Wisteria Wrinkle

by Angela Pepper

  Margaret said nothing.

  Mike took another step back, pulling further away. “We can stick to the schedule, mini-golf and all. If you want to set up some other time to see the kids without me, you can speak to my lawyer.” He turned and walked away.

  Margaret’s mouth moved but no sound came out. Her eyelashes fluttered. Mike was already three houses away when she squeaked out, “Lawyer?”

  Zinnia stood very still.

  Mike disappeared out of sight around the corner.

  Zinnia’s heart pounded. This wasn’t as bad as seeing her other coworker being snapped up by an interdimensional sandworm, but it was bad. Should she reveal herself and let Margaret know she’d heard everything? It could feel supportive to Margaret. But then again, it could make Zinnia the target of Margaret’s wrath.

  Margaret answered the question for her. She turned to the bush and kicked it. Hard.

  “Ow!” Zinnia dropped the glamour all at once. “How did you know it was me?”

  Margaret blinked rapidly. “I didn’t. I felt like kicking something, and that ugly bush was right there.”

  Zinnia didn’t believe her. “You felt my thoughts, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe.” Margaret started walking back toward the house.

  There was a rumble as a family van with a broken muffler started up. It lurched noisily out onto the street and zoomed by. Mike was at the wheel. Parked behind where the van had been was a compact sedan, the other Mills family vehicle. Zinnia realized Mike must have come there to exchange vehicles, since he had the four kids with him at his sister’s place and would need the van.

  Zinnia felt, yet again, that it was time for her to comfort her friend. She was almost getting good at it. She reached out and patted Margaret on the shoulder. “I’m sorry about—”

  Margaret twisted quickly, yanking her shoulder away. “Don’t be sorry,” she snapped. “And don’t look at me like that.”

  “Like how?”

  Margaret scrunched up her whole face. Her eyes were glistening. “Like you feel sorry for me. It’s disgusting.”

  Zinnia averted her gaze, looking up at the sky, which was now turning from orange to red. She loved being outside for sunset, but not like this.

  Margaret asked, still snappy, “Did you at least get that pot of soup mixed up? And by soup, I mean... you know what I mean.”

  “It’s ready.”

  “Well? What are we waiting for? A telegram from Liza and Xavier? An engraved invitation?”

  Zinnia felt her irritation at Margaret rising. She had been the one waiting for Margaret, waiting for her to finish blowing up her marriage and get back on track with their plan. Why was Zinnia being yelled at? She hadn’t done anything wrong... other than eavesdropping. But it was something witches did! Why else had they developed so many types of glamours?

  Zinnia wanted to give Margaret an earful about how she wasn’t the easiest person to get along with. Mike had actually made a few good points. But even as she mentally formed the words in her head, another part of her advised caution and compassion. Margaret was already hurting enough. Plus they did have a mission ahead of them.

  Zinnia nodded and repeated her response. “The soup is ready.”

  “Good.” Margaret turned and clomped toward the house.

  She didn’t have to tell Zinnia not to say a word to the others about what had just happened. Zinnia knew. Even when the two witches were furious, they still understood and trusted each other.

  They returned to the house and got ready with minimal talking. They gathered supplies and split into two groups for the car ride back to their workplace. There was no point in taking all the cars. It would be suspicious to have the entire department’s vehicles in the parking lot.

  Both carpools arrived at City Hall just as the building’s exterior lights were flickering on. The lights were immediately smothered by the problem insects. There seemed to be more of the moth-like bugs than ever.

  Chapter 28

  City Hall was eerily empty inside.

  The cleaning crew, who’d been spooked by one creepy thing too many that week, had made good on their threat to go on strike. An all-staff memo from the mayor’s office had gone out that afternoon, along with the request that all departments pitch in by cleaning their own offices until the “minor negotiation issues” had been resolved.

  As the group of five entered the elevator, Margaret held back.

  Dawna asked, “What’s wrong, Margaret?”

  “I don’t know,” Margaret said, frowning. She’d been quiet since her fight with her husband. She looked uncertain, which was anything but normal for the woman.

