Wisteria Wrinkle

by Angela Pepper

  “Dawna’s the real deal,” Gavin said. “I’d put my faith in her.”

  “And yet you wouldn’t tell her the truth about who you were. Karl told her.” It had been wrong of Karl to tell anyone, but that was beside the point.

  Gavin didn’t say anything.

  Zinnia turned her attention inward, asking herself why she even cared about Gavin telling Dawna he was a gnome. Dawna had only just learned about the existence of supernatural powers that morning, when she’d read the note intended for Gavin. She hadn’t even had a single night to sleep on the news.

  Gavin grabbed the coffee pot, which was now full, and started toward the living room. “I’ll take care of the crew,” he said. “Do you want me to send your partner in crime back here to help you with that potion you were talking about? The, uh... what was it called again?”

  “Chameleon potion,” she said, getting excited about her project. “It sprays off a rainbow assortment of magic. Using it on a charmed object is a bit like hitting an infected patient with a raft of various antibiotics rather than a targeted strain.”

  He gave her an appreciative look. “And the key is the infected patient?” He and Dawna had both been brought up to speed about the accordion floor and the manner of Xavier’s and Liza’s abductions.

  “Following the metaphor through, the keyhole in the elevator control panel is the infected patient.”

  “Very clever,” Gavin said. “And if your chameleon potion doesn’t work, we’ll just call Uncle Griebel. I bet he can hotwire the thing.”

  “Your uncle is not my favorite person right now. Ever since one of his contraptions nearly electrocuted my niece.”

  “Huh. Uncle Griebel never mentioned that to me.” He gave her a knowing look. “See? This is why gnomes have a bad reputation.”

  “Then it’s up to you to be the changed gnome you wish to see in the world,” she said, mangling the famous quote.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.” She waved him to go join the others and take the coffee.

  Half an hour later, Margaret Mills came into the kitchen for the fourth time that evening. “The pizza is here,” she said.

  “Not hungry.” Zinnia barely looked up from her magical ingredients and cauldron full of bubbling potion. She was dimly aware of how she must have appeared at that moment—perfectly ready for the cover photo of Kitchen Bewitched Magazine!

  Margaret did a double take. “Zinnia, is that an honest-to-goodness cauldron you’re using?”

  “Cauldrons have the exact right shape, and their materials don’t interact. You can’t mix this stuff in any old jar. You’d bruise the potion. If you were Kitchen Bewitched, you’d know that.”

  “Bruise the potion? But it’s a liquid. I don’t understand how it would get bruised.”

  “Of course you don’t understand. And that’s why I’m mixing the chameleon potion and you’re keeping an eye on things out there, making sure nobody...” She searched her memory for a phrase she’d learned from the younger Riddles. “Making sure nobody wipes their pepperoni fingers on my upholstery.”

  “Nobody wiped their pepperoni fingers on the sofa, but they are getting antsy about going through the elevator.” She leaned forward and peered into the cauldron. As she did so, a single pale eyelash fluttered loose from her cheek and fell toward the cauldron’s contents. Zinnia deftly grabbed the eyelash using magic and floated it safely over to the kitchen sink, where it wouldn’t contaminate the entire batch. Margaret didn’t even notice the close call. And this was exactly why Zinnia had sent Margaret out of the kitchen three times already.

  “Step away from the cauldron,” Zinnia said in her most authoritative voice.

  Margaret backed up, waving both hands in the air. “Fine, I’ll leave you to it, Ms. Kitchen Cursed.”

  “Kitchen Bewitched.”

  “Tomay-to, tomah-to.”

  Zinnia rolled her shoulders back, and cast the spell that would give Margaret a chomp on the hindquarters.

  Margaret squealed and ran from the kitchen.

  Chapter 27

  While Zinnia put the finishing touches on the chameleon potion, she listened to her coworkers chatting amiably in the living room.

  Dawna had a million questions about magic, and the others were eager to tell her about aspects of their lives that had been secret until now. Despite the shadow of disaster looming over them, the mood was cheerful, not unlike the moments they’d shared at the bowling alley whenever Karl bowled one of his high-scoring games.

