“Agents? Are they FBI?”
“More like Men in Black, only they don’t call themselves that.”
Bentley pinched himself on the arm and then gave me a sheepish look. “Had to be sure.”
“Come on. Let’s get out of here and…” And what? I didn’t know.
Bentley didn’t ask. He started moving, pausing only to pull up the leg of his trousers and retrieve a gun from his ankle holster. I hadn’t thought to check his ankle, and I was glad I’d missed the weapon because now we had one.
There was a scream somewhere nearby. Bentley and I exchanged a look, and then began to run.
We ducked underneath the sharp talons of the bird shifters and moved toward the salon’s exit. We approached a shimmering curtain of safety glass spraying out from where the large windows overlooking the courtyard had been. There was another scream, coming from beyond the broken gems of glass.
“The genie,” I said.
“The suspect,” Bentley said.
Bentley put his arms up to shield his face as we walked through the glass. I used my magic to sweep it away like an invisible broom.
We got out to the courtyard just as the exterior lamps flickered on, bright yellow against the dark blue sky.
Two women were huddled together, glancing around nervously. They were the two loud-mouthed women who’d drawn my mother’s ire in the ballroom the day before. The one who’d been strangled by my mother now clutched at her throat as her eyes bugged out at me. Her friend looked at Bentley and made a spluttering sound.
Bentley tucked his gun into the back of his trousers and walked toward the huddled women with his hands up. “Ms. Waldorf and Ms. Nebbins, it’s me, Detective Bentley. Did you see a man come running through here?”
Ms. Waldorf turned her bugged-out eyes from me to Bentley. “Yes,” she answered. “He took her. He said he wanted a hostage.”
Ms. Nebbins chimed in. “He took a woman.” She pointed in the direction of the parking lot. “He took her that way. I don’t know her name, but she’s beautiful. Indescribably beautiful.”
Bentley’s eyes widened. “My blueberry muffin?”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll get her back, Bentley.” I asked the women, “Which way did he go? The parking lot?”
They both nodded vehemently.
* * *
We got to the parking just in time to see a silver-gray sedan skidding sideways on loose gravel as it left the castle grounds.
“My car,” Bentley said, stupefied. “That genie took my girlfriend, and my car!”
“The nerve.” But I knew what to do next. I ran over to the vintage Cadillac convertible and jumped over the door into the driver’s seat. “Hop in,” I called out to the detective.
He hopped into the passenger seat without a word.
I flipped up the floor mat and grabbed the key, which was right where I knew it would be. The car started up like a dream.
“This isn’t your car,” Bentley said.
“Nope. But it does belong to my buddy, Nash, and he promised I could drive any Lucille I wanted, just as soon as I got my driver’s license. It’s taken a few years for our paths to line up, but—”
“Drive,” Bentley said, and he tucked his gun into his lap before pulling on his seat belt.
I hit the gas, and we peeled out of the parking lot. We drove over the wooden roadblock sign the previous car had knocked over, and then I pushed the gas pedal down as far as it would go. The old Cadillac rumbled with excitement. The wind whipped my hair around. The narrow road away from the castle seemed even more narrow after dark, with the thick treetops blocking out the moonlight.
“He didn’t even need a hostage,” I said.
“No, I imagine he didn’t.”
“I bet he took her just to mess with us. He’s a genie! He could have gotten away no problem on his own. Look how easily we left.”
“All true.”
“Also…” I trailed off. There’d been that time Archer had disappeared in the blink of an eye, when we were in the stairwell together. He must have frozen me then. That meant my witch powers didn’t make me immune to his powers. Not unless he’d used a witch-specific variant that time in the stairwell. Was that even a thing? Or had he wanted me to be moving around freely after he froze everyone else in the salon? Was I, at that very moment, playing right into some master plan of his? Was I driving myself and Bentley right into a trap?
Probably.
But what other choice did I have? Let the bad genie take my mother and keep her?
We reached the main road, and the Cadillac skidded to a stop.
“I can’t see tail lights in either direction,” Bentley said.
I turned to look at my mother’s boyfriend. “Do you love my mother?”
He gave me a confused look. “Your mother?”
That wasn’t going to work. He knew about genies, but he hadn’t yet got on the clue train with his creature-of-the-night girlfriend. That was some powerful voodoo, all right.
I tried a different tactic: “Do you love your car?”
He continued to look confused. “I like my car, I suppose. Why?”
“Take my hand, and think happy thoughts about your car. There’s no time to explain.”
He was skeptical, but he did as he asked. My object-locating spell only worked on objects I had a personal connection to, such as my purse or my cell phone, but I hoped I could link into his feelings in order to locate his car.
I felt a pull to the right. It had worked.
I hit the gas and pulled onto the main road.
After a minute, he said, “I thought genies granted wishes.”
“Good work, Detective! Very smart.”
He grumbled, “I’m trying.”
“I wasn’t being sarcastic. I meant what I said. Genies are supposed to grant wishes, which gives me an idea. Take the wheel, will you?”
