Wisteria Wrinkle

by Angela Pepper

  Zinnia looked down at herself. She hadn’t looked too bad, not until they’d fallen on the pile of dirt on the way back.

  “Let’s get to the bathroom so we can remove this dirt,” Zinnia said. “Then we’ll see about getting some coffee.”

  “Dibs on sleeping under your desk.”

  “I’m sure you’ll perk up once we get some coffee in you. About three pots should do the trick.”

  “Challenge accepted.” Margaret yawned and rubbed her face, spreading more dirt around.

  Chapter 22

  Zinnia and Margaret put a Closed for Maintenance sign on the ladies’ washroom, and then used magic spells to wash and dry their clothes.

  “We need to cover our tracks,” Margaret said. She was using her finger to brush her teeth at the washroom counter. “Voo voo vava chee?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Margaret took her finger out of her mouth. “Do you have the key?”

  “You saw me put it in my purse less than twenty minutes ago.”

  Margaret gave her teeth one more rub. “We need to switch it back. Liza can’t know that we figured out what she’s been up to.”

  “Sure. We can switch it back. She’ll probably go there again at lunch time with Xavier, but I suppose that will be okay. We’ll call a meeting of the coven tonight.”

  Margaret groaned. “Do we have to?”

  “Four heads are better than one.”

  “Even if one of the heads is Fatima’s?”

  Zinnia regarded her friend for a moment. “You know, Margaret, I never realized how ageist you are. Are there any young people you’re not suspicious of?”

  “Young people are loose cannons.”

  Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. “In any case, I do believe it’s time to involve the others. And possibly my niece as well, if it comes to that.”

  Margaret patted her gray curls dry. “I knew that Gilbert girl was too cheerful. Nobody her age is that happy. She’s been up to something really evil.”

  “I’m not so sure of that,” Zinnia said. “She’s just a kid. I’m not ageist, or at least I try not to be, but it’s true they don’t have as much life experience. It’s possible they have no idea it’s a stasis field, or a time tunnel, or whatever it is. I believe they’ve simply been using the vacant floor to spend time together.”

  Margaret frowned. “They must know more than that.”

  “It did fool both of us. It’s a lucky thing we took the stairs down, or we might never have figured it out.”

  “Oh, I would have noticed right away on our next visit,” Margaret said. “Nothing gets past me.” She started for the washroom door.

  Zinnia cleared her throat.

  Margaret gave her a tired look. “What?”

  “Your clothes?”

  Margaret looked down at herself. She was wearing only her underwear.

  Shortly before lunch time, they swapped the real key with the fake one Liza had been wearing on a chain around her neck. The two keys were so similar that the witches couldn’t help but question whether they’d made the correct swap despite being super-careful.

  At 12:05, Liza left the office, followed by Xavier at 12:10.

  The two witches met in Zinnia’s office.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Margaret said. “We don’t need to bring the whole coven into this. We could just talk to the Gilbert girl about sharing the key with us. We shouldn’t have to steal it from her whenever we need it.”

  Zinnia frowned. “I don’t like any part of what you just said.”

  “It’s not always bad to keep secrets.”

  “Depends on the secrets.”

  Margaret narrowed her eyes at Zinnia. “Speaking of which, what were you doing with Piero last night? When Francesca and I got back with the food, you had a goofy look on your face.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. The same goofy face you’re making right now. What were you doing with Piero?”

  “Nothing you wouldn’t have done.”

  Margaret squeezed her eyes into the narrowest of slits. “Ri-i-i-ight.” She turned on her heel and clomped out of the office.

  Zinnia leaned back in her chair and looked over at the surge detector in the corner. It was no longer glowing yellow. It was now a fiery orange.

  Zinnia stared at the orange glow and rubbed her temples. She was in such a tough position. The key was powerful. Too powerful. That meant the witches couldn’t allow Liza to keep using it and unwittingly letting monsters pass through to Earth. But on the other hand, if the coven met and decided to turn the key over to the DWM, then the DWM would have it, and that organization’s reputation wasn’t exactly pristine. The recent events with Chessa Wakeful made it clear that Margaret’s paranoia about the shadowy organization was not unfounded.

