Ghost Mysteries & Sassy Witches (Cozy Mystery Multi-Novel Anthology)

by Неизвестный

  Zoey turned back to her great-aunt. “What was the fight about?”

  With a sigh, Zinnia said, “It was a long time ago, before you were born.”

  “You can't remember?”

  Zinnia leaned forward on the couch and stroked my daughter's cheek in a gesture that reminded me so much of my mother, my chest began to ache.

  “Let sleeping dogs lie,” Zinnia said softly.

  “Promise you won't disappear again,” Zoey said. “Promise.”

  Zinnia made a strange series of movements with both hands and intoned, “I promise to stand by you, no matter what.”

  An icy chill ran up my spine. Something strange was in the air. My skin prickled all over.

  The timer for the oven beeped, and I jumped to my feet. From there, I lost myself in the flow of preparing a sumptuous feast. The world turned soft, like I was looking at everything through sheer curtains undulating in a summer breeze.

  I served dinner, and the compliments flowed along with the wine. The wine Zinnia brought went perfectly with the herbs in the dinner.

  I lost track of time because time was meaningless. All that mattered was the pleasure of good company and fine food. As soon as my daughter and aunt finished their plates, I jumped into action, pushing more bites and nibbles their way despite their protests.

  Zoey kept digging into the past, trying to unearth the reason for Zinnia's absence from our family.

  “Just give me a hint,” Zoey pleaded. “I need to know what got you upset, so it doesn't happen again.”

  “I can assure you it won't,” Zinnia said to her. To me, she said, “Don't you dare put another rib on my plate or I will stab you with my fork.”

  Ignoring her threat, I shoved another rosemary-infused chunk onto her plate, along with a scoop of chickpea salad, and quickly yanked my hands out of stabbing range.

  Zoey whined, “But how can I believe you if I don't know what it was?”

  “Because you're sixteen,” Zinnia said. She hiccuped from the wine and looked mortified but continued, “The curse is lifted now because you're sixteen. Your birthday was six days ago.”

  Zoey went quiet and stared at her aunt. What did her being sixteen have to do with anything? I didn't know any more than she did, but unlike her, I didn't care. I just wanted everyone to eat all the food. I snuck another rib of lamb onto both of their plates while they weren't looking.

  “How was your birthday party?” Zinnia asked. “Did you receive anything unusual?”

  Zoey answered, “I got some new sheets that are made out of bamboo. They're very soft.”

  “What else? I'm not talking about physical objects.”

  Zoey frowned. “Do you mean a type of curse?”

  “Yes, yes,” Zinnia said excitedly. “How did it manifest?”

  “I got that when I was thirteen. The cramps were pretty bad at first, but now I take a pill when they start.”

  Zinnia's face fell. She looked over at me. “No gift? Nothing?”

  “I'm not made of money,” I said defensively. “We went shopping, and I let her spend an entire gift card on stuff for her room. What else am I supposed to do? Buy her a new car? I'm a working single mother.”

  Zinnia shook her head. “Never mind. I thought perhaps she'd gotten one of the family gifts.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Family gifts,” Zinnia repeated at a louder volume, which didn't help explain anything.

  “Sometimes I get ringing in my ears,” I said. “Tinnitus. Do you mean something like that?”

  Zinnia ignored me and turned back to Zoey. “Have you experienced anything unusual since your sixteenth birthday? Any strange sensations?”

  “I'm a teenager living in a new town,” Zoey said. “My hormones are raging, one of my boobs is growing faster than the other, and I can't seem to study for five hours straight like I used to. One of my legs will fall asleep, or I'll become overwhelmed by an overpowering desire to check my social media accounts. Do you consider any of that strange?”

  “Never mind,” Zinnia said.

  I pushed my chair back and stood, shouting, “Toast!”

  My daughter and my aunt stared at me blankly. What was I doing? I shrugged. I had no idea what I was doing, but I did shout, “We need toast!”

  Zinnia picked up the empty wine bottle. “The wine's all gone, but we could still make a toast if you'd like. Do we have more cranberry juice?”

  “Toast!” I couldn't stop myself from saying it. I no longer had control of my body. “Toast!”

