Wicked Wisteria (Witch Cozy Mystery and Paranormal Romance) (Wisteria Witches Book 2)

by Angela Pepper

  “Hey,” I called after her. “I didn't get up early to go jogging.”

  She turned and walked backward, facing me. “The library's that way.” She pointed to a side street. “I can make it to school on my own.” She turned and picked up the pace, the sound of her boots on the sidewalk ringing through the quiet neighborhood.

  As she rounded the corner, I caught a glimpse of the ten-year-old version of her, insisting she could walk the last few blocks to school on her own. She'd always been so independent. I would agree, and then follow at a distance, just to make sure she was safe.

  Even now, at sixteen, I felt the urge to follow, to keep her in my sight. I waved goodbye as my heart did that mother thing and broke just a little. My baby appreciated me, but she didn't need me.

  One day, when I was gone, how would Zoey remember today? Would it be the beautiful sunny day she got beach hair at a kooky lady's wooden shack, or the day her mother wasn't a good mother because she was distracted, busy talking to ghosts and getting ominous visions?

  * * *

  By the time I got to work, I'd forgotten about my hair. A new hairstyle paled in comparison to worrying about whether or not I was a good mother and fretting over finding not just work-life balance but work-life-witch balance.

  I went straight to the staff lounge and made the day's first pot of coffee.

  Frank came in, took one look at me, and made an unrepeatable comment about the sort of activities one might engage in to rumple up one's hair.

  I finger-combed some of the backcombing from my thick red locks. “The stylist backcombed it for a beach-tousled look.”

  “Beach-tousled? More like bed-wrestled.”

  Snorting, I said, “Some people with one-track minds see what they want to see.”

  Frank poured a coffee and squinted at me with one eye. He had a tough time keeping both eyes open before his first cup of coffee. “And your beau saw a whole lot of what he wanted to see. Now here you are, yawning over your coffee because that burly neighbor man didn't let you get any sleep last night.”

  I caught myself mid-yawn and shut my mouth with considerable effort. “I had to get up early, so I could take advantage of Morganna Faire's half-price Wednesday morning special.”

  Frank shook his head. “Only half-price? But her rates are already so reasonable. I'm afraid my beauty sleep is worth a bit more.”

  I gave him a half shrug. “Not everyone can afford to be as beautiful as you, Frank Wonder.”

  He struck a Southern Belle pose.

  We finished our cups of coffee and punched in our time cards with two loud KERCHUNKS. I still found it strange that a quiet library had such a loud time card system, but I did enjoy how satisfying it felt to punch in or out. The loud KERCHUNK stirred up the pride I felt in my job. I always stood up straighter when I was “on the clock.”

  We unlocked the front door, went through the day's opening procedures, and got to work.

  Once I'd finished with everything that needed attending, I took a few minutes for my personal project. I didn't like mixing witch stuff with librarian work, but it would have roused more suspicion if I'd been using the computer terminals on my coffee break.

  I wanted to know more about the young woman I'd seen at the hairdresser's. She was connected not just to a library book with disappearing words, but also a blanked magazine, a missing tattoo, the spooky dark vision I'd gotten that morning, plus my ghost seemed quite familiar with her. The hairdresser had spoken of her father, so clearly he was still alive, but what about the young woman's mother? I knew her first name was Josephine, so I could check the history on the rock star memoir for her last name. If that didn't work out, I could always return to the Beach Hair Shack and make up some excuse to ask Morganna for her name. I would have done so earlier, during the haircut, if the woman's powerful scalp massage hadn't made me think twice about rousing her suspicion.

  The computer confirmed we had three copies of the rock star memoir. The copy that had been missing passages, and subsequently restored the day before thanks to the bookwyrm dough, had been checked out by someone named Josephine Pressman. Our system didn't have anything as high-tech as photos associated with patron accounts, but I'd heard her being called Josephine at the hair shack, so I definitely had the right person.

