Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 2

by Angela Pepper

  I got up from my knees so I could be at eye level to comfort her. It took great effort because my whole body weighed about a million pounds. Between the attempt to heal Jo and the visit to her tunnel of memories, something had really sapped my strength.

  “You’re not stupid,” I said, groaning as I straightened up. “But you are just like Zinnia. You both think that since you’re older and wiser, you should be able to do everything and know everything, and then when things don’t work out, you’re so hard on yourselves.” I put my arm around her shoulder, half hug and half using her as a crutch.

  “I still should have known better,” she said, sniffing. Here comes the drama.

  “Sure,” I said. “A girl’s been murdered, but clearly this is all about you and your personal limitations.”

  She stopped midsniff and gave me a blank look.

  Then Zoey shrieked.

  We both raced for the doorway. We found Zoey where we’d left her, in the hallway. She was standing on her tiptoes, arms crossed, looking left and right at the floor.

  My mother demanded, “What’s going on out here?”

  Zoey let out a nervous laugh. “Nothing, apparently.”

  I asked, “Did you see something?” I scanned the busy pattern on the commercial grade carpet. I didn’t see anything alarming, but my eyes were as tired as the rest of me.

  “Never mind,” she said. “False alarm. For a minute, I thought the floor was crawling with a million beetles and centipedes, but it must have been a trick of the carpet pattern and the dim lighting down here.”

  I kept my expression neutral. A million beetles and centipedes? That sounded an awful lot like the Erasure Machine. Zoey couldn’t have known, as I hadn’t fully described it to her before.

  “It’s probably just a case of nerves,” my mother said. “The imagination can run wild, and the imagination of a supernatural person can be augmented by loose energy in their surroundings.”

  I turned to her. “Loose energy? Is that a thing?”

  She shrugged. “It might just be psychic mumbo jumbo. Who can say? Magic is mysterious.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the keys to our car.

  “You need to get out of here,” I told my daughter. “Take Foxy Pumpkin and make a beeline for home. Or, better yet, go straight to Zinnia’s.”

  She frowned and pushed out her lower lip. “But I’m helping you find that girl.”

  “We already found her,” I said, mindful to keep my voice low. “She’s dead.”

  Zoey’s hazel eyes widened. “Are you sure?”

  “Her throat’s been ripped out.”

  Behind me, my mother made a displeased sound. “Must you be so blunt? She’s just a child.”

  Without turning my head, I said, “She’s sixteen, and she’s got an old soul. She can handle the news. And besides, my big plan is to scare her off to safety by telling her the truth.” I rubbed my neck and whispered, “Her whole throat is missing.”

  “Your plan to scare me off is working,” Zoey said, taking the keys gingerly. “But I can’t drive the car without an adult present. I’ve only got a learner’s permit.”

  “I’ll be there in spirit,” I said. “Just be careful. And if you do get pulled over, I’ll call in some of my special connections.”

  “Right.” Zoey stood in place, looking from me to my mother and back again. “Are you sure you want me to leave you here with Gigi?”

  “Someone’s got to keep her out of trouble.” I pointed to the stairwell door. “Now go. Get out of here. Drive straight to Zinnia’s. No speeding.”

  She agreed, gave me a hug, and then hugged her grandmother. Zirconia clutched her tightly before finally letting her go. We both promised to call her with an update about all things ghostly. My mother squeezed Zoey’s cheeks and promised that soon she would make up for lost time.

  As soon as Zoey was gone, my mother said exactly what I knew she would.

  “Letting her drive the car without adult supervision.” She made a tsk-tsk sound. “Not just letting her, but making her!”

  “I know,” I said dryly. “You and I are neck and neck for the Mother of the Year award.”

  She clutched her hand to her throat. “Me?” She caressed a pendant she was wearing on a necklace. It had been tucked under the placket of her white shirt, so I hadn’t noticed it before. “All my friends agree that I did the best anyone could have done. You were always such a willful child.”

