We talked for a while, about nothing in particular. Seeing their look-alike faces side by side, the long red hair mingling with the long black hair, filled me with love and longing. I lied and told them I didn’t mind that they were gallivanting around Europe without me. It was good for them to have their sister time and space to catch up with each other.
My mother abruptly asked, “What about Teddy?” Teddy was what she called Bentley. Teddy, or even Teddy B.
If I’d had hackles, they would have gone up. “What about him?”
My undead mother narrowed her hazel eyes at me. “Something has happened with him.”
“What makes you say that?” I felt a twinge of guilt over not calling her the moment I got home late Friday. I should have let her know that Bentley must have opened the “gift” she’d left him.
She used one pale, bony finger to stroke the indentation between her collarbones. “Call it a sixth sense. A mother’s intuition.”
Zinnia leaned half out of frame and gave her older sister a puzzled look. Zinnia didn’t know about Bentley, or what had happened. But my mother did. She knew darn well.
I gave her what I thought was a mature look. “Mother, why would you ask a question when you already know the answer?” I caught sight of my face in the small window and winced. My mature look was the same one my teen daughter gave me during her rare bratty moments.
We stared off as best we could, considering the computer’s camera was offset from our actual eyes by several inches. My mother was much better than I was at frowning fixedly at the tiny camera hole.
Zinnia broke in. “What’s going on with Bentley? Have you started dating him, Zara? It’s about time you moved on from the shifter. Their kind doesn’t mix well with ours. The detective is a much more appropriate choice for you.”
“Ew,” I said. “I’m not interested in my mother’s exes.”
“He’s not my ex,” my mother said. “Although...” Her thin, dark eyebrows almost touched. “If Teddy has done what I sense he has, then he’s sort of like a brother to you now.”
Zinnia’s eyes flew wide open. “What?”
My mother turned to her sister and explained, “Before I left town, I gave Teddy B a vial of my blood, concentrated in a lab by Dr. Ankh. I obscured most of his memory, but left him with explicit instructions to break the glass in case of an emergency.” She touched one of her upper incisors casually. “I sense that the vial has been opened.” She looked directly at me through the camera. “Trouble unsealed,” she said ominously.
Zinnia’s hands flew to her mouth. “Bentley’s a vampire?”
“What?” I gave my mother an even brattier look. “Zinnia can say the V-word, but I can’t? That’s not fair. If you’re going to glamour me, you should glamour everyone in the family.”
Zinnia gave me a dumbfounded look. “Zara, what happened?”
I shrugged. “There was a shootout at the O.K. Corral, so to speak.” I waved my hand. “Everyone survived.”
My mother gave me a dark look. There was something besides anger in her eyes. Sadness. She quickly looked away.
She didn’t have to say it. I knew what she was thinking. Not everyone had survived.
Zinnia peppered me with questions. I started at the beginning, seven days ago, and explained everything that had happened since Ishmael Greyson’s first ghostly visit. I skipped over the key fact that I’d rezoned myself so that Ishmael couldn’t interact by possessing me. We could discuss that when my mentor returned to town. I also left out my first broom flight with Maisy Nix, and how much I knew about the coven.
When I got to the end, Zinnia was leaning in so close to the camera, her face filled my screen. “What about Charlize? And the other agents?”
“They’re okay,” I reported. “I talked to Charlize already this morning. Everyone’s going to make a full recovery.”
Zinnia shook her head. “I hope this has taught you a lesson about being more careful.”
My mother pushed her out of the way. “Zara, you should have a vial, too,” she said. “I will FedEx one to you.”
“Gross! Don’t you dare FedEx me your... Ugh.” I made a gagging face.
The two sisters turned to each other. They exchanged a look that said What are we supposed to do about Zara?
“I’m fine,” I said. “Everybody’s fine here. I even sent Bentley a text message inviting him to come join us for cake tonight. Does that make you happy?”
They turned to face me and sighed in unison.
