Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3

by Angela Pepper

  I ordered something on his behalf. I knew his kind ate regular human food, thanks to sharing meals with my mother, whose appetite after her big change had diminished no more than her love of bossing around waiters.

  We sat, choosing a non-jinxed table, and he dug into his potato chowder and beef dip sandwich with gusto.

  As for the blood part of Bentley’s diet, I’d assumed he had been getting a synthetic compound from Dr. Ankh at the DWM. He reluctantly confirmed that this was true while dipping his beef dip in his soup.

  We talked about the possible missing person’s case as we ate lunch. He’d received an update from Lund that the student technicians were tackling the project eagerly.

  “Doesn’t that worry you?” I asked. “They have no idea what they’re dealing with.”

  “This is how investigations work,” he said. “We have to rely on each other as a team.” He gave me a steadfast look. “That doesn’t mean I don’t still attempt to handle everything on my own.” His silver eyes twinkled. “And get myself deep into trouble.”

  I nodded and pushed my chair back. “Can you stay out of trouble while I use the washroom?”

  He glanced around the busy coffee shop. “I can if you can.”

  * * *

  Maisy Nix walked into the women’s bathroom while I was washing my hands. The alarming part was that it was a single-user bathroom, and I had definitely locked the door. But, when it came to witches, there was no such thing as a locked door.

  “How was your lunch?” Maisy asked.

  “Lunch was excellent.” I turned off the faucet using magic, and then dried my hands using a spell. I could have used the paper towels that were next to the sink, but I wanted to impress my fellow witch.

  “Good,” Maisy said.

  “The roasted turkey I had in my sandwich was surprisingly tender and moist.”

  She quietly stared at me in a way that said she didn’t care how tender and moist my turkey had been.

  Maisy was an intimidating woman, even to a powerful witch like yours truly. She was over six feet tall, slender, and strong-looking. She had medium-brown, perfect skin, black hair, and equally dark eyes. If there was one thing about her that wasn’t perfect, it was that her upper lip was bigger than her lower lip—but both were still beautiful.

  The last time we’d seen each other, she’d been dropping me off in my back yard after taking me on my first broomstick ride. In order to give us super speed on our flight back into town from the mountainside, she’d borrowed my powers. Without asking. Ribbons felt that her power theft had been a violation that deserved violent retribution, but then he was always looking for an excuse to talk about violent retribution. Me, I had been bothered by the way she’d drained my power without asking, but not nearly as much as I was bothered by the way she’d walked in on me in the bathroom without so much as a knock on the door.

  “Are you and the detective working on a case?” Maisy asked. She had her feet spread wider than her shoulders. A fighting stance.

  “How’d you guess?”

  “It’s either that or you’re on a date. Are you on a date?”

  I mimed pushing up my sleeves, even though I was wearing a tank top with no sleeves. “All right, Maisy. How do you want to do this? A magic duel? Arm wrestling? Or just a basic girl fight where we pull each other’s hair while crying hysterically?”

  She blinked twice. She didn’t move from her wide-legged stance. She was blocking the only exit.

  “Listen,” I said. “It’s become quite clear to me that you’re interested in the detective.”

  No response.

  “And you can do whatever you want with him,” I said. “That’s between you two. I’m not his girlfriend.”

  “I didn’t think you were.”

  “I may not be his girlfriend, but you should know that he has pledged his allegiance to me.”

  She narrowed her dark, pretty eyes. “In what way?”

  “As a bodyguard.”

  “Why? How?” She looked me up and down, then repeated, “Why?”

  I kept my mouth closed and crossed my arms. I wouldn’t discuss my mother’s reappearance in my life, let alone how she’d given Bentley the gift—or curse—of a second life. But something—the look on her face, probably—told me she already knew enough to piece together the rest.

  She broke the silence. “Do you always let your mother turn men into vampires who are sworn to protect you?”

