Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Today’s specials: botched spells, bad Latin, and boundaries
Ihad three browser tabs open and a spreadsheet I’d broken four times with my Hulk hands.
Thank the Lord for the undo button. I glared at the remaining half-cookie sitting alone at the bottom of the tin like it had failed some loyalty test. I needed more than half of one to make it through this month’s episode of Make Summer Grove Profitable, Please and Thank You.
I flicked from my clinic ledger to the bank statements and back to the color-coded calendar that pretended it could hold back the tide of supernatural nonsense by sheer pastel willpower.
It could not. Line after depressing line itemized my life: gauze packs, silver nitrate sticks, three new sets of scrubs because Maggie accidentally washed my old ones with her all-natural tie-dyed dungarees, a replacement necropsy scalpel, and a mysterious charge from the plumber labeled “scream pipe.” He swore there was no such thing.
I did not believe him, but the upstairs toilet in room two no longer howled at midnight, so we had settled on a detente.
I tipped the last half-cookie into my mouth and crunched my way through a brutal truth: if I wanted to continue keeping an entire town’s worth of supernatural detritus upright and mostly alive, I needed money.
I grabbed a pen and my delightful witch hat-shaped sticky notes and scribbled aggressively.
Apply for grants?
Do half-angels get benefits? Dental?
Wingspan allowance?
War-related stress pay?
Someone, somewhere, owed me back pay and a voucher for a weekend getaway without dead people.
Preferably on a remote tropical island where nobody could demand I listen to their excuses.
My heart stuttered at the thought of the video Sebastian took.
I shook my head. Did I want to see it? No…
yes? He’s likely deleted it already, so I’m sure the choice is gone.
Indigo stayed blessedly silent while I wrestled with the masochism of curiosity.
I tipped my head back and massaged my temples, staring at the plain white ceiling like it might cough up answers… or at least a refund.
A cheerful knock sounded on my office door.
“Are you ready for your first, boss?” Maggie chirped, already halfway inside, braid bouncing as if it existed in a friendlier gravity.
I sat up and blinked. “My first what?”
“Appointment.” She marched to the blank patch of wall on my right and tapped a new, very large, wipeable weekly calendar I’d somehow failed to notice.
I squinted at the words. Tuesday Clinic, with neat blocks of names in Maggie’s loopy handwriting. “Who authorized organization?”
“You mumbled something about budgets a few days ago before you fell asleep in the armchair with a pen on your face,” she said. “So I did it. You’re welcome.”
I vaguely recalled that, but since then, we’d had a ghost invasion, a visit with an unhelpful god, and a betrayal that cut deep enough to graze bone. Still, of all the anomalies, my bobcat shifter teen organizing more than a speed-dating night or a kitchen disaster was up there.
“Probably a good thing,” I muttered, glancing at the bank total. “Proceed.”
“Excellent.” She clapped and jumped up and down. That was more like Maggie. “I’ll just prep the area.”
I scowled. “We aren’t operating, Maggie.”
She pulled the door open, and the White Furry Menace slunk inside. Maggie frowned and waggled her finger at the feline. “Play nice. No eating the customers.”
“Patients,” I corrected. Then the words sank in. Why would anyone be in danger of becoming Bella’s dinner?
Maggie dragged in a tiny bright pink inflatable paddling pool with an arching flamingo complete with cartoon eyes and a bobbing beak and dropped it beside my desk.
I folded my arms and leaned back in my chair when she pulled a bucket into the room next.
She dumped the water into it, along with a Barbie doll wearing a swimsuit.
Wonderful. I was all set up for kiddie care.
I opened my mouth, but she raised a finger, making the words die on my tongue.
She stuffed her hands inside the pockets of her denim flared jeans and pulled out a handful of green leaves.
The distinct scent of mint floated in the air as she sprinkled the water with the herb.
She stepped back, hands on hips, assessing the tableau like it was an installation at the Louvre.
Then she gave me two thumbs up and skipped out.
I stared at the flamingo, then at my colorful set of spreadsheets, then back at the flamingo. “Color me curious,” I told the universe. The universe, which had a sense of humor and poor time management, obliged immediately.
The door opened without a knock, and today’s first patient glided in like a summer storm.
Marcia Blackthorne, local witch, solstice attendee, and enthusiastic incense burner, usually wore her power like a perfume—expensive, heady, and a little cloying.
She was tall, in her late thirties, and had cheekbones you could slice bread on.
