CHAPTER 1

 

It happened decades ago on a sunny Easter Sunday morning. My witchy black-spider aunt Regina led me down the cliffside walk to her beach, where she stood me against several bales of hay, casually nocked an arrow to the string on her longbow, stretched it taut, and aimed it at my heart. I was six years old. My grandmother Jenny saved my life, and years later, when she died, she willed me everything she owned. Regina—her daughter—killed her, and now Regina, that self-same human cockroach, is coming after me again.

I am told I have great powers, but I know less than I should about what they might be. And my time is running out.

 

I work in the motion picture industry as a stunt lady. I know what I am doing and I do not take unnecessary risks, so it is not as dangerous as you might imagine. I was at my agent Sumner Blinker’s office in mid-Wilshire just east of Beverly Hills when I had my first hint that my life was about to change. I heard a ring tone and reached for my cell phone.

What I heard was an old blues song:

It ain’t necessarily so/It ain’t necessarily so

The things that you’re liable/To read in the Bible

Ain’t necessarily so…

I did not recognize the caller ID. Still, answering the phone is something automatic with me. The phone is a lifeline in my business. Ignore at your own risk. But when I flicked it on, there was nobody there. And yet I was still hearing It ain’t necessarily so… Then a woman’s voice came on the line and said, “It’s Blu Baxter! Hey, girl, may I come on in?”

I replied with a sharp “No!” with some degree of attitude. I hate cold calls, people wanting to clean your air ducts or sell you solar panels. There was no click or anything, just dead air, so I guessed the person went away.

Sumner gave me a funny look.

“You okay?”

“Of course I’m okay. It’s just my damn phone.”

“You took a pretty bad tumble up there on Mulholland.”

“Sumner, I did not fall on my head.”

Maybe I was a little too sharp with him. He was not on my favorites list at that time. He was supposed to be my agent, always in my corner, always there for me. But I was suspecting that had recently not been the case, and he was acting more than a little guilty.

“Okay, okay!” He threw up his hands, gave me a disgusted look, and turned his attention out the nearest window where absolutely nothing was going on. He was being even weirder than usual, and that only fueled my suspicions.

I have premonitions. A lot of people do, but with my family history I tend to pay attention to the little things. In a way I am just a beginner at the important things in my life. I guess you could call me a raw apprentice, a sort of witch in training. I am not all that old (as in old hag) but it takes a century or two to begin to master the craft, if such a thing is possible. So I am just a kid at this game. And worse luck, I do not have anybody training me. My grandmother, so the old family story goes, dated William Shakespeare. But maybe she was not born back in that time. There is another way to do that. But I am getting ahead of myself here. I promise, I will explain.

Anyway, I am in no way your old-school definition of a magical person. I have not memorized any spells or incantations. Not yet, at least, though I have been tempted, and I do have a book of special mixings, chants, and “mind pushes,” and I have been fooling around with a curse or two (without much success). My little not-prayer book was handed down to me by my mother, though I doubt she ever read a line of it herself. My mom was sure those ancient scribblings in old dead languages were the work of the devil. Maybe they are. It depends on your definition of what a devil might actually be.

So, clearly I can be expected to have no recipes for eye of newt and wing of bat, no heavy black cauldron that I have to lug around, and I can say that most of the common prattle you hear about witches is superstitious nonsense or badly misleading and if I were you I would not worry about it.

You hear crazy stories about women with powers and you have to realize those are just ways to explain things that are impossible to understand, even with the general public’s current awareness of parts of the universe known as dark matter, or as some of us refer to it, the dark side. A person appears out of thin air, helps you or zaps you to a cinder, and then disappears. They must have come from Mars, thank you, Orson Welles. How else do you explain it? You have a hot dream, the best, most fantastic sex ever and you wake up to realize you are alone in your own totally messed-up bed. Oh God, just another wet dream. Or was it?

If people only knew one way or another for sure, they probably would not come up with the superstitious stuff, or all that crazy, outdated sci-fi stuff, either. No, there are no canals with water on Mars. Of course, if you took away fantasy, then I guess nobody would watch The Wizard of Oz anymore, and I for one would miss the part where Dorothy gives the Tin Man that quizzical look, What the heck are you, anyway? As often as not when I see that shiny fellow, I start wondering how all his parts work, but let me admit that is just ordinary oversexed me, and if you are lucky in that way, maybe you are a bit of the same. Seriously, have you ever wondered how it would be if the tin guy had actually been a tin lady? Think about it. Every time you had to take a leak, you would risk a rusty butt, and what sort of life would that be? Keep the oil can handy, gal. 

Sumner kept ignoring me, and then my phone rang again. Or maybe not—hard to figure out what was happening with it. All I knew was I heard another ring tone from somewhere close by and I picked up again. There was a sound of drunken laughter, and I had the feeling I was trapped in a bar in Munich during Oktoberfest and a merry band was chanting

Ist das nicht ein Schnitzelbank?

