He hunched his shoulders and glanced down the sidewalk. “We shouldn't be discussing this here.”
“Tell me what she is. What is this power she has?”
“She...” He shook his head. “It's not what you think.”
“You're not in my head. You don't know anything about what I think. You only care about your own selfish needs. Your own selfish desires.”
He winced and looked around us, at anything but me. “Zara, it was Chloe and Charlize. They were so sure your daughter was the Soul Catcher,” he said. “Zoey was our only hope.”
“You thought a sixteen-year-old girl was your only hope. But then—surprise, surprise—you got stuck with me instead.”
“And I regret what I've done, Zara. I truly do.”
I took a step back. “You regret meddling in other people's lives? Or do you specifically regret bringing me here?” I held up one hand. “Don't answer that. I don't even want to know what you meant. What am I to you?”
“A friend.”
I snorted.
He lifted his chin and barely made eye contact before looking up at the tree overhead, searching for his phone. “It's really up there,” he said. “I'll have to drive back later today.”
He was worried about his phone? And not about apologizing to me for whatever scheming he, Charlize, and Chloe had been up to? Some friend he was. I'd meant to get the phone back down right away, once I'd gotten his attention, but now I wanted him to be inconvenienced. Actually, I wanted to punch him in his busted ribs, make him scream, but the decent part of me abhorred violence. And I had to hold onto my humanity, my decency.
What had Chloe said to Chet? “That's no way to treat a woman. Especially a witch. You're going to pay dearly for keeping Zara in the dark.”
A gorgon had her ways of making a man pay for disrespect, but I was a witch. My powers were subtler, and I still had my humanity, but Chet would pay.
I felt a sly smile twisting my lips.
“Good luck driving anywhere without your keys,” I said.
“My what?”
I'd already drawn his keys from his pocket and into my hand. As Chet watched, stunned, I wound my arm back and pitched his keys into the tree. I used my magic at the last minute, safely out of sight of people passing by, and snagged the keys on a twig. The phone and the keys weren't coming back down without a fight.
Chet swore under his breath.
I started walking away. “Don't worry about me,” I called over my shoulder. “I can walk to work from here.”
He muttered something that sounded like broomstick.
Chapter 20
After I arrived in Wisteria and discovered my aunt “coincidentally” lived there as well, I'd brewed up a few conspiracy theories. My aunt claimed innocence. She said that when the local library contacted her for a letter of reference, it was the first she'd heard about me moving there. She told me it was the work of magic itself—mystical forces beyond my comprehension. “Magic has a mind of its own,” she was fond of saying.
And I'd believed her. Because once you find out magic is real, the world actually makes more sense. The inexplicable becomes... not mundane, exactly, but less mystifying.
But since I'd learned about Chessa and been visited by her spirit, it seemed she was the one behind my cross-country move.
No sooner had I warmed up to that idea, though, than the carpet was yanked out from underneath me.
And I'd learned the truth from the lips of an honest-to-goodness gorgon.
The invisible director of my life had been right under my nose. My neighbor, Chet Moore, had been the one tangling my string of fate, weaving it with his own.
While I walked to the library, I replayed my first day on Beacon Street, and my first face-to-face meeting with Chet. My emotions had been heightened that day, so the memory was crystal clear, thanks to my witch powers.
That fateful Saturday afternoon, I'd been standing at the back of the moving truck, grabbing a box jokingly labeled XL PMS Sweatpants. The box actually contained pots and pans, but Zoey and I had created joke labels to make packing more fun. The goofy labels had made unpacking less fun, but that's beside my point.
Chet, the helpful neighbor I hadn't met yet, walked up behind me. With his rich, deep voice, he'd said, “You're Zara the Camgirl?”
I turned around slowly. It had been over a dozen years since anyone had recognized me from my fifteen minutes of fame on the Internet.
“I'm just Zara now,” I'd said. “My Camgirl days are over.”
“Chet Twenty-one,” the man said, introducing himself by his screen name.
At first, his screen name didn't ring any bells. But then I took a look at him, and my Hunk Detector set off a five-star alarm. He was so attractive, his face blanked out the center of my vision. I couldn't discern his actual features, other than that he had eyes, the greenest of green, with glints of silver and gold.
I complimented his eyes and asked who he was, besides his screen name.
He introduced himself as Chet Moore, and told me he lived next door, in the blue house with the goat on the roof. Then he did the cutest thing and bashfully said I probably wouldn't remember him specifically, since I'd had so many fans in those days.
Chet twenty-one. CHET21. While I tried to recall someone posting under that name, I bought myself time by introducing him to my daughter.
And then, as soon as he grinned at us, I felt a rush of familiarity. He had been studying engineering back in those days, and he'd confided to me, presumably under the anonymity of an Internet chat room, that he didn't know where his career would take him. His father had a plan all worked out, but he wasn't sure if he could follow in the older man's footsteps. I did know him. I knew this man's heart. He was kind and generous and brave. He took charge in an emergency. He was Chet, and he was one of the good guys.
All of that knowledge about Chet Moore hit me like a wave breaking, but I didn't mention it, because I was so in awe of his eyes and then his teeth. The memories of him tucked themselves away, like folded clothes slipping into a drawer, right where they belonged. His smile made my whole body sing.
