Inconvenient Murder: An Inept Witches Mystery (6 page)

Ingrid looked at Emily for real then, noticing the black circles under her eyes and the tense set to her shoulders.

“Em, my dove, are you whining? Because if you’re whining, we need some wine. Or vodka. Hey, we’re witches. We’ll get you out of this, right? Oh, yeah! Hazel said we should clear your aura.”

“Do you know how to do that?”

Ingrid shook her head. “We can Google it right? Or maybe find a ‘How To’ in that basement downstairs?”

Emily shrugged.

“Listen,” Ingrid said. “We might have no idea who did this or how to stop them or whatever. But let’s be real, we’re not entirely helpless. And honestly…isn’t it sort of convenient that he’s dead?”

At Emily’s conflicted look, Ingrid said, “Hear me out, wench! We didn’t kill him. So we avoided that whole karma’s a ho-bag thing. So, first we shake this murder charge, clean our aura in Barbados, and then, hey…no more need to fight out the divorce. You’re a widow. It’s so much better when they’re dead.”

“But I’ll be arrested first and people will always wonder and…”

“And you won’t be in jail. We’ll move to Paris or Nice or Bath, and we’ll live lives of luxury and laziness there if they get to be evil judgey here.”

“We were going to be lazy here.” There was a bit of a sniff to Emily’s voice, but it was the whine of someone who was whining on purpose.

“Oh my goodness, I’ll slap you.” Ingrid said, opening the balcony door to find the vodka in the freezer. “I only have fruit punch, so we can have fruit punch and vodka or just vodka straight.”

“Ew,” Emily said.

“Vodka and coffee? Is that a thing? Let’s make it a thing.”

“I’ll try it since it’s your coffee, but I don’t think it’s a thing. I think you add things like amaretto to coffee.”

“Now you’re just being picky. I’m not saying that dickhead dying isn’t a huge all-around inconvenience and it could ruin my plans for making the sheriff my baby daddy, but really” –Ingrid tossed Emily a mocking glance— “we can be lazy anywhere. And it’s not like getting rid of dickhead wasn’t the plan. We didn’t kill him, so we aren’t really responsible. Are we cold if we just let it slide off of us? Especially, and this is the important part, because we didn’t do it.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Emily said, “but that makes us pretty cold witches.”

“Which is why you should quit pouting. I only have so much fake nicery in me. So let’s go burn some herbs or whatever. I swear, you’re probably PMSing.”

“I am,” Emily groaned. “I’m under the threat of arrest, on my period, and dealing with the loss of my ex-husband.” She flicked a tear from the corner of her dry eye and took the bottle of vodka back to the freezer.

Ingrid took a long look at her, walked back to her kitchen and grabbed a bottle of dessert wine. “If you’re PMSing, we need to be drunk while we burn things. And if you’re PMSing, we need chocolate wine.”

“When this is over, we’re stress shopping, and you have to buy me shoes,” Emily said as she grabbed two wine glasses. She picked up a witchcraft book that Hazel had pressed on them and began flipping through it.

“Deal,” Ingrid replied. “But I think you should know my stress shopping has gotten out of hand. I found myself considering a Wii this morning, so I could play Super Mario Brothers again. So it’s good of you to indulge me and my need to shop. Plus, we’re both rich. You have that credit card. Use it like a good dove.”

“I saw the espresso makers, so yeah, I picked up on the whole out-of-hand stress shopping. Also, just because you gave me your credit card doesn’t make me rich. It makes me a mooch, but I am pretty okay with that.”

“What? We needed an espresso machine,” Ingrid said, ignoring the mooch comment.

“And you bought three.”

“One for you, one for me, one for the shop. You can thank me later.”

“Okay,” Emily said, putting the book down for Ingrid to see. “I think I’ve found a spell. It says we have to burn sage, say some stuff, and it’d be better if we were naked under the full moon.”

“Is there a full moon?”

“I don’t know.”

Neither bothered to even look out the window. They were going to do the spell regardless. They made their way to Ingrid’s kitchen since she actually had food. Sort of. So far, Emily had only bought coffee, bacon, and apples. Ingrid went shopping and randomly threw things into her cart. She had things like orange vinegar and goat cheese but no bread.

