If I’d been able to purchase my half of the duplex outright and invoke Sanctum, I could have driven her out. Gypsies could be powerful, but they weren’t witch powerful. If I just owned land in Haven Hollow, I could have sent her packing. Dammit!

  Of course, it wasn’t as though this Poppy person knew about my plight—she had no idea I didn’t own land. Hmm, maybe I could bluff my way through a conversation with her and drive her out, without ever having to reveal the truth.

  If she had half a brain, she would research until she realized you don’t own jack in Haven Hollow, I argued with myself.

  “Where does this Poppy woman live?” I asked Stanley.

  He propped his broom under his forearm and looked at me as he scratched his chin with his other hand. “She just purchased a home… where did you say you were living again?”

  “Off Magnolia Street, across from Haven cemetery.”

  “That’s right! Well, Ms. Morton is on the other side of the cemetery—right across the way from you! Your backyards are separated by the graveyard.”

  Then she’d bought that house I’d been admiring. Oh, now I liked her even less!

  I needed to get in touch with Ophelia pronto. Someone somewhere had to be willing to sell a sliver of property in Haven Hollow. I only needed a tiny parcel. Just something large enough to erect some sort of structure I could call a home—a moveable storage unit, anything!

  “There used to be a witch here,” Stanley continued, completely unaware of my tempestuous thoughts.

  “There was?” I asked, looking up at him again as my heart plummeted further.

  He nodded. “Do you remember Betanya Tayir?”

  I frowned and slurped my sundae as I wondered if this day could get any worse. It was melting quickly under all the hot fudge. So, there was a witch in Haven Hollow or there wasn’t? It was bad enough there was a gypsy…

  “I met her once or twice,” I answered. “I remember Mother kicked her out of our coven in Portland, but she never told us why. One day Betanya was there and then next she wasn’t.”

  Stanley nodded but didn’t say anything more as I started to recall memories of Betanya Tayir from when I was a much younger witch. “She was one of our red-haired upstarts, if I recall correctly. We all assumed she’d done something untenable to earn the boot. Though Tabitha swears up and down that Mother was just afraid of being deposed.”

  “Deposed?” Stanley repeated.

  I nodded. “Betanya Tayir is distantly related to us. I had no idea she came here.”

  Stanley nodded, moving back to clean his various machines. It was fascinating to watch him move. From the waist up he looked like a perfectly ordinary human man, but from the waist down, he had the sleek, muscular body of a Cleveland Bay stallion. He’d had to design his creamery in a converted stable to allow himself enough room to maneuver.

  “Well, she was the only one I can recall invoking a Sanctum Spell in Haven Hollow,” Stanley finished.

  “Is she still here?” I asked the question and sounded casual enough, but inside I was hanging on his response.

  He shook his head, and I felt a breath of relief blow out of me. “Are you sure?” I asked, just to be sure.

  “Pretty sure. Ol’ Betanya’s been missing for years, over twenty. We just all figured she was dead. She visited the river outside town fairly often, doing her spells an’ such. When she disappeared, it was in the middle of Winter and it was an especially cold one that year. Most townfolk just figured she walked too far out on the frozen lake and crashed through the ice and drowned.”

  “Did they ever find her body?”

  He shook his head. “Nope, no body was ever recovered.” He shrugged and started polishing the counters. “Maybe she settled in another town elsewhere or maybe she’s still at the bottom of that lake. Guess we’ll never know.”

  “What about her house?” I asked, hoping to low hell it had been sold. Hopefully to humans.

  “The house was kept in trust until someone of her line showed magical potential.”

  My heart plummeted again. “You said there wasn’t another witch here?”

  “There isn’t.”

  “Then what’s the deal with the house being in trust?”

  “Well, Betanya’s grandson, Henner—a rightly good boy with a heart of gold—he inherited a modest amount of talent that manifested as technomancy.”

