“It's more colorful than I expected.”
“For now, but you're looking at future black gold,” he said. “What once was waste will become extremely valuable fertilizer. From chaos and decay springs life anew.”
Was he quoting poetry? Or did he just spend a lot of time staring out the window and feeling poetic about compost?
I looked to Kathy for guidance. Kathy still had her glasses in her hands and was now cleaning them furiously, using an array of spray-on products from her purse. I knew from experience that cleaning her glasses was a process that could take Kathy several minutes. Perhaps she'd appreciate it if I broached the topic of inks and their removal.
“Mr. Wick,” I started.
He interrupted, “Call me Vincent. Dear.”
“Sure. And you can call me Zara. Dear.”
“You're Zara Riddle,” he said. “How are you settling into our fine town? Are the restaurants to your liking? Grazie serves the best Italian, but you already knew that.”
I hadn't told him my last name, nor that I'd recently become a resident, let alone where I'd eaten on Saturday night. He clearly wanted to throw me off balance, but I wasn't too rattled. Wisteria was a small enough town that his knowledge of my name and where I'd been Saturday could be explained away easily. I kept my face stony and continued.
“Vincent, Kathy tells me you're an expert on ink removal.”
“Did she now?” He flicked his gaze over to my boss, who was spraying her glasses a second time. “I'm sure dear Kathy has told you all sorts of wicked things about me.”
“She told me you're the ink expert, which is why we've brought you these.” I dropped the collection of three books onto his desk. I opened the top one to the bookmarked page that was missing ten percent of its text.
He looked down his narrow hawk nose at the page. “Someone has vandalized this book,” he said.
“Someone or something.”
His eyes flicked up. “Something? Zara, dear, whatever do you mean?”
I crossed my arms and squirmed under his beady-eyed gaze. If only I had a pair of glasses to clean. We weren't going to get any answers out of this guy. I knew this was a pointless expedition, since the ink was being erased by magical means, but I had to play along with Kathy's quest or risk exposing myself as a witch.
“Obviously someone used something,” I said. “Perhaps a type of chemical or cleaning product.”
“Do you like Sicilian food?”
I kept my arms crossed and ignored his question. “Mr. Wick, we just need to know what chemical this prankster is using to lift the words from our library books. Then we can check the local suppliers and find out who has access.”
“How industrious,” he said with a double dose of smarm.
I pointed my thumb in my boss's direction. “Kathy already tested a few of our book-cleaning supplies, but those are designed to remove pen marks without lifting ink. We're out of options. Do you have any ideas?”
“I have plenty of ideas,” he said, his voice like thick olive oil spreading across balsamic vinegar.
“Maybe something with an acetone base?” As the words came from my mouth, I started to believe myself. Maybe it really had been a chemical agent removing the words, and not something magical after all. It could have been slow-acting, which would explain why the words had disappeared in front of my eyes that day in the sundae shop.
Vincent Wick replied, “Acetone, yes, maybe. These books come from different printers, but the ink is basically the same. As for the acetone, I know of a few compounds.”
“How about something slow-acting?” I asked. “For example, something that gets applied to the paper but then doesn't react until the book's being read and the surface is exposed to light?”
He studied the books solemnly, flipping through all three at the same time, his hawkish eyes darting back and forth. He retrieved a magnifying glass from his desk drawer and leaned over the pages. “Interesting,” he said. “How wonderfully interesting.”
Kathy, who had finally finished cleaning her glasses and returned to reality, croaked out, “Horrible.” She shook her head. “Whoooooo would do such a horrible thing to library books?”
“The real question is why,” he said.
“Let's start with how,” I said, growing impatient. Something was off about this meeting, and I suddenly wanted out of there. I couldn't smell the landfill at all inside the shed, and that worried me more than if I'd been able to smell it. “Mr. Wick, do you have the name of a cleaning product that could have done this?”
