I listened, hearing nothing but crickets and the crashing of the ocean. Judging by the lack of screaming or applause, I could assume nobody had seen my amazing trick. The twilight had hidden me well, but it had also hidden Archer. Where could he be? Did he go straight into the castle to confront Morganna?
I ran over to the path leading to the castle entrance. In doing so, I startled a pair of women who’d been walking by. One of the women was my mother and the other was Dr. Ankh.
“Zara!” My mother clutched her throat. “You nearly startled me to death.”
“I doubt that very much,” I said. It would take more than a good startle to kill my zombie mom. “Did either of you happen to see the guy who looks like Chet come through here?” I looked at the doctor. “The, uh, parasite?”
My mother made a tsk-tsk sound. “You’re not chasing him, I hope. Men don’t like to be chased.”
So helpful. “Thanks,” I said flatly.
“Zarabella, your face is a mess,” she said. “You’re all sweaty, and you look stressed.”
“Would you say I look like someone who just fell out of a tower window and narrowly avoided having to land in a wagon full of manure?”
She did a double take, inhaled sharply, and held her hand to her mouth. “Is this about the top secret thing you were allegedly doing tonight? I thought you were lying to get out of dinner with me.”
“Me? Skip a meal? Come on.”
“I should have known,” she said.
“Speaking of my top secret thing,” I said, turning to her companion. “Dr. Ankh, in case you don’t already know, Agents Rob, Moore, and Knox may need your assistance. They’ve been frozen, or slowed down, or something. They’re in the tower, in the clock room. But be careful, because the access points have been set with traps.”
Dr. Ankh took this all in with no signs of dismay or even surprise. “I will go there now,” she said. “Thank you.” She gave me a look that bordered on admiration. “I didn’t see the parasitic twin come through here, but I did see a creature head that way.” She pointed toward the front of the castle, the main entrance.
I asked, “Four legs or two?” It might have been Ribbons, beating me to the punch.
She scrunched her full lips until they were in danger of looking regular sized. “All I saw was the blur of motion.”
“Close enough.” I gathered the front of my skirts and started running.
* * *
Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I arrived at the castle’s hair salon.
The scene looked like a freeze-frame from a music video, captured in the instant following an explosion. Hanging in midair were bottles of hairspray, tubes of styling mud, loose glitter, combs, brushes, scissors, mirrors, magazines, several bouquets’ worth of flowers, plus at least two pairs of rubber clogs, all red.
Nearest the entrance, at the first hair-cutting station, were two stiff yet familiar faces. Both had apparently been frozen in midscream. One was the hairdresser named Patty, and the other was Detective Theodore Bentley. By the look of his silver-streaked hair, which was shorter on one side, he’d been getting a trim when the action had started.
I stepped into the salon, ducking under a floating bowl of hair curlers and its comet-like streak of loose curlers.
The air felt thick, like fog but not as cool or moist on my face. If anything, the air was dry, and wicked away the sweat on the surface of my skin quickly.
I heard bells ringing—another one of the tower bells had fallen to join the others in the clock room. The sound of the clang was normal, meaning the rest of the world wasn’t frozen in time, just the interior of the hair salon.
On my way past Bentley, I checked him for weapons. I’d tested my hands on the way into the castle and found my blue lightning makers were on the fritz. Some defense system. This was the second time my plasma didn’t work right when I needed it most. Did I have to start carrying weapons at all times? Perhaps hair barrettes that doubled as ninja throwing stars?
Bentley didn’t have any weapons on him—at least not in the areas I checked. As I straightened his plastic cape again, we made eye contact. I could have sworn he’d been blinking when I’d pulled the cape up. I patted him on the shoulder, apologized softly, and headed toward the eye of the storm.
The only sound was the clack of my heels on the polished concrete floor.
