Better Haunts and Graveyards Read online

  “Is that so?” Randal smoothed a hand over his gel-slicked hair and wagged his tongue at my cousin. “What are your thoughts on doggie-style?”

  “What are your thoughts on being neutered?” Glinda folded her arms and cocked a leather-clad hip. Deviant as she was, I felt a smidge of relief that she still had enough self-respect not to lie down with dogs.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” Randal said. He bent over to collect a small stack of bones, pausing to sniff and lick each one as he did. “A deal’s a deal. I told you where your cousin was hiding, now you do your witchy business to help me get what I want.”

  “I need more time to get my hands on that broom,” Glinda hissed.

  “The countdown has already begun, and I’m powerless to stop it.” He gave her an apologetic shrug that lacked any shred of sincerity. “I’ve offered myself above and beyond what we agreed to. Either you take the broom tonight, or tomorrow it could be gone forever. Either way, you promised me one more ghost with unfinished business.”

  Glinda grumbled under her breath, but her family green magic soon lit up the night and cracked menacingly. Randal picked through his skeletal bounty and found a small bone he seemed willing to part with. He handed it to Glinda, and a ghost appeared out of thin air.

  The man was abnormally tall. He wore a bowler hat and a suit that was too short in the arms and too wide in the chest. From the long shape of his face and the size of his teeth, I easily pegged him as a horse Shifter.

  “Six-horse town, huh?” Glinda said more to herself than the spirit.

  “Who-o-o are you?” the man asked her with a nervous snort.

  “Just a little pony with a message from your kin,” Glinda chanted. “Their lives are lost without you, you must lead them once again. Go and share your wisdom, don’t leave until you’re heard. They need most what you know best, so tell them every single word.”

  The ghost man nickered and trotted off into the night. Maybe to track down one of his great-great-grandkids to discuss the finer points of carriage rides or the horrors of being shod by an amateur.

  Randal nodded his approval and held out his hand to take the bone back like the greedy little shit that he was. Glinda gave it to him but held on until he looked her in the eye.

  “I want that broom,” she said.

  “Then go get it.” Randal yanked the bone out of her hand and turned on his heels, heading toward his red Mercedes parked at the edge of the graveyard.

  Broomzilla quivered in the grass beside me, and I stroked her handle. Skipping town sounded like a pretty good plan right about now. With Randal working his sickly charm on the living Shifters and Glinda working her mojo on the dead ones, I didn’t stand a chance.

  I was no wicked witch. That was plain as the nose on my face. But then something occurred to me.

  Broomzilla could have zipped me out of town and halfway across the country if she’d wanted to. Just like she’d done after Gran’s funeral once the will had been read and she was officially in my possession.

  Looking back though, I realized she hadn’t been trying to save my wimpy witch ass at all. The only reason Broomzilla had dumped me in this Target-less town was because she’d been instructed to, because Gran knew Fabio would help me find the trust fund in the Caymans.

  “Well, son of a witch.” I marveled at my own shortsightedness. It didn’t end there. Not by a long shot. But I didn’t have time to get too insightful. Randal was on the move.

  The ass-licker stashed his new heap of bones in the trunk of his Mercedes. As he climbed into the driver’s seat, I noticed a smear of dried guano running diagonally across the windshield. I wasn’t sure if Dylan or the belfry colony were to thank for that, but if we were all chased from our home, I would demand that everyone leave Randal an extra parting gift before we left.

  The Mercedes’ headlights flashed across Glinda’s twisted face, and then it sped off. Everything was suddenly too quiet. Broomzilla nudged me again, but I felt as though I were hearing her for the first time.

  Timmy wasn’t down the well. And neither was I.

  I stood and noisily stepped through the grass, emboldened by the revelation that my broom didn’t think I was a total loser. “Glinda West!” I pointed an accusing finger at her. “Return that book at once.”

  Broomzilla’s annoyed rustling made me second guess my non-loser assumption, but my disappointment took a back seat as Glinda’s green magic lit up my world.

  Chapter 9

  WHEN MY COUSINS AND I were little, and they were less wicked versions of their current selves, Gran used to tell us she had baked us up in her cauldron with all sorts of defining ingredients.