  I waved a hand at her dismissively. “We can fight over who’s the better mother some other time. Let’s take one more look around the apartment before the police arrive and lock it up as a crime scene. Also, speaking of which, we should probably call the police. We’ll do it from your room. I don’t want to touch anything in here, even if I could find a phone in all the mess.”

  “But if we phone from my room, they’ll find that suspicious. What would we even say? There’s no way we could have heard a thump from four stories up.”

  “No, but we might have heard a scream.”

  “Do you suppose she screamed? Before whatever it was…?” She made a croaking sound.

  I waved my hand again. “Never mind. We won’t say anything that isn’t true. I’ve got some spells that will be perfect. I know one that scrambles the caller ID and disguises the caller’s voice at the same time. I learned it so I could make prank phone calls to my coworker, Frank.”

  “How industrious,” she said crisply.

  “When it comes to acquiring skills and knowledge, there’s no such thing as bad motivation.”

  She had no response to that.

  Movement on the carpet caught my attention. I leaned over and took a good look at the busy pattern, which had seemed to be crawling with life. I watched carefully. There was nothing.

  I headed back into the staff apartment, avoiding the room with the body.

  My mother followed me in. “Looking for anything in particular?”

  “An open bottle of wine,” I said. “I caught one of Jo’s recent memories courtesy of her memory tunnel, and she was opening a bottle of wine.”

  “To share with your friend Nash? He was always such an odd boy. They say those are the ones you have to watch out for. Or is it the quiet ones? He certainly wasn’t quiet.”

  I stopped and gave her a dirty look. “Nash didn’t kill Jo. He wouldn’t hurt a bug. I remember calling him into the house to help me get rid of a big spider, and he carefully scooped it up on a sheet of paper and took it out to the lawn, unharmed.”

  “That was a long time ago. People change.”

  “Not Nash.”

  “Don’t you watch any true crime shows? It’s always the ex-boyfriend.”

  I tapped my foot, mainly to keep from kicking her. “Then we need to find another one of Jo’s ex-boyfriends. I saw a few of her memories, and she was with another guy recently. The man in the memory wasn’t Nash.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I didn’t see his face.”

  “Then how did you know it wasn’t your friend?”

  “Because I did see the guy’s chest, and he didn’t have Nash’s tattoo of the heart with the barbed wire around it.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “How do you know about this tattoo of Nash’s? Is he Zoey’s father?”

  My jaw dropped open. “Mom!”

  “Well, he did ask how old she was, and he did have that look of a deer in the headlights.”

  “Not that it’s your business, but I was hanging out with Nash at the tattoo shop when he got the heart with the barbed wire. That’s how I know about it.”

  Her eyes narrowed even more. “You better not have been getting a tattoo. Those places are filthy. Tell me you did not get a tattoo.”

  I said nothing, just to bug her. I didn’t have any tattoos or piercings or anything like that, but it was fun to let her stew over the idea I might be hiding something. I hummed to myself softly as I turned and looked around the apartment.

  My mother as
ked, “What are we looking for? Just the wine?”

  “Yes. Or anything that might identify another of Jo’s boyfriends. That kid, Oberon, thought she might be involved with a guest.”

  “How many boyfriends did this Josephine Pressman girl have? Zarabella, I do not like the idea of this girl being inside you, influencing your thoughts. We need to get her out as soon as possible.”

  “I agree,” I sighed. “Why don’t you help me by looking around? Use your eyes instead of your mouth.”

  She scowled at me. Use your eyes instead of your mouth was a phrase she used to love using on me when I was being lippy, which was most of the time. But now I was the one with the ghost inside me. I was in charge. The shoe was on the other foot now.

  “Fine,” she said. “Was it a cheap bottle of wine?” She pointed to a dusty old Chianti bottle covered in layers of melted candle wax. “Was it this one?”

  “That’s not it. We’re looking for a recently opened bottle.”

  “How recent?”