“It’s a Black Forest cake,” I said. “From Gingerbread House. Zoey arranged it with Chloe, who made it for me personally.” I scratched my chin self-consciously. “She made it with an orange liqueur filling instead of the usual stuff. For some reason, I’ve lost my appetite for cherry filling.”
Diplomatically, my aunt said, “That was very considerate of Chloe. I feel better knowing you have some good friends there with you. Friends are important.”
“Indeed,” I said. “As important as birthdays.”
“Indeed,” she agreed.
My mother said nothing. Her gaze drifted upward. She stared into the distance dreamily while she traced a vertical line over her breastbone.
The three of us continued to talk for a while, but the conversation had already ended.
When it came time to end the call, Zinnia teared up, exactly as I knew she would. The tougher they act, the harder they fall.
When the connection clicked off and my laptop’s screen went black, I struggled to keep my own eyes dry.
Why so emotional? Maybe because I was catching up to Zinnia in years. Was it aging that made people sentimental? Did all the small losses of life accumulate in such a way that one emotional tug could cause an avalanche?
I closed the laptop. In the silence, the weight of everything that had happened threatened to crash down on me. I could have easily slid back down under the covers and slept my birthday away. Instead, I cast a spell to whip my covers away, and I got up to face my birthday.
* * *
Zoey and I set the dining room table in preparation for my intimate party. Chloe would be arriving with the cake, accompanied by her sister Charlize. If Bentley showed up, there would be five of us. I hadn’t invited my coworkers. I adored them, but I also saw plenty of them during the week. Chloe had baked two cakes so I could bring one to the library on Monday for a belated celebration.
As I set out five placemats, I found myself humming.
Zoey picked up the placemats I’d just set down, made a tsk-tsk sound, and unfurled a festive striped tablecloth over the table’s scratched and dented surface.
While she smoothed out the wrinkles with her hands, she asked, “Where do you think he went?”
“Heaven, maybe.” I used magic to take back the placemats and resettle them. “If there are Hell worlds, there must be Heaven worlds. Unicorns and rainbows must come from somewhere.” I remembered the ghost’s rifle. “He’d better not be shooting unicorns, wherever he went.”
“I didn’t mean Ishmael Greyson,” she said.
“Oh. You meant Bentley?” I checked my phone. “Speaking of whom, he hasn’t gotten back to me about coming for cake tonight. Oh, well! More cake for us.”
She frowned. “But seriously. Where do you think he went after he shot that guy in the cafeteria?”
“Honestly, I don’t know where he skulked off to after the... transformation. Don’t they like graves? After we’re finished eating birthday cake, you and I can go for a moonlight stroll by the cemetery. We can check for fresh dirt.”
She gave me a pained look. “Mom, you’re being very offensive to their kind.”
“I make jokes, Zoey. Dark humor jokes. To help everyone deal with the horrors that are visited upon us every single day. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s sort of my thing.”
“I may have noticed that about you,” she said coolly. “But where do you think he went?”
“In my wildest fantasy, he snuck out of the cafete
ria and went straight to the computer mainframe room where he gave Codex a lobotomy.” I clenched my fists, remembering the frustration of being without my magic. “If I’d had my powers, nobody would have gotten hurt that night.”
“Mom, you can’t save everyone all the time.”
“Why not?”
She gave me a blank look.
“I’m serious,” I said. “If I’m not supposed to be saving everyone all the time, then why do I have these amazing powers?”
“Nobody is supposed to be doing anything. Don’t you believe in free will?”
“Hmm.” I reached up and swept away a stray cobweb from the chandelier.
The doorbell rang.
“Doorbell,” I said, grinning.
“I believe in free will,” Zoey said.
“Doorbell.”
She struck one finger in the air. “I’ll get the door, but only because I choose to get the door, of my own free will.”
I nodded. “Doorbell.”
It rang again.
She sighed and left to answer the door.
She returned a few minutes later with three people. Two blonde gorgons and one formerly alive detective.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” I said.
