Wolves of Wisteria

by Angela Pepper

  When she had finished catching him up, Gavin shrugged. “Magic stuff is weird. I don't know what you want from me.” He put his glass in the sink, grabbed a too-small gray T-shirt off a chair, and pulled it on. He started cleaning the kitchen, carefully avoiding eye contact the whole time.

  “Tell me what you're hiding,” she said, weaving a bluffing spell between the spoken words with Witch Tongue. The charm wouldn't work on the gnome, but she had a different plan. She let her tongue hit her teeth sloppily, so that the gnome would hear something of the spell. “Tell me what you're not saying.”

  He licked his lips. “I heard what you did just now, with your witcher-i-doo. Don't bother trying to hocus pocus me, Zinnia. Gnomes can't be charmed by your witch spells. You're not getting anything out of me.”

  He'd heard the spell, exactly as she'd intended. He had fallen for her bluff. She suppressed her smile, though she felt it ripple through her body.

  “I suppose you're too clever for me,” she said with resignation. “But your kind is still susceptible to certain potions.” She set her purse on the counter with a dramatic thunk.

  “So what?” He looked at the purse on the counter and frowned. “I'm not an idiot. I'm not going to drink anything you give me.”

  “No need,” she said lightly, allowing her internal smile to curve her mouth. “You already fed it to yourself. You made a smoothie with three magical herbs, but you didn't add the fourth. I suppose you made that choice because the fourth one has wilted and doesn't look so appealing. If you'd like to revive it, try putting the pot in your bathroom for a few days. The steam from your shower will do wonders. You can make a new smoothie by tomorrow, but I'm afraid that by then,” she paused and gave him a concerned look, “it may be too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  She knew very well what the four herbs were used for. She had helped Tansy perfect the combination. The woman could have made herself rich selling the herbs online to men who wanted to be more impressive in the bedroom. Gavin, vain as he was, was an ideal customer.

  Zinnia held up one hand and made a drooping gesture.

  Gavin understood. He swallowed hard and frowned at the plants on the windowsill. He cursed under his breath. “I shouldn't have trusted Wick. I shouldn't have messed around with those herbs. My kind is much better with mechanical devices.”

  “But you can't use mechanical devices for...” She stopped herself. “Actually, I'd rather not know what you gnomes do.”

  His cheeks reddened. “Never mind about gnome stuff. Should I chew down some of that other plant right now? Will that help?”

  “No.”

  His cheeks got even more red. “Thanks,” he spat out. “Thanks a lot. You had to come in here and distract me, didn't you?”

  Zinnia reached into her purse and pulled out a glass baby jar full of orange mush.

  Gavin stopped making sputtering sounds and stared at the jar with a hopeful look.

  “Don't worry your pretty face,” Zinnia said. “I happen to have something with me that will reverse what you just poisoned yourself with. As a matter of fact, if you ration yourself, there's more than enough here for you to keep Dawna happy for a long time.”

  He lunged for the jar, as she knew he would. She used magic to levitate it out of reach.

  The grief in her chest was gone now, replaced by something not unlike happiness. It felt good to practice magic openly in front of a new person. She and Gavin were not the best of friends, but they could be open with each other now.

  “Aw, come on, Zinnia,” Gavin whined. “What happened to teamwork? Cooperation? We're the Incredibowls.”

  “The pen,” she said. “Who wanted it?”

  “Me,” he said. “I've, uh, always wanted to write my life story.”

  Zinnia coughed and fixed him with her gaze.

  “Fine,” he said with a sigh. “I was going to sell it to the highest bidder through my uncle. Are you happy now?” He jumped for the floating jar, but it was up too high.

  “Tell me how you knew about Annette's powers. Do you have some sort of detection device? Even Annette didn't know she was a witch.”

  He kept his gaze on the floating jar while he crossed his arms. “Have you ever heard of gnome intuition?”

  “I've heard your type has powers of perception when it comes to acquiring items of value. I didn't realize it was supernatural.” She'd thought it was simple greed, but didn't use this word with Gavin.