  The discussion turned to the one remaining coworker who wasn’t accounted for: Carrot Greyson. Not one person had said a word to her about what they’d seen on the third floor or in the ground floor hallway. The crew from the DWM had done an excellent job of containing and cleaning up the bone-crawlers before the infestation had become a building-wide panic. Carrot Greyson had no idea what was going on around her.

  “Carrot’s just like me,” Dawna said. “I bet she’s got powers, but she doesn’t know it yet.”

  Margaret made a vague noise.

  Dawna immediately whooped. “She does? Margaret, tell me more!”

  Margaret said nothing. Zinnia couldn’t see the witch, but imagined Margaret was miming zipping her lips shut.

  “Fine, don’t tell me,” Dawna said. “But you have to tell her. Poor Carrot can’t be sitting there every day, working side by side with the rest of us, not knowing.”

  Karl said, “We don’t know about Carrot. Just because Annette made her a rune mage in that silly book, that doesn’t mean anything.” He snorted. “The woman actually cast me as a troll.”

  Nobody said anything.

  Karl went HARUMPH.

  Gavin said, “Carrot is quite happy to live her life not knowing. I vote that we leave her out of this.”

  “I vote we tell her,” Dawna said. “Come on, people. You’re not going to take Gavin’s side, are you?”

  There was some muttering. Despite how they might have felt about telling Carrot about magic, none of them wanted to take sides in a Dawna-Gavin standoff.

  “I could just ask Carrot,” Dawna said.

  “No,” Margaret replied sternly. “First of all, not everyone is supernatural, Dawna. Keep that in mind at all times. And secondly, remember that it’s extremely rude to ask.”

  “It’s way beyond rude,” Karl said. “Dawna, you don’t ask. You don’t. Not ever. Whenever you ask someone, you’re putting yourself at risk, as well as everyone you consort with.” He made a huffy noise. “As your supervisor, I forbid you from disclosing your gifts to anyone except those currently present.”

  “What?” Dawna sounded outraged. “You can’t do that. You’re not my supervisor in everything.”

  Karl made another HARUMPH, and the room fell silent. Zinnia guessed that by Dawna’s lack of quibbling, Karl had flicked out his terrifying chameleon tongue.

  “Okay,” Dawna said meekly. “I see what you did there with your tongue.” Her voice became nasal. “Ew. That thing smells nasty.”

  “It’s the bone-crawlers,” he said. “They take a long time to ferment.”

  “I didn’t want an explanation,” Dawna said.

  “Me, neither,” said Gavin.

  “I’m interested in the fermentation process, but perhaps another time,” Margaret said. “And I’d rather you tell me than show me.”

  There was a smattering of amused laughter.

  Dawna spoke again. “All right, Karl. You can be my supervisor when it comes to magic stuff, but only if you’re Gavin’s supervisor, too. That way we’re all at the same level.”

  “I already am his supervisor,” Karl said.

  “It’s true,” Gavin said. “I’ve known about Karl’s powers for a long time, and he knows about mine. That’s why I work at the department.”

  The revelation triggered a dozen more questions. Dawna spit out queries at a rapid pace. Soon, everyone was talking at once.

  In the kitchen, Zinnia realized that was why Gavin always li
stened to Karl’s orders despite giving off the impression he didn’t respect the older man. It was a mentor thing.

  While the conversation in the living room continued, Zinnia tuned them out and reviewed her notes and procedures for the potion.

  So far, everything was coming together perfectly. She’d been short a few ingredients, but she’d consulted some of Tansy Wick’s notes for substitutions, and she felt confident in her choices. There were some aspects of Zinnia’s life where she didn’t have the utmost confidence, such as when she was trying to impress lessons upon her niece, but Zinnia did know her potions.

