Wardens of Wisteria (Wisteria Witches Mysteries - Daybreak Book 1)

by Angela Pepper

  She waved me toward the front door with a limp arm. “Go on your date to the morgue.”

  “I don’t have to go.”

  “You should go.”

  “I should probably stick around close to home. For your safety.”

  “Mom, just go.” She sighed and flashed her eyes at me. “I promise not to get in any trouble.”

  I shook a finger at her. “No potions.”

  She shuffled down a few more steps and gave me an exasperated look. “No potions,” she promised.

  I put my hands on my hips. “I’d make you do that my-word-is-a-bond thing, but you’re not old enough.” I shook my head. “It’s rather convenient that it doesn’t work on people under twenty-four.”

  She gave me an innocent look. “It’s because our brains are still forming.”

  I turned to explain the whole thing to the detective, but judging by the look on his face, he already knew.

  “It’s true about brain development,” Bentley said in agreement. “We don’t see a drop-off in risk-taking behavior until after that age.”

  Risk-taking behavior. Like hunting? I asked the detective, “How old was Ishmael? Twenty-six? He was barely an adult.”

  “Barely. You’re right about that, and it may have been a factor.” He gestured toward the door. “Shall we?”

  I took his elbow playfully. “Let’s go to the morgue.”

  He looked down at my fingers on his suit jacket, then up at my face with an amused expression. “Ah, but it gets better,” he said, waggling his eyebrows. “The morgue is located in the underground headquarters of a secret organization.”

  I gasped. “The DWM? I’m so excited-slash-terrified!”

  Chapter 19

  I’d been to the underground headquarters of the Department of Water and Magic a few times. Each time, I’d gone in through a different secret entrance. It was only logical that the place had a few access points—all the better to hide a stream of people and creatures coming in and out—but it was nevertheless dizzying.

  For this visit, we entered the Wisteria Police Department, then ducked through a service door, which brought us to an elevator with the expected high-tech security panel. There was a palm and eye scan for Bentley, and then, weirdly enough, a brief interrogation by a disembodied female voice.

  “Welcome back, Zara Riddle,” the voice said, managing to sound both robotic and breathily sexy at the same time. “We hope you enjoy your visit to our headquarters.”

  “Thank you, disembodied voice,” I said.

  “You may call me Codex,” she said, sounding husky along with breathy.

  Bentley muttered under his breath, “That’s new.”

  “I am new,” she replied. “Thank you for noticing, Detective. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Codex. I am the voice of this building’s automated systems.”

  I peered up at the glowing red dot on the video screen. “Are you a robot?”

  “Thank you for asking, Ms. Riddle. I am not a robot. I am the voice of this building’s automated systems.”

  “You’re software?”

  “Thank you for asking, Ms. Riddle. I am not software. Software is a program used by a computer. Let me see if I can explain by using an example. You and Detective Bentley use the language English, yet you are not English.”

  Bentley frowned. “My ancestors are English.”

  “A wonderful observation,” cooed the voice. “My ancestors are software.”

  Bentley muttered something unintelligible.

  The light on the display screen turned amber. The voice—Codex—continued, “We have now exceeded our allotted time allowance for pleasantries. Please proceed to your destination at once.”

  The doors slid open faster than I’d ever seen elevator doors open. Bentley and I hopped in immediately. We exchanged a look but didn’t dare speak until we we’d ridden down multiple stories, then exited the elevator.

  “That was new,” Bentley said again, once the doors had closed between us.

  I gave him a bemused look. “We are currently ten or twenty stories beneath street level, inside a labyrinth of secret tunnels, filled with monsters. Does the fact that the exits are guarded by a flirty artificial intelligence make you feel more safe or less safe?”

  He squeezed his chin thoughtfully. “With some things, it’s best not to ask questions or examine too closely.”

