“Wait,” I said, spraying a few crumbs.
She tried the door handle, but the door was locked. “Let me out.”
“No way,” I said. “You’re a part of this family, and that means even when things get weird, you don’t get to leave.”
She said nothing. I felt the weight of everyone listening. This moment was overdue, but it had to happen.
“We stick together,” I said. “That’s why Riddle women are so tough. It’s because we stick together.”
She continued to stare at the door. “Is that all?”
I swallowed down something that was not cupcake.
“And you stay because we love you,” I said. I swallowed again. “I love you.”
She turned slowly, her eyes gleaming. “You do?”
“Every minute of every day, even when I’m furious at you.”
She blinked. “Oh.”
“Now sit down and eat your dessert, and tell us how you get the frosting so fluffy.”
She slowly returned to her chair.
“Yes,” Zinnia said with exaggerated eagerness. “How do you get the frosting so fluffy?”
My mother cleared her throat as she returned the napkin to her lap. “The secret is Italian meringue. A dear friend in Venice showed me. It’s a mixture of egg whites beaten to full volume, blended with hot sugar syrup, which you add to the butter or vegetable shortening.” She looked up, her hazel eyes bright and clear now, and she reached for the bottle. “We should finish this wine.”
“Someone’s got to do it,” I agreed.
We filled our glasses with more raspberry wine, and Zoey filled hers with juice.
“One more toast,” Zinnia said.
The four of us stood and raised our glasses.
My aunt looked each one of us in the eyes as she spoke. “To the Riddle women. So much alike, and so wonderfully different. Here we are on this blessed night, for any night is blessed when it’s spent in good company.” She paused and leaned forward with her glass. “Here’s to four unique women, spanning three generations, all together at one table, as it should be.”
“As it should be,” the rest of us murmured in unison.
The sound of our glasses clinking was the most beautiful song. A chill ran down my spine, as though time itself had cracked just a little, and I’d caught sight of a dizzying parade of endless women such as ourselves, past, present, and future.
Together at one table.
As it should be.
Let nothing tear us apart.
Chapter 42
I couldn’t sleep. That night was the warmest one yet since we’d moved into the house, which, like most homes in Wisteria, didn’t have central air conditioning. I had a fan running to keep the air in my bedroom circulating, but it was neither the sound of the fan nor the heat that was tensing my muscles and keeping me from sleeping. It wasn’t a ghost, either. Josephine Pressman was long gone, and nobody else had moved in. Not yet, anyway.
Something Zinnia said over dinner was bothering me. Not the comments about my wardrobe or my inability to keep the interior of the microwave clean, but something else.
I climbed out of bed, pulled on a pair of slippers and a robe, and walked downstairs. The house must have agreed with my actions, because the old wooden stairs didn’t squeak once. The temperature on the main floor was a few degrees cooler, but I was heading somewhere chilly. I opened our new door, located just off the kitchen, and flicked on the light. I paused to stare down the plain, unvarnished stairs to the darkness pooling below. Anyone seeing this basement would swear it must have been there since the day the house was built. Only crazy people would suspect it had magically appeared within the last month, manifesting where only a crawlspace for access to utilities had been when I’d purchased the place back in the spring.
With one hand on the railing, I stepped down the narrow stairs, my slippers clapping softly and echoing below.
I’ve heard about people in space-strapped London hiring digging crews with expensive, small-scale excavation equipment to dig down underneath their homes to get more space. My house had done the same thing, except it had done so of its own accord, and by magic. Having a house with a mind of its own can be unsettling, but on the plus side, my new square footage hadn’t cost me a dollar. Or, as new basement owners in London would say, it hadn’t cost a pound.
I padded over to my work space, which was a tall table so quaintly rustic it could have come from a Pottery Barn window display. The table had been there already when I’d first ventured into the basement, yet it was exactly the design I would have chosen myself. There had been some old cobwebs as well. I wouldn’t have picked those, but I had to admit they were a nice touch.
