This week, I decided that something needed to happen to make the narrator’s situation feel more urgent and dangerous, so I decided to have something bad happen to the investigator, Mickey.

But since I don’t want there to be dead bodies already, I decided just to have him be threatened and to assume it’s because he’s investigating for the narrator (who still doesn’t have a name).

Here’s this week’s installment:

“Narrator!” Nikki exclaimed. “It’s so good to hear from you. Serena wasn’t sure we would, but I knew—”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “You live in Santa Monica, don’t you?”

“Yes?” She spoke guardedly.

“I have to go to the Pier this afternoon, so I figured two birds, one stone.”

“What, uh, birds do you mean?”

“You and Serena said you’d only discuss the situation with me once I agreed I was all in. So I’m all in. I have to go to Santa Monica today so let’s meet and you can tell me what the hell is going on and what I’m supposed to do now. I mean, do I go by the wand shop and—”

She laughed more heartily than the joke deserved and said, “No, no, nothing like that. Everyone has to learn the limits of their own power, but Serena and I can show you some things. When is your other meeting?”

“Around four,” I said. That was when Marissa’s shift started and it wouldn’t be too busy. “It shouldn’t take too long. Maybe half an hour or so.”

“Then text me afterward and we’ll be waiting for you.”

She gave me her address with no apartment number so it was a single-family home and in Santa Monica, even a tiny cottage went for millions. I had new respect for her abilities as a lawyer, assuming she wasn’t a trust fund baby, which she might well be. A lot of SoCal wealth is like that.

Mickey’s bill came in and I paid it and I read his notes about Steve, I guess to torture myself over might-have-beens. You think you’ve long since gotten on with your life and then something like this comes along and knocks you on your ass.

So I was just glad to have something to do but I couldn’t do it yet; it wasn’t even lunch time.

I had a vague and kind of silly idea and so I locked up and walked out to Overland and then up to Rose Avenue, where there’s a little crystal shop that does a very quite trade. Most of it must be by mail order or it was a cover for some kind of criminal activity because there’s never anyone inside but the attendant.

I didn’t know which it was and since no one was paying me to investigate, I didn’t care. I went in, the bell jangling over the door, and a solid-looking young man with dark hair swished a bead curtain aside and came out of the back room.

“Morning,” he said and I agreed it was morning, then turned to browse along the shelves. I was looking first at just plain quartz, looking for the obvious ball shape, but I was drawn to a chunk of lavender, roughly triangular-shaped, and the sparks burst along my skin as I reached for it.

“This one,” I said, not even turning it over to check the price. “This is the one.”

*

I took the shard of amethyst home with me and set it on the window sill in the kitchen. I kept it in the corner of my eye for a while, then, feeling foolish, I picked it up again and brought it into my bedroom, closed the blinds, and shut the door, then switched on the lamp by my bed. That felt too bright so I turned it off and moved the blinds slightly to keep the room from being in total darkness.

I sat cross-legged on the bed, then remembered I wasn’t nineteen anymore when my knees protested. I stretched them out, leaned against the headboard, and shoved a pillow behind my back. I felt certain a real witch didn’t require fifteen minutes to get her butt comfortable, but I was new at this.

Being left-handed, I held the stone in my left hand, but for some reason that felt awkward so I moved it to my right hand and that felt better. It kept my left hand free to scratch on itch on my face. I sighed and closed my eyes.

Once upon a time, I’d tried to learn meditation so that I could calm the hell down—being a middle-aged woman with an implausible career makes a person anxious—although truth be told, I’d been anxious pretty much from the start of adulthood. Maybe everyone is, excepting perhaps psychopaths and sociopaths.

Anyway, I hadn’t gotten very far with the meditation because I found it boring, which probably gives you all the insight into my character that you need to in order to draw conclusions about it.

I tried clearing my mind of the usual racket—Seriously, a witch? Are not! Am so!—but that didn’t work very well. I remembered the sage’s advice to observe the thoughts but detach from them, so I tried that for a while. Seriously, a witch? floated into my mind and I made no effort to argue with it or confirm it.

Seriously, a witch?

Seriously, a witch?

It started feeling like an echo chamber in there and after a few minutes I got bored, so I sighed and opened my eyes.

I looked down at the amethyst in my hand, the little world of jagged mountains and valleys channeled within the shard, mostly lavender and violet colored crystals but some white, a few amber. I just looked, trying to experience the stone without a lot of judgment about it, without a lot of oooh, pretty, and the sparks ran down my arm and crackled in the air.

