He barked, “Back in the house!”
She let out a petulant sound as she went inside.
He followed her in without saying another word, and slammed the door shut. I heard the deadbolt being turned.
Man-Zinnia came over to where I was standing still, impersonating a bush.
The sun had finished setting, and murky twilight gave everything an underwater look.
She was breathing hard, and back in her regular Aunt Zinnia form, her pale skin sweaty and waxen. I glanced down to find my body was no longer twigs and leaves. A startled sparrow fluttered away from my shoulder.
“Something's wrong,” Zinnia said in a low tone that made my blood turn to ice.
I climbed over the low fence and rushed to her side.
“What's wrong?”
She coughed and slumped against me.
I caught her in my arms.
“Tell me what to do,” I said, panic rising in my throat.
“Home,” she said hoarsely. “You drive. Get me home.”
I draped one of her sweaty, clammy arms across my shoulders and started guiding her toward the car.
“Easy does it,” I coaxed. “One foot in front of the other, and let's watch where we're going.”
She continued to stumble and weave, her head turned so she could stare at the Pressman house.
I paused and followed her gaze, up to the attic window.
Two shadows stood framed in the window, not moving. “They're watching us,” I whispered. “It feels like the house itself is watching us.”
“Bad,” she said, her voice barely a croak. “I saw a bad machine.”
“Sounds like you get a peek at that freaky thing inside Josephine's head. You think it's a machine? The thing I saw had insects crawling all over it, like it was infested. They've probably got this bad machine inside there, in the basement, or in the attic. How much evidence do we need to get a search warrant?” She didn't chuckle at my joke. I quickly added, “I'm kidding about the search warrant, of course.”
She shuddered and leaned heavily on me as we neared the car. “I don't know what I saw,” she whispered. “Visions aren't my specialty. I don't know how to interpret what I saw, if it's the past, the future, or more of a metaphor. Perhaps it was simply an omen.”
“Did you hear voices? Two people talking?”
She swore under her breath. “I might have heard people talking. More than two, and it was all a jumble. How many entities are involved in this Project Erasure?”
“Beats me. It could be half the people in this weird town for all I know.” I pulled open the passenger side door and helped her climb in. As I was about to close the door, her body jerked, her eyes rolled up, and she made a hissing sound. “Zinnia?” I shook her. “Open your eyes. Look at me. Wake up! Do I need to take you to the hospital?” I pressed my hand against her forehead, which was dripping wet.
Her eyes flashed open suddenly. They were unfocused and milky-looking. “I'm sorry,” she croaked. “I'm sorry I killed you. It was an accident. Oh, Zara, you've got to believe me. It will be an accident.”
Was this a spirit speaking to me through her?
I shook Zinnia again. “Who are you? What's your name? What do you want with us?”
Her eyes fluttered shut and she went limp in the passenger seat. “Home,” she moaned.
Chapter 16
“Go home to your daughter,” Aunt Zinnia said for the fourth time as she waved tiredly.
She was cocooned on her floral-print sofa, propped up and padded by two laundry loads' worth of pillows and blankets. She had recovered a little from her encounter at the Pressman residence and had been trying to reassure me everything was fine. I didn't buy it for a minute.
“You need more water,” I said. “Blended with ice, lemon, and salt, which is a Poor Man's Gatorade.” I paused and knocked on my head. “Another factoid. That recipe sounds like something from the Penny Pincher Gazette.”
“But you're not possessed right now,” Zinnia said.
“I don't think so.” I tapped on my melon again. “Hello? Mr. Finance Wizard? If you're not Perry Pressman, then who the heck are you? Thanks for the Poor Man's Gatorade recipe, but I'd appreciate a little more cooperation from you.”
“Perhaps there never was a ghost.”
“That recipe didn't just pop into my head from nowhere.”
“Your previous ghost knew many recipes. Remember, I worked on that book with Winona, years ago. Many of the recipes came straight from her head.”