  Zinnia pulled her gaze away from the glowfish and looked at the directory on her phone. She could pick up the handset right now, and in ten seconds, she could be talking to Mayor Paladini. The mayor was certainly interested in the Gilbert family, if not the key specifically. Was she the person Zinnia ought to be reporting to? If only Zinnia knew who she could trust.

  Something else pecked at the back of her mind. She was forgetting something.

  She took another sip of coffee. She usually preferred tea, but after no sleep, plus wine and time travel jetlag, she needed all the help she could get. If she’d been at home, she could have whipped up something stronger. Then again, if she’d been at home, she could have climbed into her soft, comfortable bed.

  Her eyelids felt heavy. She leaned all the way back in her chair. Since her eyelids were so heavy, she would allow them to rest for a minute. Just for a minute.

  Zinnia woke up, disoriented from her chair nap.

  Karl was in her office, repeating her name and clearing his throat.

  “You’re awake,” he said.

  “I was just resting my eyes.” She checked the time. It was two o’clock, which meant she’d been asleep for over an hour. She leaned to the side to see if Liza was back at her desk. She wasn’t. Neither was Xavier. Zinnia’s pulse quickened. Her mouth tasted sour. They should have been back by now. They’d always returned by one o’clock. Something was wrong.

  Karl followed Zinnia’s gaze and asked, “Is there something going on that I should know about? Something to do with the new hires?”

  Zinnia kept her voice calm and breezy. “Nothing work-related, I’m sure.” She had to get rid of Karl so she could track down Liza, but how? She picked up her coffee mug and took a sip of the cold drink to clear the acrid taste of panic from her mouth.

  Karl went to the door, as if to leave, but he didn’t exit. He pulled the office door closed. Then he slowly pulled Zinnia’s guest chair away from the wall, pushed it up snug to the other side of her desk, and took a seat. He groaned loudly as he sat, as usual.

  Zinnia swept away her worries about Liza and Xavier to focus on the current problem. Karl wanted to talk to her. In private.

  Karl Kormac was the sort of older man whose quirks you had to laugh at, if only to keep from crying for him out of pity. Karl was easily flummoxed by things like computers and email, yet he had gotten himself into a management position at City Hall. He was eagerly awaiting his retirement date in less than two years. Then, he promised, he would start pursuing his dreams, whatever those were.

  When Zinnia had started working at the department, Karl had secretly been referred to as the Coworker Most Likely to Have a Heart Attack While Screaming at the Photocopier. Zinnia had observed his lack of patience with electronic devices first-hand, so it was no mystery to her why the photocopier never worked for Karl. She’d also seen him inadvertently jinx the coffee maker—something regular, non-magical people could do by accident if they used the right words and tone of voice.

  Karl was average height and portly in build. He had a full head of hair, mostly brown, which was perpetually in need of a haircut. His wife had passed a few years back, so he didn’t have anyone to remind
him to visit the barber. He had squinty eyes, a bulbous nose, and a ruddy complexion that easily turned beet red when his ego was insulted, which happened at least once a week. He dressed exclusively in off-the-rack suits, even on Casual Fridays, and wore yellow-tinted glasses when he worked on the computer. When a coworker had used Karl as inspiration for a fictional book character, she’d cast him as Lark, the troll. Trolls weren’t real, as far as Zinnia knew, but she did suspect Karl might have some supernatural powers. The man was a wicked good bowler, could drink scorching hot coffee without wincing, plus he was really good at jinxing the office appliances.

  Karl spoke first. “Technically, we are both equals now, Zinnia.”

  “I suppose that’s true, though you have subordinates and I’m only the boss of myself.”

  “Zinnia...” He trailed off and looked down. His cheeks reddened.

