Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3

by Angela Pepper

  “Me, too,” he said. “But I felt only about seventy, eighty percent when I got here.” He looked down at his coffee mug with suspicion. “Did you put something in my food?”

  “Nope,” I said with a laugh. “It must be the house.”

  He looked around at the upper corners of the room. “It does more than rearrange itself?”

  “The last owner used to brag about it being a fountain of youth. Nobody knows how old she was when she finally died.”

  “Must be the house,” he agreed. “I was concerned I might be drawing energy from you.”

  “You can’t do that very well without biting me,” I said, waggling my eyebrows.

  His gaze flitted to my neck. He looked away again, immediately, but I’d seen it.

  My cheeks flushed. The icy tickle on my spine felt like a rope of fire now. Why had Maisy felt it necessary to be so graphic in her explanations about the mating habits of certain creatures?

  I turned away and busied myself with portioning out the perfect amount of soap for the dishwasher.

  “What about other powers?” I asked over my shoulder. “Can you fly?”

  “No.”

  “Not even if you turn into a bat first?”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “So, all you’ve got is super strength and healing? That’s not very impressive.”

  Suddenly, he was standing between me and the dishwasher. I’d been about to put the soap into the door, so, naturally, I walked right into him. Full body contact. I managed to duck my head to the side to avoid smashing my forehead into his nose, and smashed my mouth into his shoulder instead. To anyone watching, it would have looked like I kissed his shoulder.

  “You forgot speed,” Bentley said, his tone low and gruff. “You can’t deny that it’s an advantage in certain situations.”

  “Some advantage,” I said with a snort. I pulled back, extracting myself from his grasp. “Thanks to that super speed of yours, you nearly got a handful of this gritty dishwashing detergent stuffed into your belly button.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I’d like to see you try.”

  Challenge accepted. I lunged for him.

  He yelped and jumped out of the way at regular human speed.

  I used magic to yank his shirt upward, untucking it from his trousers.

  He yelped again, and was suddenly behind me, blowing hot air onto the back of my neck.

  I howled in mock outrage, turned, and zapped him with the spell that mimicked being bit on the rear end by something toothy.

  Now he howled, as I’d intended. Except it was with laughter.

  He wiped at one eye, still grinning, and asked, “Is that all you’ve got?” He jumped from one corner of the kitchen to the other, moving so quickly he seemed to be teleporting. “You’ll never get that detergent anywhere near my stomach,” he said. “Not in a million years.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Zara, I’m stronger than you. And smarter, too.”

  “Is that so?” I lifted my arms straight up in the air, as though preparing to cast a spell that required a downward push. But instead of a new spell, I used basic telekinesis to adjust my clothing. Specifically, I whipped my blouse all the way up over my head, and off. Underneath the blouse, I wore the very special bra that my closet had selected. Lacy, peek-a-boo, and covered in non-functional ribbons. It was the sort of bra no woman would ever buy for herself. It was the sort of bra designed to provoke a reaction in a man, supernatural or not.

  Bentley’s jaw dropped. Theoretically, he could have looked away with super speed, but he couldn’t even look away at regular speed.

  I gasped and covered myself with my arms. “Bentley! How could you?”

  He stammered, “Tha-tha-that wasn’t me. I didn’t do that. I swear.”

  I relaxed and put my hands on my hips. “I know,” I said flatly. “Check your belly button.”

  He looked down to find the bottom of his shirt unbuttoned, and a generous portion of gritty dishwashing detergent caked into his navel. He made a disgusted sound.

  I turned away for modesty, grabbed my blouse from the air where it was floating, and re-dressed myself.

  “We all have our own kind of strengths,” I said over my shoulder.

  Suddenly he was in front of me again.

  I finished fastening my top button and stared him in the eyes. “And our own kind of smarts,” I finished.

  “Is that so? What makes you think taking off your blouse was your idea?”

