No Treats for Charlie Read online

  Charlie blinked at her, only his head revealed by the covers that she’d thrown back. /Serves them right,/ he opined.

  “I agree.”

  In the aquarium, one of the newts squeaked, and it was almost like a wee bark. Matilda smiled to herself as she settled back into her bed, imagining that Susannah was put out by the pranksters, too. Matilda fell asleep wondering what good beauty sleep did for salamanders.

  In the morning, Matilda cleaned up the pumpkin mess, made a new jack o’lantern, and settled down at the kitchen table with her grandmother’s spellbooks. Charlie sat across from her, helping her go through the books as well. He turned the pages, careful not to use his claws. The spellbooks smelled like lavender, which he liked, and camphor, which made him sneeze. The newts munched on their meal worms and one of the last crickets, probably not long for the world, chirped away defiantly in a corner of the aquarium.

  /What will you do if one of the crickets gets loose?/ he asked Matilda.

  “Congratulate him on a fine sense of self-preservation.”

  She sounded distracted, and she had her lips pressed into an unhappy line. Charlie could feel her emotions and knew that she was frustrated with the search for a spell that would work for what they needed. Underneath it, she was also feeling nostalgia with a tinge of grief.

  /Tell me about your grandmother,/ he prompted, hoping the conversation would take the edge off the subconscious missing that she felt.

  She smiled. “She was kind, and always very soft and huggable.” She glanced up at him. “She had a wonderful kitten shelf. You’d have liked her.”

  /Aw, I’m sure I would have./ He rubbed his paw across his nose and shook himself. His new sweater, which was orange with a black stripe around the middle, shook with him. /Did she teach you much about witchcraft?/

  Matilda’s eyes softened at the memory. “Silly little things. Divination, mostly. Like how you could find a star in an apple if you cut it the right way, and how to read fortunes in tea leaves. She gave me my first Tarot deck when I was seven years old.”

  He glanced over at her reading table. The deck that sat there was ragged with long years of service. /That deck?/

  “No. The deck my granny gave me is tucked away in a box under the bed. It’s too special to me to use every day.”

  He could understand that. He was sure he’d feel the same way about the sweater that was currently on Matilda’s knitting needle, because it was made of the softest white yarn he had ever encountered. He couldn’t wait for it to be finished so he could show it off in town.

  The window by the door rattled, and Henry appeared beside it, his coat coming into view before the rest of him. Matilda looked up, pleasantly surprised, and waited for him to finish materializing.

  “Good morning,” she greeted as soon as he had all his parts in a visible form.

  “Good morning to you, Miss Matilda,” he greeted. He looked around the single room that was their home. “A charming little cabin.”

  “Thank you.”

  He walked closer to the fire and held out his hands, warming what would never be warm again. The newts scurried away from him, and he chuckled.

  “Silly creatures,” he commented. “I have news about your warlock.”

  “Excellent! Where is he right now?” she asked, folding her hands over the vellum pages she’d been scrutinizing.

  “He’s hid himself away in the Academy’s main building, up in the attic. He’s been staying there for a while, now, with three young men.”

  Charlie’s eyes went wide. /Three young men? The same ones who stole the spirit sphere?/

  “I’d bet money on it, if I had money to bet,” he nodded.

  “That doesn’t make sense to me,” Matilda said, frowning. “Why would he associate himself with three mundane teenagers?”

  “Who better to send around running errands and making mischief on Devil’s Night?” Henry asked.

  /Nobody would pay them any attention,/ Charlie agreed. /They’d be able to get places he couldn’t go./

  “I wonder what sort of errands he’d need…”

  Henry shrugged. “Gathering supplies, maybe, or spying, or who knows?” He turned to her with a sly grin. “But I could find out.”

  “Would you?” she asked eagerly.

  “Happy to, Miss Matilda.”

  Henry bowed and tipped his hat to her, and Matilda blushed. The ghost vanished, his smile disappearing last, and then he was gone. The witch ran her hand over her hair, and she straightened her skirt with a fussy swipe of her hand. She sighed.

