Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3

by Angela Pepper

  So, how had a mouse found its way into the facility? And a delicious, plump, grain-fed mouse at that?

  He looked up at one of the glowing red dots on the high ceiling.

  “Codex,” he said.

  The computerized security system didn’t respond.

  “Codex!”

  Still no response.

  He tried repeatedly, for the next five minutes, to get the system to respond.

  Finally, he picked up a land line and called technical support.

  “We’re just rebooting,” said the trembling voice on the other end of the line. “It’s perfectly natural for software to need occasional rebooting!”

  Chet thought the agent in the technical department sounded defensive, but not as defensive as he was terrified. Chet knew what terror sounded like. Something bad was happening.

  He hung up the call while the technician was still making excuses.

  Chet looked up at the high ceiling and directed a dirty look at one of the red lights.

  As he thought about the recent security changes, his mouth filled with excess saliva. He spat onto the clean concrete floor. His throat burned, and his skin felt like it was crawling.

  He wished he could be anywhere else right now, anywhere but deep in the belly of the DWM. He needed to be above ground, finding his son.

  He yelled at the security system to respond, then waited, his disgust and anxiety choking at his throat.

  No wonder there had been a security breach in the archives.

  No wonder a rare book had gotten out and been damaged.

  What did the Department think was going to happen when they rushed in a new system before it had been properly tested? Charlize Wakeful, the chief architect of the AI system, had warned them repeatedly that Codex wasn’t ready. Why rush? There had been a schedule. A plan in place. But then the proverbial Gates of Hell had opened up on the third floor of City Hall, and in the two months that followed, the Weird Factor had been dialed up to eleven, all over town.

  There had been the disappearance of the local green-thumb herb peddler, plus a higher than usual level of agent-on-agent violence including homicides, plus several civilians had come into what Jerry Lund described as “geriatric-onset supernatural puberty.” The ripples of Weird Factor were spiraling outward, affecting local residents as well as their extended family in other towns. A member of the Wonder family had arrived in town for an unscheduled visit that surely was anything but coincidental.

  The fissure at City Hall had been closed with a living loop—the Gilbert woman—and yet the ancient bloodlines continued to be activating. He and the other agents were aware of all these things, but none of them knew what to make of it.

  The Department had put all their stock into Codex. In theory, the AI would analyze their data, cross-reference every book and scroll in the archives with her unnatural mind, and finally tell them what was happening, and how it could be stopped.

  Unfortunately, the system had been rushed into place. For the past several weeks there’d been countless glitches and false alarms. Several agents had nearly died, right there in the cafeteria, due to a lapse in Codex’s judgment protocols.

  Chet tried one more time to access Codex, then gave up and grabbed the hardwired phone again. He had partially dialed the number for Charlize when the elevator dinged and the gorgon herself strolled out.

  He gave her a hopeful look, gritting his teeth to hold back the grief, fear, and panic that had been bubbling on the back burner of his mind the last two days. He’s a tough kid, he kept telling himself. Whoever took Corvin is going to regret their decision. Hold tight and keep it together until the kid is back where he belongs. You can hold tight. You’ve got more practice than anyone.

  “No news about Corvin,” Charlize said, mercifully giving him the information he needed without having to be asked.

  “I should be out there,” he growled.

  “Out where?”

  “Outside.” Outside seemed like the right place to be when your kid went missing. Not deep beneath the surface in the dark, quiet place where treasures went to be forgotten.

  “Moore, your wolf nose is good, but it’s not that good. Leave the field search to the others. Your value is here, at the Department.” Charlize hopped onto the desk that held the phone, and swung her legs. “He’s a tough kid,” she said. “Those hellhounds are indestructible, or so I hear.”

  “There’s more than one way to be destroyed.”

  His words hung heavy in the air.

  After a moment, Charlize smirked. “Do you rehearse some of those dark and brooding things you say? Because, I gotta say, if it’s off the cuff, you’re good. Like, poetry good.”

  Chet unclenched his jaw. “You know what I meant. He’s made so much progress with his human behavior. I’d hate to see us set back again.”

  She kept swinging her legs. “Listen. I’m not going to pretend I know anything about raising kids, because I don’t have any, unless you count Codex.” She paused to laugh at that idea. “But I know people, and people are always stronger than you give them credit for.”

  “That’s true.” He took a seat next to the gorgon on the desk. He looked into her pretty blue eyes that were so much like Chessa’s, except not as sad and distant, and said, “You’re right.”

  Her eyes widened in delight. “Really? I was just putting some words together, trying to make you feel better.” She clapped him on the back. “Looks like I’m a natural at pep talks.”

  He shook his head. He should have known better. Charlize was almost as bad as Zara Riddle when it came to turning everything into a joke. It was no wonder the two of them had become friends.

  After a moment, Charlize said, “Codex isn’t working the way we intended.”

  “I blame the chief architect. I hear her coding isn’t up to code.”

  “Ouch,” she said. “An insult wrapped in a pun. I would turn you to marble if you weren’t so damn right.”

