3-Book Series Bundle: Wisteria Witches, Wicked Wisteria, Wisteria Wonders - Cozy Witch Mysteries

by Angela Pepper

  I held my hand to my chest. “You're right. This probably is my fault, but there are things you don't know about this town, and about me.”

  His long neck relaxed into an S-shape. He steadied himself, both legs locked straight. His kazoo squawking softened. WHUZEEEEeeee. ZEEEEee. ZZZEEERE. ZARRRAAA.

  “Very good. Yes, I'm Zara, and you're Frank.”

  ZEEEEEKK!

  I glanced across the staff lounge at the door that led to the parking lot. Where was Chet? The dispatcher had promised it would only be a few minutes. I wrung my hands and paced the staff lounge. I'd closed the interior door leading to rest of the building, but the head librarian was sure to notice soon. If Kathy popped her head in, how would I explain the presence of a flamingo? I knew a spell to improve the believability of my lies, but the spell could only do so much.

  Frank made a soft cooing sound and walked toward me, his webbed feet making soft splat sounds on the floor. His walk was improving. He stopped in front of me, cocked his head, and stared up with one beseeching orange eye.

  “You want an explanation,” I said. “And you deserve one.”

  He bobbed his head and said ZEEEEEE. He walked toward the staff lounge's Grumpy Corner, a dimly lit corner with beanbag chairs and big pillows. He plopped on top of a beanbag chair and nodded for me to join him.

  I went over and sat cross-legged on a pillow. Where to start? A stack of children's storybooks caught my eye. In a flash of inspiration, I had my opening line.

  “Once upon a time, there was a town called Wisteria,” I said.

  Frank opened his curved beak in what looked like a silent laugh.

  I continued in my story-time voice. “Wisteria was a special town, because it had more magic running through it than any other place in the world.” That part was unsubstantiated, but you know what they say—never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.

  Frank preened some pink wing feathers and nodded for me to continue.

  “Magic is an elemental force, like water or electricity, and it acts a bit like both. Magic is wondrous, but also dangerous.” I paused to let the story's tone settle in before moving on to the inciting incident. “One day, something strange happened, and the people in Wisteria started noticing unusual events. The magic was acting up.” I paused for drama. “Luckily, there were some people whose job it was to protect the town. They drove around in vans marked Department of Water, but that was just their cover-up. They were secretly called the Department of Water and Magic. The DWM.”

  Frank opened his black, curved beak. KAAAAKAA! His long neck undulated, snakelike. He thrust his head forward, took my wrist in his beak, and gently shook my hand.

  “Oh, I'm not part of the DWM,” I said. “I only know about these things because I'm a witch.”

  He didn't react to that bombshell. He didn't even blink his orange eyes.

  “Well, it was a big surprise for me,” I said, chuckling. “I didn't find out I was a witch until a few months ago. Now I'm a baby witch, a novice, at the age of thirty-two.”

  He released my wrist and relaxed with his head on my knee.

  There was a loud knock at the exterior door.

  Frank flew up with a flap of feathers. FZEEEBZZ-RAWWWK!

  I ran to the door and opened it to find three familiar faces: my neighbor Chet, plus the two DWM guys I'd seen with him once before.

  I let them in, and we made hasty introductions.

  The shorter guy was Rob, and the towering mountain of muscles was named Knox. “As in Fort Knox,” he said with a grin. “Because nothing gets through me.”

  “Except bullets,” I said.

  Rob laughed and punched Knox on his enormous bicep. “She got you, big guy!”

  Knox continued grinning, his teeth in bright contrast to his ebony-dark skin. “One little bullet can't keep me down,” he said with a shrug.

  Rob shook my hand. “It's nice to officially meet you, Zara, assuming you are you, and not an impostor.”

  “I swear I'm Zara Riddle,” I said. “Which is exactly what an impostor would say.”

  We'd finished shaking, but Rob continued to hold my hand. “An impostor could never match the natural charm of a lovely witch such as yourself.”

  Chet, who was already walking over toward Frank, barked gruffly, “Rob, stop flirting with the witch and help me with the bird.”