  “Of course it was my...” I took a step back and braced myself on the sink. Had it been my idea? His kind could cloud memories, hide words, and even implant ideas. “You tricked me! You no-good, grave-digging, brain-munching zombie!”

  He frowned. “Zara, it was just a joke. I didn’t trick you, unless you count the part just now where I tricked you into thinking I’d tricked you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Did you call me a grave-digging, brain-munching zombie?” He gave me a hurt look, then walked at regular speed around me to the sink. He cleaned the detergent out of his navel. “So much for you not being sure about how you feel about my kind. It’s all clear to me now.”

  “It was a figure of speech... with some truth to it.” Again, the bond I’d given was keeping me too honest. “After everything went down in the cafeteria, you disappeared. I asked around, Bentley. I know you were in the ground.” I crossed my arms and rubbed my upper arms. The mere thought of being buried in the dirt gave me a bad, cold feeling. “You were in the ground,” I repeated.

  “I was in a crypt,” he said. “I was underground, but not in the ground. Not in the dirt. Dr. Ankh said it was vital for the transition. She believes that...” He trailed off as he tucked in his shirt. “Who told you about that? Was it the gorgon?” His silver eyes glinted. “Don’t answer that. I can see it on your face. It was her.” He spat the words out bitterly. “I know you two are friends, but I didn’t realize her loyalty to you superseded her loyalty to keeping my business private.”

  What was happening? I reached up and twirled a strand of my hair. A moment earlier, we’d been goofing around, flirting like crazy and literally pulling on each other’s clothes. Then I had to go and ruin it by insulting him.

  Or, no. He was the one who ruined it by having no sense of humor.

  We stared at each other, neither one moving.

  How could I have thought, even for a minute, that he and I could have a relationship beyond consulting on a case?

  He wasn’t the man for me. He never had been. I’d been distracted by all his talk about being my protector. He’d appealed to something weak and feeble inside myself—something I didn’t want to grow.

  Bentley was the first to look away. He turned his head, and then his whole body. He walked over to a pantry cupboard and poked at the pink leather strap hanging out under the drawer.

  “This is your purse,” he said. His tone was neutral.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Why was he so interested in my purse?

  I couldn’t tell if it was his powers of suggestion or my desire to drop the disagreement, but I immediately stopped thinking about everything that had been bothering me.

  Bentley was a true master of the topic change.

  He poked at the leather strap again, as though it might turn into a snake and bite him.

  “Your purse is in a different place every time I visit,” he said. “Doesn’t it cost you time when you’re trying to leave the house?”

  “Witches don’t lose their purses. Or their keys, or their cell phones. Watch this.” I cast the spell that called my purse to come to its master.

  The detective watched the cupboard door nudge itself open. My pink leather purse peeked out cautiously, then flew obediently to my outstretched arm.

  “Ta-da,” I said. “Saying ‘ta-da’ actually dampens spells, because it associates us witches with stage magicians, who are the corniest of all fake supernaturals. As a general rule we shouldn’t say it, or
the magic gets embarrassed. But sometimes I say ‘ta-da’ anyway. Some rules are meant to be broken, right?”

  Bentley wasn’t listening. “My car,” he said, his eyes unfocused. “I remember you using a spell when we were chasing the genie. You used it to locate my car, through me.”

  “That’s right. I guess all of your memories have come back.” When we’d worked together on the Greyson case, his memories of the events at Castle Wyvern had been foggy. But then he’d bitten into that vial of blood, and everything had changed.

  He said, “But you can’t use the spell to locate people.” It was a statement of fact, yet he gave me a hopeful look.

  “Sadly, no. If I could, the Tate woman wouldn’t still be missing.” Neither would Corvin. “There is a spell for locating an evil presence, but it requires at least two witches, and the evil thing’s true name. I’ve never done it, but my aunt has. Oh, and there’s a way to locate the place where something tragic happened, if you have a ghost plus some physical remains such as bones—neither of which we have.”

