Page 28 of Real Fake Hauntings

Dru joined me in the kitchen. Luckily, she’d brought the pizza with her.

“So, that’s Bagley,” she said as I set up the laptop on the counter.

“Yes, that’s the evil spawn.”

A series of happy gurgling noises came from the faucet, followed by more happy clanking on the pipes.

I patted the wall. “Hello, Tiny Kraken.”

Dru closed her eyes and massaged her temples. “It’s an octopus. Christ.”

She was having a bit of a problem coming to terms with my little kraken.

“To-may-to, to-mah-to,” I said soothingly, then returned my attention to the laptop. “Okay, so let’s assume the symbols don’t matter or were part of the spell.”

“That means a witch,” Dru said. “Not many of those in Olmeda.”

That perked my interest. “You know of any?”

While I was the official council representative, there was no law stating more than one witch couldn’t live in the same town.

“The lying asshole,” she answered immediately.

That would be Lewis, her ex-boss.

“Anyone alive,” I amended wryly.

“None off the top of my head,” she admitted after thinking it over.

“Makes sense.” I brought up Bosko’s shop’s website on the laptop to check their official closing time. Bosko or his daughter would’ve had more than enough time to paint the pentagram on their wall, then go to the other spots before the shifter smelled the blood at four. “Bagley likely made sure to keep any witch out of her territory, in case they tried to encroach into her business.”

“Sonia might know,” Dru said.

“Sonia might be a witch herself.”

Dru arched her brows.

“Not that I’m going to ask her.” I had some self-preservation instincts, no matter how much Ian insisted I had lost them in infancy. I added a note on my suspect to-do list. “I’ll call the Council tomorrow and ask for any witch registered in Olmeda.”

“It’d be silly to do this in the city where you’re registered.”

“You never know.” During my adventures as Olmeda’s official witch, I had come across many a bad guy who had failed because of the dumbest details. “They might be like Bagley—cookies on the outside, rotting on the inside.”

“Ew.”

She was no doubt thinking about all the Bagley-made cookies she had eaten in her lifetime. Cookies containing unwilling blood, seeing as how I’d found a container full of them in Bagley’s cabinet of dark magic horrors.

Speaking of which…

I checked the Cabinet’s closing time. It’d be open for a few hours yet—creepy places did their best business in the late evening and early night.

“I need to go talk to the Cabinet people.” I eyed Dru, who was slurping her soda while trying to ignore the waving tentacle peeking from the end of the faucet. I poked it, and it wrapped around my finger, tugging it this and that way. Ah, the innocence of ghostly pipe pets. “Wanna come with me?”

Dru shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal, but her mouth curved with satisfaction. “Sure, why not?”

TEN

I wanted to take Bee-Bee, but Dru refused to get on what she called the lovely piece of human leftovers (paraphrasing), which was very unfair since she’d had no problem using the Vespa when it was time to follow her ex, so we went on foot.

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