“Some lesson that'll be,” I grumbled. “It's going to be a real memorable one when I get fired from my good job at the library and can't make my mortgage payments and have to move in with you. A lesson for you. Because soon you'll have two homeless witches living under your roof, eating all your food, and switching the TV channels in the middle of your favorite gardening programs.”
She paused and then said, begrudgingly, “The effects will wear off over time.”
“You mean after I'm dead? I feel like I'm breathing faster than usual. Or slower. And my stomach feels weird.”
“You weren't supposed to eat bookwyrm dough, Zara. It's a compound meant for restoring books damaged by regular wear and tear. It puts ink only where the bookwyrm dough feels it belongs. If the dough restored ink to your mouth, it must have felt your mouth needed that ink.”
“Dough has feelings?”
“Magic has a mind of its own, Zara. You know that. Or at least you should, because I keep telling you.” She sighed heavily into her phone's receiver. Her disappointment in me was a gust of angry, dispirited wind.
“Maybe I offended the dough in some way,” I said. “Should I have given it a name? It looks like a Henry.”
Zinnia made a strangled noise. “Don't you dare. Don't go naming that which ought not to be named, and don't go putting things into your mouth. I've got to go now, but please do try to keep yourself out of trouble for the remainder of the day.”
I gave myself a smile in the bathroom mirror. With my blackened teeth and gums, I looked like a ghoulish creature from a horror movie. “I'll be a good girl,” I said creepily. Or maybe I said it normally, and it was imbued with the creepiness from my appearance.
I heard pages flipping on the other side of the phone call.
“Eight to twelve hours,” Zinnia said. “The side effects from ingestion of any part of the bookwyrm are said to wear off on human subjects within eight to twelve hours, unless...”
“Unless what?”
“It becomes permanent in the event of death, but I don't think we need to worry about that.”
I swallowed hard. “Right. Let's not worry about that.”
“Drink plenty of water,” she said.
“Will it help speed up the recovery?”
“No, but it's important to always stay hydrated.” She said goodbye, and then I was on my own again.
Just me and my ghoulish black smile.
* * *
With no magical solution to my ghoul-mouth problem, I had to get creative with non-magical tools.
I cleaned off the staff washroom's counter and spread out all the makeup in my purse, plus a few things from the Lost and Found box. I applied a liberal base of opaque skin-toned concealer to cover my stained lips. It worked, but with no pink on my lips, I looked even more terrifying, like a ghost.
I applied a blend of two lipsticks and a lip gloss to put my lips back on. For my teeth, I ducked out to the book repair alcove and grabbed scissors and a roll of the white, cloth-backed tape for repairing book spines. Next, I cut out arched, tooth-sized pieces of white repair tape for my front teeth. The blackness inside my mouth was colorfast, so at least it didn't stain my artificial lip color or my cheapo teeth caps. My gums and tongue were still black, but if I kept my talking to a minimum, it was possible nobody would notice.
When I emerged from the washroom, Frank was returning with the sushi.
I ate my lunch as quickly as possible without disturbing the tape on my teeth. I turned my face down with each bite and made only the minimum number of chews needed to swallow. I was finished with my bento box before Frank and Kathy had even rubbed the loose wood burrs from their own chopsticks. This wasn't much different from how I normally ate sushi, so nobody even commented.
After lunch, I performed my librarian duties to the best of my abilities. I answered patrons' questions by whispering through my hand shyly. If someone gave me a suspicious look, I would cough into my fist and point to a prominently displayed container of cough lozenges. Everyone bought it.
Or at least, they all bought it after I cast the believably spell my aunt had taught me. What a great spell! It was like lying, on steroids.
At the end of the day, I punched my time card and left work without much of a goodbye to the others.
I felt terrible for my rudeness, but giving my coworkers a flash of teeth made from book-mending tape would have been much less forgivable.
I walked home quickly, looking forward to brushing my teeth. The sushi had cleared the lingering bookwyrm taste from my mouth, but the glue on the book-mending tape kept melting, like I was sucking on a glue-stick lollipop.