  I glanced over my shoulder. My boss, Kathy, wouldn't be in for a few hours, but I couldn't shake the sensation I was being watched. It had to be my conscience, feeling guilty about using the database for a personal project.

  As a professional librarian, I take confidentiality very seriously. No person wants their personal reading history to be public knowledge. People will borrow from the library the sort of books they only need once, as well as the ones they wouldn't be caught dead with on their shelves at home. While I might find it personally amusing to know that the mayor's wife has paid for two copies of Fifty Shades of You-Know-What due to dropping both books into her bathtub, that's for me (and Frank) to giggle over, and not for the general public to be made aware of.

  On a more serious note, there are plenty of instances where checkout history needs to stay secret and the stakes are higher than social embarrassment. For example, just that morning, I helped an unwed young lady with a newborn baby in her arms find some books about paternity testing and parental rights. An hour later, I helped a worried-looking fifty-something man check out several relationship books, including, coincidentally enough, one titled Rebuilding Your Marriage After an Affair. He kept twisting his wedding band nervously while I processed his stack of books.

  “They really have a book for everything,” he'd said, and I agreed. “This is for a friend,” he insisted, and again, I agreed. As he left, I wished him a good day and the best of luck. “I'll probably be back for some of your divorce books,” he said heavily. I assured him I would help as much as I could, should it come to that. My promise seemed to lift his chin a few degrees.

  And isn't this exactly what most of us want from our careers? Not just a paycheck, but the opportunity to lift someone's chin a few degrees.

  But I digress.

  Back to my amateur sleuthing.

  Not only did I locate my person of interest in our database, but I checked other patrons with the same Pressman surname. There was only a Perry Pressman, who resided at the same address as Josephine. Was that her husband? The history on Perry's account went back a good forty years. It was more likely he was her father, the man Morganna had spoken of.

  “That's odd,” I said under my breath. I clicked the command to enlarge the text on the screen to be sure of what I was seeing. According to our records, Perry Pressman's book history included a vast number of titles about stock trading and personal finance. Was he Mr. Finance Wizard? That would explain his relationship to the young woman. But if he was deceased, why would his daughter agree to pass along the hairdresser's greeting? Something wasn't adding up.

  I used a piece of notepaper to jot down the Pressman family's address.

  Next, I pulled up the internet and did a search on Perry Pressman. After a few clicks and cross-referencing Wisteria, I found the guy. Perry Pressman, a long-time resident of Wisteria and retired math teacher, was also the founder and editor of the Penny Pincher Gazette, a local classified advertisement circular and coupon guide. I skimmed a newspaper article about the demise of the Penny Pincher, shut down two years ago due to “changing technologies in the coupon industry.” In other words, the internet and free advertising services such as craigslist had made him obsolete.

  There was a photo accompanying the article. A jolt of recognition shot through me.

  This was the same man I'd seen on Monday—the translucent one who'd turned into a wisp of smoke and swirled up my nostril.

  In the photo, he wore a plaid, button-up shirt, faded from repeated washing but crisply ironed. Narrow, rounded shoulders sat beneath his rectangular face, skinny and angular with loose neck folds. Behind the lenses of square-framed glasses a decade or two of date were hooded, hazel eyes. His
gray hair tufted up over one ear, as though he'd cut it himself and missed a spot. Given Perry's tendency to pinch pennies, he probably did cut his own hair.

  I had the name of my ghost.

  How long ago had he died? I ran a few searches looking for his obituary.

  There was no obituary.

  I rubbed my chin and stared at the computer screen. Why no obituary?

  There was one simple explanation. I'd first seen him on Monday, and today was only Wednesday. If he'd only recently died, it would take the family some time to write up the notice and submit it to the newspaper.

  However, that didn't explain why his daughter, Josephine, hadn't said anything about his death to the hairdresser that morning.

  Unless... he had died elsewhere and Josephine didn't know yet. She might not have noticed he was missing, given the memory gaps she'd mentioned to Morganna plus the presence of the voices in her head.

