The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told (24 page)

Darla drove toward her place, using a long and winding route, to make sure she wasn’t followed. She was almost home when she heard the sound of a police siren. She looked into the rearview mirror and saw a plain, tan Crown-Victoria with a blue light flashing on the dashboard behind her.

“Oh, shit!” she said. An icy wave washed over her, as if she’d been drenched in liquid nitrogen, turning her stiff with fear.

She pulled to the curb. This wasn’t a traffic stop.

A tall, heavyset, balding man alighted from the car. He wore a cheap, badly wrinkled suit and brown shoes, and a tie that failed to reach his belt. Might as well have had a neon sign over his head flashing out the word “Cop!”

He walked to her driver’s door.

“Would you step out of the car, please?”

“What’s the trouble? Was I speeding?”

“No, lady, I’m a detective, I don’t do traffic tickets. Out here, please, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

Dead. She was dead. She had considered it over the years, what she would do if she was ever caught, but it had never seemed real to her, it had been so theoretical.

What was she going to do?

The Glamour.

Of course! In her panicked fear, she had forgotten she had a perfect weapon. She’d touch him, and when the moment was right, she’d distract him, change, and that would be that!

The woman? she’d say, when he turned around and saw an old man there, She went that way, she was running!

Okay, she’d be okay, she could do this. He’d have to pat her down, and that would be enough, his hands on her would be fine. A touch was a touch.

“Over on the sidewalk, please,” he said.

She obeyed.

“What did I do?” she asked.

“You don’t need me to tell you that. Step in there, please.”

He pointed to a gate that lead to what looked like a small garden.

“Excuse me?”

“We don’t want to do this out here.”

“Do what out here?!”

The panic she’d felt came back. What was going on?

“Open the gate, please.”

She did. He shut the wrought iron behind them. “Wow, look at that,” he said.

She turned. “Wh-what?”

When she turned back to look at the cop he was gone.

In his place was an old woman.

Darla frowned. She knew this woman from somewere . . . ah, it was the old lady on the MAX train . . .

“Or this?” the old woman said, in a decidedly masculine voice.

The woman shimmered, and of a moment, Darla found herself looking at the cab driver who had taken her home from St. Johns—

And then, like a strobe light blinking on and off, the cab driver became the teenager who had stolen her purse, the good-looking guy she’d seen in Starbucks, and finally, St. Johns.

Blink, blink, blink.

Darla was too stunned to speak.

“Are we having fun yet?” he said.

She realized her mouth was open. She closed it.

He chuckled. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist.”

The meaning of it hit her. “You—you’re like me,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Yep. What you see isn’t what you get, necessarily.”

He laughed again. “I don’t rob houses, my ambition is a little bigger than that, but I do okay. As you noticed when you spotted my cash box.

“How much did you take, by the way?”

“Two bills from each stack.”

“Smart. I like bright women.”

“Why are you—what—?”

“Well, I’ve been watching you for a while, Darla. Far as I can tell you and I are the only two of our kind. I’d propose a . . . partnership.”

“Partnership?”

“Well. More than that, maybe. I mean, you are gorgeous and careful and clever, but there there are some advantages to what we can do together. Between the two of us, we could do bigger and better things than either of us can do alone. Imagine how much easier it would be be if we could be a couple that looked like anybody we wanted?”

She considered it. Yes. That would be something.

“Plus there are some other perks.”

He shimmered and turned into a studly young movie star that Darla much admired.

“Or maybe . . . this?” He morphed into another young man, this one a match to a well-known rock star.

“We have a world of choice to offer each other, don’t we?” He shimmered again, and reclaimed St. Johns. “Not that I think I would get bored with you as you stand. You are stunning, you know, but you also have a kind of variety to offer no other woman does.”

She smiled back at him. “Even though I stole your money?”

“Because you stole my money. What do you think?”

She found herself nodding. Yes. There was an attraction, no question, and if she got tired of looking at him?

Well, he could fix that in an instant.

Because nobody was immune to Glamour . . .

NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN

I’m a thirty-year-old woman who lives at home with her mother. When guys do this, I suspect it’s because they can’t find a woman their age who will cook and do laundry and pick up after them the way their moms do. When a woman does it, the only legitimate excuse is that Mother is feeble and needs help.

My mother refuses to be feeble. I could cast a spell on her to make her feeble, but she has a rule: no witchcraft in the house. This is why I have to have an outside office to craft the spells I sell on my website. I have broken Mom’s no-magic-in-the-house rule a couple times, but she really means it when she says she’ll kick me out if I do it again without permission.

