
–
Castle
gone-country, now with a bit of Bewitched tossed into the
mix

And each of the Stuck with a Series
Books releases first in Serial Format!

What does that mean?

Think D. D. Scott and David
Slegg do Charles Dickens.

Okay...

I know what you’re
thinkin’...

Who’s David
Slegg?

And what do D. D. Scott and
this David Slegg have to do with Charles Dickens?

David Slegg is my new Co-Author. He’s
the Castle to my Beckett.

You can get the scoop on him
on his website:
http://davidslegg.com

Now then...about D. D. and David and
Dickens...

Charles Dickens began his writing
career by publishing his novels in Serial Format, which meant that
each month, another installment (aka chapter) was
released.

How fun is that?!

One of the questions I’m asked most by
my readers is:

“
How long do we have to wait
for the next book?”