  Hmm, maybe I’d have to seduce this Henner person and get my hands on his grandmother’s estate. That would work just as easily as purchasing my own sliver of land. Actually, maybe even more easily. As long as I got my name on a deed, it didn’t matter how I got it. Hmm… my seduction skills were certainly lacking, but if I was anything, it was industrious.

  “Is he married?” I asked.

  “No, I’m not rightly sure Henner’s the marrying type. Seems happy on his own.”

  “Then he’ll never be able to claim his grandmother’s estate,” I started, frowning.

  “Right. Unless he has a daughter of his own.”

  “Then he has no offspring?”

  “None that he’s aware of.”

  “Hmm,” I said as I started plotting my future. “If he’s not a father yet, and there’s only a fifty-fifty chance he’d have a girl anyway… And if he did have a girl, she wouldn’t be of age to claim the estate for at least thirteen years…”

  “You have time to claim Sanctum, Wanda,” Stanley finished for me.

  Right. But time was of the essence where seducing Henner was concerned. Because there was no way in spell I was going to bet my future on this man having female progeny who could later claim his grandmother’s estate and in so doing, could boot me out on my very shapely ass.

  I had to force myself to relax because my heart was going a mile a minute, trying to keep time with my thoughts. A technomancer, huh? That meant he’d be good with repairing stuff and that would be handy to have around…

  But, wait…

  He was technically a relative of mine, many times removed, but our blood was still familial and that meant I couldn’t…

  Dammit!

  Or could I? I mean, it wasn’t like I’d ever met the guy and…

  Oh my Goddess, Wanda, I chided myself. You’ve really reached a new low.

  Right. I couldn’t do it.

  If we ever had children, they’d probably be of the four eyed, two headed variety and that would just destroy any maternal instinct I possessed (and I wasn’t convinced I possessed any to begin with). I finished my sundae, chewing the many bobbing gummy bears that remained in the cream at the bottom.

  Stanley hummed along with Frosty The Snowman as he worked. I even joined in on the chorus. Overall, I was feeling at least marginally better—I mean, I had thirteen years to stake my claim here, and that was only if this Henner person even had children—of the female persuasion. Hmm, maybe I could somehow make him start shooting blanks—normal witch magic couldn’t do that, but maybe my dark magic could? Or maybe I’d end up just lighting him on fire.

  Which would also work because if he was dead, that meant he couldn’t procreate…

  Wanda! You are not going to kill the poor man!

  Right. Dammit.

  And, just like that, my mood soured again.

  “You sure you don’t want a tour of the town? I can show you around and introduce you to some folks so you can get to know your neighbors.”

  At the thought of returning to the duplex and possibly running into the vampire, I faced Stanley with a nod. Not to mention, there was still the subject of that nuisance of a gypsy. “Now that I think about it, I’d love to take that walk with you, Stanley. Give me a moment, I think I have a bristle brush in my trunk. It’ll work the Confusion Oil into your coat more thoroughly than your fingers.”

  He grinned broadly, and he was all horse teeth. “That sounds lovely, Wanda. And very thoughtful.”

  Then he glanced over his shoulder, lips pursed suspiciously. He knew witches well enough to know we rarely did things with altruism in mind. He didn’t ask me what I was up to, though, probably suspecting he’d get a lie for his troubles, anyway. Smart man.

  I ducked out of the creamery and barely avoided being sideswiped by the Nooks and Crannies van as I attempted to cross Main Street on my way to my car, which I’d parked on the street.

  The hunched figure behind the wheel of the cleaning van laid on the horn, and I casually aimed a curse at his tires. If my magic didn’t fail me, he’d encounter a nail on the road somewhere and have a flat by morning. Served him right for frazzling me when I was already having a spell of a day.

  I pounded on the trunk of the car twice, then opened it and grabbed the hair brush I kept in a duffel bag along with a change of clothes and a bag of extra makeup for emergencies. Then I sidled into the creamery, still smiling.

