Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3

by Angela Pepper

  “Thanks for the offer,” he said. “What I’d like to do right now, more than anything, is experience for myself those soft-boiled eggs you were telling me about yesterday.”

  “Sure,” I waved him into the house. “The Red Witch House Diner is open for business. The cook will be serving up breakfast for a few more hours.”

  Bentley paused, looking over at the house next door. Grampa Don was standing on the porch, watching us. The old man was dressed formally, as though he was expecting a visitor, or preparing to leave the house.

  “Hello, Mr. Moore,” Bentley called out, then he started walking over to Grampa Don.

  Don waved his hands as though swatting the detective away. “I don’t need you to hold my hand,” he said, in his usual irritated fashion. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve got trees of my own to shake. You stick to your job.”

  “Will do, sir.” Bentley jabbed a thumb in my direction. “I’m just taking a meal break to clear the cobwebs from my head.”

  “To clear the cobwebs from your head? What the wing dang doodle is that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s just an expression, Mr. Moore.”

  Don rapped on his head with one fist. “No cobwebs in here,” he said. “Not anymore.”

  “That’s... good to hear.”

  Don waved the detective away again. “Get going,” he said. “I’ve got someone to see.” He pointed to the taxi that was pulling to a stop in front of the house. “There’s my ride.”

  Bentley handed Don his card and told the old man to call him if he needed anything at all during this difficult time.

  Don snorted. “Difficult time? This is nothing. That kid will be back like a dirty sock.” He patted Bentley on the shoulder, then cackled all the way into the back of the taxi.

  Chapter 18

  DON MOORE

  Don Moore slid into the back seat of the taxi and gave the driver the address of his old friend, Felix Wonder.

  “What a coincidence,” the driver replied.

  If Don had been in his wolf form, his hackles would have gone up. There was one word he hated hearing: coincidence. He didn’t believe in such things. How could he, knowing what he did about magic?

  “Yeah?” He waited for further explanation from the driver, who was, to his surprise, an attractive young woman—young by Don’s standards, anyway. She looked about forty, her light brown hair treated with those blonde streaks ladies her age believed hid the gray.

  “Must be a party,” the woman mused.

  Don scowled. What the wing dang doodle was she yammering on about?

  She didn’t offer more as she pulled away from the curb.

  He didn’t press her for details. He wanted to know who else had taken a taxi to Felix’s house that morning, but he wasn’t going to beg this woman. He’d done enough begging, and enough pleading, and more than enough bargaining these last few years. He’d put in all that effort, just to be treated with some dignity by his know-it-all son, Chet.

  Lately, Don’s only child had taken to calling himself the Sandwich Generation, joking about how looking after Don and Corvin at the same time felt like having two kids. The indignity of being compared to the boy like that!

  Now that Don’s bedeviled mind was coming back under his control, his begging days were over.

  Things were going to change.

  And all he’d had to do was make a deal with the devil.

  Not that Dr. Aliyah Ankh was a devil. He’d seen devils before, and she was far from one. But she wasn’t like the other people or creatures he’d worked with during all his years with the Department.

  The scenery whizzed by.

  The female taxi driver talked, but she didn’t reveal the identity of whomever it was she’d taken to Felix’s house. She worked her mouth on the usual jibber-jabber, which Don nodded through without comment.

  They pulled up in front of Felix’s house.

  The woman with the streaked hair gave him the total fare.

  He paid, and he tipped well. He didn’t feel justified in holding her jibber-jabber against her. But mainly he didn’t want to wait around while she sighed and slowly counted out the change, the way all taxi drivers did. As though she’d never done math before, or handled money, and didn’t know what quarters were, let alone how they might magically add up to fifty cents.

  He hopped out of the taxi and sprang up the walkway to Felix’s front door.

  Dr. Ankh’s treatments hadn’t just rejuvenated the holes in his mind; they’d put the spring back in his step. Don Moore was pushing seventy, but going on twenty. He might even be able to shift again—not into the bony old wolf with the gray muzzle, but the young version of himself, with powerful muscles in his haunches and ears that could hear the nibbling of a tasty field mouse ten yards away.