“You're staring at me,” he'd said that sunny Saturday. “Is there something on my face?”
I'd wondered at the time if the memory of talking to CHET21 on the Internet was real, or wishful thinking. But did it matter? The guy lived next door to me now. Whether I really did remember his individual story or he was just a composite character formed from dozens of my young male fans, our past didn't matter as much as the present. And those eyes!
After a bit of my babbling about craft supplies and googly eyeballs, he said warmly, “You should fit right in here on Beacon Street. Welcome to the neighborhood. We should probably shake hands now.”
I couldn't shake hands due to my armload. I jiggled the box, making the pots and pans clatter. “I'll be done moving in about an hour.”
He took my box from me, shuffled it to one strong-looking arm, and shook my hand. At the touch of his hand on mine, I stopped questioning whether or not I remembered him from my Zara the Camgirl days. In my heart, I knew his heart, and knew it to be good and pure and loyal.
“It's official,” he said. “I now pronounce us neighbors.”
“Neighbors,” I repeated. “Til death do us part.”
He jerked his hand away from mine abruptly. His eyes were darker, the light gone out. The hollows in his cheeks caught shadows that hadn't been there a moment earlier. His face became long and lean, his eyes hungry, like a wolf's.
What had I said? Just a joke about being neighbors 'til death do us part.
I apologized quickly, assuming his reaction had something to do with Winona Vander Zalm, his elderly neighbor who'd passed away, and whose house I'd just purchased.
I could not have known that the man standing before me was grieving his fiancée, who was in a coma, lying in a top-secret hospital bed twenty-some stories below ground.
He'd quickly changed the subject, offering t
o give me a hand with the last few boxes. We'd parted on good terms, but later that day, I'd gone banging on his door because I suspected his little boy had snuck into my house and broken things. Later, Chet brought young Corvin over to our place, gripping him by the collar, and made him apologize.
Zoey and Corvin traded insults, calling each other pestilence. They had taken an instant dislike to each other, not knowing they would become good friends within weeks, surrogate siblings to each other.
As I considered their blossoming friendship, I had to admit positive things had come from Chet guiding me toward Wisteria. Many positive things.
That Saturday evening, before I knew I was a witch and Chet was a wolf shifter, he and I had bonded over the challenges of being single parents. The kids joined us for housewarming pizza and lime cordial in martini glasses.
I couldn't say much for Corvin's manners, but he was a smart kid. “Your son is a clever boy,” I'd said to Chet.
“He doesn't get it from me.”
“What does your wife do?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Lucky lady,” I said with a laugh. I had no idea the man had a fiancée who did “nothing” due to being in a coma.
“She's dead,” he said, and I immediately stopped laughing.
He quickly added, “No need to apologize. It was many years ago, before I moved in next door with my father. Don was supposed to help me raise Corvin to be a well-adjusted and perfectly normal boy. As you can see, that didn't exactly work out as planned.”
I was still reeling from the dead-wife bombshell. I'd blathered about how difficult it was to raise kids, and how I'd lucked out with my daughter, whom people said had an old soul.
An old soul. The sort of old soul who'd have her name on some ancient prophecy?
But I didn't know about the magic running through Wisteria yet. I didn't even know I was a witch.
That night, Chet and I had bonded quickly. I immediately felt more at ease with him than I'd been around a man for many years.
That first night on Beacon Street, Chet had encouraged me to talk about myself, to share how I felt about Wisteria.
“This town is an undiscovered gem,” I'd said, laughing over my booze-free lime cordial martini. “There must be some magical spell shrouding it from the rest of the world, because I can't understand why everyone isn't beating a path to move here.”
“A magical spell,” he'd repeated with a sly smile. “You don't believe in that sort of thing, do you?”
I'd snorted. “I love a spooky campfire story as much as the next gal, but I'm not one of those woo-woo types who's always falling for nonsense.” I reached for another slice of pizza. “My family's not very close, because we've got some weird relatives who are into fortune telling and various scams. My mother kept me far away from those other wacky Riddles.” I looked him right in the eyes. “I'm the normal one in my family.”
He bit his lower lip, as though holding back a sarcastic comment. “So, you don't believe in anything paranormal. Not even when you see things you can't explain?”
“Nah. If there really were such things as ghosts or vampires or werewolves, there would be scientific proof by now.”
“What makes you think you can trust the scientists?” Chet asked playfully. “Maybe all the top scientists in the world are vampires and werewolves themselves, and they're working hard to keep their kind secret.”
I pointed my pizza crust at him. “I like you, Chet Moore. You've got a wicked sense of humor and a wild imagination.”
“And I like you, too, Zara Riddle. I always have.” Shyly, he added, “Just like all the other lonely young men who used to follow your every move online. How many marriage proposals did you get in those days, anyway?”
“Not a single one that had any appeal.” I gave him a sidelong look. “Chet Moore, aka CHET21, did you ever propose to me?”
His cheeks reddened. “It was a long time ago.”
