Page 52 of Justice & Liberty

“Screw that. You were gonna be the next...Cy Young.” I paused, considering. “He was a pitcher, right?”

He laughed at that, burying his face in his hands. “Yeah, like eighty years ag—no, like a hundred. Jesus, more than a hundred years ago. But he was a badass. I’ll take that. But for real, don’t feel bad. Hot neighbors, murder investigations, Hunt as a grown ass adult who seems like the scary badass she always wanted to be. This is really cool, and I’ve got nothing better to be doing.” He leaned down and looked into the fridge when I opened it. “You should make Mag’s chicken and dumplings. Her mom used to make that, it was killer.”

I considered for a moment, then shrugged, because why not? I’d gotten everything I needed for it. So I started pulling ingredients out of the fridge. “Not sure why you want me to do this, since it’s just kind of torture.”

“Eh, I have a great imagination. So, tell me about the investigation.”

We talked about the meeting with Abigail as I cooked, himmostly nodding along and watching my every move as I worked.

I concluded with the law firm and their lack of interest in the situation, and he gave a gusty, if imaginary, sigh at that. “I dunno, man. People suck, no matter what year it is.” He leaned over the pan with the chicken and vegetables in it, taking a deep breath, like maybe he could smell what I was making, and then, not looking the least bit disappointed that he hadn’t been able to smell it, turned to me. “What about magic?”

“What about it?”

He gave me that disgusted teenager eye roll. “You could do, like, a spell or something. To find the killer.”

I gave him my best quelling look, but honestly, I was thirty and childless. I was never gonna be Mom, no matter how great my role model on that had been. “I tried magic, remember? That’s how you got here. I’m just...I’m only starting out. I didn’t even know magic was real till this month.”

“Sure, which is why you can’t quit now. Maybe you didn’t get the ghost you wanted, but you didn’t fail. Besides, you and me both know summoning the ghost of your mom wasn’t you trying to solve a murder. It was summoning the ghost of your mom. I’d have done the same thing if I were you.” He turned and pulled himself up onto the counter and while my instinct was to tell him to get his ass off my kitchen counter...his ass wasn’t physical. He wasn’t going to get anything dirty. “So you should go back through that book and see if you can find a spell that will actually help find the killer.”

As much as I wanted to deny it, he wasn’t wrong.

I had a history of trying things, and when I wasn’t immediately good at them, giving up and never doing them again.Crochet, guitar, sports of any kind...the trail of dead hobbies in my wake was prodigious.

Magic was...well, it couldn’t be like that. First off, because I’d already had some success, so Iwasgood at it. But mostly because if I was the only person I knew whocoulddo it, didn’t that mean Ineededto? Not doing it felt irresponsible.

So after I plated up my dinner, I sat with Dez in the living room and we went through the book, page by page, looking for a spell that would specifically help with our situation.

“Make Her Sorry She Crossed You,” I read the title of a spell aloud.

“Daaamn,” Dez said, then gave a low whistle. “Witches are so badass. You should totally use that on your ex. Gabby said she cheated on you, didn’t she? She totally deserves that.”

“Deserves what, though? Is it going to make her skin break out, or is it going to make her fall and break her neck?”

He cocked his head one way, then the other, and finally shrugged. “Who cares? I mean, I guess you don’t want to kill her, but she can’t be sorry if she’s dead, so it probably won’t do that.”

It was a fair point, but not what we were looking for, and not really something I felt a need to do. I didn’t need revenge against Tanya. It was enough to be rid of her.

“He’s right,” Bee agreed from her bed across the room, half asleep and grumbly. “I still say we should find a spell to make her toenails all fall out. Or her hair.”

Ignoring her and turning to the next page, I sighed. “Find That Which is Missing.”

“That could work,” he said, and I wasn’t immediately sure whether he meant the spell I’d read, or Bee’s suggestion about Tanya’s toenails. “Also, again, witches are cool. None of that ‘love spell,’ ‘luck spell’ crap from movies. Nope, painful specificity only. That’s what I’m talking about.”

“That one we saw earlier was a little bit of a generic luck spell,” I said, fanning back through the pages to find the one I meant. “Best Day Ever. It looks really complicated, though, and the text specifies it doesn’t work for gambling. I wonder what it does work for.”

“Best outcomes for stuff you were going to do anyway, maybe? Maybe useful for, like, weddings and stuff. Exams. First day at a school or job.”

I went back to the one he’d said sounded like it would help. He wasn’t wrong, exactly. Clues. Clues were missing. But didn’t you have to have ever had them, to find them? “We can come back to that if we don’t find something better,” I hedged, instead of plowing forward.

On the very next page, there it was. “Find That Which is Required.”

He jumped out of his seat. “Bingo!” Then he paused, looking at me, as though he was waiting for me to say something pessimistic. “Right?”

“Right,” I agreed immediately. “It sounds perfect. Let me just see if we have the stuff for it.”

We did, and I wasn’t sure if I was grateful or nervous.

Still, I dutifully put together the list of ingredients, and realized that to some degree, the spells were mostly the same. At least, the simple ones. Find the ingredients, put them in the ritual bowl, blah blah blah, candles and chanting, the end. It seemed simple.

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