Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3

by Angela Pepper

  Ribbons descended to the desk soundlessly, like a drop of sparkling green sap falling from a tall tree. He waddled, duck-like, over to my half-full coffee mug. The wyvern was as ungainly on solid ground as he was graceful in the air. He dropped the muzzle of his seahorse-shaped head into my coffee, steamed it, then returned to his usual perch on the shelf above my desk.

  “Genies,” I prompted him.

  He used one of the green, claw-like hands connected to his wings to stroke an imaginary beard. “The first thing you should know about genies is their kind don’t belong in this world, Zed.”

  “Really? I’ll skip that part when I break the news to Zoey. Teenagers have a hard enough time fitting in without being told their kind aren’t welcome in this world.”

  “My word choice was inaccurate. What I meant is they’re not from this world.”

  “Are they from Hell?” I leaned forward. “Hell is a real place?”

  More stroking of the nonexistent beard. All he needed was a pair of round spectacles, and he’d be Professor Wyvern.

  “Any place can be Hell, or Heaven,” he said playfully. The ridges above his eyes waggled like sparkly eyebrows.

  I leaned back again. “I’m not interested in discussing the power of positive thinking right now, my beady-eyed barista.” I took a sip of the reheated coffee. The cheeky wyvern’s saliva added a mint flavor I’d more than gotten accustomed to. I waved for him to get to the point.

  “Genies,” Ribbons said, as though announcing the topic of his presentation before a large crowd. “Once upon a time, humans and demons and half-gods all lived together. This was known as the Time of the Four Eves. Do you know about the Four Eves?”

  “Morganna Faire told me a pretty crazy story about four ladies who were created for the first man, Adam. Although he wasn’t technically the first man, just the one the gods didn’t destroy and reboot. Was that story true?”

  “As true as any of the Old Tales, Zed. As true as the stories they tell today on the television and the internet.”

  “Hmm.” I took another sip of the coffee. As true as today’s news wasn’t saying much for the hairdresser-genie’s veracity.

  Ribbons elaborated on his opening theme and went on with the story.

  To summarize, long ago, humans and magical creatures lived together, not just on Earth, but on multiple worlds. They traveled between these worlds through space-time tunnels formed by burrowing creatures called timewyrms. From Ribbon’s description, the timewyrms resembled the sandworms of science fiction. The wyvern went on for quite some time about the timewyrms, which I thought was a random tangent until he got to the part where timewyrms were instrumental in separating the humans from the magical creatures, sequestering them to just one world. “For their own protection,” Ribbons said.

  I held up a hand. “Wait. For whose protection? The timewyrms, or the demons, or the humans?”

  Ribbons let fly one of his chittering laughs. “Oh, Zed. You do know how to amuse me. It was for the protection of the puny humans, of course.”

  “Right. The puny humans.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Remember, at that time, humans were many, many years away from inventing their weapons of mass destruction. They were easy pickings for the other predators.”

  “Blood-sucking ones?”

  Ribbons nodded. “That kind, and more. The humans would have died out, but the gods favored them for some reason. The gods took no pleasure in watching their favorite pets be enslaved, tortured, and eaten—by anyone but themselves, of course. And back in those old days, the timewyrms served the gods.” He looked down at his torso and smoothed some sparkling green scales along his belly. “The timewyrms only serve themselves these days, ever since the gods abandoned us.” There was a weighty sadness to his telepathic voice.

  “Ribbons, how old are you?”

  He gave me a coy look. “The age of a creature is of no importance, only the length of its memory.”

  “Fine. I’ll bite. How long is your memory?”

  “My memory stretches back to the First Days. All wyverns are one. We share a common memory. It’s the equivalent of an oral history.” He looked down and ruffled the scales he’d just smoothed. “Unfortunately, our memories are far from complete. They’re not at all like your human libraries. I must admit you puny humans have outdone us with your technology, with your books.”

  “Two points for the puny humans,” I said.

  There was a flash of white fluff as Boa jumped on my lap and bunted my hand for chin scratches.