“Did she know about Poor Man's Gatorade?”
“Possibly. This thing you call Mr. Finance Wizard might just be residue from Winona Vander Zalm.”
“But what about the other penny-pinching factoids?”
Zinnia raised her head from her flower-shaped pillow and arched her eyebrows. “Zara Riddle, it is possible that at some point during your thirty-two years living on this plane of existence, you might have picked up a money-saving tip or two on your own.”
“If you saw my credit card statement, you wouldn't say that.”
“Are you having money problems?” She struggled to sit upright.
“You say money problems, I say money adventures. Anyone can cook breakfast with working electricity. It takes an Iron Chef to make do without.”
She continued to struggle with the many pillows and blankets. I knelt on the thistle-dotted ottoman and helped her sit up. Using my hand, I checked the temperature of her forehead. She'd been weak and clammy ever since our trip to the Pressman residence, but at least she wasn't running a fever. She claimed all she needed was some quiet time and rest, and that the appearance-altering spell had been more exhausting than she'd expected. I wasn't buying her story, though. I knew the problem was serious, because I'd seen the terror in her eyes as we stumbled away from the Pressman residence while the two shadowy figures in the attic watched.
“Now, about this bad machine you were mumbling about,” I said. “We need to find out more. We need access to that house so we can poke around and locate this greasy black clockwork-and-bugs thing that's straight out of a steampunk graphic novel.”
She blinked. “Clockwork-and-bugs?” She blinked again. “Steampunk? I don't know that word.”
“Don't you have any friends who are comic book geeks?” I could see by her look of confusion that she did not, so I explained. “You know how you're into floral stuff? Well, some people are into alternative history, of a world that branched off during the Victorian age. They love dressing up in cool costumes, and going to sci-fi conventions. You must have seen people in steampunk costumes. They're hard to miss, with their old-fashioned aviator goggles.”
She gave me a sideways look.
I waved one hand. “Never mind the aviator goggles. In my vision, underneath the bugs and squishy stuff, I think I saw this large machine, with giant moving pieces like clockwork, and industrial bits of wood and iron. It gets a bit more clear whenever I remember it in my mind's eye.”
She listened, and when I paused for a breath, she said, “When I was talking to Mr. Pressman last night, I had a similar vision.”
“Did it happen when you looked into his eyes? That's how I got sucked into his daughter's mind.”
“I'm not sure. It happened so fast. My vision wasn't as clear as you, but I felt strongly that the man's mind was consumed by thoughts of a machine.” She pulled the blankets tighter around herself and whispered, “A bad machine.”
“Project Erasure,” I said.
We sat in silence for a minute, then she asked, “What sort of machine uses ink?”
An idea came to me, crystal clear. It seemed crazy, but so obvious. “A printing press.”
She smiled. “And the family's last name is...”
I smacked myself on the forehead. “Their last name is Pressman.”
“We no longer live in the times where people take their last names from their careers, but this can't be a coincidence.”
“You think he's got some sort of
magical printing press that works in reverse, sucking the ink out of books?”
“It's a preposterous idea,” Zinnia said. “But people don't use magic to do regular things.”
I nodded, catching on. “People use magic to do preposterous things.”
She gave me a weak smile. Other than my slip-up earlier that had gotten my telekinetic powers grounded, she was pleased at how I was learning.
She licked her lips, her dry mouth making smacking sounds. “I would like some of that Poor Man's Gatorade,” she said.
I jumped up and went to her kitchen, where I started preparing the refreshing drink. She still had masses of plants strung from the ceiling beams. I avoided eye contact with the face-slapping tentacles and triple-checked the labels on the salt and sugar containers to be certain I wasn't making some magic cocktail that would turn us into weasels.
While I crushed the ice, I gave some thought to Perry Pressman's motivation for creating a magical printing press.
His daughter had been on the phone with him at the ice cream shop. What had she been saying?