  “We need five of us,” Dawna said. “I’ve got my cards with me, and I’ll try to figure out more, but I’m pretty sure we all need to stick together.”

  “Maybe someone should stay behind,” Margaret said. “For safety.”

  Gavin said, “If you’re too chicken to go, just say so.”

  Margaret gave him an indignant look. “Oh, I’m going! I was thinking Zinnia should stay behind.”

  Everyone turned to look at Zinnia, who said, “Why me?”

  “Your family needs you,” Margaret said. Her expression was inscrutable.

  Dawna said, “What about your family? You’ve got those four kids of yours who are always gettin’ in trouble. Zinnia doesn’t have any kids.” Dawna looked around the group. “None of us have kids except you, Margaret.”

  The others glanced around the elevator and murmured agreement. It was true. None of them had kids.

  The elevator doors started to close.

  Margaret jumped forward, squeezing past the doors.

  “Not so chicken after all,” Gavin said.

  “If the prophecy is for five people, I don’t have any choice,” she said.

  Zinnia gave Margaret a puzzled look. Since when were they referring to Dawna’s card reading as a prophecy? She’d missed that memo.

  Margaret avoided meeting Zinnia’s eyes. They hadn’t exchanged more than a couple of words since the house.

  Dawna asked, “What about your kids, Margaret?”

  Margaret snorted. “Having four kids just gives me four reasons to take a one-way ticket to 1955 and never come back.”

  Dawna chuckled, and soon Karl and Gavin joined in. Zinnia stayed quiet. The others thought Margaret was joking, complaining about her obnoxious children in her usual manner. They hadn’t been outside with Zinnia. They hadn’t witnessed the sad spectacle of Margaret’s home life crumbling.

  The elevator rose. The doors opened on the third floor. It was the regular third floor, with the boardroom, glass hallway, and cubicles. An overflowing garbage bin sat next to the wall across from the elevator.

  Gavin stepped out, saying, “It doesn’t look very magic to me.” He turned to ask Karl, “Is this really an accordion floor?”

  Dawna joked, “Quick, someone press the button to close the doors. We can get rid of Gavin for good.”

  “Hey!” Gavin gave his on-again, off-again girlfriend a dirty look. “Everyone saw that, right?” He waved one hand jerkily. “Dawna thinks it’s funny to be mean to me.”

  Dawna leaned out and peered left and right. “I don’t see any sandworms,” she said.

  “Me, neither,” said Gavin.

  Zinnia looked over at Karl. She held up the white key, which she hadn’t used. They couldn’t be on the accordion floor, assuming it was even possible to reach it again, because they hadn’t tried the key yet.

  Karl held his fingers to his lips in a shush gesture. It wasn’t like Karl to play a prank. Zinnia caught on that he wasn’t doing it to be funny. He was teaching Gavin and Dawna a lesson about paying attention.

  “Tell me what you do see,” Karl said to Gavin gruffly.

  Gavin looked around. “I don’t see anything, but it does smell a bit funny.” He inhaled audibly. “Yes. With my keen supernatural senses, I can tell this is a different plane of existence.”

  “That’s the garbag
e you’re smelling,” Dawna said.

  Gavin walked over to the opposite wall and took a good, hard look at the pile of garbage. “Do you think there’s a clue in here about where those sandworms have taken Liza and Xavier?”

  Karl started to snigger. He wasn’t just teaching the two of them a lesson. He was also enjoying himself.

  Zinnia decided to put a stop to it. They’d wasted so much time already. She’d voted against sticking around the office until closing time, but Karl had promised to make some phone calls to his contacts to see if any of the other sprites knew about the floor. He hadn’t found out anything, and the time had been wasted. If Karl wanted to remain in charge of the group, he was going to have to make better judgment calls.

  Zinnia waved Gavin back to the elevator. “Gavin, get back in here, you ding-dong,” Zinnia said. “This is the regular third floor. We haven’t used the key yet.”

  “Oh. Right. I knew that.” Gavin turned around and got back into the elevator. “I was making sure the regular third floor was okay. Like a control group in an experiment.”

  “Sure, you were,” she muttered. “Ding-dong.”