“It’s a crescent moon.” Emily looked up from her phone.

Ingrid’s gaze said she didn’t believe Emily.

“I downloaded an app for the moon.”

“When?”

“Just a second ago.”

“Okay then,” Ingrid said. “If you start knowing things like that, the next thing you’d expect is that I know them, too, and I have no intention of looking at the stars for anything that means I have to care.”

She filled their wine glasses and pulled a plastic can of herbs from the cupboard. “Will that do? We don’t have to wait for a full moon, right?”

“I don’t know.” Emily took her glass.

“Can we just be in our underwear? What if we’re naked under robes? There’s a chill in the air. I don’t want a runny nose when I romance the sheriff.”

“Please, whore,” Emily said. “I don’t know.”

“Should we call Hazel?”

“No,” Emily said distinctly. “She has this way of telling me how to do something while not telling me that I should know already, but saying it silently or psychically or…you know.”

“Yeah,” Ingrid agreed. “She’s a cruel, cold dove. Maybe we could call that pretty one with the hair.”

“We’d probably have to know her name.”

“Oh, yeah…” Ingrid shrugged and kicked off her heeled sandals.

“Are we really getting naked?” Emily sounded disgusted at the thought. Ingrid agreed completely. They lived on an island. There was a constant ocean breeze, and it was night. The goosebumps would be out of hand.

She looked her friend over and down at her fluffy robe covering flannel, cupcake pajamas. “At least our feet should be naked.”

Emily took another sip of her wine and then kicked off her own shoes.

“Balcony?” Ingrid asked as she lifted the wine bottle.

“Rooftop garden,” Emily said, and Ingrid nodded, opening one of her double front doors and leaving it hanging open as she returned for the plastic canister of sage that she had left on the counter.

They hadn’t had gardeners in and neither of them actually wanted to do any of the work themselves, so the garden was mostly empty plant containers they’d had the carpenter build, some outdoor furniture and two hammocks that they’d set up under a gazebo.

Emily kicked aside some debris and turned to face Ingrid. “What do you think? Throw burning sage over my shoulder and think happy thoughts?”

Ingrid shrugged, settling into one of the lounge chairs.

“We could make a circle of sage, I could get in it, and then we could set it on fire.”

“You think we’ll burn down the building?” Ingrid asked from experience. They’d set their dorm room on fire three times. But that had been with candles. Their moms had sent them candles to study by, they’d lit them while studying, fallen asleep, and nearly killed themselves a few times. After that, they sold them to other witches. Just because they were terrible at magic didn’t mean their mothers were. Those were study candles with good spells embedded in them.

Emily toed aside some debris, examined the dead leaves and trash, and shrugged.

“You got a lighter?”

Emily nodded as she said, “There was a diagram and what not.”

Ingrid frowned. “I left the book downstairs.”

Emily took the lid off the canister. “Circle, you think?”

“Seems likely.” Ingrid glanced around the rooftop garden. Her feet were cold, storm clouds were coming in off the sound, and she was somewhat regretting not having had anything other than coffee and wine since the morning. “I might vomit,” she said lackadaisically.

“Try to do it over the side.” Emily sprinkled the sage around herself, and the wind caught most of it up, spreading it across the rooftop.

Ingrid took the lighter and went to her friend, who stood in a field of debris and sage flakes. “What are the words?”

She received only a shrug in reply, so Ingrid said, “Spirits, um, please clear the aura of my friend, Emily. She probably didn’t kill that creep, dickhead. Do you think I should say his real name.”

Emily nodded.

“She didn’t kill Owen, so…okay, thanks then.” Ingrid touched her necklace as she finished and lit some of the trash that was sprinkled with sage.

Her magic ran wild through her as she did, and the flame jumped from the lighter, igniting the circle around Emily and then hopping across the rooftop to the spread out flakes of herbs.

“I’m on fire,” Emily shrieked, spinning in a circle.

“Stop, drop, and roll.” Ingrid said calmly, watching the trash and dead plants catch fire. “What’s the word for putting out fire?”