He closed the books and flipped them onto their covers. “I have a few ideas, but trust me, it's not worth your time.” He opened his desk drawer, put away the magnifying glass, and pulled out a metal cash box—the kind small businesses use for petty cash. He flipped open the metal lid, counted out a sum of money using bills and coins, and placed it on the edge of his desk in front of Kathy.
She sputtered, “What's this? Vincent, I don't need your money.”
“That sum is to buy replacements for these three books. I believe you'll find that sum includes the cover price of all three titles, plus fifteen percent for the service charge. I'll keep these useless copies and recycle them.”
“Thanks for nothing,” she said bitterly. “But those are the library's books, and I'm not selling them.”
She reached for the books, but he'd already pulled them back, out of reach.
And then he did the strangest thing. One by one, he picked up the books and tore them in half along the spine.
“Allow me to deal with this matter,” he said.
“But it's library business,” Kathy said.
“Vandalism of city assets is technically my business,” he said matter-of-factly. “Consider this matter upgraded to a Maintenance issue.”
Kathy sputtered some more, her hands flapping at her sides. We did have a mending kit that could repair such spine abuse, but what would be the point? The books had been damaged to the point of worthlessness even before Vincent Wick ripped them in half.
Kathy finally accepted her defeat with a stiff nod. She grabbed the money, gave me a see-what-I-meant look, and headed for the door without saying goodbye to Vincent Wick.
I turned and followed her so closely I accidentally stepped on the heel of her shoe, nearly causing both of us to wipe out on our way through the door.
Once we were outside the corrugated metal building, the speakers affixed to the metal shed crackled. Vincent's voice boomed at high volume. “LOVELY TO MEET YOU, ZARA RIDDLE.” There was a pause. “ALWAYS A PLEASURE, KATY CARMICHAEL.”
We climbed into Kathy's car, and she did a three-point turn at high speed, the gravel on the road crackling beneath the tires. She slammed the accelerator to speed away, kicking up gravel from the tires and spraying the metal office building with a machine-gun-like rat-a-tat-tat that felt deliberate.
Chapter 7
Kathy and I returned to the library, where we told Frank about our expedition to the dump and its lack of helpful results, besides stress-testing my olfactory sensory neurons.
“That's not such bad news,” Frank said, wiping his hands theatrically, as though washing them of responsibilities. “Let ol' Vinnie Wick bring the lead pipe down on the miscreants responsible for erasing our books.”
“Lead pipe?” Now I was even more interested in Vincent Wick's personal history. “Tell me more about Vinnie and lead pipes.”
Kathy, who had been quiet during the car ride back, blinked rapidly behind her horn-rimmed glasses. “Whoooooo told you such a thing?”
“You did,” Frank said. “At the staff barbecue last summer, when you thought the grapefruit punch was non-alcoholic.” He rubbed his chin and looked up at the ceiling. “Let's see. You must have told me sometime after you started the congo line but before you tried to rip the clothes off an actual Parks Board employee you thought was a stripper.”
Kathy's head pulled back and down, so that her chin completely disappeared. “Heat strok
e,” she said. “I had terrible heat stroke that day and must have been rambling nonsense.” She swayed left and right, looking around furtively without moving her neck. Then she muttered something about checking the Storytime Lounge upstairs and made a beeline for the stairs.
I turned to Frank, who looked exactly like the human equivalent of a bottle of pink champagne waiting to be uncorked.
“Frank, do Vincent Wick and Kathy have some sort of history?”
“I really shouldn't say.” His nostrils flared and his eyes flashed. “Kathy wouldn't want me to tell you.”
“But you're dying to tell me something.”
In response, Frank used his hands to make a gesture indicating specific intimate activities.
“They used to date?” I asked.
He made the gesture more vigorously.
“But that must have been before she got married and had three kids,” I said. “Which means it was more than twenty years ago.”
He held up one hand parallel to the counter top and wiggled it, which I took to mean more or less.
“Is he dangerous?”
Frank kept making the more-or-less gesture.