  Gavin shot Zinnia a puzzled look. “Did you just call me a ding-dong? Twice?”

  “Yes.” Zinnia was more focused on getting the key into the chameleon potion from her purse than worrying about Gavin’s feelings.

  “Take it as a compliment,” Margaret said. “She only calls people that if she likes them. She calls me a ding-dong all the time!”

  “That’s because you are a ding-dong,” Zinnia muttered.

  “Ouch,” Margaret said. “I hope you cheer up once we’re back in 1955.” She said to the others, “You should have seen her last night. We met this lovely Italian-American family, and—”

  Zinnia flicked Margaret a warning look. She thought, very clearly, Margaret, if you tell them my business, I’ll tell them yours.

  Margaret pointed to her temple and nodded. “That’s a ten-four, good buddy.”

  Zinnia wasn’t sure why Margaret had chosen to use CB radio slang to communicate, but she was pleased her message had been received. She wouldn’t need to follow it up with a magical bite in the buttocks.

  “Now watch closely,” Karl instructed Gavin and Dawna. “You’re getting to see a genuine witch at work, close up. Witches are typically secretive—for good reason—so this is a rare privilege.”

  The others watched as Zinnia carefully dipped the key in the chameleon potion. She slowly brought it over to the keyhole next to the control panel.

  “It’s dripping,” Dawna said. “Is it supposed to be dripping like that?” She turned to Karl.

  “Hold your questions until the end,” Karl said gruffly. In other words, he didn’t know.

  Zinnia crouched down to be eye level with the keyhole so she could insert the key cleanly.

  “Yes, it’s supposed to be dripping,” Zinnia said to Dawna out of the corner of her mouth. “Try not to step on the drips.”

  Dawna asked, “Will it ruin the potion?”

  “No,” Zinnia said. “But it is slippery, and if one of us falls down in this tiny elevator, they might take down the rest of us.”

  Gavin asked, “Was that a genuine witch joke?” He clapped slowly. “Nicely done.”

  Zinnia looked back over her shoulder. “Would you like to do the key insertion, Mr. Gorman?”

  Gavin stopped grinning and cleared his throat. “Uh, no. Go ahead, Zinnia. I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”

  Dawna crouched down and put a hand on Zinnia’s arm. “Wait,” she said. “Are we really going to 1955? I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m kind of a different color than you folks. The nineteen-fifties weren’t such a jolly old time for my people.”

  Gavin puffed up his chest. “I’ll protect you,” he said.

  Karl said, “You’ll be fine. You’re with us.”

  Dawna didn’t look very reassured. “It sure would be ironic if we were all looking out for sandworms and one of us got lynched.”

  The others exchanged uncomfortable glances.

  Dawna went on. “It’s just, what if we go through and it’s night time there, and we find out Wisteria used to be one of those sundown towns, where black people couldn’t be out after dark.”

  Nobody spoke, not even Gavin.

  Finally, Margaret said, “If worst comes to worst, we’ll put a magic glamour on you, Dawna. Zinnia has an excellent spell for disguising a person as a green, leafy bush.”

  “I do,” Zinnia said. “I’m so sorry we have to plan this as an option, but I can protect you with a glamour.”

  Dawna pondered this for a thoughtful moment before nodding. “I’m in,” she said. “Slide that key in there, Zinnia. Let’s do this thing.”

  Let’s do this thing.

  Zinnia slid the key in. There was a hum, like white noise but prettier, that filled the elevator. She tried turning the key. It wouldn’t turn.

  “Wiggle it,” Margaret said. “You’ve got to wiggle it.”

  Dawna asked, “Is that a magic thing?”

  Margaret shrugged. “Just a basic key thing.”

  The key wouldn’t turn. Zinnia’s heart sunk. Wiggling the key wasn’t helping. The chameleon potion had its limits. It was a general all-purpose potion that could do many things, but it wouldn’t open interdimensional portals. There was no hope. Their hare-brained scheme wasn’t going to work after all. They should have called the DWM. Why had they been so eager to believe Dawna’s prophecy was about the five of them? Were they all so desperate to be heroes that they had screwed up any chance of getting the Red Shirts—make that the new hires—rescued?

