Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3

by Angela Pepper

  Fossorial, I thought. Now use it in a sentence. “After we left here, Bentley I went down into the DWM’s fossorial lair.”

  “Burrow,” she corrected.

  “If you saw it, you’d agree it’s more of a lair than a burrow. Concrete walls, not dirt.”

  “Lair it is. Keep talking.”

  “So, we went down there, only to be given a hard time by a computer. A computer! Its name is Codex. Well, her name.”

  Her eyes widened. “Artificial intelligence?”

  I nodded.

  “Keep talking,” she said. “Keep talking and don’t stop.”

  I grinned. “Sweeter words have never been spoken.”

  I did as requested. I told her all about the underground building’s new security system, the spell-dampening measures, the interview with Carrot’s lawyer boyfriend Steve, and my visit to the morgue. Zoey was just as fascinated by the bell-wearing cow in the alpine meadow as she was about the medical examiner using the karambit to behead a dummy made of headcheese.

  When I got to what happened in Ishmael’s tiny office, she found the encounter both spooky and fascinating. She giggled at the image of Bentley drawing his gun and blindly aiming it at a ghost’s temple—for all the good that did. But when I relayed the very worst part, the part about me getting booted off the case for the second undignified time, she only shrugged.

  “Bentley does have a point,” she said. “If you can’t charm the victim’s ghost into communicating with you, you’re basically just a civilian.”

  “But we did communicate! I could see Ishmael when nobody else could. Plus, we had a bit of a dialog. He mouthed some words at me.”

  “Sure, but only enough to make it clear he doesn’t know who murdered him.”

  “True.”

  “The killer must have snuck up behind him and done it... lickety-split,” she said.

  “So to speak.”

  “That means the killer must have skipped that whole speech-from-the-villain thing. That’s when the bad guy in a James Bond movie explains his whole evil plan.”

  I gasped. “People actually do that in real life,” I said. I had witnessed it myself, at least once. “I guess, deep down, everyone wants the world to know they’re good at stuff. Even killers.”

  Zoey nodded. “But poor Ishmael Greyson doesn’t know who killed him, so whether you can sniff him into your head or not, you’re not much use to Bentley, the WPD, or the DWM.”

  “What you’re saying makes perfect sense. I agree with your logic. But answer me this, smart child of mine. If Bentley was only doing the logical thing by dismissing me, why do I still feel like slamming doors?”

  “Maybe it was the way he said it to you.”

  “He did eventually come around and thank me.” I wrinkled my nose. “Probably out of self-preservation, due to all the spells I threatened to cast on him once we got above ground.”

  “Oh, Mom.”

  “And he even apologized before he shipped me off with Persephone. He was actually quite apologetic, now that I think about it.”

  “Then you must feel all door-slammy because of the ghost.” She gave me a pointed look. “And not out of any romantic jealousy over young Persephone.”

  I struck the air with my finger. “You’re right. It was entirely from Ishmael. I’ve settled down, but his emotions are still affecting me.”

  She studied me thoughtfully. “Auntie Z says ghosts can have powerful tantrums.” She lowered her voice. “She told me a story about something that happened to a friend of hers. There was once a ghost who used its own cremated ashes to form a body, and take revenge.”

  I shivered. The massive quantities of ice cream combined with the passing of time spent with a sympathetic listener had cooled off my rage.

  “That’s disturbing,” I said. “The ghost made itself a body out of ashes?”

  Zoey nodded. “And I don’t think it happened to Auntie Z’s friend, if you know what I mean.”

  I did know what she meant. “Your great-aunt has more secrets than a librarian has unread books on her nightstand.”

  Zoey got up from her chair and went to the cupboard. “I’ll make you some coffee,” she said.

  I yawned and checked the time. “It’s too early. I can still get a few hours of sleep before the next thing goes wrong.”

  “No. You need to go downstairs with your spell notes. You need to set things back to normal.” She quickly added, “And by normal, I mean normal for you. Not normal-normal. You need to reverse that library rezoning spell that you shouldn’t have cast in the first place.”

