Witchy Wishes Read online

  Witchy Wishes

  Neighborhood Witch Committee 3

  Nic Saint

  Puss in Print Publications

  Contents

  Witchy Wishes

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Ghostlier Things (Ghosts of London 6)

  About Nic

  Also by Nic Saint

  Witchy Wishes

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  When a local baker is killed, the neighborhood watch is on the case. Especially when it turns out the victim is the uncle of Skip Brown, of Brown’s Better Bread Bakery fame, and one of Edelie, Estrella and Ernestine’s best friends. When the killer claims a second victim, and starts implicating the neighborhood watch, suspicion soon falls on the Flummox sisters.

  Meanwhile, things aren’t looking too good at Safflower House. Snakes keep showing up all over the place, sapping Cassie Beadsmore’s strength and witchy powers, and it starts to look as if an unknown nemesis is out to get Cassie and her three granddaughters.

  The fact that the three guests of their Airbnb prove particularly challenging further complicates matters. And when the bodies keep piling up, and the snake attacks threaten to overpower Cassie, things soon spiral out of control for the sisters, forcing them to dig deep and conjure up some of that old family witchcraft. The big question is: can they handle it?

  Prologue

  Skip Brown was whipping through the Haymill neighborhood in South Brooklyn on his messenger bike, delivering fine bread and pastry to some of the less mobile regulars of the family bakery where he earned his keep. Brown’s Better Bread Bakery had been in business for as long as Browns had lived in Brooklyn, which, as far as Skip knew, was pretty much forever.

  As a junior member of the Brown baking empire, Skip’s job was to hawk the family wares and, as in this case, make sure bread aficionados up and down Haymill and greater Brooklyn got their bread fix at their earliest possible convenience, preferably in the early morning.

  Skip, a liberally pimpled young man, obviously didn’t follow the old marketing shtick that to sell a product, you have to be a product of your product: he looked more like a stick insect than the nicely globular shapes his father and uncles and all the other Browns aspired to. If the Browns were bowling balls, Skip was the only bowling pin, a fact which often irked him.

  What also set him apart from the other Browns was the fact that he possessed no baking talent whatsoever, which was one of the reasons his family kept him as far away from the actual baking operation as possible. A non-baking Brown could only jinx things and screw it up for the rest of the dynasty.

  And Skip was steering his trusty steel steed along the busy streets of Brooklyn, not far from where the Browns plied their trade, when he happened upon a disturbing scene.

  He’d just delivered a small white to Beatrix Yeast, and was on his way to Safflower House to provide Cassandra Beadsmore with her usual order of a dozen assorted buns, muffins, cinnamon rolls and croissants, when he passed a dead-end alley, where some form of altercation was in progress.

  Usually Skip liked to keep himself to himself, something he’d learned on these mean streets of Brooklyn. But ever since his good friends the Flummox triplets had started a neighborhood watch, he’d been itching to get in on the action and help make Haymill a safer, more pleasant environment. And part of that was not to pass by a confrontation in a creepy back alley between a black-clad stranger and a large man who was crying out for help.

  Skip placed his bike against the graffitied wall and hurried over to lend aid and support.

  If the fat man was being mugged by the black-clad figure, he was here to make sure justice was done and the miscreant faced the Brown wrath.

  Just to make sure he was up to the task, he’d taken a firm grip on his bicycle pump in his left, and a baguette in his right hand. They were the only weapons at his immediate disposal, and he swung them both in a menacing fashion, calling out, “Hey! Leave that man alone!”

  The black-clad figure slowly turned to face him. Well, perhaps not exactly face him, as the assailant’s visage was obscured by some form of black mask.

  “What’s going on here?” Skip asked, his heart now beating a mile a minute.

  He suddenly found himself wishing he’d taken that self-defense course at the community center his mom had told him about. He could have taken out this person with a leg sweep or a cool move and that would have been that.

  Now, seeing that the stranger was holding a very large, very shiny, very scary-looking knife, he lost some of the exuberance that had led him into battle.

  “Um, you better drop that thing, buddy,” he called out, starting to feel particularly ill-equipped to take on this hoodlum. Wasn’t there some sort of saying or folk wisdom about bringing a bicycle pump and a French baguette to a knife fight? The general consensus seemed to be that it was probably not a good idea. Unless you were Jackie Chan, of course.

  “You better stay out of this, Skip Brown,” said the stranger in a strangely hissing voice. He almost sounded like a snake—if snakes could talk—which, apart from Disney and Harry Potter movies, they obviously couldn’t.

  “Back off, buddy,” Skip said, swinging the pump and baguette combo like he meant it.