  “So, let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said. “The timewyrms burrowed tunnels through time and space, and dropped all the humans on Earth, and all the other creatures in other places. Other planets.”

  “Same planet,” he said. “But in different dimensions, with other astral configurations. My own home world has two moons. Or so I recall through the shared memories. I was hatched here, in this world. Like you.”

  “You must be pretty old, because red wyverns, the female ones, are extinct.”

  He didn’t reply, but a neon sign in my head flashed NO COMMENT.

  “No way!” I slapped the surface of the desk, startling Boa enough to cease her purring. “Red wyverns aren’t extinct? Ribbons! Do you have a girlfriend?”

  Another flashing sign: NO COMMENT.

  “Naughty boy,” I said. “Though Aunt Zinnia suspected as much. She said the only potion that would be powerful enough to melt a genie like Morganna would be one made with venom from a female.” I leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “So? Where’d you meet her? Is it a cute story?”

  The neon sign flashed a third time, this time also accompanied by a horrible squealing, like feedback over a PA system. I yelped and covered my ears—not that it did any good keeping out a telepathic signal.

  “Genies,” Ribbons said in the ringing quiet following the squelch. “I’ll tell you what I know, and no more.” He yawned. “Then I need my beauty sleep.”

  I chucked back the remainder of my coffee and nodded for him to keep talking.

  “Their powers in the other worlds are nearly as limitless as those of the half-gods. They are the rulers in many kingdoms. But here on Earth, this particular Earth, their powers are limited. They can put humans into trances, and they can put lesser beings into stasis fields. But they are mortal, and live in borrowed bodies that age rapidly.”

  I felt a surge of concern for Archer Caine. Was he in hiding somewhere right now, dying of old age before Zoey could meet him?

  I interrupted to ask, “How rapidly?”

  “I misspoke. When I say rapidly, I mean at the same rate as humans. To a wyvern, that’s rapid.”

  “How do they borrow bodies? Do they always make cloned copies of other humans, like Archer did with Chet Moore?” The genie had split a second body off the DWM shifter when he was transitioning into his wolf form.

  “That was a new development,” Ribbons said. “Made possible only because the genie had infected the shifter’s blood during Morganna’s first experiment that went awry.”

  I scoffed. Chet Moore had nearly been killed by a flesh-machine monstrosity. It had been a bit more dramatic than an experiment “gone awry.”

  “The point of the Erasure Machine was to allow the genies to use fully grown bodies,” Ribbons said. “Previous to this recent development, they had to respawn from life to life as infants. They had to wait until they were eighteen, or even in their early twenties, before their collective genie memories kicked in.”

  Something about what Ribbons said tickled away in my brain, unfurling ribbons of thoughts. The wyvern seemed to be aware of my reaction and paused his story. I chased the unfurling ribbons through my mind.

  If genies had human lifespans, and respawned as babies who didn’t know they were genies until they were over eighteen...

  “That’s right,” Ribbons said, responding to what he’d read in my mind. “Archer didn’t know he was a genie when he fornicated, I mean, made a child with you
.”

  A new, horrifying thought struck me. If genies respawned as babies who didn’t know they were...

  “No,” Ribbons said. “Zoey is not a genie.”

  I sighed in relief. What an emotional roller coaster the whole day had been—and the night hadn’t gotten any less bumpy.

  “But she’s not not a genie,” Ribbons said.

  “She’s not not a genie?”

  “We don’t know what she is.” He brought his claw-like hands together and rubbed them. “Which is why you need to tell her. Then she can tell us what she is.”

  I snorted. “Good luck with that. Have you met a teenager? They’re the last people who know what they are.”

  Ribbons didn’t seem rattled. “With my kind, there is a story about a special kind of being.”

  “What kind?”

  “A creature of mixed origin.”

  “Do you mean one who is half genie, one quarter witch, and one quarter shifter?”

  “The story doesn’t say so much about her pedigree, but I can tell you she is called the Soul Eater.”