  I was made from lemon drop candies and a ball of green yarn. A page torn from an old spell book and a pinch of stardust. Glinda was made from chocolate pudding and kitten claws. The glow of a hundred lightning bugs and the smell that comes after a hard rain.

  As my face smooshed into a muddy patch of earth, and Glinda’s supercharged magic made every nerve in my body twitch in agony, I wondered if maybe Gran had botched my cousin’s recipe and gone with a hundred lightning bolts instead.

  Broomzilla’s bristles scuffed impatiently in my face, and then her handle dug under my arm as she attempted to lift me to my feet.

  “You’re the genius who brought me out here,” I hissed. “What did you expect me to do? Play hopscotch with her?”

  “Give me the broom, Margo,” Glinda shouted from her perch on top of a crumbling headstone. “If you do, I’ll let you live.”

  “No, it’s mine!” I yelled back at her. It was like we were kids all over again, fighting over a voodoo doll. Except Gran’s broom was waaay cooler than any doll, magical or otherwise. And there was no way I was parting with her.

  “You don’t deserve it,” Glinda said, lifting her finger in a silent threat. “Your housemaid magic is nothing compared to the power I command.”

  “I broke a crusty old curse last year, so there.” I stuck my tongue out and then dodged another bolt of energy, falling face-first into a shallow grave. The smell of death and decay made my stomach clench. Broomzilla zipped between my legs as I righted myself and carried me out of the hole just before Glinda filled it with green lightning.

  “I’ll give you this stupid grimoire back in exchange for the broom,” Glinda said, hurling another bolt that narrowly missed my head as Broomzilla twisted in a wide loop.

  “Not on your life!”

  “What about on your batboy’s life?”

  “You can’t touch him,” I said, but my words didn’t sound as certain as I hoped they would. Glinda waved Mama Ellie’s book in the air.

  “The ritual that cursed his family is still in here. I’d just have to spread my legs for randy Randal, and then when your big bad bat blows out the birthday candles next month, the curse will blow out his.”

  “You wouldn’t.” I shook my head in disbelief, but her stony expression refused to crack.

  “His spirit will be trapped in that house. All alone. Just in time for you to get evicted so it can be leveled.”

  I swallowed, unable to muster a reply with my heart racing the way it was. I’d just gotten Dylan back. I couldn’t lose him all over again.

  “Give me the broom,” Glinda shouted. “Now, Margo.”

  Broomzilla lifted me higher into the air. Up, up, up until we were too far away for my cousin’s magic to reach. This was where I supposed we’d have a heart-to-heart if I were more fluent in bristle-ish. Instead, Broomzilla was quiet, letting me think things over for myself.

  Of course, that would have been easier to do if the sky hadn’t been grumbling as loud as bullfrogs humping in a trashcan. We would have been better off taking shelter in the grass or behind a tombstone. Anywhere but up here in the eye of a budding storm.

  “Shhhh,” I said, closing my eyes tightly. I didn’t expect the sky to listen.

  A strange stillness took hold of the air, pressing pause on the rumble of thunder and the pale dusting of clo
uds that webbed across the moon.

  Broomzilla bobbed beneath me as if to say, I told you so.

  “Oookay.” I blinked again, willing the sky back into motion. Then I blinked faster, pushing the clouds against one another until they roared.

  Holy poppy fields. I was an idiot.

  I’d been manipulating the baking time and temperature on food and drink for years. It just never occurred to me that I might be able to apply the trick to the whole damn sky—that brewing up a storm might be as easy as baking a lasagna.

  This changed everything.

  But, first things first. It was time to show Glinda my fancy new oven. And then I was going to cook her goose in it.

  “I’M STILL WAITING,” my cousin called out as I descended from the clouds, spinning slowly like a disco ball. She shot the moon a skeptical frown. “You better make up your mind before this storm hits. I’m not going to melt out here while you boo-hoo over your shit luck.”

