"This is a stickup, Birdie. Everything goes into the bag."

"No." I put my hand over the locket, pressing it against my chest.

Old-timey Red pointed his old pistol at the mounted head of a moose, which had already been shot once in Alaska by Kenny in 2003, and pulled the trigger. The pistol's report startled us all into silence, and then Red pointed it at my head. "Put the necklace in the bag," he said.

"A loaded gun? The sheriff will kill Georgia Sue," I muttered.

The second bandit, who wore a green bandana over his face caught my arm and yanked it down. The locket pulled out of my hand, and Red s.n.a.t.c.hed it and dragged it up and over my head.

"Wait," I yelled and grabbed Red as he turned to leave. Red broke free, and both bandits waved their guns menacingly as they ran toward the door. "No," I shouted, stumbling after them. Mr. Deutch grabbed me around the waist to stop me.

"Let go! They've got Edie," I snapped.

"You named your locket?" Mrs. Deutch asked.

I jerked free of Mr. Deutch's hold and rushed out of the room. The bandits had left the front door wide open, and I hurled myself through it. They were actually leaving, actually stealing the locket!

"Hey!" I sprinted toward the driveway, coming right out of my shoes when the heels got stuck in the lawn. "I'll pay you for the locket. I'll pay a lot!" I screamed as they peeled out in Councilwoman Faber's brown Jaguar.

I ran after the car, pounding the pavement with my bare feet until it turned a corner and I lost sight of it.

"Oh no," I whimpered, holding my head as I panted for breath. How could you have let them get it? Why didn't you hide it when you saw them taking things? You were supposed to keep her safe, I shouted at myself in my head.

"I thought it was a game. Another murder mystery game," I whispered to no one. "Oh, this is bad. This is so bad," I mumbled. October twenty-fourth was only six days away. I had to get Edie back by then or she'd be destroyed forever. And what if she came out before that? What if she came out again tonight? She'd be lost without someone from the family to connect to and then she'd get sucked into whatever darkness had almost gotten her twenty years ago.

I turned and ran back to the house. Everyone was in an uproar. People were yelling at Georgia that she'd gone too far with this game, that letting the actors carry real guns was madness. I rubbed the tears off my cheeks with the heel of my hand, hoping the others were right: that it was a game, and that the bandits would bring the locket directly back.

"Just shut up!" Georgia Sue snapped in a voice that could've pierced armor. "I did not hire them! My surprise was a magician. Those men with the sack must be the same ones who robbed the sheriff. It's a crime spree is what it is."

"Oh dear Lord," Mrs. Deutch wailed.

"They took my Jaguar. I've got to get it back," Mrs. Faber said, her patrician nose turned up.

I stood numbly in the corner. I hung my head, looking at my pale pink toenails. I needed to do something, but I didn't know what.

"Tamara, your feet," Bryn said. "Come and sit down."

I didn't resist as he led me to a wingback chair at the edge of the foyer.

"They took my locket. It's a family heirloom. It means the world to us," I mumbled, sinking down. "Has someone called the sheriff?"

"Yes, the police are on the way," he said, shaking his head as he looked at the bottom of my feet, which were dirty and skinned.

"Did they take anything of yours?"

"My Rolex. My fault. Zorro didn't wear a wrist.w.a.tch. I should have left it at home."

"I'm sorry about your watch," I said, but I didn't really mean it. I was so preoccupied with my own trouble that I didn't have a bit of sadness to share for someone else's.

"Oh, don't worry. I'll be compensated when they're found."

I looked at him suddenly. Bryn Lyons knew magic and was rich. That combination meant he usually got whatever he wanted. If anyone could make sure the thieves were caught quickly, he could.

"I need my locket back as soon as possible. If you find them will you make sure that I get it? It can't be stored in evidence or anything like that."

"If I find them before the police, you'll have it back immediately."

"Thank you," I said, clutching his arm. He was on one knee in front of me and looked suave enough for celluloid.

He smiled.

We heard sirens and both looked toward the door. "The cavalry," he said.

"I should rinse my feet and put my shoes on."

"I'll get your shoes." He stood. "It'll be all right," he added.

I nodded with a weak smile and limped off to the bathroom.

By the time my feet were clean, Zach and the others had arrived. The sheriff had a colicky look as he tried to calm folks down.

I grabbed Zach's arm and pulled him toward the back room.

"Easy now," he said, extracting himself. "I need to listen to the sheriff and so do you."

"They got my locket, Zach. The Edie locket."

"Well, good riddance," he said, moving back toward the people crowded around the sheriff.

I felt like he'd dumped a pitcher of ice water over my head. I stood rigid as a steel beam and stared after him.

