Wicked Wisteria (Witch Cozy Mystery and Paranormal Romance) (Wisteria Witches Book 2)

by Angela Pepper

  If I had to reach Chet at a busy restaurant and his cell phone wasn't working, I'd call the kitchen staff and ask to speak to the handsome, tall, dark-haired man who was frowning like he suspected he was in the wrong place. That's the funny thing about Chet. Despite being attractive and smart and charming, there's an aura of discomfort all around him. It all disappears when he smiles, of course. When he's smiling, he can make you feel like the sun always shines and there's nowhere else you were destined to be at that particular moment in time except right there, with him. And yet, his smile had been in short supply lately.

  He watched the iced tea pitcher with so much discomfort, I got the anxious feeling I wasn't supposed to be there at all—and it was my kitchen.

  I asked, “Is everything okay?”

  “My question about the doorbell was just a question,” he said.

  I set down the glass pitcher with a heavy thump. So that was how tonight was going to be. We were still on the doorbell issue.

  “And you deserve an answer,” I said stiffly. “We yell because we both love yelling, almost as much as we love having a doorbell. Zoey was raised in apartments, where we got in trouble for yelling or singing or generally enjoying life more than our neighbors thought a poor single-mother family should. And we never had a doorbell.”

  Chet raised his right eyebrow, scaring away more of the lowest forehead wrinkle. If he'd been a porcupine, he would have been bristling with barbed quills. Could he turn into a porcupine, or just a wolf? I had no idea.

  “It was just a question,” he said.

  “I can do questions, too. For example, why does your wild-child son hang from your clothesline like it's a jungle gym?”

  He blinked twice. “Corvin?”

  “Yes, I'm talking about Corvin. Unless you have another hyperactive ten-year-old boy living with you.” Chet didn't react, so I went on, holding my hand four feet off the floor. “About this tall, black hair, big eyes, enjoys terrorizing people. Yesterday, he climbed up on a stepladder just outside my kitchen window and stood there, creepily staring at me through the herb garden for heaven knows how long. I went to harvest some chives and he started screaming bloody blue murder, accusing me of trying to poke out his eyeballs with the scissors to harvest them for a potion. He called me a witch.”

  “That's unacceptable,” Chet said, growing visibly angry. “The boy needs to learn respect. It's my fault for being too lenient with him.” He smacked his hands together in a gesture that suggested corporal punishment.

  I was surprised to see this new side of Chet, this sternly authoritative side. From the scowl on his face to the sound of his hands smacking, everything Chet was doing had an unintended side effect. Rather than win my favor, it antagonized my own wild-child, rebellious side.

  “Well, he wasn't wrong,” I said in defense of the boy. “I didn't check the chives for little boy faces before I started snipping, and I am a witch.”

  Chet gave me a curt nod. “I'll see that he's punished.”

  I winced. “Kids will be kids,” I said. “He's probably curious. When Zoey was his age, she started a plant-watering service in our apartment building so she could spend more time inside other people's apartments.”

  I smiled at the memory of her lugging around heavy watering jugs while dressed in her official watering clothes. She wore a pair of too-large overalls and covered her red hair with the red-and-white handkerchief she was given by the building's superintendent. The kind yet gruff man had also made her an official name tag, like the one worn by his elderly mother, who vacuumed the threadbare carpets in the hallways. Little Zoey's watering service was a hit, and half the residents of the building gave her their spare keys. The other half of the residents continued to complain about our noises and blame us for everything that went wrong in the building, but that was their loss.

  Chet asked, “You let your ten-year-old daughter go into other people's apartments by herself?”

  “Of course. She didn't want to split her two dollars per hour with me.” I took a sip of my iced tea. It had too much lemon.

  “Two bucks an hour,” he mused. “They were taking advantage of her.”

  “Oh, it was never about the money. She wanted to see how other people lived, to see how we compared.” I lowered my voice, sensitive to the fact she might be listening from her room upstairs. “She wanted to find out if we were normal. Can you believe it?”

  “Seems like a common thing for children to be interested in.”

  “I told her it was too late for us to be normal, even if we tried, but she was so earnest. She thought if we stopped keeping wool sweaters in the oven and started making more casseroles, we could be just like everyone else. She even got a recipe from Mrs. Hutchins, for tuna-noodle casserole.”

  “And how did that work out?”

  I took another sip of the iced tea. “We got to know the local firefighters. My sweaters were never the same.” I fluttered one hand in front of my chest. “The buttons on my favorite cardigan melted.”

  Chet studied me, his eyes locking on mine. Once again, his features began to swim and become indistinct. I was under his spell. But was it magic, or something of a more human nature? The strange effect could be explained by hormones and boy-girl magnetism. Was he experiencing the same thing, or was it just me? What was my effect on him? Was he as charmed as I wanted him to be? I could barely make out his expression, but from what I could see, his face was distinctly lacking signs of amusement at what I considered to be a delightful family anecdote. Most people loved the story about my melted sweaters, and how I offered uncooked tuna casserole to the firefighters.

  Finally, he said, “You and I have very different parenting styles. I prefer a more traditional approach to fathering.”

