“Stephania, it’s so good to see you,” Baba Yaga said, her beautiful, ageless eyes sparkling. She sat at the new breakfast nook table Win had made me fly in from France. The distressed, creamy-white top and chunky legs stained a deep walnut for contrast fit perfectly in the area by the tall windows overlooking the Puget.
She held a mug of coffee courtesy of Enzo and tipped it at me in a salute of sorts.
“Your name is Stephania?” Win squealed in disbelief, his peal of laughter squeaking in my ear. “Stephania? I guess I don’t know everything about you, Stephania, because I certainly didn’t know your full name wasn’t Stevie.”
“Hush, Win,” I said before I realized I was doing so.
“Also, bloody hellfire. How could you fail to mention the woman I’m supposed to despise in BFF solidarity was so beautiful? You really are a beast master, Stephania,” he teased.
I did realize Win was trying to lighten a very heavy situation in typical Win fashion, but the mention of BY’s beauty made me want to poke his eyeballs out. I was at the stage where I was so angry with her, if she just sat there and did absolutely nothing but breathe, it would make me homicidal.
Clenching my hands together, I cracked my jaw. “I repeat, hush, Win. Please.”
Baba Yaga’s head tilted then, the sun streaming in from the windows gleaming on her shiny hair. Instantly, the scent of Love’s Baby Soft, her favorite perfume, whispered under my nostrils. “Who’s your friend?”
“I don’t have friends anymore. You saw to that.” My words were stiff, yet I’d managed to spit them out anyway.
I wanted to scream and yell and force her to tell me why she’d let that son of a butt scratcher steal my powers, or why she’d let the council lob me out of Paris like a tennis ball, but my pride and lots of cuss words got in the way.
“Hey!” Win protested, still trying to make light. “What am I, haggis? I’m your friend. I’m gobsmacked you’d not declare as such. Hmpf.”
Baba smiled at me and winked the girlfriend wink. “And he’s British. Sexy.”
My eyes narrowed at her and her neon-pink scrunchie and zebra-striped leggings, making them a haze of mixed-up colors. “You can hear him?”
Her perfectly plucked eyebrow rose playfully. “Of course I can. He sounds divine.”
“Thank bloody God someone thinks so. You have no idea how underappreciated I am, Miss Yaga.”
“The question really is, how can I still hear him, Baba? You know, me being powerless now,” I blatantly taunted.
She smiled, wide and beautiful. “The world does have its mysteries. It’s magical, isn’t it?”
My teeth clenched so hard, I was well on the way to breaking them, but I kept my mouth shut. Bel technically still belonged to the coven. I was desperately afraid she’d take him away from me. Going by coven law, I have no need for a familiar anymore. She had the power to relocate him, or rehome him with someone who needed spiritual and otherworldly guidance. I’d die if she took him, so the last thing I should be doing was calling her out.
Belfry tucked closer into me when Baba took note of him on my shoulder. “And Belfry? How’s my favorite familiar?”
Bel quivered, his tiny wings shaking against my neck. “I’m peachy-fine, and I’m here to tell you, if you came to try and take me away from my girl, forget it. Hear me, Maleficent Two? I stay here with Stevie or things are gonna get real hinky. You’re not stickin’ me with some newb lunatic who doesn’t know her wand from her arse! We’ve been together a long time, me and my Stevie-girl, and it’s stayin’ that way.”
Baba threw her head back and laughed, revealing her creamy throat. “Feisty as ever. I’d never take you from Stephania, Belfry. Surely you don’t think that of me?”
“I think all sorts of things about you,” he growled.
But I tapped his head with a gentle finger. “Behave, Bel. Have some respect.”
Bel still had to answer to Baba, even if I didn’t. I didn’t want him punished for putting on this show in my defense, and I definitely didn’t want to lose the only living family I had left aside from my flighty mother.
Baba’s shoulders lifted and sagged as she sighed, her eyes taking in the view of the boats bobbing on the Sound, the sun sparkling like dancing fairy wings on the calm waters. “It’s lovely here, Stephania. Simply lovely. What a wonderful way to enjoy a cup of coffee, watching as the boats sail about. How lucky are you to have come into such good fortune?”
