Witch Slapped (Witchless In Seattle Mysteries Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

without the effort resulting in an emergency brain transplant, turn around.”
    I blew at a strand of hair stuck to my mouth. “If I do what you ask, what will happen? Will the store fall into a sinkhole?”
    “No, no. It’s much, much worse.”
    His somber tone had me—and obviously my better judgment—sitting up straight.
    As I took in the room behind the purple gauze material, my gasp echoed, the noise flying from my mouth, making me cringe and press my fingers to my lips.
    I closed my eyes and gulped as Belfry climbed up my jacket and settled on my shoulder. “ Please,please,pleeease tell me that isn’t Madam Zoltar.”
    “I’ve only been saying as much for nigh on three hours now. Blimey, you Americans are slow.”
    Enter British Guy.
    Jolly good show.

Chapter 3
    “ B elfry? Why can I hear but not see a British guy?”
    “Winterbottom,” a smooth voice whispered against my ear, sending a cool chill along my spine. I knew that chill. Oh yes, I did. British Guy was a real live ghost. That much of Belfry’s story was true.
    How could this be? I was a mortal now. No mortal I knew could truly talk to the dead. “Bottom who?”
    I squinted and looked around the store, just as I did back in the good old days when a ghost made contact, hoping against hope I’d see him appear just the way ghosts always did in the past when they came to me for help. But there was nothing. No filmy, transparent glimmer of anything. Just a store trashed courtesy of yours truly.
    What the heck was going on?
    “I’m Winterbottom. The name’s Winterbottom,” the disembodied voice repeated.
    I wasn’t sure where to begin. With what I saw in the room behind the purple curtain, or the fact that I was hearing the voice of a ghost even though I technically shouldn’t be able to hear anything from the afterlife.
    I decided to attack the unclear first, before I sank my teeth into the obvious. “Okay, um, Bottom’s Up, how can I hear you?”
    “ Winter. Bottom ,” he enunciated, dry as a bone, sounding a lot like he’d stepped right out of an episode of Game of Thrones . “And it’s a bit of a tale for the X-Files . A tale we don’t have time to indulge in, but I’d be chuffed to pieces to share with you later. As you can see, we have far more pressing matters.”
    A warm breeze wafted past me and ruffled the gauzy material, revealing problem number two.
    My eyes slammed shut and my fingers spread over my temple to pinch off the ensuing headache. “Madam Zoltar, I presume?”
    “It is indeed. No need to check for a pulse, she’s dead.”
    The desert my throat had become made it difficult to swallow. “What happened to her?”
    “I don’t know. That’s why you’re here. To help me figure it out.”
    “So all this trying to talk to Belfry was to get me to come here?”
    “That wasn’t the original intent.”
    “What was the original intent?” I asked.
    “Forget that for now. As I was saying, you are, as they say here in the afterlife, the best in the biz. They also say you have a big heart, you’re tenacious, you cry at Hallmark movies during Christmas, you’re unbelievably gifted at finding bargain designer clothes from consignment shops and the like, you love a good mystery and are rather proficient at solving them, and you have a lovely shade of gray-blue eyes—of which I’d quite agree.”
    My cheeks flushed red. “That’s very kind of them, and you. The problem is, I can’t help you or anyone from the afterlife anymore.”
    “Mmm. I’ve heard. That’s neither here nor there.”
    I stared up at the direction the voice came from and made a face. “No, that is here. Did the afterlife gossips fail to mention I’m not a witch anymore and all my medium powers are gone?”
    “Yet, here you are, talking to me. They couldn’t be gone entirely, because I truly am gone from this plane and still we communicate…um, sorry. What’s your name?”
    “The afterlife didn’t tell you my name?”
    “They’re all