Either Perry heard my thoughts or he did what came naturally to him once he felt the warm, vaguely damp bookwyrm in his hand. He wound his arm back like he was about to throw out the starting pitch for a ball game, and he tossed the wriggling bookwyrm right into the dark-haired woman's mouth.
She convulsed and shook as the blackness spread out from her mouth, across her face. She collapsed on the ground, still shaking. With one final shudder, she violently spat out the bookwyrm. Squealing with what sounded a lot like glee, the bookwyrm flew across the attic and landed in the midst of the pulsating fleshy wall of machine.
The monstrosity began screaming again.
Chet struggled to break free and let out a roaring battle cry.
Smoke filled the room.
And then there was pain.
I was gagging, choking on smoke.
I coughed and rolled onto my knees.
My lungs were filling with smoke, and there was good news and bad news.
Good news first: I was back in my body.
Bad news: The bookwyrm had set off a chain reaction of explosions in the fleshy monster wall, and we were all going to die.
But wait.
There was more good news.
Chet's backup finally arrived. They stormed in wearing gas masks and hazardous materials suits.
My head was reeling. The punch Chet had delivered turned out to be a real skull-rattler. I was concussed and losing consciousness.
“Chet,” I croaked, hoarse from the smoke. “He's trapped in the wall.”
A mechanical voice replied, “Madam, don't try to talk. Don't worry. Everything's going to be okay.”
“Chet,” I croaked again.
I was being picked up, moved somewhere.
All around me, there was pandemonium.
I saw a familiar face. Zinnia. She had deep gashes down her cheek and bruises around her eye.
There were whirling lights, sirens, and smoke everywhere.
I tried to hold onto my consciousness, but...
Fade to black.
Chapter 27
One nice thing about being a witch is you do heal quickly.
When Chet knocked my body into unconsciousness, he shook my brain inside my skull and caused a moderate to severe concussion. When the blast in the attic threw my spirit back into my body, I had a bad sense of equilibrium and blurred vision. An ordinary person would have gone to the hospital to have herself checked out, but the crew of people who stormed into the house had their own protocols.
They whisked me away, amidst hushed discussions about “wave incursions" and a “non-binding power fracture.” I didn't understand what any of that meant, but I did know that I hurt all over. I struggled to get free of the stretcher they wheeled me out on. I had to make sure Chet had been pulled safely from the wall, and that the big guy was treated for the bullet in his leg, and that the crew was careful about removing the shards of glass from the other guy, Rob. And was that really Aunt Zinnia I'd seen?
Someone held my hand and said, “Relax, Ms. Riddle.” It was a female, judging by the voice, though I couldn't see her facial features through the mask she wore. “I'm going to give you something to help with the pain.”
I attempted to stop her, but they had me strapped down, and I was no match for whatever the woman shot into my veins.
The last thing I saw was her eyes, gray with white flecks, like granite.
* * *
I awoke in a plain, clean room with a window looking out onto a tropical beach. My first thought was that I wanted to go for a walk on the white sands outside.
A woman in a mint green nurse's uniform came in with a tray. She was pretty, for someone whose hair was made of snakes.
I blinked. The snakes became curling coils of golden blonde hair. Was I dreaming?
“You're awake,” the blonde nurse said brightly. Her eyes were gray and white. “How do you feel?”
My throat was too dry to speak. She offered me water from the tray, and I took a sip.
“Better now?” she asked.
“I feel like toothpaste that's been crammed back into the tube,” I said.
“Sounds about right, considering what you've been through.”
I glanced around the room, and at the window. Something about the sandy beach view wasn't right.
I took another sip of the water. My head was pounding with pain, but only if I moved.
“And what is it you think I've been through?”
“A lot,” she said.
I looked at the window again, my vision coming into focus at last. The window wasn't a window after all. It was just a television screen, set into the wall and made to look like a view.
