Jenna’s barely twenty-year old customer curled her lip. The girl sported a kissing snakes tattoo that peeked from under the strap of a skimpy tank top, and she had more body piercings than Swiss cheese had holes. Jenna mentally shook her head as she scanned the to-be-purchased items. Dear God, who had the money to throw away on this crap? Careful not to expose her disgust, Jenna rang up the African mask, eye of newt powder, and paper-thin snakeskin.
“That’ll be fifty-seven dollars and thirty-two cents, please.”
Just looking at the girl’s tattoo made Jenna’s fake skull on her forearm itch like hell, but she didn’t dare scratch it. Too much was at stake.
The girl tossed down her VISA card. “Here ya go.” She turned to her girlfriend and began gossiping about the cute guys they’d met at the bar down the street. Considering the friend’s purple hair and orange eyebrows, Jenna could only imagine their definition of cute.
She flashed back to last week to when her dad had come into the store to lecture her on proper police procedures when doing undercover work. First came the pursed lips, followed by the intense body scan, making it clear he didn’t approve of her studded collar and pomaded hair. He acted as if she should have been wearing a plaid skirt and ponytails. In retrospect, she wished she’d dyed her blonde hair green or pink just to piss him off some more.
Jenna handed Miss Kissing Snakes a bone-shaped pen to sign her receipt and checked the clock again. Only twenty minutes until closing. Yay. On the down side, she only had a week left of her undercover job. And she still had no evidence of foul play.
Jenna leaned on her elbows. “Can I ask you guys something?”
They eyed each other. Kissing snakes nodded. “Sure.”
“My boyfriend has been stalking me, and the police won’t do shit.” Jenna narrowed her eyes. “I really want to find someone to put an evil spell on him. Do you have any ideas who I can ask? I got money.”
“Why not ask your boss? She did one for me about six months back.”
Jenna’s shoulders relaxed. “Really? I’ve been afraid to ask her. I thought she might get mad. How much did she charge?”
Kissing snakes shrugged. “She only charged me seven fifty since I’m such a good customer.”
“Seven dollars and fifty cents? I can handle that.” Acting dumb took work.
The girl rolled her eyes while orange eyebrows giggled. “Seven hundred and fifty dollars.” She tugged on her eyebrow ring. “If that’s too rich for your blood, I know of someone else, but he’s not as reliable.”
Marna was considered reliable? Jenna widened her eyes real big. “Wow. That’s way outta my league. I’ll get back with you.” Seven hundred and fifty dollars for some priestess to stir a pot of junk and wave a hand over it? This world was messed up.
As soon as the two girls split, the owner of the store, Marna Willows, waddled out, her long crinkle shirt dragging on the floor. She didn’t look like a high priestess to her. She was way too frumpy. A priestess should be tall, lithe, and very beautiful.
“Jenna, I need a favor.” Her thick black brows creased on her too pale face.
“What’s wrong? Is it the baby?” Marna’s very pregnant sister, Shelby, had another month of her term left. The sister had worked at the store the first week, but then went home to wait out her time.
“Her midwife is out of town, and Shelby’s in a panic. She’s gone into labor and needs me to look after the kids, and that deadbeat husband of hers won’t lift a finger. Do you mind putting the money in the safe and closing the store?” Before Jenna had a chance to answer, Marna unhooked two keys from her broom keychain. “This one’s for the front door.” She placed it in the palm of Jenna’s hand. “And this gets you into my office. Be sure to lock the door before you go.”
“Don’t worry about a thing.” Inwardly she celebrated.
She made a production of straightening the mess on the counter as Marna rushed out. Jenna itched to check out the back and look around. Her boss spent hours in her one-room hideout doing who-knew-what. Twice in the last three weeks, Jenna had gone to speak with her only to find the door locked. Even Jenna’s knocks had failed to rouse a response. She could only conclude Marna was either into meditation or doing some kind of spell and didn’t want to be disturbed.
Since her boss wasn’t here to oversee her actions, Jenna turned off the eerie background music designed to enhance the gothic element of the place and extinguished the incense that irritated her sinuses. Not wanting anything to look out of order to an outsider, she waited until exactly ten to lock up.
“I’m going to put you back together, Mom. Don’t you worry. I’ll find those thieves.”
With money in hand, she headed to the inner sanctum. Marna’s office sat wide open even though her boss had given her the keys. Interesting.
As she’d done for the past week, she flipped on the computer and entered the money into QuickBooks, happy not to have her boss breathing down her neck for a change. When she finished, she searched My Documents for something incriminating. After fifteen minutes, she shut down the machine. Cleaner than a picked bone. Damn. If her boss were into something sinister, she didn’t keep a log of it here. Jenna leaned back in the chair and shoved her hands through her stiff hair. Her chances of finding her mother’s skull was slipping through her fingers with each tick of the clock.
The captain made it clear Jenna needed proof someone was doing spells in this building using human remains before he could even ask for a warrant. She shivered just picturing her mom’s head being doused with bodily fluids and other foreign substances.
“Don’t dawdle.”
As she placed the money into the safe next to the closet, she got a whiff of something foul, like an animal had died. She could only hope the stench was human. After a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure Marna hadn’t materialized out of thin air, Jenna tugged hard on the closet handle next to the safe. It creaked open and a moldy stench blew out.
She’d expected to see a pile of stacked boxes, but instead found a dark hallway, lined with crumbing brick, that led to another ancient-looking door. Determined to find out what secrets the old building held, Jenna headed down the unknown path, pushing down the knowledge she had no right to be there. The scarred, pine floorboards creaked under every step. She tugged on a ratty gray string hanging from the ceiling, and a dim bulb lit the long, narrow corridor.
This could be stupid. “Who am I? Buffy the Vampire Slayer?”
She hurried to the end of the walkway and tested the knob. Locked. Crap. The need to find out what was behind door number two overtook all rational thought. She raced back to the office and ripped open Marna’s desk drawer, regretting never having learned to pick a lock. The key to the door had to be someplace. After a three-minute search, she found a ring of keys in the fourth drawer that looked like they came straight from Home Depot. She didn’t give a flip what they looked like as long as one of them let her get inside.
Rushing back down the hall, Jenna focused on the worn door. The first two keys failed to work, but the third one did the trick. She noted the time on her cell phone. She couldn’t afford to waste time investigating in case Shelby’s scare turned out to be a false alarm, and Marna came back to check on her new employee. Always one to cover her bases, Jenna ran back and slipped the keys into the fourth drawer.
Hurry. For her mom’s sake, she had to push ahead. Two hard pulls later the door groaned open.