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  Waking Up Wicked

  An Evil Ones Mystery

  Etta Faire

  Book One

  Copyright © 2019 by Etta Faire

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  30. Mind Your Own Magic

  Books By Etta Faire

  Chapter 1

  Blown Fuses

  I wasn’t sure which of my fingers had actually been the first one to touch this thing. I kicked myself a little for not noticing that. I had wanted to savor every last detail. Still, it felt just as good as I thought it would.

  I dug a corner of the card under one of my fingernails then another, watching the edge bend and split as I thought back to that day last year. The day Mark moved out.

  “Okay, it’d be awesome if you could be on the lookout for that card. I can’t find it anywhere.” His voice had that trademark whine to it as he stomped out to his Camry with the last of his belongings, a random box filled with plastic beer mugs, a Padres foam finger bobbing out from the top. And just like that, he was gone.

  But I remember staring after him, thinking that I didn’t really know this man anymore, not the man he’d become. A whiny man who wore khaki pants with weird pleats down the middle, who said words like “awesome,” and pretended to work overtime while he cheated on his wife, with his wife’s boss.

  Twenty years of marriage with three beautiful kids, and the very last thing he said to us as a family was to look out for his precious Tony Gwynn rookie card because “it was special.”

  “Honey, I found it,” I said to no one as I pressed the “Accept Offer” button.

  Tony Gwynn looked back at me from his tiny circle. He knew this was a good deal. It was actually an awesome one. The buyer was giving me 20 bucks. And it wasn’t like it was in gem-mint condition and had never been touched by human hands. It looked like somebody had cleaned their fingernails with it.

  The morning sun was already lighting up my room. I glanced up at the clock on my laptop. 6:45. Shoot. It had taken me way too long to pry that stupid plastic casing open, and now I was going to be late for work, on my first day. I hated my ex-husband even more now. And I still had no idea what I was going to wear.

  Grabbing a roll of duct tape from off my desk, I ran down the hall to bang on Lilly’s door. She didn’t answer, so I kept knocking, louder and louder, ending in a drum solo that vaguely resembled You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Party.

  She finally opened up, but like most 17-year-olds, she wasn’t happy about being interrupted while she was doing nothing. And her usually big green eyes were still half-asleep slits.

  “What? We don’t have to leave for another fifteen minutes,” she said, like that was scads of time.

  I kissed her good morning then barged my way in, rummaging through her closet, kicking through a large pile of clothes on the floor in front of her armoire.

  “Moooooom! Ugh! You’re making a mess.”

  I looked around at the dirty dishes stacked on her desk, her unmade bed, the candy wrappers on her floor. “I do not think you know what that word means,” I said, then shook it off. “I’m looking for the cardigan you borrowed from me. You know, my good one, the black one. I need it. I’m starting my new job with Aunt Mabel today, and she basically told me I couldn’t show up looking like myself.”

  Lilly laugh-yawned.

  “I haven’t needed to look professional in a while.” I reminded her, tugging on my stained sweatshirt.

  Technically, I hadn’t had a job in almost a year, but it wasn’t my fault. You know the saying “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade?” Well, they don’t tell you what to do when life hands you a pile of crap while laughing maniacally.

  First, my mother passed away, then my husband and I separated while he started dating my ex-friend and now-ex boss Jessica Fitz, and, of course, I got fired… all around the same time. So, I took some time off to write the novel I always wanted to write, which really meant I laid around in sweatpants for a year eating Rocky Road.

  But since the money I inherited from my mother was running out and the house hadn’t sold yet, I needed a job fast.

  “Wait. What black cardigan are you talking about?” Lilly said, tilting her head to the side, like everything was finally processing in her half-asleep brain. “The one with the huge elbow hole?”

  I held up the black duct tape and raised my eyebrows at her.

  She stared at me blankly. “You’re kidding, right? But whatever. I’m sure it’ll be fine for Aunt Mabel’s ‘business.’” She put air quotes around the word business. “Vitamins again?”

  “That was last year,” I said, referring to the MLM, vitamin-scheme Aunt Mabel tried to sell us on, saying things like it wasn’t the vitamins we were buying that made it $300, it was the “business opportunity” to sell the vitamins to our sucker friends and family too.

  “She says it’s a legitimate business this time,” I said. “A matchmaking one. She runs it out of her garage.”

  “Sounds legitimate.” Lilly responded.

  “I’ll quit as soon as something better comes along. Right now, I just need to get through today so I can pay a bill tomorrow.”

  Her mouth curled up in a smile. “So… you’re going to be a matchmaker? You?”

  “What? What’s so funny about that?”

  Her face went back to serious. “Nothing,” she said, looking me up and down.

  “Just stop it, please. Stop being insulting with your eyes. Stop being questions when I need you to be answers. And help me find something to wear already.”