She followed my gaze to the screen. “We can change that to any location you'd like. Would you like to visit Rome?” She walked over to a control panel and pressed a button. Beaming, she turned back to me. “Isn't it wonderful? These interior rooms don't have windows, but it's not like the patients in this ward complain.”
With great pain, I turned my head to the right to view the rest of the ward. There were three other beds, and their occupants were lying motionless, staring up at the ceiling, their bodies hooked to machines and tubes. It did not take a medical degree for me to figure out I was in the coma ward. But in what hospital?
“How long was I out?” I asked.
She gave me a soft smile. “Twenty-five years,” she said. “We have flying cars now.”
I closed my eyes and wished for the sweet oblivion of my coma to return.
A male voice said, “Charlize, that's not very nice.”
My eyes flew open. Charlize? I knew that name from somewhere.
The blonde nurse whipped her head, and her hair spun up like snakes. I heard the golden snakes hissing, saw them writhing with their gold scales, and then they were blonde curls again. She smiled up at a man in a white coat.
“Doctor,” she said sweetly. “I was just testing the patient's response to a humorous comment.”
The male doctor shook his head. “Go to Level Five.”
Her lower lip trembled. “But it's not time yet.”
His voice boomed with authority. “Go.”
She turned to me and narrowed her eyes. “Farewell, Ms. Riddle. Please send Chet a hug for me, and give that adorable little Corvin a pinch on the cheeks. He loves it when you do that.”
“Corvin?” I blinked at her in disbelief. “Attempting to pinch that boy's cheeks sounds like an invitation to lose a finger.”
The doctor chuckled. “That boy is a handful.”
I jerked my head to the left. His voice was coming from beside me. I hadn't heard him move there from the foot of my bed.
He was injecting something into an IV line, the same line that was snaking across my pastel-green sheets and into my arm.
The doctor said, “Speaking of handful, something tells me this won't be the last time I see you down here, Ms. Riddle.”
I started to ask, where am I? What was down here?
But blackness took over, and I was in oblivion.
* * *
When I woke up again, I was on a hospital gurney, in a hallway. I could hear someone coughing in a nearby room, and muffled voices coming from behind closed doors.
I sat up slowly, expecting to see stars and chirping cartoon birds. To my surprise, my head felt fine. I could use an extra-large cup of coffee, for sure, but other than that, I felt reasonably good.
A solid-framed nurse with an orange-hued pixie haircut was walking down the hallway in my direction. She sped up when she saw me struggling to right myself. She had a juice box in her hand. Orange juice.
I pointed to the juice box and asked croakily, “Is that for me?”
“Now it is,” she said cheerfully, and handed it over.
I stabbed the straw through the silver foil. In my mind flashed a memory of cutting through silvery gray flesh and machinery to free Chet. My stomach recoiled. I drank the orange juice. It was—no lie—the best orange juice I'
d ever had in my life. And that's saying a lot, because it was lukewarm.
The nurse asked, “How are you feeling, Miss Jones?”
Miss Jones? I was careful to not react. If I was there under an alias, there had to be a good reason.
I replied, “That depends. What year is it? Are there flying cars?”
The orange-haired nurse smiled and delicately touched the gold cross visible on her sturdy-looking collarbone. She gave me the year, date, and time.
It was now Saturday morning. I'd gone to the Pressman house on Thursday night. I was missing a whole day, Friday, but compared to the twenty-five years that Charlize had joked about, one day was nothing.
I asked the orange-haired nurse, “What do I need to do to get myself released?”
She seemed confused by my question. “You can go any time. There's no follow-up care, except to drink plenty of fluids and sleep it off.”
I rubbed the back of my head. “Sleep what off? Wasn't I in an accident?”
She glanced around, frowning. “Miss, if I were you, I'd stop pretending that drinking a bottle of tequila was some sort of accident.” She leaned over and pulled a flier from the corkboard on the hallway's wall. “And get yourself to a meeting.”
She handed me a flier with information about the local branch of Alcoholics Anonymous.
“I really need to quit drinking margaritas,” I said.