I tell people I still live with my mom because she needs my rent checks. I make twice as much money with my spell business as she does at her florist job. The checks meant something to Mom while Dad was defaulting on the alimony, but now that he wants to get back together with her, he’s paying regularly, so my expressed reason for living with Mom is a lie.

What I really crave is living with someone who understands me. This is a big secret. Not my biggest one, but one of the top ten. My twin sister and I became witches the same day, and for a while we grew into our power together. We were close before we turned into witches, but afterward, we were so tight I had trouble loosening up enough to find a boyfriend. Tasha and I went to the same teacher and learned the same lessons. We practiced our arts on each other . . . until I took a turn toward the dark side, and she refused to follow. She got all mystical instead, dedicated herself to the powers of Air, and left me so she could pursue her new faith. Now she travels the world practicing weird rituals that don’t get her anything but good will. I can see that being a bankable asset, but only if you spend it sometimes, which Tasha never does.

Mom’s the only one in town who understands me. So she’s stuck with me, whether she likes me or not.

As part of my business practice, I hung out at the student union building at the local university. My regular spell customers knew to find me there, and I hooked up with new ones all the time. The right conversational opening gave people all the excuse they needed to complain. Once I knew their problems, I knew which spell to sell them.

The S.U.B. was a rambling building. There was a bowling alley/ video arcade in the basement, a food court on the second story, offices for university clubs and special interest groups scattered throughout, potted plants, meeting rooms, and snarls of conversational furniture everywhere. I could lurk there with impunity.

A boy witch bumped into me in the food court. I was waiting to buy a gyro, and he was heading toward a girl. In addition to sideswiping me and not apologizing, he totally dinged my witch radar. I’d encountered other witches here and there on campus, but never somebody else with such powerful vibes.

“Hey,” I said, giving New Witch Boy the up-down.

He brushed past me without answering. I wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the world unless I worked at it, but I had style. Short dark hair in a clean cut, and single-color tailored clothes. I passed for college age all the time. Was this guy gay?

I wandered after him, not so much offended as intrigued. Maybe he didn’t have witch radar and didn’t recognize me for what I was. I’d met a number of powerful people, and power made its home in them in different places; I no longer expected anyone else’s power to match mine.

“Shelley,” he said, catching up to a girl who was hurrying away. I was disappointed. She had that blonde cheerleader look—long, washed-out hair, big blue eyes, lush lips, and big, pushy breasts—so beloved in teen-centric TV and too often in real life.

“Not
now
, Gareth,” she said. Her voice incorporated acid. “My boyf riend’s watching.” She swung away, bobbing gently in front, and Gareth stood, his mouth half open in either idiocy or preparation for a remark that never made it past his teeth.

I stopped beside him. “If you’re that interested in her, why don’t you enchant her?”

His mouth closed and he stared at me with angry amber eyes.

“Hey, hey, I was just asking,” I said.

“Get away from me,” he said.

“Sheesh, you don’t have to be nasty.”

“Did my mother send you here to pester me?”

“No, but I’d like to meet her.”

He blinked. “What?”

“If she’s the type of mother who sends girls to torment her sons, she might be my kind of fun.”

“Who
are
you?”

“My name’s Terry Dane. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“Terry Dane? Do you run that spell website?”

I smiled. “You’re heard of me!”

He looked madder than ever. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I shrugged. “Making a living?”

“With those watered-down imitation spells? More like wholesale fraud.”

“Come on. Have you tried them?”

“I bought the spell for studying harder. It hardly helped at all.”

“Did you dissolve it in hot water?”

“What?”

“You have to use hot water to make it truly active—the hotter the better.”

“Oh—I thought—”

“I include instructions with the spells for a reason. It’s not my fault if you ignore them. I’m feeling generous today, so I’ll give you a replacement for the last one you messed up, but this is a one-time deal.” I shrugged out of my backpack and rummaged through my sample case. The spells I carried with me were stronger than the mass-produced ones I made for mail order, on the principle of intermittent conditioning, and the desired-recapture-of-the-first-time syndrome. If your first hit was really effective, you kept thinking the next one would work just as well. Every once in a while I sent out the stronger versions through the mail to keep my regular customers coming back. “Here.” I held out the little gray-paper-wrapped cube that was the “increased study skills” spell. “Hot water. Tea or coffee works.”

He hesitated.

