3-Book Series Bundle: Wisteria Witches, Wicked Wisteria, Wisteria Wonders - Cozy Witch Mysteries

by Angela Pepper

  And then I must have fallen asleep right in front of the poor guy. How rude. But he'd probably be understanding. I had spent the day moving.

  When I'd heard the gonging on the clock at midnight, it could have been an auditory hallucination brought on by exhaustion, or even the beginning of a dream.

  My tiredness explained my patchy memory, but not sleepwalking, let alone this new phenomenon of sleeptoasting.

  I chuckled to myself as I wrung the water out of the black toast, tossed the soppy remains into the food compost bucket under the sink, and poured myself a glass of water. Dehydration makes people do funny things.

  I checked the time on the stove. It was three o'clock in the morning.

  Today was Sunday, Zoey's birthday. I yawned. I had to get some more sleep before taking her shopping to get new bedroom stuff for her sixteenth birthday.

  She'd laugh her butt off when she heard about my sleeptoasting.

  Actually, I'd never hear the end of it. Maybe I wouldn't tell her about this incident.

  It was probably just a one-time event, nothing to be concerned about.

  I turned to leave the kitchen, and accidentally dropped the water glass I'd forgotten I was holding. The glass headed straight for the floor, right between my bare toes. My breath caught in my throat, and time stood still.

  No, really.

  Time stood still.

  Not like a car accident, when something scary is happening quickly and your mind speeds up to make it seem like everything's moving in slow motion.

  Time truly stood still, and the glass paused in its descent, floating about three inches from the floor.

  I leaned forward to see what the glass had caught on. Was it a trick of the light, a bump in the flooring? I blinked, and time seemed to flow again. The glass dropped the rest of the way and landed on the floor with a soft ringing sound.

  I picked up the glass and examined it. There was nothing unusual about the glass, except that it had hung in mid-air for a second.

  As if by magic.

  I snorted at my wild imagination, put the glass back on the counter, and went back upstairs to bed.

  * * *

  In the morning, I chuckled to myself over the previous night's sleeptoasting. I knew I hadn't dreamed the incident, because the charred toast remains were still sitting in the compost bucket under the sink.

  I made a pot of coffee and fresh, non-charred toast for breakfast.

  At ten o'clock, I went upstairs to get Zoey up, and found her bed empty and neatly made. I raced around the house, checking all the rooms and calling her name. She was sixteen, and able to take care of herself, but we were in a new town, and I couldn't help but get those motherly worries.

  I eventually found her in the backyard, reclining on a weathered lawn chair, soaking up some morning sunshine with her eyes closed and an open paperback resting on her chest. Like me, she had pale skin to go with her red hair, and so sunbathing was limited to the spring and fall months only.

  "Happy birthday, Sleeping Beauty," I said.

  Her eyelids fluttered open, and she sat up. Except for the rusty lawn chair that squeaked with her movement, she could have been a slumbering princess from a fairy tale. My chest ached with love, as it always did whenever I saw my daughter immediately following a bout of motherly worrying.

  I took a seat on a wooden stump next to her chair. "Do you feel any older?"

  "I think I feel different," she said as she rubbed her eyes. "But I can't tell if it's from turning sixteen, or if it's from waking up in a new place. I was so disoriented this morning. I thought I was going into the bathroom, but I opened the door and it was a linen closet. I spent a whole minute being mad at you, because I thought you switched things around to play a joke on me. But then I found the actual bathroom, so you're forgiven."

  I laughed. "As much as I love pranks, I have neither the magical powers nor the team of construction workers required to swap rooms around willy nilly."

  She reached for the mug of coffee in my hands. "For me?"

  "Sure." I handed it over. "Happy birthday. I'll just go get another one for myself."

  I went back into the house and poured myself a cup. My daughter had been drinking coffee for the last year. Sometimes other mothers would give me disapproving looks, while ordering sugary cocoa for their children. I allowed Zoey to drink coffee, as long as she avoided the heavy syrups and kept it to a reasonable quantity. As far as vices went, her caffeine habit was mild. I hoped she would continue to be such a smart, thoughtful teenager now that she was another year older. I knew the risks of small town life for teens. On one hand, it could be safer, because people knew each other and were more community oriented. But on the other hand, some small towns were lacking in activities for teens, which left kids with little choice but to find their own amusement.