  “How does that work, anyway?”

  He gave me a funny look. “Raising kids? You have to employ both negative and positive reinforcement.”

  “No, I mean fathering. Like, with the whole wolf shifter thing. Can the females give birth in wolf form? Can they still shift if there's a baby inside them? And what about the actual mating?”

  Chet didn't move a muscle. He seemed to have stopped breathing.

  I sensed my overstep and lobbed in a softer question. “Can you turn into a porcupine?” My question went over like a flatulent sound in a packed sauna.

  With a low, growling voice, he said, “Zara, we are not having this discussion right here, right now.” He glanced down at the floor, which reminded me of something.

  “Ah, right,” I said knowingly. Chet Moore had been born right there in my kitchen, during a terrible storm. I had to assume the room held some resonance for him, which would explain his discomfort.

  He asked, “Are you ready for dinner?”

  “Yes, please.” I finished drinking my extra-lemony tea and started looking around for my purse. “We can talk more freely once we get to wherever you're taking me for dinner. I've got a sound-muffling spell I'm learning to cast, so it'll be great practice. I can build us a shroud.”

  He made a pained sound and cleared his throat.

  “It's actually pretty cool,” I said. “Much more useful than the cantaloupe spell.”

  “Right.” He grabbed his glass of iced tea and tossed it back like a tequila shot. As he set the empty glass down, he gasped, “Too much lemon. And why so much green stuff?”

  “The green is fresh mint—mentha suaveolens, or apple mint. You didn't find it refreshing?”

  He coughed a few times. “I'll recover,” he said hoarsely. “Let's go.”

  “Hang on while I fulfill my stereotypical female requirements. In other words, give me a minute to find my purse.”

  He crossed his arms and started tapping his foot impatiently, fulfilling his stereotypical male requirements. I ransacked the kitchen looking for my bag. When a physical search didn't work, I called an image of my purse to mind. Pink. Leather. Brass buckle on the strap.

  With the image in mind, I whistled the summoning incantation and starte
d the gesture part of the spell. I twirled my right hand as though reeling in a fishing line.

  Nothing happened at first, but after the third try, something inside the fridge thumped. I opened the fridge door, and there it was. My pink purse with the brass buckle. It obediently hopped out of the fridge and hitched itself onto my shoulder.

  Chet asked, “Why was your purse in the fridge?”

  I gave him an innocent look. “Well, it's not exactly safe in the oven, is it?”

  On our way out the front door, he paused by the table where Zoey and I usually tossed the mail.

  He pointed to the stack of unopened envelopes. “Those look like bills.”

  “Don't look directly at them, or they'll want to tag along to dinner.” I grabbed Chet's arm and steered him toward the door. “Don't worry. They'll be waiting right here when I get home.”

  I kept my voice light and cheery, but deep down I had a bad feeling about our date. If this was how it started, with so much bickering over our respective parenting styles, surely the evening would end in physical combat.

  At least I had some witchy healing powers.

  Chapter 3

  Chet took me for dinner at Grazie, which features authentic cuisine from which European country? Go ahead and guess. If you said Italy, you're right.

  The word grazie means thanks in Italian, and you can embellish your grazie with other words to make pleasing phrases such as grazie di cuore, which means thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you want to lay on your gratitude super thick, you can say grazie infinite for infinite thanks.

  This brief and helpful lesson on the Italian language comes courtesy of the informative text written on the back of the Grazie menus.

  I had a lot of time to read the menu, because as soon as we arrived at the restaurant, Chet's phone rang and he disappeared to take an important call. All I caught was that it was someone named Charlie on the phone.

  Alone at the table, I checked out my surroundings. I'd never been inside Grazie before. It was so pretty that I felt guilty for being there without my daughter, who loves anything castle-like or decorated with stones. One time I drove for hours to take her to a water park, and all she wanted to do was hang out inside the subterranean part of the building. There was a dungeon-like grotto that served ice cream and housed the gift shop. With some prodding from her mother, Zoey eventually took a reluctant ride down the water slide. She enjoyed it, and quickly made friends with some other kids her age, but after an hour I found her back in the stone-lined underground room again, examining the lichen on the damp rocks.

  Grazie didn't have lichen on its stone walls, probably because the square rocks were the manufactured kind that people stick to the surface of new walls to give them an Old Europe look. When I looked carefully, I could spot matching twin stones, taken from the same mold. Despite being artifice, just an illusion, the stone walls did give the Italian restaurant an ambiance that was both casual and reverent.

  The tables were decked out with the checkerboard tablecloths common to Italian restaurants and topped with miniature bottles of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The waiter, bless his heart, brought me a basket of warm rolls and a plate.

  “Grazie infinite,” I told him, and I meant it. The restaurant's fragrance of garlic and asiago cheese had my mouth watering.

  The waiter excused his reach as he picked up the two bottles on the table. He tipped out first the golden yellow oil and then the inky balsamic vinegar onto the plate. “This is for dipping the bread,” he said. “Unless you'd prefer butter?”

  I tore a chunk off the crispy roll and dabbed it enthusiastically on the plate. “When in Rome,” I said with a smile.