I would have sworn there was an audible poof! Except that I knew the apartment was totally silent. Whatever was happening was happening only in my head.

The sparks moved restlessly now and I stared at the amethyst, a bead of sweat popping up on my hairline. It trickled into my eye and I blinked it away.

The sparks were more urgent now and I felt they wanted me to do something or say something and since I was staring at what was supposed to be a crystal ball, I said, “Reveal!” in a dramatic tone that I almost certainly copied from someone in a movie.

Nothing happened.

Well, reveal what? I mean, magic was probably like anything. You had to give instructions. Like you couldn’t just get in a Waymo and say, “Drive!” You had to tell it where you were going.

What did I want the stone to reveal? When I was twelve, it would have been the face of the boy who was going to give me my first kiss. When I was twenty, it would have been the name of my first adult job. What did I want to know now? Am I really a witch?

What did I want it to reveal? The face of my best friend? But I already knew the answer to that—Dahlia.

Reveal the face of my worst enemy.

I thought it without meaning to; it was just the logical contrast to best friend, but then I thought what the hell, maybe someone on Arnold’s staff hated me and was whispering sweet nothings into his ear and wouldn’t it be helpful for me to know that so I could do something about it before it was too late? It was probably that little runt Roger.

So I leaned into it: Reveal the face of my worst enemy.

And suddenly I felt like the wicked queen in Snow White: Who’s the fairest of them all?

I cackled, a real live cackle, and kind of scared myself. If I wasn’t a witch already, obviously I was turning into one.

A smoky fog drifted from the stone, and I dropped it like it was hot. It wasn’t, and I reached down to pick it up again. The fog shifted and took shape, though drifting and moving. A central core solidified into a figure, a tall slender figure but broad in the shoulders, slightly stooped. It was a man wearing a suit with a vest and his hair was long for a man, about shoulder length.

The figure turned his head and I saw a craggy oval face, like a New England farmer, the eyes deep socketed and shadowed. The lips formed a smile, as if he’d seen me. I clapped my hands down on the stone and yelped, “Enough!”

I don’t know if it was the word or the action or if the image had naturally reached the end of its life span but the fog spread apart, drifted. I jumped off the bed and yanked open the window to get a fresh breeze int to help dissipate the whole thing.

I didn’t recognize the face, and that troubled me: shouldn’t you recognize your own worst enemy?

*

By the time I’d had two soothing cups of tea along with a soothing cinnamon apple muffin, it was getting to be time to drive to Santa Monica, but a knock at my door stopped me halfway to my shoes. I glanced through the peephole: Mickey. He’d gotten the payment and was delivering the goods.

I unlocked the door but instead of handing me a discreet manilla envelope, he slid inside, whacking the door against my toe. If only I’d made it all the way to my shoes first.

“I gotta tell you,” he said, whapping the expected manilla envelope against his thigh. “I didn’t want to come here. At first I was just going to tear this up.” He gestured with the envelope. “And give you a freebie next time or something. We’d a worked it out.”

“Worked what out?”

“But then I thought, are you really going to let this bastard push you around?”

“No?” I guessed. “What happened? What are you talking about?” I got a good look at his face. “Are you afraid?”

“Afraid isn’t even scratching the surface.” He scrubbed a big hand over his face, looked at the envelope, and then tossed it onto my table. “They killed my dog.”

“Jesus.” I had no idea who they were but I didn’t ask. “Jesus, Mickey, that’s horrible. What—” I stopped myself and repeated, “That’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”

“They run him over right in the middle of the street.” He plopped down on my sofa, covering his face with his hands.

“Maybe it was an accident?” I collected my shoes and put them on.

“No,” he said. “They drove up onto the sidewalk to do it. That ain’t an accident.”

“No,” I said. “Doesn’t sound likely.” I hesitated, then sat on the sofa next to him. We weren’t actually friends, but I felt a little camaraderie wouldn’t go amiss.

“Do you think they were aiming for you?”

“I don’t think so. We were working on sit and stay, so I had him sitting, and I had walked a little bit away when they … when they….”

“I get it,” I said. I patted his shoulder. “But, uh, how do you know it’s related to my case? Did you get a threat or something?”

“No, no.”