  The Soul Eater. That sounded an awful lot like the Soul Catcher.

  I waved for Ribbons to keep talking.

  “The Soul Eater will reunite the worlds,” Ribbons said. “Or destroy them all.”

  I got goose bumps all over. I immediately blocked my mind from the wyvern before he could read my next thoughts.

  I had also heard such a story. Only it had been called a prophecy. My daughter had been named in the text of some ancient scrolls that had been dug up from the bottom of the sea. In the translation, she was called a Soul Catcher, not a Soul Eater. However, even with the more neutral term, the prophecy hadn’t exactly filled me with gleeful anticipation about my daughter’s future.

  My mind was reeling. The prophecy had seemed like such a ridiculous thing. Who believed in prophecies anymore? Probably the same people who believed the Earth was flat or the moon landing was faked. But now that the wyvern was talking about his kind’s version of the prophecy, it didn’t seem so ridiculous.

  In the dead of night, it was much easier to believe the unbelievable.

  My goose bumps were growing more goose bumps.

  Boa, who’d been purring away in my lap, suddenly went from a soft noodle consistency to rigid muscle tension. She hissed at something behind me, then licked her lips and transitioned into a low, guttural howl.

  I turned my head slowly. I already knew what I was going to see before I saw it.

  A ghost.

  Ishmael Greyson stood near the foot of the stairs, looking lost, his neck faintly glowing where it had been chopped by a curved blade or two.

  With all the family drama, all the talk about genies and other worlds and prophecies, I’d actually forgotten about the poor fellow.

  Chapter 26

  My ghostly drop-in visitor put an end to my discussion of genies with Ribbons.

  Boa continued making horrible noises, her white tail twitching in agitation.

  “I’m getting a ghastly headache,” Ribbons announced. “You’ve got to do something about that ghost, Zed.”

  “What do you think I’ve been trying to do all day?”

  “Try harder.” He launched himself into the air above my desk. The beating of his wings sent my hair flying, blinding me. By the time my hair settled back down, the pint-size wyvern had already disappeared. Where had he gone? I squinted at the inky blackness along the edges of the basement. I really had to get a decent lighting system installed down there. Or hire a decorator. It was a shame that whenever my magical house spontaneously remodeled itself, it didn’t provide the same cozy comforts that a good interior designer would.

  Boa hissed once more, then jumped off my lap and high-tailed it up the stairs.

  Ishmael stood where he’d appeared, still looking lost and confused.

  “Sorry about the chilly reception from my pets,” I said to Ishmael. “But you’re welcome to hang out with me for a bit.”

  He gave me a glum nod.

  * * *

  For the next hour, I tried to gently prod Ishmael into communicating with me. I hoped he’d tell me who or what he was involved with that might have gotten him killed. It was slow going, without much progress. He seemed to know he was deceased, but not understand what that meant.

  After a while, I was frustrated nearly to the point of crying. His sadness was affecting me. He seemed like a nice enough young man, and it really was a tragedy that his life had been cut short. Also, I was worn out by a lack of sleep and a lack of progress.

  Was the real problem coming from my foolish attempt to improve my powers? I was on the verge of caving in, of admitting Zoey was right. Casting the rezoning spell on myself had been a mistake. I was not a tidy, well-organized library for ghosts. I was Zara Riddle. I was a witch. I was a woman, and my life was messy.

  I took out my notes, looked them over, and considered how I might reverse the spell. The markings on the page swam before my eyes. My head began to throb with the same ghastly headache Ribbons had complained of.

  I snapped my journal shut and tucked it back into the hidden drawer.

  Now was not the time to make big life decisions. I was too emotional, too exhausted.

  Also, perhaps I was giving up on my transformation too easily. The homicide was barely a day old. A very long day, but still just one day. Had I ever resolved anything thorny in just one day?

  Nope.

  My briefest ghost possession had been by the Pressman girl. And even with the help of several DWM agents, solving that apparent homicide had still taken me a few days. Complicated things took time to unravel.