Today, she chose a red dress that swished dramatically without tangling in her heels, rolled her dark hair into a chignon held with two silver pins shaped like crescent moons, and lined her eyes with glitter eyeliner.
This must be serious, because Marcia hated asking for help.
“Cora,” she said. Or rather, her mouth said it while refusing to cooperate with the rest of her face.
Her expression didn’t shift. Not in the “I have a resting witch face” kind of way, but more like “my muscles have staged a coup.” Her forehead didn’t crinkle.
Her eyebrows didn’t move. Her upper lip hovered in a perpetual suggestion of a smile, and her cheeks were fixed at a perma-plump that would have made an influencer weep.
“Are you aware you have a gathering of ghosts upstairs?”
“It’s an ongoing situation.”
My gaze skimmed past the flawless surface and noted what the untrained eye would miss—tiny bloom-like bruises at the corners of her eyes and faint purpling dotted like a constellation around the temples. A botched enchantment… with needlework.
“And the nakedness?” she asked.
Ugh, they were still at it? Damn ghosts had stamina. “Also an ongoing situation.”
She lowered herself with practiced grace onto the opposite chair and sighed. The large black purse perched on her lap shuddered.
Interesting.
“You look… immobile,” I said, deploying my professional voice.
Her eyes flicked, the only thing capable of movement. “Do not mock me, Undertaker,” she tried, but it came out in a gentle monotone.
Oh dear. “I’m not,” I lied smoothly. “What brings you in today, apart from a life lesson in restraint?”
She pressed a protective hand to the purse as it twitched. “I need help. I tried making sure he would love me forever, because I saw him eyeballing Sasha, and she’s a man-stealing whore.”
Awesome. Why were we still blaming women for men’s wandering hands in this day and age? And look at the result. Love magic and facial paralysis.
The flamingo bobbed in agreement as the air-con clicked on, while Barbie smiled up at the ceiling, an unknowingly appointed lifeguard.
I clicked my pen. “Let’s start at the beginning. When did you do it?”
“Yesterday,” she said primly, or attempted to. Her mouth gave me prim-adjacent. “And before you ask, yes, I know better. Yes, I’ve attended your tedious lectures about consent magic. But the heart wants what it wants.”
“The heart wants what it wants until it realizes it’s hungry and under-hydrated,” I said. “I take it ‘he’ is your partner?”
“Pete,” she said, with a softening in her eyes that told me the rest. “We are soulmates. He just needs to not have his head turned by floozy witches.”
I did not offer the advice tumbling around my tongue—that if someone was truly your soul mate, you could fill a room with the most beautiful naked people on Earth, and their gaze wouldn’t stray.
I was furious with Hudson for a thousand different reasonable things—control issues, secrets, the way he arranged his socks by mood and his obsession with aliens—but I didn’t worry he might look at another woman like he looked at me.
Jealousy still rears its ugly head. That was part of human nature.
But deep down, I knew he would never stray.
I tapped the pen against my pad. “It will wear off in a few weeks, assuming the agent you used wasn’t permanent.”
Marcia blinked. It was the only dramatic gesture available to her. “I assure you, it won’t wear off without intervention, and I’m tapped out at the bottom of my power. I need your help.”
“Clarify,” I said. “Is this an aesthetic situation?” I circled the general area of her head. “Or a spell situation?”
“Both,” she said. The bag jolted. “But this takes precedent.”
She leaned forward and unclasped the purse. Something inside thumped, then launched. A frog the size of a large plate cleared the lip of the bag and belly-flopped directly into the flamingo pool with a sound like a steak hitting a skillet.
Mint leaves waved. The Barbie spun. The frog blinked one huge golden eye. That was unusual. Bella hissed from the shadows in the corner.
I pointed at my feline. “Don’t even. I’ll have your furry butt at the adoption center faster than you can say snack.”
Marcia gestured at the frog. “I misread the old language for ‘tongue of lover’ as ‘lover’s tongue.’”
Indigo stirred, languid and amused, behind my sternum. “This is evolution’s punishment for arrogance,” she purred.
“Thank you for the ethics lecture, carnivore.”
Indigo sent me the impression of a bored manicure.
The frog shifted, making the most of his little spa while eyeing Barbie, who stared back with unwavering positivity. Where did Maggie even get the doll from?
“I want Pete back to how he was, but hopelessly in love with me.”
“It’s the golden rule. We don’t meddle in matters of the heart. You aren’t this green, Marcia.”