  Charlie watched his witch in confusion, then went back to scanning through the book in front of him. He didn’t know what Matilda was thinking, but he knew what she was feeling clearly enough.

  Everybody knew you couldn’t mate with a ghost.

  Chapter Nine

  Eddie didn’t much care about witches.

  He knew them, sure. He’d lived in Button Landing all his life, and you didn’t grow up in a place like that without encountering at least a few of the spooky ladies from the Academy. They were almost all the same: ravishing beauties, knockouts with hourglass figures and legs that went on for days, long hair that seemed to always flow on a wind all its own… fakes and phonies, all of them.

  When he saw the witch that his boss had told him to watch out for, he was surprised. She didn’t put on a fake face and make herself look like a wet dream on feet. She had a familiar that looked more like a goblin than a cat, and she was a little too heavy and a little too old. She had a weird, rolling gait, and her hair looked like she’d just pulled her finger out of a light socket. All in all, a very un-witchy witch, in his opinion.

  Eddie didn’t know why his boss wanted that particular witch kept under surveillance. If she couldn’t even put on a fake doll face like all the others, she probably couldn’t do anything that should make old Xander nervous. Still, he liked money, and he was paid to watch her, so he did.

  “Watch” was an extremely malleable word, as far as Eddie was concerned, so his activities as her watcher included throwing a stolen spirit sphere at her, demolishing her Halloween pumpkin against her own door, and stealing her morning newspaper. She didn’t realize she was the target of the first one, retaliated mildly for the second, and as far as he could tell, she hadn’t noticed the third. Oh, well. He’d just have to come up with something else.

  His buddies, Ralph and Jimmy, were more than happy to help him out for a cut of what Xander was paying him. Jobs were hard to find in Button Landing, and jobs that let them harass a witch were even more scarce. Xander paid him a ridiculous amount of money, so he could easily afford to share with his buddies. They thought he was splitting it evenly, but he wasn’t a chump; he kept half, and they split the other half between them. He called the extra his finder’s fee, and what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

  Xander was a weird one. He had all kinds of things that he muttered about, but even after working for him for nearly a month, Eddie still didn’t know what he wanted, beyond his immediate plans for the Halloween ball. It had something to do with the Academy and its creepy administrator. Eddie figured anybody with a name as creepy as ‘Winterhex’ deserved whatever mischief Xander had planned.

  For now, with Xander holed up in the Academy clock tower, Eddie was once again being deployed to gather spell components and snacks. Almost without fail, the things Xander needed for his spells were slimy, smelly, or just plain gross, and this time was no exception. He eyed the list in his hand.

  Five fish heads, two mouse livers and a bottle of pickled hot peppers. It didn’t say what kind of fish, so probably any fish would do. He could go to the store for the fish and peppers, but the mouse livers? He had no idea how to get those. Then he remembered that the pet store in Button Landing had mice for sale so people could feel them to their snakes. Those mice wouldn’t be needing their livers, he supposed.

  He rode the ferry back over the river, leaving Button Hollow behind and going back to more familia
r surroundings. He felt strange while the boat was moving, like he was being stared at, but even though he checked numerous times, he could never see anyone who was taking an unusual interest in him or in his activities. He was happy to leave the ferry behind when it docked.

  It was Halloween morning, and the town was coming to life in anticipation of the holiday. Jack o’lanterns leered from every doorstep, and garlands of ghosts and bats festooned the town square. The one witch shop in town was doing brisk business, and across the street was the grocery store, where he had business. Eddie wadded up his list and shoved it into his pocket.

  The grocer, Mr. Peabody, looked up when Eddie came in, and his friendly smile instantly shifted into wariness. “Edward,” he greeted, his voice deep. “What brings you here?”

  “Shopping,” he answered simply.