  “I hear you. It’s like when you’re getting on an airplane, and you recognize the pilot from the fast food pit at the airport, where you noticed he had trouble getting his straw into his drink container.” I mimed clumsy repeated stabbing. “And he kept going like this, over and over, poke, poke, poke, not hitting the little patch of foil over the hole, until finally the straw gave up and crumpled in on itself.”

  “That’s a rather specific example.”

  I squeezed my own chin thoughtfully. “It wasn’t a perfect simile. How about this? It’s like when you’re donating blood, and you—”

  “Blood?” His eyes widened.

  “Yeah. It’s like when you’re donating blood, and you recognize the nurse from the fast food pit at the mall, where you noticed she couldn’t get her straw into her drink container.” I mimed more futile stabbing.

  “Enough with the blood talk, and all the poking.” Bentley waved a hand to stop me. “You’re very good at examples.”

  “I can do better. How about this one? It’s like when you’re getting on the roller coaster, and there’s a safety announcement, except it’s not done by a person. The announcer is actually an insane computer who talks in riddles.”

  Bentley gave me two weary thumbs up. “Perfect.” He started walking down a concrete-walled corridor. “Right this way. We’re actually meeting with someone from legal before we head down to the morgue.”

  “Someone from legal? Why?”

  “He knew the victim personally, so I’d like to ask a few questions. He’s actually—”

  I whooped excitedly as a sign caught my eye. “The cafeteria?” I asked. “Are we meeting this guy from legal in the cafeteria?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great.” I put a skip in my step. “I could eat.”

  “Didn’t you just eat?”

  “I didn’t say I was hungry. I said I could eat.” I fell in step with the detective. “I hear the cherry cheesecake is to die for.”

  “Cherry cheesecake,” Bentley said, his voice sounding more dreamy than weary. He licked his lips. “Dark, red cherry syrup.” He reached up and touched the bullet talisman that formed a lump under the collar of his shirt.

  “See? You’re not hungry, but you could eat.”

  His voice low and gritty, he said, “I could eat.”

  Chapter 20

  The cafeteria at the DWM looked like the kind you’d find within the building of any corporation large enough to have a dedicated foodservice area, yet not gigantic enough to have multiple cafeterias, all with different themes.

  The time was 8:30 pm, well past dinner, plus it was a Saturday. The place was understandably quiet. Nobody was seated on the gleaming white chairs. A lone janitor in dark-blue overalls barely glanced our way as he dragged his pine-scented mop back and forth across the polished concrete floors. Over at the food stations, the buffet had been closed for the day. There wasn’t any hot food on offer, but there was a long row of refrigerated compartments offering sandwiches, salads, and—most importantly—cherry cheesecake.

  I was yabbering away about cheesecake and headed toward it when Bentley grabbed my arm. He squeezed my bicep in what felt like urgency. I pulled myself away from the desserts, turned, and jerked to attention when I saw what he’d seen.

  Walking in through the same door we had come was a creature from a fairy tale. Or a horror movie. It was the size of a pony, with the body of a lion and the head of an iguana. A big iguana.

  I’d seen this creature before, during a visit to the underground offices. The beast had been walking down a hallway with a human, casually joking about eating
a coworker’s office chair. The beast was an iguammit, and it was a him. His name was Steve. He was the person we were there to meet with, except he wasn’t in person form at all.

  As the creature padded closer on its huge lion paws, I forced myself to blink a few times to break up the staring. The iguammit flicked its pink, forked tongue at us, then offered the iguana equivalent of a smile.

  He spoke. “It has been a very long day for all of us, hasn’t it?” Steve the Iguammit had a French-accented human voice despite his green, dry-looking iguana lips. If you closed your eyes, you’d swear his pleasant speech came from human lips. That was magic for you. Just a wee bit inconsistent at times. My daughter couldn’t speak English at all when she was in fox form, yet this fantastical chimera, whose mouth wasn’t even mammalian, could speak perfectly. Better than I could, some might say.

  Bentley replied to the giant iguana face, his voice showing only a hint of terror. “It’s been a very long day,” he agreed. “And it’s liable to be an even longer night.”