  “How’s this for luck, electro-slut?” I winked and sent a dark cloud funneling down from the sky. Glinda gasped and leapt off her tombstone perch as the mini tornado blasted through the stone, turning it to dust. I blinked, and a second tornado touched down in front of her. A third and a fourth filled the gaps, boxing her in.

  My cackle echoed across the sky. This felt good. Maybe a little too good. I was drunk on the new power. Just let the West witches come for me, I thought. I’ll chew them up and spit them out. I’ll drop houses on them all!

  “Margo!” Glinda wailed as the cyclones ripped at her hair and began lifting her into the sky. She whimpered and clawed at the ground. “Margo, I’m sorry!”

  “Now you’re sorry?” I laughed. “You come here and turn my new life inside out, threaten all I love, steal what is not yours—and you think sorry is going to fix it?”

  “I was wrong,” she cried. “I was jealous and all alone.”

  “Alone?” I ground my teeth. “I was alone! You weren’t dubbed a magical reject and expelled from training. No one in our family would even claim me.”

  “I was disowned right after you left,” Glinda confessed.

  I was so shocked, I almost let the sky eat her alive. But then I blinked, and she dropped like a sack of wet robes. Her pitiful sobs skewered my heart, but I was still cautious. The West family had a tricky history where waterworks were concerned.

  “How? You were Aunt Evillene’s favorite,” I said, wondering if she had concocted the sob story just to get out of a free twister ride.

  “I was her favorite,” Glinda agreed, pushing herself up off the wind-torn earth. “Until I summoned Gran’s ghost to ask her why she didn’t leave anything to me in her will. I know I wasn’t the best granddaughter in the world, but...nothing? Really?” Her pain sounded fragile and genuine enough that I signaled Broomzilla to lower me to the ground.

  “You summoned Gran? What did she say? Did she tell you how she died?” Now I was curious.

  Glinda chewed her bottom lip and hugged herself. “Evillene discovered me and banished Gran before she had a chance to say much—and then she threw me out and told me to never come back. She said disturbing the dead was beneath a West witch. That I’d polluted my gift with necromancy. Gran seemed surprised when I told her I hadn’t inherited anything, though.” Glinda frowned and then gave me a weak smile. “I guess that’s why I thought maybe she meant for me to have her broom. What else would she have left me?”

  I groaned and let my shoulders slide away from my ears as the last of my anger fizzled. The storm dried up, too, exhausted from me wringing out its energy as if it were nothing more than a dishrag.

  “Gran didn’t just leave me the broom. There was also a trust fund in the Caymans,” I told her, hoping it wouldn’t launch our feud anew.

  “So that’s how you bought the fancy house,” Glinda said. I shrugged, proud that I’d held on to the secret this long. Another strength I’d given myself too little credit for.

  “What do you wanna bet there’s an account with your name on it at the same bank?”

  “And how do I find this bank?”

  “I’ve got a guy,” I said, holding my hand out to help her up. Glinda took it hesitantly, but she smiled at me once she was on her feet again. “But first, we need to do something about all these ghosts.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.” Glinda winced. “It was the price Randal demanded when he offered to tell me your location.”

  “So, he tracked you down?”

  “Maybe he did, or maybe our paths crossing was just a lucky coincidence.” She shrugged.

  “We have very different ideas about what’s lucky.” I glanced around the cemetery at all the sunken graves. “Let’s put some souls to rest.”

  For once in my life, I had no doubt my magic could handle the spell I needed it to. And the fact that Glinda didn’t question my ability either filled my heart with pride and inflated my ego until I thought my head might float right off my shoulders.

  “You’ll help me with the incantation?” she asked, a slow grin stretching her lips.

  “Do flying monkeys have wings?”

  The rest of the night went off without a hitch or a bitch.

  Just two little witches, chanting in a graveyard.

  Blood of my blood

  Let our bond be blessed

  Depart in peace

  Let our history now rest

  .

  You’ve done all you can

  You’ve said all you must

  Let your bones rattle free

  Return to ashes and dust

  .

  North, East, South, and West

  Wherever you’ve gone

  Return spirits now

  Then get the hell off my lawn

  Chapter 10

  BY THE TIME DYLAN RETURNED from his cave excursion that morning, everything was right in the world again. He entered the kitchen through the bat flap on the back door and shifted to find Glinda and I baking cookies. His eyes almost fell out of his head.