  He brushed past Mr. Peabody and went into the aisles. Pickled hot peppers were surprisingly easy to find, which was gratifying, and the little jar fit perfectly into his pants pocket. He’d cut corners where he could as far as costs were concerned, and after the greeting that Mr. Peabody had given him, he didn’t feel bad about causing the grocer a little stock loss.

  The seafood counter was quiet, but Marvin, the butcher, was on hand. “Hey, Marv,” Eddie called. “You got any smelt?”

  “In the case,” Marvin answered curtly. “Six to a package.”

  “I only need five.”

  The butcher shot him a warning look. “Now, don’t be tricking any of the witches tonight. You had your fun last night, just judging from the busted-up pumpkins, and from the shards of the spirit sphere that the cops found by the ferry.”

  Eddie widened his eyes and put his hand over his heart. “You’re accusing me? With what proof?”

  “I’ve known you for sixteen years,” Marvin advised. “That’s all the proof I need.”

  The feeling of being watched returned, and this time it carried a sensation of someone standing far too close to him. Again, there was nobody around when he looked, and Eddie realized that he was probably being haunted by one of the ghosts from the shattered sphere.

  “You should be grateful,” he whispered. “I got you out of that thing.”

  A voice breathed in his ear, cold and sepulchral. “Gratitude is wasted on the ungrateful.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

  Just like Marvin said, the smelt were packaged up, six to a bundle. He took the cold fish to the counter, where he paid Mr. Peabody. The grocer looked at the money as if he expected it to be printed in crayon, but he accepted the bill and gave Eddie the change.

  “Thanks, man,” the teenager said, throwing in a jaunty salute. “Happy Halloween.”

  Mr. Peabody squinted at him. “Happy Halloween.”

  Eddie made a mental note to come back with toilet paper to give the store a little something extra tonight.

  He glanced at the clock and made his way to the pet store. Xander said he had to have his errand run by noon, but there was plenty of time still. A group of school children trooped by him in their costumes, trick-or-treating at the businesses. Their teacher, a pretty redhead named Alice, nodded to him as they passed one another on the street. She’d never spoken to him. He wondered if he could get Xander to change that for him.

  The pet store was near the witch shop, which made sense to him. If witches always needed eye of newt, why not set up next to the one place where you could pop in and buy some? He chuckled when he thought of all the new newts in town, and at what Xander had planned for Old Lady Winterhex.

  He knew the kid behind the pet store counter. They had dropped out of school at the same time, and they used to run together until Steven decided he wanted to be a decent human being and clean up his act. Eddie was convinced that he was less interested in becoming a reformed character than he was in getting with Alice’s sister Hannah, but that was Steven’s business.

  “Hey, man,” he greeted jauntily as he walked in, the change in his pocket rattling against the jar of pickled peppers.

  “Hey,” Steven greeted. “Happy Halloween.”

  “You, too. Hey, can I get two of the feeder mice?”

  Steven frowned. “What do you want ‘em for? We’re not supposed to sell live animals to any suspicious characters today.”

  Eddie feigned shock. “I am not suspicious! You know me perfectly well.”

  “That’s why I’m not sure I should sell them to you.”

  He sighed. “Well, do you have any dead mice? That’ll do, too.”

  Steven hesitated. “I’ve got some pinkies in the freezer.”

  “What’s a pinky?”

  “A baby mouse that’s been frozen.”

  Frozen mouse liver was just as good as fresh, he reasoned. “Sure, that’ll do.”

  He watched as Steven walked over to the chest freezer that they kept near the front window. Alongside the organic dog food, they carried frozen cubes of fish and other nasty perishables, including dead baby mice, apparently. Steven pulled out a baggy and closed the lid.

  “There’s three in here. They’re stuck together, so…”

  “I’ll buy all of ‘em. No problem.”

  Steven rang up his purchase but looked at him strangely as he did. “Are you growing a beard?”

  Eddie frowned. “No.”

  “Huh. Looked like it for a minute.”

  Behind him, Eddie heard a disembodied chuckle.

  “Yeah… no. No beard.”