I clambered up onto my seat, gripped the top of the windshield with both hands, and yelled at the distant red tail lights of the car in front of us. “Hey, Mr. Genie! I wish you would pull over and let your hostage go! Do you hear me, Archer Caine? Or whatever your name is? I said, I wish you would pull over! And for my second wish, I wish you would let my mother go!”
Our car continued at top speed, thanks to my telekinetic magic holding down the gas pedal. I probably could have steered without Bentley’s help, but I wanted him to feel useful.
I yelled some more wishes, but the car up ahead showed no signs of pulling over.
I settled back into my seat, and we kept going.
After a minute, I said to Bentley, “Is it wishful thinking, or are they slowing down?”
“Brake lights,” he said. “They’re slowing.” He lifted his gun and took aim.
“Easy now!”
“I’m aiming for the tires,” he said.
The distance between us and the tail lights closed rapidly.
Suddenly, the silver-gray car swerved to the right and launched off the road, into the ditch.
“Good shot,” I said.
“I didn’t fire.”
“Then what’s happening?”
“You tell me. You’re the one who knows about giant wolves and monster birds.”
I slowed the car and steered toward the tracks in the dirt made by Bentley’s car. “We can’t chase them in Lucille,” I said.
“Lucille?”
“The Cadillac,” I said. “Jump out. We’re going on foot.”
I didn’t have to tell him twice. He was out ahead of me and running after the red tail lights of his car, gun raised.
“They won’t get far, either,” Bentley.
Sure enough, they didn’t. The car mowed down a few small saplings before coming to an undignified resting spot on a large stump, both front wheels off the ground. The vehicle wasn’t overturned, yet it reminded me of an upended tortoise.
The driver’s side opened. A dark figure stepped out and then disappeared in the blink of an eye.
“I don’t see him,” Bentley said, pivoting left and right, scanning with his gun at the ready.
There was a long creak. The passenger-side door was opening slowly.
“My mother,” I said.
Bentley lowered the gun. “Who?”
“Your blueberry muffin.”
He gave me a stunned look. “She’s here? Now? Why?”
Behind him, Zirconia Riddle stepped out of the passenger side of the car and straightened up.
She pointed at Bentley. “Teddy B, go to sleep,” she commanded.
Good ol’ Teddy B buckled like tin foil and went down in a heap. So much for having a partner, or backup, or whatever Bentley was.
“Mom,” I said. “I’m so glad you’re—”
And then she crossed in front of the beams of light coming from the Cadillac parked at the roadside.
I stopped breathing. She’d been wearing a white shirt and tan slacks when I’d seen her in the courtyard.
Now the shirt was red.
The slacks were red.
The bottom half of her face was red.
The coppery scent of blood hit my nostrils.
I stumbled toward her, fell to my knees, and looked down. As long as I didn’t look up and see that red shirt and red slacks, it wasn’t real. It didn’t have to be real.
I rubbed my hands together, harder and harder. Where was the flicker? Nothing sparked. Not even a glimmer. Only blackness and night. My healing powers were as flatlined as my defensive lightning. I cried out in frustration and slammed my palms against the ground, willing the magic to flow into my palms. It had to work. It had to. If I couldn’t heal her…
No.
It had to work. I kept slamming my hands into the ground. Come on, Mother Earth. Give me just a little of that juice.
A hand landed on my shoulder.
“Don’t,” she said softly. “You’re hurting yourself.”
I shrugged the hand away and kept focusing on limbering—or hammering—the joints in my hands.
“Mom, I can heal you. I know I can.”
“Heal me? It’s too late for that,” she said. “I’m already dead.”
I blinked through my blurring vision and kept beating my hands on the ground, rubbing them together, beating the ground.
It had to work. I had to be able to heal her. Why else would I be given powers, if I couldn’t use them to save my family?
“Save your energy,” she said softly. “You’ll only tire yourself out.”
My vision kept blurring. There was so much blackness, so much night, so much nothingness. Like being buried. I blinked harder.
“Look up,” she said. “Look at me, my child.”
“No,” I said with grim determination. “I don’t want to see you like this. I’ve seen you in a coffin before. I’m not a fan. It’s not going to happen again.”
“You don’t want to see me as I am?”
I shook my head and kept facing down, even though I couldn’t see anything through my stupid blurry eyes. “I won’t let you go. I refuse. That’s all.” That was the key. I heard my new reasonable lightness reflected in my voice. “I reject all of this.”
She knelt beside me.
The scent of blood was even stronger now. I gagged on the stench of death. No.
I searched around inside myself. Josephine was gone. It was only me there.
But I was a witch, and I did have some powers that were still working.
I cast the bluffing spell, for lack of a better idea. “You aren’t dead,” I said, weaving in the Witch Tongue commands. “You aren’t going to die today, Mom. We are going to walk out of this field, get into Nash’s convertible, and drive somewhere civilized.”
“What’s done is done,” she said. “Look at me.”
“No.”
She seized my wrists with surprising strength and yanked me up to standing.
I was looking into her eyes, so much like mine, yet so cool and dark in the moonlight.
“Look at me,” she repeated.
“I’m looking.”
“See me.”
“I see you.”
