As much as I wanted to question Archer Caine about my stranger twin theory, I left the door closed and went to the minibar. Jackpot! The snacks had been refilled while we’d been at dinner, plus there was booze. I took out a tiny bottle of rum and mixed a cocktail that Winona Vander Zalm would approve of, which wasn’t difficult, since she approved of anything that contained rum.
Cocktail in hand, I settled onto my makeshift bed. I hadn’t brought any books along, so I started to get restless after a few minutes. I searched around, hoping my mother had suddenly taken up reading novels in her new “second life.” She had not.
Her magazines weren’t too compelling, and the room had no television, so I got out my phone and scrolled through my contacts. I stopped on the emergency number for the DWM. I’d only used it once before, when my coworker had turned into a flamingo. Was it a one-use number, or would it work again? I pressed the call button. I had to report Chet’s doppelganger to someone. Surely it was an emergency for the department that someone was walking around impersonating one of their agents.
A familiar feminine voice answered the call after one ring.
“Zara!” she exclaimed happily. It was Charlize, whom I hadn’t spoken to since the incident at Tansy Wick’s greenhouse a few weeks earlier. With a snaky hiss, the gorgon said, “It’sssss ssssso nice to hear from you.”
But was it nice for me to hear from her? My throat closed up. My heart was heavy in my chest, like granite. I wanted to hear more of her voice, but that would require talking to her, and I wasn’t talking to her. Sure, Charlize had technically saved my life the last time we’d seen each other, but she was also the one who’d endangered me in the first place. How do you get past something like that? In all the advice columns in all the ladies’ magazines that have ever existed, not once has someone adequately addressed the issue of forgiving a gorgon for turning your heart to stone to save you from the poison of the flesh-eating plant she let you get eaten by. Not once.
“I can hear you breathing,” Charlize said. “I know you’re still there.”
“This is an emergency business call,” I said, slurring a bit.
“You’ve been drinking.”
“No,” I lied. Interesting. Being around my mother all day had made me more defensive than usual.
“What’s the emergency business?”
I took a deep breath and considered my choices of spilling everything versus ending the call. Could I tell her about Josephine’s ghost, and about Chet’s stranger twin without technically breaking my vow to never speak to her again? This conversation could be exempt, because it related to emergency business. Like how some union members can go on strike but still maintain essential services.
“Zara? Did you capture the soul of that poor girl who killed herself at the castle? Do you know why she did it? Are you feeling suicidal?”
“Slow down,” I said. “Yes to the first part. As for the rest, huh? Suicide?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Have you read the reports about the condition of the body?”
“Yes. And I’ve seen photos.”
“Well, you don’t seriously believe Josephine Pressman was feeling a bit glum and ripped out her own throat, do you?”
“More like burned it out. We believe she drank something.”
“Oh.” I rubbed my own throat. “I saw the open wine in the apartment, and I thought someone might have drugged her before doing whatever they did.”
“We believe it was a corrosive poison in the wine.”
“Poison?” I sniffed my rum and Coke. It did smell like poison, but only because alcohol technically is a poison. I set it aside anyway.
“We’re not sure yet what kind,” she said.
“But you’re working on it, right? Does Westwyrd still fall within your jurisdiction?”
“Yesssss,” she replied with a snaky hiss. “Our jurisdiction is quite broad. How are you? Is everything okay with you and your family?”
“We’re fine. You don’t need to worry about us.”
“But I have been worried. You haven’t returned any of my calls, and now you’re calling me on the outbreak hotline.”
“There’s an outbreak? Of what?”
“That’s just what we call the hotline It’s a long story. I’ll tell you some other time.”
“Sounds interesting. I’ve got all night.”
She chuckled under her breath. “It’s the sort of story that’s better if I can show you.”
“Another time, then.”
“It’s a date!”
I didn’t say anything. Why was I talking to Charlize if I wasn’t talking to Charlize? Maybe I did have too much wine at dinner.
“Zara, is everything okay there? I understand you’re at Castle Wyvern, under the lockdown.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I’m bunking here for the night. I’m sharing a suite with my mother.”
“Who?” Her voice pitched up. “Zara, your mother died five years ago. Stay where you are. I’m sending an agent to extract you.” I heard buttons being tapped rapidly.
“No need,” I said. “Don’t extract me. My mother would be so offended if I got myself out by extraction, and I’d never hear the end of it.”
“How are you in communication with your mother?”
“The regular way. In person. I know I told you mother was dead, but she’s not. As it turns out, my mother is a creature of the grave.”
There was only a hissing sound, then, “What?”
“Yeah, she’s back, and everything’s cool,” I said. “I mean, it’s weird, but kinda weird-good, you know?”
There was a squeak, like that of an office chair being leaned back into. “What a shock that must have been.”
“I know, right? First my dad shows up out of the blue. Then my mom. Who’s next?”
Silence.