As I rounded the corner onto Beacon Street, I was walking quickly and eager to get home.
I slowed when I caught sight of an attractive male backside. The buttocks belonged to Chet Moore, who was unloading grocery bags from his vehicle. Visible at the top of one bag was a box of powdered miniature donuts. Chet claimed to be health conscious, buying treats such as pastries only for special occasions, so it surprised me to see these powdery white treats. My mouth immediately watered, which only increased the taste of glue-stick lollipop inside my mouth.
He saw me walking toward him, followed my gaze to the top of his grocery bag, and quickly rearranged the contents to hide the donuts. But he was too late. I'd seen them. The perfect teasing comment came to me. That's an interesting round vegetable you have there. Is it a new type of turnip? Funny how the healthy vegetable skin looks exactly like powdered sugar.
I took a deep breath to say something as I drew nearer, but three things made me stop. Firstly, I didn't want him to see the inside of my mouth. The black had faded somewhat over my shift, but my gums were still a sickly shade I would describe on a paint chip as Clarified Bruise. Secondly, I recalled how he had dropped me off on this very spot on Saturday night, treating me with all the warmth one might show a road-killed garter snake. Thirdly, he'd probably noticed I'd swiped his clicker pen, and I wasn't ready to admit it yet.
So, I played it cool. I gave him a polite nod as I walked by. He did the same. Once I was past him, I heard him clear his throat. I stepped lightly up the front steps of my house, listening for him to call my name, or to say anything. He was silent.
I let myself into my house and let out the breath I'd been holding.
Give it some time, I told myself. Just like the blackness from the bookwyrm dough, the blackness in my heart would fade.
Once I'd had high hopes for a deep and robust relationship with Chet Moore. I'd hoped it would develop quickly rather than dragging on for an eternity of will-we-or-won't-we, but now it seemed that my dreams were foolish. Perhaps it was for the best that we'd fizzled before we'd ever caught on fire. We wouldn't be plagued by memories of intimate activities as we went about normal neighborly business. Chet and I could discuss what kind of wood to use for mending the backyard's shared fence without blushing over unspoken shared memories of similar conversations about what sort of wood made for the best spanking paddles—not that I'd fantasized about playing wild bedroom games with Chet.
Not much, anyway.
I'd definitely had some daydreams. I'm not made of stone. Ever since that time in the woods when he'd shifted into a wolf, he's achieved mythical status in my heart. He'd saved my life and then recovered in my arms, nude and glistening, as beautiful as any artistic celebration of the male form as I'd ever seen. There'd have to be something wrong with a woman if she didn't entertain the occasional fantasy after an experience like that.
I gagged. Not at the thought of Chet's muscular arms encircling my waist, but at the sensation of accidentally swallowing one of my gummy, cloth-taped teeth.
There I was, drooling again.
* * *
I found Zoey at the kitchen island, doing her homework.
She took one look at my mouth and said, “That's not your shade, Mom.”
I told her all about my taste-test mishap with the bookwyrm dough. She enjoyed a good laugh at my e
xpense.
“This could have just as easily happened to you,” I said defensively.
She squinted and wiped a tear from one eye. “Keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel any better.”
“Zoey, I've seen you put plenty of questionable things into your mouth. The first time I took you to a beach, you tried to eat the dead crabs that were washed up on shore.”
She shrugged. “You can't say I'm not a cheap date.” She leaned in and took a good look at my mouth, pulling my chin down as though giving me a dental exam. “What did the dough taste like?”
“The magic hit me so hard, nothing registered. I got a horrible jolt of pain, then I kept sneezing. I'm still a bit dizzy.” I started hunting around the fridge for something to make for dinner. “If you cut the mold off the cheese, it's still safe to eat, right?” I took a closer look. “Never mind. That's not even cheese.”
After a minute, she said, “No offense, but I think we should do a seance to bring back the ghost of Winona Vander Zalm. Just for a few dinners.”