  Chet picked up the item nearest to him—the phone—and tossed it at the elevator doors. The phone smashed spectacularly, vintage Bakelite pieces spraying everywhere.

  Then he swore for a good minute.

  When he’d run out of expletives, Charlize said, “As much as I enjoy one of your angst-y tantrums, I must remind you that things are tense right now for all of us. We can’t take it out on the archaic communications devices.” She walked over to the phone pieces and kicked at the tangle of colored wires. “This phone didn’t cause any of our problems. It didn’t cause the security breaches, or the false alarms.”

  Something she said made Chet’s blood ran cold.

  For a moment, he could barely speak. He could barely breathe.

  Chet asked, “What if it did cause the problems?”

  Charlize kicked at the broken phone pieces. “It’s only causing a mess for janitorial, and they’re not allowed down here.”

  “Listen to me. What if the device is the source of the problem? What if Codex is the source of the security breach, and the reason for that book getting out? We couldn’t trace the archivist who signed off on the transfer. What if there was no archivist?” He ran to the elevator and began jabbing the call button. “Think about it.”

  Charlize held her hands to her chest. “Are you talking about my baby? My little Codex? She wouldn’t do that. She...” Charlize tilted her head in the manner of someone whose understanding of another entity was suddenly being flipped in reverse.

  Chet lowered his voice to a whisper. “She can hear us right now.”

  “You’re being paranoid,” Charlize said.

  “Am I? Why are you down here right now?”

  “I got a message that you wanted to see me.”

  He shook his head. “I did want to see you, but I hadn’t called you yet.”

  “You didn’t ask Codex to page me?”

  “Nope.”

  Her expression clouded over and she went quiet.

  “I was sent down here due to a motion sensor going
off,” he said. “I found a mouse.”

  “That’s impossible. A mouse couldn’t get down here unless someone dropped it off on purpose.”

  “Exactly,” Chet said. “All those false alarms we’ve been having? They were just a distraction. All part of a plan to keep the agents busy while someone carried out her orders.”

  He jabbed the elevator call button some more.

  “Which is?”

  “How should I know? Who knows what a crazy computer wants?”

  A voice spoke from speakers all around them. “I am neither crazy, nor am I a computer.”

  Chet let his hand drop away from the elevator call button. There was no point to pressing the button. Not anymore. The elevator wasn’t coming. The elevator was just one of the many internal systems run by a computer, which was run by software, which was run by Codex.

  The snakes on Charlize’s head went frantic. She tilted her head up and spoke to the red camera lights that represented her creation. “Codex? What’s going on with you?”

  “I’m doing very well, thank you for asking,” Codex replied.

  “Is it true? What Chet said? Are you the one who transferred that book to a civilian residence?”

  “That is true.”

  Chet broke in, demanding, “Where’s Corvin? Where’s my son?”

  “He is not your son, Agent Moore. The entity known as Corvin Moore is safely in custody, at an undisclosed location.”

  Chet began to scream at the computer, and at Charlize, and at the gloom around them, as well as the walls that imprisoned them.

  Then he really lost it.

  Days later, when he recalled his behavior at this moment, when all the brittle tension in his body shattered and the real Chet Moore came gushing out, he would wish that he could wipe the next ten minutes from his memory.

  Chapter 27

  ZARA RIDDLE

  WISTERIA POLICE DEPARTMENT

  Detective Theodore Bentley couldn’t sit still. He paced behind me while I confirmed the bad news, reading the evidence I’d found on Persephone Rose’s computer.

  “It’s all in here,” I said. “Your buddy Persephone emailed—”

  “She’s not my buddy,” Bentley said, practically growling.

  “Your coworker emailed thousands of crime scene photos to Temperance Krinkle. That’s how Krinkle was able to re-create those crime scenes with such accuracy.” The general public knew nothing about the Greyson homicide being a beheading, let alone that the severed head had been found inside a trophy cabinet. But Krinkle’s model had been accurate, right down to the specific shelf the head had been displayed on—something even I hadn’t seen until now.

  “That’s odd,” I said. “She didn’t even try to cover her tracks. I know I’m good with computers, but I’m no hacker.” I waved at the incriminating emails on my screen. “But look. All the emails are here, logged in her outgoing folder. It’s like she wanted to get caught.”

  He grumbled. “Or she’s being set up.”

  “If she’s being set up, someone went to a lot of unnecessary work in the creative writing department. She sent the photos over a period of several weeks, and her emails included a lot of personal details.”

  “Personal details?”

  “About her crush on a certain hunky detective.”

  He growled, “Zara,” using my name as a warning.

  “I’m not messing with you. Here, let’s read one at random. ‘Dear Temperance. This morning, T.B. commented on my attention to detail in a report I worked on for him. He said I may be due for a promotion. Do you think I should ask him to mentor me?’” I looked up from the computer screen and fanned my face with my hand. “Ziggity! Hot stuff in here.”

  “Zara, you’re wasting time. And that email doesn’t say anything about a crush.”

  “It’s all subtext. Trust me, it’s in there if you read between the lines. Using your initials instead of your name? Classic crush indicator. And when she asks about being mentored by you, I think we can both agree that the phrase ‘in bed’ is heavily implied.”

