Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3

by Angela Pepper

  Too late. She’d definitely seen me.

  The frizzy-haired woman clip-clopped to a halt in front of me. She put her hands on her sturdy hips and demanded, “What are you doing, and why are you drawing me into it?”

  I tucked a stand of hair behind my ear and squinted at the sun, which was almost blocked by her mass of hair.

  “I’m just sitting on a concrete planter in a public place,” I said. “Enjoying the sunshine.” I smiled. “As one does on a fine day such as this.”

  “But you’re using me.” She stomped one of her hard-soled shoes, reminding me of a rhinoceros. Be careful, I thought. The wild rhinoceros was not as deadly as the Nile crocodile or hippopotamus, who together killed more than three thousand humans annually, but the rhino was definitely on the list of deadly animals to watch out for.

  Mrs. Mills continued to stand in front of me, partly blocking the sun, waiting for a response to her vague accusation.

  I cocked my head to the side. “Mrs. Mills, have you lost your mind?” I’d meant to continue our exchange in a more pleasant, less confrontational manner, but her directness had a way of burning away my social niceties.

  “Zara Riddle, I know you’re using me to triangulate a lost object. It has to be you. Zinnia’s out of town, and Maisy would never do this without my permission. And the other one, well, I’d like to see her try a spell this sophisticated. She can’t even keep dog hair off her uniform.”

  “A-ha!” I jumped off the concrete planter, my puffy skirt flouncing around me playfully. “You’re the fourth member of the coven.”

  Her gray eyes flashed. “Say it a little louder, Zara. I don’t think the whole town heard you.”

  “Mrs. Mills,” I said, smiling. “May I call you Margaret?”

  She gave me a wary look. “Sure.”

  I offered her my hand to shake.

  She reluctantly shook my hand.

  As our palms touched, an image flashed into my mind. Margaret Mills was on the floor, wrapped from head to toe in packing tape, like a large, strange, very angry cocoon. The image was gone just as quickly as it had come. I didn’t know what the packing tape was about, but I had a feeling that whenever an unfortunate thing happened to Margaret Mills, she’d done something to deserve it.

  She stared up at me for a moment, then said, in a civil tone, “You don’t know about me, do you?”

  “Not until now.” I shook my head. “And if you are being drawn into that object-location spell I cast, I apologize. I didn’t mean to pull you into it, I swear.” I held up my hand. “My word is—”

  “Don’t,” she said, cutting me off. “Don’t waste your energy on a bond. I believe you.” She looked down and adjusted the hem of her jacket. “I may have overreacted. It happens on very rare occasions.”

  She overreacted only on rare occasions? I stifled a snort. She’d overreacted every single time we’d interacted. Now I understood why my aunt had held off so long on introducing the two of us.

  “Margaret,” I said tentatively, feeling uncomfortable using her first name, even though I’d gotten permission. “You were saying something about my spell drawing you here? Some sort of triangulation? Can you explain that to me slowly, like I’m a novice, which I am?”

  She held up three fingers. “Three points in the triangle. Me, you, and the lost object. We’re both here now, which means whatever you’re looking for isn’t far away.” Her eyes grew wide and serious. “Is the lost object that missing woman I heard about on the news? Zara, you can’t use that spell on the living.”

  “I know,” I said. “I used the spell on a doll, from a dollhouse.”

  “A doll?” Her face reddened. “You exposed me over a doll?” She drew back a few steps, as though planning to cast upon me a curse so vile and messy it might splash back onto her.

  “Whatever you’re going to do, please don’t,” I said, holding up both hands. “The doll I’m looking for is connected to the missing woman, and there’s more. You know how they said on the news that she disappeared along with a dog? It’s not just any dog. It’s a shifter. A little kid. He’s only ten.”

  “You’re lying to me. Ten-year-olds can’t shift.”

  “He’s a special case,” I said.

  She rushed forward, charging at me.

  I, being the brave witch I am, flinched as I let out a strangled scream.

  She grabbed both of my hands and squeezed them urgently. “A child is missing?”

