Page 113 of Real Fake Hauntings

“Don’t worry, Fluffy. I’d never let such a horrible insult stand. You’re the smartest, bestest girl.”

She licked my sneaker, then sneezed on my leggings.

“We better get you inside before you catch a cold. It’s been a long day, hasn’t it?”

“Longest day ever,” Dru agreed from the door. “Are you sure the witch will stay there?” She gestured toward the locker.

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

Dru rubbed her hands. “Awesome.”

“No making deals with the evil hag.”

Her smile was as bland as cheese-less white bread. “Sure.” As we moved back inside, she said, “So, Hannah, huh?”

I sighed. “Yep.”

She patted my shoulder. “Can’t win them all.”

“I guess you turned out okay.” I studied her intently. “Right?”

“One hundred percent evil-free.”

And thank goodness for that.

“I need to grab something upstairs,” I said.

“And then?”

“Then we’re going to celebrate.”

“I’ll finish closing.”

While Dru got busy clearing the last of the mugs and getting everything ready for tomorrow, I left Fluffy with her and went upstairs.

Page thirteen, line thirteen. It better not be in code.

Accessing Bagley’s bank’s app from my phone, I inputted the random letters and numbers. It immediately asked me for my secret question since I was logging from a new number.

Hah!

Licking my lips, I typed the answer and pressed “go.” The screen changed to show a balance that was nearly heart-stopping.

Bagley had made bank with her dark magic business. No wonder she’d been fully committed to the life.

Wasting no time, I transferred everything to the extra bank account I’d set up for all my dark web marketplace dealings. Strangely, it didn’t ask for any sort of two-factor authentication, but I supposed Bagley was old school and didn’t want anything pointing to the bank lying around.

Once the transfer was confirmed, I logged out of the account and checked my own.

Finally, after all this time, there it was. Way more money than I’d have thought possible for a witch to ever have.

No need to daydream about how to invest it, though—I had already decided what to do with it.

I wasn’t the only one working here who deserved her own shop.

After returning the ledger to its super-secret hidden place inside a plastic bag in my closet, I retrieved Key’s grandma’s spellbook.

Key hadn’t pressed me about it, and for the longest time I’d wondered what to do about it. Key’s grandma had practiced some forms of dark magic, and a lot of her notes in the spellbook reflected this. By all accounts, it should be destroyed.

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