Ja, das ist ein Schnitzelbank!

The ring tone cut out and a cheerful woman’s voice said. “Juniper Warner, it’s Tillie Noonschnapper!”

Nobody I knew. “Go away,” I said out loud.

Those Germans sounded like they were having a great time, but I certainly did not know anybody named Tillie, much less with the ridiculous last name Noonschnapper. Sounded like she was hanging out in a happy beer hall. I bet she was getting her share of fine Teutonic romance and good lovings, to boot. Okay, so I was jealous of a person I did not know in a place I had never been. Nobody is perfect.

I was on pain meds for my knee at the time and so I was feeling a drowsy mean, so to speak, and my mind started to drift. I could not remember the last time I had gone for some really great affectionate intimacy. I do not know why it has to be so difficult. There is nothing even remotely mysterious about the rules for how to have wonderful sex, or of cosmic physics, for that matter. You give me five minutes and I can dispel a lot of silly old beliefs about sauerkraut making you impotent and pickles making you horny. Actually, it is a bit of the other way around, particularly if you are talking about those tiny little green gherkins. Now there is a turnoff for you. As for modern science, no, Pope Urban VIII, sorry, but these days nobody follows your declaration that the sun revolves around the sun. After all, since Einstein and Hawking figured out a few bits of the space-time continuum, anyone can see how a person like me (and maybe you) might be able to bend time a little, or raise or lower your body density so you could punch like Iron Man or disappear through a solid brick wall. You see how drifty I was.

I can only guess why I am bringing up a lot of doubts and concerns here, but believe me, ladies with powers are basically just ordinary people with wants and desires and plenty of faults, and they are just as confused about the meaning of life as anybody else. And since we are talking about superpowers, sooner or later you are bound to ask, and the answer is no, I have not yet found a guy with a rod like iron who can go all night without chemical additives. That does not mean I have stopped looking. Hope springs eternal, if you will pardon the pun.

And in the next moment there was a third ring tone! This time I heard an old Harry Belafonte ballad:

Love, oh love, oh careless love/Love, oh love, oh careless love

You’ve broken the heart of many a poor guy

But you’ll never/break this heart of mine!

An ancient voice came on and said her name was Margotha—those cold callers will try anything, but it was going to take more than a pitiful old lady to scam me—I screamed a silent Go away! and shook my head and slipped the phone back in the pocket of my jeans. That seemed to take care of it.

Still, I had to reflect that an unusual number of little weird things had been happening lately. The other night I had the odd notion a spider on the wall in my apartment was trying to talk to me. And for the last few days Scamperdoodle, the damn black cat that lives in the bushes next to my front door, has been dashing across the sidewalk in front of me every time I leave my apartment. It is something more than the old wives’ tale about the black cat curse, I am sure of it. He stops for a moment and gives me the gimp eye and then moves on with a grave, measured step. And another thing. My super-dependable motor scooter, Putt-Putt, has been running rough as a cob. And now my cell phone is acting up. Maybe I am going crazy, but I do not think so. Something is up and I am pretty sure it involves me.

No, I am not being stupid or paranoid. Really. I have to pay attention to the little things. People like me can live a long time—hundreds of years, actually—but usually we do not. Over the centuries, we seem to lead awkwardly dangerous lives, and we are just too impetuous for our own good. Rashness is bred into us like an unlucky charm. Born to die and no reason why, at least no real reason that I can see, other than maybe if we were a bit less wild and carefree we would be on top of the world.

When I was very young, my own mother and father disappeared while on a questionable venture they thought of as a charity mission. Supposedly, while they were flying to a remote village, their plane crashed in the green jungles of Borneo. I was barely six years old, just about the time Auntie Regina tried to nail me with an arrow, come to think of it. To this day I do not know for sure whether Mom and Pop actually died back then, but if they did, I doubt it was in so mundane a fashion. Think about it. Why would my mom need any sort of airplane to go anywhere? And she could bring Pops along, no trouble at all. How? I will explain later.

Anyway, when I was a young girl you might have described me as timid. Okay, that is the exact opposite of “impetuous,” but there were reasons why I became a scaredy-cat for a while. For one thing, the loss of my parents made me hesitate before taking a step in any direction. I tried to think about what I was doing, to at least try to control the impetuous nature Regina assured me was mine. Timid at the start of things. And yet look at me now: I turned out to be an attractive (if not totally luscious) Hollywood stunt girl.

My name is Juniper Warner. Juniper. It is not a common name and some of the kids in early grade school called me Loony Joonie, Ju-Ju Bird, or Juicy. My uncle Alfred called me Jouse, his own bemused putdown, a combination of my real name and “mouse.”

