Zoe looked at me, then rolled her eyes so hard that her disdain afflicted her entire body and she had to collapse back onto her bed limply, wailing, “Mooooooooooooom,” which, incidentally, is my second-least favorite rendition of my title. My number one, least favorite rendition is the whining “mo-ho-hooo-whaaa-whaaa-herk-herk-whaa-whaa-whaaaaaa!” Luckily for me, Zoey never sang that tune, but I hear it often enough in shopping malls and it turns my blood to ice every time.
I looked over to see Corvin's pale face and big eyes staring back at me. I wondered if he ever wailed for his absent mother. Had the boy even known his mother long enough to throw temper tantrums in crowded malls?
As I wondered about his past, he slowly shook his head. As though he could hear my thoughts. Could he read minds?
There was his strangely wide, maniacal smile again.
Well, maybe it was good that my romance with Corvin's father had been nipped in the bud. I could help the kid plenty as a neighbor without having to explain his behavior to teachers and other parents.
I forced a pleasant wave and backed away from the window. Corvin and all his creepiness could be wondered about any time. I had to get the electricity running again, or else learn how to make cold-brew coffee, and the latter did not appeal to me at all.
* * *
We got through most of Sunday without power, and rejoiced at dinner time when it finally came back on.
My suspicion that the outage had something to do with the unopened orange envelopes turned out to be correct. Yay, me!
On Monday at work, I told my flamboyant, pink-haired coworker all about my problems with the hard-bottomed, by-the-rules billing administrators at Wisteria Electric.
Frank Wonder responded to my anguished tale with equal parts sympathy and sarcasm.
“That must have been very difficult for you,” he said in a mock-soothing tone. “How dare those jerks at the electric company demand money in exchange for services?”
I glanced up from the book-return bin to shoot him a dirty look, crossing my eyes and sticking out my tongue.
“Careful you're not making that face when a clock chimes, or it'll get stuck that way.”
Innocently, I asked, “Is that what happened to you?”
Frank ruffled the front tuft of his dyed pink hair and screwed his face up into a grotesque mask.
I quaked with mock horror.
Satisfied, he walked away to go help a library patron with a stack of House of Hallows paperbacks.
I kept sorting through the returned books, half listening to Frank's conversation with the patron as they argued over whether or not the popular fantasy series would ever be finished.
After an hour of lifting stacks of books, my arms felt like cooked spaghetti and my forehead was damp. Monday morning's returns are always the biggest stack because we're closed on Sundays. Ordinarily, we'd have one of the library's entry level workers do this task. FYI, the title for this position is page, not to be confused with the pages of a book. Back in medieval times, a youth being trained for knighthood would be called a page. I like that origin, and how it implies that being a librarian is similar to being a knight.
Anyway, that Monday morning I wasn't patient enough to wait for one of our pages to come in for their shift. I was looking for a specific book, and there it was, at the bottom, cheekily hiding under a coffee table book about knitting.
I checked around me to make sure nobody was watching, and then began flipping through the rock star memoir. The pages looked normal. There were no blocks of text missing. I flipped through it once more, and then again, slowly.
Frank, who'd snuck up behind me, said, “The good stuff starts on page fifty-one.”
I slammed the book shut guiltily. “I wasn't reading this filth.”
Frank raised his eyebrows, which were probably as gray as any fifty-five-year-old's, but had been dyed pink to match his hair. “Sure you weren't,” he said, flashing his super-bright, nearly blue teeth.
I fidgeted with the book. “I was just flipping through because I thought I saw one of those stop-motion cartoons in the margins, but it's fine.”
He gave me a skeptical look. “Honey, you've got a guilty conscience about something. I wonder about you sometimes. How's it going with your beau?”
I sighed. “We are officially crossing Chet's name off the Beau List. His beau days are over. That beau is a no-go. A no-beau.”
Frank shrugged one shoulder. “True love takes time. When you get older and wiser, like me, you'll learn to be more patient. Didn't he take you somewhere nice on Saturday?”
