Back Off Witch by Brad Magnarella

Author:Brad Magnarella [Magnarella, Brad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B09SHPD85S
Publisher: Croftverse Publishing
Published: 2022-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

8

“If you’re trying to creep me out, you’re succeeding.”

“Hmm?” I stirred in my reading chair. Off to my right, Tabitha’s green eyes glowed from her divan.

“You’ve been staring at nothing for the past hour.”

Had it really been an hour? I checked my watch. “Just thinking.”

“Well, I’m only now achieving something resembling comfort, and you’re threatening everything I’ve worked for.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” I muttered, stretching my arms overhead.

After the close call at the housing project, I’d made my way to the nearest subway stop. Back home, I wasted no time liquifying the copper and expunging the last of the Babaroga’s residue. But had I really expunged her? From a Garfield button? And that easily? Those were the questions I’d been mulling for the last hour.

I stood and began working the stiffness from my legs.

“What’s that vile smell?” Tabitha demanded, wrinkling her nose.

I sniffed my shirt collar. “Oh, when I dispersed the Babaroga, her smoke got all over me.”

“That horrid woman in the boy’s picture? Good riddance. Not that the boy was much better. I can’t believe you allowed those little nitwits to manhandle me, as if I were a common plaything. Sometimes I wonder if death by decapitation wouldn’t have been a more dignified existence to this one.”

“Starvation works too,” I suggested.

The phone on the kitchen counter rang, interrupting our verbal sparring.

“Hello?” I answered.

“How did everything go?” Kayla asked.

“Given the neighborhood, about as well as could be expected.” I proceeded to tell her what had happened, leaving out the firefighter and police parts. Some juvenile part of me didn’t want to admit I’d been wrong. “I dispersed the Babaroga’s energy and melted the button,” I finished, “but I’m still puzzling over how the energy came to inhabit the button in the first place.”

“Could it have transferred there from a more potent source?”

It was a good question and something I’d been considering. “Possibly, but it’s not in Oliver’s apartment.”

“Which means he’s safe now?”

“I’d like to think so, but something’s still bugging me.”

“Your intuition,” she said knowingly. “It does that to me too.”

She hadn’t brought up her crystal ceremony yet. Before she could, I came to a decision. “Remember how I told you that once the Babaroga’s energy was banished, Oliver would begin recovering? I think that’s going to be our best metric for how tonight went—seeing how he looks tomorrow.”

“I’m on the volunteer schedule. I’ll do an auric reading.”

“Ah, maybe I should be there too. If his energy isn’t rebounding, I want to look at his other drawings. Could be a clue in there.”

“We’ll need your cat for that. Will she be game?”

Throughout the conversation, I’d been watching Tabitha in my peripheral vision. After two years, I’d come to learn her various looks and postures well enough to recognize her veiled show of interest. As much as she complained about the kids, she’d savored the attention—especially Oliver’s.

I just couldn’t let Tabitha know that I knew.

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” I replied.

“Hey, I’m sorry for earlier.”

“Huh?”

“My reaction when you asked about Clark?”

I’d almost forgotten the frosty state in which she’d left my apartment.

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