  Zinnia’s mind raced. She’d seen Karl Kormac look bashful before. On her first day at the office, she’d realized he had a crush on their coworker, Annette Scholem. Zinnia had encouraged Karl to act on his crush and spend time outside of work with Annette. Unfortunately, that advice hadn’t worked out so well. Karl had been rejected as a suitor—Annette was understandably wary about romantic relationships—and he hadn’t taken it well. At one point he’d suffered a meltdown and attempted to fire everyone in the office.

  Zinnia remembered Karl telling her once that she wasn’t “his type,” but people changed. Seeing her dirty and inebriated might have ignited something in the older man.

  Zinnia held her breath and waited for him to finish his thought. Please don’t ask me on a date. She had certainly enjoyed the attention of Piero last night—or this morning, or back in 1955, or whenever it had happened—but she wasn’t looking for a relationship right now, especially not with Karl Kormac.

  “Zinnia, we all have our... demons,” he said.

  “Oh?” She took another sip of the cold coffee.

  He gave her a sage look. “I want you to know that you can talk to me. I’m your friend.”

  “Thank you. That’s very kind.”

  Karl rubbed his bulbous nose and squinted at her with his beady eyes. “What do you know about demons?”

  Zinnia was slow to answer. “Demons? As in personal demons? Well, there’s gambling, and drugs, and alcohol.” She waved a hand, interrupting herself. “Karl, I realize my appearance this morning may have caused you some concern, and I appreciate your caring, I really do, but I assure you I do not have demons making me consume alcohol.” No, she had consumed the wine of her own free volition. She had even encouraged Margaret to do the same.

  “There are many kinds of demons,” he said, running a hand through his mostly-brown, thick head of hair. As he did so, he knocked the pair of yellow-tinted glasses off the top of his head. He leaned forward, groaning, picked up the glasses, and sat upright, groaning some more. His face was red from the effort. His face didn’t usually turn that red unless he’d had his ego insulted. She hadn’t offended him, as far as she knew. Was something wrong with Karl? An illness?

  Zinnia asked, “Karl, are you feeling all right?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’ve been feeling funny.” He turned his head and stared at the glowing surge detector in the corner. “What is that thing, and why is it glowing red?”

  She looked. Sure enough, the globe had moved beyond yellow and orange, and was now glowing an alarming shade of red.

  “It’s a decorative thing,” she said. “For relaxation.”

  “That red isn’t very relaxing.”

  “I can take it home with me tonight if it’s bothering you.”

  “Of course not.” He made a blustery sound. “It’s your subdepartment, your office. You can decorate it,” he waved at the wallpaper and curled his upper lip, “however you like.”

  “Thanks.” She gathered some papers from her desk and stacked them together in a tidying-up motion that she hoped would signal completion of the conversation and send Karl on his way.

  Karl didn’t budge. Lark didn’t budge, she thought. She had read that line in Annette’s book, about the troll character who’d been based on Karl. Annette had been right about Karl’s ability to not budge. The one and only time Zinnia had seen Karl move quickly and lightly was when he’d skipped his way up a grassy hill to play on a children’s swing set. He’d been under the influence of two conflicting magic spells at the time, and he’d suffered greatly due to the bad reaction, yet remembering the sight of Karl skipping up the grassy hill never failed to put a smile on Zinnia’s lips.

  Since he wasn’t going to budge, Zinnia decided to go ahead and lance the boil, so to speak.

  “Karl, tell me about your demons,” Zinnia said.

  He made a HARUMPH sound and fidgeted with his computer glasses. “Me? You’re the one who showed up to work drunk and covered in dirt.”

  She said nothing.

  “Fine,” he said. “Can you promise to keep an open mind?”

  “My mind is very open.”

  “But can you keep a secret?”

  Zinnia smiled and repeated a phrase she’d learned from her mentor. “Only the dead keep secrets, and even they aren’t perfect.”

  “True,” Karl said. “But I think you’ll keep my secret. It’s a big one. The sort of thing you’ll keep to yourself because if you tried to tell someone, they’d think you were crazy.”

