Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3

by Angela Pepper

  Boa howled at my feet and pawed at my leg, as if to say, What about me? Is there a special bowl for me?

  Boa presumably didn’t speak or understand English—she was a regular cat as far as we all knew—but her timing could be eerie.

  “There’s a bowl of you-know-what for you,” I said to her adorable whiskered face.

  I looked up at my daughter, who was already putting Boa’s special dinner in the microwave for the optimal amount of warming—thirteen seconds. The thing about heating cat food was you always knew it was warmed to the right temperature when the smell made you gag. It wasn’t as noxious as Frank’s anchovy breath, but it came close.

  Zoey set the bowl on Boa’s floor place mat. “Here’s your you-know-what, Boa.” She tapped the side of the bowl, and the cat trotted over, white tail in the air like a flag pole.

  My daughter and I avoided saying the specific brand name of the cat food because it made Boa go crazy. And also because it was a really stupid name.

  We finished getting the human food ready, and sat for dinner. The conversation flitted between genies and sprites, Zoey’s father, and my boss.

  “You both have learned many secrets in a short period of time,” Ribbons observed as we reached the end of the meal. “Now you know what weaknesses your foes have. You can use this knowledge against them in times of battle.”

  “Kathy’s my boss, not my foe,” I said.

  “She is your work foe,” he said.

  “He’s not entirely wrong, Mom,” Zoey said. “You do complain about some of the things she makes you do. And her rules.”

  “She can be unreasonable at times. I mean, she actually wanted me and Frank to throw out our Cynical Librarian Bingo cards, and I was so close to getting five in a row.”

  “Sprites have many weaknesses,” Ribbons said sagely. “They are agitated by changes in routine, and by underlings not following their rules. Also, they have a powerful addiction to popular food-borne toxins such as those found in commercial snack products.”

  “Addiction to snacks? That sounds like a lot of regular people,” Zoey said. “Are you sure it’s specific to sprites?”

  “Do not question my wisdom,” he said tersely, shreds of coleslaw escaping his mouth. As much as the pint-sized creature enjoyed salad, it was difficult for him to eat, due to his teeth being designed for shredding rather than chewing.

  “What about genies?” I asked. “What are their weaknesses?”

  “As you know, they can be transformed into their gas and liquid essence—”

  “He means melted down,” I cut in, for Zoey’s benefit. I explained further. “Archer’s sister, who I suppose was technically your aunt, was killed with a poison made from red wyvern venom.” I looked over at our resident wyvern. “It’s a big mystery how someone got red wyvern venom, seeing as how they’re extinct, but we’ll have to take Ribbons’ word for it that he hasn’t seen any red wyverns around in millennia.”

  “So tragic,” Ribbons said. “Completely extinct.”

  A likely story.

  I set down my utensils and folded my hands on my lap for a somber moment. “Zoey, I’m sorry for the loss of your aunt or whatever she was.”

  “She was just a spooky old lady who cut my hair one time.”

  “In any case, I am sorry.”

  “Don’t be. That old kook was building a machine to wipe people’s brains,” Zoey said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m glad she’s gone. She was a bad influence on my father.”

  I felt my eyebrows raise. “Is that what he told you last night?”

  She stared down at her plate. “We didn’t talk for very long. He was bleeding pretty bad from the puncture wounds he got when your boyfriend tried to eat him.”

  “Bentley apologized for that.” I didn’t correct her on the point about the reanimated detective not being my boyfriend. “He only attacked because he thought Archer was here to hurt us.”

  Zoey shook her head. “He didn’t think that. He wasn’t thinking at all. He just reacted.”

  “Reacting is a form of thinking. Sort of. Okay. Not really.”

  Zoey pushed her chair back and stood. “Do you mind if I do the dishes later? I’d like to be excused to my room.”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  She groaned. “Not everything is about you, Mom.”

  I started to say something, but Ribbons cut me off with a private message. “Let it go, Zed.”