  “You’re going to have to choose,” hissed the man, who was of slight build he now saw. “Do you want to be part of the problem or the solution? If the latter, you better skedaddle.”

  “Well, I’m not skedaddling,” said Skip bravely. “You’re the one who should be skedaddling if you know what’s good for you—you-you hoodlum.”

  He now glanced at the fat man, who was lying on his back on top of a pile of garbage, his breathing stertorous and obviously in a great deal of pain.

  “Are you all right, sir?” he asked, and then proceeded to experience the shock of a lifetime. The fat man wasn’t just any fat man. It was his uncle Gus!

  “Call the cops, Skip!” his uncle said in a wheezy and labored voice. “Make sure they catch this bastard!”

  “Too late,” hissed the black-clad figure, and produced what could only be described as a sort of sinister chuckle. Then, as if the laws of the natural world didn’t apply to him, he moved away from Skip at breakneck speed, and was soon swallowed up by the darkness that covered the back part of the alley.

  “Hey! Where did he go?” Skip asked.

  His uncle looked up at him with a pleading expression in his eyes. �
��Skip, son, I’m not feeling too good. Better call an ambulance.”

  Uncle Gus lifted his hand from his belly for a moment, and to his horror Skip saw there was a great deal of blood covering his uncle’s substantial gut.

  “He cut me, Skip,” lamented his uncle. “The bastard just gutted me like a friggin pig.”

  Skip quickly took out his phone and for the next few seconds busied himself apprising the nice lady from 911 of the facts pertaining to the case.

  A hand stole out and his uncle grabbed him by the pant leg. “If I don’t make it—tell your aunt Adelaide I love her,” he said in a croaky voice.

  “You can tell her yourself, Uncle Gus,” Skip said, kneeling down next to his relative. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  But then his uncle’s round and ruddy face displayed a pained grimace, and he wheezed, “I’m not too sure about that, Skip. I don’t mind telling you I don’t feel fine. In fact I feel downright lousy.”

  And then, before he could respond, the light went out in Uncle Gus’s eyes.

  Chapter 1

  Samuel Barkley squeezed out of his Toyota Yaris with some effort and a lot of grumbling on his part. The car—the latest addition to the NYPD motor pool—was a bit on the small side to accommodate Sam’s sturdy frame. Pierre Farrier, his trusty partner and sidekick, had far less trouble emerging from the passenger side of the vehicle.

  Then again, Pierre was built along the lines of a sickly grasshopper, while Sam looked like he’d just swallowed the reigning boxing heavyweight.

  Sam, his brown hair neatly in place, his piercing blue eyes surveying the scene, and his anvil jaw working, shook his head. “Damn shame,” he said.

  “You can say that again,” said Pierre, fingering first his pepper-and-salt mustache and then the small scar on his brow, just beneath his receding hairline. It was the last remnant of the incident that had put him in a coma not that long ago.

  “Stop touching your scar,” said Sam, fighting the urge to slap his partner’s hand away.

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” said Pierre. “In times of great stress it starts throbbing.”

  “Throbbing?” he asked. “You mean you can still feel the scar?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Pierre. “It sends me messages.”

  Sam looked up at that. “Messages? What kind of messages?”

  Pierre shrugged. “Well, the message that something is seriously wrong. Like now, with this poor schmuck being struck down in this nasty alley.”

  “Oh, right,” said Sam. “For a moment there I thought you were going to say you received direct communications from Lord Voldemort or his faithful pet snake Nagini.”

  Pierre directed his soulful eyes at him in an expression of hurt. “That’s not funny, Sam. The scar really hurts.”

  Sam held up his hands in a gesture of apology. “I’m sorry, buddy. I believe you. And no one is happier than me that you came through this whole ordeal more or less unscathed.” He clapped the other man on the back. “Now why don’t we solve ourselves a murder, huh?”

  “Yes, let’s,” Pierre said softly.

  It was obvious he was taking this particular crime to heart. As an aficionado of bakery goods in general and Brown’s Bakery in particular, the murder of Gus Brown had hit Pierre very hard. Apparently the man had been something of a latter-day genius with the rolling pin, spatula and piping bag.

  “Who found him?” Sam asked.

  “Skip Brown, the victim’s nephew.”

  Sam jerked his head up. “Not the Skip Brown?”

  Pierre nodded. “Yes, the Skip Brown.”

  “The Skip Brown that used to work for the Flummox triplets?”

  Pierre nodded again, gazing down mournfully at the remains of Gus Brown. “The one and only.”

  “Dayum,” Sam muttered, scratching his scalp. “Talk about a small world.”