  Steve moved toward us with no hurry. He gave another flick of the forked tongue. His cone-shaped eye sockets rotated independently as he glanced around. He stopped in front of us, sat back on his lion haunches, and extended a front paw.

  “Thank you for taking the long elevator ride down here,” said the lizard-headed beast with an outstretched lion’s paw.

  Bentley offered his own hand with almost no hesitation.

  As human hand touched iguammit paw, the air shimmered in a heat wave pattern. Powerful change magic passed through me in a hot burst, throwing off my balance the way a mild earthquake might. The chimera transformed. Bentley had begun shaking hands with a lion’s paw, but now he was shaking hands with another human. A man. Also wearing a business suit.

  Steve was dark-skinned, average height, with a slim build. He looked about thirty. His hair was black and tightly coiled to his head. He had an amiable, round face, with a cleft chin, clean shaven. Sliding down his short nose was a pair of round tortoiseshell glasses. The mottled brown and gold glasses emphasized his big, expressive brown eyes. He wore a stylish suit jacket over a tan-colored safari-style shirt with two buttons undone. No tie. The jacket and trousers were playfully mismatched in a youthful, fashion-forward way. Both garments were cut in a slimmer, more contemporary style than Bentley’s conservative suit, yet not as feminine as my own gray suit. He looked exactly like the sort of sharp young man you’d trust with your legal documents, your taxes, your banking, or even your daughter. His posh, vaguely French accent certainly added to his charm.

  The man continued his conversation with Bentley as though he hadn’t just shifted form. “I deeply regret that we are not meeting under better circumstances.” Steve’s deep, rich voice as a human was exactly the same as it had been as an iguammit.

  Bentley tilted his head back and offered the man a grim look. “Being a detective, these are the type of circumstances under which I meet most new people.”

  Steve nodded and shot me a shy look. He had the thickest eyelashes I’d ever seen. He said to Bentley, “I recognize your redheaded partner, yet we haven’t been formally introduced.”

  Bentley opened his mouth to introduce me, but I beat him to it.

  “Zara Riddle,” I said, offering my hand. He shook it. I was mildly disappointed his hand didn’t turn into a paw and then back again for me.

  He gripped my hand like a man with no intention of releasing it. “You’re a natural redhead,” he said.

  “Down to the last freckle,” I replied.

  “I do love the color red.”

  “That’s right,” I said. I knew that about his kind. “And you love red candy, too, right?”

  He finally released my hand and gave me a coy look, batting his thick eyelashes behind the tortoiseshell-framed lenses. “Who told you?”

  Nobody had told me. I’d read that particular fact in the book I called the DWM Monster Manual. Iguammits such as Steve were prone to periods of intense concentration during which they often forgot to eat. When famished, they would eat almost anything, but they loved red-colored candy the most. At the mention of red candy, something had started bubbling up in my memory. The glass jars of red candy at Carrot the tattoo artist’s studio.

  Two pieces of a puzzle snapped together. Carrot had red candy, and her boyfriend Sefu was sometimes called Steve. He was a potential suspect. And he was standing in front of me.

  Steve seemed to catch something in my expression. “Have I offended you, Ms. Riddle? I do apologize if I’ve been rude in any way. It’s been a very long day.”

  “You’re Sefu,” I said tentatively.

  “I am. Most people call me Steve.” He shuffled from one foot to the other, glancing down.

  “You’re a lawyer here, and you’re also the person Carrot Greyson is dating?”

  “Of course.” He hunched his shoulders under his stylish suit jacket. “Am I to assume, by your question, that you were not made aware of that fact before now?”

  “So it would seem.”

  Bentley broke in, “I apologize, Mr. Adebayo. I should have told Zara on the way over.”

  “No need to apologize.” Sefu Adebayo, also known as Steve the Iguammit or Steve the Lawyer, fidgeted with his tan shirt where a tie might have been. “We are all on the same team. We can grieve for the loss of our late friend, Ishmael, another time. Right now, it’s important we put all your resources toward catching whoever did that unspeakable deed.”

