SonofaWitch! Page 7

  She turned to me, like he wasn’t even there. “He sleeps outside the door in my hallway. I’m about to be evicted.”

  “I protect you.” He grinned, like he thought everything she said was adorable. She sneered at him. Out of the corner of my eye, Greta suppressed a laugh.

  I stuck out my hand, “James Jonah Fitzgerald.”

  He gave it a good pump, “Bob Wolfe. Nice to meet you.”

  Scarlet half turned to him. “Can I have a moment with James? Alone?”

  His thick, dark eyebrows knit together and a low growl rumbled from his throat. He backed away, still glaring at me as he took a seat in the far corner.

  “Well, that was awkward,” I said, relieved he hadn’t ripped my throat out.

  “Now you see? I met Douglas online and he’s smart and funny and kind. I want to meet him in person, but can you imagine? Bob would tear him to pieces.”

  “Aren’t you being a little dramatic?” I asked. “He seems okay.”

  Scarlet’s mouth set in a hard line, “He told me if anyone ever comes between us, he will literally tear them to pieces. I believe he would, too. I can’t meet Douglas and have Bob murder him. That’s why I need your help.”

  “Oh, boohoo.” Greta pretended to rub tears from her eyes. “Your curse is to have a gorgeous guy totally devoted to you. How awful. You could be stuck eating like a sumo wrestler and living with your brother like me.”

  “Hey!” Hans protested.

  “Sorry, bro. I just don’t feel bad for Red, is all.”

  “Don’t you dare say you’ve had it worse than me!” Scarlet’s face was turning crimson.

  Greta jumped up. “I think almost getting devoured by a witch is worse than having Bob follow you around. He didn’t even really eat your grandmother, he just locked her in a closet.”

  “Stalking is no joke.” Scarlet got right up in her face. “And it doesn’t make me feel any better that you find him attractive.”

  I stuck my arms out and separated them. “Ladies, ladies, we all have our problems, okay?”

  They both backed up a little. The last thing I needed was a battle of the fairy tale stars go down in the middle of my coffee shop. Greta plopped back onto her stool, still giving Scarlet the stink eye.

  “I need to have this curse lifted.”

  Hans snorted. I turned back to Scarlet. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that. I sell coffee and muffins. To people. And not quite people. I don’t do curses.”

  “You lifted the curse out of the door.” She pointed to Alrik’s Door, which I had laid out on four thick wooden legs, making it into a spectacular table.

  “That was an accident. I didn’t know it was cursed and I sure didn’t know that helping your Fairy Queen would lead to all this.” I looked around the room. Three leprechauns were snorting sugar packets in the back corner. “Now I’m stuck with it.”

  “Please,” she pleaded, glancing over at Bob who was gripping the table with both hands, as if trying to restrain himself from pouncing on me. She wasn’t kidding, Bob would kill for her, and if his body posture meant anything, I was on the top of his list.

  “Crystal might be able to help you,” Hans tossed in. Greta gave him a sharp jab in the ribs with her elbow, causing him to let out a sharp, “Ufff!”

  “Who’s Crystal?” That was a name I’d never heard come up in conversation around the shop.

  “Isolde. Of Tristan and Isolde fame? Had an opera written for them and all that?” Hans tried to take a nibble of one of Greta’s pastries and she slapped his hand away.

  “The Tristan and Isolde that drank the love potion and fell into a relentless, passionate love?” I asked.

  “You do know your fairy tales!” Scarlet exclaimed, clearly impressed.

  “I had to watch the opera in tenth grade music comprehension.” I shrugged. “It was okay. Long, but all right.”

  “She goes by Crystal now,” Hans continued. “Isolde is too much of a mouthful, I guess. And if she can make a potion that bound her and Tristan together for all time, why couldn’t she make one to unbind these two? A reverse love potion.”

  “Can you try her for me? I would do it myself but I can’t go two feet without Bob there.” Scarlet looked at me with desperation in her bird-like face. I’ve always been a sucker for a desperate woman. Across the room Bob let out another growl.

  She stood there, eyes begging.

  I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. No more. Don’t get involved.