  Just as Zinnia’s flame of hope guttered, she felt a tingle in her fingertips.

  She wiggled the key. The tingle grew stronger. The chameleon potion was working! It had just needed some time to take hold. Ah, the oldest magic that ever was. The passage of time, which always changed everything with its spell.

  She turned the key.

  The elevator lights flickered.

  Everyone had been quiet, but now they became even more quiet. Not one muscle twitched.

  The elevator cage lurched. There was the sensation of smooth, fast movement, despite the elevator already being positioned on the third floor.

  The movement, which seemed to be neither up nor down but both at once, stopped with a second lurch.

  The elevator dinged and the doors opened.

  Everyone who’d been holding their breath—which was all five of them—gasped.

  Chapter 29

  The two previous times Zinnia had been to the otherworldly third floor, the elevator had opened on an abandoned construction site. This third visit, the bare concrete space was still there, along with the objects she’d seen during her first visit: piles of lumber, a vintage lunchbox, and old tools. However, this time the entire floor was bathed in bright orange light, and the view through the windows was very different.

  Before, the windows had been milky, filtering bright light that matched daytime blue sky. Now all the windows had been smashed. Some fragments remained in the frames, and the glass fragments showed pale blue sky. However, the view, as seen through the smashed holes, was not Wisteria as they knew it. Not the current version, and not the 1955 version.

  It was daytime here, but daytime in the desert... if that desert were also on a different planet. Two pale daytime moons hung in the orange sky.

  Dawna stepped forward, leading the way out of the elevator. “Two moons,” she said. “I thought it was a mistake, but the cards told me to follow the two moons, and here they are.”

  Margaret was the second person to step out of the elevator. She craned her neck, looking left and right. “What’s going on? When we came through here yesterday, we walked down the stairs and out into a regular-looking world. It was Wisteria, in 1955. I think I would have remembered seeing sand dunes and two moons in the sky.”

  Karl stepped out third, making a mild HARUMPH sound to get everyone’s attention.


  “Just as I suspected,” Karl said. “This is a three-way connection. If we take the stairs down, we’ll corkscrew through the portal and go into the past. But the world outside the windows is a different one. Remarkable.”

  Dawna asked, “You mean this is a portal with three doors? Like a three-way traffic stop?”

  “Yes,” Karl said.

  “You mean a three-way intersection,” Gavin said. “Because sometimes there’s a yield sign one way.”

  Ignoring him, Karl said, “There can be all manner of connections. I told you that an accordion floor is known for its elasticity.”

  Had he? The group looked at each other.

  Gavin stepped out of the elevator. “No, boss. You didn’t tell us any of that stuff.”

  Zinnia chimed in, “And you told me that time travel was impossible.”

  Karl tugged at one ear. “Did I? Well, we sprites can’t be expected to know everything.”

  Gavin waved at the twin moons. “Do you sprites know about alien planets?”

  Karl breathed in and out. “The air seems breathable.”

  “But you didn’t know that before we got here,” Gavin said. “It might have been handy to know more about the place we were going to. The way you talked about accordion floors, I thought you knew all about them.”

  Karl’s face reddened. He made a blustery sound.

  “Go easy on our boss,” Dawna said to Gavin. “This is uncharted territory for all of us.”

  “Thank you,” Karl said to Dawna.

  Gavin pointed at Dawna. “Teacher’s pet!”

  “Good grief,” Margaret said. “Are we going to hit the clean streets of 1955, or what?” She was already heading toward the stairwell.

  “Not so fast,” Zinnia called out. “I didn’t see any sandworms in 1955. Doesn’t that sandy desert outside the windows seem like the more appropriate place to look for the Red Shirts? I mean, Liza and Xavier?”

  Gavin cracked up. “Did you actually call them Red Shirts?” He rubbed the corners of his eyes. “That is priceless. Especially coming from you, Zinnia.”

  Dawna elbowed him. “Don’t be nasty. Just because the cards say they’re not dead doesn’t mean they aren’t in danger.”