Murder in the Mix Boxed Set 28-30: Cozy Mystery Addison Moore (the reading strategies book .txt) 📖

“How in the heck did you memorize all that?” I marvel. “I only told you that once.”

“I’ve added it to my list of prayers each night. I can’t help it, Lot. You have a special way of frustrating me.”

Suze swoops over with a mean looking scowl on her face, and I instinctually recoil.

“What are you doing here?” she snaps.

“I was just paying my mother a visit and thought I’d furnish your club with a little dessert. Free of charge, of course.”

“Oh.” Her shoulders loosen at the thought. “Thank you,” she grouses.

A few of the women leaving the room wave her way and Suze waves back.

“Remember”—she cups her hands around her lips once again—“debt is normal. Be weird!”

“Be weird!” the women call out in unison before taking off.

Suze is weird, all right. And this meeting of the cheapskate minds just confirms it. Not that I have anything against living on a budget.

She nods toward Carlotta. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, my next club is meeting in five minutes. You’re welcome to stay if you like.” She takes off into the crowd and begins to mingle.

I watch as Elodie, the brunette from last night, makes her rounds through the crowd of women all clad in black.

My mother skips back with a spring in her step. “I just gave away thirty-two autographed copies!” She crosses her fingers in the air. “Let’s hope this multiplies sales by the new year.”

“I’m sure it’ll help.” I’m crossing my own fingers because I think I may have let a white lie slip. I’m pretty sure those women have made a pact never to spend a shiny dime. “Mom, is this the Christmas Angels club, meeting up next?”

“Try Christmas demons.” Mom shudders as she looks to the crowd of women. “It’s the Magic Mavens of Honey Hollow. They get together and talk about their latest enchantments and whatnot. That woman over there”—she points a red glittery fingernail right at my very first suspect—“that’s Elodie Frost. She tried to put the moves on Wiley last month, and when I told her to back away from my man, she laughed and said I’d lose him soon enough. She looked right into my eyes, and I felt something, Lottie. It was as if I could see the writing on the wall. Wiley and I are just about finished. It’s almost as if she put a hex on me. Anyway, I think I’ll bring in a fresh pot of coffee. All they talk about is beguiling this beguiling that.” She takes off in a sprint.

“Beguiling?” I squint over at Carlotta. “Where have I heard that before?”

“I don’t know, Lot, but I think Suze belongs to a bona fide coven. I can’t say I’m all that surprised. Hey? I bet these witches would be willing to part with a little of their hard conjured-up cash. I think I’ll get some of my kinky candles out of my trunk. Try not to kill anyone while I’m gone.”

She zips off just as a spray of stars appears in her place, and soon I’m staring right at the ghost of Greer Giles.

Greer has long dark hair, the face of a supermodel, and she’s still wearing the white ruched gown she had on the night she lost her life.

Before I can say hello, Kringle appears on her shoulder and she gives him a pat.

“Lottie Lemon, this one is a keeper,” she says. “He and Thirteen get along so well.”

Kringle’s nose twitches. “And Lea has yet to chop off my tail.”

“I’m pretty sure it’d grow back if she did.” I know this as a fact. Lea makes it a point to chop off as many ghostly body parts as she can. Her true aspirations lie in chopping off body parts of the living, and I’m half-afraid she’s getting closer to meeting her goal.

Kringle stands on his hind legs and gasps. “Here she comes.” He starts zipping around the room and little Lea gives him chase, swinging that machete in her hand as if it were her job, and I’m afraid it sort of is.

Greer leans in. “I was wondering when you were going to show up to one of these.” She shudders and a sprinkling of miniature stars falls right out of her hair. “It’s just such an odd thing to hold these kinds of meetings out in the open. You’d think they’d want to hide something like this. Sort of the way you do.”

“Hide what sort of thing?”

“You know”—she wiggles her fingers my way—“that whole beguiler thing.”

I suck in a never-ending breath.

“Beguiler!” I suddenly remember with crystal clarity why that word felt so familiar. “Oh my word, Greer, you don’t think these are real beguilers, do you?” Back in October, my grandma Nell came back to tell me about the creepy Hearst curse and why the woman who set the curse on that family gave it to them. It turns out, she was also transmundane and her powers fell under the category of a beguiler, a person who has the ability to charm—as in the ability to charm a whirlwind to come forth, objects to move at will, people to bend to your will, earthquakes, fires, and I’m sure an entire slew of things I’m not that familiar with.

“Lottie, I thought you knew?” Greer begins to float over to the refreshment table and Kringle leaps from her shoulder to mine. “Sit back and enjoy the show,” she says. “They always put on a good one.”

Wait a minute...

“Oh, Kringle.” I bring my fingers to my lips. “I think Noah’s mother might really be a nefarious being.”

The lights flicker on and off as the women all gather around the table. I don’t miss a beat as I head that way and Serena Digby’s eyes widen as she looks at me with a twinge of malice.

“Well, well, ladies”—Serena nods my way—“it looks as if we have a guest in our midst. Lottie Lemon, will you be joining us this