A few questions later, Charlize was satisfied we’d gotten all we could.
“A tooth is better than I expected,” she said to me.
We were about to leave when a cat meowed pitifully from somewhere inside the clinic.
The white cat! That was what I’d been trying to remember, the thing Tansy had been smuggling away due to her prejudice against cats.
I asked Fatima, “Is that fluffy white cat you had here last week still in need of adoption?”
“Cat?”
“The one who looks like something you’d pull out of the lint filter after a load of white towels.”
Fatima pushed her white glasses up her nose. “Yes! If you’re interested, I can get you the adoption request forms. If everything clears, you could take her home in a few weeks.”
“A few weeks?”
Charlize elbowed me out of the way. “Cat,” she said, in a language that was not English yet I understood as English all the same. “Now.” She pointed to a spot on the counter. “Cat. Now. Pleassssssssse.”
Three minutes later, we were walking out the front door with a fluffy white cat in a cardboard pet carrier. I’d been thinking about adopting the cat, but with everything that had happened last week, I’d forgotten. Tansy would surely have reminded me if it had been a dog needing adoption.
“Her name is Boa,” I said to Charlize as we climbed back into the car. I set the box on my lap. “Kind of an interesting coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Boa? As in Boa Constrictor? I can’t believe you’d make such a tasteless pun.” She stared at me. And kept staring. For a full minute. Was I turning to stone? I wasn’t sure. I did feel strangely tingly. My eyes began to water, but I stared right back, because I sensed she was testing me somehow.
Someone who wanted our parking spot pulled up behind the Beetle and gave a polite toot of the horn.
The shock of the sound made me break eye contact.
Charlize laughed and slapped her knee. “Boa, as in the feathered kind,” she said. “I get it. I’m only teasing you, Zara. That was my impression of Knox.”
“Good one,” I said. “I thought I was going to suffer the same fate as that poor squirrel in your backseat. Is that Petey?”
“You tell me.” She reached back and grabbed the stone statuette.
The car behind us beeped again, this time less politely.
Charlize suddenly thrust a squirming, living and breathing red-furred creature into my face. “Does this guy look like a Petey to you?”
The squirrel chattered angrily as it twisted free of her hand and jumped onto the top of my head. I instinctively pushed open the passenger side door. The squirrel scolded us as it jumped out of the car and zigzagged up the sidewalk. Petey the Squirrel lived!
Charlize didn’t just turn living creatures to stone. She could also turn them right back again. Suddenly my witch skills felt like a useless degree from a bankrupt school.
Charlize winked and blew over her fingertip, just like a gunslinger in an old Western.
“Neat,” I said, making the understatement of the day.
She twirled her mass of keys. A few seconds later, we squealed out of the parking spot.
Boa reached a paw through a circular hole in the box and groped around the air.
I have a cat, I thought. A fur-kid, as they say.
Charlize asked, “Are you coming back to the department with me to run a bunch of lab tests on that fang?”
“As fun as that sounds, my shift at the library starts pretty soon. Can you drop me there?”
“Want me to take the cat?”
“No,” I answered a little too vehemently, thinking of Petey the Petrified Squirrel.
My coworker, Frank Wonder, didn’t miss a beat.
“Zara Riddle, that’s a box of cat,” he said. We were in the staff lounge, making the first pot of coffee before we officially opened for the day.
“Yes, Frank. That is, indeed, a box of cat,” I agreed.
“Wine,” he said. “If you’re going to smuggle in a box of something, it should be wine.” He made a tsk-tsk sound and shook his pink-haired head.
“Don’t worry. I’ll call a taxi and take her home on my lunch break.”
Frank opened the cardboard pet-adoption carrier and scooped up an armload of white fluff.
“No way,” he said. “I’m going to make up a timecard for this fluff ball. She can work the full shift. What’s your name, pretty lady?”
In a squeaky voice, I answered for the cat. “Hi, Frank. My name is Boa, and I am a pretty lady.”
