Free A Cast-Off Coven by juliet blackwell

and prepping inventory, anyway. Why don’t you come by around noon and I’ll show you what I have?”
    “Don’t forget, I’ll be here, too,” Bronwyn put in. “I want to learn your trade secrets.”
    I laughed. “As if I would turn down anyone who wants to help with the wash.”
    Susan’s brow furrowed as she began to rifle through a stand of 1940s-style dress suits. “It really is interesting, your finding a body—of Jerry Becker, no less—at the bottom of the bell tower stairs. You know, a professor from the school came to see me about a month ago, asking questions. He had seen my book.”
    “What professor?” Maya asked.
    “A rather diffident, odd fellow . . . Walter, maybe?”
    “Could it have been Walker? Walker Landau?” I asked.
    “That sounds right.”
    “What was he asking about?”
    “If I knew about a death that occurred on the bell tower stairs, way back when.”
     
    “Awesome! Students!” said Oscar as I stood in my kitchen an hour later, preparing to go to the School of Fine Arts. “I love students. I’ll come with you.”
    “You most certainly will not.”
    “I thought you said there was something fishy going on?”
    “There is.”
    “How ya gonna know what spirits are in the building without a familiar?”
    I paused from packing an assortment of charms and talismans into my satchel. It was still light out, but given what had happened yesterday, I wanted to be prepared. I had another charm bag, more talismans, a jar of special salts, and even a small bag of dust swept from the threshold of a New Orleans prison that a recent acquaintance, Hervé LaMansec, a vodou priest, had given me.
    “You can detect spirits?” I asked.
    Oscar crossed his arms over his scrawny chest and rolled his eyes.
    A goblin just rolled his eyes at me.
    “Why do you think people bring a cat to check out a house before they buy it?” Oscar asked.
    “A cat?”
    “Cats and guys like me, we’re sensitive to such things.”
    “Who brings a cat to a house before they buy it?”
    “Everyone.”
    “I know of no one who does that.”
    “You don’t?”
    I shook my head.
    “Well, I’ll be doggoned.” His little brow wrinkled; he looked truly bemused. “I always wondered how people wound up living in haunted houses. Like that Amityville Horror —you ever see that movie? I guess those poor folks didn’t know enough to bring a cat. Huh. Ya live, ya learn, eh?”
    “You sense spirits? Can you communicate with them?”
    “Nah, I can’t talk to ’em, exactly.”
    “Then you won’t be much good to me, will you?”
    “But mistress! I can sense enough about them to tell what you’re up against.”
    I hesitated. Having Oscar along might take some of the guesswork out of what I had planned. Still . . .
    “Please?”
    “And you’ll stay in pig form?”
    “Yes, mistress,” he said with a sigh.
    I picked up the protective amulet I had made for him two weeks before and draped it around his neck.
     
    Oscar and I arrived at the school just after five. Oscar was in his porcine guise, whereas I was in an old pair of jeans and an even older sweater—not vintage, mind you, just old. I’d spent enough time in long-sealed, mildewy closets to know not to wear anything I cared to keep when rummaging through piles of old textiles.
    I parked my purple van alongside the school’s back loading dock. The graphics on the side of the van read:
    AUNT CORA’S CLOSET
VINTAGE CLOTHING AND QUALITY ACCESSORIES
CORNER OF HAIGHT & ASHBURY
BUY—SELL—TRADE
IT’S NOTOLD; IT’S VINTAGE!
    It was Sunday evening, and though there were students milling about, the school was quiet. Belatedly it dawned on me that I should have called ahead to see if Provost Marlene Mueller would be here. But I’m not at my best on the telephone. I don’t yet trust my ability to judge people, so I still rely on sensing auras and vibrations, which don’t convey through electronics and telephone wires. I was probably the last person in America