  I was running out of time. I still had to finish making Violet’s lunch and remind her to get dressed because for some odd reason if I didn’t remind my 7-year-old to get dressed, the girl would go to school in her pajamas or worse, and I hadn’t heard from Celia, my middle schooler, all morning, which meant she was likely still sleeping, and it was almost time to go.

  “Mom! Celia put too much milk in my cereal on purpose, so I’m not eating it!” Violet yelled from the living room.

  “Thank God,” I said to myself. “Celia’s awake.”

  I grabbed Lilly by her bony shoulders; her long dark hair flew back from the jolt. It was time to beg. “Please, Lilly. Help your mom. Find me something, anything, that Aunt Mabel will find appropriate, and that means no sweatpants, stains, or holes unless the hole can be fixed with black duct tape because that’s the only color I’ve got. We have like five minutes.”

  I rushed back out to the living room, grabbed the bowl, dumped out some milk, threw a glob of peanut butter onto some bread, smushed it around a little then stuffed it into a lunchbox, making sure everyone’s backpacks were ready and clothes were on and then I took a breath and looked at the clock. I only had 15 seconds left
— exactly 15 seconds for hair, makeup, clothes… and Owwwww! I looked down. Laverne was scratching her paws into my sweatpants.

  “Good morning, Laverne,” I said, stroking her beautiful calico fur, but only three times because that’s all she lets anyone touch her before she breaks out the claws. The most evil cat in the world, but she fits in well around here.

  “Somebody feed Laverne, please,” I called out from the kitchen as I wiped peanut butter off the counter with the edge of my fist, then licked it when no one was looking.

  No wonder I looked tired all the time. I was pretty sure I needed more than a 15-second transformation and a smear of peanut-butter for breakfast, but, like most moms, I took what I could get.

  Lilly came in from the garage holding the ugliest brown-and-white, polka-dotted dress I’d ever seen in my life. It was made from some sort of silky material with weird ruching along the sides. “That is hideous,” I said, mouth open about as far as it could drop without breaking my jaw.

  “It was in a GoodWill bag marked Aunt Mabel’s Fat Clothes,” Lilly said.

  I stared at the dress a moment, not sure if I should be more offended by my daughter thinking I would want to wear leftover fat clothes, or that I would fit into them. But the dress was Aunt Mabel’s, so the woman couldn’t turn her nose up at it.

  “It’s perfect.” I snatched it from Lilly and ran to throw it on. It was one of those stretchy numbers without a zipper and as I wiggled my way into it, I soon realized I might have to dislocate a shoulder in order to fit into someone else’s fat clothes. Hopping around the bathroom with my arms stuck in a polka dotted dress, I yanked and pulled until somehow I got it on. I felt like the Incredible Hulk, but it was on. The dress was about four inches too short, and I couldn’t really inhale properly without splitting a seam, but it would do, hopefully. I’d forgotten just how petite Aunt Mabel was.

  The girls tried to hide their laughter when I came out of my room, and I dug a nail into my arm to stop myself from tearing up. I teared up over nothing nowadays. I was about to turn 47 and I knew it was just menopause, but that didn’t make it any easier to go through.

  Lilly looked at me sideways. “Oh Mom,” she said, shaking her head like she was about to show a puppy how to use his paper for the umpteenth time. She twisted the dress a little at the middle and pulled a couple strands of my salt-and-pepper hair out of the lumpy bun I’d created.

  “Better,” Violet said, like she knew. But at this point, I just took my 7-year-old’s word for it. We needed to get going.

  “TV and lights off. Dishes up, and backpacks on,” I yelled, snapping my fingers like that meant something around here. Nobody moved and I felt my anger boiling past the normal point and into the menopausal one.

  Anger was different in menopause too, at least for me it was. Mostly, it was different because I liked it. And I couldn’t stop myself from having it and liking it. And wanting more of it. Seriously. How had I not enjoyed unbridled rage before? It was heavenly.

  “Let’s go. Now,” I yelled in an I-mean-it tone, anger seething underneath.

  The lights in both the dining room and living room flickered and crackled at the same time then shot off, and the TV flashed to dark.

  “What the…” Violet asked, mouth open, staring up at the tinge of smoke settling in my living room, a slight burning smell coming from the overhead light.

  “We blew a fuse. I’ll deal with it later,” I said like it was completely normal as I hustled the kids out the door with more unnoticed snapping. “Or at least I hope it’s just a fuse. How am I going to sell this house with faulty wiring?”

  After I dropped the kids off at three different schools, I breathed a small sigh of relief. I had successfully made it through another crazy morning. Then, I remembered I was about to start a new job in a tight polka-dotted dress, and I almost hyperventilated into a wardrobe malfunction.

  I was not at all excited about love or matchmaking, or any combination of those two words, but a job was a job. I only wished I knew a little bit more about it. I had no idea what I was getting into except that Aunt Mabel considered it “legitimate,” whatever that meant.