He held her at arm’s length. She went limp and mewed softly.
“Boa?” Frank kept his eyes on the fluffy newcomer. “What manner of creature are you?”
“She’s a regular cat, as far as I know. Charlize gave her a good sniff in the car and said she checks out as a standard feline.”
Frank brought the cat in for a hug. Boa wrapped her front paws around his neck adorably.
“This is no standard feline,” Frank said. “She’s a diva. Isn’t that right, Boa? You’re just a feathery ballerina in a little white tutu, aren’t you?”
“She can’t stay here all day without cat stuff. She needs food and somewhere to go to the bathroom.”
Frank grinned as he cradled Boa like a baby. “Zara, you’re hardly the first librarian to smuggle a cat in here. Check the supply closet.”
I did, and he was right. All those clichés about cat-smuggling librarians are true.
Boa took to the library like a natural. We tried to restrict her to the staff lounge, but she insisted on exploring the whole place, jumping from shelf to shelf like a feathery circus acrobat. She climbed higher and higher, up to the skylights. I worried I’d need magic to locate and extract her at the end of the day.
The patrons were delighted to make her acquaintance. When they learned I’d just adopted the cat that day, they told me their own heartwarming pet-adoption stories.
My lack of sleep became more pronounced throughout the day. I wasn’t sleepy, exactly, but my mind was playing tricks on me.
Wherever I was in the building, I had the sense someone was watching me. Following me. Creeping up on me. At first I thought it was the cat, jumping from shelf to shelf, but I caught glimpses of something dark, not white like Boa.
I was tidying up the floor pillows in the children’s storybook corner when a shadowy figure crossed by at the edge of my vision. I don’t know how I knew this, but I sensed it was better to not look directly at the figure.
I kept tidying up the storybook corner. I nonchalantly approached a trio of brothers, all blond, who were sharing a graphic novel.
“Enjoying the book?”
The middle-sized boy looked up at me. “Can we really take this home?”
“You can borrow it,” I said. “All you need is a library card.”
“Wow,” he said and went back to reading.
I leaned forward to pick up a pillow and then abruptly glanced past my shoulder.
The shadowy figure moved like a blur, disappearing around the corner of a shelf.
Oh, no you don’t. I ran after the dark blur.
Nothing but books and two teens who might have been about to kiss.
I kept going, weaving up and down the aisles. Was Frank playing one of his practical jokes on me, or was there a mysterious entity following me?
I gave my resident spirit a poke in the ribs.
Tansy, did you see who that was? Did you see someone with dark hair, a woman?
The spirit gave no response. I would have thought she’d be more active due to my tiredness. Honestly, I’d hoped she might take over for a bit so I could slip into the backstage of consciousness for a nap. But for my entire Monday shift, she was absent.
I had just tricked Boa back into the temporary pet carrier when Charlize showed up, looking serious.
“Oh, no,” I said. My father hadn’t made it. I grabbed onto the circulation counter to steady myself.
&nbs
p; “Relax,” Charlize said. “I’m just here to give you and the cat a ride home.”
“How’s my father?”
She glanced around. “His tail’s wagging.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t my favorite person, but he was the only father I had. The only living parent I had.
Charlize eyed the pet carrier. “Need some help with that?”
“Sure, but no funny business.” I slid the carrier across the counter to her. “Play nice.”
Charlize rolled her eyes and took the carrier. Boa poked a paw through a circular hole and batted at one of Charlize’s blond curls.
“Aren’t you a cutie,” Charlize said. “Yes, you are. Yes, you are!”
I smiled as I watched my gorgon friend make embarrassing baby talk with my new fur-kid. I hadn’t experienced this emotion since Zoey had been a baby, and it filled me up with emotion. They grow up so fast, I thought.
I was so glad to see Charlize, though. I hadn’t felt so excited about a friendship with another woman since before I’d become a parent.
My feelings must have also excited my resident spirit in a way that regular librarian duties did not.