  Only time would tell what kind of life Zoey would build for herself in Wisteria. She had been a well-liked student at her former high school, but it hadn't happened overnight. She'd grown up with most of the girls in her small circle. I did worry about her sometimes, because she was content to spend her weekends with her nose in a book. It could take months for her to come out of her introvert shell and make friends. I smiled at the memory of her chasing Corvin around the house the night before. At least she had one new buddy, a pseudo-brother.

  Mug in hand, I stepped out into the backyard once more.

  "This is amazing," I said to Zoey. "Am I dreaming? We have an entire backyard that belongs to us. This is so much better than a tiny, rusted fire escape looking out over an alley, don't you think?"

  She'd gotten up from the old lawn chair, and was digging around under the stalks of some overgrown vines. "It's like a jungle back here," she said.

  "But a real jungle. Not a concrete jungle." I looked around at the shrubbery and trees and flowers that were all mine, mine, mine. I'd dreamed for so long of having a yard of my own that I relished the idea of toiling away back there, planting and pruning things.

  "That's weird," Zoey said, pulling something from the dirt. "These little rocks aren't rocks at all."

  "They could be bulbs for daffodils or tulips that finished blooming a couple months ago."

  "No. Bulbs look like tiny onions, and these are rocks that look exactly like... Well, you tell me."

  She plopped three gray stones into my palm. They looked like concrete hornets, right down to the detail of wings folded against their backs.

  "These are weird," I agreed. "Mrs. Vander Zalm must have had eclectic taste when it came to garden ornaments." I handed back the three pebble-sized ornaments as I glanced around at the shadows between the fence and the overgrown shrubs. "Keep an eye out for garden gnomes. They sneak up on you when you're not looking."

  "Very funny." Zoey scooped a handful of water from a concrete bird bath and rinsed off the concrete hornets. "These are incredibly detailed," she said.

  "You look like you're enjoying yourself. Do you want to spend the day poking around in the garden, or do you want to hit the shops?"

  "Shopping," she said. "I don't really need anything, but we should explore our new town."

  She set the curious little hornets back on the ground where she'd found them.

  Chapter 7

  We were walking along one of the quaint shopping streets of Wisteria when Zoey said to me, "What's the name of that show where some of the people are robots?"

  "Do you mean Westworld?"

  "Not that one."

  "Robocop? The Terminator? Blade Runner? Aliens?"

  "The one with pretty robots," she said.

  "Like the fembots in Austin Powers? Or do you mean pretty like Jude Law in A.I.?"

  She stopped walking and raised her red eyebrows at me. "Wow. You're really good at the whole librarian thing."

  "So good, it never shuts off. Just call me Walking Wikipedia. People used to say 'walking encyclopedia,' but I'm still young and hip, so I've updated the expression to be more current." I gestured for her to step over
so we weren't blocking the sidewalk. "Now tell me more about this show you're thinking of."

  She rubbed her chin and scrunched her forehead. "The remake has Ferris Bueller in it."

  I snapped my fingers. "You mean Mathew Broderick, and the movie is Stepford Wives." I fist pumped the air in a most un-librarian-like gesture. "Nailed it!"

  She gave me a patronizing pat on the shoulder. "Very good." She gestured for us to start walking again. "I was trying to think of the name of that movie, because I'm noticing something unusual about the people who live in this town."

  I looked around, trying to see what she did. All I saw were regular people up and down the sidewalks, carrying shopping bags, or walking dogs, and stopping to say hello to each other.

  "Zoey, I don't see anything wrong with these folks."

  "Exactly." She glanced over to give me a knowing smile. "They're all perfect. Like extras in a movie about a quaint small town with a dark secret."

  "Like Wayward Pines," I said. "Or any number of Stephen King adaptations."

  "Exactly. Do you think it's the town, or do you think it's just me? Did growing up in a big city warp my mind somehow?" We'd both slowed our walking again, and she stopped to gaze at our reflections in a store window.

