Wisteria Warned

by Angela Pepper

  I completed the transaction. It took me three tries to hit the right keystrokes.

  Nothing, she’d said. Was it really nothing? By the way she was fidgeting with both her bangs and her false eyelashes at the same time, I guessed she hadn’t stopped by the library for “nothing.”

  “What did you want to ask me?” I prompted, deliberately making my tone sweet. “Is it something about Detective Bentley?”

  The roses on her cheeks deepened to scarlet. “I don’t know. He seems different lately.”

  Being dead will do that to a person.

  “I hadn’t noticed,” I lied. “Maybe you didn’t know him that well in the first place.”

  She blinked those big, droopy brown eyes twice. “Did you two, um, break up or something?”

  “No,” I answered honestly. I didn’t clarify that the reason we hadn’t broken up was because we hadn’t been dating.

  She bit her lower lip. “Good to know.” She swayed from side to side girlishly.

  “Is there anything else I can help you with, Ms. Rose?”

  She shook her head and transferred the books into her canvas book bag. She’d borrowed some thriller paperbacks as well as a hardcover, all seemingly random selections from the New Arrivals table.

  She thanked me, and left without another word.

  I glanced over at Frank, who said only, “Meow.”

  I thumbed my chest. “Me? Are you implying I was catty just now?”

  “Meow,” he repeated. “Does kitty want a saucer of milk?”

  “Mind your own business.” I waved at him to get busy. “You worry about removing all the sneeze residue from those books, Mr. Wonder.”

  “Oh, it’s more than just sneezes.” Frank tapped a second pile of books. “These ones came in courtesy of a sweaty gentleman in a tank top who was holding them under his arm. He must have walked a long way, because every single one of them reeks of armpit.”

  “Isn’t that one of your bingo squares?”

  He beamed. “It sure is. Armpit books. Bottom-right corner.” He waved me over. “Come here. Smell.”

  “I will do no such thing.”

  “You know you want to.”

  “Every single book reeks of armpit? I suspect you are exaggerating, Mr. Wonder.”

  “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. Come over here and smell these books. You know you want to.”

  I couldn’t resist his charms and my own curiosity. An acrid, musky smell hit my nostrils. He’d been right.

  We looked at each other and sighed in unison.

  “We are so lucky to be librarians,” I said.

  He nodded. “All those degrees are really paying off.” He glanced around to make sure nobody was reading a book within earshot of us, then asked, “Who was that big-eyed girl with the bangs who got your kitty-hackles up?”

  “Her name is Persephone Rose, and she works with Detective Bentley.” I smirked. “She says he’s been acting different lately.”

  Frank snorted. “Being dead will do that to a person.”

  I shushed him, because he’d been getting loud. I could have cast a sound bubble, but I tried hard not to cast spells at work, tempting though it was. I could have deodorized the armpit books in five seconds flat using a spell, but I’d promised myself I wouldn’t. Also, the spell did create a visible stench cloud that floated six inches off the floor and took hours to dissipate.

  In a quieter voice, Frank asked, “Do you think she’s more than just a coworker?”

  I put on my old-fashioned Southern accent. “Whatever do you mean, Frank Wonder?”

  He blinked rapidly. “Like how you and I have been smitten with each other since the day we met?”

  “She might love him, like I love you, but it’s a puppy sort of love. Their bond can’t possibly be as strong as ours,” I said with a straight face.

  His expression grew serious. “How different is he, exactly? How does becoming a vampire affect a person?”

  I threw my hands in the air. “How should I know? I barely saw him on Sunday before he tried to eat Zoey’s father.” I held one finger in the air. “But he did seem to have more of a sense of humor. Oh, and his eyes weren’t gray anymore. They were silver.”

  I turned to get back to work, but Frank stopped me.

  “Hang on. I want to try something.” He held up a popular graphic novel featuring a tough but beautiful blonde who reminded me of the gorgon triplets. “What’s this girl’s name?”

  “Buffy.”