She nodded, took my empty juice box, and asked if I needed a hand finding my way out of the emergency room of Wisteria General Hospital.
I assured her I could find my way out.
Keeping a lookout for snake-haired Charlize or the deep-voiced doctor who'd drugged me, I made my escape.
I headed for home, praying I would find my family there safe and sound.
Chapter 28
I arrived home to the sweet aroma of fresh waffles. I've always been grateful to smell waffles, but after what I'd been through and the worried thoughts I'd had on the walk home, I was more grateful than ever.
I closed the door behind me and called out, “Have I died and gone to heaven?”
“Mom!” Zoey came running to greet me with a big hug. “You're back early. Auntie Z said you might be in the hospital for a week! I was going to come see you tonight.”
I patted her hair and squeezed her tight to my chest.
Aunt Zinnia emerged from the kitchen with a tea towel in her left hand. Her right arm was in a cast. The scratches I'd seen along the side of her face were all but gone. Only a few pink lines remained on her cheek, and the bruises around her eyes were barely visible.
“What happened to your arm?”
She gave me a secret-loaded glance. “We'll talk later about my little accident,” she said.
Zoey pulled back and looked up at me. “Corvin told me the funniest story. He said you came over to his house, but as a ghost, and you offered to tuck him into bed.”
“That kid has quite the imagination.”
Zoey patted my head in a motherly gesture. “I'm just glad you're okay. What were you thinking, anyway? Auntie Z said you were snooping around in someone's attic, and you walked into a wooden beam. You're not usually so clumsy. Was it that penny-pinching ghost?”
“Yes, it was basically like that.” Except that it was actually an evil entity who'd hijacked my body, an entity I knew only as the boss of the murderous Dorothy Tibbits. Not that my daughter needed to worry about any of that, or the secret organizations hiding in plain sight in Wisteria.
“You must have had quite the adventure,” Zoey said. “Any new money saving tips?”
I replied, “Serve your guests diluted ginger ale instead of Dom Perignon and you'll save thousands of dollars annually because nobody will eat at your house.”
Zoey shook her head.
“I'm afraid Mr. Finance Wizard has moved on,” I said. “He probably left a few factoids behind up here.” I rapped on my head lightly.
“Where did he go?”
“I don't know. He got to see his daughter one last time, and then he...” Got shot in the head, which was only half a head by that point anyway. I forced a smile. “And then he happily and willingly moved on to a better place.”
“If you ever see him again, be sure to thank him for everything he did for us.”
I kept up my smile. “Remind me again, what did he do for us? Other than the half-price haircuts.”
“We're rich!”
“No kidding! Did we quadruple our nest egg thanks to some savvy stock picks?”
“Don't get too excited. We're not actually rich, but while you were in the hospital, you got a call from the bank. It was a nice lady. I pretended to be you, since I know all the answers to your security questions.”
“I don't know whether to praise you or punish you. Go on. What did the nice lady at the bank say?”
“She said you were very smart for reviewing the Terms of Service on your loan agreement, and that you were right about the error that was in their favor. They corrected the percentage rate, and they paid back the retroactive difference with a lump sum, which they used to pay off all your credit cards, just like you asked them to. We're now free of debt! I mean, besides the mortgage, but that debt is offset by the asset value, which will hopefully appreciate.”
“Speaking of appreciation, somebody's become a little finance wizard in her own right.”
She grinned. “Whenever you get interested in something, I get a bit interested, too.”
Zinnia cleared her throat. “All's well that ends well, as Shakespeare wrote four hundred years ago.”
I turned to my aunt and dropped my jaw playfully. “You knew Shakespeare? Aunt Zinnia, what were the dinosaurs like?”
Zoey giggled.
Zinnia took it in stride. She swung the tea towel over her shoulder and tossed her red locks in the direction of the scent of waffles. “Let's get some breakfast in you, Zara. Hospital food leaves a lot to be desired.” Her eyes told me she knew very well that I'd been somewhere other than the hospital.