  I looked over at the wyvern, who was licking his coleslaw bowl with his long, purple tongue. Let it go, Zed? For someone who claimed to not care about human affairs, the wyvern could be quite the family counselor when needed.

  “Don’t worry about the dishes,” I said softly. “I’ll clean up.”

  She turned to leave, still not meeting my gaze.

  “I love you,” I called after her.

  She left, and I listened to her light footfalls on the stairs, followed by Boa’s even lighter hops after her. The only thing Boa loved more than a bowl of lightly nuked you-know-what was being in the same room as her favorite person.

  I wondered if I should follow them up to Zoey’s room and make things better.

  Or worse.

  “Give her space, Zed,” the wyvern spoke in my head. “Even the strongest need some solitude.”

  And, right on cue, he left the kitchen to go spread wisdom and cause trouble elsewhere.

  The wyvern did have a point.

  Even the strongest needed solitude.

  But they also needed each other.

  I picked up my phone and scrolled through my contacts, to the letter C.

  All three of the triplets were there: Charlize, Chessa, and Chloe.

  I noted with amusement that their names all started with the same two letters, yet were pronounced differently. The English language was not without its quirks. I’d always been good at spelling, but even I had to look up a few words, such as Caesar, as in Caesar salad. I also had a funny urge to spell the word dilemma with a letter N, as in dilemna. I couldn’t explain it, but that word in particular felt like it should have been spelled that other way.

  I wondered if I was living in an alternate timeline, and there was another Zara Riddle, in another universe, where everything was exactly the same, except dilemma was spelled differently.

  I send a text message to my gorgon friend, Charlize: Have you ever thought the word dilemma should be spelled differently?

  She wrote back: Yes! Dilemna with an N. You’re not the only one!

  I smiled as I replied: You totally get me. I like you. What are you doing?

  Charlize: Hanging out with the girls for a late dinner. We have five bottles of wine for three of us. Do you think that’s enough?

  Me: Probably not.

  Charlize: Chloe’s still breastfeeding, so she’ll only have a sip.

  Me: You might be okay then.

  Charlize: If not, there’s always tequila. You should come join us! We’re in Chessa’s cottage, behind Chloe’s house. Just the girls. You could sleep over again.

  Me, struggling to come up with an excuse: I have to be at work bright and early in the morning, so I’ll have to pass.

  Charlize: You’re not still worried about Chessa, are you? You big chicken. Relax! Her bark is worse than her bite.

  I’d rather not find out, I thought, and I politely declined.

  We sent messages back and forth for a while, chatting about life and making silly in-jokes. Then she had to sign off and interact with her sisters, so I wished her a fun evening without me.

  Then I cleaned up the kitchen.

  I resisted the urge to go upstairs and bug my teenager. Instead of causing more trouble, I retired downstairs to the basement to do some reading.

  With nothing specific in mind, I flipped open a magic book at random and found the story of the Four Eves. I recognized it as the same tale I’d been told by Morganna Faire, albeit in more formal language.

  I read about the four sister-wives who’d shared t
he original man, Adam. In one part of the story, the four women, Quenya, Mahra, Dinara, and Amora, bickered over who drank all the honey wine. It had been Amora, the lover. The text didn’t come right out and say it, but drinking all the honey wine was such an Amora thing to do.

  As I turned the pages and read more tales about the Four Eves, I kept thinking about Charlize and her sisters. At that moment, they were gathered in Chessa’s chic white living room, inside her chic white cottage. The woman’s cottage stayed perfectly chic and white because she stayed at the Moore house most of the time.

  I wondered if the sisters were getting along tonight, or if the inevitable bickering had started up.

  Chapter 3

  THE TRIPLETS

  COTTAGE OF CHESSA WAKEFUL

  Across town from the Riddle house, in a chic white cottage, three blonde sisters gathered in a chic white living room.

  “Use a coaster,” said the owner of the cottage, Chessa Wakeful. She was the fairest of the three. Her wavy platinum blonde hair was practically white, and her pale skin was luminous. She was the oldest of the triplets by one hour. Family legend had it she emerged from her mother’s womb, stood up on the birthing table, and reached in to help haul her sisters out by the hand.*

  *It should be noted that family legends in the Wakeful clan were often exaggerated. For example, some people believed that Grandmother Diablo was a time-traveling demon/goddess from another world, and had a brother who could turn himself into a volcano.