  “Yes,” I managed.

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Why didn’t you say so? We have to find him. We have to do something! We have to find this doll of yours, if it’ll help.”

  “Well, I don’t know how much it will help...”

  She squeezed my hands so hard I was thankful to have supernatural strength and healing. “Oh, Zara. We have to find that baby boy. That poor defenseless thing!”

  “I wouldn’t say he’s defenseless...”

  She squeezed my hands again. “He’s a child!”

  “He is,” I said. “Thank you for helping. I really appreciate it. His family will, too.”

  Chapter 25

  Magic makes for strange bedfellows.

  My former enemy had become my ally; Margaret Mills held my hands as we cast a booster spell on my object-location spell.

  This time, the signal came in strong and clear.

  “The doll is inside the WPD,” I said, absolutely certain this time. “On the second floor.”

  She let go of my hands. “You’ll be able to hold the connection without me now.” She took a step back, reluctantly, it seemed. “Good luck.”

  “You’re not coming with me?” Moments earlier, she’d been hysterical about the idea of a missing child, and now she was just walking away?

  Her eyes squeezed nearly shut. “I can’t,” she said, sounding broken. “I have an appointment. I have to meet my divorce lawyer.”

  “Oh, Margaret! You’re getting divorced? I’m so sorry.” Suddenly, all her crabbiness toward me seemed justifiable. The woman was going through something terrible. But she’d been so patient and kind to me moments earlier, when we’d cast our spell.

  I barely knew her, and I used to dislike her, but now everything was different. We’d shared magic. We’d worked together for a good cause. She was gruff on the outside, but underneath that tough rhino hide, she was good. Margaret Mills was a good witch!

  I closed the distance between us and grabbed her hands again, this time to offer comfort.

  She squeezed my fingers and swallowed hard. We were still inside a sound bubble, and thanks to our connection through our shared magic, I could feel the beating of her heart. I felt it beating alongside my own, faster by a quarter beat.

  Her heart slowed, matching the pace of mine. “Don’t you waste another second worrying about my stupid divorce,” she said. “What’s done is done.”

  “Your husband is an idiot,” I said. “I don’t even know his name, but I know he’s a fool to let you go.”

  “Mike,” she said. “And you’re absolutely right about him being an idiot. We’ve been married all these years, and he still doesn’t know who I am.” She looked away briefly, then back at me. “But don’t worry about him, or me. Get yourself into that building, find the doll, and then find that little boy. If you need help later, let me know.”

  “How? Is there a spell? An all-coven-members smoke signal?”

  She smirked as she pulled her hands from mine. “I’m in the phone book,” she said. “Under Mills.”

  * * *

  After wishing Margaret good luck with her divorce lawyer, I entered the WPD.

  Getting past security, and then up to the second floor was no problem at all for this witch.

  As I turned down a hallway, I spotted a familiar face walking toward me: Persephone Rose.

  “Ms. Riddle!” She stopped in her tracks and fidgeted with her thick, dark bangs frantically, as though she’d hidden a tiny weapon in there and was about to draw it on me in self defense. />
  “Ms. Rose,” I replied. “Isn’t this fun? You dropped by my workplace last week, and now I’m dropping by yours.”

  “Detective Bentley isn’t here right now.”

  “I didn’t come to see him.”

  “You didn’t?” Her voice was a squeak, mouse-like. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Have you found the Tate woman yet?”

  “No.”

  “Then I guess you can’t help me, can you?” I heard the sharpness in my voice, winced, and manually dialed my witch down. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s not your fault that any of this happened. I’m sure you’re doing your best.”

  She squeaked and nodded rapidly, her straight, dark hair swinging.

  I nodded at the bag on her shoulder. “Heading home for the day?”

  “We’re supposed to take breaks,” she gushed defensively. “There’s a maximum to how much overtime we’re allowed to work. It’s a union thing.”

  I stepped to the side of the hallway and waved for her to pass without paying any sort of toll. “Don’t let me keep you,” I said. “Go home. I’d hate to get in trouble with the union.”