  Now it was my turn to pat her on the shoulder. "Oh, sweetie. You are warped, but not from—"

  We were interrupted by a person approaching and lightly touching my elbow. It turned quickly to find a very small man with a big, round nose staring up at me with tiny dark eyes. He had a pair of wire-rimmed eyeglasses in one hand.

  "And a very good morning to you, Ms. Riddle," the gnome-like man said.

  "Same to you," I said politely, even though I had no idea who the small fellow was. If I'd ever met someone who looked exactly like an adorable garden gnome, I would have remembered the face.

  He kept squinting up at me, waving the glasses in his hand as he spoke. "And who's this lovely redhead accompanying you this fine morning? Is this your niece?"

  "My daughter," I said. "Zoey, this is..." I turned to the man, expecting him to give his name.

  The small man laughed. "Such a joker, you are!" He passed his glasses to his other hand and extended his right hand to Zoey. "Lovely to meet you, miss. I'm Griebel."

  "Griebel," Zoey repeated, giving me a raised eyebrow as she leaned down and shook his hand. "And how do you two know each other?"

  The big-nosed man let out a merry laugh. "Oh, this one,"—he nodded in my direction—"and I go way back." Griebel pulled a crisp handkerchief from his pocket and turned to walk away, cleaning his glasses as he went. "Toodles," he called over his shoulder.

  Once he was out of hearing range, I whispered to Zoey, "I have no idea who that was."

  "He must really need those glasses, if he thought you were someone else."

  "Someone who's also called Ms. Riddle?" I shook my head. "Weirdly enough, the little guy did seem familiar. I must have met him before and forgotten."

  "Does he work at the library? Maybe he was there at your interview."

  "No, but weirdly enough, I do have a faint recollection of giving him an autographed book of recipes."

  "A book? Well, that explains it," Zoey said. "You must have met him at a librarian function, or a book signing."

  "Sure," I said. "That seems a lot more logical than your theory that this town is populated by humanoid robots."

  "Or that there's a giant conspiracy and everyone here is a paid actor, like in The Truman Show."

  "Ooh." I looked around at the colorful storefronts, clean city streets, and orderly flow of smiling townspeople. "This town does have a Truman Show vibe. Maybe we should move back to the city right away? It will be so much fun to put all the things we just unpacked back into cardboard boxes again."

  "Hmm," Zoey said. "Let's not be hasty."

  "Admit it. You love Wisteria."

  She frowned. "Undecided. Let's go across the street to that appliance repair shop, and see if they have a nice lamp for my bedroom."

  We went to the crosswalk, and the cars in both directions immediately stopped and waved us across, both drivers smiling.

  Zoey was right about one thing. There was definitely something unusual about the whole town.

  At least I'd be starting at my new job the next morning. My fellow librarians would be able to let me in on the many secrets of Wisteria.

  Chapter 8

  An Old English word for library is bochord, which literally means "book hoard."

  Given the size of the town, the Wisteria Public Library was a very well stocked bochard. The library crouched on a downtown corner, low and squat, like a slumbering dragon made of concrete. It had been built in the brutalist style, during an era when municipal buildings seemingly erupted from the ground, raw in material and devoid of frivolity. The only color was the slate blue of the doors. There were windows on the lower floor only, and they were deep set within the folds of the concrete walls.

  I'd had low expectations from the exterior, but was dazzled to find the interior of the library surprisingly bright, thanks to a grid of skylights and a lofted central area.

  When I'd visited the month before for my interview, I'd taken one look around and instantly known it was the place for me. A book hoard inside a bunker. From the sensible layout to the gorgeous, double-height shelves with rolling ladders for staff to access the closed stacks, this was the library I'd been longing to call home.

  Call it love at first sight. And I was pretty sure the Wisteria library loved me back.

  My new boss, however, wasn't too sure about me.

  I was nervous on my first day at my job, and the head librarian, Kathy Carmichael, wasn't giving me much feedback.