  While Chessa was elegant and ethereal, like an elf in a Tolkien novel, Chloe was the more mundane of the sisters. She was always trying to figure out the rules—the rules about how to be the best cheerleader, or the best daughter. After high school, she moved away from Wisteria for a while, but had come back to run a bakery. Naturally, it had to be the best bakery, with the best pastries. Now that she had a baby, she had to be the best mother.

  “Coaster,” Chessa repeated. “Now, Chloe.” There was ancient power in all of Chessa’s commands, even the minor ones.

  Chloe jerked forward and grabbed a coaster as per her elegant sister’s order, but not before shooting an exasperated, she’s-doing-it-again look at their other sister, Charlize.

  Charlize, however, didn’t notice, because she was staring at her phone while chewing her fingernails. As Charlize gnawed away on her short, tattered nails, Chloe felt bile roll up her throat. What a disgusting habit. Charlize was, by far, the least refined of the three. She was like a wild creature who’d been raised by animals and introduced to society too late in adolescence to be properly socialized. At least that was how Chloe saw her.

  Charlize had never been terribly concerned about the rules. Unlike Chessa, who considered herself regally above and beyond such earthly things as rules, or Chloe, who was obsessed with them, Charlize only took enough notice of the rules so she could be amused by the ones she was breaking.

  Of the three triplets, Charlize had always been the most physical, the one most comfortable in her body. Her body was her friend, her ally. It never gained three pounds after she ate a few ounces of pastries, unlike Chloe’s body, which was defying all attempts made by its owner to shed the pregnancy weight.

  Charlize and her body danced through life. She dressed her body in clothes that sparkled and moved without restriction, clothes that could keep up with her whims and energy. And she chewed on her nails as though nothing else in the world could be as interesting as herself and her own body.

  A moment ticked by. Chloe grew more and more irritated that Charlize was chewing her nails and looking at her phone instead of participating in the sisters’ social night. How rude of her! Chloe had made sacrifices to be there, sacrifices that were not being appreciated. To think, she could have been next door, in her large and comfortable house, relaxing and making cookies while Jordan Junior snoozed in his bassinet. He loved being in the kitchen while his mother baked, and Chloe had some new cookie cutters she was dying to use.

  Chloe snapped her fingers, trying to get Charlize’s attention. When that didn’t work, she summoned her powers. Of the three, she was the least powerful, but she could get someone’s attention if she wanted to. She narrowed her eyes and shot her rude, nail-munching sister a special look—the kind that would not be ignored.

  Charlize yelped as her hand turned to stone. Before she could turn it back to flesh, Chloe grabbed the phone from her hand.

  “What’s so interesting on here?” Chloe demanded. She tried to read the screen, but it was, like Charlize’s hand, currently made of marble.

  A few seconds later, when the phone turned back to regular electronics, it requested a lengthy password. Chloe shook the phone accusingly. She didn’t need to read the message to know what Charlize had been distracted by. The phone still resonated with a witch energy. A Riddle energy.

  Chloe demanded, “Were you complaining to Zara about us again?”

  “No,” Charlize said guiltily. “I was just checking in with her. She’s got a lot going on right now, with Zoey’s father back in the picture.”

  Zoey’s father. The genie.

  Suddenly, Chloe was back in high school, back with the cheerleading squad, about to dive into some hot gossip.

  Just like that, her irritation at her sister about the phone usage and the nail biting melted away.

  Chloe sat, leaning forward, and asked, “Do you think they’re going to hook up? A genie and a witch would be quite the power couple. Plus, it would be nice for Zoey to have both parents in her life. Children need stability. If I were in Zara’s shoes, I would want the father of my child living under my roof with me and my child.”

  “Zoey’s sixteen,” Charlize said. “Practically an adult.”