  She squeaked again, and tottered off clumsily on her high heels. I stared after her, and the shoes in particular. They were bright yellow-orange, like a duck’s feet. What a waste of cute shoes, I thought, then I heard Frank in my head: Would kitty like a saucer of milk?

  My imaginary version of Frank was right. I was being needlessly cruel to young Persephone Rose. But I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to be the only woman in town who spent way too much time thinking about kissing Bentley. I’d already been crushed by unrequited love once since moving to Wisteria. If I had to go through the painful process again, I’d probably give up on men entirely and take one of those anti-love potions I’d been warned to avoid.

  Two more WPD employees approached, asking me for my visitor’s pass.

  “Right here,” I said, showing them the charmed piece of paper that would provide the information their minds needed.

  Zara is a pretty decent novice witch. Zara can get into places.

  Once they’d been dealt with, I continued on my mission, following the spell’s tug all the way to an employee’s cubicle. The employee was either away from their desk or gone for the day.

  I yanked open the top drawer of the desk. The spell was so strong now that the handle for the drawer had been glowing. Inside the drawer, a zippered clutch purse was gleaming like a pearl under a bright light. I yanked it out and unzipped the bag.

  The purse’s contents included a supply of feminine products, a pack of unopened mint gum, and one tiny woman. She was two inches tall, and though she had no features carved into her wooden face, I knew it was Veronica Tate.

  My heart soared, and then, half a breath later, my heart sunk.

  I’d found the doll, but so what? Unless Wisteria had a giant multi-story desk somewhere, complete with giant drawers, finding the doll had put me no closer to finding the larger, human version of Tate.

  I sunk into the workstation’s swivel chair and slumped over the desk as the spell drained away. The sensation was not unlike the feeling of mass and weight returning to your body when the bath-tub water drained away while you were still lying in the tub.

  “Excuse me, miss,” said a voice behind me. It was one of the men I’d shown my fake visitor pass to. “If you’re looking for Persephone Rose, I believe you just missed her. She’s gone home for the day. She wanted to stay and help with the Tate case, but she was over her limit for overtime.”

  I wheeled around on my chair slowly. “This is Persephone Rose’s desk?”

  The man nodded. “Yes. Is there something I can help you with, Ms....” He rubbed his furrowed brow. “That’s funny. I just saw your visitor’s pass, but I can’t remember your name. Usually, I have a photographic memory for things like that.”

  I sent one of my trusty bluffing spells his way, weaving my words around the Witch Tongue of the spell. “What you want to do next is call Detective Bentley and have him meet me here, at Ms. Rose’s desk.” I would have called Bentley myself, but he’d been ignoring me and would likely have sent my call to voice mail.

  The spell took hold, giving me a visual sparkle of confirmation. The man pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’ll call him now.”

  “And I’ll need Ms. Rose’s password for her computer.”

  He balked. “I can’t give you that.”

  I beefed up the spell. I was no longer connected to Margaret Mills, but just thinking of how we’d worked together in perfect synergy gave me a much-needed power boost. Positive thoughts are a magic of their own.

  “What I can do is type it in for you,” he said brightly, all signs of reluctance enchanted away.

  The helpful young man typed in the password, showed me how to access Persephone Rose’s accounts, called Bentley, and then offered to bring me some refreshments.

  “I’m fine for now,” I said. “Unless there’s orange juice? Freshly squeezed?”

  “There’s a juice bar up the street,” he said eagerly. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  I turned to the computer and got to work.

  Persephone Rose, what have you been up to, you naughty girl?

  Chapter 26

  CHET MOORE

  DEPARTMENT OF WATER AND MAGIC

  ARCHIVES

  At the same moment Zara Riddle touched her fingers to the missing doll and resolved her day-long spell, Chet Moore experienced an all-over body shiver.

  He froze where he was, deep underground, in the archives.

  If he’d been in wolf form, his hackles would have been up. He looked around, wary of danger lurking in the gloom.