It was all I could do not to snatch her cup from her and throw it against the windows.
Now my teeth clenched together tighter. “Oh, I’d definitely say luck was what landed me here.”
Yes. I realize I was being sarcastic after I’d just told Belfry to squash it, but the resentment I thought I had a good grip on was seeping into my every word as Baba sat here in my kitchen, like nothing horrific had ever happened between us. It was sticking in my craw, worming its way into a bloody wound, reopening it just enough to make it seep.
Cupping her chin in her hand, she eyed me. “I know you struggled after you left Paris. I’m just happy to see you’ve landed on your feet.”
I think my eyeballs almost popped out of my head. But “struggled” was like calling the Titanic disaster a “small boating accident”. So I sort of lost all that cool I was hanging on to so tightly.
“Struggled? Is that the right adjective to use after being fired from my job, having to sell all my belongings because I had no income and very little savings, booted out of my apartment and my town? Then to top everything off, I was shunned. Just thrown out of the coven as though I’d never even existed. No warning, no explanation, just end of days for loyal, helpful, rule-following Stephania Cartwright. For doing nothing more than trying to help a little boy whose mother is so sickly brainwashed from her dead husband’s verbal and physical abuse, she somehow managed to talk her own child into telling the council nothing happened the night his father nearly killed them both? Struggled is the best you got?” I squeaked, my legs shaking.
Win was there again, his warm aura slipping into my space. “Don’t antagonize, Dove. For Bel’s sake.”
Baba looked at me for a long time, or rather what seemed like a long time, without saying anything. As though she were sizing me up like some prized hog at the 4-H fair.
She didn’t flinch, she didn’t speak. She just looked at me. For far longer than I was comfortable. So I broke before she did. It was time to get down to brass tacks. I didn’t have to bow and scrape anymore because she wasn’t the boss of me.
All right, wait. That’s unfair. She’s never made anyone bow and scrape, but Mother Earth here always felt like a warm hug when I was part of the coven, like I could tell her anything and she’d listen to my problem, and I hella resented her for turning her back on me when I’d needed her support and understanding the most.
“Why are you here, Baba? I don’t owe you anything. My powers are long gone. I turned in my wand and my Book of Spells. If you’re not here to take Belfry, what’s left? Did I forget something? What else could you possibly want after you let the council take everything I ever had away?”
When Baba finally spoke, her tone was soft, almost tender, her beautiful eyes gentle and calm. “I don’t want anything from you, Stevie. Just your happiness and your safety, and it seems as though you’ve found both. You look beautiful. I like that you’ve let your hair grow out a bit. It’s flattering. All of this pleases me more than you’ll ever know.”
Pleased her? Pleased her? Really?
I know I was gawking at her in my outrage, my jaw unhinging and scraping the floor. But how was it that my happiness and safety were suddenly of primo concern to the great and wonderful BY? Now? Almost two months after I’d been kicked out of my life, she was checking on me?
There were a million things I wanted to say right now, but none of them would come out without some choice words bandied about, and I couldn’t think straight enough to keep from sounding like some caveman grunting out incoherent sounds.
So Win thought, and even spoke for me. “Er…Miss Yaga? Is that how you wish to be addressed?”
“It is, delicious man,” she purred, twisting her ponytail around her index finger.
“I’m going to hazard a guess here and walk out on a ledge and say Stephania’s still a bit raw after the incident. Should she say something to ruffle your lovely feathers, I do hope you’ll take that into account. She did, after all, lose her powers. The heart and soul of her very being.”
My heart picked up its pace. He really did listen. All those nights when I’d tried to explain how losing my powers was akin to losing a vital organ, Win had listened.
So I nodded. “What the dead guy said,” I offered woodenly. “I think you should go, Baba Yaga. If you want to check in on Belfry, which is your right as his ruler, feel free to do so. But please do it when I’m not here.”
“I trust you’ll watch over my Stevie, Crispin Alistair Winterbottom?” she asked. Making this visit seem even weirder than it already was. What did she care what happened to me? She’d all but let me be railroaded. She hadn’t fought to get my powers back. She’d ordered me to leave my home.
