Nope. I still couldn’t say it.
She smiled even more broadly. As she did, her fangs retracted. Her teeth were normal again, and she was just my mother again. With genie blood on her chin.
“Keep the necklace,” she said.
“It’s not the source of your powers?”
“Not at all.” She lowered her gaze to the dark ground. “It was wrong of me to let you think a silly antique necklace was the source of my power.”
“It was wrong,” I said. “And not once did you correct me when I called you a zombie.”
She kept her gaze lowered. “I let you believe a fairy tale because you seemed more comfortable that way.” She flicked her hazel eyes up to meet mine. “Will you ever be able to forgive me?”
I looked down at the pendant on the palm of my hand. “I can’t believe it’s just a necklace. And you’re a va—” My throat closed up again. Trying to say the word was like trying to cough up an organ and swallow a sharp bone at the same time.
A moment passed. An owl hooted in the nearby forest. I thought of Kathy, and the library, and my life that I would be returning to, but in that moment, none of it seemed real. Nothing was real except the smell of blood in the air. Genie blood. It smelled just like regular blood.
My mother broke the silence. “You’ll keep your memories. You’ll know the truth from this point forward, even if you can’t say a certain word anymore.”
“Fair enough.” I bobbed my head to the rhythm of the owl’s continued sounds. “And I’m telling Zoey and Zinnia. They have a right to know.”
“Of course,” she said. “How about you? Are you injured? Were you hurt when the agents shot Archer’s sister?”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Is that not what happened? Perhaps you’d better fill me in.”
We walked over to Bentley and picked him up, each taking one arm over our shoulders. I would have cast my body-lightening spell, if it had been working, but we managed.
By the time we reached Lucille, I’d explained most of what had happened.
“Dr. Ankh will be disappointed about being wrong,” she said. “We were both so certain he was a parasitic twin.”
“Who even knew genies were real?”
“Not me.” She hiccuped.
“Indigestion?”
She loaded the sleeping detective into the backseat and shot me a dirty look. “Don’t be rude.”
“I’m not trying to be rude. We can get you some stomach medicine back at the castle. I overeat plenty, so I know all the good flavors.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“I’ll pick up a whole assortment while you shower and get changed.”
“That would be nice.”
I got in behind the wheel, and she settled into the passenger seat.
As soon as we were back on the road again, she said, “I’ve never eaten a genie before. But then again, I’ve never eaten anyone. Up until tonight, I’ve been subsisting on a serum of Dr. Ankh’s design.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve taken a liking to eating people.”
She shrugged. “You said so yourself, he was a genie.”
She looked off at the dark horizon. I followed her gaze to the dark fringe of the forest.
“Do you suppose he’s dead?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “Sometimes you think someone’s dead, but it turns out they’re not quite dead after all.”
“Tell me about it.”
We kept driving, and she didn’t say anything about the wyvern flying overhead. She didn’t notice when he dove down into the backseat and made himself comfortable next to the sleeping Detective Bentley.
I reached back with my mind and asked how things were going at the castle.
Safe for you to return, Ribbons answered. Not for me.
That’s what you get for supplying wyvern venom to an evil genie.
He replied with a nonverbal burst of flames inside my head. He hadn’t supplied the venom, which reportedly only came from female wyverns, and he wasn’t in the mood to joke about it.
I’m coming to live in your house, Ribbons said as I pulled the Cadillac back into the castle’s parking lot.
Okay. I parked the car, turned off the engine, and turned around to smile at the wyvern in the backseat.
His scaly eyebrows lifted in surprise. Really? Just like that?
Sure. Why not? Also, I suspected I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.
My mother, still unaware of our wyvern hitchhiker, got out of the passenger side and came around to help me get Bentley out of the back. The wyvern was already gone. Ribbons hadn’t told me as much, but I knew he was already flying to my house.
