Page 32 of Sugar, Spice, and Magical Midlife

Did I want to get mixed up in this and drag Des and Ethyl into it, too?

I hadn’t realized I’d been clutching the steering wheel so hard until I pulled into my driveway and uncurled my knuckles, the leather crunching as I released it.

The first thing I noticed as the midday sun beat down on Ric’s dashboard was that the outside was relatively quiet, not a cat in sight, which was strange. Gladys, my nosey neighbor who shared a condo wall with me, loved to feed stray cats, which meant the felines were always on my side of the yard, too.

The second thing I noticed was the nosey neighbor herself was sitting in front of her arched entryway, her gray hair tuckedbeneath a baseball cap and her normally dull eyes protected by oversized sunglasses. As usual, her pale features were draped in a permanent frown, but what was most striking was the rather large baseball bat she clutched with whitened knuckles. Last I checked, Gladys hadn’t been recruited by the Mafia to go around breaking kneecaps, but considering the several strange turns my life had recently taken, I supposed anything was possible.

I hopped out of the truck and waved at my neighbor. “You alright, Gladys?”

She gave me a cool look over the rim of her glasses while squeezing her bat. “Where did you get that truck?”

I scratched the back of my head, wondering why it was any of her business. “Uh, it’s my boyfriend’s,” I lied. Ric wasn’t my boyfriend, not yet, anyway, but she didn’t need to know that.

I took a few hesitant steps toward her. “Everything okay here?”

She frowned, raising her bat. “Does it look like everything is okay?”

As I approached, I noticed the police whistle around her neck, and then my eyes bulged when I saw two distinct objects tucked into the cupholder on her foldable chair. The first was an industrial can of bear mace. The second was a string of rosary beads with a crucifix on the end.

I silently prayed Gladys was preparing for an apocalypse of zombie bears, though I had a sickening feeling it was something far more sinister.

I motioned to the can of mace. “What happened?”

She turned up her chin, her lower lip wobbling. “A burglar tried to break in.”

I feigned shock as a sickening feeling twisted my gut. “You’re kidding.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” She raised her sunglasses, glaring at me through bloodshot eyes. “I haven’t slept all night. I’m terrified he’ll come back.”

I swallowed at that. Just a burglar. A coincidence, right? So what was up with the rosary beads? “Did you call the police?”

“Of course!”

“And?” I asked. Considering she was the neighborhood gossip, it sure was difficult getting pertinent information out of her this morning.

“What could they do?” She looked away as she visibly swallowed. There was something she wasn’t telling me. “He was already gone by the time they arrived.”

“Did you get the burglar on your camera?” I asked, then tensed. Did I want to see the camera footage? If it was a succubus, I would certainly see the aura of the witch it was possessing.

“It doesn’t show his face.” She pouted. “He wore a hoodie and gloves.”

“I doubt he’ll be back with all the security you have on your house.” I waved at the many security cameras she had pointed at her yard and even my yard, something she and I had argued about more than once. Truthfully, Gladys and I weren’t exactly on the best terms ever since I reported her to our HOA for aiming a camera into my backyard. The camera had since been removed, but no telling what she saw. Des doesn’t always do a great job concealing his magic, which is why he plays basketball at night.

She folded her glasses in her flannel shirt pocket and slowly stood. “A camera isn’t going to stop the devil.”

“The-the what?” I stammered, but I’d heard her. Alarm bells went off in my head. She thought she saw the devil, which meant a succubus had probably tried to break into her house. No doubt it had gone to the wrong door.

“I want you to see something.” She waved me toward her as she pulled out her phone. “The police laughed when I showed them.”

What she showed me turned my blood to ice. I couldn’t tell the gender of the intruder, for he or she was covered head to toe in black, including a hoodie and mask that covered all but the eyes. I did see a faint aura, which meant the intruder was a witch, a weak one, but a witch nonetheless. Why was a witch trying to break into my neighbor’s house? Was it a succubus? If so, why would a succubus possess a weak witch when they’ve always preferred powerful striga? The witch tried to open the front door, then swore when the handle wouldn’t turn. Were they expecting the door to be open? The alarm went off, and the witch looked into the camera before taking off at a run.

And that’s when I saw them, those red, demonic eyes.

Holy cauldron! A succubus!

My knees weakened as I lowered myself onto Gladys’s chair.

“You saw it, too? The glowing eyes!”

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