Hex to Pay: A Witch Detective Cozy Mystery by Stevie Day

Author:Stevie Day [Day, Stevie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-02-01T22:00:00+00:00

15

Alice didn’t remember how she and Aunt Penny ended up sitting on her couch. She’d given in to the tears, and they had come fast and hard. Aunt Penny, after her initial question, remained silent except for the soft, soothing shhs she quietly whispered as she held Alice and gently stroked her hair.

As she had so many times before.

Aunt Penny was the sister of Alice’s father. When Alice’s mother died, her father had been devastated. He had always been an active parent, but there was a big difference between that and suddenly being a single parent. Luckily, he wasn’t the prideful type. He wasn’t afraid to ask for help, and Aunt Penny had been more than willing to step up.

As the tears finally began to run their course and subside, Aunt Penny took Alice’s face in her hands.

“Alice. The most important question first: Are you okay?”

Alice sniffled and nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“Shh. None of that. As long as you’re okay, everything else is secondary.”

Alice nodded again and put her head back on Aunt Penny’s shoulder. “How did you know to come?”

“You never checked in with your dad. He tried to reach you and when he couldn’t, he reached out to me.”

“And you came over? Why didn’t you call?”

Aunt Penny turned to her. “Alice, I’ve been calling all day! I’ve left you about a dozen voicemails and texts. We were both worried sick.”

“Oh my gosh, really?” Alice reached in her back pocket for her phone and found it wasn’t there. “Jeez. I lost my phone and didn’t even realize it.”

“We’ll figure that out later. Right now, tell me what happened.”

Alice took a deep breath and looked lovingly into Aunt Penny’s jade eyes, which contrasted so beautifully with the red hair that framed her face. “My magic is gone.”

“What do you mean, ‘gone’?”

“Gone. I can’t feel it. I can’t reach it. I can’t talk to Mr. Ploppers, I can’t start my car, I can’t cast the tiniest spell.”

Aunt Penny took a moment to let that sink in before asking, “How did this happen?”

“About a week ago, I was hired by a guy whose wife had just died. It seemed like natural causes. The police and medical examiner all agreed it was natural causes. But this guy was convinced she’d been murdered. So he hired me to find out who did it.”

Alice took a deep breath and continued, “I took the case, figuring that if it led me nowhere and I concluded that she had, in fact, died of natural causes, then that was okay. Maybe he’d take my word for it and be able to move on. I could help bring him closure and peace. And if there was a murder… Well, I believed I’d find that out too.”

Aunt Penny nodded patiently, waiting for the explanation.

“But the investigation wasn’t going anywhere. There were a couple of people I guess I could’ve investigated a little more thoroughly, but…”

She trailed off, but Aunt Penny, now with something like a stern look on her face, wasn’t about to let her off the hook.

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