  “Yeah, well, we do have intuition, and let me tell you, it's both a strength and a weakness. Why do you think I can't stay away from Dawna?”

  “Are you telling me you aren't in love with Dawna?”

  “I'm telling you it's why I'm in love with her.”

  Zinnia frowned. “I didn't want to know that. Poor Dawna. You're only after her for her cartomancy magic.”

  He took a raspy, irritated breath and moved his hands to his hips. “Dawna's powers are just part of the whole Dawna package. I thought you witches were more pragmatic about love. Especially at your age. If it's okay to love a person for their looks or their mind, why not for their powers?”

  “It's not okay to love a person for their looks.”

  Gavin raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really? And I suppose you're carrying on with Jesse Berman because he's an appropriate mate for you?”

  Zinnia had nothing to say about that.

  Gavin jumped for the jar again. “Can I have this now? I told you everything I know about the pen.”

  “Let me get this straight. You sensed the pen had value, and you immediately guessed that Annette was a witch?”

  “Not immediately, but I started watching her more closely. It's easy enough to find support for an idea once you have a theory.”

  “That's true.”

  “Didn't you or Margaret sense something was different about Annette? There were plenty of signs.”

  “Like what?” Zinnia had seen lots of odd things around the office, but they were always the result of one of Margaret's spells. Or so she'd assumed.

  “Just little things,” Gavin said. “For example, her mood would affect the thermostat in the office. Whenever Karl went over to her desk, the whole room got chilly. But she did like Jesse, so if he came out of his office, that would warm the place back up again. Their two offices were like hot and cold taps on a water faucet.”

  Zinnia considered the office's heating and cooling issues over the last year. Gavin was right. The proof was in the past four days. The temperature had been absolutely consistent since Tuesday. Annette's emotions must have been causing the fluctuations. And the poor woman hadn't even known she was a witch.

  Zinnia snapped her fingers and let the jar drop into Gavin's hands. “Take one teaspoon now, and then a quarter teaspoon as needed. It will give you what you need to make Dawna a very happy lady.” She pursed her lips. “So you can maintain your access to her,” Zinnia coughed, “items of value.”

  “Thanks, I guess.” Gavin looked at Zinnia's purse with new interest. “Do you carry this sort of thing with you regularly?”

  Yes and no. The male stamina compound was something she'd been making for Margaret to give her husband. Earlier that morning, Zinnia had slipped it into her purse planning to bribe Gavin, but he didn't need to know that. She would continue to bluff the non-magical way.

  Snippily, she said, “My romantic life is none of your business.” For Zinnia, pretending to be offended wasn't difficult.

  “What else have you got in that big ol' purse of yours?” He held the jar tightly to his chest while trying to peer in through the top of the purse. “Is this how you got Jesse interested in an old lady such as yourself?”

  “I beg your pardon?” She didn't have to pretend to be offended.

  He raised his free hand. “Easy now. Don't shoot. I think it's cool you two are hooking up. Older women are hot, in their own way. Lots of young guys are into cougars.”

  Zinnia grabbed her purse, turned on her heel, and headed for the door.r />
  “Wait, Zinnia. Don't go mad! I don't have a lot of friends.”

  “I'm not surprised.” She kept walking.

  “Wait! I just thought of something else, something people don't know about. It's a secret.”

  She paused at the door. “I don't have time for games, Gavin. Either tell me or don't.”

  “It's about that other wolf attack,” he said. “The one that never happened.”

  She turned slowly to face him.

  “The attack that happened on Friday afternoon?” She felt her curiosity surge and her rage settle. This business of feeling all her emotions unfiltered by the spell on her heart would take some time to get used to. Feeling everything—every little thing—was like being in a room full of stereos with the volume cranked up to eleven.

  Gavin practically sparkled with excitement. “The attack that didn't happen.”

  “What do you mean? Did it not happen, or did it not happen the way they reported because it was a cougar, not a wolf?”

