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

by Angela Pepper

  The doorbell rang.

  “Doorbell,” I said, grinning.

  “I believe in free will,” Zoey said.

  “Doorbell.”

  She struck one finger in the air. “I’ll get the door, but only because I choose to get the door, of my own free will.”

  I nodded. “Doorbell.”

  It rang again.

  She sighed and left to answer the door.

  She returned a few minutes later with three people. Two blonde gorgons and one formerly alive detective.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” I said.

  Chloe and Charlize each set a cake on the table.

  Detective Theodore “Teddy B” Bentley held out a fat bottle of champagne. “Happy birthday,” he said. He looked different, though I hadn’t quite worked out everything that had changed. A hint of a smile curled his lips. That was new.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking the champagne. “Getting older sucks, but it sure beats the alternative!”

  Bentley raised one eyebrow. It lifted higher and faster than it had before. “Oh? And what is the alternative to getting older?” The steely gray eye beneath the raised eyebrow was now silver, the light tones on the iris shining like the facets on a cut diamond.

  I was temporarily speechless. There were two alternatives to getting older: Being dead, or being something that didn’t age. I hadn’t seen Bentley in two days, and now we’d only exchanged a few words, and I’d struck a nerve already.

  Or had I?

  He didn’t seem at all offended by my gaffe. If anything, the curve on his lips had deepened.

  Someone—my daughter—clapped her hands. “Champagne flutes,” she said. “I’ll get some if you let me pop the cork.”

  Without taking my eyes off silver-eyed Bentley, I said, “They’re above the refrigerator, behind the Frisbee we use to eat in the tub.”

  Now Bentley’s second eyebrow raised. “You use a Frisbee to eat in the tub? I’d like to see that.”

  “You can’t,” I said quickly. “You can’t see me naked. Only family is allowed to see me naked.”

  “We’re practically family,” Bentley said. “My maker is your mother.”

  His maker. My mother. Practically family. I managed to pull away from the tractor beam of his gaze and latch onto something safer. The gaze of a gorgon. Charlize. Help me, I pleaded with my eyes.

  “You’re okay,” Charlize said softly, soothingly. “It’s always a big adjustment when someone you know makes a transition. Bentley’s still the same person, I swear.”

  “He’s still Bentley, but he’s...” Not Bentley. Not placid, predictable, striving, gray-wool-suit-wearing Bentley.

  Charlize kept talking, reassuring me. I didn’t hear a word she was saying. Chloe chattered happily about the cake and the recipe she’d adapted.

  Suddenly, there was a loud BANG!

  I was so startled, I managed to catch the champagne cork in mid-air and explode it into confetti.

  Zoey squealed with glee and clapped her hands. “Nice one! I didn’t know you could do that!”

  I caught some of the falling confetti in my hand. It crackled against my palm. I hadn’t known I could that, either, but I didn’t let on to the group. Instead, I smiled at my friends and complimented the baker on her handiwork.

  Next, I endured countless jokes about the number of candles on my cake, and how next year they would have a fire crew standing by.

  Zoey dimmed the chandelier, lit the candles, and they sang to me. I looked around at their faces, one at a time. Boa had joined us and was sitting politely on a chair. Ribbons had come for the cake and was not-so-politely hanging upside down from the chandelier like a bat. As I looked at each one of them, it hit me that one year ago I hadn’t known any of them. Last year, it had been thirty-two candles on a store-bought cake, and my daughter and I had agreed to skip the singing that year, since it was, yet again, just the two of us. How things had changed.

  “Blow out the candles before you burn this old house down,” Charlize said.

  “Let’s see how many she can blow out in one breath,” Bentley said. “Then we get to count all Zara’s boyfriends.”

  Everyone made childish oooh-oooh sounds, except for Ribbons, who said, “You have boyfriends, Zed? More than one?”

  I sucked in my breath and held it a moment.

  “Make a wish,” someone said.