  He met my gaze with shining eyes.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.

  He jerked his head downward. “Thank you, but I must admit that Ishmael and I weren’t very close,” Steve said. “My heart is breaking right now for his sister, of whom I’m very fond.”

  Of whom I’m very fond. For a young-looking guy, Steve had an old-fashioned way of speaking. Did the style came from his education? Or was he older than he appeared? Like maybe a century or two older?

  Bentley cut in. “When we spoke on the phone earlier today, you said that Miss Carrot Greyson is unaware of the supernatural. Is that true, or were you reluctant to discuss such things over an unsecured line?”

  Steve rubbed the base of his nose. “Carrot doesn’t know what I am, and I’d prefer that she doesn’t find out. Eventually, perhaps after we’re married, I’ll break the news. I’ll start, of course, by revealing her own powers as a rune mage.”

  In unison, both Bentley and I said, “Rune mage?”

  “Yes.” Steve took off his glasses and began cleaning them with a square of blue cloth he took from his jacket pocket. “I believe Carrot has the ability to forge psychic connections with other beings, using symbols.” His speech took on an instructive tone, aided by the professor-like cleaning of the glasses. “In the old days, the ancients drew runes upon their skin using charred wood and dark berries. They conducted rituals around fires and waterfalls, attempting to communicate with the spirit world or distant villages.”

  “Before the days of phones and telegrams,” I said.

  Steve shot me a pleased look. “Before language, even.”

  “You got me,” I said. “I can’t even imagine a time before language.”

  Bentley snorted.

  Steve continued. “Carrot hasn’t been indoctrinated with the ancient knowledge by a mentor, and yet, the magic has found a way to her. Without knowing it, Carrot has been channeling rune magic through the tattoos on her body.”

  Bentley asked, “How is it that she’s unaware of this? A person should be able to tell if they’re under the influence of magic.”

  Not necessarily, I thought. Bentley had no idea he’d been under a certain black-haired upgraded-zombie’s spell.

  “Carrot is not surprised by coincidences because she believes in superstition and magic the way many people do,” Steve explained. “As a vague force that can be influenced by prayer or,” he wrinkled his nose, “positive thinking.”

  Bentley asked, “Can she use this rune mage tattoo power to co
ntrol people? To make others do her bidding?”

  Steve paused before answering, “Anything is possible. She has been a suspect in a homicide case before. I was first alerted to her magical abilities when she awoke from a dream, ran to her car, and drove to a crime site.” He smiled at the memory. “That case has since been closed. It was officially determined she was merely a witness to events. An innocent bystander, who was only involved because of a few foolish choices she made in her love life.”

  “Yup,” I said. “I know that tune. Love makes you stupid.”

  Steve sighed and got a wistful look. “It certainly does.”

  Bentley cleared his throat. “No, it doesn’t. The opposite is true. Love—actual love, not infatuation or lust—clarifies everything.”

  Steve and I both turned to the detective for further explanation. He offered none.

  After it was clear Bentley didn’t have more to say about love and its ability to make people the opposite of stupid, Steve continued talking about Carrot.

  “It is really quite wondrous how intuitive Carrot is,” Steve said. “Recently, she has been talking about getting another tattoo. Either a lion or an iguana.” He raised his eyebrows emphatically. “Her idea entirely.”

  “A lion or an iguana,” Bentley mused. “Sounds like your tattooed girlfriend knows more about you than she’s letting on.” He gave Steve a playful, brotherly punch on the shoulder.

  Steve winced. His human form was apparently not very rugged.

  “She knows without knowing,” Steve said.

  Bentley raised his eyebrows. “It could be the power of love that’s allowing her to see the truth.”

  Steve held his cleaned glasses up to the cafeteria’s bright windows and inspected them as he spoke. “But even if one sees the truth, how can one be certain it’s not another wishful illusion? Surely you are both familiar with the expression we see what we wish to see.”