  “There was no wolf, no cougar. I heard about it in the gym this morning, from the divorced guy who lives down the hallway, who heard it from his kid who was there. It was just a bunch of dumb kids. They pushed some other kid down into a dry creek bed. He got banged up, and they all agreed to blame it on a wolf.”

  “There was no attack, wolf or cougar, on Friday afternoon?”

  “Just regular dumb kid bullies. Not wild animals. You could chalk it up to,” he grinned, “the boy who cried wolf.”

  He waited expectantly for Zinnia to laugh at his bad joke. She did not.

  Instead, she asked, “Have any of the other people from the office been here, to your apartment?”

  He frowned. “Why?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  He rubbed his chin and said, “There was a poker night, not that long ago.”

  “My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail,” she said.

  “Sorry,” he said. “But it was just a guys' night thing. You know how it is. We let Xavier Batista tag along.”

  “I understand. Was that the only time?”

  Gavin scratched his chin again. “I think so. I haven't entertained much since I moved into this place. Dawna doesn't like being here.”

  “No, I would imagine she wouldn't.”

  They stared at each other.

  Ten seconds later, Zinnia was running at full tilt down the stairwell. She took the steps two at a time once again, but not because she was scared of the building's bad juju. She was on a mission.

  Friday's attack wasn't real.

  That meant...

  She knew exactly what it meant, even if she didn't dare think it clearly. The pieces snapped together. Annette's magical pen. Her murder. The book she was writing. Questions about people's past. All the secrets revealed. All the magical powers her coworkers had. The dating and breakups. Everything was coming together now.

  Chapter 25

  Zinnia ran out of The Candy Factory and jumped in her car. She checked that she still had the digital storage stick containing the scanned version of Annette Scholem's handwritten draft. Thankfully, it was in her purse where she'd put it the day before. If she hadn't gone straight to bowling after work, and then traipsing around Towhee Swamp, she would have started reading it already.

  She started her car's engine but didn't pull out of the parking lot yet. She was forgetting something, but couldn't put her finger on it. If only there was a spell that worked on the mind the way a page finding spell worked on a book. If only she could query her brain directly. Dear brain, what am I forgetting? Oh, thanks for asking, Zinnia! You're forgetting... uh, I don't know.

  She shook her head and started driving. The brain did respond to queries, it just took a while. The result would come eventually, and once you'd forgotten about your need and moved on. Like when you ask for a glass of water in a busy restaurant.

  The traffic light ahead was yellow. No. Red now. Zinnia slammed on the brakes. Her mentor's voice echoed in her head. One thing at a time, Zinnia. What do you know to be true?

  What did she know to be true? For starters, she had to pay attention to what she was doing. Just like spellwork, driving a vehicle came with rules and parameters that existed for everyone's safety, including the operator.

  She took a calming breath, deep into her lungs, and blew it out between her lips.

  Two pedestrians began crossing the street in front of her. One of them immediately drew her eye. Charlize Wakeful. Zinnia leaned back in the driver's seat and tried to blend in. Just a few hours earlier, Charlize had warned Zinnia to stay home, and here she was, out of the house, getting a gnome riled up, bartering potions for information, and nearly running red lights.

  The blonde looked her way and then past her. The young woman clutched her bulging stomach protectively with one hand while she used the other to grab the arm of the man walking at her side.

  Zinnia relaxed enough to get a better look at the blonde, who was not Charlize after all. The woman was a gorgon, all right, but not the one who'd unfrozen Zinnia's heart. Charlize was one of triplets, and since Chessa was in a coma at the moment, that left only Chloe. Chloe and her husband, Jordan Taub, owned the Gingerbread House of Baking. They appeared to be enjoying the unseasonably pleasant weather by going for a Saturday afternoon stroll. Zinnia's focus narrowed in on Chloe's stomach. Either the blonde gorgon had been sampling too many of the bakery's excellent donuts or the woman was pregnant. Maybe six months along, judging by the size of the bump.

