Point one: Chessa had been gone for a year.
Point two: Chloe wanted me to visit her body.
Point three: She wasn't dead.
That left only one logical explanation.
“Chet's girlfriend is in a coma,” I said.
Chloe opened the sliding patio door at the back of her house. “Fiancée,” she said. “His fiancée is in a coma.”
“Right. Chet's fiancée is in a coma.” My mouth didn't like forming the phrase 'Chet's fiancée.' Even though he'd been acting like a moody burro all day, he'd previously laid the foundations for my crush with some kind gestures over the past few months. Now that I knew he was mourning a fiancée, his occasional hot-cold treatment of me made more sense. It would take time, but my heart would get the memo that Chet and I weren't meant to be.
I stood on the paving stones outside Chloe's house and wiped the corners of my eyes. There must have been a quick summer breeze that kicked pollen or dust into my eyes.
Chloe was already inside, apologizing for the mess.
I entered the main house, which was fragrant with the welcoming scent of freshly brewed coffee.
Girl time, I thought. Now I would have coffee and pastries with the blond baker whose sister was in a coma. Presumably, the sister was equally blond and beautiful.
Chessa was just like a real-life Snow White from the fairy tales, waiting for her prince to kiss her awake. Legend has it the kiss served to jostle her head enough for the chunk of poisoned apple to tumble from her sleeping mouth. But who had given the poisoned apple to Snow White in the first place? Hadn't it been a wicked witch?
Chapter 6
Chloe's husband, Jordan Taub, would be at the bakery for a few more hours, Chloe explained as she set platters of food before me on an enormous rustic wood table. She served all manner of pastries, from savory mini quiches to sweet tartlets filled with strawberry jam.
We made small talk about the food, and she explained that she had so much at home because the “imperfect” goods were unsalable at the bakery. A few of the dishes were experiments they conducted at home. And yet more of it was simply her favorites that she enjoyed making in her home kitchen to relax.
I checked the time and mentioned getting home soon to make sure my daughter ate dinner.
Chloe asked, “How old is she?”
“Sixteen.”
“Of course she's sixteen,” Chloe said with a chuckle, the laugh lines of which didn't extend to her bright-blue eyes. “I knew that.”
“How did you know?” Zoey hadn't visited the bakery with me, as it was located past the point where our morning paths to school and work forked apart.
“Uh,” Chloe stammered as she rearranged the serving platters on the table to make room for steaming cinnamon rolls, still hot from the oven. “Maybe Chet told me?”
“He might have,” I said.
“In any case, you look way too young to have a teenaged daughter.”
I gave her a practiced smile. I'd heard that phrase countless times. Sometimes it was a compliment, but more often it was a roundabout way for people to pry into my personal business. Other women always wanted to know how old I'd been when I'd gotten pregnant. With time, I'd gotten over being offended. People were simply curious, and I'd probably want to know the same thing if I were in their shoes.
“I had her at sixteen,” I said.
“Smart,” Chloe said warmly. “I'm not quite thirty, and my little guy runs me ragged.”
As if on cue, a baby squeal filled the open-plan dining area. The cries came from a portable baby monitor sitting on the nearby kitchen counter.
“Be back in a minute,” Chloe said. “I hope you don't mind serving yourself.”
I was already reaching for the cannoli.
While Chloe tended to her little one, I sampled the cornucopia of goodies, starting with the supposedly “imperfect” quiches. I couldn't for the life of me guess what was wrong with them. If containing too much bacon and cheddar was a flaw, I didn't want quiches that were right. Next up was a cheese blintz, then a jam blintz, and, finally, one filled with both cheese and jam. I chased down the blintzes with a cup of coffee and cannoli. Technically, I started with a cannolo—the singular of cannoli—but the cream-filled pastry didn't want to visit my stomach without a friend or two.
As I succumbed to the gastric pleasures before me, I forgot all about my reason for being there.
It was Chloe's voice, coming through the baby monitor, that brought me back to my mission.
“Zara's going to help Mommy,” she cooed. “What do you think about that?” The baby made a happy noise that caused the monitor to crackle. “That's right! She is a witch. But she's not a nasty, old, icky witch. Zara is a good witch.”
Alone at the big table, I pushed my chair back and rubbed my belly. I said to myself, “Zara tries to be a good witch, but Zara has a weakness for buttery pastry.”