Chloe and Charlize each set a cake on the table.
Detective Theodore “Teddy B” Bentley held out a fat bottle of champagne. “Happy birthday,” he said. He looked different, though I hadn’t quite worked out everything that had changed. A hint of a smile curled his lips. That was new.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the champagne. “Getting older sucks, but it sure beats the alternative!”
Bentley raised one eyebrow. It lifted higher and faster than it had before. “Oh? And what is the alternative to getting older?” The steely gray eye beneath the raised eyebrow was now silver, the light tones on the iris shining like the facets on a cut diamond.
I was temporarily speechless. There were two alternatives to getting older: Being dead, or being something that didn’t age. I hadn’t seen Bentley in two days, and now we’d only exchanged a few words, and I’d struck a nerve already.
Or had I?
He didn’t seem at all offended by my gaffe. If anything, the curve on his lips had deepened.
Someone—my daughter—clapped her hands. “Champagne flutes,” she said. “I’ll get some if you let me pop the cork.”
Without taking my eyes off silver-eyed Bentley, I said, “They’re above the refrigerator, behind the Frisbee we use to eat in the tub.”
Now Bentley’s second eyebrow raised. “You use a Frisbee to eat in the tub? I’d like to see that.”
“You can’t,” I said quickly. “You can’t see me naked. Only family is allowed to see me naked.”
“We’re practically family,” Bentley said. “My maker is your mother.”
His maker. My mother. Practically family. I managed to pull away from the tractor beam of his gaze and latch onto something safer. The gaze of a gorgon. Charlize. Help me, I pleaded with my eyes.
“You’re okay,” Charlize said softly, soothingly. “It’s always a big adjustment when someone you know makes a transition. Bentley’s still the same person, I swear.”
“He’s still Bentley, but he’s...” Not Bentley. Not placid, predictable, striving, gray-wool-suit-wearing Bentley.
Charlize kept talking, reassuring me. I didn’t hear a word she was saying. Chloe chattered happily about the cake and the recipe she’d adapted.
Suddenly, there was a loud BANG!
I was so startled, I managed to catch the champagne cork in mid-air and explode it into confetti.
Zoey squealed with glee and clapped her hands. “Nice one! I didn’t know you could do that!”
I caught some of the falling confetti in my hand. It crackled against my palm. I hadn’t known I could do that, either, but I didn’t let on to the group. Instead, I smiled at my friends and complimented the baker on her handiwork.
Next, I endured countless jokes about the number of candles on my cake, and how next year they would have a fire crew standing by.
Zoey dimmed the chandelier, lit the candles, and they sang to me. I looked around at their faces, one at a time. Boa had joined us and was sitting politely on a chair. Ribbons had come for the cake and was not-so-politely hanging upside down from the chandelier like a bat. As I looked at each one of them, it hit me that one year ago I hadn’t known any of them. Last year, it had been thirty-two candles on a store-bought cake, and my daughter and I had agreed to skip the singing that year, since it was, yet again, just the two of us. How things had changed.
“Blow out the candles before you burn this old house down,” Charlize said.
“Let’s see how many she can blow out in one breath,” Bentley said. “Then we get to count all Zara’s boyfriends.”
Everyone made childish oooh-oooh sounds, except for Ribbons, who said, “You have boyfriends, Zed? More than one?”
I sucked in my breath and held it a moment.
“Make a wish,” someone said.
Later, when I reflected back on that night, I wouldn’t be able to tell you who told me to make a wish. I couldn’t even say if it had been a man, a woman, or a wyvern. But I heard the command, and I looked across the glowing candles at my beautiful, kind, patient daughter, and I knew exactly what to wish for. I didn’t even need to take a second breath to think about it.
I wished, I closed my eyes, and I blew.
Through my eyelids, I saw the bright light grow dim. The candles guttered, but not every one of them extinguished.
I opened my eyes to the sight of two candles burning defiantly.
There was another chorus of oooh-oooh, then, “Zara’s got two boyfriends!”