  Later, when I reflected back on that night, I wouldn’t be able to tell you who told me to make a wish. I couldn’t even say if it had been a man, a woman, or a wyvern. But I heard the command, and I looked across the glowing candles at my beautiful, kind, patient daughter, and I knew exactly what to wish for. I didn’t even need to take a second breath to think about it.

  I wished, I closed my eyes, and I blew.

  Through my eyelids, I saw the bright light grow dim. The candles guttered, but not every one of them extinguished.

  I opened my eyes to the sight of two candles burning defiantly.

  There was another chorus of oooh-oooh, then, “Zara’s got two boyfriends!”

  “Oh, please.” I huffed and rolled my eyes. “Who’d want to date a bossy old witch like me?” I took another breath and blew out the other two.

  In the darkness, I said, “Cake time! Zoey, would you get the lights?”

  “I’m trying,” she said. There was a click-click sound of the switch being flicked. “We must have blown a fuse,” she said.

  “I’ll blow a fuse if I can’t see this cake to cut it,” I said.

  The chandelier came on. Nobody was standing anywhere near the switch. In fact, my daughter was at the doorway, presumably on her way to check the electrical panel.

  Charlize gave me a knowing look. “Another ghost?”

  I scanned the dining room. “I don’t see one.” I pointed to the hanging light fixture, and the scaled creature swinging from it. “We can probably pin this one on Cirque de Wyvern.”

  Everyone laughed.

  Zoey was returning to her chair when the doorbell rang. She and I locked eyes. We weren’t expecting anyone. Something about the sound of the doorbell at that particular moment sent an unwelcome shiver down my spine. I felt pressure on my lungs, like the chimera beast was standing on my chest again.

  Without a word, Zoey ran to answer the door.

  Everyone gathered at the table sat absolutely still, as though they sensed it, too.

  Doom.

  Impending doom.

  My daughter’s voice floated into the dining room. “Good evening, Mr. Moore! Is everything okay with Corvin? Do you need me to watch him for a few minutes?”

  He answered her in a murmur too soft for us to hear.

  Next to me, there was a hiss of multiple snakes waking from their magical slumber. The gorgon nearest me, Charlize, grabbed my hand with hers and squeezed. “That’s not Chet,” she said.

  Chloe said, “If it’s not Chet, then it must be...” She didn’t say the name, but she didn’t have to. There was a genie strolling around in a body he’d cut from Chet Moore’s. He called himself Archer Caine.

  Bentley stared at me across the table. “Zara,” he said, his voice slicing through my confusion like a sharp blade. “What did you wish for?”

  I looked down at the cake with the burnt candles and muttered my answer.

  “Zara,” he said again. “Tell us what you wished for.”

  I lifted my chin and met his eyes. “I wished that my daughter could have what I didn’t. I wished she could get to know her father.”

  Nobody said anything.

  Ribbons swung upward from his perch on the chandelier, flipped in mid-air, and landed on the table two feet from the cake. “And you say I stir the pot, Zed. You’re the one who stirs the pot and shakes the hornet’s nest and lights the firecrackers.”

  Two people appeared in the doorway. My daughter, her pale face even more pale than usual, and Archer Caine.

  “Everyone,” Zoey said hesitantly. “This is—”

  She w
as cut off by Bentley, who hurled himself through the air in a supernatural move that defied all laws of physics. He struck the genie with the full force of his body, and the two went tumbling backward, snarling and growling and making an unholy racket.

  Ignoring them for the moment, I picked up a knife and held it over the shaved chocolate curls and whipped cream in front of me. My hand was trembling. “Cake, anyone? Cake?”

  * * *

  Thank you for reading WARDENS OF WISTERIA by Angela Pepper. This is the 8th book in the world of Wisteria Witches. Zara's adventures will continue! Turn the page for a note from the author. See the backmatter for a list of Angela Pepper titles.

  Author's Note from Angela Pepper

  Dear Reader:

  That was quite the note to end the book on, wasn't it? "Cake, anyone? Cake?" That cracks me up. I love it in real life when something weird breaks out at the big family dinner, and nobody knows how to fix it, so someone brings out the dessert.