  It took a long time just to sweep his gaze down the rows of heavy-duty industrial shelving filled with crates and boxes of artifacts. It didn’t help that the lighting was inadequate for his human eyes, just a few bulbs here and there. The people who’d designed the lighting for the space hadn’t intended it to be welcoming. Their main concern was preservation and even artificial light could degrade some valuable objects.

  Chet didn’t see anything that explained the body shiver, but he was certain he had felt something. A power surge of the magical variety. He’d always been sensitive to power surges, though he didn’t talk about it much around the Department, lest he be accused of having witch blood in his veins.

  His head grew dim. Chet reminded himself to keep breathing.

  Power surges happen all the time, he told himself. This particular one probably wasn’t connected to Corvin’s disappearance.

  If anything, the surge had a taste and a smell to it. The same taste and smell that he associated with Zara Riddle. The surge must have come from her. She was probably somewhere nearby, casting a spell that was far above her pay grade, as usual.

  Or, and this was more likely, his doppelganger was up to no good. The doppelganger was Archer Caine, the genie who had stolen Chet’s appearance along with a couple hundred pounds of flesh to make a duplicate body for himself. The two had reached a truce, in which Archer had become a criminal informant for the Department, like Zara’s father, Rhys Quarry, and in exchange, Chet would not have the genie drawn, quartered, and fed to bonecrawlers.

  Archer, who’d been in a terrible state when Zirconia Riddle had finished with him, had vowed to be a model citizen in Wisteria, not even jaywalking. He’d given his word, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t up to something dangerous.

  Once Chet started thinking about Archer Caine, his hands balled up into fists. He couldn’t stop thinking about him.

  Archer Caine. What kind of a name was that? The genie had actually tried to convince the DWM he was King Arthur himself, of the Arthurian legends. A likely story. It was as fanciful as the idea that Shakespeare had been a sprite. Supernaturals could be just as big of liars as civilians.

  Whether the genie had been a legendary king or not, one thing was certain.

  This town wasn’t big enough f
or both of them.

  Chet called out into the darkness, “Archer? I know you’re down here. Show yourself.”

  Nothing happened.

  Chet called out again, “Hello?”

  No one answered. There wasn’t one peep. Yet Chet’s senses told him he wasn’t alone. The warehouse was extremely well insulated. No sound from the surface reached down there. Chet could hear his own heart beating. The archives had the type of insulated silence that could drive a person insane.

  He tilted his head and honed in on which sense was telling him he wasn’t alone. It was his hearing. He listened.

  Beneath the sound of his own pulse was another one. A tiny, rapid heartbeat.

  He stepped out of a dim corridor, oriented himself toward the other heartbeat, and shifted into wolf form without even pausing his stride.

  With Chet Moore in his natural animal form, the owner of the tiny, rapid heartbeat didn’t stand a chance. Chet-Wolf caught the scent, found the quivering mouse, and questioned it. When the mouse showed no sign of being anything other than a regular, non-magical rodent, he devoured it in two bites. Then he licked his wolf lips and shifted back to human form.

  He padded back toward his clothes, his bare feet virtually soundless on the dusty concrete floor, and he got dressed again. He was relieved that Agents Knox and Rob weren’t around to harass him about his inability to keep his clothes with him when he shifted. He always took their ribbing without comment. He didn’t share with the others his theory that retaining clothes was a magic connected to witchcraft, and that only the shifters whose family lines mingled with those of witches were the ones who kept their clothes through shifts. It was just a theory of his, and an offensive one. Any talk about the purity of bloodlines was, to say the least, delicate.

  Clothed again, he patrolled the perimeter, looking for any holes or cracks that would explain the presence of a mouse in the archives. The warehouse was supposed to be impervious to vermin, magical or otherwise. The lighting had been scrimped on, but not the environmental controls. Everything from humidity and temperature to baseline Animata had been accounted for by the engineers, including Chet Moore himself. Items stored in the DWM warehouse were supposed to be safe from theft, abuse, and the indignities of aging.