Page 37 of The Accidental Detectives

But she was a witch who had magic—magic that could change her appearance…

Finally, I bumped into Brenda, her body limp, the scent of her death rife in my nose.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered hoarsely.

“Don’t be sorry, be awake!” Nudging her, I grimaced when she fell into me with a hard thump. “Brenda! Wake the fuck up! You have a lot of shit to look forward to. Remember what Arch said? He said you could play bingo with him and all his little troll friends. Tater Tot loves it. I bet you will, too, and then there’s Doug and the dogs. Peppermint Patty and Linus need you. You can have a life if you’ll just stay the fuck awake! ”

“Aren’t you a delight?” a melodic voice asked.

There was a sharp snap of fingers, and then there was light.

So much damn light it burned my eyes like somebody had rubbed raw onions in them, singeing them. Clamping them shut, I tried to ignore the searing pain and demand answers. “Who the fuck are you?”

From behind my eyelids, I saw a shadow pass before me, blocking out some of the abrasive light. “I can’t believe you don’t know. I guess I’d be hurt if I cared.”

Forcing my eyes back open, I stared into the face of a strange lady. Brenda was right. She really was pretty. Lots of long, flowing blonde hair shrouding her shoulders, eyes bluer than Marty’s and skin like that silk scarf Wanda wears around her head at night.

Ace detective that I am, this wasn’t at all the person I’d thought had killed Owen—or was it? How the fuck would I know? If I got out of this still undead, Marty and Wanda were going to have to come to the realization that we sucked at this.

“Who the fuck are you?” I said between teeth that I clenched so hard, I thought they’d break.

Her shoulders slumped beneath her floaty white dress. She snapped her fingers again before using her hand to make a circle around her face.

As she morphed into an entirely different person, I wanted to fucking gloat that Ihadbeen right about Owen’s killer, she was the stinky lady Owen Jr. was talking about, but my eyeballswere on fire from the glow of her magic light. When I’d smelled Grandpa Simon, it hit me, for all the good that revelation’s doing me now.

“Sonja,” I muttered, but then I sat up straight. The hell I’d let her see me sweat. That wasn’t how shit went down with me. If I was goin’ down with Brenda, I was goin’ down with my head held high. “Care to explain what the hell this is about?”

She squatted, chucking me under the chin with an evil smile. “You mean this? How I look? It’s called a cloaking spell. Easy enough if you’ve been around as long as I have. You met Sonja, the messy divorcée and neighborhood gossip. And now you’ve seen the real me. ”

I lifted my chin, yanking it away from her touch—a touch that sent a slimy slither of dread along my spine. “Cut to the chase. What the fuck do you want?”

I’d been in plenty of dangerous situations in our line of work with OOPS, and despite the fact that this bitch filled me with a serious case of the icks, I was ready for whatever she was dolin’ out.

Sonja pushed my hair from my face with tender fingers. “You haven’t figured that out yet?”

Brenda moaned beside me, meaning, I had to get her fed soon. “Pretty sure you wanna tell me, so how about you get to it so I can beat your ass and be done with it. What do you want?” I ground out, the words thick on my tongue, the restraints around my wrists embedding themselves deeper into my flesh.

She chuckled again, soft and light, but the subtext screamed, “You’re gonna die.”

“What do you think I want, Nina?”

“Revenge…” Brenda husked out. “She wants revenge…”

Well, we’d been right about that, hadn’t we? It was one of theonlythings we’d been right about, but we’d been right. Sonja had a grudge, and I’d bet my bippy she wanted to tell us all about it.

Straining against the zip-ties, digging my heels into the hard ground, I asked, “For what, Sonja? Why do you want revenge?” Every word I spoke was fucking torture, my tongue weirdly, suddenly raw.

Sonja rose from her haunches, backing away, her hair swinging around in a cloud of blonde Marty would envy. “Didn’t Brenda tell you?”

“Seeing as you’re starving her to death, she was too weak to explain. Why don’tyoutell me?”

She shrugged her shoulders, giving me a coy smile as her face reverted back to her true self. “Alfred, of course. You did find his picture, right? Under Brenda’s mantel? I put it there as part of my revenge spell. You know, a picture of your lost love in the home of the tramp who stole him from you? I know it was you ladies who found it. Ismelledyour essence when it incinerated.”

Note to self, in the paranormal world, a whole lot of identify-by-smell happened. We needed to tread lighter—or shower more.

That aside, who the hell was Alfred? “Who the hell is Alfred?”

“The man in the picture, silly! His name is Alfred!”

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