I sat on my work stool, opened my notebook, and started writing. I wouldn’t be alone for long.
Within thirty seconds, I had a fluffy, white cat sprawled across my papers, batting at my pen.
“Naughty girl,” I said to Boa.
A squeaky voice replied, “But I’m so gosh-darned cute.”
“Oh, no,” I said with theatrical dismay. “Boa, you can talk? Great. That’s all I need. Another family member giving me their opinion about everything I do.”
“Gotcha,” said the voice again, this time in his normal speaking tone. It was my resident wyvern. I couldn’t see him, but his nest was somewhere in the basement, and he had been there most nights when I’d come down to work.
“You thought I was the fluffball,” he said.
“Ribbons, I knew it was you the whole time.”
“You did?” He sounded disappointed. Or at least that was how it came across inside my head. Ribbons didn’t technically speak, not from his throat. He communicated telepathically. We’d strengthened our connection since he’d moved into my house, and now I heard his telepathic speech as though it was actual sound coming from his scaly lips. As far as my brain was concerned, it was real speech, with varying volume and tone.
“But you did a good job making your voice sound squeaky,” I said. “If Boa spoke, she would sound squeaky like that.”
From his hiding place, wherever that was, Ribbons scraped his sharp talons against stone or concrete. “We could give the fluffball the power of speech, you know. If we wanted to.” The talons scratched again. “We have ways of making the fluffball talk.”
I chuckled. Ribbons’ voice had a vaguely “European” accent, a pastiche of television Draculas, wealthy aristocrats, and Italian crime bosses.
“No, thanks,” I said. “If Boa could talk, she’d do nothing but yell at me to leave the house and not come back without a ten-pound can of tuna, extra salty.”
“Tuna? Now you are making me hungry, Zarabella.” He emerged from a crack in the rocky wall and hopped up to his favorite perch, a ledge overlooking my desk. “What devious thing are you working on now?”
“Witcher-i-doo,” I said, taking back the derogatory phrase I’d heard both Vincent Wick and Agent Rob use.
“But what manner of witcher-i-doo?”
“Pfft. Like you care. What was it you said the day after you moved in here? Wait, let me quote you with my near-perfect recall: ‘The affairs of humans are of no more interest to wyverns than the affairs of an anthill matter to a dolphin.’ Sound about right?”
“True.”
“And I hadn’t even asked you about your opinion on human affairs. That was your response when I asked if you drank all the maple syrup.”
“All true.” Ribbons used his tongue to clean one eye and then the other. Whenever he did that, he reminded me of the stereotypical English gentleman in a movie, cleaning his glasses to avoid eye contact during a potentially emotional interaction.
“However,” the wyvern said in a tone dripping with sweetness, “I care very much about what you are doing, Zarabella.”
“No, you don’t. And don’t call me Zarabella. That’s reserved for my mother. Call me by my regular name.”
“Zarrrrrrrrrahhhhh. Zerrra. Is it Zar-rah or Zer-ra?”
&n
bsp; “Either is fine. I’m not fussy. I know who I am.”
“But which one is it?”
“It’s whatever you want.”
“Zed,” he said with an air of triumphant discovery. “I will call you Zed, because that’s what your old friend Nash called you, and you liked being called Zed.”
“Because I like Nash.”
“You don’t like Ribbons? You don’t like meeeeeeeeeeeeeee?” He opened his wings and stepped from side to side in an awkward dance.
“Hmm.” The jury was still out on me liking him. I did find the pint-sized wyvern entertaining. He mostly stuck to himself, but he was secretive as all get-out and probably up to all sorts of stuff I wouldn’t approve of. He still hadn’t ratted out the party who’d supplied the genie with the venom. He was lucky he had good credit with the DWM, or he’d be in a heap of trouble.
“You can call me Zed,” I told him. “Not that you need to call me by my name much, anyway. Whenever I hear your voice in my head, I know you’re talking to me. It’s, like, duh.”