  I turned and began to walk jerkily toward the kitchen. My body felt like it was attached to puppet strings. “Toast!”

  Zoey and Zinnia followed after me.

  “Is she drunk?” Zinnia asked.

  “She might be sleepwalking,” Zoey said. “She's been getting up in the middle of the night and making toast. Six nights in a row now. It's very strange.”

  “Six nights?” Zinnia sounded both puzzled and excited. “I suppose it's possible,” she muttered. “Maybe your gift transferred to her.”

  “What gift?” Zoey sounded frustrated. She tugged on my arm. “Mom! Stop being so weird! What are you doing?”

  What was I doing? Just filling the sink with water. Hot, hot water. Nice and full.

  Then plugging in the toaster. Pushing down the handle. Letting it get nice and hot.

  Then grabbing the toaster with both hands and plunging it into the sink full of water.

  Pain jolted through me. Someone screamed.

  The blackness rose up, and all my tension turned to black velvet waves of calm.

  Chapter 9

  I woke up in a bed, in a dimly-lit room that was definitely not my bedroom. Female voices floated in from a nearby hallway. I tried to move, but my body made a cranky refusal. I felt like I'd been taken apart and put together with staples and glue.

  Croakily, I called out, “Nurse? Hello?”

  Zoey came running in, a giant leather-bound book clutched to her chest.

  “Mom, is that you?”

  I peeked under the covers. “This part looks like me, but we can't be too careful. Bring me a mirror.”

  She flung herself onto the bed next to me. The corner of the book jabbed painfully into my ribs.

  “Mom, you had us so worried! You were totally possessed!”

  “What happened? Am I in a hospital?” I looked around at my surroundings. The soft pastels came into focus as flowers. Everything was covered in floral print. “This is a suspicious-looking hospital,” I said. “Have I died and gone to heaven? Does heaven look like an overdecorated bed and breakfast? This is the sort of thing I'd expect in hell. Uh-oh.”

  “Mom, stop talking. I have something to tell you.”

  “Did you find the freight train that ran me over?”

  “You're a witch,” she said. The book continued to jab into my ribs. She repeated the words slowly for emphasis. “You're. A. Witch.”

  “Now, now. You may be unhappy with me for drinking too much at dinner and embarrassing myself somehow, but we don't call each other names.”

  She sat up, shuffled to the edge of the bed, and opened the big book on her lap.

  “Look,” she said, pointing at an inky page. “This is you.”

  I hoisted myself upright. Stars swam in my head. I caught my breath and leaned over to look at the pages, which were yellowed and covered in swirling cursive. The drawing Zoey pointed to looked like something an ancient monk would spend his days transcribing, back in the days before the printing press.

  In the center of the page was a long-haired woman with her arms thrown high in the air. Around her floated swirls of text and beautiful, hand-drawn flowers. The look on her face was both serene and powerful. My pulse pounded in my head, but the pain in my body receded.

  Zoey poked at the page with one finger. “Don't you see? That's you, inviting the spirit of Winona Vander Zalm to enter you.”

  “Very funny. Your mother fell and bumped her head, and you've conc
octed this elaborate prank to make her think she's crazy.” I used my foot to push her off the bed so I could get up. I got to my feet, swayed, and collapsed back onto the bed again.

  Zinnia appeared at the doorway with a glass of water. “Zara, you should be resting now,” she said, her tone motherly and authoritative. “Drink your water and try to relax.”

  “I already relaxed a little too much,” I said. “Sorry about the dinner party and whatever I did. Was I dancing on tables? My right buttcheek feels tender, and it only gets that way after dancing on tables or bowling, and I'm ninety-percent sure I wasn't bowling last night. Please let me go, and I'll make it up to you some other time. We'll have a nice, daytime family reunion and I'll only drink tea.”

  Zinnia grabbed a wooden chair from the corner of the room and brought it over to the bed, where she sat next to me. She put the glass of water on a side table next to the bed. She gently took my hand and stroked it with her cool, silky fingers.

  “Be calm,” she said. “I brought you to my house because I was afraid of what the ghost in your house would do next.”

  I gave Zoey a dirty look. “You've got your great-aunt in on your ghost prank?”