“Oh, please.” I huffed and rolled my eyes. “Who’d want to date a bossy old witch like me?” I took another breath and blew out the other two.
In the darkness, I said, “Cake time! Zoey, would you get the lights?”
“I’m trying,” she said. There was a click-click sound of the switch being flicked. “We must have blown a fuse,” she said.
“I’ll blow a fuse if I can’t see this cake to cut it,” I said.
The chandelier came on. Nobody was standing anywhere near the switch. In fact, my daughter was at the doorway, presumably on her way to check the electrical panel.
Charlize gave me a knowing look. “Another ghost?”
I scanned the dining room. “I don’t see one.” I pointed to the hanging light fixture, and the scaled creature swinging from it. “We can probably pin this one on Cirque de Wyvern.”
Everyone laughed.
Zoey was returning to her chair when the doorbell rang. She and I locked eyes. We weren’t expecting anyone. Something about the sound of the doorbell at that particular moment sent an unwelcome shiver down my spine. I felt pressure on my lungs, like the chimera beast was standing on my chest again.
Without a word, Zoey ran to answer the door.
Everyone gathered at the table sat absolutely still, as though they sensed it, too.
Doom.
Impending doom.
My daughter’s voice floated into the dining room. “Good evening, Mr. Moore! Is everything okay with Corvin? Do you need me to watch him for a few minutes?”
He answered her in a murmur too soft for us to hear.
Next to me, there was a hiss of multiple snakes waking from their magical slumber. The gorgon nearest me, Charlize, grabbed my hand with hers and squeezed. “That’s not Chet,” she said.
Chloe said, “If it’s not Chet, then it must be...” She didn’t say the name, but she didn’t have to. There was a genie strolling around in a body he’d cut from Chet Moore’s. He called himself Archer Caine.
Bentley stared at me across the table. “Zara,” he said, his voice slicing through my confusion like a sharp blade. “What did you wish for?”
I looked down at the cake with the burnt candles and muttered my answer.
“Zara,” he said again.
“Tell us what you wished for.”
I lifted my chin and met his eyes. “I wished that my daughter could have what I didn’t. I wished she could get to know her father.”
Nobody said anything.
Ribbons swung upward from his perch on the chandelier, flipped in mid-air, and landed on the table two feet from the cake. “And you say I stir the pot, Zed. You’re the one who stirs the pot and shakes the hornet’s nest and lights the firecrackers.”
Two people appeared in the doorway. My daughter, her pale face even more pale than usual, and Archer Caine.
“Everyone,” Zoey said hesitantly. “This is—”
She was cut off by Bentley, who hurled himself through the air in a supernatural move that defied all laws of physics. He struck the genie with the full force of his body, and the two went tumbling backward, snarling and growling and making an unholy racket.
Ignoring them for the moment, I picked up a knife and held it over the shaved chocolate curls and whipped cream in front of me. My hand was trembling. “Cake, anyone? Cake?”
* * *
Thank you for reading WARDENS OF WISTERIA by Angela Pepper. This is the 8th book in the world of Wisteria Witches. Zara's adventures continue in the 9th Wisteria book, WISTERIA WARNED.
Turn the page for a note from the author. See the backmatter for a list of Angela Pepper titles.
Author's Note from Angela Pepper
Dear Reader:
That was quite the note to end the book on, wasn't it? "Cake, anyone? Cake?" That cracks me up. I love it in real life when something weird breaks out at the big family dinner, and nobody knows how to fix it, so someone brings out the dessert.
As for what happens next, I'm not entirely sure, so it would be impossible for me to post spoilers here. I do have notes and plans for a few more books after this one, but some of the future is shrouded in mystery. My characters have been up to shenanigans. Bentley wasn't supposed to turn into a vampire for at least two more books, but he refused to wait any longer! Now it's happened, and Archer Caine is back, and we'll have to deal with all of that over the upcoming mysteries!
Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3 Page 58