“He took me to Grazie.”
“That sounds romantic. You know their stone walls are about as genuine as my sister's cleavage and her diamond earrings, but they do have good lighting. What happened? Did you ask too many questions about the boy's mother?”
“Not at all. I was on my best behavior.” I added, “By which I mean best behavior for Zara Riddle. I did ask some other intrusive questions, but I swear it was all about getting to know him as a person and not just a handsome face.” I couldn't tell Frank the exact questions, but I did go on to explain Chet's absence while he took a phone call, his general distraction, and his brusque, smooch-free sendoff.
Frank looked pensive. “I wonder, what is that silly boy thinking? You're a confident, professional woman who's a real kick in the pants. I don't want to inflate your head too much, but your presence has certainly livened things up around here. If Chet can't see what a catch you are, he's a fool.”
I smiled my thanks. “You're too sweet.”
“Think of me as your fairy godfather.” He winked. “Speaking of which, do you know when the young man was last in a relationship?” He waggled his eyebrows. “With a woman?”
I sighed again. “Maybe he's not into women. I suspect he may be a pasta-sexual.” I described Chet's apparent bliss over a plate of fettuccine “There was so much slurping,” I said. “It sounded like a bad teen make-out party, and trust me, I would know.”
Frank gave me a saucy look. “There are worse things than pasta-sexuals. At least you know the way to his heart. Cook him up one of your fabulous gourmet dinners, like you did at that party you threw.”
He was referring to the dinner party I cooked multiple courses for when the ghost of Winona Vander Zalm was my in-house personal chef.
“I suppose I could whip him up something involving bacon. Guys do love bacon.”
“Yes, spaghetti carbonara. One plate, two forks. You could try for a threesome, if you can handle sharing your man.”
I pouted theatrically. “I couldn't handle losing a love triangle to a plate of noodles.”
Frank pointed to the rock star memoir in my hands. “This explains why you're indulging in some sexy escapism today.”
“Nothing beats a trashy beach read,” I said.
“Flip forward and check out the hotel suite action on page two-twenty-one.” His expression turned serious. “If you're trying that one at home, I recommend a safety harness. You can pick up the equipment you need at any mountain-climbing store.” He batted his pale eyelashes. “Or so I hear.”
With gravitas, I said, “Frank Wonder, you are my personal hero.”
He tilted his head to the side as he blinked demurely. “I get that a lot.” He backed away. In a regular speaking voice, which registered as loud within the quiet library, he said, “I'll leave you to your important librarian research, Ms. Riddle.” Then he cupped his hand around his mouth and whisper-yelled, “Page one hundred is also good.”
Alone again, I checked pages two-twenty-one as well as one hundred, just to be sure the pages had all their words. They did. I flipped through the book a few more times. Why had the book been erasing itself on Saturday? I knew I hadn't imagined it. The dark-haired young woman had been frustrated with her reading, so she must have experienced the missing words as well.
I closed the book and scanned the code while I thought about what my aunt had said on Saturday after leaving the cafe.
She had no explanation for the book erasing itself. Zinnia felt it was just “one of those things" that happened from time to time without any logical explanation. She'd told me, “Until something jumps up and demands attention, it's best to ignore these minor incidents.”
“But isn't it our duty as witches to look into strange occurrences?”
“Maybe in other towns, but we're in Wisteria,” she'd said. “Things are different here. The sky is a deeper blue, the grass is greener, and you can eat as much ice cream as you like and never gain weight.”
I'd laughed at the idea, thinking she was teasing me over the giant sundae I'd just inhaled. She grabbed my arm and said, “Really. Zara, look around you. We've got bakeries, chocolate shops, and fresh-made ice cream parlors on every downtown block. This town should have dozens of weight-loss centers, but we don't even have one. Everyone here is fit, happy, and healthy, because of magic. It imbues everything in Wisteria.”
“It's true, Mom,” Zoey said. “The people at my high school have their problems, but it's different here.”
“Better?” I asked.
