“The detective,” I said. “I was listening in when that Bentley guy was talking to someone.” Close enough.
“The store had a two-for-one special. Given the price of things here at the resort, I figured I should get my bargains when I could.”
“Sounds reasonable.” I waved for him to continue.
“We left one bottle in her apartment and brought the other up here. I thought we could drink it straight from the bottle, like old times in New York, but she brought along these plastic wine glasses, and she was dead serious about using them, too. But then, as soon as I had my first sip, I knew something was off.”
“But you drank it anyway?”
Nash shrugged. “I thought whatever she put in there was recreational, if you know what I mean.”
“What happened?”
“We talked for a while, and my head felt funny. The waterfall got louder and louder. And then, it felt like all my feelings for her were playing through an amp, and then the volume got turned way down until it was off. No signal. I figured it was just the booze, but then yesterday morning, I woke up and I couldn’t remember why I was there.”
“Like your memory got wiped?”
“Nah. It just took me a minute to figure out where I was, because I didn’t feel that ache in my heart. My feelings for Jo were just gone.”
I stared at him. He pushed his thinning hair back on his temples, looking all of his thirty-something years and then some.
“Zed, don’t tell anyone how crazy I am.” He glanced around the tree canopy above us, wild-eyed. I followed his gaze. A flash of blue caught my eye. A blue jay was watching us from above.
I pointed my finger at the blue jay and mouthed I see you watching us, Mom. The blue jay let out a strangely metallic warble.
Nash continued talking. “I know there’s no such thing as love potions or anti-love potions. But I saw Jo getting a glass vial from that little person, and I started thinking about how much he looked like a gnome, and I guess my imagination got away from me. Anti-love potions. Whoever heard of such a thing? Curse my creativity, right? It’s a blessing, but… you know.”
“Wait. You saw Jo get a glass vial of something from a little person? Was this man nearsighted, with a big nose? About seventy? Pretty much bald?”
Nash held up both hands. “I mean no disrespect to little people, but that guy could be in a Lord of the Rings movie with no makeup needed.”
“I understand. And I think I know who you mean.”
“Maybe it was a new kind of party drug,” Nash said. “I hear some of the new stuff can be subtle and mind opening.”
“I thought you didn’t do drugs.”
He looked sheepish. “I’m a musician, Zed. The occasional bit of untested chemical compound has slipped past these sexy lips.” He made a pouty mouth, doing his classic Mick Jagger impression. “These sexy, sexy lips,” he said.
“Those sexy lips have been known to spew a whole lot of bullcrap,” I said.
He gave me a mock wounded expression. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the blue jay flit over to a closer branch. All the better to listen.
I would deal with my mother and her bird spies later. I gave my old friend a serious look and asked, “Is any of what you told me true?” I subtly cast my bluffing spell, which would increase my charisma along with his gullibility. “You want to tell me the whole truth, Nash. Everything. You want to be honest.”
He swallowed audibly. “It’s all true. Everything I’ve told you today.”
I believed him. And, since I had him on a spell anyway, I asked him another important question.
“Who were the people Jo owed money to?”
He glanced over at the waterfall, then back at me. “Mr. Visa and Mrs. MasterCard.”
“No. I mean the people in New York she was scared of. The bad guys. Mafia types?”
He sighed. “There weren’t any bad guys. She made that up to get her father to rustle up some cash for her.” He looked down at his cigarette, which was entirely ash now, since he’d forgotten to take more puffs after the initial ones. “Why didn’t I tell the detective that?” He was talking to himself more than to me. “She felt so guilty about what happened to her dad. I guess we both wanted to believe the bad guys were real, so we could blame someone else.” He took out a second cigarette and lit it. The flame seemed brighter now than before, the forest around us darker. “I never met Perry, but I hear he was a good man.”
“He was a good man,” I said. “He deserved better than what happened to him.”
“What did happen to him?”
I lied and said I didn’t know.
We talked about Perry Pressman for a few minutes while Nash smoked.