To my surprise, the memory from Saturday afternoon, four days ago, came back with perfect clarity. Chalk another point up for being a witch. I could have used this total recall back when I was a student.
I replayed the memory:
Josephine, who I knew only as the dark-haired young woman in the hipster hat, was complaining about the rock star memoir. Then she was scrambling to find her phone in her large bag. The purse looked expensive, but her phone had a cracked screen. She huffed at the phone and said, “Now what, Dad?” Then, “What do you mean, it needs more power? I thought you knew what you were doing.” She stood up tiredly and began to pace. Her voice was tired and desperate, and she had dark circles under her eyes. “I don't care what you have to plug it into, just do whatever it takes. I need that money.” She listened for a moment and then whined, “Please, Daddy? For me?” She continued to pace, heading toward the door, and then my memory of her ended. There was something about cherry-flavored lip gloss, but it was hazy.
I loaded the lemon drinks onto a flower-decorated tray and brought them out to Zinnia's sitting room. The cold drinks chattered on the tray. A factoid popped into my head. Nothing speaks of hospitality quite like the delightful tinkle of drinks on a tray being served to your guests. Now that was residue from Winona Vander Zalm. It had come to me in her elegant voice, unlike the financial factoids.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Aunt Zinnia said. “What are you smiling about?”
I told her about my amazing memory recall. “Is that a skill all witches have?”
“Don't get too excited,” she said. “Regular human memory is linked to emotions. The more heightened the emotions, the stronger the memory. That's why your most humiliating moments are, unfortunately, the most vivid.”
“But I wasn't embarrassed when I saw Josephine at the sundae shop. I was feeling pretty relaxed.”
An impatient frown flicked across her face briefly. “But you did feel the tingling sensation of ungrounded magic. It was seeping through the cafe like water at that moment. And that's why we were all quiet. The three of us felt it. Including Zoey.”
“And that's why that particular memory is clear? Because there was ungrounded magic floating around?” I took a sip of the electrolyte-replenishing drink. “Does magic move like electricity? Or—you said seeping—does it move like water?”
Her eyebrows bounced up with surprise. “Very good, Zara. Uncontrolled magic moves like both electricity and water.”
“Those are two things that should not be mixed.”
“Exactly,” she said. “When those two powerful elements converge, unfortunate accidents can happen. For example, an entire herd of reindeer can drop dead of heart failure in the middle of a field.”
“You're scaring me,” I said.
“A healthy dose of fear is good for a witch.” She shook the crushed ice in her drink. “Along with an equal-sized dash of fearlessness. Magic has a mind of its own, but it favors witches. We are...” She took a sip and shook the crushed ice again. “You know how the casino always wins? We witches are like the dealers in the casino.”
I took a moment to soak in what she was saying. If the witches were the dealers in a casino, who was our boss? Was it magic, or some other entity?
I would have asked my aunt, but she was was nodding off.
While her eyelids fluttered closed, I took the glass from her hand. I tucked the blanket around her and went to sit in the kitchen for a minute, so I didn't wake her before she'd settled.
As I finished my Poor Man's Gatorade, alternatively named the Less-Fun, Tequila-Free Margarita, I thought about dealers and casinos and gambling and ancient gods and goddesses.
My mind meandered back over to Perry Pressman and his daughter, Josephine.
The motto of his Penny Pincher Gazette had been The most valuable thing printed today, besides money.
That was it! He was using a magic-infused printing press in his attic to print counterfeit money. His daughter must have gotten into some manner of trouble and now needed more cash than her retired father had access to.
But why would his machine be sucking the ink from people's tattoos and books?
I remembered something he'd said to my aunt as they stood on his gravel yard. “The people in this town didn't appreciate good advice when they had it. All they read is garbage that isn't worth the paper it's printed on.”
“Revenge,” I said to myself.
Something at the edge of my vision wriggled. It was the bundle of black tentacles hanging from the ceiling, getting excited. Did they think I was talking to them?