  “Okay.” Steven handed him the frozen mice in their baggy, stashed into a plastic shopping bag. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  He strolled back out into the street, and almost immediately, he felt cold air wrap around him and sink into his body, chilling him all the way to his bones. His body shook as if he were standing on a fallen electric line and just as suddenly went still. Eddie tried to brush his hair back from his face, but he couldn’t get his hand to move.

  The disembodied voice, now a part of him, spoke in his head. “I’m driving now.”

  He was able to exert enough self-control to whimper, but then the ghost that had possessed him took him at a quick clip back to the ferry and Button Hollow.

  Chapter Ten

  “Ah!” Matilda exclaimed, startling Charlie awake. He had fallen asleep on top of the book he’d been skimming, curled into a ball with his paws over his nose. He blinked up at his witch, momentarily confused.

  /Ah?/ he echoed.

  “I found the newt spell!”

  That woke him up. He stood and stretched, then crossed the table to look at the spell that Matilda had found. It was handwritten in very old-fashioned penmanship, and the ink was made of lead and hemlock. The smell was pungent, and Charlie rubbed his nose after he got too big a whiff of the stuff.

  /Can you undo it?/

  “I think, maybe… but more importantly, I think I can reflect it.”

  /How?/

  “It’s touchy. I have to take one of the newts he made, and I need to hold it while I cast it the spell in reverse into a mirror that both I and Xander are looking into at the same time.” She glanced at him. “But since tonight is Halloween, I might be able to use a short cut.”

  Charlie was excited, and he kneaded the tabletop with his front paws. His claws caught in the tablecloth, bunching it up. /A Halloween short cut? How does that work?/

  “The veil between the living and dead is thinner tonight, and so is the separation between spiritual magic and physical magic, at least in theory.”

  She sounded like she was beginning to doubt herself, and he was too good of a familiar to allow something as silly as that. /You can do it! I know you can!/

  “I hope so. There are just some special things that I need.”

  /Like what?/

  “Well… here’s where it gets harder.” She pointed to the page. “I need three pieces of Halloween candy, given freely by three strange women to my familiar.”

  Charlie rose and arched his back, his tail rising like a flag. /I can go tric
k-or-treating in Button Landing./

  “You could, I suppose…”

  /But?/

  “Most mundanes can’t hear you speak. If you stop at their doors and holler for them, they won’t hear you.”

  He tipped his head back and yowled at such a volume that even he was impressed. /They’ll hear that!/

  “They will, but they won’t know that’s how you say ‘trick or treat’ in cat,” she pointed out.

  /I can just follow a child,/ he suggested. /I can hold a little bag or something in my mouth, and when the child calls trick or treat, then I’ll get candy, too./

  “Well…”

  /Come on. At least let me try./

  He gave her his best wide-eyed, innocent kitten look. It was the same look that had always failed to get him selected back at the emporium, but that was just because he’d been waiting for Matilda and hadn’t known it. Charlie was certain the innocent eyes would work for him now.

  Matilda relented. “Well… Okay. Let me whip up a costume for you.”

  There was a loud knock at the door, and they both jumped, startled. Even the last surviving cricket fell silent. One of the newts, the one with the golden blaze down its back, chirped. Charlie had decided that one was Susannah.

  Matilda went to the door and opened it. One of the three mundane ne’er-do-wells stood there, a haunted look in his eyes and two shopping bags in his hands. She held the door open, ready to slam it shut in self-defense if need be.

  “Yes?”

  Henry’s voice spoke clearly from the young man’s throat. “Aren’t you going to invite us in?”

  Charlie and Matilda gaped in surprise, and his witch stepped back, allowing the ghost-possessed human to walk awkwardly into the room. Henry sat his stolen meatsuit in Matilda’s armchair and said, “Quickly, now. Tie him in place and I’ll release him so you can question him.”

  She grabbed the belts from two bathrobes and a couple of scarves and bound the human’s body into place, his arms and legs secured to those of the chair. As soon as he was secured, Henry abandoned him and appeared standing nearby, his arms crossed.