There were about a dozen people frozen in various tableaus along the hairdressing stations. They might have been wax figures demonstrating hair techniques ranging from the permanent wave to the gray-roots touch-up. I could tell by their frozen expressions—not to mention the fact they were fixed in place—that the hairdressers and clients bore me no threat. I was much more concerned with the two people at the end of the room, near the sinks.
Morganna Faire and Archer Caine were both standing, facing each other, holding their positions but not frozen. As I drew nearer, I could see their chests rising and falling, and I could hear their labored breaths. Both were surrounded by a shimmering bubble of heat, about ten feet wide in diameter. I stuck a finger forward, into the bubble. There was resistance, and more heat, but my finger passed through. I could puncture the bubble if I wanted to. But did I want to?
The tiny, old woman and the big, tall man were a strange pairing, yet their powers seemed equal. Both had their arms outstretched, and their stances wide legged, so they were star shaped. They resembled two mimes pretending to press on either side of a sheet of glass. Both had faces shining with sweat from exertion.
Morganna spoke to me through gritted teeth, “Zara, help me!”
“Don’t fall for her tricks,” Archer growled through his clenched jaw. “She might look like an old woman, but she’s not what she appears to be.”
No kidding. What was she? I leaned forward, getting my face as close to the bubble’s surface as I could without pushing through. The power was buzzing off them, sending a heady rush of power through me. It wasn’t my power, but I could feel it all the same. This power was what had drawn me here, drawn me into the heart of the conflict, despite the warnings of the more sensible part of me who felt I should wait for backup, or let the DWM finish what they started.
But I wasn’t feeling very sensible that night. I hadn’t nearly died in a wagon of manure just so I could turn around now and miss the good stuff.
“Well?” Archer asked. “What do you think is happening here?” The tendons on his neck stood out as though they might suddenly pop off like overtightened guitar strings.
“You seem to be locked in a standstill,” I said. “You must have equal powers. Whatever you are. That’s why you want me to take a side.”
“My stars, you certainly are smart,” Morganna said, breaking eye contact with her foe so she could look at me. “I could tell from the moment we met. You’re whip smart, just like your beautiful daughter. Zara, remember that lovely time we all shared together at my beach studio, the first time we met?”
“That was nice,” I agreed.
“Zara, you’re as beautiful as you are smart,” Archer said, not to be outdone.
“Enough with the flattery,” I said. “I’m immune to flattery. If I weren’t, the library would never collect any overdue fines at all.”
“You’re tough but fair,” Morganna said, her eyes watering now from the effort of her magic. “Now, help me with this big meathead so we can have a good discussion, woman to woman.”
I circled around them slowly, careful not to broach the bubble of fire. “How could I help? I mean, assuming I even wanted to pick a side.”
She slowly sneered. “Hit him on the head with something. Knock him out.”
Archer caught my eye as I walked behind Morganna. “Not me,” he snarled through his clenched jaw. “She’s the evil one. Hit her on the head, not me.”
I asked, “How do I know she’s the evil one?”
He held my gaze as his whole body began to tremble from the effort of holding off the tiny woman. Calmly, he asked, “Did you not
ice how she was the first to suggest violence? Plus, let’s not forget, she’s the one who gave the poison to the gnome to give the girl to kill me. She’s the one—”
Morganna cut him off. “He’s dangerous,” she spat out. “The potion was for his own good.”
I put my hands on my hips and continued circling them. We were getting somewhere, but not fast enough.
“Morganna, I believe you that he’s dangerous. He can freeze people in time. He can set guns on fire. What is he? A sorcerer? A warlock? Come on, Morganna. I like you. Girl power and all that. But you’ve got to give me something to work with.”
“I’ll give you a hint,” she said. “What is the end of a flame?”
“That sounds like more of a riddle than a hint,” I said.
Archer chuckled.
Morganna flashed her eyes at him then said, “It’s time for you to go back into your bottle.”
I sucked in air so quickly it burned my lungs. What kind of supernatural creature goes back into a bottle? The same kind who comes out of one.