  I turned and gave my tall, dark-haired neighbor a dirty look. The witch and the bird? What pooped in his cornflakes?

  Rob and Knox joined Chet, and the three of them spoke softly to Frank. That was all they had? Talk therapy? I'd expected them to bring a few DWM gadgets at the very least.

  Still talking softly, the three men cornered the flamingo. Frank responded by flapping up, feathers flying, and soaring over their heads. He crashed into the ceiling and landed in a pink heap on a table, feathers ruffling up like a crinoline. He looked like a fallen ballerina.

  Knox wiped beads of sweat from his brow. He took off his jacket, revealing tight ebony skin over enormous, muscled arms.

  While Rob and Knox continued to murmur softly to Frank, Chet came over to stand next to me.

  “Your friend is worked up,” he said.

  I nodded. “And if your buddy Knox keeps stripping off clothes, Frank's never going to calm down. He adores big, strong men.”

  “I'm open to suggestions,” Chet said coolly. “We need to get him calm, turn down his limbic system response.”

  “Frank is friendly and sociable, but he's an introvert,” I said. “If all he needs is to calm down, you should get him somewhere quiet.”

  Chet quirked one eyebrow. “Somewhere quiet. Like a library?”

  “Ha ha,” I said flatly. “I was thinking his apartment.”

  A flash of pink feathers shot past us. Frank the Flamingo crossed the room and hit the door's push-handle with his body. The door didn't open. Frank let out a disappointed SKREEEAAWWWKK.

  Chet said to Rob and Knox, “If he gets out, you two are on your own.”

  Rob swiped the air dismissively. “He knows better than to draw attention to himself.”

  I replied, “You don't know Frank Wonder.”

  Right on cue, the flamingo backed up and took another run at the door. This time, it flung open. In another flash, he was outside in the summer sunshine, his plumage a dazzling, surreal pink. He stretched out his wings, revealing a fringe of black flight feathers.

  Rob waved his hand again. “At least he doesn't know how to fly. It takes ages to learn.”

  Again, I said, “You don't know Frank Wonder.”

  I ran to the door and stepped outside in time to see the flamingo shoot across the staff parking lot. His long neck stretched out straight while he flapped his wings. My breath caught in my throat. I didn't want him to fly away, and yet, deep down, I was also rooting for him. Who hasn't dreamed of flying? With a final squawk, he was up and away. I couldn't help but cheer for him.

  Frank was airborne.

  Sort of. He was up and down, a zigzagging streak of pink and black.

  Behind me, I could hear Chet using his phone to call in a report to DWM dispatch.

  I turned around to see Knox and Rob blurring as they exited the library. I blinked to clear my eyes.

  The blurs coalesced into new forms. Instead of an Asian man and a black man, there were two birds—a crow and an eagle. Both of them were enormous, three times the size of a normal crow or eagle. As the sunlight flashed off their sharp beaks, I remembered the flashing of beak and talons in the woods. The day Chet and I were attacked.

  My fingers tingled. Traces of blue lighting circled my hands like St. Elmo's fire. I clenched my hands together, palm to palm. The blue fire crackled but didn't hurt me.

  The two dark birds jumped into the sky gracefully. The beating of their giant wings kicked up dust in the parking lot, sending grit into my eyes.

  I blinked the grime away and watched as the giant, dark birds flew after the zigzagging pink flamingo.

  Chet jog
ged past me, heading toward the Department of Water van parked on the street.

  I called after him, “Now what?”

  He looked back over his shoulder. “Go back to your job. Cover for your friend.”

  “What about Frank?”

  “I'll come back for you,” Chet said. “I'll pick you up at the end of your shift.”

  He climbed into the van without waiting for a response. He drove away in the direction the birds had been flying.

  “Sounds like a solid plan,” I said to the empty parking lot. “See you at five o'clock, assuming I don't succumb to spontaneous combustion.”

  I tentatively pulled my hands apart. The blue fire continued to crackle between my palms.

  Once upon a time in Wisteria, things were strange. Again.

  Chapter 2

  I pressed my lightning hands together and looked up at the sky. No sign of the three birds. Just blue sky with a picturesque smattering of fluffy white clouds.