  His fully nude condition might have contributed to the shock, but I was sure my cousin laid claim to the brunt of it, and the fact that we were making cookies for consumption rather than a magical melee.

  It had taken a few trial batches, but we’d finally crafted a suitable low-fat version of Mama Gretta’s beloved pawpaw-doodles. It even had Zelda’s stamp of approval. Randal’s treachery and her Target-less future had been a real disappointment, but being able to eat her feelings guilt-free had mended our rocky friendship. She gave Dylan a thumb’s up from the breakfast nook table since her mouth was too full to wax poetic about our success—or Dylan’s ass, since that’s where her eyeballs remained until he fled the kitchen in search of clothes.

  I never thought I’d be able to enjoy the company of another West witch the way I enjoyed my gran, and Glinda was still a touch more wicked than I was comfortable with most of the time, but I was glad to have her in my life. Glad that family didn’t always have to be a four-letter word.

  I wasn’t about to give up Broomzilla, but even with a matching trust fund, the scales didn’t feel balanced between Glinda and me. So, I let her keep Mama Ellie’s book of illustrated sex rituals—minus the ritual that had cursed Dylan’s family and the one we’d performed to break said curse.

  For nostalgia’s sake. And emergencies. And maybe special occasions. Though maybe not the special occasion just around the corner: Dylan’s birthday.

  My heart still did laps around my ribcage whenever I thought about it. If I really, truly hadn’t butchered the ritual, Dylan would be the first man in his family to live past the age of thirty in over a hundred years.

  That would be something—something even bigger than my newly discovered tornado bakery in the sky.

  The weeks leading up to Dylan’s birthday party flew by like a sexy eighties music video montage. Somehow, even with all the extraordinary yet magic-free nookie that consumed my schedule, I managed to sell two more houses in town—one to a squirrel Shifter who had re
cently come into his family’s lost acorn fortune, and the other to Glinda.

  I’d been thisclose to inviting my cousin to live with Dylan and me, when she had a tantrum over the internet being down and fried all our electronics. It was just as well. Her tastes in men were questionable at best. Zelda set her up with a bartending job at the Assjacket Country Club, and Glinda and I settled comfortably into the more agreeable distance.

  Dylan was happy about having more of me to himself, too. After jumping my bones, he jumped all over my fixer-upper daydream. In fact, he took it one step further and began scouting the East Coast for vacation beach properties near caves.

  If Randal Thorpe reared his fugly head again and tried to wipe our home off the map, we’d have a backup plan. Make that a plan C. Plan B involved me twister-whipping his ass somewhere over the rainbow, never to be seen again.

  JUNE WAS HERE BEFORE we knew it, and everyone carried on as though everything were perfectly fine. Like we weren’t all hawk-eyeing Dylan, waiting to see what would happen. I’d had Zelda take a look at him twice leading up to the big day. Just to be safe. When I suggested a third visit, Dylan threatened to paint the restored gazebo white.

  So I zipped my lips, smooshed his with a million kisses, and counted down the days as I planned his party. Now that it was finally here, everything felt surreal. I walked through the garden, blinking vacantly as I tried to think of what I could have possibly forgotten. I’d gnashed over every detail a million times it seemed.

  The backyard was a witchy wonderland. String lights adorned the pawpaw trees and the new roof of the gazebo. Long tables topped with white cloths were spread out around the lawn. Glinda had decorated each of them with a fishbowl centerpiece filled with her sparky green magic, and Wanda, the Shifter who ran the Assjacket Diner, had loaded down a buffet table with heaps of her homecooked goodies.

  Slowly, guests began to trickle in through the side gate. The Shifters were still wary of the Hernández house. To be fair, it had been haunted for the last century. Now that it was ghost free and had a fresh coat of paint, there was nothing to fear. Except for the guano-bombing fruit bat Shifter and the witch with the storm cauldron who now lived there. Luckily, we were the make-love-not-war kind of creatures, prowling the night for only each other.