  “Family is family,” Chloe said with an air of smug superiority.

  Charlize rolled her eyes, turned sideways in the white armchair, and dangled her legs over the side, teenager-style. “You’ve had a baby for a couple of months, and now you’re the expert on everything.”

  “Excuse me?” Chloe’s voice pitched up. “I think that having a family of my own is precisely what makes me an expert. What exactly are you an expert on? Besides sparkly jumpsuits and not cleaning out your car, like, ever?”

  Charlize reacted to the criticism on a gorgon level. The magic snakes that resided between another realm and Charlize’s golden curls began to wake up and hiss.

  Charlize hissed back at her sister, “Since when doessss it matter what I have inside a car that’ssss one hundred percent my car and not yours, sissssster dearessst?”

  Chloe retorted, “Since there wasn’t any room for me to safely buckle in Jordan Junior’s car seat yesterday!”

  Charlize’s hair snakes settled down. “You should have thought about that before you asked me to drive you all over town running your stupid errands.”

  Now Chloe’s hair snakes woke up. They twined around each other, still short-tempered from her haircut.

  “Errands? We were spending quality time together,” Chloe said. “I thought that was what you wanted! Besides the trouble with the car seat, we had a lovely day. You have to admit I was extremely patient when you tried on all those weird outer-space jumpsuits at that store you like.”

  “Patient?” Charlize snorted. Three hair snakes snorted as well. “You call that patient? You paced outside of the dressing room the whole time, telling me to hurry up.”

  “I wasn’t pacing. I was walking. To calm the baby. And then I politely asked how long you thought you might be.”

  “I was trying on clothes, sisssster dearessssst. I was only taking the normal amount of time a person takes to try on clothes. I’m not like you, when you’re looking at cookie cutters. Now, that’s something that could take hours.” She tossed a smug look at Chloe. “You’ll notice I’ve started packing a lunch and bottled water whenever you drag me to the bakery supply store.”

  Chessa, who’d been quiet for a moment, giggled and joined in. “She’s right,” Chessa said to Chloe. “You do take forever at your favo
rite baking stores. And, as for your obsession with cookie cutters, it may be time for an intervention.” Her pale, ocean-blue eyes twinkled.

  Chloe pointed at Chessa, finger wagging accusingly. “Don’t you dare take her side. Not now! Not when I’m barely hanging onto my sanity by a thread! Not when I’m getting by on three hours of sleep a night!”

  Chessa smiled knowingly—like always—as she picked up the bottle of wine and poured some into a clean wine glass. She handed it to the new mother.

  “Drink this,” Chessa said with gentle authority. “Junior is already sleeping, and I know you won’t have to feed him again for hours. It’ll be fine.”

  Chloe narrowed her eyes at Chessa but accepted the wine anyway. She took a sip, then another, and relaxed back into the sofa.

  Chloe snuck another she’s-doing-it-again look over at Charlize, who caught it that time, and understood.

  Charlize understood how much Chloe hated it when Chessa gave her “permission” about anything regarding the baby. The infant was Chloe’s, born from her womb, yet the egg had come from Chessa. That meant, at least to someone as sensitive to rules and criticism as Chloe, that everything Chessa said about the baby had a double meaning. “That should be fine for the baby,” actually meant, “That should be fine for my baby, who is with you on loan, for now, until such time as I decide to reclaim him for myself, the way I did with young men who struck my fancy when we were growing up.”

  Charlize offered no comment on the giving of permission. It was between the other two.

  Charlize leaned over the mirrored coffee table, grabbed her phone back, and stuffed it into the chest pocket of her favorite silver jumpsuit. She refilled her own wine glass, and settled back into the chair.

  Charlize smiled as she looked at her two sisters. A warmth went through her entire body, and it wasn’t just from the wine. This evening was going so nicely! She’d expected her sisters would be in an argumentative mood, but things were going much better than usual.

  After a few minutes of comfortable silence, in which all three gazed at the television, which was tuned to a baking channel but muted, the fairest and most powerful broke the silence.