  I returned to the library's exterior door and tentatively touched the metal handle with the index finger of my right hand. The blue plasma at my fingertips discharged harmlessly. The crackling fire in my left hand continued to burn. I cupped my hand, and the plasma pooled on my palm, where it bubbled like the boiling contents of a cauldron.

  I wondered if I should be concerned, if my flare-up of St. Elmo's fire was a warning sign.

  Shortly after I moved to Wisteria, I was attacked in the woods by a winged beast. My witch defense system kicked in automatically, and I found myself shooting blue lightning balls from my fingertips. I didn't know I could do that, so I was nearly as shocked as the flying creature I blasted. Since that day, I've been trying to juggle being a single mother, working full-time as a librarian, and learning everything I can about my powers. Luckily, I work at a library, so I can do research on the job. I've become an expert in a few eclectic things, including sparky blue electrical discharge.

  The name, St. Elmo's fire, was coined by sailors who witnessed the phenomenon sparking around the masts of their ships. They believed the blue “fire" was a sign of salvation from St. Erasmus, the patron saint of Mediterranean sailors, because it usually occurred toward the end of a bad storm. Chemically speaking, the light is from molecules tearing apart due to an imbalance in electrical charge. This results in plasma, or ionized air. St. Elmo's fire is blue because different gasses glow different colors when they become plasma. Nitrogen and oxygen, common in Earth's atmosphere, happen to glow blue.

  If our planet's atmosphere were made of, say, neon, then St. Elmo's fire might glow orange instead of blue. Yes, I just said neon. As in the same gas they put into glass tubes to form those bright signs you probably see every day. A neon tube, whether it's advertising a brand of beer or a strip club, is St. Elmo's fire contained in glass. And the ubiquitous fluorescent tube produces a light unflattering to all skin tones because it contains mercury vapor that makes the phosphor coating glow white.

  “Out you go,” I murmured to my palmful of blue plasma. I clapped my hand closed, counted to three, and held my breath as I opened it. The fire was gone.

  I shook both hands, snapped my fingers, and clapped three times. I made jazz hands. No blue lightning.

  Once I was sure I wasn't going to zolt anyone by accident, I went inside and surveyed the damage to the staff lounge.

  Frank the Flamingo had knocked over a few things, including a bucket of crayons. While I gathered the scattered crayons, I found three pink feathers, ranging in size from a downy bit of fluff to a quill longer than my hand. I picked up the feathers and examined them. They looked and felt real enough. Were these feathers pieces of Frank, or magical objects? Would they change once Frank shifted back, turning into skin flakes, or hair, or maybe fingernails? Chet was so secretive about shifter physics, but this was my chance to find out on my own. I grabbed a clean sandwich bag from the drawer next to the fridge, bagged the pink feathers, and tucked the evidence into my voluminous skirt's pocket.

  The lounge looked normal again, but my armpits were prickling with cold sweat. My face felt sticky, like I was coming down with the flu, but it was probably just a reaction to the stress, or my guilt, or both.

  Frank will be back to his regular sassy self by Tuesday morning, I told myself. He probably wouldn't be ripped limb from limb by those two giant birds. Chet wouldn't allow it, plus Rob and Knox had seemed like good guys. They'd joked around and teased each other like good guys, anyway. Surely they wouldn't harm a feather or a pink hair on Frank's head.

  But if they were the good guys, why had my defense system kicked in with the blue fire? Was it the triggered memory of the attack, or was one of them the same vicious beast who'd attacked me that day in the forest?

  The more I thought about it, the more nervous I got. And I was hungry—famished—because the magical blue fire had eaten up calories. It didn't help my nerves at all when my stomach growled with such ferocity that I thought a tiger was sneaking up on me.

  I gobbled down three of the eleven rainbow sprinkle donuts I'd brought in that morning, and then returned to my librarian duties.

  The library, normally a cozy place to me, seemed very dark and eerily quiet after all the excitement outside. Almost like a tomb.