I would wait my turn to tell him and the sheriff what I'd had taken. And, for Edie's sake, I would pester him as much as I could to get them to find the thieves, but, once I had her back, I wouldn't bother to cross the street to talk to my cold-blooded b.a.s.t.a.r.d of an ex-husband. Good riddance, indeed.

I looked around and saw Bryn Lyons sitting on the back porch swing, talking calmly into his cell phone. I hoped he was hiring a band of mercenaries to hunt down the criminals. I hoped his people found the loot first and made the sheriff and his deputies look like fools. And I hoped really hard that he did it all before the twenty-fourth of October.

Chapter 3.The next afternoon, I stood by the ATM machine with a receipt in my hand that told me I had insufficient funds to make a withdrawal. I'd forgotten that I'd made the mortgage payment early before I'd lost my job.

I couldn't ask Georgia Sue for money. She'd already maxed out her credit card to buy a new jukebox for the bar. And because I wasn't taking charity from Zach, I'd given him the money to get the mechanic to fix my car. I regretted that now. I would need that money to buy spellbooks to help me get the locket back. Though I don't have strong witch powers like the other women in my family, I do have a little psychic energy like most people-maybe more since I can see Edie and sometimes I can sense Bryn Lyons's magic. It was only when I tried to cast the spells that Momma taught me that nothing happened. Still, it had been a long time since I'd tried, and I can follow directions pretty well. I didn't think I'd be half bad at potions since, as a pastry maker, I've got measuring and mixing down cold.

Plus, there are spells that anyone can do, although they're a lot riskier for the average person to try than for a witch, because a real witch can control the energy that goes in and comes out. So I wasn't happy about having to try to do magic. There was a chance that things could go wrong, and I'd blow myself up or maybe create a really bad smell in the house. But with Edie's soul at stake, what choice did I have?

The trouble was that when Momma left she took half the library of family spellbooks, and when Aunt Mel left, she took the other half. At the time, I didn't object because I didn't have any powers and wasn't a witch wannabe. But now I needed them. Real spellbooks had some power in them, and that would help me. I wouldn't get any boost from a Barnes & n.o.ble dictionary of spells that had been handled mostly by teenagers working part-time to get discounts on CDs and mochas. Besides, most of the spells in those kinds of books were written by nonpract.i.tioners and were just plain wrong.

I needed to take a road trip to Austin to the Witch's Brew-a pagan gift and coffee shop where real witches went to get discounts on CDs and mochas-and to go into the back room to buy from the inventory of proven old spellbooks and charms. Unfortunately, those books would all cost upward of three hundred dollars. On my current budget, they might as well have been three million.

And I couldn't wait until I could get the money together to buy one. I needed to do something now. I thought about Bryn Lyons. I just bet he'd have some fancy books, but they'd probably be full of mojo as black as his hair.

Bryn and his father were the only other magical family in town besides us. Too bad I couldn't ask him for advice.

"Well, well, well."

I spun around to find Jenna Reitgarten staring at me.

Great. Just who I wanted to see in my darkest hour.

"No money in your account?" she asked with a saccharine smile.

Hiccups for life. Hiccups for life. Hiccups for life. I tried to hex her, but, of course, nothing happened.

"Well, maybe you just ought to use better judgment the next time you have a job. How long until you move?" She looked at her manicured nails while I glared at her. "I never did like y'all living here anyway. You and your aunt, divorced women, and your momma, who never even bothered to get married before she had a child? That's not the kind of family values we want to promote in this town. But yours is a cute little house. Maybe I'll buy it when you go and rent it out to some nice couple that's planning a family and a normal life."

"That's a wonderful idea," I said in my sweetest Southern belle drawl. "Except I'll burn it to the ground and collect the insurance money before I sell it to you."

"Then you'll go to jail when I report you to the sheriff."

"At least I'll have a place to live rent free, with my house gone."

She rolled her eyes, but I just smiled as she strutted off. Okay, so I wouldn't really burn down a house, but I couldn't let her walk all over me in her flowered, freaking Keds. And no normal people were going to live in my house. It was strictly for witches and women obsessed with spun-sugar sculptures.

Home was a couple of blocks away, and I headed there on foot. It was a nice sunny day, and the big Texas sky stretched out above me like a beach blanket. I waved absently at neighbors as I walked.

"h.e.l.lo, Red!" Doc Barnaby called.

"Hi," I called back.

"Come sit a spell," he said.