  He now saw that Skip was seated in the back of a nearby ambulance, a cup of something hot and steamy in his hand, a space blanket draped across his bony shoulders, looking sorrowful and clearly in a state of great shock.

  “Look at this, Sam,” Pierre’s voice came.

  “Mh?” He was still thinking about the odds that Skip, who’d been employed by Edie Flummox and her sisters at one time, would be involved in this heinous crime. When he glanced in the direction Pierre was indicating, he saw that this crime had suddenly turned even more astonishing. On the wall, over the dead man, someone had written in what appeared to be blood: ‘Watch Committee—when will you act? If you don’t take these predators off the streets, I will! I’m watching you, watchers… watching your every move.’

  He whistled through this teeth. “Take these predators off the streets. Do you think he means Baker Brown over here?”

  “It would appear so,” said Pierre, now kneeling down next to the murdered man. “Murdered with a very sharp object,” he said knowingly.

  “Yes, according to Patrolman Daniels he was actually gutted with a knife. Not something you see a lot around these parts.”

  “What do you make of this challenge to the watch?” asked Pierre, studying the message daubed on the wall in a crude hand.

  “Apparently some concerned citizen doesn’t think the watch is doing enough to keep the streets safe. Always accepting the fact that Gus Brown wasn’t as upstanding a citizen as we all thought he was.”

  “He was a fine baker,” said Pierre, a hint of sadness in his voice. “A regular genius with the baking pan. His scones, in particular, were to die for.”

  “We better have a chat with the triplets,” said Sam after a pause. “See if they’ve been getting other messages from this murderous freak.”

  Pierre nodded, then bit his lower lip. “Are you sure I should come, Sam?”

  “Of course you should come. Why wouldn’t you come?”

  “Well… it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the sisters.”

  “So? All the more reason to tag along. They’ll be thrilled to see you alive and well.”

  Pierre shook his head. “I don’t know, Sam. It might be awkward.”

  Sam heaved a silent groan. Ugh. He now remembered how Pierre had taken a fancy to Ernestine, and when she had proved unresponsive to his lethal charms, had transferred his affections to Estrella.

  “For your information, Stien is currently between boyfriends if that’s what’s got you worried,” he said.

  A glimmer of hope appeared in the policeman’s gentle eyes. “And what about Strel?”

  “Strel is dating some bar owner at the moment. Dunlop Bard? Runs Puppy Power over on Franklin Avenue? You know the place.”

  The hope in Pierre’s eyes died away. “Oh,” he said quietly.

  Sam frowned. “Hey, I thought you had the hots for Stien?”

  “Well, I like Stien a lot,” said Pierre. “But…”

  “But you like Strel even better, is that it?”

  Pierre nodded. “Oh, I know she’s way out of my league, Sam. Strel is on her way to becoming a star. She’s going to be the next Taylor Swift and her career is going to take her into the stratosphere, far removed from mere mortals like me.” He gave Sam a sad look. “But one can only dream, right?”

  Sam clapped a hand on his partner’s shoulder and growled, “Let’s talk to Skip, and then we’ll visit the triplets.” He crooked an eyebrow. “Unless your scar tells you otherwise.”

  But it was clear from Pierre’s mournful expression that this was not the time for levity. Whatever his scar was telling him, it obviously wasn’t a message of joy and good cheer.

  Chapter 2

  I woke up with a start. It took me a few moments to get my bearings, and to realize what had awakened me. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t my alarm clock, which was a relic from the eighties: an alarm clock radio that was tuned to an eighties music radio station and usually eased me from my usual dreamless state to full wakefulness to the tunes of popular eighties superstars such as Modern Talking, Bonnie Tyler or even The Human League.

  Now, however,
another singing voice had dragged me from my peaceful slumber, and if I wasn’t mistaken it was my sister Strel’s awful caterwauling that had done the trick.

  “Ugh,” I grunted, and covered my face with my pillow in a bid to drown out the terrible noise.

  To no avail, of course.

  Strel’s shrill voice was so powerful it could easily penetrate a brick wall, or possibly even a concrete underground bunker. Scientists at the Department of Defense’s DARPA would probably be most interested in harnessing its power as a weapon of mass destruction. It could also come in handy in the interrogation of unusually shy terrorists, who would snap like twigs under the strain.

  With another tired groan, I swung my legs from between the covers and rubbed my eyes. Ever since Strel had gotten it into her head to revitalize her fledgling singing career, she’d been absolutely intolerable. She’d all but given up on her dream of being the next Katy Perry when a new houseguest had arrived at Casa Cassie, as we liked to call our ancestral home. Helmut Totti was a Belgian singer, vacationing in New York, and of all the places in this fair town of ours he could have chosen to grace with his presence, he’d chosen us.