“Or maybe it was just a teenage fuckwit,” I add. “They do horrible things sometimes because they don’t have a clue.”

He dropped his hands to his legs and looked over at me. “It wasn’t a teenager. He stopped the car.”

“Oh.”

“And he got out of the car. And he expressed sorrow for what happened and he asked did I want to call the police.”

“Okay,” I said.

“It wasn’t what he said,” Mickey told me patiently. “It was how he said it.”

“Like you knew he wasn’t sorry and he really did want you to call the police? Like, he wanted to get it on the record that he was just a poor fool who made a mistake? Meaning it would be hard for the police to take you seriously if you accused him of doing it on purpose.”

He gave a nod. “I see you know this type of fucker.”

“I have encountered my share of character-disordered sociopaths,” I said. “I don’t think you can get to be my age without that experience. They’re missing the thing that makes us human.”

“Then you understand my concern.”

“I understand. What did this guy look like?”

Mickey tilted his head and narrowed his eyes as he examined my face. “He wasn’t anyone on Hugh Small’s campaign staff, of that I’m sure.”

I described the worst enemy figure the amethyst had conjured up and Mickey shook his head.

“No, he was young, maybe thirty. And blond, with a buzz cut like a marine. You know, or he wanted you to think he was military. Kind of stocky, moved a little like he might know how to fight.”

Mickey also knew how to fight but his last time in the ring had been a while ago and I guessed he wouldn’t really relish going around and around with a guy who was half his age.

“Okay, but how did you know it’s about my case? That it’s about Smalls?”

“I ain’t got nothing else going at the moment.”

“Still, could have been a former case, couldn’t it?”

“The car had a Hugh Smalls bumper sticker,” he said. “It adds up.”

“Huh.” I understood what he meant. It wasn’t anything you could make an accusation out of, and you surely couldn’t prosecute it in front of a judge and jury but the message had been sent. And received.

“You think you’re in danger?” I asked. Then, with a slightly higher tone of voice, “Do you think I’m in danger?”

“Dunno. I mean, I tried to keep the surveillance low key and I still don’t know how they made me. I don’t keep records that could point to you. I was careful about not being followed here, but who knows? Maybe they got a guy who can get them traffic camera footage or something.”

“You sure you didn’t lead them here—”

“I took the Metro,” he said, waving a hand at me. “And then I walked. But that ain’t the same as invisible.”

“Right. So I may or may not be in danger because they may or may not know you were working for me, but you suspect you’re in danger because of—”

“Murder. It’s murder when it’s your dog,” he said and passed his hand over his eyes again. “I loved that dumb mutt.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Man who’ll kill a dog won’t stop at killing a person.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Look, you probably ought to get out of sight for a bit, maybe until after the primary.”

“I intend to.”

I paused again, remembering what he said about my being his only client. “You need a bit of money? I can ask Arnold to dig into the discretionary fund. If this is what you think it is, it’s happening because I asked you to investigate.”

“No, no,” he said. “I’m okay. I’m square. I’m going to Vegas, stay in one of them big hotels. Man’s tracked every way to Sunday, place like that. No one’s going to make a move on me there.”

I hoped not. “All right,” I said. “Look, why don’t I bring you down to the garage and let you out the back way? Just in case someone’s got eyes on the place. There’s a gate you can use to get to the next street. Then you just get an Uber to meet you over there and take you to LAX.” I nodded at the duffle. “You’re packed, right?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m packed.” He didn’t sound enthusiastic and I didn’t blame him. I looked at the frayed collar on his shirt, the worn tread on his shoes. I didn’t ask why I was his only client at the moment. He was a good PI, and maybe it was just a lull, or maybe he was tired. You reach a point sometimes at this age where every tomorrow looks like every yesterday and you stop leaping out of bed in the morning to welcome the dawn.

I opened the closet, got my nest egg box from the shelf and dug out a couple hundred dollars. He’d said he didn’t want money but I could see he did.

“Just in case,” I said, holding it out.

“No, no.”

“If you don’t need it, then you can bring it back,” I said.

He seemed to think that was acceptable, so he took the money and put it away in a thin wallet, wiped his mouth with this hand and said, “You be careful. You be real careful. Man who’d kill a dog….”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”

~~~

Jennifer Lawler has been a writer-editor for more than twenty-five years and has published more than forty novels and nonfiction books. She is the founder of the online education company Club Ed LLC.