  “Now how about that tour?”

  ***

  After our tour, in which I’d noted the location of the Gypsy’s shop (which happened to be right across the street from mine), I said goodbye to Stanley and returned to my ‘car’, pulling into the street as I contemplated returning to the duplex. Earlier, I’d decided to camp out in the Vega, simply because I didn’t want to go home. Not with the vampire right next door.

  But the weather had taken a turn for the worse, and now the wind was howling and a steady rain had followed. And the Vega wasn’t exactly warm. So, I’d have to sleep in the duplex tonight but tomorrow…

  I would start sleeping in my shop. No, I still didn’t have access to the space, but when did niggling details stop me? Never. I could sleep on the floor in the back room of the shop on a cot until I could buy the shop outright from Rowe. To hell with the duplex. The dark and dingy store space would be better than spending another moment in the same building as the insufferable vampire.

  So how to get the key? It wasn’t like Lorcan was just going to hand it over to me. No, he had to make everything difficult.

  Then I’d take it from him…

  Borrowing from voodoo teachings, maybe I’d construct a small doll and send it into Lorcan’s half of the duplex to retrieve the shop key… it wasn’t a bad idea and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea.

  And hopefully I’d have everything I needed in the trunk.

  As soon as I pulled the car into the driveway of the duplex, I killed the engine and prepared myself for the onslaught of freezing cold rain, I opened the door and beelined for the trunk.

  Digging through my wicker basket of odds and ends, I found a Ziploc full of scraps, stuffing, a sewing kit, and a number of small vials. Perfect.

  The freezing rain bit at my face as I hightailed it back up the duplex’s front steps and struggled with the key in the lock because my fingers were frozen stiff. Once inside, I slammed the door behind me and threw everything in my arms onto the floor. Then I fell down to my knees and started working.

  “You look like something the familiar dragged in,” Hellcat said as he lazily approached me, tail in the air.

  “Oh, sit on a broom handle.”

  “What, pray tell, are you doing, foul ogress?”

  “I’m minding my own business and you should too!”

  I pieced together the mismatched scraps of fabric and cut them into the semblance of a human shape. Then I threaded a needle and set to work, stuffing the thing with what bit of stuffing I had available as well as more scraps of fabric.

  After twenty minutes, the thing was almost finished.

  “What is that abomination?” Hellcat demanded, pawing at it with complete distaste written all over his stupid face.

  “That is the answer to our current dilemma,” I responded, holding it up as I smiled broadly.

  “How is that hideous thing an answer…”

  “Oh, shut it!”

  The doll wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination—one arm was plumper and longer than the other one, but it would still do the job. The thing was overstuffed, a fat little minion with two stubby legs.

  It was no frills—checkerboard patterns mismatched with polka dots, a few stripes, some floral patterns, and glittery accents. There was only one button in the bag to serve as its eye, so the other one was a cross stitch done in red thread. Running out of the thread, I grabbed a pen from my purse, drawing on a mouth, just in case it needed to report back to me.

  Finally, I anointed the doll with Goddess of Evil Oil. It would have been more effective if I’d had time to let the fabric soak up the oil, but I was in a rush so this would have to do.

  Animating dolls was one of the first spells a witch learned. And it was a good one.

  So, with a whisper of power, I beckoned the doll into being. And… nothing.

  “I call upon the energies of fate and order this object to animate! I breathe my life into thee, such is my will, so mote it be!” I repeated and the doll just lay there, in my hands, doing nothing.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head. “My magic worked earlier.”

  This didn’t make any sense! I’d used a spell to pull the book from Lorcan’s hands, and then I’d used the truth spell to create the rattlesnake. So why…

  “I call upon the energies of fate and order this object to animate! I breathe my life into thee, such is my will, so mote it be!”

  Nothing.

  I threw the doll on the ground and stood up, angry and confused. And then it dawned on me. “He’s somehow done something to this side of the house,” I said to myself as my mouth dropped open in shock.