  “You think?” I gave her a defiant look.

  “Don’t you?” She measured coffee grounds into the filter compartment. “A highly advanced computer intelligence was able to scan you and detect that something was wrong. What more evidence do you need that what you did was wrong? I don’t want you to get sick and die like Gigi did. I don’t want to lose you.”

  I bit my tongue. We hadn’t lost Gigi, technically.

  “I think you should see Gigi’s friend, Dr. Ankh, for a consultation,” Zoey said. “Gigi says she knows a lot about witches.”

  I gasped in horror. “Since when do you trust the opinion of the woman who turned your grandmother into a you-know-what?”

  “You don’t have to do what Dr. Ankh says, but it might help to get a medical opinion.” She turned on the coffee maker. “Or you could just reverse the spell tonight. The coffee will be ready in a few minutes.”

  “Even if I wanted to reverse the spell, it might take me a few days to work through the counterspell.”

  “I could call Gigi and get Dr. Ankh’s phone number?”

  “No way. You haven’t met her yourself, but if you did, you’d agree with me that Dr. Ankh has a strong evil vibe. She’s always talking about the purity of bloodlines.” I gave Zoey a mother-knows-best look. “Throughout history, that sort of talk is rarely associated with good things. For example, the royal families kept marrying their own cousins to produce their pureblood offspring.”

  “They wouldn’t have, if they’d known what we do nowadays about DNA.”

  I pulled a face, sticking out my tongue. “Some of them even married siblings.”

  Zoey shrugged. “Maybe with genetic engineering, they can eventually get right back to it.”

  “How can you be so calm and logical about it? Cousins getting married. Siblings having babies together!”

  She rubbed her chin with her index finger. “I think because I don’t have any cousins, let alone siblings, I haven’t experienced the feelings associated with that taboo personally.”

  “Just because you haven’t met them doesn’t mean you don’t have tons of...” I realized what I was saying only after it was too late to stop myself.

  Zoey pounced. She was on me like white lightning. Like Boa on unguarded deli ham. “I have siblings? Do you mean I have half-siblings, on my father’s side?”

  My throat tightened. Now I’d done it. Zara tries to be a good mother. Zara tries not to blurt out family secrets in the wee hours of the morning.

  If only we could get back to trashing on Bentley or arguing about my rezoning spell. But it was too late.

  I tried to play it off casually. “We can’t really know for sure that you don’t have any half-siblings. But, I assure you, the possibility of you bumping into one of these theoretical half-siblings, out of all the billions of people in the world, is highly unlikely.” I tilted my chin up and proclaimed, “Please feel free to date whomever you want.”

  She gave me a deadly serious glare. “You said my father died a long time ago. That’s what you told me. But now you’re saying he’s been around, having kids?”

  “He did disappear,” I said. “That’s as good as dead. Basically. After enough years missing, a person can be declared legally dead.”

  Her voice became quieter and colder. “That’s not what you told me.”

  “You were just a little girl,” I said. “You already had enough thin
gs working against you, by which of course I mean being raised by me.” I forced a laugh. “Not that there’s anything wrong with you, in spite of having me for a single parent. You’re brilliant, and strong, and healthy, and—”

  “Mom.”

  I blinked repeatedly and took another angle. “So I told a little white lie. What sort of mother would I be if I let you grow up feeling abandoned? Forgotten? You know how hard that was for me. I only saw my father one day a year. I know from personal experience what it feels like to mean so little to your father.”

  Zoey shook her head. She opened her mouth and then closed it.

  “What?” I asked.

  Another head shake, and then finally the words poured out. “Pawpaw loves you, Mom. He only saw you once a year because that was all Gigi and the family would allow. They had something on him, Mom. He tried to fight them, but he didn’t have the resources, and they threatened to take away his one day. That’s why he tried to cram so much into the times he saw you. He was trying to make up for a whole year of missing you.”

  To say I was stunned by this revelation would be an understatement.