“Everyone's so smart here,” she said.
“Are you telling me we live in a mystical town where all the children are above average?”
She didn't answer, and Zinnia took over the conversation with an anecdote about an actor who had to leave his hometown's boundaries to gain weight for a movie role.
While we talked, we walked past not one, not two, but three bakeries.
* * *
By the mid-day point of my Monday work shift, I'd stopped thinking about the book with the disappearing words. I had a brand-new mission that was more pressing than a few missing words.
My recent adventures with The Wisteria Electric Company had highlighted a lack of literacy on my part. Not book literacy but financial literacy. This was not a new problem for me. For most of my adult life, my idea of an “investment strategy" was to buy brand-name cereal boxes that I refilled with cheaper fare from the bulk bin.
If it hadn't been for a surprise lump-sum inheritance that had come my way earlier that year, I never would have had the down payment for my lovely house in Wisteria.
I'd never worried too much about money before, trusting in myself that I could always find a way to support my family. And I did support us—albeit not in a way anyone would describe as luxurious. But everything was different now. The stakes were higher. Now that I had my beloved three-story Gothic Victorian with the triple lancet windows, I had something precious to lose. The power outage was a wake-up call. I was discovering that having something to lose was in some ways more uncomfortable than having nothing at all.
At least the electric bill had been simple enough to sort out. My library job paid a good wage, so I had the funds to pay the utility bills, but I'd made the mistake of mixing up the water bill with the electric bill. I'd never lived somewhere with metered water before, and when I paid the water bill to the Department of Water, I thought it included the electricity, because wouldn't it make more sense to send a single employee out to each house to check two meters at the same time instead of sending two different people? The clerk I spoke to at Wisteria Electric did not appreciate my helpful suggestions about how the city could reduce expenses. She just wanted my credit card number.
If I wanted to avoid such unpleasantness in the future, I would need to improve my financial literacy. Luckily for me, I knew of a place where all the collective wisdom of the modern world was available, for free. No, I don't mean the internet, though it's a close second.
Once I'd finished my morning duties, I entered the personal finance section of the library on a personal mission. In case you're ever in such a need yourself, the books are under: Social Sciences > Economics > Finance > Not set > Miscellany And Personal Finance > Personal Finance. The Dewey Decimal call number is 332.024.
As I browsed the titles, I sensed someone coming into the aisle behind me. The person was moving quietly, their footsteps soundless, but their presence was given away by the subtle change in the aisle's acoustics. I thought it had to be Frank sneaking up on me again. I tensed my body and prepared to twist around suddenly and scare him before he scared me. Maybe he would shriek, setting off a chain reaction of dropped books and startled cries throughout the library. The pranks Frank and I got up to were exactly the sort of thing librarians aren't supposed to do, which was why it felt so deliciously wicked.
I waited as he drew closer and closer. I pretended to be fascinated by the financial advice books on the shelf before me. The newer books had fun, catchy titles to make budgeting sound like a wild new hobby. All of them claimed to be “the only money book you need,” or “your personal guide to financial independence.” That one caught my eye, partly because the spine was an attractive shade of purple. How personal could this guide be? Did they have a chapter about keeping the lights on while sending your gifted child off to college? I opened the book while casting the bookmark spell that Aunt Zinnia had assigned. It was the kind of subtle spell I could cast in the presence of regular people. I riffled the pages, and the book fell open to a chapter named Should you send your smart kid to an ivy league college? I nodded to myself. Nicely played, book.
Frank still hadn't made his move behind me. The back of my neck felt itchy from anticipation. I selected an armload of financial self-help books and commented out loud for Frank's benefit, “I wish there was some way to download all this financial wizardry directly into my brain.”
He didn't respond. Was I imagining things? I whipped around and found myself facing a man who was not Frank. Not unless Frank had suddenly gone semi-transparent. Like Frank, this man was mid-fifties and of average height and build. Unlike Frank, he was as see-through as a foggy pane of glass.