  “It's not a prank,” Zoey said. “Our house has a ghost, and you are a witch.”

  “A ghost and a witch,” I mused. “What does that make you? A werewolf? No, don't tell me. You're a vampire.”

  Zinnia muttered something under her breath and moved her hands in a complicated gesture. The room filled with tiny sparkling lights. The scent of sweet, sugary cotton candy hit my nose.

  I reached for the floating sparks. The dazzling color shifted from purple to blue to teal and back again. I could almost catch them but not quite. The lights spiraled up out of reach and began to spin.

  “Are you doing this?” I asked with breathless wonder. “Aunt Zinnia, what's happening? Did I bump my head?”

  She held up one hand and whistled. The lights spun faster. My head couldn't take the sense of motion. I clutched the edge of the bed.

  She whistled again, at a lower pitch. The lights dimmed and gradually extinguished. The scent of cotton candy was replaced with the scent of ashes.

  Zoey squealed and clapped her hands. “I want to do that! Will you teach me?”

  Having seen the evidence, I became a believer. Aunt Zinnia was a witch. That actually did explain a few things about the Riddle family. I reached for the glass of water on the side table and started to drink.

  “Light magic is harder than it looks,” Zinnia said. “When you both begin your novice training, you'll start with the basics—modulating sounds and shifting air movement. Have either of you studied musical instruments in school?”

  Zoey raised her hand excitedly. “I play the harp.”

  “How wonderful,” Zinnia cooed. “Learning music is the perfect preparation for spellwork. If you can read sheet music, you'll find reading spells is only about ten times harder.”

  The two of them continued to chatter about musical scales and sheet music, their words blending into each other as though they were one person. The whole world was blurry and swirling, and my head felt like the stage where an avante garde musical group was banging on garbage cans and stomping their feet to make lousy music.

  I finished drinking the water and set it back on the table with a loud clunk.

  They were talking about harmonies and triads, threading needles of sound, and harnessing unseen forces.

  I cleared my throat and said, “I'm feeling a bit strange.”

  They stopped talking and turned to face me. Zinnia was still on the chair, and Zoey was standing next to the bed. My aunt and my daughter were separated by thirty-two years, but now that both were softly lit by the same golden glow of the bedside lamp, they looked like the same person.

  “We're the same person,” I said woozily. “The exact same. Are we clones?”

  Zinnia leaned forward and pressed her cool hand against my forehead. “Zara, we're not clones. You've had a very challenging experience tonight, and you're seeing our similarities. Trauma brings us all closer, and in special families like ours, the women are always quite similar.”

  Zoey sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her knees up to her chest. “Mom, she means in witch families. You're a witch, and I'm a witch, and Auntie Z is a witch.”

  I turned to my aunt. “Was my mother a witch?”

  “No,” she said softly. There was pain in her expression. “Sometimes it skips a generation.”

  “Is that why she died?”

  She took my hand. “No, Zara. Your mother's passing had nothing to do with our family gift. It wasn't anyone's fault. Sometimes things just happen.”

  “She knew that you're a witch?”

  “Yes, but she didn't know about you. None of us did.”

  “I'm not a witch,” I said with a growl. “You are, and maybe Zoey is, but I'm not a witch. I'd know if I was. My whole life so far has been challenging and wonderful, but it was nothing magical.”

  She smiled. “But now your life is magical.”

  “Is that why I feel like goose poop right now? If this is being a witch, I hate it.”

  “You only got your gift on Sunday,” she said. “When Zoey turned sixteen that day, she got hers, and you got yours at the exact same time. The channels opened and the energy transferred from the Divine Bank to both of you.” She squeezed my hand. “The only reason you didn't get yours at sixteen was because of Zoey.” She glanced at my daughter. “Because of your unplanned pregnancy.”

  “Which was the best accident that ever happened to anyone,” I said, just as I had hundreds of times before.

  “Don't be cross with me,” Zinnia said. “I'm simply explaining what happened. When your gift didn't manifest at sixteen, I assumed you'd been skipped. My sister was so relieved that you'd be normal.”

  Zoey chortled. “Normal? My mother has never been normal.”

  “I tried to be normal once,” I said. “Worst four minutes of my life.”