“He’s a genie,” I said. “You’re both genies.”
Archer’s upper lip curled up in apparent distaste. “We prefer the term djinn, with a d.”
“No, we don’t,” Morganna said. “What we prefer is for nobody to know what we are.”
I casually nodded toward the salon full of frozen people who were watching and listening in their semi-petrified states. “Bit late for that now,” I said. “Even Bentley knows about you two now, and Bentley has been missing a lot.”
The bubble made a whooshing sound, and the air grew hotter, like a bonfire. I felt the burn in my cheeks and stepped back instinctively.
Both of the genies were now trembling with effort, and locked in their battle.
“Darling brother,” Morganna said, her voice sweet and gravelly like that of a weary yet loving great-grandmother. “Since Zara won’t decide, we could always make a truce.” Don’t trust her, I thought, probably because her voice reminded me of an evil witch in a classic cartoon movie.
“No truce,” Archer said. “One of us is going back in the bottle, and it’s your turn, dear sister. It’s been your turn for a long time.”
“But I’ve accomplished so much in my time,” Morganna said. “Just think. As soon as we have the new Erasure Machine up and running, we’ll have an unlimited supply of bodies at our disposal. We can be anything. We won’t even have to get old and wrinkly every hundred years.”
I held up my hand like a student in a classroom. “I’m sorry, did you say Erasure Machine? Are you admitting that you two were the ones behind that whole thing with Perry Pressman and the monstrosity in his attic?”
Their grim silence told me everything.
I cursed under my breath. If only I’d thought to retrieve the DWM microphone from beneath the tower. If only I had the genies’ full admission on tape. The DWM was never going to believe me. They wanted their closed cases to stay closed.
“Just hit her already,” Archer said to me impatiently. “Whack her on the head with whatever’s handy. You heard what she said. She was the one who used Dorothy Tibbits to try and drive you out of your house so she could use your basement.”
“Joke’s on you, because I don’t have a basement.” Unless, of course, it’s what’s behind my new mystery door. Oh, floopy doops. She knows about my door.
Archer continued. “She’s responsible for the death of Perry Pressman and his daughter, and countless others. She trapped all of your friends in that hellish machine of hers, and I would know, because I was trapped in there, too.”
Morganna lifted her chin defiantly and caught my gaze. “Except for he took over your body, Zara,” Morganna said. “Remember that? Remember how violated you felt?”
I did remember, and knowing Archer was the one who’d taunted me with my own lips was not currently endearing me to his cause. I circled around the two genies—no way was I calling them djinn with a d in my own head—to get a clear look at Archer’s face. “That was you?”
“You got your body back, good as new,” Archer said. Rivers of sweat streamed down the side of his face. Guilt sweat? “In fact, you might have ended up more powerful, thanks to me.”
I had felt more powerful after the incident in the attic. I’d chalked it up to experience and time, but what if he was right?
“He doesn’t respect women,” Morganna said. “My brother uses women and tosses them aside.”
“I love women,” Archer said. “I love all of them.”
Their heat bubble was getting hotter, and my circling path was getting wider. I caught my shoulder on a floating mirror. I grabbed it in my hand before it could fall to the floor and break. Who needs another seven years of bad luck? The mirror had an ornate metal casing and weighed as much as a small skillet.
“Hit him,” Morganna urged, flashing her eyes at the weapon in my hand. “Hit him now!”
I swung back my arm. I wasn’t actually going to hit him on the back of the head, but the genies didn’t know that. They were looking at my face, and not at my feet, or the thick snail trail of glitter gel I’d just momentarily slipped on, causing me to momentarily lose my balance and swing my arm up wildly to steady myself.
Archer blurted out, “I’m Zoey’s father! You wouldn’t kill the father of your only child, would you?”
“You’re not Zoey’s father,” I said, almost laughing at the genie’s desperation. “Nice try. He was just a regular boy. He was nothing like you. He was sweet.”