  Was that my mission? To break the news of Perry Pressman's death to his daughter? Or to help her complete her father's final project? The one the voices called Project Erasure?

  The room tone around me changed. Someone was approaching.

  I cleared my computer screen of the evidence just as a fifty-something woman with frizzy hair approached the counter. She had puffy bags under her eyes and a red nose. I reached under the counter, gathered some tissues from the dispenser, and stuffed my skirt pockets.

  “Hello,” she said timidly.

  I asked gently, “How may I help you?”

  She leaned in and whispered, “Are there any books about getting a divorce?”

  Thoughts of my penny-pinching ghost were pushed aside. Here was a living person who needed my help. This woman was the same age as the man who'd been in earlier, looking for relationship books. And she was twice the age of the unwed mother. My heart ached for her. I would do what I could to help her access the resources she needed.

  “We have a few on that subject,” I assured her in a hushed tone. “Right this way.”

  When we got to the section, call number 306.89, she began to sob.

  I handed her one of the tissues from my pocket.

  “Divorce is such an awful word,” she said. “Why couldn't they call it something more fun?”

  “More fun?” I struggled to come up with a response. I had all the tissues, but I sure didn't have all the answers.

  We stood in the aisle for twenty minutes, talking about the books in that section. Luckily we were standing right in front of section 306.872, which still held several books about saving marriages in crisis. She hadn't come right out and said her husband had cheated, so I couldn't exactly put the perfect book into her hand. I did, however, use my magic to nudge a few appropriate titles out when she wasn't looking. When she turned her head, they caught her eye.

  She reached for the second copy of the same book I'd already checked out once that day. “Interesting,” she said, tugging the book free of the shelf.

  “Are you finding what you're looking for?”

  “Yes. Thanks so much,” she said without taking her eyes off the pages. “I'll take it from here.”

  I nodded and walked away with a smile. Maybe when they both got home and saw they'd checked out the same book, it would lead to healing. Or maybe she'd pack his bags and kick his cheating butt out for good. It was her choice, and only time would tell which option was the best.

  As I walked, I pulled the paper with the Pressman house address from my pocket and studied it for a minute. I had half a mind to toss it into the garbage and forget about the matter. The man's daughter would eventually figure things out. And if the voices in her head weren't spirits, she needed the kind of help that didn't come from a witch.

  The temperature in my feet seemed to drop a few degrees. This was cold feet, all right, and my feet had a good point. I already had two full-time jobs, as a librarian and a mother.

  Just then, my phone buzzed with an incoming message.

  Aunt Zinnia: I have that information you wanted.

  Did she mean the information about being Spirit Charmed? She was always careful to not use words such as spells or magic in her messages.

  I texted back: Could you be even more cloak and dagger?

  She wrote back: What? Who said anything about daggers?

  I replied: Never mind. I'll come over when I'm off work.

  I kept the paper with the Pressman home address. If visiting the deceased man's daughter was such a terrible idea, I'd let Zinnia talk me out of it.

  Chapter 13

  Aunt Zinnia greeted me at her front door. Like me, she also favored what Zoey called the Anne of Green Gables look. She wore a voluminous green skirt, paired with a cream blouse and a fitted vest in a tapestry-like fabric decorated with purple blossoms.

  She looked at my hair, winced, and didn't say anything about my new hairstyle.

  I pointed to her vest and asked, “Where did you get this? The fabric looks so familiar.”

  “You haven't seen it in any stores,” she said proudly. “I sewed it myself.”

  I studied the thick, nubby fabric of the vest and rubbed my chin thoughtfully. “Did you shoot a chesterfield and skin its hide for raw materials?”

  Zinnia guffawed. “I should think not.”

  “Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” I mused as I hung up my purse and light summer jacket near the door.

  She led me through the house.

  I looked closer at the back of her vest. “What are these purple flowers. Are they thistles? Why do I know this fabric?”