Grow only true friends in your garden, Tansy’s spirit whispered in my head. You’ll know when you have the right ones because they’ll sprout up and bush out like weeds, even if you neglect them from time to time.
Wise words.
Chapter 31
I must have nodded off in Charlize’s car.
I remembered leaning my head back on the headrest.
The next thing I knew, my shoulder was both burning and freezing at once. Charlize was jostling me awake by shooting her stone powers into my shoulder.
“A gentle shaking would have sufficed,” I grumbled, swatting her hand away. My defensive magic flared up, and I shocked her hard enough to make her shriek.
“Zara! I nearly wet myself!”
The cat inside the box on my lap meowed in alarm.
I made the horns sign with one hand and waved it at my blond chauffeur. “You mess with the bull, you get the horns.”
She eyed my finger-horns warily. “You would know, devil’s spawn.”
“Snake monster.”
She grinned. “Soul sucker. Daughter of flame-haired demons.”
“Ouch.” I reached for the door handle. “I’d say something horrific about your lineage, but I might accidentally guess right.”
“Probably.”
We got out of the car and walked up to the front door. The cat in the box seemed heavier with each step.
“Boa, this is your new home,” I said.
The fluffy white cat in the box meowed pitifully.
“She’s excited,” Charlize said. “I don’t speak cat, but I do know excitement.”
I wasn’t so sure.
We walked into the house, and I called for Zoey.
My sixteen-year-old came down the stairs slowly, warily glancing between me, the meowing box, and Charlize, whom she’d heard all about but had never met before.
I made introductions, we gave her an update on her grandfather, and then I quickly moved on to releasing Boa from her corrugated cage.
The fluffy white cat hopped out like a bunny being summoned from a magician’s hat.
Zoey gasped and clapped her hands together in a childlike expression of pure delight.
I couldn’t be happier. Zara is a great mother!
With her white feather-duster tail held high, Boa sniffed the air delicately, her tiny pink nostrils flaring. She began to explore the main floor of the house, ignoring the three of us. We trailed behind her like groupies, watching in fascination, and whispering about what she might be thinking.
“This is mine now, and so is this, and this,” Zoey said, speaking on behalf of the cat. Indeed, Boa was rubbing her whiskered cheeks on furniture legs and corners as though staking her claim. “Oh, and this window is mine.” The cat struck a pose on the den’s windowsill. “Yes. Very nice. I shall return later to sunbathe.”
The cat jumped off the windowsill and strutted past us, toward the downstairs powder room.
Boa’s keen attention to every item in every room made me think of the white glove a butler might use to inspect a mansion for dust. She completed her “white paw inspection” of the main floor and stopped at the foot of the stairs, turning to look at us as though asking for permission to proceed upstairs.
“Go ahead,” I told her. “This house is yours now.”
Zoey raced up the stairs and stopped halfway. “Come on, Boa! Come see my bedroom. You can sleep on my bed after Auntie Z fixes you for allergies.”
“We might not need that spell after all,” I said. “She’s been with me all day, and I haven’t sneezed once.”
Zoey frowned. “Sure, but that’s you, Mom.” The fluffy white cat passed her soundlessly on the stairs and began her inspection of the upper floor. “You got stronger in every way after...” She gave Charlize a cautious look.
“Charlize knows everything,” I said. “Technically, she knew about us being witches even before we knew.”
Charlize spoke through an embarrassed grin. “Not something I’m proud of, but it’s true.”
“You’re the computer hacker,” Zoey said. “You committed reckless conduct that created a risk of serious physical injury to another person.” She pointed to her chest. “Me. Because you brought me and my mother here, straight into danger with all the weird stuff in this town. That’s a class D felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, a fine of up to five thousand dollars, or both.”
“You were at risk of living a boring life,” Charlize said, meeting my daughter’s accusatory tone with equal fire. “It would have been a far greater crime to let you continue the mundane life you were leading. Before Chet and I intervened, the most exciting thing you had going was planning a coup in your school’s newspaper committee with Francie and Jade.”