  Pulling around the corner of her neighborhood, I kind of got a sense.

  One of the best parts about living in San Diego is it’s a big city made up of many smaller communities, each with its own flavor and style. And my aunt lived in a subdivision of one of my favorite communities, Kensington.

  I drove down her tree-lined street, passing the neighborhood houses that all screamed “old San Diego money” because they were mostly built in the 1920s and maintained impeccably. Quiet little millionaire-quaint, gingerbread-looking houses with immaculate lawns.

  Most of these people had been born into this kind of wealth, passing it down from generation to generation. My aunt had married into it.

  Even though Southern California was still in the kind of drought that made even the most expensive of houses look like a dirt lot, somehow her division, Morland View Estates, never showed it.

  And Aunt Mabel’s house was no exception. But today, I wasn’t noticing her rock garden or stone-embossed waterfall. What I couldn’t take my eyes off of was a 10-foot sign sprawled across her converted garage. Two silhouettes of sexy witches with hourglass figures and sassy stances decorated the sides of the vinyl sign that read in hot pink letters between them:

  LET A WITCH GET YOU HITCHED

  SNATCH YOUR MATCH

  at the Magical Matchmaker’s Club

  Chapter 2

  A bad sign

  I fell back against my seat, staring up at the sign. Oh how her neighbors must love her now. They probably hated her three years ago, back when they considered her the “gold-digging wife” of their wealthy elderly neighbor, and probably even more so when said-neighbor mysteriously croaked and left her the house.

  But I was pretty sure she’d won them all over now with this “completely legitimate business” she was running from her garage.

  I opened my door, trying to figure out how to gracefully climb out of a 1998 Odyssey in a dress that was too short and too tight for me. I shifted my knees to the side, squeezing them as hard as I could without popping a kneecap. This dress was awful, but technically, I wasn’t coming to work looking at all like myself. So technically, everyone should be happy.

  I looked up from my knee-squeezing. One of my aunt’s neighbors was eyeing me from his lawn. Great. Why do you have to water your lawn right now? We’re in the middle of a drought!

  Slowly, I managed to slide both my legs out without feeling too much of a breeze.

  The man never took his eyes off of me. The veins on his almost-transparent 70-something neck seemed to grow thicker as he watched. His eyes bulged out from his balding head, and I began to worry he might actually be having a stroke or something, so I smiled and waved. “How’s it going?”

  “That’s illegal!” he said, pointing at my aunt’s sign with the end of his blue watering hose, water spraying out randomly, splashing the poor gray tabby by his feet. “Running a sex club out of a house. I’ve contacted the authorities about this! You ought to be ashamed. Hussy!”

  “Mind your own business,” I yelled back. Men were not on my good list at the moment, and especially not ones that called me hussy.

  Thunderous flapping echoed off the side of my aunt’s garage where the humungous vinyl sign blew around like it was trying to escape. I gestured toward it. “Trust me, my aunt has all the permits to run this legally, I can assure you. But let’s talk about why your grass is so green in the middle of a severe drought. Let’s talk about how legal it is to be watering your lawn right now.”

  He muttered something under his breath and threw down his hose. Picking up his cat, he walked away. I actually had no idea if it was legal or not to water like that. I didn’t water anymore, but that was because I could hardly afford the water we used for showers. I was certainly not going to let him know all of that, though. As far as he knew, I was the water police.

/>   He turned back toward me before he went into his house. “Tell your aunt, she’d better have everything cleared through the city and the HOA for that sex club of hers. Or her days are numbered!”

  I ignored his tirade, straightened out my bunched-up dress, and dramatically slammed my crappy minivan’s door. It made a pathetic “I’m-dying” squeak before it softly closed. “Please, Aunt Mabel,” I thought as I walked up the driveway toward the humungous sign. “Please don’t let this be a sex club. I need this job.”

  A thick cloud of incense smacked me in the face as soon as I opened the door to my aunt’s converted garage. I stumbled back, coughing and gagging, my tongue instantly numb from what tasted like I’d made the unfortunate decision to lick the front counter of a vape shop.

  I stumbled through the initial haze and into the darkness of her office. For some odd reason, all the lights were off and the blinds were down.

  “Hello?” I said, as I felt along the wall for a light switch. “Did the power go out here too?”

  Maybe everyone was having power problems. A city-wide outage.

  I heard crackling. And bubbling. I waved my hand in front of my face to try to get rid of the smell of burning rubber while I moved toward the voices at the back of the room.

  “Hellooooo,” I said again.

  “Okay, now hand me the ginger root.”

  “I haven’t grated it yet.”

  I heard my aunt’s Tennessee accent. “What do you mean? Hurry it up then. Honestly, Flootie. There’s a very short window here.”