  But I’m a sucker. And Bob’s fangs were starting to show.

  “Okay. I’ll go, just get him out of here before he scares all my customers away.”

  Scarlet jotted her cell number down on a napkin and slid it to me while Bob was shooing away a nymph who had wandered over to talk to him. She clapped her hands together and turned around, calling to him, “All done, Bob. Let’s go.”

  As he held the door open for her, she twisted around and mouthed thank you to me. Bob gave me a nice snarl and slammed the door, causing the little bells to crash against the glass.

  I let my head fall forward until it was resting on the counter. I’d been reading Cormac McCarthy again. All the Pretty Horses. If you’ve never read it, it’s all about true love left unfinished because people and circumstances stand in the couple’s way. I’m such a sucker. I should have reread The Road instead. Post-apocalyptic nightmares didn’t hit so close to home. Not that week, at least.

  “Why do I let myself get involved in these things?” I asked the polished wood grain.

  “You’re too soft,” Greta said. “It’s your whole Millennials generation. You’re all so ‘Do the Right Thingish,’ but selfish at the same time. It’s really amazing.”

  I lifted my forehead up, “Thank you for your commentary on me and my peers. How about you tell me where I can find Crystal instead?”

  “That’s easy. She and Tristan run a high-end dating service. They have an office on Main Street, right by the new FBI building.” Greta said and licked the icing off of her fingers one by one.

  “They introduce millionaires to other millionaires,” Hans added. “They were even on that reality show… what was the name?”

  “I Want to Marry Another Millionaire,” Greta chimed in.

  Hans snapped his fingers. “That’s the one.”

  I unlocked my cellphone to look for the address. “Thanks for the help, guys.”

  Crystal and Tristan’s office was a brand-spanking-new glass tower plunked right in the middle of downtown Buffalo. I don’t know why I had never gone urban exploring there before, except that maybe because I wasn’t a millionaire, I had no need of their special services, and they’d probably kick me out. Still, I love to explore the city’s architecture when I can. Then I go back to my apartment above the coffee shop and try to duplicate it in Legos.

  I parked my delivery van at the curb. I tried to only use it to drop off the baked good my kitchen elves made every night to other local shops, which had become my main source of extra income. Mostly I walked, to lessen my carbon footprint, but downtown was too far from South Buffalo to take a stroll. I looked up at the sixteen-story, mirrored façade. They were doing quite well for themselves, no doubt about that. I straightened my plaid shirt and brushed off the front of my skinny jeans, feeling a little underdressed as I pushed my way through the revolving doors into the opulent lobby.

  Huge abstract paintings framed in gold were positioned high on the walls. A tall, spiraling sculpture of what looked like gilded spaghetti reached toward the fifteen-foot ceiling in front of a sparkling gold and glass elevator. It was all very New Age modern-money looking.

  A young woman, about my age, but infinitely out of my league, looked up at me from behind a massive polished chrome reception desk. “May I help you?” The ice in her voice was enough to freeze my hipster glasses to my nose.

  “I came to see Crystal Smith.” Smith. A very common undercover fairy tale character last name. They’re not very creative when it comes to
aliases.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No. Sorry. But it’s really important.”

  She shuffled some papers around on her desk to appear extremely busy. “I’m afraid Mrs. Smith doesn’t see people without a proper appointment. If you’d like to leave your name and number, maybe she’ll get back to you.” She looked me up and down. “Or maybe she won’t.”

  “Listen, Miss.” I bent an elbow on the desk and leaned in, causing her to lean back. “I need to speak to Mrs. Smith now. Tell her Cerena sent me.” I hated to name drop the Fairy Queen, but it was my only shot.

  At Cerena’s mention, her blue eyes widened and she grabbed for the desk phone. No one wants to be on Cerena’s bad side. She whispered into the phone for a few seconds and then smiled up at me. “Take the elevator to the sixteenth floor. Mrs. Smith will be waiting for you.”