  As for what happens next, I'm not entirely sure, so it would be impossible for me to post spoilers here. I do have notes and plans for a few more books after this one, but some of the future is shrouded in mystery. My characters have been up to shenanigans. Bentley wasn't supposed to turn into a vampire for at least two more books, but he refused to wait any longer! Now it's happened, and Archer Caine is back, and we'll have to deal with all of that over the upcoming mysteries!

  The unusual thing about the production side of Wardens of Wisteria is that I've been working on it for much longer than usual. Typically, I plan a book, write it, revise it, then edit and publish it, working on it continuously (some might say obsessively) until it's finished. With this one, I planned the book, along with a couple others, then put the stories on ice while I wrote the two City Hall books featuring Zinnia Riddle. That means I've had this story about Bentley in my head, in that shaky, dream-like, foggy form all stories have before they're fully turned into books, for over a year. Even now that Wardens of Wisteria has been written, I have the "phantom limb" of the unfinished book in my head. I have to keep checking that it is, indeed, entirely written. (I probably shouldn't tell you these things; I sound like a nut.)

  While writing this book, I found myself relating to Zara's desire to keep the ghosts from taking over. In regular, non-witch life, we don't have to worry about ghosts possessing our bodies, but we do face the challenges of allowing people into our hearts, and the messes they make.

  During the writing of this book, I faced a couple of challenging situations, with a family member and then with a friend. I'll have to stick it out with the family member, since I'm stuck with them for life, but I cut the ties on the friendship because I could. It's still difficult, though. I always wonder if I'm doing the right thing by people and by myself. It actually does help when the person you're kicking out of your life lashes out and tried to hurt you, unwittingly proving you made the right decision.

  I wish things didn't have to be so dramatic, but I tend to put up with crap for a long time until one day I finally snap and kick people out. If I were better at boundaries, perhaps some of my failed relationships wouldn't have reached that point of toxicity, but, honestly, I suck at boundaries. I'm too open, too willing to give away emotional intimacy in the hope of being known/understood/loved. "Come on in! I have so much to give, and I want to share. Sure, just go ahead and wreck whatever you see that triggers your envy. Heaven forbid you experience an uncomfortable emotion during the experience of getting to know another human being who isn't you." Sigh. Maybe in the next book, Zara will work out some boundaries with her ghosts. Maybe she'll teach me something.

  On a more positive note, I also relate to the positive aspects of Zara's life. She is settling into Wisteria, and is surrounded by so many wonderful people who are on their way to being her "old friends" in a few years. I'm fortunate to be in a similar situation. My husband and I just enjoyed our third summer in our new home, which is in a semi-rural area near a resort town. We are blessed to have landed in the perfect neighborhood. Shortly after we arrived here in 2016, several houses nearby changed hands, and a whole bunch of us newcomers have arrived and bonded with each other. One couple has since turned into a family of four, and I delight in seeing the little ones grow up before my eyes. The group enjoys potluck dinners and summer barbecues. If I want some company for a hike to the nearby lake, a hiking partner is just a few text messages away. Now that I think about it, I might be even deeper into my new community than Zara is. But, to be fair, she's only been there less than a year in story time. Also, it's not a competition.

  Today is a special day. It's my and my husband's anniversary. We've been married fourteen years. He tells me the traditional gift was ivory, but the modern one is gold jewelry. I tell him to save his money, since the band of white gold I wear on my ring finger is all the gold I need.

  You might guess, based on our late-October wedding date, that we are both Halloween lovers. The truth behind the unusual date is that it was a lark. We had been engaged for two years already, and were so busy running our new business at the time that we laughingly said we'd probably just stay engaged forever. But then my father announced he'd be in town on his way to an overseas vacation, so we figured, since one of the parents was going to be around anyway, maybe we should throw together a little ceremony to make it official.