“I’ll always look after Stevie, Miss Yaga. That you can count on.”
Baba rose then, her beautiful figure outlined by the sun streaming in from the windows behind her. She looked at me again.
Looked at me as though she were preparing to leave someone she regretted leaving.
She looked at me with a brief flash of grief in her almond-shaped eyes before she raised her arms. “Goddess protect you always, beautiful Stephania,” she whispered, before she snapped her fingers—and then she was gone, leaving only the vestiges of a Debbie Gibson song and her signature neon-green smoke in her wake.
I let out a breath of air, releasing the tension so present in the room, and leaned against the only countertop I had at the moment. Sorrow tried to creep its way into my chest, but I wouldn’t let it.
Baba’s words had sounded like goodbye for good, but I’d said my goodbyes when I left Paris. I wouldn’t let this odd visit bring me back to the place I’d been a couple of months ago.
“I spoke out of turn. Are you angry?”
I inhaled again and let another whoosh of air rush from my lungs as tears stung my eyes. Thumbing them from my cheek, I shook my head. “No, Win. I’m not angry. You said what I so obviously was incapable of doing without gnashing my teeth. I appreciate it.”
“Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say!” Belfry chirped. “We don’t need that hag! Me and Cumberbatch-alike got your back, right, buddy?”
“Indeed,” Win murmured, his warmth pervading my bones.
I smiled, looking at the sturdy black picture frame I’d bought a few weeks ago, sitting by the microwave. The insert of a man sat inside, a dashing, incredibly handsome man with steely-blue eyes, a sharp jawline, and hair the color of a starless Texas night.
A stranger of course. Some model used to display the frame, but I’d decided this would be my frame of reference for Win. The model reminded me of the image that came to mind when I thought of my intrepid spy.
I crossed the plywood of our temporary kitchen floor and opened up the lone cabinet left on the wall until our new ones arrived next week, pulling out a box of Pop-Tarts.
“Stevie! What have I told you about a proper lunch? How can you become uber-spy if you eat like that? You must feed your body, not massacre it. It’s your temple, not a 7-Eleven.”
I ripped the packaging and broke off a piece, stuffing it into my mouth and chewing. “I’m not going to become a spy. You do realize that, right, Win?” I asked the picture frame, holding it up in the direction his voice came from. “I mean, it’s Ebenezer Falls, not a Hellmouth. How often do you suppose I’m going to need to know how to torture a suspect with needle-nose pliers or bungee jump into a ravine? Like never.”
“How quickly you forget Madam Zoltar and my cousin Sal.”
“Like I could forget being tied up, clocked so hard in the face I almost broke my eye socket, and having a gun held to my head by an utter lunatic?” The memory was still quite fresh for me, thank you very much. In fact, I still got the occasional headache as a stark reminder.
“And do you remember your incredible aerialist act? You were bloody like Robin Hood, Stevie!”
“Do you remember how sore my throat was after that from screaming like I was on fire? Would really rather not repeat that. Like ever. Did you scream like a girl when you had to swing on a rope in order to catch the bad guys when you were a spy? I’d bet not. Besides, like I said, how often do you think I’ll need these skills I’m supposed to feed my body for, anyway?”
My cell phone rang to the tune of “Unchained Melody”, Win’s idea of hysterical irony after we’d watched Ghost, which meant there was a call coming in for Madam Zoltar.
I cleared my throat and accepted the call. “Good afternoon, this is Madam Zoltar speaking, here for all your afterlife needs. How can I assist you today?”
There was some static on the other end of the line and a pause before someone said, “Are you the lady I saw today in the parking lot? The one with the turban and the flowery dress?”
Instantly, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. So I answered with caution. “Who’s calling, please?”
“This is Bianca Bustamante.” Then she sighed, quite clearly a sigh of resignation. “My mother asked me to call you.”
My eyes flew open wide in surprise. “Oh, Bianca, I’m so sorry about your father. I loved Tito. He made the best tacos ever, and he was incredibly kind.”
“He called you a murderer.” She said the words like she’d dropped a bomb in the middle of my kitchen and relished the thought of it going off.
