Quit Your Witchin' Read Free Page B

heads crammed around my favorite taco vendor’s food truck.
    “He’s dead !” someone screamed in a light Spanish accent.
    My heart began to pound and I tried to swallow, but my throat kept closing up. No. Please don’t let it be…
    And then someone confirmed my deepest dread. “Call the police! Tito’s dead! The Taco Man’s dead!”

Chapter 2
    W in’s aura surrounded me, his oddly cool yet somehow warm presence enveloping my space. I often equated it to a hug, but I’d never tell my spy that.
    If Win knew how much he meant to me, especially arriving at a time in my life when everything had been falling apart, I worried he’d find me too needy, too much for a man who’d likely spent a lot of time on his own as a spy—without distractions like sticky relationships to keep him from doing what he had to do. I’d made it my mission to tread lightly when it came to my squishy girl feelings.
    “Damn, Stevie. I’m sorry, love.” Win’s voice caressed my ear, offering the comfort I’d come to relish.
    I bit the inside of my cheek. I couldn’t believe it. Tito was dead? I pushed out of the door, walking into the sunshine blindly, my feet more than familiar with the path I was taking because I’d taken it a hundred times before.
    It was the path that took me directly to the food truck of my favorite taco vendor in the world. The Salty Sombrero’s tacos were what had kept me from starving to death when I’d first moved back to Ebenezer Falls after my shunning.
    At the time, I was alone, without any family but Belfry, pushing poverty and a cardboard box under a bridge somewhere. Tito’s lunch specials, three for a buck on Tuesdays and Thursdays, allowed me a decent if not exactly low-calorie meal. I’d buy as many tacos as I could fit into my purse and my dwindling budget would allow, keep them in the hotel room Belfry and I were staying in, and eat them cold at night for dinner.
    I loved Tito, even though he’d accused me of murdering Madam Zoltar, too. But like Chester, once he’d realized how wrong he was, Tito had gone out of his way to make things right with me.
    In fact, just last week as Win and I were cleaning up Madam Zoltar’s, right before we had our grand reopening, he’d brought free tacos for me and the high school kids I’d hired to help.
    He’d been all smiles on his roundly cheerful face as he passed out warm, soft-flour-tortilla tacos in twos, chatting with me in broken English about getting his final papers next month.
    He’d been so proud to finally be on the path to getting his American citizenship; he’d recited the Pledge of Allegiance to show me how good his English had become. We’d laughed and laughed when he kept saying “One nation under God, invisible” instead of “indivisible”.
    Dang. The memory felt like someone had just ripped my heart out by way of my belly button.
    And now he was dead. Could this have something to do with the message Win had gotten from the afterlife about a month ago, one that we were never able to pursue due to lack of information?
    A spirit had reached out to me via Win. A spirit of Latin descent—a female aura, to be precise. She’d requested help with a “friend” and then she’d up and disappeared. Win had no description of her. He claimed she was just a voice—an older voice who’d said she had a friend here in Ebenezer Falls in need of earthly aide.
    I’d told Win to tell her we’d get right on it, but then she’d disappeared.
    I stood just on the fringe of the food truck parking lot in the warm sunshine, seeing the colorful sails bobbing on the choppy waters of the Puget, unable to push past the wall of people. Unable or unwilling, that is. I couldn’t pinpoint which.
    I think I’m still a little raw from my last bout with murder and my feet are telling my brain to move along, but my heart is telling my brain to piss off.
    “Do you suppose this has to do with the voice that contacted me?” Win asked what I’d just been