She smiled. “See me.” She released my wrists. I inhaled, and my body felt as light as air, as though the spells I’d tried to cast on my way out of the bell tower had finally kicked in. Except it was just a feeling, not a real change. I stumbled backwards awkwardly with my full weight.
And then it happened.
I saw her.
She was still smiling, the same as before, except now I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. Where she’d once had a pair of normal canine teeth, there were now two very long, very sharp fangs.
No way! My mother’s a…
I understood. The blood covering my mother from the mouth down was not her own. It was that of Archer Caine.
My mother was… a thing with pointy teeth. The sort of thing that bites people on the neck and sucks their blood. She was one of those things. A creature of the grave. The kind who sleeps in a coffin in the movies.
Not a zombie.
Once more, for clarity.
Not a zombie.
“Zarabella, don’t be scared,” she said.
“You’re a va—” My throat closed. I swallowed and tried again. “A va—” The word caught in my throat like a sharp bone.
She tilted her head to the side and kept smiling. “What’s wrong, Zara? Are you worried that all your oh-so-funny zombie jokes are going to be wasted? You’ll have to think up some new material now.”
“Va—” I still couldn’t say it. This wasn’t simple shock keeping me from saying the word. It had to be magic, powerful magic.
My gaze went to her necklace, to the pendant with the glowing amber stone. I used my magic to unclasp the chain and remove it. She flicked her gaze down and watched with amusement as I yanked the magic pendant toward myself.
With the magic pendant in my hand, I gave her a defiant look and said, “Zirconia Riddle, you’re a va—”
Nope. I still couldn’t say it.
She smiled even more broadly. As she did, her fangs retracted. Her teeth were normal again, and she was just my mother again. With genie blood on her chin.
“Keep the necklace,” she said.
“It’s not the source of your powers?”
“Not at all.” She lowered her gaze to the dark ground. “It was wrong of me to let you think a silly antique necklace was the source of my power.”
“It was wrong,” I said. “And not once did you correct me when I called you a zombie.”
She kept her gaze lowered. “I let you believe a fairy tale because you seemed more comfortable that way.” She flicked her hazel eyes up to meet mine. “Will you ever be able to forgive me?”
I looked down at the pendant on the palm of my hand. “I can’t believe it’s just a necklace. And you’re a va—” My throat closed up again. Trying to say the word was like trying to cough up an organ and swallow a sharp bone at the same time.
An owl hooted in the nearby forest. I thought of Kathy, and the library, and my life that I would be returning to, but in that moment, none of it seemed real. Nothing was real except the smell of blood in the air. Genie blood. It smelled just like regular blood.
My mother broke the silence. “You’ll keep your memories. You’ll know the truth from this point forward, even if you can’t say a certain word anymore.”
“Fair enough.” I bobbed my head to the rhythm of the owl’s continued sounds. “And I’m telling Zoey and Zinnia. They have a right to know.”
“Of course,” she said. “How about you? Are you injured? Were you hurt when the agents shot Archer’s sister?”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Is that not what happened? Perhaps you’d better fill me in.”
We walked over to Bentley and picked him up, each taking one arm over our shoulders. I would have cast my body-buoyancy spell, if it had been working, but we managed.
; By the time we reached Lucille, I’d explained most of what had happened.
“Dr. Ankh will be disappointed about being wrong,” she said. “We were both so certain he was a parasitic twin.”
“Who even knew genies were real?”
“Not me.” She hiccuped.
“Indigestion?”
She loaded the sleeping detective into the back seat and shot me a dirty look. “Don’t be rude.”
“I’m not trying to be rude. We can get you some stomach medicine back at the castle. I overeat plenty, so I know all the good flavors.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“I’ll pick up a whole assortment while you shower and get changed.”
“That would be nice.”
I got in behind the wheel, and she settled into the passenger seat.
As soon as we were back on the road again, she said, “I’ve never eaten a genie before. But then again, I’ve never eaten anyone. Up until tonight, I’ve been subsisting on a serum of Dr. Ankh’s design.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve taken a liking to eating people.”
She shrugged. “You said so yourself, he was a genie.”
She looked off at the dark horizon. I followed her gaze to the dark fringe of the forest.
“Do you suppose he’s dead?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “Sometimes you think someone’s dead, but it turns out they’re not quite dead after all.”
“Tell me about it.”
We kept driving, and she didn’t say anything about the wyvern flying overhead. She didn’t notice when he dove down into the back seat and made himself comfortable next to the sleeping Detective Bentley.
I reached back with my mind and asked how things were going at the castle.
Safe for you to return, Ribbons answered. Not for me.
That’s what you get for supplying wyvern venom to an evil genie.
He replied with a nonverbal burst of flames inside my head. He hadn’t supplied the venom, which reportedly only came from female wyverns, and he wasn’t in the mood to joke about it.
I’m coming to live in your house, Ribbons said as I pulled the Cadillac back into the castle’s parking lot.
Okay. I parked the car, turned off the engine, and turned around to smile at the wyvern in the back seat.
His scaly eyebrows lifted in surprise. Really? Just like that?
Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 2 Page 60