Zoey’s eyes widened. We both knew that Chet and Charlize had hacked into our internet accounts to orchestrate our move to Wisteria, but hadn’t considered the entirety of what that meant. If Charlize had read all our private correspondence, all our personal notes, she might know us better than we knew each other.
“Your plans worked, by the way,” Charlize said snarkily. “Francie and Jade got support from the two Tanyas, and they overthrew Brianna. If you’d kept in touch with your so-called friends, you would know that.”
The two stared at each other in stony silence for several seconds.
I got the protective urge to defend my daughter. “Francie and Jade were no great loss,” I said. “Those two were obsessed with rumors about celebrity pop stars being replaced by look-alikes, or clones, or reincarnated Illuminati priestesses, which, come to think of it, in light of everything I know now, might not be so crazy after all.”
My daughter said nothing. She continued staring at Charlize, who also said nothing.
I sighed. “I miss Francie and Jade,” I admitted.
That snapped my daughter out of the staring contest.
“It was nice to meet you,” Zoey said to Charlize with a syrupy tone. “And congratulations on your own plans working out.” And then, in the most syrupy, cruel tone only a teen can conjure, added a poisonous “I hope you’re happy now.” She went the rest of the way up the stairs, following after the white cat.
Charlize turned to me, looking sheepish. “I’m not great with children.”
“She was planning a coup with Francie and Jade? I had no idea.”
“Oh, she’s got some Machiavellian traits, all right.”
“Takes one to know one,” I said.
Charlize put her hands in her pockets and looked down at the floor between us. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Now your daughter hates me.”
“Never mind what you said—it was what you did. You reading her private emails and messages.” I tapped my fingers on the newel post. “And mine, too.”
“It was more of a light skim than an in-depth re
ad,” she said. “Except for the part about the school newspaper coup, which was strangely fascinating.”
“Mm-hmm.” More finger tapping.
“And I only did it because my poor, innocent sister was trapped in a coma.”
I rolled my eyes. How often was she going to play the coma card to get out of trouble?
The snakes in the blond gorgon’s hair remained invisible, but I did hear them hissing.
“Zara, I’m not one of those gushy girls who makes the big heartfelt speeches, but I want you to know I really like you. When I read your emails, I thought you were funny and smart and kind. I hoped that one day we would be friends.”
I took it all in. I didn’t know what I felt. Everything? Nothing? The tiredness from staying up most of the night was hitting me with a fresh wave of exhaustion. I was too tired to feel.
Charlize added, “Honestly, I’m a bit jealous of how cool you are.”
“It’s hard for me to hold a grudge when you say nice—and entirely true—stuff like that.” I tapped the wood again. What would Winona Vander Zalm do right about now? It came to me immediately.
In my delicate Winona voice, I asked, “Cuppatea, dear?”
The pretty gorgon looked up from the floor, her blue eyes bright and shining. “Cuppatea? Like a pair of girly girls?”
“Or a pair of adult women.”
“Yes, please. I need to talk to you about the lab results from the fang, anyway.”
I waved for her to follow me. “The kitchen’s this way. Or at least it was when I left the house last night. With this place, you never know.”
“So you can see my dilemma,” Charlize said after it had all been explained.
“Not exactly.” I took another sip of tea.
We were sitting on the new wrought-iron chairs we’d discovered in the backyard. The sturdy yet elegant dining set had arrived during the day, courtesy of arrangements Tansy’s spirit must have made when she’d ordered all the plants and landscaping materials.
“This looks lovely, by the way.” Charlize waved at the new lush greenery. “Let me know if you’d like any stone decorations. In case you’re worried about the mistreatment of animals, don’t be. I can turn the recently deceased and make them appear lifelike. Like the ones in front of Chessa’s cottage.”
Watchful Wisteria (Wisteria Witches Mysteries Book 4) Page 23