The mist from the waterfall made the air chilly. I shivered as I got a stereo-vision memory of the night Perry was put out of his misery. I experienced the memory from the vantage point of where I’d been floating, outside of my body, and I saw it through Jo’s eyes as well. The sight from either angle was horrific.
Whether she understood what happened consciously or not, Jo must have been in terrible pain. She must have felt so guilty about lying to her father about criminals chasing after her for debts.
No wonder she’d been in therapy.
If she really had purchased an anti-love potion from the gnome, it must have been for Nash’s protection. To get him as far away from her as possible, where he couldn’t be hurt. But was that what had happened?
The idea fit, and I desperately wanted to understand the dead girl’s actions, but it didn’t quite sound like the Jo I knew, the Jo who made me kiss Archer Caine and then, hours later, nibble on Chet Moore’s finger. That girl was more focused on getting what she wanted.
Chapter 28
On the way back from the waterfall, as we passed through the castle’s gardens, I noticed the diminutive Griebel Gorman. How appropriate. A gnome in the garden.
Nash didn’t see him, because my old pal was looking down, kicking a pinecone, and talking excitedly about the new songs he’d been working on. His big breakthrough was just around the corner, he could feel it. I told Nash it had been great to catch up with him, and that he should go ahead into the castle without me. “I’d like to sit in the rose garden and work on my tan,” I said.
He laughed, exactly how I knew he would.
“Silly redhead,” he said. “Tanning is for people with melanin.”
“I have melanin.”
“Only in your freckles.” He leaned down to pick up the pinecone he’d kicked all the way from the waterfall, and handed it to me as a gift. “Here. To remember our walk today.”
I accepted the pinecone. “Nash, I’ve missed your thoughtful gifts.”
We joked around for another minute, about the pine cones and pebbles he used to give me, most of them sourced from my own back yard. The whole time, I kept one eye on the gnome. Griebel Gorman was dressed in a grounds keeper’s uniform of gray coveralls, and appeared to be fixing the irrigation system. Clearly he wasn’t all that terrified of Chet Moore if he’d stuck around Castle Wyvern after the altercation a few hours earlier.
I said goodbye to Nash, promising I’d stay in touch. The blue jay who’d been watching us by the waterfall continued to keep an eye on us from its perch in an ornamental oak tree.
Once Nash had gone inside and I was alone with the blue jay, who I assumed was my mother’s spy, I pointed in the direction of the gnome and gave the bird a meaningful look. The bird nodded and flitted to a lower branch. If my mother had listened in on the conversation at the waterfall, she’d understand why I wanted to ask Griebel some follow-up questions. I would, of course, tell both Bentley and the agents at the DWM my new discovery about Jo’s dealings with the groundskeeper, but I wanted to try talking to the guy first. He was friends with my aunt, so he couldn’t be entirely bad.
“Hello there,” I said in a friendly tone. I walked toward him but stopped outside spitting radius.
The short man jerked his head up and hastily p
ulled his glasses over his beady eyes. “Riddle witch,” he said. “The niece. Zara.”
I held up both hands. “Easy now. I just want to talk. I don’t mean you any harm.”
He looked around the sunny, manicured gardens. His gaze didn’t linger on the blue jay. He glanced back at the castle. The tallest spire, the bell tower, loomed high overhead, casting a dark, crisp shadow across the grounds. We were alone in the garden but in view of several large picture windows. I could see castle visitors dining and enjoying the garden views from the other side of the glass. The back of my neck tingled with a sense of danger, yet I felt confident he wouldn’t attack me in full view of so many witnesses. But just in case he did spit acid at me, I’d already noted the location of a garden sprayer.
Griebel Gorman licked his lips in a way that felt threatening, given the nature of his saliva. “What do you want, witch?”
“Just a chat,” I said, slowly lowering my hands. A whiff of something earthy yet foul hit my nostrils. “What’s that smell?”