A few minutes later, Chloe returned to find me munching a gingersnap. She cradled a rosy-cheeked baby boy who was grabbing for her golden curls with both pudgy hands.
“Zara, meet Jordan Junior, our little gingerbread boy. Would you like to hold him?”
I wiped the crumbs from my hands and reached out eagerly. “All the better to nom-nom his tasty little arms.” I knew from chatting with Jordan at the bakery that they called him their gingerbread boy because his skin tone was halfway between Chloe's pale skin and Jordan's dark coloring. I took the baby and hummed a melody I used to sing for Zoey. The humming, combined with the lovely baby smell coming off the crown of his head, brought back all sorts of memories—some good, some bad, all of them surprisingly crisp and clear.
“Thanks for holding Junior,” Chloe said. “He has a knack for waking up right when I'm about to eat, and I'm famished.”
“Eat,” I told her, and then I confessed how much food I'd already put away in her absence. “You can put it on my bakery tab,” I joked.
She laughed. “At least we're in Wisteria now, so there's no need to count calories.”
“What's that all about, anyway? How does the magic keep people from gaining weight?”
She shrugged. “Why look a gift horse in the mouth?” She loaded up a plate and started eating. “My sisters and I were born here, so I didn't know the rest of the world was different. When Jordan and I moved away, our lives became more challenging, which can be fun, but also a real pain in the butt. Everything out there costs more, and you get less.” She washed down a snickerdoodle with creamy coffee. “Eventually, we admitted there was something missing in our lives. I hate to say it, because I don't like to sound lazy, but we were both tired of struggling so hard. We had an honest talk and decided that we'd had our adventures in the outside world, and now it was time to come home and start a family.”
“And is your life better here in Wisteria?”
She blinked at me, her blue eyes as bright as a sunny sky. “Isn't yours better here?”
“Sure, but that's because I own a gorgeous house, have a great-paying job, the people here are so nice, and there's a bakery on every downtown block.”
“Exactly,” she said.
I nodded slowly before resting my chin on Junior's warm head. Chet hadn't come over to check on us, and I wondered how much time we had for “girl talk.” I wanted to hear more about Chloe's sister, such as what kind of mishap had put her into a coma. Was it related to the coma that Dorothy Tibbits had been in before she lost her memory? Was Wisteria plagued by some wicked witch with a basket full of poisoned apples?
The baby squealed and wriggled on my lap.
“How old is he?” I asked, smoothing his swirl of dark hair.
“Almost three months.”
“If your sister's been asleep for a year, she wouldn't have known you were pregnant. This nephew will be a big surprise if she comes back.”
The baby squealed again in what seemed to be a protest.
I kissed the top of his head and corrected myself. “You'll be a big surprise when sh
e comes back. When.”
Jordan Junior bounced happily on my lap, plump arms waving wildly. He was strong for three months, no wobbling with his head, plus he had to weigh a good fifteen pounds.
“Chessa knows,” Chloe said. “I mean, she knew we'd been trying.” She coughed and looked away, at a collection of souvenir spoons decorating the wall. “Jordan and I had some stork-summoning problems.”
“And by stork, you mean the fairy tale version—the bird who delivers babies?” Silently I added, And not that one or both of you is a stork shifter? I would have asked about her magical abilities, but I wasn't sure of the etiquette. Never mind that Chet had already blabbed to her about my witch status.
“Fertility problems,” Chloe said heavily. “We went through the whole roller coaster ride. Vitamins and lifestyle changes. Jordan switched to boxers and baggy pants. We blew through our savings on treatments. Then, finally, a year after we'd all but given up, we moved back here to Wisteria, to this house. My sister was already living in the cottage at the back, so she and I became even closer.” She took a deep breath. “And then we got our little miracle.” She looked pointedly at Junior on my lap.
Junior twisted his torso, cocked his head, and looked up at me with an eerily intelligent stare.
I looked into the baby's eyes. They were a dark gray, halfway between his mother's baby blues and his father's dark-brown eyes. I silently asked, Are you in there, Chessa? Did you already give up on your body and reincarnate into this adorable baby boy?
Junior blinked and then crammed his whole fist into his mouth with a joyful squeal.
“Wow,” Chloe said. “He's as comfortable with you as he is with his auntie, Charlize.”