  “Buffy the... ?”

  “Buffy the, uh, Slayer.”

  “It’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Frank shook his head. “You still can’t say vampire, can you?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “You should get your new beau to bite you, or put you in a thrall, or whatever it is they do. See if he can reverse what your mother did.”

  “Right,” I scoffed. “I’ll get right on that. Please, Bentley, bite my neck for scientific reasons.” I tugged down the collar of my blouse, exposing my neck.

  Frank’s eyes flashed with mischief. “Or for personal reasons.”

  I rolled my eyes and got back to work.

  *

  THURSDAY

  Mid-day, I got scolded by Kathy for constantly checking my phone.

  She pushed her glasses up her sharp, narrow nose, which still looked owlish to me even though she’d been revealed as a sprite, not an owl shifter, and said, “I expect this sort of obsessive phone-checking behavior from the teenaged pages, but not from my librarians.”

  I nodded for her to follow me into the break room.

  Once we were alone, I explained to her my very good reason for obsessive phone checking. My daughter, who was still on summer break from school, was having lunch with her father, the genie. I relayed to Kathy how I was feeling every kind of emotion imaginable, all at once. I was happy she was getting the gift of another parent, but fearful it would be a crushing disappointment. I was curious about what information she would find out about genies, and Archer’s past, but also angry they hadn’t invited me along. I could have taken my lunch break early and met up with them, if anyone had asked.

  “You’re a good mom,” Kathy said after I’d poured my heart out.

  “Well, duh,” I said, then, quickly, “I mean, thanks.”

  “Does your phone vibrate when you get a new text message?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then leave it in your pocket. Taking it out and looking at the screen isn’t going to make your daughter report back any sooner.”

  “You say that, but can either of us, knowing what we know about magic, really say for sure that looking at my phone doesn’t have some effect on her messaging me?”

  One of Kathy’s golden-brown eyes twitched behind the round lens of her glasses. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a witch I know who has a psychic ability about phones. She can sense when someone’s going to call her, a few minutes before they do.”

  “Is it your aunt, Zinnia?”

  Oops. I only knew a handful of witches in town—three, to be precise. Aunt Zinnia, Dreamland Coffee owner Maisy Nix, and her niece, Fatima Nix. Kathy knew I was a new witch, so she must have known my witch social circle wasn’t wide. I hadn’t even been invited to join a coven. This was exactly why supernatural people didn’t gossip about powers.

  “Just a witch I know,” I said breezily.

  “Zinnia and I have been friends for years. You have my permission to reveal to her my secret. You can make official introductions when you have hers.”

  “Good.” Because I probably would have told my aunt regardless.

  Kathy peered up at me, her lips pursed. “But you were going to tell her anyway, weren’t you?”

  I pursed my lips right back at the head librarian. Were sprites mind readers? Kathy, are you reading my mind?

  She cocked her head to the side. “Why are you making that face?” Kathy asked. “Did your phone buzz?”

  If she was a mind reader,
she was an equally good bluffer.

  “No, but I should probably check it, just in case it buzzed while we were talking and I missed it.”

  She pointed to the charging station, where we kept cords and chargers for every type of phone. “Check it one more time, then leave it in your pocket or keep it back here at the charging station.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  As she walked away, the screen lit up with a new message from Zoey: Lunch with Mr. Caine is going well. The waitresses thought I was his date! He introduced me as his daughter, and now they are all flirting with him like crazy. One of them offered to be my new stepmom.

  I typed out a few choice words then erased them.

  I was so full of confusing mixed emotions that a full minute passed and I hadn’t been able to compose a response.

  A second message came through: I’m going to put my phone away now. I just wanted to let you know everything is fine and you can stop checking your phone obsessively. Have a great day at the library! Boost those circulation numbers!

  Chapter 5

  FRIDAY

  As I shelved books about family relationships, I thought about Zoey’s relationship with her father, whom she referred to as Mr. Caine. She would probably come up with a goofy nickname for him soon enough, but he was Mr. Caine for now.

