magical cures 07 - a charming fatality (3 page)

The other man motioned for me to get out of the car.

“You stay and be good,” I said to Mr. Prince Charming who was now sitting ram-rod straight on the dash with his eyes following the man with the mirror. “It’s a formality,” I said as if I knew what was going on or even if Mr. Prince Charming truly understood me, but it didn’t stop me from talking to him.

My eyes slid from him to the glow in my bag. Madame Torres was trying to tell me something. It was going to have to wait.

“Hi!” I bounced out of the El Camino. I stuck my hand out. “I’m June Heal and it’s my first day.”

His dark, hawkish face seemed never to have known a smile.

I smiled bigger. Any bigger and my cheeks would have popped right off my face. 

He took his thick finger and scrolled down his clipboard.

Awkwardly, I cleared my throat. He was taking longer than he needed to. I popped up on my toes and glanced over the top of his clipboard. He drew it to him and looked at me. His eyes squinted in suspicion.

“Nothing under the car, boss.” The man with the mirror went back into the building.

“Nope. Just me.” I bounced on the balls of my feet with my hands clasped in front.

Mewwl.

“And him,” I whispered and looked down at my fingers. I didn’t want to look at Mr. Prince Charming. I could feel he was doing something he shouldn’t be.

“Sorry. You aren’t on here. Leave.” There was no detection of thawing in his voice.

“But Tiffany and Burt are. . .” About that time a tall figure came toward me from the other side of the gate.

“June!” Tiffany called from the shadows of the tree line. She stepped out into the sun. She had on a pink jogging suit and a matching pink headband. There were ankle weights velcroed around each ankle, a small dumbbell in each hand. She pumped her arms up and down over her head with each step. The sunlight made her hair have glimpses of gold, adding a shimmer around her.

My intuition told me the stress potion I had made her was working and her appearance was showing that it was.

“Ronald! Ronald!” Tiffany waved the dumbbell in the air. “Let her in!”

“Ma’am, she’s not on the list,” Ronald held the clipboard in the air. “And Mr. Rossen said—”

“I don’t care what Mr. Rossen said. I’m the boss here.” She jutted the weight toward us as her pace picked up, inching closer and closer. “I said! You hear me! I said!”

“What is your name?” Roland’s voice changed in tone to somewhat more of a pleasant nature of having to be nice.

“June Heal as in H-E-A-L, not heel like the foot.” Every time someone asked for my name, it never failed; they would spell it as in the foot heel. This way it was up front and no miscommunication.

His brows pulled into an affronted frown.

“Shoowee,” Tiffany stopped and handed Ronald the weights. He juggled them with the clipboard until he had everything in a football grasp. “Did you see those trees? Do you see how the sun is not coming through and the making all sorts of shadows?” She didn’t wait for Ronald to respond. “I thought I told you that you had to cut those back. No shadows. Full sun.”

“But Mr. Rossen,” Ronald stammered.

“Mr. Rossen again?” She planted her hands on her thin hips. Raising fine, arched eyebrows, she protested, “This is my company and you take orders from me. I’m so sick and tired of him thinking he is in charge of my company. He thinks he is going to get this company, but it will only be over my dead body. You got that, Ronald?”

She didn’t bother getting an answer from Ronald before she turned to me. She tucked her arm into mine, elbow-to-elbow, and leaned over. She whispered, “I’m so happy to have you here. We’ve had a bit of an issue since we talked, but you don’t need to worry with that.”

She jerked me toward the car and was talking a mile a minute without me getting a word in. Before I knew it, we were at the passenger side of the Green Machine. Her nose snarled when she noticed Mr. Prince Charming was sitting on the hood of the car with his tail dangling down over the passenger door window.

“June.” She pulled me closer as if she knew Mr. Prince Charming could hear her. “Um. . .” she glanced over my shoulder, and then back at me. “We don’t allow animals in the factory.” She snugged me closer. “I mean imagine the bad publicity we would get if someone was rubbing on your fabulous stress lotion and a cat hair was in it.”

I wasn’t sure how she did it, but she snorted, eye rolled, and curled her nose at the same time.