“Manure. The finest horse droppings money can buy.” He thumbed in the direction of an old-fashioned wagon containing no small amount of brown matter. It sat in the shadow cast by the bell tower, so I hadn’t noticed it before.
“And is that your only job around here? Mucking around in horse manure?”
His small, deep-set eyes twinkled. “I do other things.”
“I bet you do.” I struck a more casual pose. “If you have time, I’d love to chat with you about love potions. I hear you’re the man who can supply such things.”
“Yeah?” He pressed a finger to the side of his large nose and blew out the other side onto the ground. “Who told you that?”
I glanced down at the snot that was now glistening on the pea gravel beneath his work boots. The visual of that, combined with the scent of horse manure, turned my stomach. Then I had a more troubling thought. If his saliva was so toxic, could his snot be another weapon? I stared at the ground. Had the snot moved? My pulse quickened.
He repeated his question. “Who told you?”
The snot hadn’t moved. I could relax, but not too much.
“Josephine Pressman told me,” I said. “You supplied her with a vial of something that made her ex-boyfriend lose interest in her.”
“So? What’s the harm in that?”
I smiled inwardly. I’d been right. And now I was one step closer to solving the puzzle and sending another satisfied ghost customer on their way.
“No harm,” I said. “You probably did the poor boy a favor.” I took a step back, no longer worrying about the mucus, and pretended to be fascinated by a plump rose blossom. “Since it worked so well, I was just wondering, what other kinds of potions do you make?”
“What did the girl tell you?”
I kept touching the soft rose petals as I turned my head and looked him straight in the eyes. “Mr. Gorman, if you know about my specialty, then you should already be aware that I know everything. I have all of Jo’s memories. Every last one.”
He lifted his chin and stared up at me belligerently. His enormous nostrils flared, revealing multiple boogers. Were those also weapons?
“You’re bluffing,” he said.
“There were two bottles of wine,” I said. “Jo brought one bottle to the waterfall, and she shared it with her ex-boyfriend. She drugged him with a potion you gave her. It was a potion that made him fall out of love with her.”
He wiggled his nose but didn’t look away from me. His expression told me I was right so far.
“Then she used the other bottle of wine for something else,” I said. “Another potion from you.”
He said nothing.
“Only something went wrong, and the poor girl paid with her life.”
“Yeah?” His face twitched. Something I’d said made him uncomfortable. The breeze changed direction, and the manure scent emanating from the nearby wagon all but disappeared.
“And she blamed you,” I said. “You should know that Jo Pressman cursed your name with her dying breath.”
His tiny eyes widened behind the thick eyeglasses. “She did? Oh no.” The corners of his eyes glistened with tears. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”
Inwardly, I fist pumped. I’d been bluffing, but I’d hit upon something. The gnome wasn’t entirely evil. He felt bad about what happened to Jo. He hadn’t meant for her to get hurt. Was he an ally? Deadly boogers and all?
In a soft, soothing tone, I said, “You can help me put her spirit at peace, Mr. Gorman.”
His lower lip quivered. “B-b-but I can’t talk to you. I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”
“You can trust me.” I used silent Witch Tongue to weave my bluffing spell around my words. Would it work on gnomes? It couldn’t hurt to try. “Zinnia’s my mentor, and you trust Zinnia, don’t you? She’s your friend.”
He nodded, lower lip still quivering. “Zinnia Riddle is my friend. She’s one of the good ones.”
“Then you can tell me,” I said, stepping forward slowly. “You can tell me what was in the other bottle of wine. Was it another of your potions?”
He stammered, “D-d-did she really curse my name? My full name?”
“Mr. Gorman, how much potion did you sell Jo Pressman? Was all of it for falling out of love?”
He held up a finger for me to wait. He looked down and dug around in the central pocket of his groundskeeper overalls. He pulled out what appeared to be a spiky seed—like the pinecone from Nash that was now in my back pocket, except smaller. He handed the seed to me.
