Page 4 of Hopelessly Teavoted

“Mr. George, you’re dead, and we have five minutes here before you’re gone for good.”

“Shit,” said the specter, still staring at his hands and the pristine floor shining through them. “Is this Hell? It seems cold enough to be hell, but it smells good for an afterlife.”

Newly dead, then, if his corporeal senses were lingering. He’d lose those in a few days. She sighed. It had taken her a while to figure that one out. The gift didn’t come with instructions.

But unlike Kyle George, she was a quick study.

For a person who presumably had not known about the existence of magic, he was taking this pretty well.

Some ghosts, usually those more in touch with the occult in life, realized at once that they were dead.

Others protested and had to be calmed down before they could be helpful.

But he didn’t strike her as caring about anything enough to panic about his sudden state of unalive.

In fact, it was hard to tell if men like him were actually ever human to begin with.

She had a goal, though. If she wanted her parents’ support, she needed to get Kyle George’s password.

Favors were the way to win their fleeting approval.

Her chest ached with the emptiness of what she’d never had, but she pushed that aside to focus.

She didn’t know the precise terms of the arrangement they had made for her to speak to the dead, but that didn’t stop them from insinuating that because they owed someone something for her powers, she owed them everything, in turn.

“My father would like you to tell him about the passcode for the platinum client files.”

The ghost smirked. “I bet you would, old boy,” he said, turning to her father, who was now glancing around the room, eyes falling on objects, but never on the spirit.

“He can’t see you,” she explained. Kyle was a bit dimmer than most ghosts. Usually, they picked up on the gist of what was happening, but this particular shade seemed impervious to logic. Kyle huffed, but she ignored it. “It would be helpful if you could tell me the passcode.”

“Fine. It’s KyleDog.”

“Seriously?” It was her turn to cross her arms. “That’s your top secret passcode for your most important accounts?”

“Yes, who are you to judge me? Some sort of ghost psychic? I knew Max’s kid would be a little off.” She shook her head, surprised that he even knew her father had a daughter.

It was often enough that people didn’t.

She turned to her father and told him the devil-damned passcode.

“Anything else?”

Her father looked eager, but the ghost spoke, and she held up a hand. Maximillian’s shoulders tensed. He glared at her, and then at the space next to her, though unable to see the man. His scorn was about six inches too low and to the left. This, at least, made her chuckle.

“Those fucking cuff links are the only thing I truly loved, you know.”

“Yes, you’ll pass on after this. To wherever you’re headed.”

Vickie paused. She’d be the last soul this man spoke to before that. Looking at his narrow, ratlike face and limp blond hair, she couldn’t bring herself to care much for the loss.

He looked at her, determination glinting in his eyes.

“Listen, Veronika.”

“It’s Victoria.”

“Right. Do two things for me.”

She sighed, rubbing the cuff links, now scalding as the flame in her fist licked higher. They didn’t have much time.

“Sure,” she agreed. Who was she to deny a dead man his last request?

“Have your father tell Candie I would have left. She was worth it.”

Vickie bit down on the impulse to tell him that if he was going to leave, he would have.

“And second. They really should know, all things considered. It’s on them. There’s shady stuff going on at Brethren of One Love.”

“The megachurch?”

“Yeah. I’m not sure what, but I kept seeing one of the college kids from my neighborhood headed in there.

He’s a fine upstanding fellow. Straight As, captain of his lacrosse team.

His mom is—well, she’s a close friend.” The ghost winked, and Vickie shuddered.

“She was worried about him. I told her it was probably over a girl, but the night I died, I saw him go in there again. After hours. I almost told his mom about it, but he’s just about a grown person.

Still, no reason for him to be around that insufferable group at Brethren. ”

Her eyebrows furrowed, Vickie puzzled at that.

There could be a thousand reasons for a student to check out a different church.

A girl. A boy. Hell, maybe a religious conversion.

Kyle was trying to buy time in his last moments.

She shook off the nagging feeling at the back of her mind that this was consequential.

“It felt important,” said Kyle. He looked desperate enough to lie. “The school might be involved. I mean, just because I told some kid’s smoking-hot mom I love her in the heat of a moment doesn’t mean he was my kid. But still I saw—”

But Kyle George’s time had run out, and Vickie was tired of listening to his tales of philandering.