  “The body is dressed in the same clothes she was wearing in the memory, so I believe she was opening the wine this afternoon.”

  “Drinking before dinner,” my mother said, and more tsk-tsk sounds followed. It was only acceptable to drink before dinner when Zirconia had endured a busy morning and “required” a glass of wine, because then it was a reasonable exception.

  “Found it,” I said. There was an open bottle of red wine on the table, next to the empty yogurt containers and dirty dishes. “Now, where are the wine glasses? I’m assuming she didn’t put on makeup and fix her hair just to drink wine straight from the bottle.”

  “Over here,” my mother said, plucking two wine glasses from the drying rack next to the sink. “They’re still wet. They’ve been recently washed.”

  “Great. And now you’re getting your own fingerprints all over them. That’ll be fun for the crime lab.”

  “Fun?” She held up both glasses delicately and looked innocent.

  “Yes. It’ll be so much fun when they run the fingerprints and get a positive match on a woman who’s been dead for five years.”

  “My fingerprints wouldn’t be on file with the police,” she said snappily, but she turned on the water and started rewashing the glasses anyway.

  I turned and examined the open bottle of wine. It was still two-thirds full, and had a pleasant aroma that made my mouth water.

  I glanced around the kitchen again. Whoever had washed the glasses had done so to cover their tracks. They hadn’t touched any of the other dirty dishes. But in doing so, they had left us a clue. If the killer was concerned about fingerprints, that meant they had fingers. They were human, which probably ruled out a few of the usual suspects.

  Chapter 7

  My mother and I returned to the third floor and her luxury suite, which looked even more luxurious and clean after our time in the dingy staff apartment. She paced the room while I called in the anonymous tip to the police using the phone in her room. The spell to disguise my voice and caller ID only worked on a land line. I had an inkling I could update it for modern cell phone use, but now was not the time for messing around with Witch Tongue syntax.

  When I was done with the anonymous phone call, my mother asked, “What next?”

  I stared at her for a moment. Who was this woman? Her black hair was taking some time for me to get used to. It was just so very dark, like the absence of color, and it made her pale skin look like alabaster. She’d always been elegant, but now she resembled a statue in motion. Mostly, though, what threw me off was the black hair. Having her back from the dead didn’t seem nearly as strange by comparison.

  “Well?” She stared at me pointedly. “What can we do next? Should you call one of your friends at the DWM?”

  “Can’t hurt.” I whistled for my cell phone, which shot out of my pink leather purse like a dolphin performing tricks for a tasty mackerel.

  She gave my twirling phone a look of displeasure. “You certainly do enjoy flaunting your powers.”

  “You say flaunting, I say practicing.” I raised an eyebrow. “Does somebody regret giving up all their cool magic?” I twirled the phone on my fingertip. “Does seeing the magic on someone else change how you feel? It’s like when you bring a bunch of old clothes to one of those ladies’ wardrobe swap things, but then as soon as you see your acid-wash denim miniskirt on someone else, you realize how cute it is, and that you were a darn fool to let it go.”

  She picked up a magazine, took a seat on the chair, crossed her legs, and ignored me.

  I stopped my phone from spinning and scrolled through my contacts list. I had a number for the DWM office main switchboard, as well as personal numbers for two of their agents, Charlize and her future brother-in-law, Chet. Since I wasn’t speaking to Charlize, and my switchboard call would be routed to her, that left me only one option. I’d been trying to minimize contact with my neighbor so that his fiancée, the frighteningly powerful sea goddess, didn’t get jealous and turn my skull into a candy dish, but surely the current situation warranted some contact.

  I picked up one of the room’s occasional chairs and brought it over to the window. My mother watched me without comment. She used to hate it when I rearranged furniture in a room. Why stare at a wall when you can look out a window? I took a seat on the chair and gazed out at the ocean view beyond the parking lot and castle grounds. The blue of the ocean looked especially enticing. A salty sea breeze filled my lungs. I felt a pang of longing for my scuba diving equipment and the quiet at the bottom of the sea. Soon, I told myself. After I deal with this current predicament.