The blue jay who’d been watching us flitted down to land on my shoulder. Mr. Gorman didn’t react to the bird, which should have been a clue to me that I was in danger. Unfortunately, I couldn’t have known what was coming next.
I extended my hand and let him drop the spiky seed on my palm. It was impossibly heavy, at least a pound. But how could that be?
The gnome used his own hands to make the gesture of cupping one hand over the other. He nodded for me to do the same.
I did.
The little man smiled, and then clapped his hands three times.
Pain shot through me as black spots appeared on the top of my hand. The spots grew from my hand, extending out as spikes. The tiny seed cupped within my palms had expanded rapidly and magically, sprouting out through the flesh and bones of my hands. Now both of my hands were locked together, and in searing pain.
The blue jay on my shoulder screamed, “Zara, careful!”
It was a bit late for that.
Chapter 29
Dr. Ankh seemed more interested in the gnome’s deadly gadget than in helping me.
I stood in the bathtub in my mother’s suite, where I’d been told to stay so I didn’t get my blood on anything else. Truth be told, the spikes had stopped most of the bleeding, and I hadn’t started gushing until the doctor had helped remove the device from my hands. The bleeding stopped after a few minutes of applied pressure, but the holes remained. I could hold up my hands and look through my pierced hands. I peered through a large hole in my palm at the doctor, who was poking at the star-shaped device on the bathroom counter, and then at my mother, who stood at the doorway with one hand pinching her nose.
“So much blood,” my mother said, her voice muffled due to her pinched nose. She asked the doctor, “Will my daughter need a transfusion?”
“She will heal on her own,” the doctor answered without looking up.
“I’ll be fine,” I said bravely. I made two fists and then opened my hands. “See? The holes are shrinking. I’ll be as good as new in no time. All I need is fluids. Do you have any soda left in the minibar? I’ll take pomegranate if it’s available.”
“The minibar is empty,” my mother said. “Thanks to you.”
I smacked my lips and looked pathetic. “Can you get me some from the gift shop? Please? Remember how you used to give me warm ginger ale and soda crackers when I was sick? If you could do that for me now, it would make me feel so much better.
Please, Mom?” I grinned. “Mommy?”
Zirconia Riddle did not like being called Mommy and would do anything to make it stop.
She dropped her hand away from her nose. “Sure,” she said flatly. “And did you want anything else from the gift shop?”
“A book of crossword puzzles?”
“Honestly, Zara, sometimes I can’t tell when you’re joking.”
“Me neither,” I said, which was the truth.
After she left, I gave my hands one more rinse under the running faucet, and then stepped out of the tub. The clothes Charlize had sent me were ruined, stained with blood. That was two outfits ruined in two days.
After the device had shot its spikes into my hands, it had only taken me a minute to get inside the castle—thanks, telekinesis!—and up to the suite. As luck would have it, there’d been a doctor in the house. Dr. Aliyah Ankh had been there visiting with—or checking up on—her patient. Back in the garden, I hadn’t bothered to chase after the gnome, for two reasons. First of all, he’d stomped his foot three times and vanished in a puff of smoke, and I had no way of knowing where his magical smoke tunnel led. And secondly, what would I have done if I had caught him? Bash him over the head with my spiky hands until his eyeballs popped out? The thought had occurred to me.
The rage and irritation I had been feeling were now redirected at Dr. Ankh. She was still focused on the spiky thing. What kind of a doctor was so coldly unconcerned with a bleeding human? The type who worked at the Department of Water and Magic, apparently.
“You’re welcome for the new toy,” I said with an icy tone. “Though maybe it should remain my property, and not the department’s. I am the one who nearly got killed by it.”
She replied lightly, “You were in no real harm.”
“The giant, gaping holes in my hands might say otherwise.” I held up both hands in demonstration, but then quickly dropped them again. The holes had already closed up. “Never mind,” I said. “I guess I won’t get to do any cool party tricks after all. Spoiler alert, I was going to feed myself pretzel sticks through the holes.”
Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 2 Page 52