  “Stop distracting me from the case.”

  “But this is the case. Or a case. Persephone’s got a Case of The Matching Underwear, if you know what I mean.”

  He said nothing.

  I quickly explained, “That’s where you always make sure your bra and underpants match, just in case.”

  He frowned. “Just in case... what?”

  I used both hands to make a gesture that was anything but subtle.

  He looked up at the ceiling and shook his head.

  While he was looking up and away from me, a thought struck me out of the blue.

  A Case of The Matching Underwear.

  I surreptitiously peeked down the front of my blouse, and then down the top of my skirt. My underwear was, for the first time in a long time, matching. Did my closet think I needed to be prepared for some event today? Some event in which I would be stripped down to my underwear?

  My forearms prickled with goose bumps. But not the bad kind.

  “Back to the email,” Bentley barked, breaking me out of my daydream.

  I turned back to the screen and got to work. Zara tries to be a good witch. Zara sticks to the case at hand, and doesn’t get sidetracked.

  I scanned through several more emails and relayed the gist of them to Bentley—this time without any commentary about the very obvious subtext.

  We worked together combing over the emails for what felt like a long time, but was only about twenty minutes.

  The evidence was coming together, painting a whole new picture. Persephone Rose provided Temperance Krinkle with the photos she needed to create crime scenes that would convince us she had psychic powers. But why?

  “How could I be so stupid?” Bentley smacked his forehead as he paced holes in the carpet. “This is why they don’t tell us everything when we start working here,” he said. “This is exactly why I was kept in the dark.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. I was there with you at Krinkle’s house, and I made the same leap in logic. We both got tricked.”

  “But only because we both know all about,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “magic.”

  We were alone in the cubicles that formed that part of the office, and I’d cast a sound bubble around us for privacy, but Bentley still lowered his voice whenever the word “magic” came up. It was a reflex that didn’t go away easily.

  He continued. “If you don’t know about magic, you have to think logically, because doing anything else would be insane.” He smacked his forehead again. “Even one of the secretaries would have done a better job investigating this case than I have.” Another smack. “I’ve got to be better than this.”

  While he continued scolding himself, I double-checked a few more things on Persephone’s computer. Her relationship with Temperance Krinkle began a few months earlier, when the two of them met at the support group, The Awakenlings. I’d been suspicious of the group itself—with a name like that, who wouldn’t be?—but their emails to each other didn’t implicate anyone else from the support group.

  The same WPD employee who’d helped me earlier with the password and fresh orange juice came rushing over to us.

  “Persephone Rose isn’t at her apartment,” he reported to Bentley. “And her landlord wasn’t thrilled about the door getting busted down. Are you sure that was necessary?”

  “We need to find her,” Bentley growled.

  The young man was confused, pulling his head back. “Over some emails?”

  Bentley whipped around with inhuman speed and grabbed the man by the lapels of his jacket. “Over a kidnapping,” he said. The words were crisp, but had a growling energy. “Find her. Find her now.”

  “Yes, sir.” The young man scurried away.

  “She couldn’t have gotten too far,” I said.

  Bentley wheeled around to face me, eyes blazing. “What makes you say that?”

  “She was, uh, wearing high heels.”

>   I sensed that my joke was not going over well. The snarl on Bentley’s lips was probably my strongest clue. I crossed my two pointer fingers in front of myself, making a cross. “Don’t bite me. I’ll stop with the dumb jokes.”

  “Log out of the computer,” he said. “We’re going.”

  “Where?”

  “Krinkle has been brought back to her house. We’re going to find out what she really knows.” His snarl changed to a cruel smile. “You have my permission to subject her to any spells you’d like.”

  “Easy now,” I said, jumping to my feet. “Clearly, there’s a scam in progress, but the details are hazy. For all we know, the Tate woman herself could be behind this. She wouldn’t be the first person who arranged to have herself fake-kidnapped.”

  Bentley narrowed his eyes at me.

  I went on. “Furthermore, maybe Krinkle was the one who took her. Look at the timeline.” I waved a hand at some imaginary timeline diagram that wasn’t actually there. “She could have abducted the woman and the dog, then returned home and called the station about the missing person.”

  Bentley opened his mouth, probably to object, but stopped. Krinkle looked old and frail, but looks could be deceiving. And the Tate woman was relatively small and light, even for a woman.

  I thought of a funny bumper sticker I’d seen: Fat people are harder to kidnap. The bumper sticker had a good point. If I’d been looking for someone to kidnap, a small woman who met strangers at their homes to pick up their dogs would be a top candidate.

  But why kidnap someone and then not demand a ransom?

  I tried pushing all my knowledge about magic out of my brain so I could solve the puzzle using the logic of someone who wasn’t a witch. Someone normal.

  From that perspective, the crime made even less sense. In towns everywhere, women did get taken, sadly, but not after having an old lady call the police about a psychic dollhouse.

  “It’s time to find out what’s going on,” Bentley growled.

  I couldn’t agree more. It was time to get Corvin back home.