“Yes, please,” I said, nodding. “Hospital food is the worst.”
We followed her into the kitchen, where I found a stunning bouquet of summer flowers in a vase.
“Those are for you,” Zoey said. “Chet stopped by earlier this morning to drop them off.”
I played it cool, giving the arrangement only a cursory glance and a quick search for a note. There was no note, just a ribbon that read GET WELL SOON. The flowers were a mix of orange and pink roses mixed with fragrant Stargazer lilies and hot pink asters.
Zoey was watching me.
I looked back at her. “Did he say anything?”
She shrugged. “Not much. He asked me how school was going, and he gave me this.” She handed me a recipe card. It was for zucchini chocolate cake.
“How romantic,” I said.
Zinnia placed a stack of waffles on the kitchen island. She peered over my shoulder at the recipe card. “He is thoughtful, in his own way.” She turned away to set out dishes and utensils. “His handwriting is a bit rigid.”
Zoey yanked the recipe card from my hand. “Let me see.” She frowned at the card. “This is definitely the handwriting of a sick person who puts zucchini into perfectly innocent chocolate cake.”
“Ha ha,” I said. “Everyone's a critic.”
* * *
The three of us sat around the kitchen island on our stools and enjoyed a luxurious Saturday morning brunch. As we were finishing our second round of waffles, Zoey patted me on the head again.
I swatted her hand away and asked, “Why do you keep patting me?”
She raised her eyebrows, looked at Zinnia, and then back at me.
“You two have been scheming,” I said.
Zinnia got up and began clearing away the dishes with her good hand. “Ask your mother,” Zinnia said to Zoey.
Zoey pressed her hands together in a pleading gesture. “Mom, can we get a pet?”
“Sure,” I said. “We can make another bookwyrm, and you can
keep it in a terrarium.”
She frowned. “What happened to the last one?”
I glanced at Zinnia. “Long story, but trust me when I say that he or she went out a hero.”
She waved a hand. “I don't want any type of wyrm or lizard. I'd prefer something I can pet and cuddle.”
“We could probably make a furry bookwyrm.” I kept my eyes on Zinnia. “I'm sure Auntie Z has some ingredients she could mix in to make a soft, fluffy version. You could comb its long, luxurious fur. Like a My Little Pony.”
Zinnia's eyes widened. She was too horrified to even protest.
Zoey groaned. “Mom! I want a cat or a dog, like a normal kid.” She lifted her clasped hands, touched her fingertips to her chin, and batted her eyelashes. “Pleeeeeeeease!”
I shook my head. “Not with your allergies. You can't have a cat or dog unless it's hairless and saliva-less. Honestly, if it wasn't for your allergies, we'd probably have a whole menagerie of creatures.”
Zoey's pleading pout turned to a grin, as though I'd just said the magic words she was hoping to hear. “Auntie Z has a recipe that makes any cat or dog hypoallergenic.”
From where she stood by the dishwasher, Zinnia gave me a guilty look. “I'm afraid it's true,” she said. “We were planning to give you some time to recover from your ordeal before we sprung this on you, but somebody has the patience of hot popcorn.”
I put my hands on my hips and pretended to be very cross with them for all of a minute before relenting. “Okay. Let's get a cat or a dog. But not both. One or the other.”
Zoey unclasped her hands and clapped them excitedly. “I think the rescue place is open today. Can I go see if Corvin wants to go with me to take a look?”
“Careful they don't try to put him in a cage,” I joked.
She rolled her eyes. “We won't come back with anything today, I promise. They won't adopt to anyone under eighteen.”
“Have fun,” I said, waving her toward her new pet-owning lifestyle.
She nearly knocked her chair over in her excitement to leave.
“Nicely done,” I said to Zinnia. “I walked right into that trap.”
Wicked Wisteria (Witch Cozy Mystery and Paranormal Romance) (Wisteria Witches Book 2) Page 22