Later, when I did finally get back to my house myself, at two o’clock in the morning, with both my mother and my old friend Nash in tow, the wyvern would already be settled into my new/old basement. When the sun rose on Tuesday morning, the house would be teeming with life. There would be five people—Zinnia stayed over with Zoey on Monday night—plus one fluffy, white cat and one pint-sized, sarcastic wyvern. And there would be, thanks to the Red Witch House’s accommodating magic, just enough room for everyone.
There would not, however, be nearly enough maple syrup.
Chapter 41
Zoey turned off the whirring food processor and gave me a huge smile.
“This thing works like magic,” she said.
“Technically, no,” I said. “Magic is much less predictable.” I pointed at our new kitchen gadget. “That thing works like an overpriced kitchen gadget made of plastic and metal, running on electricity.”
“Whatever. The vegetables are all sliced perfectly, and I didn’t even have to touch a knife.”
“Be careful when you change the round thing. It’s still sharp.”
She rolled her eyes. “I think I can swap out an interchangeable disk without harming myself. Look, I’ve turned the machine off, and I’ve unplugged it. For safety’s sake.”
“You can’t be too careful,” I said. “I wouldn’t want you to lose a fingertip, especially not when your grandmother is here, what with her being a bloodthirsty va—” I still couldn’t say the word, thanks to my mother’s powerful magic.
Zoey snapped the carrot grating disk in place, then glanced at the open kitchen window. “A little louder, Mom. I don’t think the entire neighborhood heard the disturbing conversation coming out of the Red Witch House.”
She made a good point. Even before we’d moved in, neighborhood kids had told stories about our house.
I rubbed my chin to show I was pondering big changes. “We should paint the whole exterior of this house. We should do a whole re-brand.”
“Sounds like a lot of work.” She plugged the food processor back into the wall. “Expensive work.”
“It would be a big job. And, knowing this house, it would probably shake off the new paint like a wet dog shaking off pond water.”
She giggled and went over to the window to close it. As she turned back to face me, she frowned the way she did when something was troubling her and she wanted me to coax it out of her.
I asked, “What’s up, buttercup?”
“Mom, you said the genie took the gun from the DWM agent like someone taking a candy gun from a baby. What did you mean by that? Does the gun in this metaphor shoot candy at people, or is the gun itself made out of candy?”
She closed the window for this? “It’s a metaphorical candy gun, so it could go either way.”
“What if the gun is made out of candy, and it also shoots candy?”
“That sounds adorable.”
“And yet still not appropriate for babies.”
I chuckled. “You used to love playing with the strangest things when you were a baby. And boy, could you crawl. I had to make you a cage out of two laundry baskets and a bungee cord just so I could take a shower.”
She looked horrified. “You what?”
“You loved it,” I said with a hand wave. “You
made chimpanzee noises.”
Her hazel eyes widened.
The doorbell rang.
“Doorbell,” I said.
Zoey shook her head at me as she checked the lid latches on the food processor. She held up a thick carrot. “Can you get the door? I want to see this thing grate a carrot.”
“Doorbell,” I repeated. I held up one finger, which she knew was shorthand for you have one job, now do it.
The chimes rang again.
“Doorbell,” she said reluctantly, and she slunk off to answer it.
Four women whose first names started with the letter Z and last names were Riddle sat around my dining room table.
“What a lovely salad,” Zirconia Riddle said.
“That’s not blood,” I told my undead mother. “It’s just grated beets. So don’t get all excited and make your fangs pop out.”
Zoey clapped her hands excitedly. “Oh, Gigi, can you do that? Can you make your fangs pop out?”
I patted my daughter on the arm. “Zoey, don’t be rude. We don’t ask you to turn into a fox and play fetch with the Tub Plate.”
“Why not?” She gave us a playful grin. “That sounds like fun.”
Zinnia said, “Maybe after dinner we can go for a walk to the beach and bring the Frisbee.”
“You can’t,” I said. “It’s in the dishwasher.”
Zinnia raised an eyebrow my way. “Dinner in the tub again last night?”