  “Floral designs,” said a pleasant, round-cheeked woman who was apparently talking to me. “Where you take cut flowers, and put them in a vase.” She spoke slowly as she mimed a pair of scissors cutting. She made the hand gestures of putting cut flowers into a container.

  She spoke to me as though I'd left my brain at home. I blinked at her and searched my short-term memory. She'd actually been talking to me for several minutes while I spaced out, pondering the magical wonders of Wisteria.

  “Never mind,” she said with a sigh, turning away from the counter.

  I apologized and ran over to the opening in the counter, chasing after her. The sound of my lace-up boots on the floor got me an owlish look from the head librarian. I slowed to a speed walk and caught up with the round-cheeked woman.

  “Flower arranging,” I said with confident ease. “Sorry if I appeared dazed. I was just wondering if you meant 745.92, dried flowers and flower arranging, or 745.4, floral design in the decorative arts.”

  She gave me a delighted smile. “Aren't you clever. Those numbers come right off the top of your head?”

  “Indeed.” I gave my noggin a playful tap. “You never know what you might find up here.”

  * * *

  I finished my shift without further incident, and punched out my time card as well as Frank's. Nobody had noticed him missing, so I hadn't needed to cast my convincing spell after all. I grabbed my purse, said a quick good-bye, and left the library through the front door.

  Chet was waiting for me in the Department of Water van as promised.

  I approached the passenger-side door and paused. Recently, I'd gotten a little too close to another municipal services vehicle, and it had nearly killed me.

  Well, technically it did kill me, but my aunt had kept my body going with some dark voodoo, keeping it on spiritual ice until I could hijack my way back in again.

  I shook off the memory and opened the door. If whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, then getting over the fear of something that actually did kill you must make you practically impervious. I settled into the leather bucket seat and reached for the seat belt with a trembling hand.

  Chet grunted something like a greeting and continued to train his green eyes on the screen of his phone. The two and a half wrinkles across his forehead deepened as he concentrated. Judging by the healthy glow of his skin, he'd completely recovered from the previous week's injuries. With the bright late-afternoon summer sunshine filtering into the van, lighting his long face and prominent cheekbones, his cheek hollows had no shadows. My neighbor, the wolf shifter, didn't look hungry for once. He had the strong, lean look of a professional athlete. Some of his scalp showed through his mahogany brown hair over his ears.

  “You got a haircut,” I co
mmented and then I turned my attention back down to my seat belt. The tremor in my hand was making it difficult to get the belt fastened, but I clicked it on the third try.

  “You must be rattled,” Chet said, eyeing my hands. “I've never seen you like this.”

  “Then you've never seen me when the pizza delivery guy calls to say he can't find the house.”

  He snorted and started the engine. “There's the ballsy Zara I've grown to know and love.” He coughed abruptly as he realized what he'd said. “And by love, I mean... Well, it's an expression.”

  “Love thy neighbor,” I said. “That's also an expression.”

  He smiled and kept his gaze on the road ahead. “Good fences make good neighbors.”

  “And no beauty shines brighter than that of a good heart.”

  He whipped his head to face me. “What did you just say?”

  I repeated the saying. “No beauty shines brighter than that of a good heart.”

  He nodded and returned his attention to the road. “True enough.”

  Our conversation felt familiar, as though we'd played the game of exchanging clichéd expressions countless times. I'd been living next door to Chet and the rest of the Moore family for only a few months, but our history went back at least sixteen years. He'd been a fan of my website during my Zara the Camgirl days. I was internet-famous for a while, part of the first wave of people broadcasting their lives over the Internet. I hesitate to call myself a “camgirl” because it means something different these days. Back then, being a camgirl hadn't involved stripping off clothes for strangers, except for the one or two times I'd forgotten the webcams were running in a room.

  Chet had been a regular visitor to my Zara the Camgirl page, plus we'd talked in the chat room. It was a great little community of nerds and self-named oddballs. This was all right before YouTube took off and people started having their own channels, before the first YouTube star had been christened. Back in the “olden days,” you had to be a computer nerd to handle the technical side of broadcasting your life.

  Chet didn't seem like such a nerd now that I'd met him. He was quiet at times, but I wouldn't call him an oddball, either.