  “Thank you,” I told her, smirking to myself at how fast her tune had changed. Cerena was the one who gave me the Sight, unbeknownst to me, until the Fair-Fairy Tale Folk started showing up at my door in droves. Save one Fairy Queen from marriage to a diabolical frost demon and you could write your own ticket in these parts.

  I stabbed the up button and listened as Miss Thing at the front desk spoke in hushed tones into the phone behind my back. Giving Isolde the full scoop on me, I was sure. The doors slid open and I stepped inside, throwing her a wave before they closed. I rubbed the little space between my eyebrows. I could feel a Fairy-folk induced migraine coming on.

  A man was waiting for me as soon as I stepped off onto the sixteenth floor. He was short, balding and had buck teeth. Like Bugs Bunny buck teeth. “Sir? I’m Tristan Smith.” He stuck out his hand.

  I was a little shocked. After all, he and his wife’s love story was literally the stuff of legends. I expected him to be more legendary. And less hairy. The man had hair curling out of every orifice. It felt like he was wearing a wool mitten when I shook his hand.

  “Sorry about the intrusion, friend. I just need your wife’s help with something. She came highly recommended.”

  He put his hand on my back and guided me through the hallway to the rear of the building. “It must be important to invoke Cerena’s name.”

  “You know I wouldn’t do that if it wasn’t an emergency.”

  Tristan nodded and slid a key card through a slot next to a great black door. “I must admit, you’ve roused both of our curiosities.”

  The door slid open, and seated behind a modern chrome desk framed by the skyline of Buffalo was Crystal/Isolde. Her elegant desk was bare except for a matching chrome phone. She sat with her fingertips steepled—a show of dominance and power, I read somewhere—and her lips pursed.

  She wasn’t as shocking as Tristan. She wasn’t unattractive, she was just… ordinary. Brown hair cut in a severe bob. Brown eyes the color of a mud puddle. Causal brown dress. She was the type of woman who walked by and never earned a second glance; the most deadly kind. She must have been a very powerful witch, if she was capable of never ending love spells, and she did not look happy at all to see me. She definitely wasn’t the warm and fuzzy type. More like cold and calculating.

  “Mr. Fitzgerald. I was wondering when you’d finally make your way to see us.”

  “You know me?” I took a step back. There’s no telling what a witch will do.

  She stood and came around the desk. She was a tiny woman, shorter than Tristan, even with five-inch heels on. “Everyone in our realm has heard the brave tale of James Jonah Fitzgerald. Rumor has it your coffee shop has become sort of a safe haven for our kind.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a safe haven. It’s more like a dumping ground.”

  “Ha!” She wagged a finger, slowly circling around me, like a cat preparing to pounce. “That’s a great analogy. You either prosper in the human world or you flounder, isn’t that right darling?”

  Tristan gave his wife a loving smile, “That’s been my experience, dear.”

  She stopped dead in front of me, her sleeveless brown dress hung like a sack on her shapeless body. But her eyes were sharp as razors as they bore into mine. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “Scarlet is cursed with Bob Wolfe. She wants to be with another man, but Bob will kill him. He can’t help that, it’s part of the curse.” I used my best reasoning voice, the one I usually reserve for my mother when I’m trying to get a loan. “She wants to be free of the curse, that way they’ll both be happier. I can’t imagine following her around like a puppy makes for a fulfilling life for him. And going to jail for murder would legitimately suck.”

  She gave a sharp laugh, “Oh, Red. I should have known. Making herself out to be noble, is she?”

  “No, actually. That was just me.”

  Crystal was smiling as she made her way back to her desk. “I like you. You’re honest. Very rare.” She sat back in her chair and looked at her husband. “What do you think?”

  “We’ve done more, for worse.”

  “True, true. But now the real question is: What’s in it for us?”

  “For you?” The damn price. I knew that was coming. I tried playing dumb about it, it’s the one thing I’m good at.

  Her expression melted a little into exasperation. “You know the rules, James. Everything comes with a price. Do you think Red is willing to pay that price?”

  I shrugged. “It depends. What’s your price?”

  Now she laughed out loud, with her husband joining in. “It’s whatever I want it to be. You, as her agent, have to accept or reject that and assume the responsibility for whatever happens.”