  In addition to having lunch together, Zoey had spoken to her father, the genie, on the phone a few times.

  According to Zoey, his powers were pretty much what we’d known about. He had the ability to bend and manipulate time, but only in small pockets.

  Other than that, the genie who’d sired her was, in Zoey’s words, “basically normal.” She’d gone on to say that despite his age, he was immature. His body was the same age as Chet Moore’s—thirty-seven—but he acted like someone thirty-seven going on sixteen. He seemed to Zoey less like the fathers of her friends and more like the teenaged boys she went to school with. This was mostly due to his interest in massive multiplayer online video games. At their lunch meeting, he’d talked about his gaming system and playing strategies “pretty much non-stop.” He’d also acquired the phone numbers of not one but two waitresses.

  “Two waitresses,” I muttered to myself as I shelved books about self-improvement.

  “Two waitresses,” I huffed as I shelved books about knitting, and gardening, and origami.

  “Two waitresses,” I snorted as I was logging into the computer system to help a patron at the self-checkout.

  I probably would have thought about Archer Caine getting the phone numbers of waitresses for my entire shift, except I was finally startled out of my thoughts by the name on the self-checkout patron’s library card: Jasmine Pressman.

  Pressman! Alarm bells clanged in my head.

  She was the ex-wife of Perry Pressman, and the mother of Josephine Pressman. Both of them were now deceased, thanks to their involvement with Archer Caine and his genie sibling. Before he was getting phone numbers from multiple waitresses, he’d been involved in dealings that lead to several deaths.

  I turned toward the woman at the self-checkout slowly. “Jasmine Pressman?” I had spoken to her on the phone once before, but we’d never met—that I knew of. Until now.

  “Yes,” she said cheerfully. “That’s my card, all right. Would you like to see my ID to make sure it’s me? You probably do. Here. I’ll grab my driver’s license for you.” She rummaged in her purse, humming a happy tune under her breath, then produced her driver’s license. “That’s me. I know it says Jasmine Carter on the license, but it’s actually Carter-Pressman, with a hyphen. Or at least it is now. After my divorce, I went back to my maiden name, but then,” she paused to inhale rapidly, “earlier this year, after my ex-husband and my daughter both passed away unexpectedly, I decided to add the Pressman back on to keep them alive, so to speak. To keep them with me.”

  I looked her in the eyes and struggled for an appropriate response. I couldn’t let her know what I knew, but I wanted to say something.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. There was genuine sadness in my voice, courtesy of my memories of her loved ones.

  Jasmine Carter-Pressman, however, only shrugged.

  “That’s how things go,” she said, smiling and being quite chipper for someone who’d suffered such terrible losses so recently. Was it medication? Magic? Or was she simply one of those remarkably resilient people?

  She was a petite woman, much shorter than her daughter. She had big eyes, olive skin, and acne-scarred cheeks. Her hair was long and dark, and very sparse. She was practically bald at her temples. Her makeup was heavy and her eye shadow was a jarring shade of turquoise that matched the turquoise in her earrings and necklace.

  I caught myself staring, and quickly looked down at the driver’s license in her hand.

  She followed my gaze down, and her smile broke as she frowned at her driver’s license. “Look at that silly photo of me,” she said, then immediately returned to smiling again. “Such a shame anyone checking my license has to see this dreary old mug looking up at them, don’t you think? Did you know they don’t let you smile? It’s a security thing, they say. It’s hooey, if you ask me. Nobody looks like themselves in a photo if they’re not smiling. They might as well ask us ladies to remove our makeup, too! What are they thinking over there at City Hall, at the DMV?” She waved the driver’s license card between us, then stuck it into my hand. “Horrible, isn’t it? Well, there you go, now you’ve seen it. I suppose it serves me right for not coming in here more regularly!”