  “But you can locate objects.”

  “Not just any object. It has to be something strongly connected to a person. The object must believe it has a master. Your car is a good car. It believes you are its master, as we found out.”

  Bentley, still looking like he was only hearing about a third of what I was saying, picked up a salt shaker from the counter. “I’ve got an idea,” he said.

  “Involving a shaker of salt? I like where you’re going with this, but it’s too early in the day for tequila shots. You can only drink tequila for breakfast if a gorgon is present.”

  He ignored my joke—as he should have—and explained what he’d been thinking.

  It was a very good idea, I had to admit.

  I couldn’t use magic to locate Mrs. Tate or Corvin, but something else had gone missing. The tiny doll from the miniature Tate residence.

  How had Bentley thought of it?

  He explained that my salt shaker caught the light from the window in just the right way that it had made him think of the dollhouse figurines.

  “Brilliant,” I said. “If the dollhouse does have Animata energy, I may be able to tap into that energy and locate the doll version of Veronica Tate.”

  “Might it direct you instead to the woman the doll represents?”

  “It’s a long shot, but it can’t hurt to try,” I said to the detective. “If the dollhouse is the master to the doll, something could happen.”

  “Get ready to go,” he said.

  I patted my purse, which was already at my side. “Don’t I look ready?”

  He winced. “I’m no expert on fashion, but I believe you’re wearing pajama bottoms.”

  I looked down. He was right. I was dressed on top, wearing a cute blouse over my distracting bra, but I’d only gotten halfway dressed that morning.

  “Good eye,” I said. “I was testing you.” The vow I’d made to tell him the truth had a bit of wiggle room when it came to joking around.

  “You’re always testing me,” he said, raising one eyebrow. “The pajamas look comfortable. It’s interesting seeing this casual side of you.”

  “If you like seeing these pajamas, you should drop in for breakfast more often.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  And, just like that, we were back to flirting again.

  When I went upstairs, a pair of jeans were flying out of my closet and settling onto my bed.

  Chapter 20

  Bentley’s idea about using the dollhouse to locate the missing woman was a magnificent one. As we set out, I had high hopes. If our plan worked, my daughter would return home from her first day of work to find Corvin waiting to swap adventure stories with her.

  The detective and I arrived at Temperance Krinkle’s residence to find no outward signs of trouble at the cream-colored house. The DWM knew how to keep a low profile.

  I almost expected to see Temperance Krinkle’s face when the front door opened, but it was a humorless agent in sunglasses. Krinkle was not in the house. According to the agent, she’d been taken elsewhere for questioning, but she was “perfectly safe.”

  Bentley explained the reason for our visit. The agent’s lip curled even higher at each mention of magic.

  * * *

  After getting the run-around from multiple levels of DWM agents, none of whom I knew personally, we finally got access to the attic around noon.

  The attic didn’t look much different from how it had been during our previous visit, except the giant model of Wisteria had been pushed to the side of the space. We squeezed past stacks of boxes to get into the main space, and Bentley tripped over something low and dark—a heavy toolbox.

  “Mr. Clumsy Feet,” I teased him.

  “Why is there a toolbox right where a person would be walking?”

  I sighed. “Why is there always a fluffy cat right where a person would be walking?”

  He gave me a puzzled look.

  I explained, “Since getting a cat, I’ve become much more aware of the space directly in front of my feet. You could call it my Sixth Sense.”

  “Sure,” he said dismissively, and then he went to where the model of the Tate house should have been.

  He cursed under his breath.

  I joined him and looked down at the bad news.

  Unfortunately, the model of the Tate house wasn’t a house at all. It was a pile of pieces.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Is this standard WPD procedure? Destroy all evidence?”

  Bentley shook his head. “The junior technicians believed the model was a training exercise. They must have decided that dismantling it for hidden clues would get them full marks.”