  For an instant, my heart rose. I wanted to believe what she was saying was true. But then the wise part of me took over and punched down my stupid, weak heart. It wasn’t true. My daughter had been brainwashed. Clearly.

  Through clenched teeth, I said, “You can’t believe what that man says. He’s a trickster. He’s a foxy trickster.”

  “Not all men are bad, Mom. I know you’ve had a few bad experiences.”

  I snorted. “A few?”

  “I know Mr. Moore tricked you and lied to you, but not all guys are like that.”

  “This?” I sputtered, trying to get the feelings out in words. “This from the girl who wanted to cast an anti-love spell on herself? Suddenly you’re on Team Men?”

  “Mom.”

  “What’s changed? It must be love. Love has made your head soft.” I crossed my arms. “After I abandoned you at the museum today, that young man in the caveman costume must have shown you around his cave.”

  She shook her finger at me. “Don’t try to change the subject. Don’t smoke me out. We were talking about my half-siblings.”

  Don’t smoke me out? What an excellent idea. Witches had many ways to change the topic of conversation. Violence was one way, but sometimes the simplest parlor tricks worked best.

  I twirled my tongue and cast a spell. I didn’t use that particular spell frequently, but it was easy enough to cast without accidentally inverting, even under tense circumstances. The Witch Tongue flew from my mouth effortlessly. The air around us glittered. It was working. Billowing plumes of pink smoke rose from the floor all around us.

  Zoey made a startled noise.

  Brightly, I said, “Hey, did I ever show you how good I’ve gotten at the pink fog?”

  “Don’t you dare fog me out!”

  It was too late. The foggy pink clouds filled the entire kitchen, including the space between us. I could no longer see her face, or her accusing expression. I could barely see the tip of my own nose.

  Zoey’s voice was muffled by the pink clouds. “We need to talk about this eventually, Mom. If I have brothers and sisters, I have a right to know.”

  “Do you? Really? What about your right to privacy? What about theirs?” The pink clouds ebbed, and the fog thinned enough for me to be able to see her face. It wasn’t a pretty sight. I quickly doubled the pink clouds in the room, then doubled the spell again.

  “Screw privacy,” she said.

  “Honestly, Zoey, I don’t even know for sure if you have any siblings. It’s all theoretical. That’s the truth.”

  She made a grumbling, displeased noise.

  I paused to take in the situation as calmly as I could.

  Mother-daughter relations were at an all-time low.

  I should have cleared the fog and made things better. But, for whatever reason, I didn’t. Was it the lingering effects of Ishmael’s tantrum or just my own stupidity? I’d never know for sure.

  What I did next was truly shameful.

  If I’d been in the running for Mother of the Year, this certainly would have disqualified me.

  I used my telekinesis to grab a mug, plus the nearly full pot of coffee, and floated both over to me. I silently climbed off my chair and edged my way blindly toward the door to the basement.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” I said through the pink haze. “Now get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  I didn’t wait for a response. I slipped through the door to the basement with the coffee, locked the door behind me, and retreated to my basement lair.

  I reached the bottom step. My daughter was stomping around the kitchen, cursing me.

  In the basement, there was a whipping sound, the movement of bat-like wings, and then the scrape of talons on stone. Ribbons landed on the stone ledge over my desk. Orange light flared. He used his wyvern fire to light the candles above my desk. I had plenty of electric lamps, but the flickering of candles helped me do my best work.

  “You must have heard everything,” I said. “What a day, huh?”

  “Poor Zed,” he said, his Count Chocula voice echoing telepathically in my head. “You have had a very long day.”

  “I sure have.”

  “And, worst of all, Zed, I’m afraid you are no longer in the running for the Mother of the Year Award.”

  Chapter 25

  Ribbons let out a sigh that was much louder and longer than his tiny wyvern lungs should have allowed. “You’re being so boring, Zed.”

  I looked up from my spell notes, which I’d been focused on despite the constant interruptions. An hour earlier, I’d had to unlock the basement door for the cat before she scratched a hole in the door. Since then, she’d been chasing an insect around the basement and yowling pitifully about her failure to make the kill.