  She turned to face me. “Because it's the same fabric I also used to upholster my ottoman.” We were next to the living room that she referred to as a sitting room. She pointed at the matching ottoman. No wonder the purple thistles were so familiar. They'd made quite an impression on me during a previous visit. Literally. I'd fallen asleep slumped over the ottoman and gotten an imprint of the thistles on my cheek.

  She unbuttoned the vest and tossed it on top of the ottoman. “Happy now?”

  With a flick of my wrist, I commanded the vest to flap up into the air like a moth. It circled the room three times before settling back down on the ottoman, aligning the print patterns perfectly so that it disappeared against the furniture, like a mottled insect resting in its natural habitat.

  Zinnia didn't smile or even react beyond saying, “Your fine motor control is improving.”

  I returned the compliment. “And your outfit is actually cute, minus the vest. You have a great figure. You should show it off. Maybe a certain Detective Bentley will take notice.”

  She snorted. “The last thing the Riddle family needs is a cop sniffing around.”

  “Even if he is handsome and capable and has steely gray eyes that peer deeply into your soul?”

  “His eyes are rather steely,” she agreed.

  “When was the last time you went on a date?”

  She turned on her heel and headed toward the kitchen. “Floopy doop. Who has the time?”

  I scrunched my lips to hold back my laughter. Floopy doop? I'd heard my aunt make up a few charming substitutions for swear words, but nothing as adorable as floopy doop. I couldn't wait to tell Zoey that one.

  We went into the kitchen, where Zinnia began setting empty glass jars in a row on the counter. Since my last visit two days earlier, her kitchen had been transformed into a cross between a florist and an apothecary shop. Bundles of herbs the size of frying pans hung from strings criss-crossing the kitchen, something was audibly crackling as it dried inside her oven, and the air smelled strongly of magical ingredients. The aroma was a combination reminiscent of a bubbling pot of curry, hot apple cider, and a rack of car air fresheners. Despite the food smells, there was no food in sight. It was a good thing I'd picked up takeout sushi on my way over. My new bargain instincts—thanks to Mr. Finance Wizard—had led me right by a sushi place with a half-price Wednesday special.

  I set the sushi and chopsticks on the only clear bit of counter space and wat
ched my aunt in action. She was crumbling what appeared to be oregano, except with larger leaves, and sparkly. All around her, every flat surface contained some manner of plant, mixing bowl, or measuring apparatus.

  “Aunt Zinnia, are all of these things for spell casting?”

  She tucked a strand of curly red hair behind her ear. “Some of it's for cooking,” she said.

  I reached up to poke at a dangling bundle of what seemed to be black barbed wire sprouting red berries. The bundle twisted, recoiling from my touch. I jerked my hand back.

  “That one's not for cooking,” she said.

  “I should hope not.”

  “Don't touch anything,” she said.

  I swept my hands behind my back and stepped in to take a closer look at the black, twisting tendrils. “Are these tentacles?”

  “Actually, I'm not entirely sure what they are, but I'll find a good use for them some day.”

  “You make up your own spells?”

  Her green eyes twinkled with amusement, revealing a lighter side I'd rarely seen. “Oh, I dabble a bit, with this and that.”

  “Because of your specialty,” I said, nodding. “What are the odds Zoey might also be Kitchen Bewitched?” I struggled to keep a straight face. When my aunt told me her specialty was called Kitchen Bewitched, I'd never heard anything so corny. I had assumed she was pulling my leg. Little did I know, Kitchen Bewitched really was the official name for a witch who specializes in herbs and magical compounds.

  “Some specialties do run in families,” she said. “But young Zoey doesn't strike me as the kitchen type. I asked her to help me prepare some crudités, and she used a pair of scissors to cut vegetables into the most awkward shapes.”

  “Awkward crudités,” I said. “That's our Zoey.”

  The black twisting tendrils hanging before me undulated in a suggestive, come hither manner. What was that scent? Licorice? I leaned in to take a sniff. They had the most delightful fragrance, like star anise.

  Suddenly, the tendrils yanked back, formed a glove shape, and slapped me across the cheek.

  I gasped, “Why you little—"