Wisteria Wrinkle

by Angela Pepper

  Aside from the redhead, everything else looked new and modern. Zinnia had not slipped through a wacky interdimensional time portal after all. What a crazy thought!

  Zinnia drove by the woman, chuckling to herself about the crazy outfits some people wore. Who craved attention so badly they dressed in a costume on any day besides Halloween? Zinnia glanced up in her rearview mirror and spotted a familiar face. She had her answer about who craved attention so badly. The woman in the poodle skirt was Zara Riddle, Zinnia’s niece.

  Zinnia kept driving, shaking her head. That Zara! Oh, well. Even if Zara was in a costume, at least she was wearing something, and not skinny-dipping in the ocean again.

  Zinnia glanced over at the glass globe on the passenger seat. It was no brighter or dimmer than it had been a few minutes earlier. That was good news. At least Zara and her new spirit companion didn’t seem to be connected to the power surges. Not directly, anyway.

  Once she got to work, Zinnia kept thinking about Zara’s poodle skirts, as well as the catchy, upbeat music of the fifties. Zinnia hadn’t been born yet, yet she had a fond memory of the time thanks to countless movies set in that era.

  That morning, she found herself doodling the number 5, and then the date, 1955.

  Chloe Wakeful had mentioned that 1955 was the year some monsters had showed up in Wisteria. It seemed, based on the appearance of the brainweevil from last month as well as the wyvern and goopy creature from yesterday, that history was repeating itself. Zinnia didn’t need to research the history of the entire town, since it seemed the phenomena was focused around the City Hall building.

  Zinnia used her new computer network clearance level as the head of Special Buildings Permits to access old records for City Hall itself. The building had been under construction in 1955. She checked the site manager’s daily logs from the construction period and found something odd. The records started in 1953, with the initial survey and ground preparation work. All of the daily logs from 1954 were present and accounted for. And then the records jumped to 1956. All the records for 1955 were missing.

  Zinnia picked up her phone and made a call to the City Hall archives department.

  A happy-sounding man answered. “Hey, Jesse. What can I do for ya?”

  Zinnia was shocked to hear Jesse’s name, but recovered quickly.

  “This is Zinnia Riddle from Special Buildings Permits. Jesse Berman no longer works at this office.”

  “Oh, yeah? How come? Did he find somewhere better where he could slack off even more?” The happy-sounding man on the other end of the call laughed.

  Zinnia rubbed her thumb. “Jesse Berman is deceased,” she said.

  There was a long silence on the other end of the line, and then the man said, “I, uh, didn’t know. Sorry about that. How? When?”

  “It happened in January.”

  “Yeah? What happened?”

  “You can read about it in the newspaper archives, if you’re that interested.” She really didn’t want to discuss Jesse’s death, especially not with someone who she sensed was going to tell her what a great and wonderful man Jesse Berman had been.

  “That’s a crying shame,” said the man on the phone, no longer sounding happy at all. “Jesse was a great guy. One of the best.”

  A great guy? Zinnia knew otherwise. She waited the appropriate amount of time before getting back to the task at hand.

  “Yes, well, I was hoping you could help me locate some records. I can see from my computer here that the original construction logs for a certain town building don’t seem to be digitized. I’m looking specifically for something from the nineteen-fifties.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, yeah. So, that’s a big project. Honestly, I don’t know when we’re going to get around to scanning in all those dusty old books. Some of them might disintegrate before we get to them.”

  “We wouldn’t want that. May I put in a request to move some to the top of the list?”

  “Uh...”

  “It should be simple enough. I’m looking for the daily logs from the City Hall construction, from 1955.”

  There was a long pause. “A lot of those old books got water damaged. Sorry. I wish I could help you, but that year’s not available. My hands are tied.”

  His hands were tied. The ache in her thumb turned into a sharp pain. You didn’t realize how frequently people used the phrase “my hands are tied” until you’d been kidnapped yourself.