  “So terribly boring,” Ribbons reiterated.

  The wyvern was slouching, hunchbacked, on the stone shelf above my desk. With that posture, he looked less like a tiny dragon and more like a gargoyle. A bored gargoyle.

  I tapped the eraser of my pencil on my chin thoughtfully. “If I’m so boring, why do you hang out with me?”

  Ribbons sighed again, his nostrils flaring as he emitted the pretty orange ribbons he’d been named after.

  “I am what you humans call a homebody,” he said.

  “A homewyvern?”

  He reached down with his arm, flapping out the attached bat-like wing, and snatched the pencil from my hand.

  “Tell Zoey who her father is,” he said. “I want to see what she does when she finds out.” He gnawed on the pencil eraser tentatively, then bit it off and began chewing. “Tell her, Zed.”

  I gave him an oh-really look. “Tell her what, exactly?” I leaned forward, so I was eye to eye with his glossy black wyvern eyes. His breath smelled of sweet peppermint and chewed pencil eraser. “What is it you think you know, Half-Pint?”

  “I know what I know, Giraffe Pants.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  Ribbons dropped the eraser-less pencil on the desk and drew himself up to his full height, which, excluding the tail, was slightly taller than a single-serving soda bottle. He tended to puff up like that when he had nothing to back up his claims. I grabbed my coffee mug and took a sip while I waited for him to admit he was bluffing.

  His green scaly eyelids changed shape, giving him a malevolent, evil expression. He spat the words into my mind. “Oh, but I do know, Zed.”

  “Sure, you do.”

  “You fornicated with a demon, Zed.”

  I was so shocked, I choked and spewed out my coffee, spraying the desk.

  Ribbons was faster than my volley of coffee spray. He jumped in the air, unfurled his wings, and flew straight up like a rocket. He rotated and stuck a landing on the ceiling. The wooden ceiling beam creaked as his talons dug in.

  He continued, his voice taunting. “You fornicated with a demon, and I
don’t mean last month at the castle when you almost did, but didn’t. It was years ago, Zed. You know it. I know it. Are you going to make me say the rest of it?”

  “Say it,” I managed.

  “I know that the genie who calls himself Archer Caine is Zoey’s father.”

  The basement was quiet. Even Boa had settled down. There was a wet, smacking sound as the white cat noisily consumed the insect she’d finally captured.

  Ribbons’ telepathic voice rested. He used his throat to make a chittering sound similar to a squirrel’s warning chatter. It was how he laughed.

  I craned my neck and looked up at his upside-down face. “You knew? This whole time?”

  He flicked out his purple tongue and licked one beady black eye and then the other. Eye-licking was one of his many smugness indicators.

  “I’ve known for a while,” he said. “Let’s tell her right now, Zed.”

  “It’s late.”

  “She’s not sleeping. I can hear her tossing and turning in bed.” He swung from side to side hypnotically. “Let’s go upstairs and tell your daughter that you fornicated with a demon, Zed.”

  “Would you please stop saying fornicated? What a horrible word.” Accurate, but horrible.

  “What term would you prefer? Making the beast with two backs? Dancing the Paphian jig? Shooting ’twixt wind and water? Shaking the sheets? Groping for trout in a peculiar river? That last one’s Shakespeare, by the way.”

  “You are a vile little creature. I can’t believe I let you talk to me this way. I can’t believe I let you live here rent free.”

  He stretched out his wings. “But you like meeeeeeee. You like Ribbons.” His beady black eyes seemed to double in size.

  “I suppose I do appreciate your knowledge and your honesty,” I replied evenly.

  “You looooove meeeee!”

  I tapped the desk. “Get your skinny chicken butt down here. I’m getting a crick in my neck. Get down here, reheat what’s left of my coffee, and tell me everything you know about demons.”

  “Demons? Or genies? All genies are demons, but not all demons are genies.”

  I tapped the desk again. “You know darn well what I mean. If I’m going to tell Zoey, assuming there’s ever a time that feels right, I’d like to know something about genies. She is half genie, after all.”