He sighed dramatically, sending out a ribbon of orange in a spiral that twirled past Boa’s front paws. The fluffy, white cat batted at the ribbon with mild interest. It was safe enough; the wyvern’s decorative ribbons were a form of light and smoke that didn’t burn. After a few swats, the ribbons dissipated.
Now, where was I? The rezoning spells. I went back to scribbling notes in my notebook.
“What is that, Zed?” The wyvern hopped from foot to foot, scraping his talons on the rocky ledge. “What are you writing, Zed? Why won’t you tell me, Zed?”
I sighed. “You really need to know everything, don’t you?”
“I don’t care all that much about your witcher-i-doo, but I find myself rather bored this evening, Zed. Entertain me with your problems, Zed. Perhaps I may be of some assistance.” He paused and then added, “Zed.”
“Great job breaking in the new name,” I said, and then, since I didn’t have much choice in the matter, I explained to him what I was working on.
He listened, and commented only that it sounded like an interesting experiment. “Keep working,” he said. “I would very much like to see where this goes, Zed.”
“Okay, then.”
I got back to my scribbling. The fluffy, white cat renewed her efforts to gnaw on my pencil, which was not helpful. But, being a witch, I wasn’t without my own tricks. I let Boa continue to wrestle with the pencil in my hand, while I used my magic to write hands-free a couple inches out of her reach. Boa swished her feather-duster tail happily, having no idea she was being tricked. I wondered, what do people without magic do when cats try to “help” with their work? How does a cat owner even write out a simple grocery list? It boggles the mind.
Two hours and a mug and a half of cocoa later, I had the breakthrough I’d been hoping for. Boa, who’d been sleeping on my lap for I don’t know how long, yawned and slipped away as quietly as she’d come. Ribbons, who had been watching without comment, jumped down from his perch and cocked his seahorse-shaped head at my notes.
“Your handwriting is abysmal, Zed.”
“Yeah? Well, you walk like a duck.”
He snorted a ring of blue smoke that smelled of peppermint.
He eyeballed my notebook more closely. “The handwriting is abysmal, but the logic is solid, Zed.”
Bolstered by his compliment, I started explaining my work. “The thing is, I thought I understood the syntax of the Witch Tongue, but I’d been learning the modern version of the language, which is an improvement in many ways over the hodgepodge of ancient tongues that evolved separately over different parts of the world. The new version of Witch Tongue would be the equivalent of Esperanto, which is an international language invented in the late eighteen-hundreds by a Polish physician named Dr. Ludwig L. Zamenhof. He proposed that—”
Ribbons tumbled forward off his ledge, and coughed on my notebook paper, scorching a dime-sized hole in the center.
“Hey!” I shooed him away. “You promised not to set anything on fire if I let you live here rent free.”
“Sometimes I scorch in my sleep. I’m an occasional sleep scorcher.”
I gave an indignant snort. “I’m sorry my talking put you to sleep.”
“Don’t be sorry. Would you record that speech about Esperanto in case I ever get insomnia?” He waddled, duck-like, over to my mug of cocoa, which was half full and lukewarm. He dropped his pointed snout into the liquid and blew steam through the brown liquid, whipping up froth.
I was speechless. I’d never seen the wyvern’s impression of a Starbucks barista.
He nudged the steaming mug toward me and said, “Never mind my delightful sense of humor. You were saying?”
I accepted the mug cautiously. I wondered, on a scale of one to twenty percent, how much of my beverage was now wyvern spit. The mug already contained some of Boa’s saliva, since the white cat regarded any and all cups as Boa’s Cups.
Ribbons had his beady eyes fixed on me. I was being tested. This, like the meltdown at dinner with my mother, was something that needed to happen for us to move forward with our relationship. I took a small sip. The cocoa, which had been regular chocolate flavor before, now had a slight peppermint flavor. It was, I guessed, roughly five percent wyvern spit. And delicious.
“Thanks for the reheat,” I said, smacking my lips.
Ribbons bobbed his head. “Any time, Zed.”
