“I worked an overseer spell and I saw you drinking your green potions. I saw you trying to give one to that buffoon you were besotted with, too.” Agatha crossed her arms and raised one eyebrow. “Spelled love never ends well, any witch worth her salt knows that much.”
I snatched a bottle of bubble bath from a drawer and emptied it into the water. “Vegan smoothies.” I snapped the drawer closed. “Not potions, smoothies. Because I’m a businesswoman, not a witch.”
“Oh, for goodness sake, enough with this charade already. You think I don’t recognize a witch when I see one?” Agatha threw her hands in the air. “Fiddlesticks and pork pies, next you’ll be trying to tell me that boyfriend of yours doesn’t have a teeny-tiny piece of equipment.”
The tabby cat poked his head through the cat flap in the bathroom door and his whiskers twitched as he glanced from me to his ghostly owner.
“Ex-boyfriend,” I snapped, instinctively, narrowing my eyes. “And how would you know about my ex-boyfriend’s… anything? Were you spying on him with your spell, too?”
“Absolutely not.” Agatha held a hand to her chest as if the accusation offended her. “But if you insist on sniveling over your cell-phone thingy at night and flicking through pictures of him with his pathetic little—”
“Stop!” I clapped my hands over my ears and glared at the door. “Stop, stop, stop. Let me have my bath in peace, please.” I tipped my head at the tabby cat perched lazily on the side of the bath. “And take that hairball with you.”
Agatha tutted. “Don’t call him a hairball, Pussy is a beautiful cat.”
“Pussy?” I almost choked on the name. “You called a male cat Pussy?”
“Don’t have such a filthy mind, child,” Agatha drawled, but I could tell from the gleam in her eye and the twist of her lips that the humor wasn’t lost on her.
The tabby cat arched his back and stretched his paws before pouncing onto the floor with a toss of his head. “Don’t be like that, sweetheart. You’re just feeling a little tense. Maybe a little time with a man who’s packing more than a shrimp-sized—”
I grabbed the empty bottle of bubble bath and flung it as hard as I could. It sailed through Agatha’s stomach and smacked off the wall above Pussy’s head. “Get out, you psychopaths. Please.” Agatha opened her mouth, but I cut her off. “No! Get out, get out, get out!”
With a roll of her eyes, Agatha vanished, leaving me alone with the smarmiest looking cat on the face of the earth. I waved a hairbrush threateningly and glared at him. Pussy stretched once more before he sauntered away. He looked over his shoulder as he approached the cat flap and blinked with one eye. “Have a nice bath, sweetheart. If you discover you have an…itch you want licked—“
The hairbrush bounced off the door as his tail disappeared.
Chapter Seven
“Sleazy little fur bag,” I muttered as I dipped my toe into the bubble-filled bath. “Ouch.” I recoiled from the scalding heat of the water and glared at the door. “Great, made me run my water too hot as well.”
Grumbling, I made my way back to the bedroom to unpack my stuff while I waited for the bath to cool a little. I emptied my bags and placed my folded clothing into the dresser drawers in the airy bedroom. A bedroom, I suddenly realized, that had probably belonged to Agatha only days before. I stared at my belongings in the old woman’s drawers and wondered what I was doing. Why was I unpacking? I wasn’t sure if I was going to stay in the house with its cats and its ghostly witch. Hell, I wasn’t sure if I was going to stay in Salem. I closed the drawer with a shove. “No sense making any hasty decisions, Price.”
I grimaced at my reflection in the dresser mirror and made my way through the room. The décor screamed old woman, but with a few tweaks it wouldn’t be that bad at all. Vintage chic was all the rage these days and something about it appealed to my inner old lady. Reminded me of a time before cell phones and social media and constant accessibility—a cell phone that buzzed with endless messages and calls from people who didn’t really care if I lived or died.
There was a large window overlooking the back lane, which perhaps wasn’t the most peaceful of views, but somebody had painted the back wall with bright splashes of color and hung flower baskets of artificial flowers amongst the fairy lights strung along the crumbling brick. I smiled, imaging Agatha and her old friends eating bologna sandwiches and drinking tea in the lane on warm summer evenings. “What a strange little place.”
I plucked my jacket from the floor and hung it on the back of the door, emptying my keys from the pocket. I opened the drawer of the bedside table to tuck them in for safekeeping, and sitting in the drawer was a small diary, a thin layer of dust covering the front cover. I carefully picked it up and blew off the dust, revealing the name Aggy on the front. I couldn’t help but cast a guilty look over my shoulder as I flipped open the front page. It wasn’t any of my business going through someone else’s diary, but the old woman was dead, so what harm could it do, right? And she’d snooped into my life with her spell, watching me try to win Gerard back, spying on my photos of— “Nosey little busybody.”
I clutched the diary between my stiff fingers and marched back into the en-suite, tossing my robe onto the floor in a disgruntled heap. Still gripping Agatha’s diary, I dipped my foot into the water. It was hot but bearable, and I slowly submerged my feet, followed by the rest of my body, inch by inch. The water against my skin felt invigorating, and I let out a soft sigh as I sunk down to my neck and floated in the massive tub. The surface was coated with bubbles, and the scents of lavender and citrus filled my nose. I closed my eyes and relaxed, relishing in the therapeutic benefits of the hot tub. Peace at last. Time to reconnect with Dr. Lee and find my Zen. I’m a leaf, floating on a gentle current—
“What’s she doing?”
Clenching my teeth, I turned to see the three cats standing beside the bathroom door, cat flap swinging. The large black cat jumped up to the toilet seat and then onto the cistern, watching me from a safe distance with narrowed eyes the color of blue glass. The ginger cat sprawled in the middle of the floor and stretched out while the cheeky tabby, Pussy, sauntered around the tub, as if unsettled in the steamy room.
“What are you doing here?” I asked them. I should have locked the cat flap. If cat flaps could even be locked. Who installed a cat flap in a bathroom, anyway? In the event that I did stay, I mused, I’d have to seriously weigh the benefits of keeping the creepy fur balls or giving them away, perhaps to a neighbor or shelter. I was allergic, after all. My lips twitched up at the thought.
“She acts like she wants us to leave, but she’s smiling. Women are so confusing.” The ginger cat’s voice was softer than the tabby cat’s, less refined. I frowned at the cat’s green eyes. Something about the bright stare reminded me of Gerard’s best friend from grad school, a former quarterback and superstar-turned-business-major. He’d asked me on a date once, before Gerard and I got serious. He’d told me I could do better than Gerard. Guess I should have listened. The ginger rolled into a crouch. “Guys, she’s staring at me. Why’s she staring at me?”
Before I could answer him, a deep, gravelly voice filled the room. “She’s not deaf, Muffin.” The ginger cat’s face swiveled in the black cat’s direction and then back toward me, before he covered his eyes with a soft paw. The black cat’s chuckle was so low it was almost a growl.
Pussy padded across the floor and rolled onto his back beside the ginger cat. “Fluffy’s right, Muffin. She’s not like the other people on the street, kid. Price is the new Agatha.”
“I’m not the new Agatha,” I snapped, glaring over at the tabby cat.