  And so we whipped together a wedding that turned out so much nicer than what I deserved, given my lack of planning. We rented a small boat, the type that does booze cruises, and got the dinner and a DJ as a package deal. I had seen the boat during the daytime only, and it had not been terribly pretty. You get what you pay for, I reminded myself, and we were on a budget. However, when I arrived the evening of my wedding, what I saw took my breath away. The Costco folding tables were completely transformed, covered in crisp white tablecloths and decorated with jade plants in terra cotta pots, and miniature pumpkins. As for the boat itself, the boat operators had recently sprung for new carpet, a deep burgundy. That simple upgrade, combined with the decorations, plus the twinkling white lights twining all over the low ceiling, gave the impression of opulence. Plus all my favorite people were there, dressed up and ready to have fun.

  We had a wonderful wedding, and remember it fondly fourteen years later. I associate it with pumpkins, so I get a full month of reminders.

  Tonight, we were going to celebrate quietly at home. We've had a lot of social events lately, and we're both introverts, so a chill night in with a movie sounded perfect. But then we realized there wasn't much food in the fridge, so we had to go out. I wore my dressiest hoodie sweatshirt, the red one with the Flash logo on the front. I'm not a big comic book nerd; I just like the sweatshirt.

  We went to a small restaurant that specializes in farm-to-table cooking, with many gluten-free options. (Yes, we've become those people, the gluten-free ones. We quit sugar ten months ago, and then, since weren't irritating enough to the rest of society, we also went gluten-free. It's hard to say which food elimination had the bigger impact, but several health issues have cleared up. My husband used to get such dry skin on his hands and feet--dry to the point of cracking and bleeding--and now his skin is amazing.)

  We arrived at the restaurant around dusk, the same time we had been on the boat's upper deck, getting married while our friends and family shivered patiently while curious seals surfaced around us to witness the vows.

  We sipped single-shot Americanos by the window while the world outside the cozy cafe went dark. Behind me, a loud woman talked about riding a horse. It wasn't the sort of thing I mind hearing. Horses are lovely. In the corner, a table of four twenty-somethings were laughing joyously. The cafe's walls were covered in interesting artwork and handmade objects. Our food came, and both meals were beautiful--the sort of Instagram-worthy meals people take photos of. My husband's meal came on a wooden board decorated with swirls of sauce, seeds, and pink flower petals. I'd never ordered their rice bowl before, and now I kicked myself for wasting two years' worth of op
portunity to order it. There was so much yummy stuff on top that it took a while to find the steamed rice at the bottom. We noted that this was in stark contrast to the meal we'd had at a noodle-themed restaurant last month, when I'd had to dig through a mountain of cheap salted noodles to find a single sprig of vegetable. This time, I got all my veggies, along with delicious braised pork and a variety of sauces, including a heavenly turmeric aioli.

  As we were finishing, I looked across the table at my favorite person in the world, who also happens to be the World's Best Husband and Handsomest Man, and I became overwhelmed with emotion. I believe it's what people call happiness, but I always experience that feeling with a bit of pain. I told him how sad I was that we couldn't live inside that perfect moment forever. He leaned across the table and kissed me. He's used to me being odd about emotions.

  We went home and put on a movie, which we stopped twenty minutes in so we could grab a laundry load from the dryer. I'd started the laundry process around lunch time, but there was a lot of it, and it would take us until bed time to finish folding all the loads. We had to put the movie on pause twice for laundry breaks.

  I'm finishing up this note the following day, so I know how the day ended, and I'll share it with you.

  As we climbed into bed, I commented, "That was a lot of laundry."

  "But a nice anniversary," he said. Another kiss. "Happy launder-versary."

  Cheers,

  Angela Pepper

  Angela Pepper Series Reading Order

  Wisteria Witches - available in ebook, paperback, and audiobook!

  Wisteria Witches Mysteries (Zara Riddle)

  #1 - Wisteria Witches

  #2 - Wicked Wisteria

  #3 - Wisteria Wonders

  #4 - Watchful Wisteria

  #5 - Wisteria Wyverns

  Wisteria Witches Mysteries - City Hall (Zinnia Riddle)

  #1 - Wolves of Wisteria

  #2 - Wisteria Wrinkle