I hesitated. Dr. Barnaby was our hearty seventy-two-year-old retired psychiatrist. He'd lost his wife in March and had been pretty lonely since. He had an excellent selection of Chinese teas, so I sometimes made pastries and dropped in to see him, although I hadn't been by lately. A year ago, I'd paid him five dollars and a strawberry cream torte to get my head shrunk for an hour. He'd have listened to me for free, of course, but I'd paid to get the doctor-patient confidentiality so I could tell him about my life. I felt like I was a disappointment to my family of witches for lacking the gift, and asked him whether he agreed that it was unfair that they didn't appreciate me for my cherries jubilee and my chocolate lava cake. Halfway through a plate of chocolate coconut drops he'd agreed completely with me. I had a rare and valuable gift he'd a.s.sured me.

"What are you doing? Come on in," he called.

I thought maybe a few minutes on his sofa and some tea might help me feel better, so I went.

Inside the sunroom, I nestled into the cream-and-yellow cushions and felt more cheerful. He had a nice tape of chirping birds playing in the background, and as I sipped tea I began to feel very relaxed. And then I began to feel sleepy. And then I began to feel dizzy.

He smiled at me and murmured some comforting words, which were so distorted that all I heard was wa, wawas, wama wa.

"Somethin's wrong," I slurred. Then I slumped over.

He got up and patted my head, still smiling. I tried to speak, but my jaw was stuck shut as if super-sticky peanut b.u.t.ter had glued my tongue to the roof of my mouth.

It turned dark. I struggled to get up, but my body stayed limp. What was happening? I tried to keep my eyes open, but the lids felt like they weighed twenty pounds each.

Help me. I'm schick. I'm sick.

Something bit my finger. I heard a faint garbled moan. My heart pounded, and a mosquito bit my head.

Oh, Dr. Banaslee. You poishinned me. Evilin. If I live, I'm telling Zash on you.

It was dusk when I woke up with a monstrous headache and found myself in a hammock in Doc Barnaby's backyard. I pushed the crocheted afghan off me and tried to get up. I fell out of the hammock, banging my knee.

"Kiss my behind," I said to the rotten universe.

I stumbled to my feet and wove my way to the wrought-iron gate. I didn't know why Dr. Barnaby had poisoned me, and I didn't care. I was p.i.s.sed off, and it was making my head hurt worse. The gate was unlocked, and I staggered forward, stopping to get my balance. I turned toward the house for a moment and shook my fist.

"You son of a gun." It was the best I could do. I was too sick to confront him.

I marched-well, shuffled-home. I stopped near the hedge to have some dry heaves, feeling like someone was hammering "I Wish I Was in Dixie" on my skull.

I couldn't manage the three steps to my door. I didn't remember them being so steep. So I crawled up them, grabbing the door handle to hoist myself to a standing position. I panted from the exertion and fought another wave of nausea.

"Thank you, door," I mumbled, resting my forehead against the cool wood and feeling slightly better.

Several beats of a police siren sounded and then stopped.

"Now what?" I grumbled.

"Tammy Jo, I should whip your a.s.s," Zach's voice boomed from somewhere behind me. "Where the h.e.l.l have you been?"

"Poisoned."

"So I see. Where the h.e.l.l were you drinkin'? I looked all over town after Doc Barnaby called. You're lucky the man didn't have a heart attack, or I'd be charging your sweet a.s.s with man-slaughter."

"Wha-?"

He pulled me aside, maneuvered my key in the lock, and then scooped me up.

"He did it."

"Who did what?" Zach said, carrying me to the couch and setting me down.

"He gave me poison tea." I held up my hand and turned it this way and that about three inches from my eyes. There was a Band-Aid on my index finger. "He poked me."

"What are you talking about?"

My arm was too darn heavy. It fell with a thud onto my chest. "I told you. He did it."

Zach squatted down next to me and sighed heavily. "Jo, we've been through a lot together, and I've got to tell you, darlin', I'm worried about you. You don't have to tell me where you been, but I wish you would. I know none of your girlfriends have seen you 'cause I talked to all of them. And I know they wouldn't dump you on your front step in this condition. Only a man, and not much of one, would leave you like this. It wasn't Doc Barnaby; you were already drunk and out of it when you called him."

My lip quivered. I could not believe this.

"He's a liar," I slurred.

Zach stroked my hair. "C'mon, Tammy Jo, you're on somethin'. Whyn't you just tell me what? You know I'm not going to arrest my ex-wife. Just tell me who gave it to you."

"Barnaby."

"Uh-huh. Remember that time June got you to try pot in high school and you thought Earl was Skeletor from the He-man cartoon? You almost drowned trying to get away from him, and yours truly had to fish you out of the lake. Next day, even you said that you can't take any of that stuff. Some genetic thing that makes you hallucinate, you told me. Your momma was the same way."