  “You quite resemble a trout,” Hellcat said.

  But, I wasn’t paying any attention. “He’s made it so my magic won’t work!”

  “What are you going on about now?” Hellcat demanded, but I continued to ignore him.

  “That bastard!” I yelled as I grabbed the doll and throwing open the door, I ran down the stairs, back into the pouring rain, running in the opposite direction of my side of the duplex. And I didn’t stop—not for the rain that was making my eyesight bleary, not for the freezing cold that wrapped itself around me in an icy embrace, not even for the mud that sucked my Ferragamo shoes right off my feet. I left them there—it was better to be one with nature anyway, to feel the mud on my naked skin.

  Not that being one with nature worked a damn when you attempted to dance, I reminded myself.

  That was then, and this is now, I argued. For some reason, my magic had returned—as long as I wasn’t confined by the walls of my house.

  I lifted the doll up to the gray sky and allowed the rain to fall into my eyes and mouth as I yelled out: “I call upon the energies of fate and order this object to animate! I breathe my life into thee, such is my will, so mote it be!”

  The overstuffed thing started to shake in my hands before it sat up and looked around, as if trying to understand what and where it was.

  “Yes!” I yelled like a crazed madwoman against the thunder and the sudden onslaught of lightning that decorated the otherwise gray sky. “Yes!”

  The thing turned to face me. My heart squeezed tight. It was so small, but I’d created it and my magic had worked! Maybe there was hope for me yet!

  “Do you understand me?”

  The doll didn’t have much of a neck, but it tried to incline its head. Meanwhile, I decided to take shelter from the pouring rain and the upset of the skies. I hurried back up the stairs and threw open the door as Hellcat stared at me before shaking his head like I was a lost cause. I didn’t care. I slammed the door behind me and noticed my little creature went rigid in my hands as soon as I crossed the threshold of my house. Yes, there was certainly something in play here that was disallowing me the use of my magic. I would have to address that later, for now I only needed the creature to come back to life once it was on Lorcan’s side of the property.

  “What are you going to do with that… that abomination?” Hellcat demanded as he admired my handiwork with a snarl.

  “This is my new familiar,” I said as I faced Hellcat and he began shaking his head.

  “You can’t do that!” he insisted. “That’s against the rules! I’m going to call your mother and tell her…”

  “Oh, will you stop it? I was just kidding… jeez.”

  He huffed out an indignant breath as I shook my head at him. “It wasn’t funny,” he said as he trotted away, which was just as well because I couldn’t be bothered with him.

  Throwing open the door to the basement, I hurried down the stairs, then ran-walked across the floor until I reached the staircase leading to Lorcan’s. As soon as I did, the doll began to stir.

  I looked down to face my creation as soon as I’d reached the top of the stairs. “Alright. I have a job for you.” The doll nodded. “I want you to go into the vampire’s house and I need you to find the key to my shop. It will be somewhere in his side of the duplex, but I’m not sure where. You need to find it. And once you do, I want you to bring it to me as quickly as possible. I will be waiting right here for you.”

  The doll nodded again.

  And then I got an idea. “Then I want you to find his house and car keys and hide them somewhere creative… somewhere he won’t think to look for them. And look for my fabrics.”

  The red line of the doll’s mouth curved upward in an eerie smile before it dove off my palm, landed with a soft plop on the floor and, as I opened Lorcan’s door, allowing the thing entrance to his house, it took off as fast as its stubby legs would allow.

  I watched it go with a grin of my own.

  Chapter Nine

  My faithful doll returned from Rowe’s side of the duplex within twenty minutes. And encircling its thick, little wrist was the vampire’s key ring. Apparently, Rowe had simply kept my house and shop keys on the same key ring he kept his house and vehicle keys—bad for him, good for me. After retrieving both my keys, I gave the key ring back to my little creation so it could return to Rowe’s house and hide them in some impossible-to-find location.