  Two hours into my Monday shift, we walked together into the staff lounge in the north-west corner of the library. We were supposed to be taking a coffee break, but the head librarian kept remembering more important things she needed to tell me.

  "Oh, you'll need to get on rotation for FPF," Kathy said.

  "That sounds serious." It was also, surprisingly, a term I didn't know.

  Kathy had spent the morning drilling me on the library's computer system and more three-letter acronyms than a person typically hears in a single day. The Wisteria Public Library (WPL) used an open source, web-based Integrated Library System (ILS) to manage acquisitions, and a Geographic Information System (GIS) to map the physical layout of everything.

  Kathy looked at me with pinched lips, silent for a moment, as though she wasn't sure if I could handle the shocking revelation of whatever FPF was, and what it meant to be on rotation for it.

  "Whooooo am I kidding," she said, drawing out the word who so it sounded like she was hooting. "This is a lot of acronyms I'm hitting you with. We should take a break." Her small eyes darted toward the box of leftover birthday cake near the staff lounge's sink.

  I nodded and gave Kathy my serious face. "There are a lot of acronyms, boss, but I've worked at libraries before, as a page and also an assistant. I can handle it." Plus I really wanted to know what FPF meant. The P could easily stand for Patron, which is what libraries call the people who patronize the institution, rather than customer or client or muggle.

  She didn't hear me, though. I'd lost the head librarian to the box of birthday cake. She loaded a sturdy square onto a plate and took a bite.

  "Stale," she commented. She kept eating anyway.

  I wasn't too good for stale cake, plus I wanted my new boss to like me, so I took a square and joined her. "Not bad," I said.

  "It's from the Gingerbread House of Baking," she said. "Have you been there yet? Oh, you have to go. Their recipes are simply magical."

  "I promise to go," I said solemnly.

  With each bite of cake, the color returned to Kathy's pale cheeks. The woman was in her forties, with medium-brown hair falling in curls, light brown eyes that glowed golden orange under the bright lights, and an oval face with high cheeks that nudged her glasses whenever she got animated and talked faster.
The lenses of her glasses were perfect circles, framed in gold with delicate filigree around the hinge connecting the arms. The round glasses gave her an owl-like appearance, and I noticed she drew out word who, so it sounded like she was hooting. And she loved rhetorical questions. Already that morning, she'd said, "Whooooo can resist a book with a dog on the cover?" as well as, "Whooooo doesn't love a trashy beach read on vacation?"

  We ate our cake in silence.

  She kept looking at me as though she expected something shocking to happen, like for me to reach into my purse and reveal the cat I'd brought with me to work. Then again, given what I knew about my fellow librarians back home, a cat in the purse wouldn't exactly be shocking. Two cats would raise an eyebrow.

  The cake didn't have any flavor in my mouth, but I chalked it up to nerves. I hoped Kathy Carmichael liked me, but she seemed guarded, unsure about something.

  She gave me a tight smile as she carved off another slice of cake.

  "Zara, do you have any hobbies? Are you into crafting?"

  "Not really," I answered honestly, and as soon as the words were out I knew I'd made a mistake. She'd asked me because she liked crafting. Now what could I do? "I like costumes," I said.

  "You sew?"

  As much as it could potentially help my career, I couldn't lie. "No. I just buy costumes when theater companies sell off their excess."

  "Hmm," she said.

  "Are you a crafter?"

  Her orange-brown eyes brightened, but she'd just taken a huge bite of cake and couldn't speak.

  I decided to go out on a limb and regale her with something personal.

  "The strangest thing happened to me last night," I said, and I recounted my unusual night time activity.

  When I finished the anecdote, Kathy stared at me like I was a talking raccoon. As the head librarian as well as the Director, she was the one who'd interviewed me and hired me the previous month. Now she looked like she was having some regrets.

  "Sleeptoasting?" Kathy pushed her round glasses up her pointed nose and scrutinized me with owlish blinks.

  "Never mind," I said with a hand wave. "I'm sure last night's sleeptoasting was just a one-time thing, like making a soufflé. Everyone has to try it once to figure out it's not for them. After all, a soufflé just a weirdly eggy cake with a bunch of hot air inside."