I laughed, filling the awkwardness. “No, really,” I said. “Who’s next? You work at the place with all the tech. You must have access to a crystal ball, or a dusty old stack of ancient prophecy scrolls, or maybe a fancy computer with prediction algorithms. You can tell me what’s next on the agenda for Operation Mess Up Zara’s Life.”
“I can’t predict the future,” she said.
“That’s a shame.”
“So… uh… how is your mother?”
“The same but different.”
“Interesting. I’ve never known a creature of the grave personally, but if that’s what it took to have my mother back, I’d welcome her with open arms.” She paused. “Probably.”
“But you’d sleep with one eye open, right?” I chuckled, and she did, too. “Or a couple of hair snakes on guard duty.”
“Good idea.” She kept chuckling.
She asked me to tell her more about the reunion, from what we’d said to how I felt. I had been too busy to process how I felt about everything, so I was happy to have the opportunity to hear the words coming out of my mouth so I could make some sense of it. We talked for a while, and the conversation flowed easily. We shared stories about loving our mothers, even when they drove us nuts. As I talked, I was surprised by how good and right it felt to share with Charlize. She had welcomed me into her family so eagerly, calling me a sister, and tonight I felt her acceptance.
My heart ached again, but in a different way. I still had her sister’s memories of their mother dying. It always hurt so much to remember their last goodbyes. The shared experience of losing our mothers had been something I’d bonded with the triplets over. And now I had my mother back. Did that corrupt our bond? It definitely changed things.
Charlize asked, “Is she different now?”
I got up and checked to see that my mother was still behind the closed bathroom door. I could hear the bath water running. We had a bit of time.
“She’s got black hair now,” I said.
“Ooh. Redheads look so exotic when they dye their hair black. Has she eaten in front of you?”
“Steak. No brains.”
Charlize laughed until she was wheezing. “Good one, Zara.”
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s nice to hear something positive from another human being.”
“Has she been criticizing you in that helpful, motherly way?”
“My mother? Gosh, no. But I did have slightly more wine at dinner than she did, so naturally I am a raging alcoholic.”
“Naughty girl,” she said.
In the faux-serious voice I used for talking to myself, I intoned, “Zara tries to be a good daughter, but wine is so tasty.”
“They say it’s better to be full of wine than full of crap.”
I snorted. “They say the most expensive part of being a parent is the wine.”
She giggled. “If I stopped drinking wine, I’d have to start picking up more hitchhikers.”
I stopped laughing. “What?”
“Uh… never mind. I always go too dark.”
I heard the bathroom door creak open, so I quickly changed the topic.
“Has Chet reported to you about his stranger twin?”
“What? A twin?”
“I don’t know if it’s a stranger lookalike, or magic, or some practical joke he’s playing on me. I just thought someone at the department should know.”
“Slow down and start at the beginning.”
“There’s a guy here at the castle, named Archer Caine, who’s a dead ringer for Chet. I told Chet about it already, but he hasn’t gotten back to me.”
“Hmm.”
“Should I be worried? Do you want me to go find the guy and question him?”
There was more button pushing and key tapping. “Hang on.”
“I hope I’m not getting anyone in trouble.”
Key tapping continued at a frantic pace. “Chet should have reported in about something of this nature. I worry he may have been compromised.”
“Really?”
She hesitated again. Stiffly, she said, “I don’t have authorization to disclose confidential material regarding that specific matter.” She cleared her throat. “But perhaps you could tell me a bit more.”
I told her everything, from me bumping into the man outside the ballroom, to him holding my shoes, and then the way he’d disappeared. I also told her my two theories. One, Archer was a twin who’d been born hours later and possibly stolen or given up for adoption. Two, he was a match from a stranger twin website.
When I was done, Charlize said, “This man could be a genuine twin. Our kind does have a higher incidence of multiple births, hence my triplet sisters.”
Just then, my mother came into the sitting room. Her hair was wet from the bath and she was wearing her robe again. She inspected the minifridge. She pulled out a single-serve bottle of red wine and gave me a look I hadn’t seen in years. It was the you’re-driving-me-to-drink-this look.
Charlize was still talking in my ear. “I’m going to hack into those stranger twin websites myself,” she said. “Don’t worry about a thing, Zara. The A-Team is on this, by which I mean me. I am the A-Team. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I’ll talk to you again soon.”
“You’re welcome, I think.”
“I’m sending you something.”
“By email?”
“Special delivery.”
“Can’t wait.”
We said goodbye, I ended the call.
My mother opened her wine, and I caught her up on my phone call—just the stuff about Chet, not the parts where I made fun of her. She seemed more interested in my friendship with Charlize, and asked a lot of questions about that. I decided my rum and Coke probably wasn’t poison and went back to drinking it.
About an hour later, our conversation was interrupted by a tapping at the window. The tapping was coming from outside. We were on the third floor.
My mother and I looked at each other with alarmed expressions.
“A friend of yours?” I asked. “Someone dead and famous who can fly?”
“I’m not expecting anyone.” She got to her feet and tightened her robe. “Get your defensive powers ready, just in case.”
I already had the blue fire crackling between my palms.