  “You can just send me the waterlogged books,” she said. “I don’t actually need them digitized.”

  “Yeah, I hear ya. But yeah, I can’t do that.”

  Can’t? Or won’t? She knew bureaucratic laziness when she heard it. She had, after all, been working at City Hall for over a year now.

  The guy muttered a few more half-hearted excuses.

  Zinnia twisted left and right in her desk chair, her irritation growing. She looked around her office. Her gaze landed on the glowing orb, which was back in its place on her bookshelf. The color was currently pale blue with occasional flickers of green.

  She sent a thought at the orb. Nineteen-fifty-five. The orb flickered green three times.

  She sent another thought. Is there something in the log book?

  The orb flickered again.

  She didn’t typically talk to inanimate objects, but she knew that some magical items had enough environmental Animata to give basic responses to simple questions.

  She might have been reading more into the flickers than was there, but her gut told her she was on the right track getting her hands on those construction records.

  Zinnia returned her attention to the flimsy-excuse-spewing voice on the phone.

  “What a shame,” Zinnia said into the receiver, pouring on heavy disappointment. The types of spells she could use through a telephone line were extremely limited, or else she’d have already whipped up a bluffing spell. She couldn’t bluff the guy without finding him in person, but she could use non-magical techniques. She’d been trying to impress upon her niece how vital it was to not rely on magic, so it would be good for her to practice what she preached. Zinnia had even dosed Zara with power-voiding witchbane to teach the novice a lesson. It had not been easy for Zinnia to use witchbane on a family member, but she had done what needed to be done.

  “Yeah,” said the man on the phone. “Them’s the breaks.” His voice was distant now, as though he had the phone halfway to the receiver in his eagerness to end the call.

  “Jesse would be so disappointed,” she said.

  “Oh?” His voice was at full volume again. “Was this for something good ol’ Berman was working on?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It was sort of a passion project for him. He loved this building and was working on something to commemorate its anniversary.”

  “Oh.”

  “It was the last thing he was working on before he tragically—” She cut herself off with a choked sob.

  “Well, if it’s for Jesse...”

  The man on the phone took the bait, and the rest of the phone call was as easy as catching goldfish in a bucket.

  He promised her he’d put a rush on retrieving the original log books. Unfortunately, a “rush job” in archival records would still take two weeks. The physical copies were stored off-site for safety, in another town entirely, and the transit procedure was labyrinthine. It was no wonder the man had been reluctant to orchestrate the whole thing for a woman he didn’t know.

  Zinnia thanked the man, hung up the phone, and made a note in her scheduling software to follow up and look for the package in two weeks.

  Chapter 9

  TEN DAYS LATER

  The package containing the construction log book from 1955 arrived earlier than anticipated.

  It showed up late Friday afternoon, only ten days after she’d made the request. In fact, when she’d ripped open the envelope along with the rest of her mail, she’d been surprised to see a dusty, water-damaged, leather-bound journal fall out of the padded envelope
and land on her desk with a thump.

  Zinnia Riddle had forgotten all about her request for the old construction logs. Over the last ten days, she had been busy helping her niece deal with her powerful new ghost. Zinnia had done her best as a mentor. She’d been a good listener when Zara had regaled her with tales of her scuba lessons, and the funny antics of the instructor, Leo.

  Zinnia thought she detected a hint of romantic interest in Leo, but any interest in the scuba instructor was overshadowed by Zara’s all-consuming feelings for that wolf shifter, Chet Moore. Zinnia had restrained herself admirably from poisoning Zara against shifters. Chet Moore seemed like a decent family man, despite disguising himself as a wolf whenever it suited him. Zinnia hoped Zara would eventually lose interest on her own. The idea of another Riddle woman falling prey to a shifter who secretly despised witches turned Zinnia’s stomach.

  Anyway, the arrival of the log book was the perfect break from worrying about Zara’s affairs.