  I passed back her card and hoped she didn’t notice the tremble in my hand. I’d been pretty tough, emotionally and physically, even before my witch powers kicked in, and I was even tougher now, but I wasn’t made of stone! My emotions caught me off guard sometimes. My hand trembled because I’d had the spirit of the woman’s ex-husband inside me, as well as that of her daughter. I’d been a vessel for their personalities, as well as their memories. I’d experienced their most precious moments as vividly as my own.

  Even after my successful rezoning spell, fragments of these experiences were around, like how dust stays around, no matter how well you vacuum. Standing next to this woman who felt like a wife and also a mother threw me for a loop. I didn’t know her, yet I had all these feelings for her. I had genuine love for her.

  “You should come in more regularly,” I said, smiling my love at her. “To the library, that is. We’d love to see you.”

  She smiled back at me, though it was hard to see her face due to the tears welling in my eyes.

  “Sweetheart, you look like you could use a hug,” she said, and then she had her arms around me.

  Mom, I thought, even though she wasn’t my mother. I hugged her tightly, then I finally overrode the residual feelings and took a respectful step back.

  Jasmine looked me up and down. “You must be going through something difficult right now,” she said.

  I had to laugh. “You could say that.” When was I not going through something difficult? Really, when was anyone?

  “You should come to a meeting sometime.” She dug around in her purse. “Darn. I don’t have any of the fliers, but we do meet once at week at the community center. It’s a self-help group for people dealing with life changes.” She glanced up and beamed at me. “We don’t say loss. We say life changes.”

  “That sounds like a wonderful group.” It did sound like a wonderful group.

  She took my hand and squeezed it. “You’re welcome to drop in any time. We call ourselves The Ducklings.” She tilted her head back and laughed. “That’s just a joke. We’re actually called The Awakenlings, but that’s kind of a mouthful, so some of us call ourselves The Ducklings.”

  “The Awakenlings,” I said, nodding. “Or the Ducklings. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  *

  I was ready for the weekend.

  At the end of Friday, before we went home, Frank and I put on a magic show for Kathy to demonstrate some of our powers.

  While our l
ittle performance of witch and flamingo tricks was good for a few laughs, the whole thing also felt cheap. As though I’d sold myself out, artistically.

  I looked forward to some time away from the library, away from Kathy’s expectations that everything was different now, and that the three of us would share everything with each other.

  I liked Kathy, and I respected her, but she wasn’t like Frank. I didn’t want to talk to her about my confusing feelings or petty jealousies.

  I told myself it wasn’t because she was a sprite. I had nothing against sprites, no matter how long and weird their tongues were. My discomfort was only due to the fact the woman was my boss. No matter how many times she insisted that the library’s patrons were our only true bosses, we all knew it wasn’t true. The patrons had never scolded me for looking at my phone. I couldn’t stop feeling self-conscious whenever Kathy was looking over my shoulder, supervising. I didn’t want her doing the same with my personal life.

  After I left the library, I picked up some Thai takeout from Kin Khao on my way home.

  As I walked up the front steps of my house, I heard a dog barking. The sound seemed to be coming from inside a house. My house.

  I opened the front door and listened. My senses tingled. Not my witch senses, but my regular mom ones.

  The dog barked again. It was almost certainly a dog, though Zoey did make some similar yips when she was in fox form, especially if Boa and Ribbons were successful at getting her riled up.

  “Zoey?” I called up the stairs.

  There was a scuffling sound from the vicinity of my daughter’s bedroom.

  I dropped the takeout bags and practically flew up the stairs. I banged open the bedroom door and found four creatures in a standoff, growling, glaring, hissing, and breathing fire.

  They were, respectively, an enormous black dog, a red fox, a white cat, and a wyvern.

  I demanded, as any mother would, “What the hell is going on in here?”

  The fox shifted back into the human form of my daughter. She gave me a sheepish look. “We didn’t hear you come in,” she said.

  “And who, exactly, is we?” I widened my eyes and nodded at the dog.

  Zoey settled onto the edge of her bed and said to the dog, “You can change back now. I promise you won’t get in trouble for the mess.”