There was still some time to kill before lunch, so I wandered around the public areas of the castle looking for a private place to make a phone call. It was Monday, but Zoey was out of school for the summer, so she was likely either at our house or at Zinnia’s. I wondered what the two of them were getting up to without me.
The castle was teeming with people, and some of them were on edge. As I wandered from one people-filled space to another, I found myself clenching and unclenching my fists. That’s odd. Why was I having such a strong reaction to the presence of other humans? As soon as I’d wondered the question, I got an answer from my subconscious, in the form of a craving for an iced mint mocha. That explained my anxiety.
It hadn’t been long since I’d hosted the ghost of a reclusive introvert gardener. Some residue of her personality remained. She had been a near hermit, who’d only left her country estate for iced mint mochas at her favorite coffee shop. The rest of her time, she spent tending her gardens and her left-handed snails. In honor of her spirit—not to mention satisfy the craving—I stopped by the coffee kiosk near the gift shop for an iced coffee. Mint mocha in hand, I headed up the stairs to my mother’s room on the third floor.
My mother hadn’t bothered to get me my own key for the room. She didn’t have to. Since becoming a witch, there was no longer such a thing as a locked door that could keep me out. I entered the suite slowly, listening for signs of anything that might be happening in my mother’s bedroom—the sort of things that might cause permanent retinal damage if I caught an eyeful. The suite was empty. No Bentley meant no naked Bentley, and thus no retinal damage.
I raided the minibar, taking the remaining snacks that hadn’t been appealing the previous night. To my surprise, the least attractive of the offerings was actually the most delicious of all. As I munched, I was reminded of Dinara, from the story. She was the one who worried all the time, so that her brow was always furrowed and unattractive, yet she was also the one who tried the hardest.
Morganna had pegged me as a daughter of Mahra, but I definitely had some Dinara qualities. And yet, when it came to rules and enforcing them—at the library, not at home—I could be a real Quenya. My librarian’s shush was my warrior’s sword.
When it came to Zoey, however, I was a Daughter of Mahra, putting the mothering in smothering, as she and I sometimes joked.
I didn’t relate as much to Amora. I loved people, sure, but I wasn’t in love with love, or willing to be in the wrong the way she was. Amora loved like she was on fire with love and had to spread it around lest she combust into flames.
After a minute to collect my thoughts, I called Zoey to check in. She picked up the call immediately, and we caught up quickly. Zinnia had come to stay at the house with her, since Boa would need food and water and playtime with her fox companion.
“I offered her your bedroom,” Zoey said. “I hope that’s okay.”
“If it’s fine with the Red Witch House, it’s fine by me. As long as she doesn’t redecorate. I’d hate to come home and find Zinnia’s flowers all over everything.” I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you think the house is listening and getting ideas?”
“Probably.”
“Great.” I tapped the mouthpiece of my phone. “House, if you’re listening, I’d love some fancy new countertops. And the fan over the stove has seen better days.”
“I don’t think it works like that.”
“You never get anything if you don’t ask.”
“True,” Zoey said. “Auntie Z thought your bedroom might have got bigger overnight, but I didn’t see a difference.”
“We really need to get a long measuring tape and take a full survey.” Our house wasn’t like normal people’s houses. It was infused with magic, and had a mind of its own. During my father’s stay with us the previous month, the house had stolen space from my room to create a guest room. My own bedroom had gotten smaller and smaller, until eventually the door completely disappeared. I’d had to bunk with my daughter in her room, and then wear clothes from her wardrobe, since my closet was inaccessible. That was how I had come to be dressed as Audrey, the character from the musical Little Shop of Horrors, on the night a carnivorous plant tried to digest me—the same fate that had befallen Audrey in the play and the movie. Had my house locked me out of my room and manipulated events just so it could play a complicated visual prank on me? I’d nearly died that night. Not funny!
The whole magical house mystery made my head spin. Zoey had a lighter, more optimistic take on our house’s magic. She thought the house shrunk my bedroom to force us to spend more time together, thus strengthening our bond. She felt it was the fierceness of her love for me that gave her the courage to transform into a fox for the first time, as well as the fiery determination to bite the Droserakops into submission.
Maybe the Red Witch House loved us, and we weren’t part of some LOL cosmic joke.
“Oh!” Zoey sounded excited. “There’s a new door on the wall where you had your ugly clock with the nineteen fifties diner scene.”
“That’s your ugly clock, my dear, and when you were ten, you thought it was the greatest thing. You begged me to…” I gave my head a shake. “Did you say there’s a new door?”
“A whole new door,” she said. “Not that it looks new. It looks like it’s been there forever. I had to look through a bunch of photos to make sure it hadn’t been there before. It’s a bit unsettling when things just appear out of the blue inside your house.”
“Where does the door go?”
“Narnia,” she said flatly. “I went through and ruled another kingdom for twenty years while only one hour passed here on Earth. I guess I should have started the conversation with that, huh?”
“Very funny. I guess it goes to a basement or a crawlspace under the house.”
“I wouldn’t know. It’s locked.”