“Oh,” I pulled my arm from out of hers and stepped back. “I had no idea that was the case so I guess my time here is done.”

Growl. Mr. Prince Charming stood on all fours and arched his back. His mouth slightly open and showing his premolars.

“Mr. Prince Charming!” I scolded him and he settled down. “Thank you so much for the opportunity. Only I do not go anywhere where my fair. . .Mr. Prince Charming is not welcome.”

“Could you imagine the returns we’d get though?” She tried to get me to see her side; which was never going to work.

“Did you find any cat hair in your stress cream I made for you?” I asked and picked up Mr. Prince Charming off the hood, cradling him in my arms and scratching him behind his ears. “He was right there as I was making it.”

“Well, no, but. . .” She bit the edges of her lip as though she were trying to come up with a good solution. “Oh, damn.” She flung her hand at me but looked at Mr. Prince Charming. “Fine. But if I get one complaint.”

“You won’t,” I assured her.

“Fine.” She opened the passenger door and got in and rolled down the window. “Well?” She rested her elbow in the windowsill. “Are you going to come to work or not?”

“I guess I am.” I rushed around the front of the Green Machine with Mr. Prince Charming in my arms and gave a quick smile to Ronald before I got in the driver’s side and shut the door. I put the car in drive and with both hands on the wheel I pushed on the gas, driving through the now open security gate.

Chapter Five

“Everything is laid out exactly how the contract states.” Tiffany tapped her brow with a hot pink handkerchief she pulled out of the jacket of her sweat suit. She wiped, talked and walked without missing a beat.

She opened the door to the company and gestured me to go ahead of her. I stepped into a world of pink and black patent leather. It took everything I had not to turn around and run. Not because my intuition told me, but this was not the type of girl I was. Not a girly girl surrounded by pink.

Rowl
. Mr. Prince Charming stood between the getaway door and me as if he knew I was seriously considering running back to Whispering Falls with my tail tucked.

“What’s wrong with him?” Tiffany’s nose curled. It wasn’t a happy curl. “I can’t have him acting like that and scaring the employees.”

Before I could protest, a squeal came from behind the sleek black leather counter with brass studs haphazardly placed all over the front of it.

“A cat!” The dark-skinned woman rushed over and grabbed Mr. Prince Charming before he could run for cover. “Little bitty itty baby.” She smothered him in kisses.

She stood about my height, five foot eight, and wore her hair in a loose afro. She had on a black shirt, black slacks, and black non-slip soled shoes. The hot pink logo matched the Head To Toe Works logo perfectly.

“Put that down.” Tiffany protested. “You will get hair all over you and bring it into the facility.” Tiffany shook her head and her finger at me. “I told you this was not a good idea.”

Tiffany walked over to the counter and grabbed a Head To Toe Works black shopping bag. I followed her over there and took Mr. Prince Charming from the woman.

“It will be fine.” I ran my hand over him to make sure he was okay. “I’m June and this is my cat, Mr. Prince Charming.”

“Nice to meet you.” With Mr. Prince Charming nestled in my arms, she gave him another good scratch behind the ear, sending him into a purring fit. She looked down at her shirt and held her arms out to her side. “See, no hair.”

“He doesn’t really shed.” I had never really thought about it, but he didn’t. After all of these years, you think I’d noticed.

“Here.” Tiffany held the bag out to me. “When you work your two days a week, you will need to wear the uniform like everyone else.”

“Really?” I had never worn a uniform for a job and wasn’t sure how this was going to work out. How did she know my size? I took the black pants out and held them up while the woman and Tiffany whispered between them.

“It’s not right.” The woman’s voice was hard. “The bottles aren’t nearly as cute and the plastic ones do not hold all the product.”

“It’s fine.” Tiffany looked over at me with a sweet smile. “Aren’t those adorable?”

“Adorable,” I groaned pulling the stretchy waistband. I could already feel the painful indentions the ribbed band was going to make around my stomach. “Is there something wrong with my product?”

When the woman said something about the bottles, my internal intuition gift went off like an alarm. Something around here was off.

“Wassup?” Another worker walked into the building with the same exact outfit on, saving Tiffany from my question. “Dude, a cat.” He reached his arm out.