The irony was that I turned out to make my way with a fairly risky job. I am not an amateur; I am a Hollywood professional. I make my living, such as it is, as a member of the Screen Actors Guild, and I have been in the Stuntwomen’s Association of Motion Pictures for the last dozen years or so and I have performed various rides, skids, jumps, and falls in twenty-two pictures. And although I do not look it, I am something past thirty, as I keep reminding my agent. He does not believe me, or maybe that is just his latest excuse. As I may have said before, we witchy ladies do not show our age much. If you had been keeping score you might have realized I am way over twice the age I have said. And yet, just an infant in the witching biz.

Still, show biz for me has been a lot of hard rides with my fair share of bumps and thumps and scrapes and bruises. A girl’s knees should not ache at my age, should they? Or maybe a wiser question might be Should not a girl who expects to live a long, long time be a little more careful? Whatever. I am at the stage where I am thinking it is time to move on to a more stable profession, like directing. But when I talk about it, my agent, shifty old Sumner Blinker, does his song and dance, shuffles the papers on his cluttered desk, and looks out the window.

I can talk about the subject of witches with some authority. You see, as far back as anyone can remember, most of the women I know of in my family have had more than their fair share of mysterious powers. And from what I have seen, many of them have lived sad and wasted lives.

Romance for us is a complicated business. For instance, suppose you might pick some rock-studly fellow to be your life mate, and your love is true for maybe a half century or so but then his magic wand begins to wilt while you are still longing for young lust. Okay, so it is not all just about heat underneath the sheets, but suppose it was you, look at the situation: the ultimate May/December tragic romance begins when you are born in 1702 (the start of Queen Anne’s War, the second French & Indian War) and even though you marry a young rake in 1752 (total population in the American colonies was estimated at something over a million people, so you get something of a choice). But by the time 1802 rolls around… Thomas Jefferson is President of the sixteen United States and your beloved is more interested in bocce ball than your (still) tender and (still) young nipples. This is actually nobody’s fault, as far as I can see, but why are there not more man witches to spread around? Maybe because they are even more impetuous than us girls and impetuosity is our doom? Could be.

Another problem: You think being able to read men like an open book is the answer to personal fulfillment? How is knowing every time you get cheated on going to secure a lasting relationship? Or how traveling back in time makes you a better person? Or being able to disappear even when you are still standing right there—how is that going to strengthen your bond with a lover who cannot do the same? How do you even explain it?

It is hard enough for the ordinary person to find happiness. It is nearly impossible to find a life that is even somewhat balanced and fulfilled when your unearthly abilities make you that much different from everybody else.

Perhaps the one exception was Grandma Jenny. Jenny somehow found a way that seemed to work for her, and it gave me hope that I someday might do the same.

I loved my grandmother, but I had not thought much about her in years. That was why it was so unexpected when I found out she had bequeathed me all her worldly possessions and a couple of unworldly ones as well. I inherited everything she had, and all that good fortune just about killed me. Of course, by the time she actually did die, I was under the impression she had been dead for years. Life is full of surprises.

This happened that same day I got the odd phone calls that proved to not actually be phone calls at all. As I may have mentioned, I was limping around with a knee brace and an ankle swollen twice normal size due to a bike stunt gone wrong on one of those car chase movies where the hero gets in a rage and zooms away in his cherry red Mustang and the hot girlfriend—that’s me, at least that was the starlet I was doubling for—anyway, she takes off after him on her big motorcycle to warn him he has no brakes. Only she has no brakes, either. This is often the kind of thing you see in movies a few months after three or four morons are sitting around in a huge office with framed movie posters on the walls trying to justify their big paychecks. There is the director, two producer types, and one of the producers’ wanna-be starlet girlfriends, and these idiots are trying to do the writer one better by “fixing” his screenplay. As in, Here, you poor fool, let me fix that for you. Ah, Hollywood!

Anyway, sorry for the digression. The thing is, my last stunt was a high-speed spill on a winding stretch of Mulholland Drive. High speed in stunting means something a little over thirty miles per hour. Maybe you are thinking really high speed should be more than twice that, but believe me, all I am wearing under that string bikini is a thin, skin-colored Mylar body suit. Thirty is plenty fast enough and they can always fool around with it in post-production. My rented Husqvarna was supposed to skid on a curve and then the scene would cut to angles of the bike and to a dummy in slo-mo going over the edge and tumbling down the hill. Except we did not have to do any pickup shots because this time the bike did not skid to a halt in time and the dummy was me.

I was in freefall for what felt like eternity but was actually only about four seconds before I did a tuck-and-roll and continued bouncing and bumping my way to finally come to an uneasy rest a hundred feet below. I would have tumbled and thumped the rest of my sorry-assed way on down the hill, except for the scraggly little tree trunk that snagged my right leg and stopped me just short of flying over a switchback cut that loomed directly below. There was no room to spare; my arms were actually over the edge of the forty-foot straight-down drop when I was brought to a jerking halt. We can agree that was the lucky part.