“You must be possessed,” I said. “My real daughter loves my creative use of leftovers and condiments.”
I started pulling out containers of leftovers and assembling a dinner from the items that weren't yet fuzzy. Once my masterpiece was assembled, I tossed a plate of food into the microwave.
“Use the thing,” Zoey said excitedly.
“The thing? Could you be even less specific?”
“The plastic lid thing! Auntie Z will get mad if you explode the food all over the inside of the microwave. She says we shouldn't microwave so much, but the least we could do is cover the food so it doesn't look like a burrito crime scene inside there.”
With a weary groan, I stopped the microwave, delaying our dinner by at least twenty precious seconds. I started it back up once I'd covered my food with the dome-shaped plastic lid Zinnia had gifted us with the previous week.
With my best redneck voice, I said, “That gosh-darned lady's tryin' to make us all fancy.”
“Speaking of fancy, I was thinking about your Spirit Charmed situation. We should be on the lookout for wealthy ghosts. Their families might give us a reward for passing along messages.” Her face took on a devilishly cheerful expression. “This could be our lucky break.”
“Since when does my daughter scheme about extortion?”
She didn't even bat an eyelash. “Every witch needs a specialty, and extortion could be mine.” She closed her textbooks and pushed them aside to make room for a dinner plate. “And it's not extortion if you're providing a valuable service to people in need.”
“My daughter the extortionist,” I said with a sigh. “And to think, when you were six, you wanted to be a ballerina.”
“I did want to be a ballerina, but then my hopes were dashed when Suzy Wiseacres told me I had the wrong kind of toes, and I'd never be stable en pointe, and I'd never get to be a real ballerina because I wasn't born having what it takes.” She'd been smiling, but now her face went slack.
I wondered if she was thinking about another disappointment, another ability she didn't have. There'd still been no sign of her magic witch powers, and they were now months overdue.
“Stupid Suzy Wiseacres,” she said bitterly.
“Being a ballerina isn't everything,” I said. “They don't get to eat yummy remixed takeout for dinner. I saw a flock of them once, eating—if you could call it eating. Did you know that ballerinas gather in a circle and peck at birdseed?”
“Right,” Zoey said slowly. “I've heard about that. And they take baths in puddles after the rain.”
“They get puddle baths, whereas we have a cool iron tub with funny chicken feet.”
The microwave beeped. I took out the first plate, whipped off the protective plastic lid, and handed Zoey her dinner with a flourish. She applauded my showmanship, and started eating while I nuked my own helping.
We ate right there at the kitchen island, amidst piles of homework and mail.
I'd imagined dinner being exactly like this, months earlier when I'd first toured the house.
As our bellies filled with warm food, I forgot about the blackness inside my mouth and simply enjoyed the moment.
I wondered, what if this is as good as it gets?
That would be fine by me, because this was really good, this new life we'd made for ourselves in Wisteria.
* * *
When we'd finished dinner, Zoey opened her textbooks again. “I'm finished with my assignments, but I just want to double-check everything,” she said.
“We could go for a walk,” I said. “There's supposed to be a shortcut around here that takes you straight to a hidden part of the beach.”
She looked pointedly at my mouth. “I'm not sure leaving the house in your condition is wise.”
I'd forgotten about my ghoulish mouth. “Is it still bad? I really want to find that shortcut. Every day we don't watch the sun set over the water I feel like we're wasting an opportunity.”
“We've waited this long to find the shortcut, so what's another day? Your mouth will be normal again by tomorrow, won't it? We can go another time. We've got the whole summer coming up.”
I got up and checked my smile in the reflection of the microwave door. My teeth had lightened to a rotten brown. My mouth looked somewhat human, but the overall effect was still bad enough to frighten children. I would stay in for the night.
“You could work on your own special project,” Zoey said. “Finish what you started last night.”