“Balls to the walls,” I said.
She replied with a sigh, “It’s a good thing magic burns so many calories.”
My mother cleared her throat. We all turned to look at her, since the throat clearing sounded like the specific type used to interrupt a conversation while pretending not to.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” she said, reaching for the wine, which was a raspberry variety she’d brought with her. “I’ll just amuse myself with more wine while the three of you Riddles talk in your secret code about Tub Plates and Wall Balls.”
“Balls to the walls,” I said, correcting her. “You see, the Frisbee’s curved walls are what make it a perfect serving dish for meals in the tub. The food stays in, and the whole thing floats. As for the balls, that’s when you combine spaghetti and meatballs with chow mein noodles plus sweet-and-sour chicken balls.”
“Of course,” my mother said, her upper lip curling with mild disgust. “That does sound like something you would eat. You always begged me to buy the pasta in the cans. The kind that smells like dog food.” She turned her head and looked at Zoey. “Your mother used to eat my hand lotion.”
“Nuh-uh,” I protested. “I never ate your hand lotion. Just your Chap Stick. The cherry kind.”
“Cherry Chap Stick?” Zoey waved one hand nonchalantly. “Perfectly understandable. Cherry Chap Stick does smell really good.”
I stuck one finger in the air. “Here’s a fun fact: Balls to the wall is a term coined by aircraft pilots. When accelerating quickly, the throttle is pushed all the way to the panel. The throttle lever, which is a ball, touches the panel or wall.”
Uncomfortable silence. Not an uncommon reaction to one of my fun facts.
Zoey asked, “Is that fun fact from one of your ghosts?”
“I don’t know. Between all the spirits, plus working at the library, I pick up all sorts of things. My head’s internal organization system is, shall we say, whimsical at best.”
Zinnia said, “It’s a shame you can’t use a page-finding spell on all your memories.”
My mother snorted. “Good one.”
Zinnia frowned at her older sister. “Have another glass of wine, Zirconia.”
The air took on a nippy quality.
My mother replied, “Don’t mind if I do.”
Zoey and I exchanged a look. This was our third meal together as a family of four, and we’d learned to recognize the early stages of fireworks. It always started with my aunt saying something about witchcraft, and led to my mother commenting passive-aggressively about how witchcraft was silly or dangerous or beneath discussion. Hurt feelings and angry recriminations would follow.
The two eldest Riddles stared off. They looked so similar to each other they were like mirror images, except for my mother’s black hair to my aunt’s red, and my mother’s ultra plain white shirts to my aunt’s floral layers.
My mother licked her lips. “That’s an interesting vest you’re wearing,” she said to her sister. “The flower petals bring out all the shades of red in your hair.”
Zoey and I both widened our eyes at each other. Here it comes.
My aunt patted her floral tapestry vest. I would guess the vest matched a curtain or footstool back at her house.
Zinnia finally replied, “You think so?” Her voice was soft, vulnerable.
“Yes,” my mother answered, not being sarcastic at all. “I always admired how you could pull together different patterns and textures. You inherited the artistic genes in the family.”
Zinnia blinked rapidly. “Zara always teases me about my clothes.”
“She does? She’s one to talk.” My mother snorted again and smiled knowingly at her younger sister. “Our dear Zarabella is not exactly in demand as a model for the cover of fashion magazines.”
Zinnia giggled and raised her glass of bright-red raspberry wine to clink my mother’s. “Cheers to that,” she said, and they shared a cheeky laugh at my expense.
My daughter raised her eyebrows at me. Are you going to take that?
“Excuse me,” I said, interrupting the two elder Riddles. “I’ll have you know that Dr. Katz, the veterinarian, has invited me to be on the veterinary clinic’s next calendar. As a model.”
This only made the two of them laugh harder. They were seated next to each other, and my mother leaned into my aunt’s space, bumping her elbow playfully. My mother’s black hair fell like a lace veil over my aunt’s shoulder, mingling with her red hair. Their combined laughter made me think, for the second time that day, of the zoo. Specifically, the hyena cages.