“Why would that stop you? Get a sledgehammer! It’s not breaking and entering if the door’s inside your own house.”
She sighed. “The door didn’t want to let us through. Trust me, we tried. When Auntie Z tried to use magic, the doorknob shocked her.”
“Is she okay?”
Zoey whispered, “She said floopy doops.”
“It must have been quite the shock if she said floopy doops. And then what?” I’d been having an adventurous time at the castle, but hearing about the new door in my house made me jealous and homesick.
“Nothing. I told you, the door didn’t want us to use it.”
“She didn’t call Vincent Wick over to look at it, did she?”
“No.” Another sigh. “She figures we’re safe enough, as long as we leave it alone.”
“Hang in there. I’ll be out of here soon, and then we’ll deal with this new door thing together.”
“It’s a date,” she said with enthusiasm.
“I hope it’s more storage space, or a craft room.”
“It might be a dungeon.”
“Well, that wouldn’t surprise me. Our house does have a very twisted sense of humor.”
“Mm-hmm.” There was a pause, and I pictured Zoey making her phone face, holding up her hand and staring at her left thumbnail as though it contained a tiny television screen. I missed her. If I didn’t get home today, that would be two nights apart. If I stayed away too long, she might realize she didn’t even need her mother. Curses on me for raising such a self-sufficient kid.
She broke the silence. “So, did you solve that murder already?”
“That’s not my job,” I said. “I’m just a librarian, not a detective. Bentley is here with a full forensics team, and some people from the DWM are around, too. I’m sure they’ll figure it out without my help. I’m just sitting pretty. Just hanging out.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” she said.
Oh, just that there’s a hot guy here who looks exactly like Chet but minus the pesky fiancée. If he checks out as not being a creepy golem monster or an evil doppelganger se
nt up from hell, maybe he can be your new stepdad.
“Not much to talk about,” I said. “Want to hear a cool story about the four Eves? They were Adam’s wives, the mothers of all of humanity. Their names were Quenya, Mahra, Dinara, and Amora.”
“Who? Have you been writing Wicked Wives fan fiction again?”
I nearly dropped the bag of unsalted peanuts I’d been munching on.
“I knew those names sounded familiar,” I gasped. “Those were the four desperate housewife witches on the show!”
“Duh,” she said, the way only a teenager can.
“No wonder I could picture them perfectly. I thought Morganna Faire was just a wizard at storytelling.”
“What are you talking about? Do you mean the kooky old lady who cut our hair at the Beach Hair Hut?”
“Beach Hair Shack,” I said. “And yes, I mean her. She’s got a chair at the salon here. She works at the castle a few days a week during the busy season. She gave me a trim and a deep conditioning treatment this morning. My hair feels so soft.”
“Fascinating story so far. Just riveting.”
“Aww,” I said. “You miss me! You’re especially mean and sarcastic when you’re in need of a hug.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny those accusations,” she said dryly. “Now tell me the cool story about the four ladies.”
I got as comfortable as I could on the formal sofa in the suite, and started telling the tale. I relayed the story exactly the way Morganna had told it to me. One of my witch power perks is having near-perfect recall of conversations, assuming I make some effort to remember in the first place. Being genuinely interested in the first place seems to be the best way to fix something in my memory, which isn’t too surprising, since memory basically works that way for people who aren’t witches.
When I’d finished the tale, Zoey said, “That sounds about right. Four archetypal women. There wasn’t one Eve, but four. Sure, why not?”
“It’s almost Jungian, but not exactly.”
“All the best TV shows have four girls,” she said, and she started listing some. In addition to Wicked Wives, there had been Pretty Little Liars, Girls, Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, and some older ones, like Designing Women, Golden Girls, and Facts of Life, all of which I’d loved watching in syndication as a young girl.
We both chattered away happily about our favorite TV characters, and how fun it was to fit them into the four archetypes. Quenya, the warrior queen, was represented by the bossy girl. Dinara, the thinker, was represented by the worrier, or the sad sack, or the nerdy girl. And then the party girls fit into the mold of Amora, the lover. Mahra, the mother and destroyer, was the least extreme, usually the role of the main girl—if there was a main character and it wasn’t a true ensemble.
Our discussion was interrupted by my aunt’s voice in the distance on the other end of the call. She was either calling for the cat or complaining about something the cat had done, or possibly both.
I asked Zoey, “Does Zinnia want to talk to me?”
“Uh, just a minute.” There was the muffled sound of the two of them talking, then footsteps on the stairs, then a door closing. “Okay. I’m in my room now,” she said.
“Something wrong?”
“No,” Zoey said, her high pitch saying otherwise. “I think Auntie Z just needs some time to process. It’s pretty big news that Gigi is back from the dead.”
“She’ll get over it. I already have, for the most part. It’s hard to stay angry at someone for being alive.”
She was quiet for a moment before saying, “I thought once I got my powers, everything would be easy and I wouldn’t have any more problems.”
“Sorry, kiddo. Life doesn’t work that way. You bop one problem on the head, and another one pops up like a mechanical gopher—like in that game where you try to bop them all on the head. You remember that game, right? You used to love bopping those gophers! Remember that one time you broke it, and it was out of order for months? You were so disappointed.”