A few members of the cast and crew peered over the steep edge and clapped and cheered, but the producer, who had overruled my objections to this particular bend in the highway (and was now glaringly aware of the possibilities of long hospital stays and expensive lawsuits), had personally scrambled over the edge and was gingerly making his way down to save the stunt girl, a role he actually accomplished, snatching me by the left ankle just as the tree root holding my right leg gave way.

The upshot was, I had to go on the disabled list and I missed a fight in a biker bar, a nude scene in an exploding waterbed, a crash through some splintering sugar-glass, and a naked-girl fall off a forty-story building. You may be starting to get the idea that I specialize in nakedness and nudity. That is not precisely accurate, as I am always wearing something skin colored, but it is as close to nude as the producer can get without his or her film being pinned with an R rating, or worse, a naughty X.

Still, whether I am bundled up to the max or naked as a jaybird, no producer in their right mind wants to take a chance on a gimped-up stunt girl. At least that was what Sumner was saying for the fourth or fifth time. There I was, grumping around in his second-floor office while he tried to keep the conversation light and inconsequential. What a thieving, conniving scoundrel he is!

For years, Sumner rented a converted two-bedroom condo in a mid-century ex-apartment complex just off Olympic and Wilshire. His establishment was freshened up with ancient movie posters from Sorcerer (Billy Friedkin’s failed remake of the French classic Wages of Fear), Herbie Goes Bananas (Disney’s tired three-quel that chugged onscreen after the original Herbie and Herbie Goes to Monaco), and a cardboard theater lobby stand-up of Shaft pretending he is some sort of angry black James Bond.

Sumner himself was a horny middle-aged fellow with his head shaved bald like his hero David Carradine played in the Kung Fu TV series, except that Sumner was middle aged (describing him kindly) and he had a wide face that peered out at an unjust world over his vastly expanded waistline. He wore huge glasses with big plastic rims, as did his father and many other powerful old Hollywood dudes in the 1970s.

Sumner was in a running verbal war with Janie, his worn-down-by-life secretary, who thought the movie memorabilia should be junked in favor of travel posters of the Bahamas that might uplift her spirits. But that was not going to happen. Sumner knew to the bottom of his scheming black heart that his movie posters were timeless. No one would ever be able to convince him otherwise. His dad, Seymour Blinker, was a top agent before him, so of course Sumner knew everything by Tinseltown osmosis. He reverently talked about the glory years when his dad represented guys like Rock Hudson and James Cagney, and he earnestly believed that the classic Hollywood of many decades ago was still alive. It had to be, with the slam-bam spirit of his legendary dad now coursing through his own veins.

On a practical level, Sumner enjoyed the fact that my more or less steady stream of gigs contributed if only on a minor level to his cost of living, and he had claimed for the last four years that he was trying to get me a shot as a film director. On my end I had been trying to get him to invest in a newer computer with a little more zip than his antique Apple IIE, and maybe invest in a smart phone or two, and—most important to me—get out there and pound the pavement a bit more on my behalf. Sumner still used cell phones that weighed about two pounds and were as big as twelve-inch Subway sandwiches. Timeless classics, he called them. A few weeks previous he caught Janie trying to sell them on eBay.

Anyway, I was hanging out in his office and moaning about lost opportunities while he had his feet up on his desk and stared out the window. He was filing his nails with an emery board, and occasionally he would grunt to assure me he was still listening. 

“What does it take to fall off a balcony?” I said. “I jump off and gravity does the rest.”

He looked up from the serious touch-up he was applying to the nail above his gigantic imitation blood diamond pinkie ring.

“You’re busted up something fierce, kiddo.”

“Just a sprained ACL.”

“And an ankle the size of a grandioso prize-winning coconut.”

“I could do the trick.”

“No way. Think about it. You were supposed to double for a hot chick in a halter and cutoff shorts. How are they going to shoot around that mungonious black knee brace you’re wearing?”

That was Sumner. He could never just say “big.” Everything in his world was fantastico, stellarific, marveloso, cracker-jacker-smacker-packer…hyperbolic words he thought show biz people actually said, and I guess they did in his own mind’s eye, in the world as seen by Blinquez the Magnifico.

“They could write something like that in the script.”

“Why would they do that?”

There was no answer for that one. I could not think of a single reason. There were at least a dozen hot chick stunters ready and eager to replace me at the drop of a cue card.

“Well, they could cut around it.”

“Oh, yeah. With no master shot. How’s that gonna work?”

In stunting, the master shot is everything, and we both knew it. All I could do was shrug, ceding the point. You would have thought that would settle him down, but it did not. Sumner kept yammering away, probably thinking he was on a roll. It was getting to where I wished for another weird ring tone.