“Special project?” It had a familiar ring, but I had no recollection of anything specific from the previous evening. We'd come home from Zinnia's around nine o'clock, and then what?
“This special project.” Zoey pushed a stack of papers across the kitchen island toward me. “Last night, you swore you'd never let the electric company or anyone else cut us off. You said you were going to organize all the bills and payments into one streamlined system.”
“I did?”
Zoey stared at me, her hazel eyes widening. “Your ghost was here,” she said.
“Being bossy about money? Yes, that sounds like Mr. Finance Wizard.”
“Mom, you must have been possessed last night, and I didn't even notice.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I feel kind of... invaded.”
“You think you feel invaded? I was possessed last night, and I didn't notice, either.”
“He seems to be a very calm ghost,” Zoey said. “You should start working on the bills now and see if he comes back to help.”
“Wow. You got over your feelings of invasion quickly.”
She frowned at the stack of papers and unopened mail. “When a company sends you something in a bright green envelope, that's not good, is it?”
I glanced at the stack. “It could be a very late birthday card.”
“They wouldn't stamp FINAL NOTICE on a very late birthday card.”
“Point taken.” I finished clearing away our dinner mess, wiped the counter top, and took a seat. I pulled the pile of mail in front of me. With Zoey quietly watching, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and placed my hands on the top of the stack of papers, palms down. “Ommmmmm,” I said.
“You're meditating?”
I peeked at her with one eye. “You have a better idea?”
Her face pinched thoughtfully. “I should probably go somewhere else, so I'm not staring at you and making the ghost nervous. A watched pot never boils.” She started gathering her school materials.
I noticed she looked and sounded very witch-like, talking about ghosts and boiling pots, but I didn't say anything. The poor kid didn't need to be made more self-conscious about her current level of non-witchiness.
“I think I'll take Corvin for a walk,” she said. “I bet he knows the shortcut to the beach. In fact, I bet he knows all the shortcuts to everything in the entire town. He's so adventurous and curious.”
“Ommmmmm,” I said.
She patted me on the shoulder on her wa
y out of the room. “You'll do great,” she said. “I believe in you.”
I wanted to tell her I believed in her as well, but she was already floating away, leaving on a wave of gauzy gray water. The room around me dimmed and became soft, as though a gray velvet curtain was being drawn all around me.
“Ommmmmn.”
I could feel the dryness of the paper under my fingers and nothing else. The rest of the world was gone. It was just me and my bills.
And the ghost.
Hello, I said inside my mind.
Another hello returned, but it was only my own voice echoing.
Mr. Finance Wizard?
Again, the strangely distant echoes.
The gray curtains drew tighter around me. Something else moved in.
I slipped away, outside of myself, squeezed out as easily as the first dollop of toothpaste from a brand-new tube.
Chapter 10
Wednesday morning, I awoke feeling refreshed and invigorated.
This was especially surprising considering how early it was. My alarm clock had sounded its cacophonous refrain a full ninety minutes earlier than usual. I sat up, switched off the noise, and looked at the sticky note affixed to the front of my LED clock's face.
Haircuts today
Zoey 7:30 a.m.
Zara 8:00 a.m.
Beach Hair Shack
1008 Seahorse Drive
I ran my hand back through my red locks. Zoey needed a haircut. Had she booked us appointments, changed my alarm clock time, and written this note?
My hair had been feeling dry and damaged lately, with some of the finer strands around the front splitting into pale forked tongues. Since the move, we hadn't found a new salon yet. This Hair Shack place sounded fun, but something was off. The handwriting on the note was not Zoey's. It appeared to be my own writing, but I had zero recollection of writing the sticky note, let alone phoning a salon and making the appointments.
This was the work of my ghost. What was Mr. Finance Wizard up to?
I asked, out loud, “Since when does spending money at a hair salon figure into getting your financial budget figured out? Is this a spend money to save money situation?”
3-Book Series Bundle: Wisteria Witches, Wicked Wisteria, Wisteria Wonders - Cozy Witch Mysteries Page 31