  The door swung open. Felix Wonder stepped into the doorway and gave Don a big smile immediately.

  Felix had a narrow jaw and a narrow set of teeth, so a broad smile always afforded a view to the back of the man’s mouth at the sides. Felix hadn’t aged much in the last decade. Same small, quick-moving eyes that didn’t miss anything. Same ashy blonde hair that hid a few strands of gray. If one thing had changed, it was that Felix’s rainbow suspenders were mere decoration now, no longer needed to hold up his trousers. He was still thin, but he wasn’t skinny.

  “What a surprise,” Felix said. He leaned over to look behind Don, probably expecting to see an escort.

  “Double surprise,” Don said, grinning. “I’m here on my own, old man.”

  Felix gave him an appraising look. “Is that so? They let you wander around town without a hall pass?”

  Don rapped on his head with his knuckles. “No hall pass needed. The ol’ noggin is back in steel trap mode.”

  Felix chuckled as he stepped back and invited Don inside. “Come on in. I’m glad your head’s feeling better. Mind what comes out of your mouth, though. My niece is here. Bellatrix.”

  “Old Chicken Legs? With the big boobs?”

  Felix chortled and tucked his thumbs into his rainbow suspenders. “No sooner do I tell you to watch your mouth than it gets ten times worse.” He shook his head. “I’ve never known anyone as ornery and contradictory as you, Don. Whatever happened to your good sense? To never passing up the opportunity to keep your mouth shut?”

  “I’m done shutting my mouth.”

  “Well, all right then. I’ll let you keep flapping your gums, as long as you’re halfway respectful. She is my niece, after all.” Felix gave Don a warning look before leading him to the kitchen.

  Don expected to see Bellatrix Wonder sitting at the table, but she wasn’t there. It was a different woman. A lovely woman. A friend of Old Chicken Legs?

  Don blinked hard and looked again.

  He’d been wrong at first glance. The woman was Bellatrix after all, but she looked different.

  He wordlessly took a seat across the table from her, then he played the game of noting everything that was different about the woman. Instead of the brassy bleached hair she used to have, she’d returned to a natural, honey-brown shade. Gone were the ostentatious fake diamonds she used to wear studding both ears. Gone were the rings, as well, and the bracelets. She wasn’t wearing one single piece of jewelry. And then there was her chest! He didn’t mean to look, but he couldn’t not look. Her chest was a regular size. Either she’d had the surgery reversed, or it hadn’t been surgery in the first place, and all she’d needed to do was stop wearing whatever feminine contraption she’d been using to shove her boobs up toward her chin.

  Her face was the same, but looked nicer without the gaudy makeup she used to wear. She still had buck teeth, and her soft, recessed jaw was not a woman’s best feature, but... those eyes! Like small but precious emeralds. How had he never noticed how lovely they were? And how all her features were actually in perfect balance, imperfect though the individual elements were? Even the widow’s peak at the top of her forehead worked, given how it shaped her face into a heart. A perf
ectly lovely heart.

  “Don Moore,” she said, fixing her little emerald eyes on him. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  “I am?” He stared at the transformed woman.

  The reason for Don’s visit to Felix Wonder’s house was forgotten. Not clouded by the damage of the brainweevils this time, but for a positive reason. His mission had been eclipsed by the wonderful surprise of hidden beauty revealed.

  “Shake your head, Don,” Felix said. “Your eyes are stuck.” Felix tapped Don on the back of the head playfully. “And close that mouth. You’re getting drool all over my fine linen tablecloth.”

  It was a joke. Don hadn’t actually been drooling—at least he didn’t think so—and the tablecloth was the plastic kind that bachelors like Felix valued for their ease of cleaning.

  In a formal tone, Felix asked his two visitors, “May I make the official introductions?”