It was hard enough not to stare at his nose ring and I couldn’t help but notice the five-point star tattoo.

My eyes bolted open and I gulped. It was true there were many witches in the world. The Good-Siders and the Dark-Siders were the two classifications. We were a very segregated world until I had mistakenly been appointed to be Whispering Falls Village President, which I gladly gave up to Petunia.

Anyway, you could never be too careful and I wasn’t sure if he was part of the spiritual world or not, but anyone who sports a symbol from my world always made me cautious.

Mr. Prince Charming stood on two legs, batted my wrist and darted around my leg when the tattoo guy tried to pat him.

“What’s wrong with that cat?” he asked.

“He’s a little shy at first.” I didn’t want Mr. Prince Charming to seem rude though I knew he was telling me something was off by batting my wrist. “I’m June Heal. I think we are going to be working together.”

“Oh no.” Tiffany extended her arms over her head and in one fluid motion swung them down and around in a stretch. “Josh works on the line.” She tapped her watch.

“The line?” I asked. The man and woman both turned and walked away silently. “It was nice meeting you!” I called.

“Your contract states that we are only a co-packer for your line of stress free lotions. You have some attorney.” She nodded. “The other contract was the one where you raked us over the coals for the percentage you will get in order to be featured in Head To Toe Works.”

“Oh.” I bit my lip. I had no idea what the Village Council had come up with in terms of the agreement. All I knew was that they had to contact the Marys, the Order of Elders, to get permission. And their decision was my decision. I had agreed to split half of the earnings to go back into Whispering Falls so we didn’t have to go through another recession like the one we had gone through around Christmas.

“Follow me.” Tiffany instructed, curling her finger behind her shoulder and walking while still talking. She opened a door and we walked through.

It was a long hallway with windows on both sides looking down into the factory part of the headquarters.

“The factory portion is built underground due to the nature of the creams. They have to have proper temperature and having it built this way provides a more constant temperature without using as much energy.  It is greener and we are able to use the money saved to use the best nutrients and vitamins in the product.” We stopped and both looked down on the assembly lines. “This is one reason why our customers love us so much.”

“I see mine!” I was barely able to control my gasp of surprise when I saw the label being put on the bottles.

When I first agreed to the deal, I wasn’t sure how much I would enjoy seeing my product out there. A lot of people had my product even before I started to produce it. Darla sold plenty of this same homeopathic cure to the customers at the Locust Grove Flea Market. In fact, this one particular cure was the reason they would come back to the market. The only difference was I put a special potion in mine and Darla couldn’t.

The potion I used was a basic one with a spell that conformed to the customer. Unlike a customer coming into A Charming Cure where I could intuitively tell what the nature of their stress was and tailor a potion to their specific needs, this adventure had to be as basic as I could and yet enough to work so I could do my part for my beloved village.

“But. . .” I stammered when I noticed the extra special bottles, extra special as in where I had put the magic touch, were not what was being bottled, but rather still in the cardboard boxes I had sent from A Charming Cure. “Those are not my bottles.”

“That is something I wanted to discuss with you.” Tiffany’s lips thinned. She looked at me with an intense but secret expression.

I flung the door open next to us and bolted down the stairs with Mr. Prince Charming next to me.

“No! No!” Tiffany hollered after me. She was so slow, I was already down the steps and in front of the machine.

“Stop this machine,” I begged and ran around to the other side when I saw the dark skinned woman from the lobby. “Please stop this machine and use these,” I begged and rushed over to the cardboard boxes and took out one of the special potion bottles.

I had taken the time to create these special bottles and hold them, giving each of them a special spell with my touch. Once the spell and the stress free potion, or lotion as they believed, mixed, the magical components of the product worked.

I held one out to the woman and shoved it in her hands. Her mouth was gaped open and an inexplicable look of withdrawal came over her face. She sat it down next to her and continued to place the cheap plastic caps on the cheap plastic bottles, sending them down the line to be packaged.

The tattoo guy kept placing the plastic bottles in the machine, letting them fill up with the stress free lotion I had sent. He shrugged.