  “I’m giving them an F. Bring those ding-dongs up here and I’ll give them a piece of my mind.”

  “What’s done is done. Let’s focus on what we can do.” He sifted through the loose pieces. “Everything’s still here. Run your spell on this.”

  I put my hands into the mess and tried, but the energy was all wrong.

  I broke the news that we needed to put the house back together to give the spell a shot at working.

  We got to work, only to discover we needed glue. And glue was the type of everyday item the crime scene technicians and agents guarding the residence didn’t have. Whatever glue Krinkle had used to make the houses in the first place had been taken elsewhere for testing. What a bunch of ding-dongs!

  Off to the hobby store we went, to buy glue.

  Then back to the Krinkle residence.

  When we came in, one of the more cooperative agents gave Bentley an update. Still no breaks in the case. Still no ransom call.

  We were coming up on twenty-four hours.

  It didn’t look good.

  I focused on putting the house puzzle back together. I had to keep my mind off the heartbreak and worry Chet must have been going through. I wondered how Chessa was feeling. She hadn’t been part of adopting the dog who later turned out to be a hellhound shifter, but she was engaged to Chet Moore. She would be the kid’s stepmother soon.

  Something troubled me. Chessa had more powers than either of her gorgon sisters. If my senses were correct, she had more power than every supernatural person in Wisteria put together. Why hadn’t she located the kid?

  As I glued together tiny bricks to form a tiny chimney, I had to wonder, could Chessa have something to do with Corvin’s disappearance? Was it possible she wanted him out of the picture? That would explain why she hadn’t used her goddess powers to find him yet.

  When I talked through my worries with Bentley, he had a different take on things.

  “She has the power to destroy worlds, right?”

  I shuddered. “Something like that.”

  “But power isn’t everything. You can put the biggest, toughest guy in front of a pile of hay, and he won’t find the needle before the skinny guy with the magnet.”

  “You’ve made your point,” I admitted with a sigh. “Speaking of magnets, I w
ish my powers were more useful sometimes. A lot of witch spells are focused on boring domestic activities. Cooking things. Ironing things. Dusting the tops of shelves where nobody can even see.”

  “This object location trick of yours is going to work. It has to.” He picked up the miniature telephone between his thumb and forefinger. “But just in case it doesn’t, what else can you do besides the domestic stuff?”

  “There’s the whole Spirit Charmed aspect, which you know about already.” I listed items on my fingers. “Plus, I can zap people with blue lightning balls, make a human being as light as a feather, and then there are even more amazing things, such as the spell to detect the most perfectly ripe cantaloupe from a pyramid at the grocery store.”

  “Handy.”

  “I can also animate things to some degree. For example, I can animate a houseplant to grab passing pets, or I can trip the pets with an invisible tripwire—but not too much, because it’s only funny the first dozen times.” I listed off more spells, then added, “And don’t forget the spell for making perfectly round melon balls.”

  “A lot of your spells are connected to melons,” he noted. “If only our missing persons had gone missing with a grocery bag full of cantaloupes.”

  “If only.”

  Bentley scratched his stubbly chin. “You could always talk to Chessa about her powers. Maybe the two of you could work together.”

  I winced. “I prefer to keep my distance from that woman. I’d rather not have my skull used as an ashtray.”

  He gave me a sidelong look. “Why would she use your skull as an ashtray? She doesn’t even smoke.”

  “Maybe it’s a candy bowl she wants my skull for. I can’t explain it, but I feel a bad energy whenever I’m near her. My whole skull tingles.”

  Bentley didn’t comment.

  I went on. “You know how women are. Men don’t necessarily get it.”

  He arched an eyebrow.

  “There’s this lingering jealousy she feels toward me,” I said. “Both of her sisters were eager to adopt me as her replacement. Like, super-eager. And let’s not forget, her fiancé was flirting with me like crazy while she was lying helpless in a coma, having her—” I paused, making a connection in my mind.