  It was a special question, the type only supernaturals asked others who also used magic. The question was a reveal in and of itself, to the ones who knew, but it was their way. The asker needed to use their best judgment to pose the question in the first place.

  “You may,” Don said. His heart raced with an excitement he hadn’t felt in years. In decades. What a morning for surprises! Bellatrix had come into powers? Was she a flamingo shifter, like her brother, the flamboyant fellow who did something with books, or sock puppets, or both?

  Bellatrix, who was seemingly new at these matters, answered uncertainly. “I, uh, I guess so.” The woman had grown up in Wisteria, but her years in London had given her the most charming accent. She chewed her lip, then quickly added, “Yes. Of course you may make the official introductions, Uncle Felix.”

  Don sucked his breath between his teeth and waited.

  He had known Bellatrix since she was a teenager. Though Felix was her uncle, he might as well have been a brother. She was only ten years younger than Felix, eleven years younger than Don.

  Not too much younger, Don thought. Not now that she was catching up to him in age. She’d been fifteen when Felix and Don had begun working together.

  Back in those days, Don had been married already. He was monogamous, and so he didn’t have a wandering eye for other women, let alone the knock-kneed niece of his partner. But now? Now things were different. He was pushing seventy, but going on twenty.

  Felix made the introductions, telling first one party about the other’s powers, and then vice versa.

  Both parties responded with respectful curiosity.

  Once Felix had finished, Don clarified, “But remember, Bellatrix, shifters are all the same. Birds, and wolves, and even cats. We’re all of the same line.”

  Felix grinned and hit the table with both hands. “More importantly, we’re not witches!”

  The two men had a good, hearty laugh. Bellatrix was slow to join in, but she did.

  Felix made another pot of coffee, then put out bagels and cream cheese, lox, and other good things to share with old friends on a Sunday morning.

  The mood turned serious when Don finally came around to the reason for his visit.

  * * *

  Bellatrix was horrified about the idea of a missing child. She had no kids of her own, but she was a good woman with a kind and understanding heart. A man could get really comfortable next to a heart like that, Don thought.

  The mood grew even more serious when Felix brought out his mage supplies. Unlike the other two, his magic was not the shifter kind. Felix used his skills as a mage to call upon his spirit guides, the ones who resided in the “Deep,” wherever that was.

  Don and Bellatrix exchanged glances that communicated fear and excitement, mingled together. This was new to her, which made it new to Don. How good it felt for something to be new. His heart soared, and then he thought of Corvin, and his cheeks flushed with guilt.

  “Your grandson is somewhere cool and dark,” Felix reported.

  “And?” Don leaned in, impatient for more.

  Felix had his eyes closed. His face was screwed up in that horrific grimace he made whenever he contacted the Spirits of the Deep. The tortured expression was enough to give a strong man the heebie-jeebies.

  Felix gasped, then pronounced, “He’s alive.”

  “Of course he is,” Don said impatiently. “That kid’s indestructible. What about the woman? Veronica Tate?”

  “There’s a woman there with him, and she’s angry.” Felix’s grimace grew even uglier. “Very angry.”

  “Angry at the boy? She’d better not touch a hair on his head.”

  A guttural sound came from Felix’s throat. His eyes flashed open, and his face relaxed.

  “That’s all I’ve got, old friend,” he said. “The Spirits of the Deep are agitated.”

  Bellatrix reached across the table and took Don’s hand in hers. “I’ll help you find your grandson,” she said. “I don’t know how, or what I can do, but I want to help.”

  “Don’t you worry your pretty little head,” Don said, straightening up in his chair. “My son’s looking for him already, and he’s got his ways.”

  “But you’ll let me know if you need anything?” She squeezed his hand in a way that had to be magic, considering how much it made him feel better.

  “There’s always the local coven,” Felix said conversationally. “If you give the witches Corvin’s other name, they may be able to locate him.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Don growled. “His other name is nobody’s business but his own.” He looked down at his second bagel, which was as yet untouched. In a softer tone, he added, “In other words, in case you haven’t guessed, I don’t know what it is. Maybe the boy told me and I forgot.”