  Ziggity. She was good. Even so, I wanted to correct her. Technically, the first thing had only happened as a result of the second thing. Bentley bit into his vial of emergency blood because he had to save me, along with a few other people.

  She pushed out her fat upper lip as though preparing to drink from a straw. The gesture was cute yet disconcerting.

  I uncrossed my arms. “I didn’t ‘let’ my mother do anything. If you knew anything about Zirconia Riddle, you’d know she never asks for permission.”

  Maisy’s fat lip recessed and spread into a smile. A genuinely friendly smile. “Mothers,” she said with a chuckle. “Yours sounds exactly like mine. Except for the part about being a creature of the grave. Mine is a witch, naturally.”

  “Mine was too, originally.”

  She scrunched up her face and unfocused her gaze, as though putting together a mental model of my family tree. Then her expression relaxed and she said, with an air of generosity, “You can have him. Fully and completely.” She held up one hand as though swearing an oath in a court of law. “He is yours, Zara. My word is my bond.”

  She was giving me Bentley? How, um, generous.

  I said, “Isn’t that up to him?”

  She sniffed. “You’re funny, Zara.”

  “What makes you think I even want him?”

  She gave me a knowing look, her dark eyes flashing wide.

  Behind her, the door handle started to turn. Without so much as a glance over her shoulder, Maisy flicked her finger, and the door locked. She spoke to the person on the other side, in an eerie, magic-infused voice. “You want to use the other washroom.”

  From the other side of the door came the muffled sound of a woman saying, “I think I’ll use the other washroom.”

  The walls of the tiny washroom seemed to be closer now. Being trapped in close quarters with a witch who wasn’t family finally got to me. I shifted from one foot to the other. “Maisy, are we going to be in here much longer? Bentley might wonder what’s taking me so long. I’d hate for him to come crashing through that door in a heroic burst of chivalry.”

  “How long we’re in here is up to you. Ask me about whatever it is you’re after. I know you didn’t come here just for the roast turkey sandwich. Stop stalling.”

  When Maisy Nix told you to stop stalling, you stopped stalling. “What do you know about dollhouses that predict the future?”

  “Are we talking about voodoo dolls?”

  “Not exactly,” I said, and I explained what we’d found at Temperance Krinkle’s house.

  When I finished, she said, “The Krinkle woman doesn’t have any powers that I know of. It’s possible she was meant to be a minor mage, like her mother, but her powers were suppressed. Do you know about Animata transfer?”

  I waved one hand in a level gesture. My knowledge was so-so. Zinnia told me a witch with suppressed magic could accidentally imbue the objects around her with her own life energy. This was why it was important for witches to never give names to objects, or talk to objects as though they were alive. It was also why she’d been so concerned about my daughter’s powers not manifesting on her sixteenth birthday.

  Maisy gave me a refresher on Animata transfer, then concluded, “The answers may be inside the dollhouses she builds. You must focus your investigation there.”

  “Bentley has a team working on that already. Dr. Lund is supervising.”

  Maisy wrinkled her nose.

  I picked up on her reaction—was it disgust?—and said, “I know, right? What is up with that guy?”<
br />
  “He means well, but silly Jerry is trying to map things that should not be mapped.” She reached into a leather bag that was slung over one angular shoulder. “That reminds me. I found this map in the back room. If it’s not your aunt’s, I’m sure she will pass it along to the appropriate party.”

  I took the map and unfolded it. It was a simple map of the town—the kind given out to the small number of tourists who passed through during the summer months. One segment had a nasty burn mark right through it, and the whole thing was stained brown by what smelled like coffee.

  “The map has no intrinsic value,” Maisy said. “But your aunt may wish to keep it for sentimental reasons.”

  “I’m sure there’s a great story that goes along with this map.”

  Maisy said nothing.

  I refolded the map. I’d left my purse at the table with Bentley, so I slipped it into the side pocket of my pencil skirt. “Thanks for your advice about the dollhouse. We’ll look into your Animata theory.”