“As for this witcher-i-doo spell research, I’ll cut to the chase. At dinner tonight, Zinnia made a joke about using a page-finding spell, one that’s normally meant for books, on a spirit’s memories. I wrote it off as wishful thinking, but then I realized that the older Witch Tongue languages have more verb tenses, including those that distinguish between internal and external.”
Ribbons didn’t move or say anything sarcastic. I was onto something.
“Long story short, I should be able to cast a series of spells to, uh, rezone myself as a library. Then I could categorize my ghosts’ memories as books, and then run the page-finder spell internally to locate the specific memories I want to find.” As I heard the words coming out of my mouth, I liked my plan even more. “No more fumbling around aimlessly, visiting various locations and hoping to jog something relevant.”
The wyvern tilted his elongated skull upward twice in a reverse nod. “Do it,” he said. “I want to see you level up, Zed.”
I slowly closed the notebook. “I really should run it past my mentor before I attempt something so potentially dangerous.”
“And what do you suppose your aunt will say?”
I crossed my arms. I knew exactly what she would say. “Aunt Zinnia will tell me to work on my intermediate spells and master the basics before I go barging off with my wild ideas.”
“Bok bok.”
I gave him a sidelong look. “Bok bok?”
“Isn’t that what chickens say? Am I not sending the sound to you correctly, Zed?”
“People don’t say bok bok. It’s more like this.” I did my best chicken impersonation, squawking, and even pushing my chin forward and back in a pecking motion.
When my performance was done, Ribbons said, “My point stands. If you don’t try this spell, you are a chicken.”
“You think I’ll do something just because you call me a chicken? I have more self-respect than to cave under peer pressure. However, I do see the value in finding out if it’s at least possible.”
Ribbons stretched his wings and jumped up to a hanging light fixture, where he hung like a bat. “If I were you, Zed, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all, knowing that only a few spells stood between myself and such tantalizing morsels of knowledge.”
I took another sip of my peppermint-infused cocoa. Maybe it was the wyvern spit, or the late hour, or being in my underground lair, but I was feeling more confident in my abilities by the minute.
I opened the notebook with a flourish. “Let’s give it a shot,” I said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
The hanging wyvern clapped together the small claws connected to his wings and made a gleeful clicking noise in his throat.
I began casting the first spell.
This is a terrible mistake. I shouldn’t have let Ribbons talk me into this.
Zara tries to be a good witch, but her telepathic wyvern friend is a terrible influence.
Too late for second thoughts. The first spell was already underway, flowing around me easily, as though I’d cast it countless times.
And then, as they say in the witch business, the transformation began.
Thanks for reading Wisteria Wyverns, Wisteria Witches Book 5 by Angela Pepper.
What trouble has naughty little Ribbons talked Zara into? And what is he hiding out from, anyway? Keep reading in:
BOOK 6 - title to be announced
WISTERIA WITCHES BOOK 6
by Angela Pepper.
Or... turn the page for an Author's Note from Angela Pepper...
Author's note from Angela Pepper
Hey, good looking!
I hope you enjoyed Zara's latest adventures. This is the first Wisteria Witches book that takes place outside of Wisteria, mainly in one location, Castle Wyvern. In television land, they'd call it a “bottle” episode. I find it amusing that this particular bottle episode contains genies. (This is the sort of thing that amuses authors—or at least this one, anyway!)
Speaking of things that amuse me, yesterday I spent ten minutes in the produce section of the grocery store, trying to figure out what all the weird, unidentifiable vegetables were. Have you seen celery root? It's got twisty little snaky roots, like a gorgon. So now I'm thinking about what type of vegetable relates best to each of the book characters. Red beets for Zirconia. Ginger root for Zara. Sweet potatoes for Zinnia. Zoey is a tricky one. Maybe acorn squash? I love all of those vegetables, and would happily eat up a pan of them roasted together with some maple syrup and powdered chipotle seasoning. Look at that! Now this book comes with a recipe.
Wisteria Wyverns (Wisteria Witches Mysteries Book 5) Page 32