Archer craned his neck so his face was near the shimmering edge of the bubble. “Lean in close and I’ll prove it to you.”
I snorted in disbelief. There was no way.
And yet, I leaned in to listen.
He whispered something to me.
And…
I jerked my head away and stepped back, slipping again on the glitter gel and actually wiping out this time. The mirror fell from my hands, and I heard it smash.
Just when I thought the situation couldn’t get worse, there was a cacophony of noise. Three terrifying beasts entered the hairdressing salon. A wolf, an enormous bird, and another enormous bird. They were flanked by armed soldiers with weapons drawn.
All the floating objects fell to the floor with a clatter.
All the hairdressers and clients in the swivel chairs became unfrozen. Their screams blended together in one horrible chorus.
And then the genies detonated.
Chapter 40
Someone or something grabbed hold of me by my shoulders and yanked me backward. The hair salon filled with a sound that was so piercing, it was pain itself. My insides felt like they were being liquefied in a blender.
I couldn’t get up. I could barely lift my head to see what was happening.
Someone tall and speedy grabbed a weapon from an armed DWM agent as easily as one might take a candy gun from a baby. Through the haze, I saw dark hair and a familiar profile. Either it was the male genie who called himself Archer, or Chet had returned to human form. I had a bad feeling it wasn’t Chet.
The man pointed the gun at Morganna, took aim, and shot her in the chest once. Twice. Three times.
There’s no nice way to describe what happened next.
The tiny woman immediately liquefied, spraying her surroundings. Once again, as had happened inside the medical examiner’s van, dark liquid splashed into my open eyes, blocking my vision.
On top of the liquefied genie exploding, the room was hot and the air was heavy and the noise was unbearable. There was so much screaming and confusion.
I tried rubbing the goo from my eyes, but I was only smearing it around. I knew I was near the hair-washing sinks, so I made my way over to them by feel. I splashed water on my face. Someone joined me, pressing their body against mine and hogging the clean water. I had just cleared my vision and was about to turn around to see how I could help when I felt a wave of energy pass over me.
Everything got quiet again.
I looked down at my
hands in the sink. My right hand was being held by another person. Detective Bentley. We stared into each other’s eyes for a second, and then we both slowly turned to face the room.
Everything and everyone else was frozen again. Except us. Why not us? I could understand me being immune, due to my witch powers, but why Bentley? He let go of my hand and reached for a towel. He must have been spared the freezing treatment due to us having been touching during the blast.
He narrowed his eyes at me and said, “I knew it. I knew there was something different about you. What have you done?”
“Bentley, I didn’t do this.”
He gave a quick shake of his head. “I must be dreaming. This is a nightmare.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Theodore, just hang in there. You shouldn’t have had the gooseberry wine at dinner. It was too tart, and you know tart wine gives you weird dreams. In a few minutes, you’ll wake up. You’ll open your eyes, and you won’t see Zara Riddle covered in the splattered remains of some type of supernatural creature.” He took a deep breath, let it out, and then slowly opened his eyes.
“Still here,” I said. “And these splattered remains aren’t just any supernatural creature. It’s a genie.” I leaned forward until our foreheads were almost touching. “Genies are real.”
He took a step back and nodded slowly. “Genies are real.” Another nod. “I’m not sleeping.” More nodding. “Okay. I can work with that. By the way, why is it so quiet in here? I thought maybe the explosion made me deaf, but I can hear you just fine.”
“See for yourself.” I waved at the salon behind him.
He slowly turned around and took it all in. The creature nearest us was an enormous wolf, hanging in midair, frozen.
“That’s Chet Moore,” I explained. “You can shake his paw if you’d like.”
Bentley made a soft grunt I interpreted as no, thanks.
“Those are Agents Rob and Knox.” I waved at the two giant birds who were similarly frozen in the air, looking like a pair of artifacts at a museum for extinct creatures.
Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 2 Page 59