  I turned my attention to my phone, which looked especially plastic and garish after the beautiful view. I clicked on Chet’s name and sent him a text: Weird stuff going down at Castle Wyvern. I’m here on personal business by total coincidence, I swear.

  The message showed as being received. A minute later, I was still staring at the screen, hoping for a response, when another message popped up.

  Zoey: I’m at Auntie Z’s. Enjoyed a lovely coastal drive here, free of both incident and accident.

  I sent her the emoji of a dragon followed by a thumbs-up.

  “The eagle has landed,” I reported to my mother. She didn’t look up from her magazine. “Zoey made it to your sister’s house. I bet they’re talking up a storm right about now. All about a certain Zirconia Riddle, magically back from the dead. Are your ears burning?”

  She still didn’t look up. “I don’t understand why you didn’t leave with her.”

  “Did you consider the fact that maybe I wanted to spend some time with you?”

  She flipped a magazine page. “Is that really why you stayed?”

  “Yeah,” I said, not sure if I was lying. I did want to continue the reunion, but there was also the spirit of Jo Pressman influencing me. She had her own feelings about the castle, and now I was imbued with her emotions. Home sweet home. Or, to be more accurate, castle sweet castle. I leaned one forearm along the cool stone windowsill and rummaged around within our shared memories. Touching the castle wall seemed to help me “remember” Jo’s experience with the ancient building.

  After the Pressman family home burned down in the late spring of that year, Jo had spent several weeks couch surfing with friends and acquaintances. People were generous at first. She was halfway to being an orphan, after all. But the sympathy and goodwill burned up quickly due to Jo’s propensity for draining resources. Her family had always called her a wizard, due to her ability to make money disappear. If she wasn’t actively spending money, she was always wasting it through carelessness, such as leaving whole containers of milk out on the counter to spoil. By midsummer, she’d run out of places to crash and was dangerously close to moving in with her batty mother when her luck finally changed. A family friend hooked her up with a job at the prestigious Castle Wyvern, up the coast from Wisteria, in Westwyrd. The job was menial and low paying, but it came with access to the female staff’s apartment. A few of the ot
her girls crashed there during shift changes, but Jo mostly had the place to herself. Her first night in the castle was a revelation. For the first time in months, she slept straight through the night. No nightmares about walls crawling with shiny black insects. No terror sweats soaking the sheets. Had she finally found a place to call home? Why this place, of all places? It was just a grungy staff apartment in the basement, but it was the basement of a castle. Those thick stone walls did something for her. The solid rock kept away the thoughts and craziness of the world on the outside. She was insulated. She was safe.

  She was safe, until she wasn’t.

  Her memories churned and boiled up dusty clouds. Jo had made friends she thought she could trust, but then there had been the inevitable betrayal.

  Betrayal? Now we were getting somewhere. If I could figure out who betrayed her, I could have this murder solved and Ghost Jo’s luggage packed by sundown. She could be gone by morning, before she had a chance to affect me much.

  I poked around at her memories. I had no idea what I was doing. How do you make yourself remember something? You just sit there and try, which was what I did. And it worked, sort of. There were people she feared. I saw them, lurking just around the corners of her mind. I ran down dark hallways which resembled those of the castle. I’d see the heel of a shoe or an elbow, but the betrayers were always two steps ahead. The deeper I went, the more strongly I sensed her fear, her reluctance to let the creatures from her nightmares be seen in the light.

  And then I was being evicted. Spat out.

  My body ached all over, and I was fighting my way up through water, or something that was as thick and sticky as molasses.

  I emerged with a gasp and opened my eyes to blinding brightness. My neck hurt. I glanced around, getting my bearings.

  “Was it a good nap?” My mother was watching me over the top of her magazine. I was still sitting in the chair next to the window. “You looked so peaceful,” she said. “I would have moved you over to the bed, but you looked so peaceful.”