  From an early age, she’d shown an intuitive grasp for combining organic and inorganic materials to create powerful compounds. For every Witch Tongue word there was a color, a texture, a taste. Once she’d learned the language, she could “speak” in potions. With each year of experience, she’d become more fluent. This chameleon potion, to be used on the look-alike key, felt like it could be her final examination. Her thesis paper, so to speak. She’d been tested before, but never like this. The lives of two people hung in the balance.

  She stepped back from the cauldron and rubbed her eyes.

  She heard a knocking sound. Someone was at the front door.

  Zinnia tuned in again to the voices in the living room.

  Gavin said, “Who could that be? Everyone’s here.”

  “I’ll get it,” Margaret said. “It might be one of the other Riddles. Zinnia’s always helping her niece out of trouble.”

  Everyone went quiet.

  Zinnia stayed where she was in the kitchen. She stared at the entryway, expecting to see her niece, Zara Riddle, come bursting in wearing something technicolor. Zara would launch into the story of some new catastrophe, talking a mile a minute, pausing only to demand to know who all the people in the living room were, as well as their respective powers.

  But the redheaded librarian witch didn’t show up. Who had been knocking at the front door?

  Zinnia went to the living room. Her coworkers barely glanced up. One of them was missing. The other witch, Margaret.

  “Where’s Margaret?” Zinnia asked.

  Gavin grinned up at Zinnia from his seat on her favorite reading chair. “Her ball and chain came by with some sort of family crisis.”

  Dawna shot Gavin a dirty look. “Don’t say ball and chain. He’s a person. His name is...” She scrunched up her face.

  “Mike,” Zinnia said. “Margaret’s husband is Mike, and he’s a very nice man.” Nice was a substitute for the first word she’d thought of to describe Mike, which was boring.

  Zinnia parted the front window’s curtains and peered out at the porch. Mike and Margaret weren’t there.

  Zinnia asked, “Did she leave? Was there an emergency with the kids?” More importantly, was Zinnia going to have to use the key and walk through the time portal and face menacing sandworms without another witch to back her up?

  “I don’t know,” Dawna said. “She didn’t say anything to us.”

  Zinnia walked toward the front door to go check on Margaret. She paused, turned back, held up a finger, and gave the group a serious look. “Nobody go into the kitchen. Don’t breathe in the direction of the kitchen. Don’t even think about how much you shouldn’t go into the kitchen. Just... don’t.”

  The three, who were seated comfortably, agreed to heed her warning, and immediately went back to talking about magic.

  Zinnia stepped outside and squinted from the brightness of the light. The sun was low on the horizon, and the whole sky was orange. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if it was sunrise or sunset. Her internal clock had been thrown off by the visit to the past and a missed sleep. Catnapping at her desk for an hour was no substitute for a full night’s rest.

  She heard Margaret’s distinctive voice. She followed it down the sidewalk and up the street. Margaret and her husband, Mike, were having a heated conversation about something. Zinnia didn’t want to eavesdrop, and yet she felt an overwhelming urge to do so. Margaret had been dropping hints for weeks about something going on in her life, and whatever it was had better not be taking Margaret out of tonight’s plans.

  Zinnia picked up a leaf, a blade of grass, and a pinch of dirt. She rolled the items in the palm of her hand, whispered her spell in Witch Tongue, and relaxed as the glamour took hold. It was just a simple foliage-cover spell. To non-magical eyes, Zinnia would appear to be a green bush that matched her height and width. The species of bush was like nothing in existence on Earth, yet it blended readily with any environment. When she had last used the spell, which was on her niece, Zara had reported birds landing on her shoulders, attempting to roost on her. Zinnia had since modified the spell to make the false foliage less enticing to feathered friends. Even so, there was one bird, a blue jay, who seemed to be watching her from its perch on a fence post.

  Zinnia ignored the curious blue jay and shuffled closer to Margaret and her husband.