“Perry Pressman is after revenge,” I said.
The tentacles undulated with apparent pleasure.
“People didn't appreciate his money-saving gazette, so now he's going to erase everyone's reading materials.”
The tentacles quivered and beckoned me to continue.
“You're a good listener,” I said. “Do you know anything about why Perry, or someone a lot like him, appeared to me as a ghost and possessed me a few times? He gave some library patron heck for her interest in designer clothes, and then he helped me book a half-price hair appointment.”
The tentacles spread apart and then tousled themselves into breezy beach hair.
“Why, thank you,” I said, patting my backcombed locks. “But I think I'll go back to my regular look tomorrow. My coworker, Frank—you'd like him—said I had sexy bed head, and he couldn't be further from the truth. My love life isn't so great.”
The tentacles relaxed into a pose that reminded me of a person resting his chin on his hands, saying do go on, love. Tell me more.
And so I did. Keeping my voice low so I didn't disturb my aunt, I told the tentacles about all the dark, weak thoughts I had, the ones that I wouldn't dare burden other people with. I shared with the listening tentacles how I would swear to anyone else who asked that I had zero regrets about moving to Wisteria, zero regrets about any of my decisions. But that secretly, I worried I had screwed up my life beyond salvage many years ago, and I'd never have a normal life. That all around me were people who seemed to understand what life was all about, who made plans and looked forward to things. I stood outside, looking in through the glass.
Other people celebrated milestones I couldn't understand. Meanwhile, I was so busy getting through the chaos from one minute to the next, always promising myself that any day now I was going to get my act together, but I was always too busy or too distracted or too something, and I never did. Whenever good things happened in my life—and I was grateful that they did—it always seemed to have happened by accident, almost in spite of my plans rather than because of them. The truth was, I felt more comfortable when things were going wrong, because that was what I felt I deserved.
“And now, I've barely got a minute to myself,” I told the listening tentacles. “I have three full-time jobs. Mother, librarian, and witch.”
The
tentacles balled up all but four finger-like extremities.
“You're right,” I said. “Four jobs, if you include being an unpaid personal assistant to the recently deceased.”
I went on for several more minutes of complaining. When I looked up, the tentacles had gone limp.
Like my aunt, they were sleeping. I had bored both of them right to sleep.
“Hint taken,” I said, and tidied up the kitchen.
The taste of the Poor Man's Gatorade had given me a wicked craving for another drink packed with natural electrolytes.
Real margaritas, with real tequila.
I gathered my things to leave, stopping by the sofa to give my sleeping aunt a kiss on her clammy forehead.
I locked up the house using the spare key she kept in a rock. This was no Hide-a-Key plastic rock from a hardware store, but an actual rock, hollowed out by magic to contain a secret slide-out drawer that would only open for people my aunt trusted. How the rock knew who was to be trusted was anyone's guess.
I headed toward home, licking my lips at the idea of margaritas. The sun had set hours ago, but the night was the warmest of the year so far.
Talking to the tentacle herbs had unburdened me, and now I wanted to bask in the relaxation, either on the porch or in the backyard. I didn't have any tequila in my house, but I had a good feeling my neat and tidy neighbor, Chet Moore, might have a well-stocked liquor cabinet.
We hadn't talked since our awkward non-date on Saturday, but the tentacle had made some good points during our therapy discussion.
The way it had twirled its tentacles, I understood it was time for me to get over my feelings, stop avoiding Chet, and work on our friendship. I'd been silly to expect us to jump straight into a whirlwind romance. We could build a solid base, get to know each other, and see what happened next.
Plus, after a few margaritas, he might be willing to share some secret X-Files-or-Whatever intel about steampunk printing presses.
I turned onto Beacon Street, walked right up to the blue Moore house, and rang the doorbell.
Wicked Wisteria (Witch Cozy Mystery and Paranormal Romance) (Wisteria Witches Book 2) Page 14