We both went to the window to see who could be tapping on the glass.
Chapter 13
It was dark outside, which made it difficult to see who or what was tapping at the window.
My mother huddled next to me and asked, “Is that a bat?”
“I can’t tell. Are you sure it’s not one of your jays?”
“It’s not one of mine.” She rubbed her temples and fluttered her eyelashes. “My babies are all resting.”
The tapping on the window became more insistent.
“Maybe it’s a very impatient bat,” I said. “We just need to shed some light on the subject.” I palmed my blue plasma and turned both of my hands so that the light radiated out through the glass.
“Zara, be careful. It could have rabies.”
“I’m just shining some light out there. I’m not going to open the window and invite a potentially rabid bat to fly around inside your nice suite.”
“Don’t make it mad. Careful! You’re shining your witch lights right in its eyes.”
I sighed and angled my palmed lights down. “How’s that?”
“Now I can’t see anything at all. Shine it up, but not so high.”
I rotated the blue light up slowly, illuminating the creature’s clawed feet, then its body, which had a main mass about seven inches long and was covered in green scales.
“Those are scales,” my mother said. “That’s not a bat.” She took a hesitant step closer to the window. “But it might still have rabies, so be careful and don’t make it mad.”
I broadened the light by spreading out my fingers. The creature’s wings were double its body mass length, about fourteen inches. It was hovering in place, flapping bat-like wings. Whipping around behind it was a snakelike tail. I angled the light upward, illuminating its head, which was elongated and had a ridged crest, like that of a seahorse.
My mother’s hand went to her mouth. “A dragon,” she gasped.
“Actually, it’s a wyvern.”
“Dragon, wyvern, what’s the difference?”
I turned and blinked at her. “That’s the question you’re most concerned with right now? What is with you?”
“I have a curious nature.” She turned back to the hovering wyvern. It suddenly dropped out of sight.
We both stepped closer to the window and peered down.
The wyvern popped up again, just as suddenly. This time it had a brown-wrapped package clutched in its talons. Its long tail swished from side to side before curling forward and tapping three times on the window.
I grinned at my mother. “Look, Ma! It followed me home. Can I keep it?”
She took a few steps back, eyeballing the wyvern warily. “That package is addressed to you. Is this one of Zinnia’s tricks?”
The package did have my name on it. Charlize had warned me she’d be sending something by special delivery. A delivery didn’t get much more special than wyvern delivery.
“I think I know this wyvern,” I said, reaching for the window clasp. “His name is Ribbons, and he works for the DWM.”
“As a salaried employee?”
I had to laugh. My mother’s knack for oddly timed questions had not changed at all.
“You can ask him the details of his employment yourself,” I said.
I opened the window wide. Night air rushed in with the scent of the jasmine and roses from the garden below.
The wyvern tossed the package at me. Somehow I’d known he was going to do so, and I caught the bundle easily—no magic required.
“Thank you,” I said. “Are you Ribbons?” It seemed like the polite thing to do, to ask his name, even though I was certain he was the same wyvern I’d met briefly via Charlize’s ceiling projection.
Still hovering, but closer to the open window and bathed in the light from the room, the wyvern fli
cked out his long, purple tongue and wiped it over one black eye and then the other. Then he blasted two streams of red-orange fire from his nostrils. The fire streamed up and looped around itself like twin ribbons.
“Ribbons it is,” I said. “And now I see how he earned his name.”
A psychic wave of positivity came from the wyvern. He set down on the windowsill. His talons squeaked against the rough-hewn stone of the window ledge. Under his force, the stone gave way like powder, leaving smooth grooves. The wyvern was barely the size of an owl, yet its raw power was sobering. If the effects of the wine and the rum and Coke hadn’t completely worn off already, they certainly did now.
My mother whispered, out of the corner of her mouth, “How much money should I tip it?”
“How much money do you have on you?”
“It’s a serious question. I don’t know how much is customary for a person to tip a small dragon.”
Ribbons coughed out another plume of orange flame. My mind filled with laughter that was not my own. Was he projecting his own amusement into my mind? One of the black eyes winked. He was.
My mother had gotten her purse and was rummaging around inside it. “How about twenty?”
Ribbons sent me another wave of positivity. Having my mind flooded with his messages was not unpleasant. I felt like how I imagined a dog would feel when being praised.
“You can’t go wrong with a twenty-dollar tip,” I said to my mother.
She folded the bill twice and held it out gingerly. The wyvern launched itself into the room, snapped the bill from my mother’s fingers, did one circle of the perimeter, and returned to the windowsill before my mother had even finished her shriek.
“He says thank you,” I reported. The twenty-dollar bill was nowhere in sight. Either the wyvern had eaten it or he had pockets hidden within his scales.
Pockets, he answered in my mind.
“Oh,” I said. “That’s handy.”
Tell your lady friend I’m not a dragon. They have four legs and wyverns have two.
“That’s no lady,” I said. “That’s my mother.”
She looked from the wyvern to me and back again. “What’s going on?”
Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 2 Page 41