She stepped back, dropping the crumbling cuff links.

The ash of them flamed orange, red, and finally gold, and within seconds was gone, along with the last remains of Kyle George’s immortal soul, on this plane, anyway.

“What was that about a church?” Her father adjusted his tie, not looking as surprised as one might expect for a man who had just heard a one-sided conversation that made Vickie look like a person in need of medical assistance.

Which made sense, since her parents, upon learning there was magic in the world, had arranged a deal with a devil for their only daughter to see dead people. Obviously, they wouldn’t stoop so low as to bargain for death powers for themselves.

She picked at her bright yellow nail polish.

“He said there’s something shady going on at the megachurch.”

“Well, that’s certainly always the case with religious organizations wringing money from the poor and handing out platitudes about how they’ll go to Heaven if they simply vote to remove rights from women and give those rights to demagogues.”

“Don’t you and Dad also wring money from people?”

“My darling, we are stockbrokers; we at least don’t try to hide what we are doing by masquerading it as the work of the Lord.

Ours is an honest sort of robbery.” Amelie tilted her head, and bleached blond hair shifted like a silken waterfall.

Even with the blowout, Vickie’s didn’t look that flawless, and she was sure her mother had noticed.

“We never should have brought that megachurch to town,” Maximillian muttered.

“You did what?” Vickie blanched.

Her father shrugged. “We thought it would be good for business. It’s one of those clever multilevel marketing–modeled organizations. It’s good business. Your mother had this idea that we could join and use it for weekly Sunday networking.”

Amelie shrugged. “It turns out they were too despicable for us to tolerate, and stingy to boot.” She examined her perfect French manicure.

Unbelievable. Her parents were unbelievable.

“So you brought an actively recruiting church to town to try to turn a profit, and then abandoned it to wreak havoc on Hallowcross?”

“Victoria, we aren’t responsible for other people’s decisions.” Her mother sighed, and shook her head, as though Vickie were the unreasonable one.

“What else did Kyle say?” Her father’s eyes bored into her, commanding.

“Ah, Dad, Kyle also wanted you to tell Candie he was going to leave his wife.”

Her mother gave her father a sharp glare.

“Well, obviously I won’t, Amelie. He was an insipid little man.”

“Just know that I am no Charlotte George, and I am not above murder should your eyes wander.” Her words were ice. Not for the first time, Vickie shuddered at her parents’ cruelty.

Her father dropped down to the couch next to her mother, and whispered words that made Amelie’s lips twitch upward in the closest assimilation Vickie had seen to a smile. This would be a perfect time to slip out, but she had additional business here today.

She cleared her throat, and her mother shook off the haze of lust.

“Yes, darling?”

“I need to talk to you about school.”

Her father focused his attention, sharp and suspicious now, on Vickie.

She sunk into the chair, wishing the upholstery could swallow her whole.

“I’m not going back. I want my own business.”

“Is this about Robert?”

“Robbie,” she corrected. As always.

“You’re well aware I don’t care to partake in juvenile nicknames.” Her mother’s eyes sharpened. “That boy is talented and handsome, and from such a good family, but honestly, Victoria, do you really want to be a permanent groupie?”

“We broke up.” She avoided the razor-sharp blue eyes digging into her, and bit back the correction that a person in their late twenties was more of a man than a boy.

“Oh, thank goodness,” said Amelie. “Groupies are so clingy and gauche. Even if he had ever married you, you would have been either a headline or a punch line. Maybe both.”

The chair was haloed by yellow nail polish chips now.

“I want to buy Hopelessly Teavoted. I want to run the tea shop, and tinker with magic.”

“No,” said her mother.

“Absolutely not,” said her father. “You return to school and finish, and then we can talk about your options.”

Vickie shook her head. It would have been easier if they had agreed, but she was willing to do things the hard way.

“I already talked to Priscilla Hart. She’s too busy at the Council of Witchery to take over. A buyer is lined up to put in a chain coffee shop otherwise.”

Her mother’s glare intensified. How was that even possible? Vickie had the magical gift, and yet here she was, a butterfly skewered by a sharp sliver on a board for examination.

“We won’t pay for it.” Amelie shook out her hair again, chin lifted. “And you have no idea how disastrous it would be to have to pay for everything we have provided for you.”