  “I have some advice to give you about dating a vampire.”

  “Uh...”

  “Get him to bite you as soon as possible,” she said, not waiting for my permission. Typical Maisy. “Get it out of the way so the game of will-he-won’t-he isn’t hanging in the air. Then you can move on to the more fun games.” She gave me a knowing eyebrow-waggle.

  “You’ve dated a... creature of the grave?”

  She puffed up proudly. “I’ve dated every kind of creature. Even Jerry Lund.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, Zara.” She turned to smile at herself in the mirror as she rubbed her pinkie finger across her enlarged upper lip. “Some creatures are more fun than others.”

  I stayed quiet. I struggled with the idea that gorgeous Maisy Nix she had dated Dr. Jerry Lund, the creepy coroner. Aside from the fact he looked like a bullfrog, the man had to be twenty years older than her.

  Still smiling at herself in the mirror, Maisy said, “Zara, make sure that door’s locked, and I’ll tell you a few more things about dating supernaturals.”

  Chapter 13

  When I got back to the table, I found that Bentley had stayed out of trouble, unlike me—not that getting supernatural dating tips was trouble. Not necessarily.

  Bentley caught me up on the investigation, though there wasn’t much to tell. The team still hadn’t identified the house, or its residents.

  But, on the positive side, the WPD hadn’t yet received a new missing persons report.

  Bentley began talking more quickly, moving his hands animatedly as he told me about his new theory: One of the children in the dollhouse seemed to be doing homework, with books spread out on the table, therefore we still had plenty of time before the kidnapping happened. Kids were currently on summer vacation.

  “And kids never do homework in the summer,” he said.

  “You can’t say never. Zoey does homework in the summer, if she can get the textbooks for the next semester.”

  “But most kids do not. As a detective, I have to focus on the general rules of human behavior, not the exceptions.”

  “I guess you would have to.” I tilted my head thoughtfully. “Okay. I see your point. We have at least a month to crack this one.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “And I’m glad to hear your daughter is so dedicated to her studies. I was a good student myself, always striving to make the academic list, but I never considered doing homework on summer vacation.”

  “Zoey’s a special kid. I got lucky.” Movement outside the window caught my eye. A group of people in colorful fitness clothes jogged past. Dreamland Coffee’s downtown location was well situated along a popular jogging route. Many exercise groups used the large cafe as their endpoint, and Dreamland’s delicious desserts as their rewards.

  My thoughts drifted to my daughter.

  After a moment of daydreaming, I asked Bentley, “What do you think the starting wage is at the museum? They probably hired her on the spot.”

  He turned to follow my gaze, then kept turning, watching Maisy Nix as she walked by with a bus pan full of dishes. He rotated back to face me and said, in a low tone, “Maisy Nix is back. You can take the lead on asking her for information.”

  “Already done. We had a chat in the ladies’ room.”

  “You did? Without me?”

  “It was in the ladies’ room.”

  “Even so, I would have liked to have been present.” His nostrils flared, and his fingers twitched as he reached for his coffee mug.

  “Trust me, Bentley. You would not have wanted to be present for that conversation.”

  He took a sip of black coffee, then leaned forward as he looked into my eyes, his silver irises gleaming. “You promised not to keep things from me. Your word is your bond.”

  A chill traveled down my spine. “I promised not to lie to you. And I’m not. It was better that you weren’t in there, and not just because it’s a ladies’ room.” I felt my cheeks flushing. “Let me make a bubble, and I’ll tell you every word she said.”

  He leaned back, seemingly satisfied by this.

  I cast a sound bubble for privacy, then shared Maisy’s theory about Animata, how the energy might be powering the dollhouse to make its predictions.

  There was one detail I wasn’t sure about. “Did Krinkle say there had been a mother doll originally, and it disappeared from the house? Or did she make the house without the doll?”