“I'll try to steer clear,” I said. “Did I tell you he knew my last name before I got there? It was so creepy. And then he actually tried to flirt with me. I don't want to go anywhere near that man ever again.”
Frank pinched his nose with his fingers.
“Yes, the smell of the landfill probably keeps a lot of people from going near him,” I said. “Maybe he prefers it that way.”
Frank winked, gave me a jovial punch on the arm, and returned to his task of searching through the periodicals for a patron request.
* * *
At the end of my shift, Zoey met me at the library and we walked to Aunt Zinnia's together.
My aunt wanted the three of us to get together as a family regularly. This seemed like a good idea, since both Zoey and I occasionally enjoy food that doesn't come from a takeout box, so we'd agreed on dinner that Monday night.
We arrived fashionably late at five minutes past six. The door opened as we walked up the front steps. My aunt was nowhere to be seen. She must have used magic to let us in. I made a mental note to tease her about flaunting her powers so brazenly.
Once inside, Zoey gawked up at the ceiling of the foyer. “Auntie Z sure loves her flowers.”
I followed her gaze up and did a double-take. I hadn't noticed before that the ceiling of the foyer had a fresco-style painting of an English garden. The imagery was lovely, and professional quality, but seeing it on the ceiling was strange. It made my up feel like down, and gave me the disconcerting sensation I was falling.
In a hushed tone, I agreed. “In fact, I'm not entirely sure there's a house underneath all this wallpaper and chintz.” I pretended to rap on a wall but didn't let my knuckles make contact. I gasped theatrically. “Zoey, there's no wall here. It's all a magical illusion.” I made a spooky hand wave. “We're standing inside a mirage.”
Zoey looked at me, her expression brightening the way it does before she's about to drop some science. “Mirages aren't magic, Mom. They're a naturally occurring optical phenomenon. Light rays are bent to produce a displaced image of distant objects. When people see bodies of water in the desert, it's actually the sky being reflected in mirror image.”
I pretended to knock on the wall again. “So, are you saying there's a parallel universe somewhere with this same exact house? With evil twin versions of both of us? If we're evil over there, we definitely have flaxen blonde hair, and you're a cheerleader.”
She shook her head. “Never mind.”
I looped my arm around her shoulders and gave her a sideways hug. “Don't say never mind. I love it when you go all Wikipedia on me.”
“A girl's gotta have some kind of skills,” she said. “Especially if she's a so-called witch with zero magical ability.”
My chest tightened.
She made a fist and swung her arm in a keep-going gesture. “From here on, I'll be the one reciting book facts and writing up reports, while you fight the forces of evil with actual magic.”
I gave her a sympathetic look.
The three of us Riddle women had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of my daughter's powers. Her gifts were supposed to kick in on her sixteenth birthday, as it normally does with witches. But something strange must have happened. Instead of Zoey receiving her powers, I unexpectedly got the overdue delivery of my own magical abilities instead. And the shocking news that I was a witch.
My aunt had a theory about why I'd not gotten my powers at sixteen. She felt the delivery was delayed because I'd been pregnant with Zoey at the time. Zinnia claimed magic had a “mind of its own" and must have decided to stay dormant rather than disrupt the pregnancy.
How this would delay Zoey's gift was anyone's guess. We'd briefly considered the obvious—that Zoey was similarly with child. I'd asked more than once, “Are you absolutely sure you're not pregnant? You're not in trouble, so long as you tell me the truth.” This earned me a flurry of eye-rolling along with gagging. Zoey hadn't even been on a date with a boy, let alone any of the extra-curricular activities that had led to my own youthful family-making.
It was possible the gift had skipped a generation, as it had with my own non-witch mother.