  Zinnia rested her hand on top of the leather-bound book and looked up at the surge detector on her office bookshelf. The orb was glowing bright green now, but that wasn’t necessarily from the presence of the log book. The glowfish had been green for days. Chloe Taub didn’t know what green meant, but advised Zinnia to continue keeping her eyes open for other strange things.

  Other than the stuff with Zara, things had been relatively quiet for the last ten days.

  Zinnia had not personally seen any other creatures since the wyvern, though she did hear whispered rumors around City Hall. Something rat-like had been chewing through bags of rice in the cafeteria kitchen. It had thus far avoided capture by rat traps. Also, some moth-like insects had been creating problems for the maintenance crew. They were so powerfully drawn to the security lights around the building that swarms of them blotted out the light completely in the evening, creating safety issues. Last but not least, there was an odd smell coming from the hand dryers in the washrooms. The scent was pleasant and floral, but odd nonetheless.

  Zinnia’s mind beeped psychically with an incoming text message that would arrive at her phone in a few minutes. It seemed Zara was going out for some celebratory drinks that Friday night with her scuba diving class, and would Zinnia like to drop in and meet the gang?

  Zinnia’s vision blurred. She blinked back the tears that threatened to come so easily now that she’d stopped guarding her heart with magical tea. She felt like such a silly, sad woman sometimes. To be so easily affected by such simple gestures of kindness! Floopy doop. She was in danger of becoming one of those sentimental old spinsters who collected porcelain figurines of angels and purchased grocery-checkout magazines featuring the royal family.

  She waited for the actual text message to come in before responding to thank Zara for the invitation. She declined, vaguely citing “other plans.” Her other plans for the evening consisted of going bowling with her office team, the Incredibowls. Zara didn’t need to know that. She’d probably crash the game if she knew, and then demand to know everything about everyone present, from their magical powers to their personal histories and love lives.

  Zara had a lot to learn about discretion. It was a small miracle she hadn’t yet blown the lid off witchcraft for the whole world to see. Being a librarian, she had a natural inclination to want information to be free and available to all who needed it. That was where the two were philosophically at odds with each other. Zinnia didn’t share the librarian’s love for freedom of information. If all secrets were known, soon every food manufacturer would be adding witchbane to their products, for the “protection and peace of mind” of their customers, the vast majority of whom were not witches.

  If the non-magical of the world were to ever find out that people weren’t all equal, and some folks enjoyed special perks, it wouldn’t be good for supernaturals. Not at all. The phrase “internment camps” often sprang up whenever the topic of “coming out of the closet” was discussed in depth by supernaturals. And, given the social climate of late, unveiling magic was the last thing the world needed.

  Zinnia put away her phone, tapped her fingers on the log book, and continued to gaze at the glowing green orb. Staring at the wriggling glowfish was relaxing, like staring at a burning campfire or rippling waters. The creatures were completely sealed within their glass prison, yet they didn’t seem to mind. They floated around, growing larger each day. Zinnia hadn’t been feeding them—there was no way to access the globe interior without shattering it—so they had to be sustaining themselves on magical energy.

  She stared at the glow and fantasized about a future where she didn’t have to hide her identity.

  If supernaturals became known to the world, the changes would be cataclysmic at first, but eventually a new balance would be found. Perhaps it was time for everything that had been in the dark to come out into the light. If the supernaturals seized control—and who was going to stop them?—they could do things right. New leaders could wipe the slate clean. Humanity could have a fresh start. A do-over.

  “Bowling night,” came a female voice in Zinnia’s doorway.

  Zinnia jerked her head up, startled to find Dawna Jones standing there. Startled, but not surprised. Dawna did have that cat-like ability to appear in places silently.

  “That’s right,” Zinnia said. “Friday is bowling night. I’m going. Are you?”

  “I have to,” Dawna said. “Karl wants to bowl a perfect game. My tarot cards tell me it’s possible, but only if everyone’s there to cheer him on.”