  Mike Mills, like his wife Margaret, had frizzy gray hair—just not as much of it. The top of his head was bald enough to be dry and shiny in the winter and sunburned in the summer. As it was late spring now, the top of his head was both shiny and pink. Mike’s face was oblong, with a prominent brow bone and a square jaw. His head had a rectangular, boxy shape to it, and his nose was a smaller version of that box. He had small eyes, thin lips, and big teeth. When he wasn’t actively engaged in conversation, he could look a bit like Frankenstein’s monster standing out in the rain. But if you got him smiling, or, better yet, talking about his favorite hobby—flying remote-control airplanes—Mike Mills could turn on the charm.

  Mike wasn’t a large man, but he looked taller when standing next to his stout wife. Mike worked as a software engineer, and could wear whatever he wanted to the office. His usual ensemble was a pair of well-worn jeans and a tropical-print, button-down shirt with short sleeves. He’d put on a few pounds somewhere between his first kid and his fourth, plus a few more after that. The tropical shirts did nothing to minimize his expanding waistline, but he didn’t seem bothered by this. In fact, with the way his head jutted forward at all times, Mike Mills gave the impression he was only vaguely aware of his body’s existence. It was simply the vehicle in which his brain rode around, getting from the computer at work to the computer at home.

  Mike was evidently agitated by something, jutting his head forward even more as he spoke to Margaret.

  “You treat me like a nobody,” Mike said, spittle raining from his mouth. “No. It’s worse than that. You treat me like I’m one of the children.”

  Margaret, who had her arms crossed, jutted her chin up at him defiantly. “I wouldn’t treat you like a child if you didn’t act like one.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re a grown man, Mike. Why do you have to spend so much time and money on toys?”

  “Toys? My computers aren’t toys. They’re how I earn a living to support our family.”

  She flung her arms out in frustration. “Oh! So that’s how you want to play this? What about my contribution? My salary is almost as much as yours, and my job is the only one with benefits. Your boss is your old buddy who knows he can take advantage of you and pay you less.”

  “Don’t you dare say that about Carter. He’s going to bump up my pay once the next program gets through testing.”

  “For crying out loud! You’ve been saying that for ten years now. Carter needs another year to get everything in place. Carter this. Carter that. I’m sick of hearing about Carter’s plans for the company’s future. What about your future, Mike? When are you going to take some control over your life?”

  “Why?” He looked for a moment like he might laugh. “Why would I take control just to have you snap it away again?”

  “Are you saying that I’m controlling?”

  “If the shirt fits, wear it.”

  “The shoe,” she said. “The saying goes, if the shoe fits, wear it.”


  He groaned and made a gesture of pulling his hair out, even though he didn’t have any on the top of his head where he pretended to grasp. “Why?” His posture buckled, and he fell to his knees. “Why must you always correct me?”

  “Why are you so content with being wrong?”

  He groaned, got back to his feet limply, and then turned away with a heavy sigh.

  “You win,” he said. “I give up. There’s just no winning with you, Margaret.”

  “Who said anything about winning? Do you think I want to win? Do you think I want to spend my life married to a loser?”

  The word loser hung in the air like a curse that couldn’t be taken back.

  Mike slumped even more. “I’m done,” he said, sounding like a broken man.

  “Don’t say that.” Margaret crossed her arms again. “I’m, uh, I should not have said what I was thinking.”

  Zinnia, who’d been watching in horror from inside the bush glamour, thought, Margaret, the word you’re looking for is sorry. Tell him you’re sorry!

  Margaret uncrossed her arms and placed her hands on her hips. “I’m not sorry,” she said, responding to Zinnia’s silent suggestion. “It’s about time we were honest with each other, Michael.”

  Mike wouldn’t meet her gaze. He waved a hand and took a step back.

  “I’ll be at my sister’s,” he said, turning his torso away from his wife, giving her the shoulder. “The kids are already there.”

  “But what about our plans? The schedule? We’ve got picnics, and barbecues, and mini-golf. You love mini-golf!”

  “We all love mini-golf. But it’s not enough to keep a family together.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “We can still do things together, as a family. We can still mini-golf.”

  “But it won’t be the same. How can we be a family if we don’t live together?”

  “We’ll figure it out. People get divorced all the time. It’s a perfectly normal thing.”