But Aunt Zinnia wouldn't give up. She claimed to feel a spark of something magical coming from Zoey, so she was indoctrinating her with novice witchcraft lessons anyway. Zoey would have the mechanical side of spell casting mastered when her abilities kicked in. I tried to hold on to the same hope, but whenever I saw my sweet, goodhearted, brilliant daughter struggle to keep her chin up in the face of disappointment, it crushed the hope from my heart. I would have gladly given up some or even all my powers if it meant she could have them. But my aunt told me such a transfer was impossible. I could give my daughter love, understanding, money, and first choice of the best chocolates in a mixed-variety box, but I could never give her the one thing she desperately wanted. Magic.
“Hang in there,” I said. “Patience is—”
She suddenly stomped her foot. “Stop it.”
I frowned. “What's happening? Is this a temper tantrum? Are you the evil mirage-world Zoey? What have you done with my daughter?”
She stomped again, petulantly, and groaned through gritted teeth. “Stop telling me to hang in there. It's just this stupid, meaningless platitude that both you and Auntie Z say to make yourselves feel better, but it doesn't help me at all.”
She gave me a dirty look, then turned to spread the dirt to Aunt Zinnia, who stood watching in the hallway. She must have come to see what was taking us so long at the front door.
“We're having some feelings,” I explained to my aunt.
“Dinner is waiting,” Aunt Zinnia said with cool authority.
I asked, her to give us a few minutes, but there was no use. Zoey huffed and walked past my aunt, toward the kitchen and dining room.
“She's upset,” Aunt Zinnia said. “Which is perfectly understandable, given her situation. Give her some space. You're always trying to micromanage her emotions.”
“I am?”
“Yes. And that's fine when they're little, but in order to develop their own boundaries, children need to experience difficult feelings on their own.”
I tried to take in a deep breath, but only got halfway before the snark came out. “Oh, I didn't realize you were such an expert on child psychology. It must be from all your real-world experience of having raised... how many children, exactly? You know, I don't think you have any kids. Not that I can think of.”
She was slow to answer. “A wise woman can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can see from a mountain top.”
“Are you calling me a fool?”
“Not at all.” She took my elbow gently and directed me toward the smell of food. “The way you climb mountains is admirable, Zara. I certainly have a lot to learn from you.”
My irritation was
replaced by confusion, and then hunger. Dinner smelled good. I was ready to micromanage some food into my mouth.
We found Zoey sitting at the table with her hands on her lap. She nodded her head forward and turned to look out the window rather than make eye contact. I could tell by her body language that she was embarrassed by her outburst but not enough to apologize. She was probably still arguing with the version of me who lived in her head. I knew because I do the same.
I watched her silently as she stared out the window before shifting to examining strands of her hair. She twisted her hair and scowled at the white-tipped split ends. We were both overdue to get our hair trimmed. I needed to find a hairdresser for both of us.
Zinnia brought in the dinner.
I asked her, “Is there a spell for getting rid of split ends?”
“Certainly,” she said. “I go to a regular hair salon, though. We must not rely on magic too heavily.”
“But you want me to practice spells over and over so I can get good at them. Why not do both? Kill two birds with one stone?”
She arched her eyebrows. “A wise woman can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can see from a mountain top,” she said for the second time that evening. It was no less irritating than the first time.
“I'd still rather be on a mountain top than stuck at the bottom of a well.”
My daughter made a snorting sound.
“Of course you would,” Zinnia said. “How about we eat some dinner now?”
I looked at the bubbling, golden surface of the steaming dish before us. My annoyance over my aunt's vague comments about fools and wells and mountaintops dissipated. The food smelled like the exact opposite of the Wisteria Sanitation Management Station. I no longer cursed the olfactory sensory neurons in my nose for being so good at their job.
“Thank you so much for dinner,” I said, and I heaped on the compliments as she heaped the food onto my rose-patterned china plate.
“Tish tosh,” she said. “It's just a simple casserole with green beans, hand-made pasta, and fresh herbs from the garden.”
“Well, we love anything with cheese on top, and this appears to have two kinds of cheese, so you have our admiration, gratitude, and a kidney should you ever need one.”
Wicked Wisteria (Witch Cozy Mystery and Paranormal Romance) (Wisteria Witches Book 2) Page 6