  “Let’s get some fresh air,” I said to the ghost. “Wanna go for a walk?”

  He brightened up at once. If he’d had puppy ears, they would have pricked up eagerly. He didn’t quite understand that he was dead or even that I was a witch, but there was enough humanity left in the guy that he knew a walk outside was a good idea.

  I led him up from the basement, and through the house. The sun was rising, and the rooms were filled with eerie orange light that wasn’t as bright as it should have been. The sun was red again, glowing like an ember. The smoke from the nearby forest fires still hadn’t cleared away.

  The house was quiet.

  “Shh,” I told Ishmael. “Be very quiet. Don’t wake my daughter.”

  I was kidding, of course. Ghosts didn’t make noises without great effort. But poor goofy-looking Ishmael didn’t know that. He hunched his shoulders, held his finger to his semitransparent lips, and tiptoed along behind me. He tiptoed all the way out the front door.

  “The air smells smoky,” I said to him as we walked down the sidewalk.

  He sniffed the air and gave me a puzzled look. He didn’t seem to detect the smoke.

  “Your nose might not be working the way it used to,” I said. “Since you don’t have any olfactory cells, you can’t pick up on smells.” I tilted my head. “Then again, by the same rule, you don’t have any retinas or optical nerves, yet you can see me.”

  He continued giving me a puzzled look as we walked.

  “Maybe it’s a type of radar,” I said. “Sonar. Like what bats use.”

  He shrugged, put his hands in his pockets, and kicked a pine cone off the sidewalk. The pine cone bounced into the street.

  Ghost, I thought. The movie, not the noun. In the classic nineties movie Ghost, starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore—no relation to the Moores next door, according to them—the fictional ghosts could move objects in the real world if they knew how to focus their energy. There had been a touching scene where Swayze’s character had floated a penny over to a tearful Moore.

  I shivered. It was eerie how often movies got the details about magic right.

  * * *

  For the next hour, as the red sun rose overhead, I walked around Wisteria with my new ghost pal at my side.

  I hoped we might walk past something or someone that triggered a reaction from him, but h
e remained calm and amiable. As far as ghosts went, he was pleasant company. As long as someone or something—like Codex—didn’t drop the truth bombs hard enough to ignite him into a volcano of rage.

  We wound up in front of Dreamland Coffee—the same downtown location I’d visited the day before with Bentley. Because I hadn’t been to bed in the meantime, my sense of time wasn’t working right, and being there again gave me a strong feeling of déjà vu.

  The door opened, and customers came out, along with the scent of freshly roasted coffee. When the heavenly smell hit my olfactory cells—which were very real and working perfectly, unlike Ishmael’s—my very real mouth watered. I’d never wanted coffee more.

  I turned to Ishmael. “Do you happen to have any cash on you? We left the house so quietly that I forgot to grab my purse.”

  Ishmael reached into his pockets and turned them inside out. A couple of people in exercise clothes jogged by. All but one of them jogged straight through my ghost friend. The one person who dodged around the ghost, a man, slowed down and looked back at me over his shoulder, puzzled.

  Another group of joggers rounded the corner and came through. This time not one of the group bothered avoiding Ishmael. They all jogged right through like he wasn’t there.

  Ishmael patted himself and gave me a hurt look. Further up the street were even more joggers heading our way. In the other direction, the man who’d dodged Ishmael was now standing still, drinking from a bottle of water while watching us.

  “We need to get you off the street,” I told the ghost.

  The coffee shop smelled great, and it was also the nearest shelter. I could see through the windows that Maisy Nix was at the counter. How was she feeling toward me now? Had she talked to her niece, Fatima, and received the report that I knew about her family’s secret? Would she welcome me to the coven with open arms and show me how to make that neat rainbow?

  Or would she fly into a witch rage and hit me with hot, sparking plasma?

  Time to find out.

  I pushed open the door and pretended to fuss with my jacket button, pausing long enough to let Ishmael come inside as well. He could have walked through the door, but it probably didn’t help his self-esteem to do so.