“Don’t use it until you’re cramming for something. The effect is temporary unless you reinforce it with actual studying on a regular basis. Wait until the night before the exam; it only helps you retain things for forty-eight hours, and that’s an outside estimate. Why do you need something like this, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on. You’re a witch. You could make your own.”

He grabbed the spell and strode away without a backward look.

“So, no coffee?” I yelled.

About fifteen people turned to look at me. Usually I kept a low profile, but at the moment I was past caring. Had I just wasted a free spell on a guy who was going to ignore me?

“Hey, Terry? You got an attract spell on you?” asked Seth, a short guy with bad teeth and too many green pieces of clothing. One of my best customers. I’d slipped him a free “see yourself as others see you and figure out how to fix your obvious errors” spell once, the permanent version, because it increased the effectiveness of all the other spells I sold him. He had learned to smile with his lips closed, but he couldn’t seem to overcome his penchant for green. “There’s a girl I want to impress right over there.”

“Sure,” I said, instead of, “Another one? What happened to the last six girls you used an impress-her spell on?” The spells had to have worked, or why was he coming back for more? Maybe it was a case of wanting something until you actually had it, or maybe the short-term effect had kicked in. If you didn’t actually interest the person you attracted after two or three exposures, the spell would wear off and the relationship was over. I fished out the red-wrapped spell Seth wanted—one of my best sellers—and he handed me fifty bucks.

“Thanks.” He ran off. I wondered if I should use an attract spell myself and pursue Gareth, but he’d already vanished.

The next time I saw Gareth was in the supermarket by the produce section.

Ding! Ding! Witch in the vicinity! I turned from the mountain of Minneolas I was casing and saw Gareth squeezing an avocado. I decided to stalk him, since the straightforward approach hadn’t worked.

He put three avocados in a plastic bag and turned to hand the bag to a woman. Ding! Okay, that was why two dings the first time, and maybe why he could ignore me so easily—he already had a companion witch.

“Gareth, I said
four
,” she said.

A testy companion witch. Twice his age.

Two girls rushed up, stair-steps, wavy brown hair, with the same tawny eyes Gareth had. “Look, Mom! Stephanie found the brown sugar!” said the taller girl, and the other one said, “Lacey got the flour!”

“Good job, girls,” said the woman, smiling down at them, an edge of enchantment in her expression. For sure the kids felt loved. Cheap trick. I had that one in my repertoire, but it was so easy I rarely used it. Maybe I should try it on Gareth. He was probably used to it, and would fall faster than someone never exposed.

A slender young woman, her brown-gold hair in short curls, arrived and set a bag of raisins carefully in the cart, offering the mother witch a tight smile.

“Thank you, Rae,” said the mother, her voice not so supple and graceful this time.

“What else do you need?” asked Rae.

Mom witch consulted her shopping list. “Chocolate chips.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before? Those were in the same aisle,” said Rae. She frowned and marched away.

“Mommy, what else can we find?”

“Bread, girls,” said the mother to the two girls, who jumped up and down. “Look by the back wall.” She gestured toward the store bakery, and the two raced off, giggling. She held out the bag with three avocados to Gareth without a word, and he went back to the produce aisle.

I edged over to him, reached for an onion. “Okay, I get why you’re allergic to witches,” I muttered, “but I’m not your mother.”

He jerked and dropped three avocados on the floor, starting an avocado avalanche. I snapped my fingers and stopped them all from tumbling, sorted them back into a stable pile. “You’ve got to work on your people-sensing skills,” I said. “I didn’t actually sneak up on you. You could have seen me in your peripheral vision.”

“Are you following me?” He stood, picked up the three fugitive avocados, and placed them carefully with the others.

“Maybe.”

“Get away from me.”

“Am I totally unattractive to you?” That came out more plaintive than I liked. I didn’t let Helpless Me out to play in public. This guy was demoralizing me, and I should probably move away from him. Instead, I said, “I can change.”

“Why are you even interested in me? I’m not sending out signals, am I?” His eyes widened. “Did I put a spell on you?”

“Simmer down. I’m just short of witch company at the moment, and you’re the first likely candidate I’ve sensed in a while.”

“I’ll be interested in you if you can teach me how to stop being a witch,” he whispered, just as his mother swooped down on us.

“Didn’t you find another avocado yet? What’s taking so long?”

“Hey, Mom. This is Terry, my new girlfriend.” Whoa! I was promoted! He went on, “Terry, my mother, Sally Mathis.”

She stiffened immediately, worked hard, and came up with a smile. “Nice to meet you. You won’t distract him from his homework too much, will you?”