My librarian instincts kicked in. “Can I help you with something?” I asked.
The semi-transparent man looked down at the books in my arms, and then back up at my face.
“Sir? Are you looking for a specific type of book?”
He shook his head. No.
“Are you lost?”
No response.
“Do you know you're dead?”
His eyes widened in surprise. He recovered and laughed silently. He mouthed what looked like, I'm not dead.
“Have you seen yourself? Go to a mirror.”
He kept shaking his head, as though I was the one in complete denial.
I tried a softer question. “Do you know you're in a library?”
He looked at the books in my arms again, up at the shelves surrounding us, and back into my eyes. The expression on his face brightened. He pointed at the books and then at me, a question being implied.
“Yes, these are for me,” I said. “I'm not keen on cooking over an open fire in my backyard, so I'm attempting to educate myself in the mysterious ways of money.”
Smiling, he pointed to his chest.
“You're some sort of expert on money?”
He nodded. Yes.
“Then maybe we can both help each other,” I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted the offer. What was I getting myself into? My sense of smell hadn't returned to normal since the sleep-toasting electrocutions caused by the last ghost I tried to help.
But the man in front of me had heard my offer, and it was too late to rescind.
His foggy form wavered, and then—there's really no delicate way to put this, so I'll just tell you straight-up what happened—he turned into a wisp of smoke and disappeared up my nostril. My left nostril.
Immediately, I could feel him in my brain, banging around like a hungry house guest looking for the cereal bowls.
Great, I thought. I'm possessed. Again.
Chapter 5
I woke up on a bean bag chair in the Grumpy Corner.
Now, the Grumpy Corner is not some cleverly named coffee shop populated with tattooed hipsters. It's a comfortable spot inside the library's staff lounge where we hardworking librarians, assistants, and pages can give ourselves
a time-out as needed. Being preternaturally perky in personality, I'd never had to take a nap in the Grumpy Corner before, but now here I was, with a few stray Styrofoam beads stuck to my face.
How had I gotten there? The last thing I remembered was standing in a book aisle, holding an armful of financial literacy books, and offering to help a ghost find what he was looking for. Then the ghost turned into a wisp of smoke and helped himself to his own personal Grumpy Corner, which was somewhere inside my skull, accessed via my left nostril.
I made a fist and rapped tentatively on the top of my head. “Hello? Are you still in there?”
No response came.
I couldn't detect anyone else rattling around up there, but ghosts can be flaky—or at least the one and only other ghost I'd been possessed by had been. Winona Vander Zalm had come and gone as she'd pleased, helping me cook complicated recipes when it suited her, or putting her own words in my mouth. It hadn't been entirely bad. As soon as I solved her murder, she'd disappeared, but apparently she'd put out the word that my brain had a vacancy.
Aunt Zinnia diagnosed me as being Spirit Charmed. Not every witch gets ghosts moving in and out of her head, but I guess I'm special that way. Every witch has a specialty, and that's mine. Your witch specialty is like an unwanted housewarming gift. No returns, no take-backsies.
I knocked on my skull again, this time on the back of my head. “Are you comfortable, sir?”
“Not really,” answered a man's voice. Except it wasn't the ghost. It was pink-haired Frank Wonder, who'd been sitting quietly at the staff lunch table, eating his mid-afternoon snack of teddy-bear shaped graham crackers.
I thought I'd been alone, but I recovered quickly from the surprise. “You're not comfortable?” I asked Frank.
“These vintage corduroy trousers keep riding up.” He leaned to the side on his stool and wiggled his cords down.
I turned my knocking fist into a hair-smoothing gesture in what I hoped was a smooth transition. Frank didn't know about my witch status, let alone the whole Spirit Charmed thing. The only people who knew were the other Riddle girls and Chet, which was how I wanted it to stay. Back in the olden days, townspeople didn't burn witches just because they'd run out of dry firewood.
Wicked Wisteria (Witch Cozy Mystery and Paranormal Romance) (Wisteria Witches Book 2) Page 4