“I've still got all the chat logs, archived on a hard drive somewhere.” I waved at the stack of boxes at the edge of the half-unpacked living room. “It might be in the box labeled Teddy Bears and Taxidermy Tools. I've got half a mind to unpack my old computer, plug it in right now, and do a text search on your username. You said it was CHET21, no spaces or underscores?”
“Don't do that,” he blurted. “Please, let's let the past lie in its musty grave.”
I'd shivered and rubbed the goose bumps on my forearms. Let the past lie in its musty grave. Between the werewolf talk and the mention of graves, I was getting a spooky vibe from my handsome neighbor. But I still liked him.
Later, the conversation would turn to the history of the house I'd just bought, and its colorful former owner. I didn't know Winona Vander Zalm's ghost was about to make my first weeks in Wisteria very complicated.
But before all that, I'd asked Chet, “Why do you live here in Wisteria?”
His expression changed, and the room grew darker, the shadows larger. “There's an anchor keeping me here. A heavy one, buried deep, and try as I might, I can't get free.” His eyes shone with sadness. “I can't leave, but some days I think I can't stay, either.”
“Moving is horrible,” I said.
He lifted his chin and forced a smile. “Not the way you do it. That's a clever idea you had, putting silly labels on your boxes.” He looked over the stack of boxes and smiled. “How did your daughter feel about moving here?”
“There were some tears, but she said she had a good feeling about it.”
“A good feeling, hmm?” He kept his gaze on the boxes and asked, evenly, “Does your daughter have any special abilities? Any special affinity for certain subjects or activities?”
It seemed like an oddly phrased question, but I'd answered honestly. “My Zoey is excellent at anything she puts her mind to.”
“Good,” he said, nodding. “That's very good. We could use someone like her around here.” He looked down at the pizza box and took another piece, dusting off some of the roasted garlic onto the wax paper.
“You don't like garlic? Are you some sort of vampire?”
He paused, the pizza slice just inches from his mouth. “Here in Wisteria, you just never know. I've seen a fair number of strange things.”
“I'd love to see more strange things,” I said. “Sounds fun to me.”
“Careful what you wish for,” he'd teased.
And then Corvin and Zoey had chased each other through the living room. The conversation turned back to our kids and the local schools.
Chet must have thought I was a sucker, falling easily for a few kind words.
Not anymore.
He was going to pay, just as soon as I figured out everything that he'd done. And I was going to start by using technology, which couldn't lie to me the way my memories did.
* * *
I put in a solid shift at the library, working hard and being pleasant, even though my mind was elsewhere. Frank wasn't working that day, so it was easier for me to stay in librarian mode.
As soon as I got through the day and punched my timecard, I went straight home on a fact-finding mission.
I pulled out the cardboard box containing my old computer and archival hard drives.
It took a few hours to untangle the many cords and cables, and get my system running, but the old gal finally booted up. The Pentium Pro had been state-of-the-art technology at the time, a donation from one of my website sponsors. The computer would have cost thousands of dollars at the time, yet it didn't have the computing power of today's entry-level smartphone.
I pulled up the stored text data from my old website's bulletin board system. It had been a huge amount of data at the time, but compared to the size of current-day streaming video, my “massive” chunk of data was downright teeny.
I transferred the raw chat logs to my laptop because I wasn't sure how long the old gal would keep running. On the laptop, I did a search for username CHET21.
To my absolute lack of surprise, there was
nothing under that name. Nothing. No record of a man named Chet, not under any variation of numbers and symbols in combination with any version of his name. I did have one fan posting as RogerMoore65, but he was a retired long-haul trucker with a passion for a certain James Bond.
My research proved what I already knew, deep down.
Chet had not been a fan of mine, nor had we been friends “back in the day.” The easy familiarity I felt toward my neighbor was either wishful thinking on my part, or a memory implant, courtesy of Chessa's spiritual residue.
And that was exactly what he'd wanted. For months now, I'd been living next door to a man who'd started our relationship on a bedrock of lies.
I'd trusted him. I'd saved his life. I'd let him have the last slice of pizza.
And he'd played me for a sucker, all because my daughter's name was on some musty old rotten scroll.
I pushed away the laptop, got to my feet, and went to Zoey's room.
I told her everything. She had a right to know.
As angry as I was, Zoey was even angrier. “That's just... so...” She struggled to find the right word. “Rude!”
“Zoey, he didn't cut in front of us at a concert, or kick our seat at the movie theater. I wouldn't characterize what he did as rude. More like treacherous, or heinous, or punishable by being rolled down a hill inside a barrel lined with knives.”
Zoey wasn't even listening to me. She'd gone to her bedroom window, opened it, and lobbed something at Corvin's window.
The little ten-year-old boy with the huge eyes and floppy black hair pushed open his window.
“Hi, Zoey,” he called over.
“Send over the line,” she said. “I need to chat with someone in your family.”
Corvin's huge eyes got even bigger, and he quickly got to work. He tossed over a big can of tomato sauce, attached to a metal cable.
Zoey set the can on her dresser, and hooked the end of the metal cable onto an eye hook embedded in her bedroom wall.
Wisteria Wonders (Witch Cozy Mystery and Paranormal Romance) (Wisteria Witches Book 3) Page 15