  “There was a mother doll,” he said. “When she assembles the dioramas, it doesn’t show a crime yet. Then, while she’s not looking, the crime happens. That’s what happened with the others. The woman in the green dress got her throat cut, the toaster fell into the tub, and the young man on the couch was beheaded.”

  “If this Krinkle woman was serious about preventing crimes, she would set up a camera to catch the killer.”

  “I’m not sure we’d be able to make a positive identification. The dolls are only two inches tall, and the faces aren’t detailed. Besides, the evidence would never hold up in a court of law.”

  “I wasn’t serious about the camera.”

  “Why not? Like you said, if the woman was serious about preventing crimes, it’s the next logical step.”

  “I like how you apply logic to things that defy logic.”

  “Krinkle could come out of retirement and head up a new department at the WPD. A pre-crimes department.”

  “Wow. You’re really running with this idea.”

  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Of course, it would generate new legal and ethical issues. Can you charge someone with a crime they were going to commit before you stopped them?”

  “No, but you could still stop the crime.”

  “But if they aren’t charged with anything, what’s to prevent them from trying again the next day?”

  I nodded. “Sounds like this pre-crimes division of yours could turn into a glorified criminal-babysitting operation.”

  He rubbed his temples. “And to think, at one point I was blissfully in the dark about magic. I had no idea how lucky I was.”

  “You don’t really feel that way, do you?”

  He frowned. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t go home again.”

  My phone buzzed.

  “It’s Zoey,” I reported. “The museum offered her a job on the spot.” Just as I’d predicted.

  Bentley grumbled, “They didn’t call me to check her personal references.”

  “Not everything is about you,” I teased.

  “Tell her congratulations,” he said. “I’m proud of her.”

  He was proud of her? Someone took his job as bodyguard very seriously.

  The joggers who’d run past earlier filed into the coffee shop noisily. Even through the sound bubble, they were loud. It wasn’t just their voices, it was their energy and their bright clothes.

  Bentley slugged back the rest of his coffee, then said, “I wouldn’t mind dropping by the community center to check out that support group. The Awakenlings
.”

  “That’s a great idea. You should totally do that. Even if you can’t tell them all the gory details about your big life changes, you can get some emotional support.” I shook my fist at him in a congratulatory gesture. “Good for you, admitting that you’re not too big and tough and masculine to get some help with all of your feelings.”

  He stared at me steadily, the muscles around his mouth and eyes twitching, as though his face couldn’t decide if he was annoyed or delighted.

  “For the investigation,” he said flatly. “We should find out more about The Awakenlings as part of the investigation. Krinkle’s spouse has been gone for years, but in the absence of a spouse, a good detective looks into a suspect’s affiliations.”

  “Krinkle is a suspect?”

  “She’s a person of interest.” He got up from his chair. “A third party may have been using the group to gain access to Temperance Krinkle.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” I grabbed my purse and followed him out. I turned to wave goodbye to Maisy, but she was busy making hot drinks for the joggers and didn’t meet my gaze.

  Chapter 14

  We reached the community center ten minutes too late to catch anyone from the group meeting. The front lobby smelled of chlorine from the swimming pool, and was full of people.

  “They normally run for a couple of hours,” said the woman at the front desk. “But it was a smaller group today, so they must have gotten through their business faster than usual.”

  A noisy family ran by, a squealing toddler in a bathing suit in the lead.

  “Their business?” Bentley asked. “Tell us more about the group.”

  The receptionist stared at him blankly. “They bring in a lot of donuts,” she said dully. “If you’d like to know more, sir, I suggest you attend a meeting.”

  I elbowed Bentley. “Did you hear that? Donuts.” I smiled at the woman behind the desk. “What about donuts with the rainbow sprinkles? Do they bring in those ones?”

  She frowned. “I believe they bring in a variety. That’s what most people do. They usually bring in far more food than needed. I’m always throwing out donuts at the end of the day.”