  The young man glanced at the empty chair across from me before angling his body away from it, giving my absent date the cold shoulder. He told me about the restaurant's wine list. I hesitated. I was no expert at dating, but I knew I'd be stepping on Chet's role as the man of the date if I ordered a bottle for both of us. He'd probably make some vague comment about me playing from a different handbook. Who was he to question my parenting style? My daughter was practically a model citizen compared to his Corvin, who was barely house trained. I would have to be careful not to make that direct comparison, though. That would be the nuclear option, to be used only when I'd given up on Chet as a dating prospect.

  “I'll wait for my date,” I told the waiter.

  He acknowledged this and left me with my bread.

  When the waiter returned ten minutes later with a refill on my bread basket, he gave me a pitying look. “Shall we revisit the wine list?”

  “It can't hurt,” I said, and he listed the evening's specials. I considered waiting, but I needed something to keep my hands busy and slow down my inhalation of the second bread basket, and I didn't know how long Chet would be talking on the phone with Charlie.

  The waiter suggested, “Perhaps a very small glass of the house red?”

  “Don't bother uncorking for a thimble's worth. I'll have a regular adult-sized glass, please and grazie.”

  He grinned. “Adult-sized. I like your style.”

  When he returned with my wine and we exchanged pleasantries again, I had to acknowledge that my date was going very well. My date with the waiter, that was. If only he wasn't a tall, skinny boy of perhaps nineteen, I might have been happy with my substitute.

  I was debating a second glass of house red or a third basket of bread rolls when Chet finally returned with a brief, “Sorry about that.”

  “At last you're back,” I said. “I've been waiting to try the sound-muffling spell.”

  “We don't need that,” he said.

  “Humor me.” I murmured the incantation while interweaving my fingers in the manner Aunt Zinnia had taught me. It didn't work, but I felt the fizzle of something. Casting a spell can feel a bit like trying to light a wet match. It doesn't work, and then it does. I tried the incantation again, a little louder. Chet watched silently and with no small amount of judgment. If I got much louder, he would certainly shush me, I thought. I tried it a third time, this time with a hilariously bad Italian accent, and what would you know, the spell lit up around us. There was a brief visual flash that only I could see.

  Once we were sound-muffled, I nodded at Chet's phone, which was on the table face down, and asked, “Big problems at head office for the X-Files?”

  “Not really. And I keep telling you, we're not the X-Files or the FBI.”

  “Have you worked with this guy Charlie for long?”

  “Enough about me,” he said. “You were at the police station this morning for a follow-up, weren't you?”

  “Yes, and I did well. I gently pointed out that Detective Bentley needed to worry less about our investigative methods and worry more about why his own department hadn't brought in Dorothy Tibbits for murder.”

  Chet nodded slowly. His eyes kept flicking around the room, ticking with movement every second like a clock.

  “And how is Detective Bentley?” he asked. “He can be aggressive, like a junkyard dog with a bone.”

  “That pussycat?” I batted my eyelashes. “He was enthralled by my many charms.”

  Chet nodded forward and smacked his hand into his forehead. “Please tell me you did not cast one of your spells on the city's senior detective.”

  “Of course not. But so what if I had? Isn't the whole point of being a witch that you get to use your powers?”

  Chet glanced around the crowded Italian restaurant uneasily. “I don't feel comfortable having this discussion in public.”

  “But I cast that sound-muffling spell perfectly. We're inside an impervious shroud of privacy.”

  “Impervious?” He raised his eyebrows as he removed a seemingly normal pen from his pocket. He slowly and deliberately pressed the button to extend the nib. It clicked, just like a regular pen, but it was no regular pen. With the click, I heard the spell pop around us. The restaurant din flooded in.

  “Hey!” I reached across our round table, graspin
g for his magic-busting pen.

  He yanked it out of reach and tucked it back into his pocket with a sly smile.

  “No fair,” I said. “You saw how hard I worked to set up that spell. It took me forever, and you poofed it away with one little click.”

  “I certainly did,” he said proudly.

  “Okay. What is that pen thing, and how do I get one?”

  “It's multi-pulse click generator, and you don't.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “In fact, I shouldn't have even let you see it.”

  “No fair,” I said again.

  He glanced down at his menu. “Let's have a nice, neighborly dinner and talk about regular things.”

  A nice, neighborly dinner? Cue the exact opposite of Cupid and his quiver of love arrows.

  He asked, “How's Zoey fitting in at her new high school?”

  “Zoey's teachers love her,” I said.

  “How are her grades?”

  “Pointy,” I said. “Because the letter A is pointy.”

  “Good for her. She'll have plenty of options in life.”

  I agreed, and I went on to brag about my daughter's academic skills. While we talked about Zoey, I split my attention just enough to take another shot at the sound-muffling spell. This time, moving my hands in the practiced gestures underneath the tablecloth, the casting took less than a minute. The invisible shroud coalesced around our table with a gentle shimmer, muting the restaurant noises and making our conversation immediately feel more intimate.

  Chet couldn't see the shimmer, but he was able to hear the sound change. He shook his head, but he didn't pull out the multi-pulse click generator.