  Zinnia rested her elbow on her desk and leaned forward. “What is it, Karl?” She batted her eyelashes playfully to lighten the mood. It was something she’d seen her niece do before making a wildly inappropriate comment. “Was there some truth to what Annette wrote about you in her book? Are you actually descended from a long line of magical creatures some might call trolls?”

  Karl maintained steady eye contact. “That depends. Are you and Margaret both witches?”

  She stopped batting her eyelashes. “Good one,” she said. “Very funny.”

  “Is it funny?” He looked down at her blouse. “How did you get all the dirt out of that light-colored shirt?”

  She pursed her lips. “Just because I buy durable fabrics and I’m handy with the cleaning supplies available in the ground floor women’s restroom, that does not make me a witch.”

  Karl adjusted his seat in the chair and groaned from the effort. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar.

  “All right,” he said. “If you won’t go first, I suppose I can. But first...” He turned his head and looked at the surge detector on the bookshelf again. It was no longer glowing red. The color had shifted all the way to white, and it was emitting more light than ever.

  Zinnia lifted a hand to shield her eyes. Witches didn’t suffer hangovers, or at least not bad ones, yet the light was bright enough to make her head ache.

  Gruffly, he asked, “What the devil is that thing?” He got up with a groan and walked over to it.

  “Karl, don’t—” Before Zinnia could finish her warning, there was a cracking sound. Karl turned away just as the glass ball burst. Glass fragments and glowfish radiated out. The glass fell to the carpet and the glowfish hovered in midair.

  Zinnia jumped to her feet. “Karl, are you okay?” He’d been close to the blast zone.

  He rubbed the back of his neck and looked down at his hand. There was something dark on his fingers. Blood.

  Karl looked around, blinking. “I, uh, what are those?” He reached out and poked his finger at one of the floating glowfish. It simply swam away. Through the air.

  Zinnia grabbed some tissues from her desk and dabbed at the back of Karl’s neck. Luckily for Karl, he’d turned away in time to avoid getting any glass shards in his eyes. The worst of the damage appeared to be the back of his neck, though she hadn’t yet inspected his scalp. The fact that the surge detector had exploded did concern her, but there was another matter that was more pressing.

  Karl’s blood. It wasn’t red. His blood was black.

  “Karl,” she said slowly. “Your
blood isn’t red.”

  “I know. That’s what I was trying to tell you before your mood lamp exploded.”

  “It’s not a mood lamp. It’s a...” Based on the appearance of his blood, she made the decision to trust him with the truth. “It’s a surge detector.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “And that explosion must mean it detected a surge?”

  “Something like that.”

  He winced. “My neck really stings.”

  “Hang on. Let me do something about that.” Using a light touch with her fingertips, she sent healing energy into the cuts on the back of Karl’s neck. The wounds closed immediately. The strange black blood disappeared, as thought it had seeped back through his skin. “I’m just checking your scalp now, if that’s all right.” He didn’t refuse. She threaded her fingers through the back of his hair, found three more wounds from the broken glass, and healed them as well.

  “There,” she said when it was done. “You’re not bleeding anymore.”

  He turned around and faced her. “That was fast,” he said in a deadpan voice. “And why is it, Zinnia Riddle, that I am no longer bleeding?”

  She narrowed her eyes and pinched her lips. He knew darn well why he wasn’t bleeding anymore. It was because she’d used her witch powers to heal him. She had told him the truth about the surge detector, but she wasn’t about to say the words he was digging for. No witch gave away her secrets easily. As much as she wanted to know why Karl’s blood was black, she wasn’t going to admit her powers first.

  “Well, well, well,” Karl said, eerily calm considering there were glowfish wriggling through the air around them, defying all laws of physics. “It seems as though we are at an impasse.”

  She kept her silence.

  There was a pounding on the door that startled both of them out of their staring contest. The door burst open.

  Liza Gilbert stood there, eyes wide with panic. Half of her blonde hair had come loose from her ponytail and was hanging down the side of her face. She was breathing raggedly, and her face gleamed with sweat.