Zoey caught my eye and twisted her lips to the side. “Interesting,” she murmured.
I leaned in toward her and whispered, “When they gang up on someone else, they don’t fight with each other.”
Zoey nodded. “It was like that with my old friends, Francie and Jade. That’s why I always let them make fun of me. To keep the peace.”
“So, I have to just be quiet and take this?”
She shrugged. “Or move across the country to get away.”
I glanced up at the dining room’s ceiling, with its old wooden box beams, and whispered back even more softly, “Something tells me this house doesn’t want us to leave.”
My mother barked, “What are you two whispering about over there?”
“Sorry, Gigi,” my daughter said. “It’s my fault.”
My mother didn’t look convinced, but she straightened up and resumed eating her dinner. Ever since the night she fed on the genie, we hadn’t discussed her dietary needs—not for lack of me trying. She wouldn’t even talk about the artificial serum that Dr. Ankh supplied her with. What I did know was that she ate just as much food as I did whenever we shared a meal.
Dinner that night was takeout from our favorite Thai restaurant, paired with the salad Zoey made using our fancy new food processor. The kitchen appliance had been a belated housewarming gift from my mother. When I compared her gift to that of my aunt’s, which had been a hideous lamp, I found myself thinking fondly of the lamp, because at least it didn’t lurk in my kitchen, making me feel guilty about not making more salads.
As we ate, my mother and her sister continued to make up for lost time and laughter. They ganged up to tease me about my love of thrift stores and theater department costume sales. Eventually, they moved on to my housekeeping skills, or the lack thereof. Way to grab for the low-hanging fruit. What next? My lack of husband? Thankfully they all lived in their own husband-free glass houses.
We finished eating, and when the subject of dessert came u
p, we made the requisite “desert the table” jokes.
After the laughter died down, my mother made a big show of presenting the red velvet cupcakes she’d brought for dessert.
“Look how red they are inside,” she cooed, slicing a cupcake open to demonstrate.
The table grew uncharacteristically quiet.
“What?” She looked at each of us in turn. “Don’t tell me you’re too full for dessert. There’s never been a Riddle woman who hasn’t been able to find room for dessert.”
“It’s really red,” Zoey said, gingerly poking the cut-open cupcake with a fork.
“It’s so vibrant,” Zinnia said, taking one for her dessert plate but not touching it with her fork. “Like a red poppy on a summer day.”
All three of them turned to me expectantly.
I looked right at my mother. “What these two goofballs are too polite to ask is, did you put anything weird in these cupcakes to make them so red?”
She furrowed her brow. “No food coloring,” she said hesitantly. “I made it the traditional way, with real cocoa powder, baking soda, buttermilk, and vinegar. That’s how you make a proper red velvet cake.”
“So… no blood?”
She looked aghast. “Of course not. What kind of a monster do you take me for?”
Zoey, always sensitive to conflict, immediately shoved a third of her cupcake into her mouth. “So yummy,” she said around red cake and white icing.
Zinnia stuffed her mouth as well. “Mmm. Good.”
My mother pushed her chair back and looked down at her lap. “Message received,” she said softly.
“No, don’t be offended,” I said, shoving a whole cupcake into my mouth and making happy eating sounds.
She looked down at her lap, her eyes glistening. “I get it,” she said quietly. “I’m not like the rest of you. I renounced my natural powers, and now I’m a monster.” She retrieved her cloth napkin from her lap, placed it neatly on the table, and stood. “I’ll be on my way. It was good catching up. Let’s do it again in a few years.”
She headed for the door.
The three of us stared at each other in shocked silence.
Using my magic, I slammed the dining room door shut so fast she nearly walked into it. With great effort, I swallowed down an entire cupcake.
Wisteria Wyverns (Wisteria Witches Mysteries Book 5) Page 31