  Suddenly, Zinnia's imagination turned down a dark corridor. Six months along with what? She pictured Chloe sweating on a hospital bed, giving birth to a flood of snakes. Or some other, even more terrifying monster. Chloe was, after all, a member of the Wakeful family.

  Chloe's head suddenly whipped around, and she was staring through the windshield at Zinnia. Her cold blue eyes locked on the witch's.

  There was a loud cracking sound. A small rock chip that had been in the windshield since the day Zinnia had acquired her car was no longer just a rock chip. A web of cracks radiated from the divot.

  Zinnia maintained eye contact with the gorgon. She smiled and waved.

  Chloe frowned and zipped her jacket, hiding her baby bump. She clutched her husband's arm possessively, and continued crossing the street.

  Zinnia was so focused on Chloe and the crack in her windshield that she barely registered seeing the person crossing the street in the opposite direction. It was a grown woman dressed up as the little girl character, Dorothy, from The Wizard of Oz. The woman was Dorothy Tibbits, one of the town's more colorful real estate agents. Dorothy Tibbits' gimmick was that she regularly appeared around town wearing a blue pinafore and sparkling red shoes, and carrying her house sales materials in a picnic basket. Today she was parading around as usual, walking a brindle Cairn terrier she borrowed for such occasions.

  Zinnia paid very little attention to Dorothy Tibbits. The witch was still staring at the cracks on her windshield. Did insurance cover “glare by gorgon?” Probably not.

  Someone honked.

  It was the car behind her. The light had turned green.

  Zinnia pressed the gas pedal. At the same moment, the busy waitress inside Zinnia's mind finally served up what she'd been forgetting: Zinnia's printer at home was nearly out of paper. She'd made two copies of Annette's final, typed manuscript, which had used up most of the sheaf of paper she'd borrowed from her neighbor. If Zinnia was to have any chance of using spells to find what she needed in the original version of the book, she needed paper, and she needed it to be bound, just like a regular book.

  Zinnia thanked the waitress inside her mind for mentioning the paper issue now, while she was still in the car.

  She drove to the little shop that offered photocopies and other digital and paper services.

  The place was busy. Saturday afternoon appeared to be prime time for people to get their menus laminated and their garage sale fliers printed.

  Zinnia too
k her place in the long line. The single employee working the counter was currently helping a woman in yoga clothes, and there were three more people between Yoga Lady and Zinnia. Not a single one of them looked like the kind of person who had a simple five-minute request. The man closest to Zinnia was carrying a large plastic container full of dusty floppy disks that had to be three decades old. There were hundreds of floppy disks. Zinnia didn't need psychic powers to predict that she would be stuck in line for an hour, minimum, before she got her printed and bound book.

  She turned to leave, resigning herself to reading the pages on her computer screen, but stopped herself.

  You're a witch, Zinnia! Her internal voice was cheerful yet insistent, like a personal trainer. You're not going to let a long line of regular humans stand in your way, are you?

  She frowned at her internal coach. The task that had brought her into the shop was certainly an important one. She was trying to determine who or what had murdered her dear friend and coworker. And yet, nobody visited a photocopy shop unless they had a need that felt urgent or important to them: Lost Dog posters, wedding invitations, memorial cards for funeral services. Did Zinnia have any right to distract the people in front of her from their own tasks?

  No, she had no right. But she already had her hand inside her purse. She was already reaching for something. A shimmering silver powder.

  She took a pinch of the powder, silently begged for forgiveness from whomever it was keeping score on a witch's rights and wrongs, and dropped the powder down the back collar of the man standing in front of her.

  By the look of the man's changing posture, the magic took effect immediately. He wavered and wobbled, then dropped the box of disks. It fell with a loud clunk and subsequent clatter that made the other customers turn and stare.

  Once the other customers were facing the counter again, Zinnia placed her hand on top of the man's shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  He gave her a dumbfounded look. “I feel great,” he said. “Why do I feel great?”