  Don looked over at Bellatrix and gave her a sheepish smile. “My memory’s been improving lately, but I’ve had some issues.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” she said sweetly. “You look fit as a fiddle from what I can see.”

  A moment passed, and then Felix spoke, a grave tone his voice. “I’m afraid there’s something else they wanted to tell me.”

  Both Don and Bellatrix, who’d been gazing at each other, whipped their heads to face Felix.

  “Something is rising through the Deep,” Felix said ominously. “Something ancient and powerful. It’s rising to power.”

  Don let out a bark of laughter. “So? What else is new?” He laughed again, then explained to Bellatrix, “You’re new at this, but trust me. Something is always bubbling up from the Deep, or burrowing in from Elsewhere, or clawing through from Nowhere Good. If you want to keep your sanity, you’ll deal with what’s in front of you when it gets there, and only then. Stay sharp, stay strong, stay prepared. Don’t get caught up trying to see the future, because it’s always changing.” He waved at the other man. “Your uncle’s always warning us. Warnings, warnings, warnings. Sometimes he’s right. But you know what they say about a stopped clock being right twice a day.”

  Felix sighed and rubbed his temples. “I suppose you’re right, Don. It’s probably nothing.”

  Bellatrix asked, “How often do you get a warning like this, Uncle Felix?”

  He gave her an apologetic smile. “All the time,” he said. “All the time.”

  Don barked with laughter again. This time, Bellatrix joined in.

  Chapter 19

  ZARA RIDDLE

  “Does it ever get old?” Bentley asked.

  He’d finished eating his first breakfast of the day and I’d finished my second. I was using levitation to clear away the dirty dishes, floating a parade of plates and utensils into the dishwasher.

  “Do you mean, does magic ever get old?” I asked. He nodded, and I said, “I guess you could say the initial shock has worn off. I probably do take it for granted sometimes, but I try not to.”

  “And does it require less effort to load the dishwasher this way?”

  “More effort,” I said. “I could load it faster with my hands.”

  “Then why use magic?”

&nb
sp; I held both hands up. “You got me, Detective. I was showing off for you.”

  He nodded, as if to say he’d suspected as much.

  “But can you blame me?” I sputtered. “There aren’t many people I can do magic in front of. Just my family, the next door neighbors, and a few others.”

  “Such as?”

  “I shouldn’t say, but I just found out someone I know is a sprite. That’s a creature who’s exactly like a troll but insists on being called a sprite.”

  Bentley looked down at his silver tie and flicked away a toast crumb. “I’d do the same thing if I were a troll instead of a vampire.”

  When he said the word, I felt a chilly, tickling sensation on my spine, like a trickle of water running down my back.

  He continued, “Not that being a vampire doesn’t come with its share of negative associations.”

  Another trickle of water down my back.

  “Why are you making that face?” Bentley asked. “Are you repulsed by what I am?”

  Was it that obvious? “Honestly, and it has to be honestly, thanks to that bond I gave you, I don’t know how I feel about it. I don’t even know how your powers work. My mother wasn’t exactly forthcoming.”

  “Probably because you kept calling her a zombie.”

  “That may have been part of the issue, though we do have a long history of her being not exactly forthcoming. For example, I didn’t know the Riddles were witches, and I didn’t know—” I cut myself off. Bentley knew my history. “But enough about my origin story. Tell me how things are working for you. Do you get stronger after you drink the serum?”

  “The serum is more like vitamins. It’s not where the power comes from.”

  “It’s not?” That was news to me. I had made certain assumptions.

  “The power comes from within, like yours. It comes from all around.” He scratched his stubble with his fingernails and studied me. “May I ask you something personal, Zara?”

  I waved one hand. “Ask away.”

  “Over the last hour, while you’ve been making me this fine breakfast, have you found your energy diminishing?”

  I gave it some thought. “Not at all,” I reported. “If I had one of those battery charge indicators, it would currently read one hundred percent.”