  “You’re not going to turn them into toads or anything like that, are you?”

  “It’s not the middle ages. You can’t buy a Porsche with a couple of toads.” She pressed a button on the side of her desk and the wall on the left side of the room transformed into a potion station, complete with shelves full of bottles, flasks, floating eyeballs and glowing gases.

  She crossed over to it and danced her fingers along the top shelf until she came to a particularly nasty-looking black canister. She plucked it out and unscrewed the lid. The temperature in the room dropped about five degrees.

  “Do you accept?”

  I gave a half-hunched, non-committal, shrug nod.

  “Give them both only one of these in a beverage. Coffee, tea, Diet Coke, whatever it is you serve. Then send them both here, to me.” She held out two shriveled black roses. “Just the petals. They’ll dissolve.”

  I took the two black roses perched on three inch cut stems. “Then what happens?”

  “Everybody gets what they want.”

  I wrapped the flowers up in the handkerchief from my back pocket. “What’s the price?”

  She waved a hand and the potion station dissolved back into the wall. Linking her arm through Tristan’s she gave me that sinister smile only a real witch can pull off. “You’ll see. It was a pleasure to do business with you, Mister Fitzgerald.”

  “Likewise.” It really wasn’t. It sucked.

  “I’ll walk you out,” Tristan offered.

  Holding up a hand, I shook my head. “I’m good. I’ll show myself out.”

  “Come back any time, James Jonah Fitzgerald!” She called after me. I couldn’t get to the elevator fast enough. I wanted to go home and take a shower.

  I called Scarlet on the ride back to the coffee shop. “You and Bob need to meet me right now. Then Crystal needs to see you both.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.” She paused and added, “Do you think it will work?”

  “If creepy is any indication of a good witch, I think we went to the right person.”

  I shooed everyone out of the coffee shop when I got back, leaving me alone with the trio of three-foot-high, pointy-red-hat-wearing Winter Elves who lived in my kitchen and baked twenty-four hours a day. Non-stop. Every single day. Thank goodness there are no Fair Folk labor laws. They were the key to my success. I jumped in my van every morning at the crack of dawn and sold
the extra pastries they made all over the city. Their goodies were in high demand. It was a good thing too; Fairy Tale Folk don’t tip very well.

  One of them stuck his head out of the kitchen door when he heard me locking up.

  “Kaduba, James!” Shemp greeted me. His little canvas overalls were covered in powdered sugar. I referred to them as the three stooges, for lack of being able to pronounce their real names. They didn’t seem bothered by it. Larry and Curly were still baking in the back. “Wrot tu?” he asked.

  “Closing up early,” I replied. Over the past six months, I had gotten pretty fluent in Elvish. It was easy to understand, once I got used to it, but I was still trying to master their speech, in which a lot depended on tone. “Nothing to be concerned about. I put the extra flour in the back cabinet.” I had to have supplies delivered on a daily basis to my back door. Then I had to smuggle the sacks of sugar, flour, fruit, and nuts into the kitchen without the neighbors getting a peek at my staff. “Your banana raspberry nut muffins were a huge hit today.”

  He gave me a toothy smile. “Holpka. Guen un whingo.”

  “You’re welcome. Keep up the good work.” I told him, giving him a thumbs up. Shemp tipped his red, pointed hat to me with his four-fingered hand and closed the door. They didn’t like to be disturbed while they worked. And worked. And worked.

  I put a fresh pot of coffee on while I waited for Bob and Scarlet. Fingering one of the black roses, I brought it close to my eye to get a good look at it. It appeared normal, except for the blackness. It smelled old though, musty, like it had been sitting in a drawer for a hundred years, which it probably had. Dropping it back down next to its mate on the napkin I spread next to the coffee machine, I looked up at the sound of the tinkling of my door bells.

  Scarlet came in first with a very agitated Bob in tow. His longish, dark hair was in disarray, like he’d just woke up, although it was only six thirty. His black t-shirt stretched over his muscular frame, showing off his impressive arms. The same arms he wanted to use to rip people limb from limb. Right that moment, his focus was on me.