  Zinnia smiled. “I didn’t realize tarot cards could be so specific.” She actually did know they could be that specific. It was sort of the whole point of cartomancy, because what good was a vague prediction? But she couldn’t let on to Dawna what she knew. The budding cartomancer was doing well on her own, discovering her abilities slowly.

  Dawna rubbed the base of her nose. “Did you smell the women’s washroom today?”

  “Not intentionally, but I do continue to breathe when I use the restroom.”

  Dawna didn’t laugh at Zinnia’s joke, which was a shame. People did not get Zinnia’s dry humor. She was much funnier than Margaret, who was only funny when she didn’t mean to be.

  “That smell from the hand dryer is getting stronger,” Dawna said. “Something strange is happening around here.”

  Dawna was joined in the doorway by her pale coworker, Carrot Greyson. Carrot chimed in, “And did you hear about the sneaky rats that have been eating all the food in the cafeteria? They’re the size of raccoons.”

  Zinnia asked, “Do they wear little black Zorro masks?”

  Carrot frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  Dawna explained to her coworker, “Because if they wear Zorro masks, that would mean they are actual raccoons, not rats.”

  Carrot continued to frown. “My cousins Jeremiah and Jebediah are both working in the cafeteria, and they know what a raccoon looks like.”

  Dawna smirked and caught Zinnia’s eye. “I bet they do,” she said. She stage-whispered, “Raccoon stew.”

  Carrot clenched her fists like an angry toddler. “They’re both vegans,” she said.

  Dawna waved her hands in the air. “Whatever! All I know is it’s five o’clock and I am getting out of this spooky old building and relocating to wherever it’s margarita o’clock.”

  Zinnia checked the time. It was only 4:55 pm, but that was as good as 5:00 pm on a Friday. She put the log book back into its protective bubble-wrap mailer, slid it into her purse, and got up to leave.

  Gavin called out from the main office area, “It’s only 4:55, Dawna.”

  “There you go again!” Dawna said to Gavin with irritation. “That’s another one. Every time you correct me, I take away a point.”

  Gavin made a strangled sound and demanded to know how many points he was currently at, as well as what he could redeem these imaginary points for.

  Zinnia smiled. It was a typical Friday at the Wisteria Permits Department.

  Everyone gathered
their things, made their way out of the office, locked up, and proceeded directly to Shady Lanes Bowling and Ales.

  After the bowling games finally wrapped up, and Zinnia had returned home, she pulled out the old log book.

  She used her page-finding spell to do a search on terms like monsters, infiltration, and attacks. She found plenty of material referencing one or all three of those keywords. The only challenge was reading the construction manager’s handwriting.

  A few hours into her research project, she called Margaret to discuss what she was finding.

  Margaret answered, “You can’t sleep either? It must be something in the air.”

  “I’ve been reading the City Hall construction logs from 1955.”

  There was a pause, then Margaret said, “Zinnia Riddle, you really make the single life sound wild and carefree. I mean, really. Who wouldn’t want to stay up late on a Friday night reading City Hall construction logs from 1955? It’s a good thing my life is so perfect already or I’d be jealous.”

  Zinnia snorted. “Try to contain your excitement.”

  “I’ll try. What did you find out?”

  “Either the construction manager went insane or there really were monsters infiltrating the building. Want to take a guess what the construction manager’s name was?”

  “Was it I.P. Freely? That’s a popular one with my kids. Also, Seymour Buttz.”

  Zinnia chuckled. Margaret’s children were always good for a few anecdotes. “It was Angelo Wakeful. The grandfather of the Wakeful triplets. The one Chloe didn’t want to talk about.”

  “Ooh. Let me guess. He tried to tell people about the otherworldly things he was seeing, and they turned against him?” She sighed on her end of the call. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

  “And get this. He was young at the time, so this all happened before he got married and had kids. And he mentions meeting a pretty young blonde who showed up on the construction site one day, confused, like she had amnesia.”