Gettin' Witched: Witchless in Seattle Mysteries, #12

By Dakota Cassidy

Stevie here, reporting to you live from Ebenezer Falls, WA with my disaster of a day.
Yes, that's right. I'm having a terrible day. The worst. It started off like any other day with the exception of Win's strange behavior, that is. But it's all gone downhill from there and I have questions.
So many questions…
For instance, why is everyone else in Eb Falls behaving as strangely as my International Man of Mystery? And who the heck is Donna? For that matter, who's Candy Cane and why does she have snow? Who's the blonde picking up Win in our driveway? And was that an Aston Martin I just saw drive by?
What the heck is going on?

I set out to have a perfectly nice day after a long summer filled with tourists and readings at Madame Zoltar's shop. Since we'd had so little time to spend together these last few weeks, I was feeling a little left behind while Win was off on a guy's day of his own, but a much-needed spa-day should have cured that.
Or at least I thought it would.
That was before everything turned upside down, Win became almost unreachable by phone or text, and the words blackmail, drugs, and extortion were bandied about…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dakota Cassidy
• Release date: Aug 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393166450

Book preview

Chapter 1

First, before I share my tale of chaos and woe, before I go any further, lest you doubt me, let me say this: I love Win.

I’ll say it again for the people in the back. I love Win.

Nay, I adore him. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me romantically speaking, and he’s perfect for me in every way.

Well, perfect in almost every way… I mean, we do have some differences. Of course we do. What couple doesn’t have differences?

There’s the fact that we don’t love a lot of the same foods. As you all know, he’s foie gras and Cristal, and I’m Twinkies and a grape Fanta. Throw in a hot dog with spicy mustard and some relish and I’m a happy girl.

He’s forever trying to upgrade my palate, and I’m always trying to talk him into hanging out in the trashy part of Food Town with me, where we’ll eat something spongey and chocolate-wrapped in a fun cellophane package

Then, while we’re at it, we should consider coffee. I’m plain old coffee (or a fun macchiato) with some cream and sugar. Not some fancy nonsense brew made high in the hills of Guatemala by a coffee bean farmer ground with the tears of the bean farmer’s donkey.

Just a Keurig and a coffee pod is fine for me, please and thank you, but Win calls it my sad brown water. He teases me incessantly about it.

Yet somehow, we’ve managed to stick it out.

Also, I’ll grant you, it’s fair to say we don’t share a lot of the same interests when it comes to our viewing pleasures, either. I love reality TV (there isn’t a Housewife franchise I won’t watch) and Win takes every advantage to poke fun at me when I’m bingeing a marathon with my Twinkies and grape Fanta.

But if I’m to keep things really fair, he’ll have water crackers with brie and some stinky pate while he watches with me and we snuggle on the couch.

And if we’re still making a case for differences, I love action adventure movies. Yet, the love of my life can find a hole in every Mission Impossible movie, and it’s infuriating, not to mention sheer torture to sit through two solid hours of him dissecting everything from implausible stunts to dialogue he considers unrealistic.

On the other hand, Mr. I-Was-A-Spy-I-Know-Things likes the History Channel, and he reminds me in his snooty British accent, Facts are facts, Stephania. Those cannot be disputed. I’d rather face-plant into a concrete wall than watch one more documentary on World War II, but I do it because facts are facts, and the fact is, couples compromise.

Then of course, there’s music. My Spy Guy loves classical music. I love the Backstreet Boys. I live for a vintage clothing store find. He teases me about my love of old, used clothing and insists I should simply buy new from the actual designer.

A casual Saturday to me means sweats and an old flannel shirt with my hair in a messy bun. Casual to Mr. Mission Impossible is when he doesn’t don a suit with a crisp hankie in the jacket pocket.

I could go on and on, but if I do, it might force a spotlight on our differences and magnify them unnecessarily when there’s no need.

My point remains, we compromise.

Anyway, despite those differences, which are by no stretch of the imagination enormous, we’ve made this work. Through murders, deaths, afterlife, angry warlocks, ghosts, reincarnation, sickness, we’ve made it through the rain, and now we have an amazing relationship full of respect, love and above all, honesty.

Or I thought we did.

Now, let me preface this by saying, I might be jumping the gun. I might be losing my mind, too. Certainly, it isn’t impossible.

But I submit to you the occurrences of the past week, and then I’ll let you decide if I’m being ridiculous or if I have a valid case for believing Win’s investigating a crime behind my back—or at the very least, involved in something with someone from his past.

Anyway, that’s when it all began—about a week ago—when I heard Win talking on his cell.

That he was talking on his cell isn’t at all suspicious. I’m not typically the jealous type (okay, there was that one time earlier this year when he was checking off the winning category for wrestling information out of suspects, where I had a niggle of envy, but you know what I mean), not even a little.

I’d trust Win with my life, and in fact, have trusted him with my life.

But…

But, but, but. I’m officially having an attack of the uneasies (if that’s even a word), or maybe a better word for it is an attack of I-don’t-know-what-the-heck-is-going-on, but my inner antennae says something’s amuck.

As I said, it started with a phone call Win took about a week ago.

I remember it distinctly, because the name Marsden had stuck with me when Win mentioned it many moons ago.

Well, it felt like many moons ago anyway. It was probably only a couple of years, but in all the tales Win’s told me about his spy adventures, I’ve lost track. Either way, it’s an unusual name, and one I’ve only attributed to the actor James Marsden from X-Men.

Regardless, I know he once mentioned the name Marsden, and I’m certain he said he was a handler at MI6. So, I ask you, why would Win be on the phone, at the other end of the house, behind some hydrangea bushes of all places, talking in hushed tones to a Marsden when he’s supposed to be out of the spy game due to his untimely death?

How many Marsdens can a person know?

Now that, in and of itself, didn’t make me overly suspicious. Not at first, anyway. I don’t know any people named Marsden, but in Win’s favor, I don’t know many people named Arkady Bagrov, either. Yet, I now have a ghost with that very unusual name in my life.

I mean, there’s likely more than one Marsden on planet Earth, right?

My point is, the name has come up rather out of the blue. Though, that wasn’t what bothered me as much as the fact that when Win realized I was in close proximity—pretending to check on the condition of our hydrangeas, which, if you’ve all paid even a little attention, you know I don’t know the first thing about the flowers—he cut the call short.

As in, my Man of Mystery clicked that phone off as though it were on fire, stuffed it in his pocket, and slapped one of his charming, I-would-do-anything-for-you smiles on his devastatingly handsome face, dropped a kiss on my forehead and went about his day.

I didn’t say anything, and of course, neither did he. But I’m telling you, something is amiss.

Something…

There have been a couple more instances where I’ve questioned whether it’s just me being me and the need for a good mystery to solve (we haven’t had one since the late winter), or if Win is really up to something.

Nothing major, mind you. He’s just been on his phone in covert corners of the house, as though he doesn’t want me to hear who he’s talking with, and he’s been doing an awful lot of errands as of late.

Anyway, that brings me to today, where I’ve been mulling over the phone call from last week, most especially trying to remember the name Marsden and who it was linked to, and pondering if I’m making a mountain out of a molehill and if I should simply ask Win who he’d been talking to.

But then he’d know I was eavesdropping, and I’d feel stupid because there was likely a really good explanation, right?

I wondered that as I sat out on our back patio with Whiskey, Strike, and Belfry in my pajamas and enjoyed a cup of my sad brown water as I watched the water roll by and the colorful sails of the boats flap in the wind on this late-summer day.

The breeze was beautiful for late August, not too warm, not too cool. Just right,