Free A Witch In Time by Madelyn Alt Page A

cleaned stains, spills, and smudges typical of a service elevator. I stepped inside, then as the doors closed behind me, I shifted my purse and carefully adjusted the goodie-filled paper bag until I could press the correct button with my knuckle. A hum of machinery preceded the usual shift of equilibrium, and the elevator began to rise, sloooooowly . I closed my eyes. Elevators had never been my favorite ride of choice, but it sure beat having to take an endless number of stairs. Even with all of the stray energies hanging around. If I didn’t have my hands full, I’d reach into my purse for the mini atomizer of sage-rosemary-lemongrass infusion I kept around for quickie energy-clearing purposes. Liss had turned me on to the protective infusion sprays just last week when I told her that burning sage messed with my allergies as much as stray cigarette smoke... and I loved the sprays. They were easy to use, they smelled great, and most important, they worked just as well as a smoldering bundle of white sage in banishing the negative energies loitering around a domicile. Not to mention, the addition of lemongrass helped to refill the empty space with more positive vibes. Loved. It.
    Unfortunately, there was no way I could reach it, much as I’d love to freshen up the space. I was just going to have to try to keep the yuck—both physical, by the looks of this elevator, and astral—from getting to me. Shields uhhhh—
    The elevator... it wasn’t moving.
    Um, why wasn’t the elevator moving?
    I frowned, nervously looking around me. Nope, I wasn’t imagining things. It wasn’t just that the elevator was moving so slowly that I couldn’t feel its progress. It had stopped altogether. I glanced up at the digital number display. The screen where the floor number should show was blank. Well, that wasn’t good. Murphy’s Law strikes again? Or maybe Mercury Retrograde. I seemed to remember Liss mentioning something about Mercury being retrograde in its orbit within the last few weeks. That was bound to wreak havoc with electrical systems, and elevators certainly qualified. Why hadn’t I paid more attention? It couldn’t be a power outage—the lights were still on. Something mechanical? Oh, but wouldn’t there have been a clunk or something, indicating a problem?
    What’s a girl to do when she’s stuck in an elevator that’s not moving? I tried to remember everything about elevators from all the movies I had ever seen. Not a good idea—most of the scenes I remembered involved something bad happening to the person inside said little box suspended ever so precariously from wires and pulleys. Still, as someone who didn’t make a habit of riding elevators, I had little real-life experience to call upon; the movies were my only hope.
    Step One: Call for help. And when it came to a knight in shining armor, only one person came to mind.
    I put the bag of goodies down on the floor between my feet and dug through my purse for my cell phone, trying not to let the closed-in feeling of the elevator get to me. It was at that precise moment that the unthinkable happened.
    The lights...
    They flickered.
    Once.
    Twice.
    And then blinked out entirely.
    Oh. Holy. Jesus.
    There was nothing like being alone in a small, confined space completely devoid of even the faintest glimmer of light to make a girl realize how isolated and vulnerable she really was. The reality of my situation hit home. If it wasn’t for my cell phone and the comforting glow it gave off, I might just have become a slobbering, raving puddle of goo, right then and there. Thankfully, I had just charged it at the store that afternoon.
    With shaking fingers and eyes partially blinded by the brightness of the screen, the one thing standing between me and temporary insanity, I found Marcus in my list and clicked Send.
    “Hey, you,” he said through the phone speaker. “I thought we’d lost you.”
    I could have sagged with relief at the wonderfully reassuring sound of