Gone With the Witch by Heather Blake

stood, too. “So? The job?”
    The job. Figuring out what happened to Natasha.
    In my mind’s eye, I kept seeing Natasha’s cherry red face . . . and felt duty-bound to figure out what had happened to her. “I’ll do it,” I said reluctantly.
    Moisture flooded Ivy’s eyes. “Thank you for helping me.”
    I neglected to tell her that I wasn’t doing this for her.
    I was doing it for myself, because there was a large part of me that felt guilty about not doing my job properly. If I had been watching Natasha at all times, her death might have been prevented.
    Finding her killer wouldn’t change the outcome of what had happened, but it would definitely help me sleep better at night.
    Ivy and I made arrangements to keep in touch, and she strode off.
    As I headed back to the front door, I glanced over my shoulder as she stormed down the street, taking the long way around the village so she didn’t have to cross the green. I didn’t blame her for avoiding the displaced Extravaganzers for whom she had no answers.
    As I watched her go, a chill came over me, raising the hair on the back of my neck. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was going to regret taking this case.
    Big-time.

Chapter Nine
    A n hour and a half after Ivy left, I was on my way to Chip Goldman’s apartment with a couple of chatty accomplices in tow. With their help, I was hoping to uncover anything and everything I could about Natasha’s on-and-off-again boyfriend.
    I’d just left the Bewitching Boutique, where I’d recruited the help of Pepe and Mrs. P, who resided in the shop’s walls. I’d filled them in about my mission, and they were happy to help in my investigation. Their duties were clear: While I spoke with Chip under the guise of finding a home for Titania, Pepe and Mrs. P would snoop through his apartment, looking for something that might identify him as a potential killer.
    A big bottle of cyanide pills in his medicine cabinet would be nice.
    â€œYour tail,
mon amour
. It is in my face, and it keeps knocking my glasses from my nose,” Pepe said to Mrs. P.
    His voice easily floated upward from the depths of my purse, and I smiled at his adorable French inflection.
    â€œ
My
tail? What of yours?” Mrs. P countered in her New England accent—she’d lived in and around the Boston area all her life.
    Even as a mouse she reminded me of the comedienne Phyllis Diller. Between the voice, her boisterous laugh, and her spiky hairstyle, all the similarities were still there.
    She added, “It is resting in a most inappropriate place, my darling.”
    His throaty guilty chuckle floated upward, and Mrs. P’s exclamation of “You scoundrel!” followed it. Then she laughed her high-pitched cackle before a round of kissing noises reached my ears.
    I stopped walking and peeked into my purse. “Would you two rather be alone?”
    Inside an empty deep plastic butter container, which helped protect them from the flotsam inside my purse, were two mice, one brown, one white. One had been a familiar for more than two hundred years, the other six months only.
    The chubby brown one, Pepe, held Mrs. P in a dip and was kissing her, a scene that reminded me of the iconic V-J Day Times Square photo of a sailor kissing a nurse. I smiled—I adored seeing them so happy.
    My accomplices were also still considered newlyweds . . . of a sort. There had been no official wedding, but that was just a formality neither cared to pursue. For all intents and purposes, they were together till death did them part, which was going to be a very long time. Familiars were immortal until
they
opted to pass over.
    At my question, Pepe set Mrs. P on her tiny white feet and straightened his red vest, making sure the three small gold buttons were perfectly aligned. He gave me a slight bow, which caused his round gold glasses to slide down his nose. “I beg your