“Obviously,” Emily shouted, “I don’t know.” She was rolling around in the trash and dirt, covered in filth and spewing curse words.

Thunder cracked overhead and Ingrid suddenly remembered the word for calling rain. She shouted it, almost certainly mispronouncing the ancient dialect, but a drizzle started, turning quickly into a downpour that put out the flames and snuffed out the moment Ingrid’s attention was caught by a confused-looking seagull.

“Oh, hey,” she said. “I put out the fire.”

“Yeah,” Emily replied sarcastically. “It would have been super awesome if you’d done that before.”

They both looked down at Emily’s blackened toes. Ingrid took a long sip of wine before she said, “You need a pedicure.”

•

“I’m pretty sure we are the lamest witches in the history of the world. We need to go talk to Hazel. She’ll know what to do.” Emily’s hair and clothes wreaked of burnt sage, and she was pretty sure she had at least third degree burns on the heels of her feet, and still she was freezing from the water. Both witches, if they could be called that with any accuracy, had plopped into their hammocks and sat looking over the small island and contemplating what had gone wrong.

Ingrid nodded. “I just don’t know why it didn’t work. How specific do we have to actually be to perform this magic. We are witches. We should be able to do this crap in our sleep.”

Emily handed Ingrid the car keys. “You drive, yeah? I think my feet are burned.”

“Hold on. I’ll run to my apartment and get some aloe gel.”

Emily waited for Ingrid to come back, impatiently tapping her fingernails on the bricks that made the patio.

“Stupid, freaking, terrible human being Owen.” Her foot burned in the open air. “Even dead, you still find a way to irritate me.”

Just then Ingrid bounced back out on to the deck, spirits entirely too high for the moment. “Here. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“Uh, you aren’t planning on using some kind of first aid magic, are you? Cuz I don’t think that we should—”

“Of course not,” Ingrid interjected. “I’ve had enough magic for tonight. And I’ve never been able to do anything like that. Except yesterday when I healed Hotpants. But that was an accident.”

Ingrid cleaned Emily’s feet and rubbed some aloe gel on them before bandaging them up and then putting socks over the bandages.. Emily was irritated, but not at Ingrid. She should have paid more attention when she was younger and the aunts had tried to teach her magic. Or when she and Ingrid were in college instead of insisting on using their membership in the local coven as a way to meet boys.

“Dammit.”

“What?” Ingrid asked. “Does it hurt still? Do you need more wine? The aloe should help make it feel better. Especially if you drink enough wine.”

“No, it’s fine. Thanks for helping wrap my feet. I was just thinking about how we should have paid more attention to magic than to boys during college. They all ended up being idiots anyway. Think of how much we could do by now if we hadn’t been screwing around.”

Ingrid’s eyebrows shot up, pretending to be offended. “Dove! Curse you! If we’d have been doing magic then, we’d never have met those twins. Remember? Andy and Alex? I’d say they were a worthy distraction, wouldn’t you?”

“You might not want to be throwing curses around. What if you accidentally cursed me for real? I’ve got enough trouble, you know.”

Ingrid smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, you’ve got a point. It would be ironic if the only magic we could do was by accident.”

Emily had a distressing thought at Ingrid’s observation. They needed to talk to the aunts.

Emily started to get up. “Let’s get going, okay? I need to talk to Hazel. My aura…I can’t even stand to be around myself right now.”

“Sure. Can you walk?”

Emily stood up gingerly, surprised when she could put her weight on both of her feet with no pain. “It doesn’t hurt at all. That aloe is pretty cool stuff. Nice job.”

They stopped by Emily’s apartment where she quickly changed into clean clothes and tried to pick the sage out of her hair. There were bits of charred sage stuck all throughout her mess of tangled curls. With a sigh, she put her mass of wild curls into a quick ponytail. She slipped her stockinged feet into her old, ratty slippers that were the most comfortable shoe in the world. Even though her feet didn’t hurt anymore, she was still using the burns as an excuse to wear her slippers out of the house. Ingrid would normally have given her a hard time about it. As it was, she just looked at the slippers with a questioning glance and then smirked as they made their way to the elevator.