Now I frowned. But she was right. He had indeed. “But he made up for it. No harm, no foul. No hard feelings.”
“Good, because I need your help. Even if you’re a fake, which I’m sure you are, my mother is inconsolable.”
My heart tightened in commiseration with Maggie. She’d been beside herself in the parking lot, and I hated that, so I ignored the crack about me being a fake. “I’m not sure how I can help, Bianca?”
“Mama wants you to contact Papa.”
So soon? He likely hadn’t even settled into the afterlife yet. And even if he had, maybe he’d crossed over and couldn’t be contacted at all.
I fought the tightness in my throat and gripped the phone. “I’d be happy to try, but to be honest, he’s only been gone a few hours. That can make contacting him almost impossible.”
Bianca snorted into the phone. “Right. Listen, lady, I don’t believe in your hokey garbage. Not even a little. But if it makes my mother feel better, if it calms her down enough that we don’t have to worry she’s going to have a heart attack, then make it up as you go along.”
Phew. Talk about no-nonsense. But everything I believed in railed against the very idea of tricking Maggie. “No. That’s not something I can do, or would ever do. I’m not going to lie to your mother. She deserves better than that. I’m sorry. I wish I could help.”
“There’s a lot of money in it for you,” she enticed, as though I could be bought.
Now I bristled, planting my hand on my hip in outrage. “I can’t be bought, Bianca. I don’t talk to the spirits for money. Ask anyone who’s had a reading with me and they’ll tell you, I donate almost all of the cost of my time to several different charities.”
Her cynical laughter rang sharp in my ear. “Everyone can be bought. Listen, what do you need from me? An open vein? All I want you to do is at least try. But if the spirit moves you to make something up once you see how torn up Mama is, to help her recover faster, then all the better.”
Good gravy. Her father had died just a few hours ago and she didn’t even sound like she’d shed a tear since finding him at the food court. But if Maggie was in pain and there was a slim chance I could find Tito, and I didn’t have to lie about it, I’d do it for her—and for my Taco Man.
“Fine. I can fit you in tonight at eight. Please bring something personal of your father’s, like a piece of jewelry, a picture, something he held dear. Does that work for your mother?”
I stressed her mother due to the fact that Bianca appeared to want to get this over with as soon as possible. Maybe she had a hot date or maybe she just couldn’t be bothered consoling her mother, but she could have at least waited until Tito was buried before she skipped off to the next bit of business needing her attention.
“Yeah. We’ll be there. Make sure you warm up whatever gadgets you use to make the lights flicker—or whatever it is you do.”
A spike of anger sizzled along my spine. “I most certainly do not use a gadget, or any gadgets, for that matter. I’ll have you know—”
Suddenly, I was speaking to dead air.
“She hung up!” I yelped, dropping my Pop-Tart on the counter and brushing the crumbs from my hands to pick up the picture frame. “Can you believe the gall of that woman, Win?”
“I can’t believe the form on that woman,” Win remarked with a wistful sigh. “One swish of those hips—”
Snarling, I pointed at the face of the model in the picture frame. “Not helping, Win! You’d better get your spidey senses in gear and see if you can find a spirit to help us find Tito, because if that woman gives me one iota of grief tonight, I’ll show her just what kind of a fake I am when I cast a hair-loss spell to rival Rogaine’s regenerating properties!”
“I hate to break this to you, but your spell-casting days are over.”
Setting the picture frame down on the countertop, I smoothed my caftan over my stomach. “Then I’ll just pull it all out in big, silky clumps. Now please, see what you can see around there on Plane Limbo, would you? Maybe find that woman who contacted us not so long ago? While you do that, I’m going to go make a voodoo doll of Bianca and I’d like some alone time to do it.”
Win’s laughter followed me out of the kitchen and up the stairs, a project that was still a work in progress.
And that’s when something else hit me.
While BY was busy flirting with Spy Guy, I’d never once used his full name. I’d only called him Win.
So how had she known his full legal name?
Things to ponder while I dug out my old Barbies and jabbed their tiny waists and pointy plastic toes with straight pins.