“Do you think that was my fox nature? That secretly I wanted to murder and eat all the gophers?”
I nearly choked on the iced coffee I’d been sipping. I hadn’t made that connection… until now. It was so obvious in hindsight.
“Never mind,” she said. “Don’t answer that. How are you getting along with Gigi?”
“There has been some sniping, and I’ll admit I haven’t been perfect, but things are pretty good. I met her reanimator. Spoiler alert: It’s Dr. Ankh, from the DWM. She’s actually here at the castle. We were in a hot tub together this morning, just the three of us. Dr. Ankh has the longest funky-monkey-finger-toes you’ve ever seen.”
“I don’t even know what to do with all that information.”
“If you think that’s a shocker, wait for it.” I paused dramatically. “My mother, your grandmother, the lady known affectionately as Gigi, is dating Detective Bentley.”
Zoey squealed with horror or excitement or a blend of both. “Seriously? Does he know about her condition?”
“Nope. He’s totally in the dark. He refuses to believe we’re even related.” I explained to my daughter about the glamour charm on my mother’s necklace, and its effects.
“Poor Bentley,” she said. “I feel sorry for him. It’s terrible to not be a part of everything that’s going on.”
“Even worse, she calls him Teddy B.”
“That’s actually kind of cute. But isn’t he a bit young for her? I thought he was your age.”
“I’m not as old as Bentley.”
“Don’t be so sure of that.”
I snorted.
She said, “Well, if zombies don’t age, he’ll have a chance to catch up with Gigi.”
“And so will you.”
“But you’ll get there first.”
“Curse you for being so smart.”
She breathed heavily into the phone. “Do you think I’m a daughter of Dinara? Do you think I’m doomed to spend my whole life thinking about things and getting worry lines while everyone else is having fun?”
“It’s just a story,” I said. “Just a very old story, told by a kooky old lady who spends her days cutting hair.”
We talked for a while longer, and I tried to cheer Zoey up, but she was uncheerable.
* * *
When it was time for me to meet my mother for lunch, I took the stairwell down, and then, instead of walking through the crowded public areas and triggering my residual introversion tendencies, I continued down to the basement level. I knew of a shortcut to the dining rooms. Given that I’d never taken the shortcut before, I had to assume the knowledge was courtesy of Jo Pressman. Did she just want to get to the dining room quickly, or did she want to show me something? Spirits work in circuitous ways, the darn enigmatic things.
I reached a locked door marked Staff Only. Jo’s shortcut knowledge didn’t come with a set of keys, but I did have my magic. While I used telekinetic energy to twist the handle open from the opposite side, I thought of the locked door that had recently appeared in my wacky change-o-matic house. What surprises could be waiting for me on the other side? Or what horrors?
I was daydreaming about a dedicated crafting room in which to start crafting when I pushed open the door and was startled to find Chet Moore—or maybe it was his lookalike—standing in a small chamber that, by the labels on the stacks of cardboard boxes along the wall, was used for the storage of Christmas decorations.
“Hello,” I said cautiously. Which one was he?
He smiled as though truly happy to see me and not just annoyed.
It was Archer.
Chapter 22
Archer Caine gave me a friendly, flirty look. He tilted his head and checked out my bare legs.
“Nice legs,” he said. “Even nicer without all the indentations from the carpet.”
I pointed my toes together and giggled. “My friend loaned me these clothes.” I tugged at the shorts—not that it made them any longer. “I
didn’t plan to spend several days at a luxury resort dressed like a summer camp counselor.”
“Regardless, you bring some much-needed fresh blood to this place.”
“Fresh blood?”
His face froze for a second. “I meant to say fresh air.” He turned toward the stacks of cardboard boxes, breaking eye contact. “How’s your buddy doing?”
“My buddy?” I replayed bits of our early-morning conversation. I’d referred to my mother as my roommate. “Do you mean my roomie?”
“No. Your buddy the ice machine,” he said with a chuckle. “You two were cuddled up pretty tight last night.”
I leaned back against the door I’d come through and pressed my palms against the door behind my butt. I pushed my butt back on my hands with body language that was unfamiliar to me, Zara Riddle, but very familiar to Jo Pressman. This was her flirty stance, with the toes pointed together shyly combined with weird hip rocking that suggested something between dancing to a favorite song and needing to find a restroom. How was this attractive? It didn’t seem very cute to me, but it was working a magic of some kind. Archer was watching my movements out of the corner of his eye.
“Oh, that ice machine,” I said. “We’re not exclusive, just FYI.” The not-exclusive line had come from Jo, who was never asleep when there was an opportunity for flirting. She made my shoulder bob, so that my whole body was an undulating twist of girlish awkwardness. “Not exclusive at all.”
“You’re seeing other ice machines?”
“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell.”
“Are things getting serious with any of these ice machines?”
“I wouldn’t say we’re hot and heavy or anything. Well, heavy, but not hot. Because of the ice.”
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