Page 106 of The Witching Hours

I flopped down on the bed at the same time the Houston bird convention convened in the trees outside my bedroom window. I had no way of knowing if there were a dozen varieties of birds or three mockingbirds. It was cacophonic. It was bird brain communication gone hysterical.

Good grief.

I put in earplugs and turned on my sound maker. I tried the white, brown, green and pink noise settings, and every combination thereof, to try and drown it out. No luck. I tried hauling in a floor fan and turning it on high. Even propeller level wasn’t loud enough to compete with the damn birds. My mind kept going to the scenes inSteel Magnoliaswhere a shotgun was the solution of choice for dealing with uncooperative birds.

When it became clear there would be no peaceful afternoon nap, no matter how well-deserved, I rose in a huff, stomped out of my bedroom and turned on the TV. The instant he was released from the bedroom, Paddy went straight to the vase and resumed barking. It wasn’t half-ass barking either. He was putting his entire body into it. I was sure that, if he didn’t have lots of beautiful fur and looked like a Greyhound instead, I’d be able to see every muscle flex with every bark. When I said he can’t help being high maintenance, I was talking about grooming, not noise pollution. I put a throw pillow over my face and screamed into it.

This is my life?I headed for sink safari, meaning digging for hidden stuff in the cavern under my sink. As always, I first prayed that nothing uninvited was living in there. This activity was interesting enough to distract Paddy for a millisecond. He padded over, looked at what the open cabinet door under the sink revealed, then went right back to threatening the vase.

For all the good it did, which was none, I was chastising him while looking through my collection of spray bottles, powders, scrubbers, and containers that could pass for flasks. “Paddy! You’re a very bad boy. Ungrateful, too. How would you like to go back to the Pasadena Pound? Hmmm? Don’t you know you won the doggie lottery when you got to come and live here with good old soft-touch Veronica?

“Why is it that cleaning supplies seem to multiply, but I have no brass polish?”

I don’t know why I was surprised by that. I didn’t own anything brass.

“Okay,” I told Paddy. “You can stay here and bark at the vase until you sound like Rod Stewart, or you can come with me. Your call.”

When the keys were lifted out of the basket on the kitchen island, Paddy’s head swiveled so fast his ears took a second to catch up. His attention was instantly and wholly committed to the possibility of a car ride. He didn’t care where I might be going. He liked outings and wasn’t particular about the destination.

I’d trained Paddy to jump into the back of the SUV with little bits of chicken shortly after he became a permanent resident.Bless his heart.He still thought he might get a chicken bit. Dogs are legendary gamblers who ignore their failures and exaggerate their successes.

There was an Ace Hardware a few blocks away. It was easy in and out. Not like those big box DIY stores. In less than five minutes I’d purchased brass polish and was back in the car. On the way home I realized that an SOS scrubber would’ve worked just as well, but at least we got to take a break from barking.

Paddy jumped down, ran to the back door and waited, wagging his tail. I started the countdown in my head knowingthat, as soon as I unlocked and opened the door, he’d go right back to barking. Five. Four. Three. And there it was.

I had a huge porcelain farm sink with an apron. It was one of the best things about my kitchen. I set the vase in the sink and turned Spotify on. I stared at my go to genre for a minute and decided the surest way to get old fast was to stop being curious about new music. So, I picked K Pop. Some artist named Jung Kook. It seemed promising because a lot of people think Jung was a kook. The sound was catchy, but even turning up the bass didn’t give Paddy pause. He just tried harder.

Leaping Lizards.Paddy was going to have to stay outside for a while. I loved him, but I loved my sanity more. “Okay,” I said mostly to myself and put Paddy outside. Once he could no longer see the vase, he was fine. A prime example of out of sight, out of mind.

Breathing out a long sigh of relief, I gathered up a few rags and went to work. Modern day brass polish is a miracle. No elbow grease required. A couple of rubs revealed the golden beauty underneath the disguise of tarnish. Just when I was thinking this project was going to be fun, the air in the room began to look hazy. At the same time, I was enveloped by a delectable scent. It wasn’t hard to identify. It smelled like the most incredible masculine cologne ever concocted in a seduction lab.

I took a step back. The haze was rising from the vase. Not only that. It was becoming thicker, like white smoke so dense there was no visibility to what was on the other side. I’d been frozen in surprise and alarm, but was brought out of inaction by a pop so loud I reached up to cover my ears. I opened my eyes just in time to see the smoke condense into a human shape and become the dreamy artist from the festival.

Every sign of haze disappeared, and I was left standing next to my kitchen island staring at a man who seemed to think there was nothing unusual about what had just transpired.

I dropped my hands. “Who are you?”

He gave me a lopsided smile as he began looking around my kitchen. “That’s not really the question, is it?”

I knew what he meant, but I didn’t want to know what he meant. Still, I needed to proceed carefully. Play along.

“What are you?”

“A grantor of wishes. Yours is my command.” He cocked his head. “What time is this?”

“Time?” I looked at my watch. “Four thirty.”

“No. Not time of day. What era is this?”

I had to guess at what he meant. “Twenty-first century?”

“Twenty-one hundred years since time began?”

“No. We started counting at the time of Jesus Christ.”

He looked curious. “Jesus Christ. What was that?”

“Not a that. A who. Long story. Here’s a better question. Are you a genie?”

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