Page 4 of A Witch-ish Guide to Protectors and Pendulums

The last voicemail recorded on Jeffrey’s phone happened the day before he died. Again, from Beetle. “Make the move now,” the low, eerily smooth voice ordered. “Or else.”

Or else?

Or elsewhat?

Or elseheloses a client?

Or elsehe gets written up?

Or elsehegets a bullet to his brain?

When I saideerily smooth, I meant like when you heard the Godfather talking in that really popular movie. You just knew he was evil, but he never sounded upset. That was Beetle. Could this man be behind Jeffery’s murder? And why hadn’t the police ever mentioned this to us before? Since no arrests were made, I could only assume that they didn’t feel the need to feed us this information. The sandwich sat like a lead brick in my stomach. Wishing that I’d avoided food altogether, I sipped on the iced tea from the sub shop in hopes that my poor tummy would stop hating me as much as it felt like it did.

But… what if the police missed something? My gut told me there was more to this Beetle and the address Jeffery looked up. Crap. Okay. My feet knew what I planned to do before my brain knew probably because my brain started to focus on something else, something more… diabolical.

The wordCORRUPTIONbegan flashing in my head over and over in a bright purple neon. Corruption? Was their lack ofcommunication concerning this person purposeful? I’d love to say that my intuition or gut instinct led me to this conclusion too, but I couldn’t because as I continued to see the flashing purple neon word behind my eyes, I felt the pulse of magic encircling it. Magic? Surrounding a word? This never happened before. I wasn’t sure I liked it now. No. My entire life I knew what to expect from my magic. Taser fingers that sparked with every full moon. Now suddenly the universe decided to change the rules of the game? Why? How? And most importantly, what did it have to do with Jeffery?

While this corruption angle took up major headspace, my feet seized control of the rest of my body. I left the other items on the table, crumpling up the wrappers from my food to throw away then grabbed Jeffery’s phone, my purse, and keys and ran out to my garage. Even in the daylight, the power in my veins started to get stronger because of the moon’s position. I flexed the fingers on each hand multiple times and shook them out. Then using my maps app, I followed the route from the address provided by Jeffery’s phone back to that less-than-stellar neighborhood.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I hoped to see a sign that read: Beetle’s place. Did I expect to see it? Of course not. But it would’ve made this job a whole lot easier. What didn’t make it easier was the address belonged to an abandoned building with the bottom windows and doorways boarded up and the second- and third-story windows broken out as if people had thrown rocks through them. It took a great deal of psyching myself up to finally decide to do a walk around. Without full use of my magic, if someone decided to pop a shot off at me, depending on how good a shot they were, it could mean R.I.P. Simone.

If they tried to attack me, maybe take me out with a tackle, enough magic flowed through me to fend them off. A touch frommy hand was like being touched by the prongs of a stun gun. But I had to be touching them for that to work.

This is for Jeffery. After my mental pep talk, I sighed, shook off my fear, and pushed open the door to my jeep, making sure to bleep the locks after I jumped out.

The entire perimeter was littered with broken beer bottles and fast food wrappers, and around the back, I even found bent spoons and discarded needles, evidence of drug use—totally gross. One of the boards on the window had been loosened and I was able to move it out of the way enough to climb through. The temperature immediately dropped by a good twenty degrees inside and when the board swung shut again, the room plunged into blackness.

It stank of urine with faint hints of excrement. I wrinkled my nose, seriously contemplating turning myself around and getting the hell out of there, but instead, I fished my phone from my purse and clicked on the flashlight, shining it around the open space. Evidence suggested that several of the city’s homeless used this building as a camp.

As I walked the room, I heard a clanging like a can falling and spun around with my light, finding the offending can and a giant rat scurrying along the perimeter of the floor closest to the wall. What in the world would have made Jeffery come here?

The hairs on my arms started standing on end, which meant the time had come to move my ass. I ran back over to the window, moving the board and slipping back out into the sun, warming my bones, though not getting rid of that shaky feeling.

The feeling grew steadily stronger as I rounded the building. I prepared to see someone scoping out my jeep or checking out the building. But I could never have prepared to see him.Hewas there. The guy from the secondhand store stood across the street not scoping out my jeep, not checking out the building, but staring straight atme.

Arms crossed over his chest, a really attractive chest, even if not quite as broad as the detective’s at the police station. It still out-broaded most chests in the chest universe. What was wrong with me, thinking about broad-chested men at a time like this? He glared at me. Those hard eyes struck me harder than any hand ever could. They struck me down to my soul. He had that menacing thing down because I, for one, was intimidated.

Instead of asking him what in tarnation he was doing there, I ran to my truck, bleeping the locks to get in before I reached it. The problem with that strategy one might ask? I’d be happy to tell if I wasn’t so scared out of my mind, but one might guess my answer when I reached the door, swung it open, and climbed in, only to be met with him sitting in the passenger seat. How? He was across the street like two seconds ago.

“Drive,” he ordered me and the only thing that went through my head at that moment was an episode of a police forensics show where the officer said flat out:“Never let them get you to a second location.”I didn’t want to die.

“No!” I yelled, hoping to take him off guard, and I touched all five fingers on my right hand to his neck. That touch should’ve knocked him out for like ten minutes at least, but instead of passing out, he grabbed my hand, forcing it back onto the steering wheel again.

“If you don’t want to die, I suggest you not try that again and drive.”

Well, my next escape strategy involved running us off the road into a busy gas station or grocery store. My baby, beautiful flowery lilac finish, pristine in her condition, would just have to forgive me when I took her into the body shop for repairs because that would mean I was alive to take her there.

As I didn’t want to die and for some odd reason, my personal finger tasers neglected to work on my kidnapper, I started the engine and pulled out onto the road.

“Turn left,” he ordered. Since turning left took us out of that particular neighborhood, up and over the bridge to an area I was more familiar with, I turned left.

“Why are you doing this? How did you know I’d be there?”

“My boss sent me,” he answered.

Uh, his boss? “And why does the owner of a secondhand store care where I spend my free time?”

“Different job. Different boss.”

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