  “Your witch gifts have been repressed these last sixteen years,” Zinnia said. “The magic couldn't manifest in spells, so it came out in other ways. I've been up all night reading. This used to happen all the time when girls got married off as teenagers. It's not so common these days, but you had your happy accident, and now here we all are.”

  “Here we all are.” I sat up straighter in the bed and took a good look around the room. The flowered curtains matched the flowered bed which matched the busy wallpaper. The floor was wood, accented with a flower-patterned rug.

  I continued, “We're all here in my psychedelic nightmare, in a room covered in zinnias, in a town called Wisteria—a town I'd never heard of before I got the idea to apply for a job here.” I squinted at my aunt. “Do you know anything about that? Did you cast a spell on me to bring me here?”

  She looked aghast. “Of course not. We witches don't cast spells to influence each other. It's against our beliefs.”

  “What about the shoe store? I was compelled to buy boots that day when I met you. That was one of your spells!” I shook my finger at her. “Witch!”

  “No,” Zinnia said, still looking upset at the suggestion. “We simply don't do that.”

  “But it's possible, right?”

  Zoey said, “Mom, don't be paranoid. This is a magical thing that's happening for us.”

  Magical? Sure. But that didn't mean it was wonderful or even something I wanted. All the flowers in the room were starting to close in on me. What I really wanted was to be back home in my house, in my own bed, with my plain duvet cover and my plain walls.

  “Enough magic for one day,” I said. “Find my legs and the rest of my body for me. We're going home.”

  Zoey extended her lower lip in a pout. Usually, when I saw that lower lip extend half an inch, I'd tell her a bird was going to come along and poop on it, but I wasn't in a teasing mood. I gave her one of my rare bossy, no-nonsense looks.

  “You're being such a mom,” she whined.

/>   I answered, “Whatever this witchy family gift thing is, it can happen to us in the safety of our own home.” I pushed the blankets out of the way so I could dig my way out of the overly-soft bed. My arms felt as weak as twisty ties, and my head was still full of garbage-can drummers, but I had to get out of there.

  “Don't go yet,” Zinnia said. “There's so much I need to tell you, and tests we must do. Your powers are fresh and you don't know how to control them.” She gave me a no-nonsense look of her own, and for a moment, my mother was in the room with us.

  My mother's eyes were glaring at me. Telling me I'd made a terrible mistake. Telling me I had to give up the baby or lose everything. A terrifying anger billowed up inside me. On some level, I knew it wasn't fair to transfer my feelings about someone else onto Zinnia, but she looked so much like her.

  “You're not the boss of me,” I said.

  “I am the elder witch, so I am your boss,” Zinnia said. She flicked one hand and the lamps in the room blazed three times brighter. “There are tests,” she said coolly.

  I grabbed my daughter's hand as I stood on shaking legs. “You're not doing any tests on me, and you're certainly not doing them on my daughter. I don't know how you summoned us to this town, and I don't know what you want from us. I'll admit that the thing you did with the sparkly lights was really cool, but we should be going.”

  Aunt Zinnia said nothing with her mouth, but her eyes blazed with a fury I knew well. It wasn't just the fury of a redhead. It was the fury of a redhead with the last name of Riddle, and it was a dangerous force.

  With my daughter's hand gripped tightly, I dragged both of us from the room. We moved down a narrow staircase and stopped by the door for shoes. I couldn't find the boots I'd been wearing earlier that evening, but all the footwear was the exact same size. Aunt Zinnia and I were foot twins. I picked a pair of ankle-high granny boots and started lacing them.

  “I'm borrowing some boots,” I called over my shoulder.

  Aunt Zinnia didn't answer or come to see us out.

  Zoey's eyes were glistening. Her pouting lower lip was in danger of getting pooped on by low-flying pigeons.

  As I finished lacing the boots, which fit perfectly, flashes of memory came to me. I remembered being led into Zinnia's house hours earlier. Before that, there'd been a ride in a car. I'd woken up in the car, so I must have been unconscious prior to that. How long was I out for? I pushed open Zinnia's front door and stepped outside, where I had my answer. The sun was coming up. I'd been knocked out most of the night.