A cold tingle went down my spine.
“Charlize? As in the...” Don't say gorgon! “The blonde who works with Chet?”
“She's our sister.”
I stiffened to keep from trembling. Thinking about the gorgon caused an unexpectedly strong fear response deep within me.
My voice high and squeaky, I asked, “How many of you are there?”
“Just three,” Chloe said breezily. “We're triplets.” She reached out to take Junior back from me. He went over with a happy squeal. She bobbed him on her lap while he batted his eyelashes at me.
“Triplets are rare,” I said. Except with gorgons, I screamed in my head.
“Multiples run in the family, so I'm lucky I only got this one.” She kissed the swirl of fluffy brown baby hair at the top of his head. “Really lucky.”
“And he's lucky to have you,” I said. Who wouldn't want a gorgon mother? Except maybe, oh, everyone?
She gave me a funny look, eyes squinting. Her gorgon eyes squinting. I cleared my throat and looked down at a stack of peanut butter cookies between us.
Chloe said, “We don't know yet if he has any abilities. I'm the least powerful of my sisters. And Jordan, well, that's another issue entirely.” She chuckled knowingly, as though I were in on the joke.
“I see,” I said, my gaze firmly fixed on the cookies.
“Still hungry? Help yourself, Zara.” She said my name like she was tasting it.
“Totally full,” I said.
She made a hissing sound, along with a rattle. The baby hadn't been holding a rattle. It had to be the snakes in her hair. I hadn't glimpsed any snakes coming out of Chloe's head, but that didn't mean they weren't there, hiding under a glamour.
I kept staring at the cookies. I was curious about the hissing and rattling, but I didn't dare look up at her hair, because I might get caught and frozen by her eyes. My knowledge of Greek mythology was neither wide nor deep, but I knew the basics about Medusa, the snake-haired gorgon who turned people to stone with a glance.
“Zsssarra,” she said, tasting my name again, and hissing.
At the edge of my vision was her shadow on the wall. The shadow revealed unnatural movement around Chloe's head.
“Zssssarrrrrrra, are you afraid to look at me?”
I reached for a butter knife and angled it so I could see her in the reflection. Her golden curls were twirling, snake-like, alternately hissing and rattling their tails. My breath caught in my throat, and I held still. Very still. Was I already frozen, turned to stone? No. I could feel my heart pounding.
Her voice thick with anger, formerly sweet Chloe said, “Zara, I'm not a monster. My sisters and I are descendant of the gods. Unlike you witches.” She said the word witches like she had tasted it, found it repugnant, and was now spitting it out. Her terrible hair snakes continued to writhe.
A male voice said, “I can't leave you alone for a minute.”
I whirled around on my chair to see Chet, standing just inside the sliding glass patio door, shaking his head.
“Me?” I pointed to my chest.
In the dim reflection on the glass door, I saw Chloe make a similar gesture and also ask, “Me?”
Which one of us was he chiding?
“Time to go,” Chet said to me. “Let's be on our way, Zara.” His suggestion had the weight of a pack leader's command.
He didn't have to bark his order twice. I was up from the chair and out of the house in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
As we made our way out of the backyard, I glanced back at the stone lawn ornaments in front of the cottage—the frightened-looking buck, rabbit, and raccoon.
In light of the whole Chessa-being-a-gorgon thing, the expressions on the stone animals' faces were even more chilling.
Chapter 7
“Thanks a lot for the warning,” I said with heavy sarcasm. “Things could have gotten awkward back there if Chloe's supernatural powers had been a complete surprise to me.” I paused. “Oh, wait. It was a complete surprise. Because now that I think about it, you didn't give me any warning, whatsoever. I suppose you've been too busy lately. Then again, you did find time in your hectic schedule to tell Chloe all about me being a witch.”
Chet kept his eyes focused on the road ahead. We'd been driving for ten minutes in silence. Well, he'd been silent. I'd been talking non-stop. He kept stonewalling me, pretending to be deaf.
“What's next on your agenda?” I asked. “Do you pull out one of your DWM gadgets—maybe a normal-looking tin of breath mints—and use it to shock me into paralysis before you toss me into a pit of angry scorpions?”
He clenched his jaw.
“Chet, I know you heard me, because I saw you clench your jaw. You should try talking about your feelings sometime. If you keep bottling stuff up, you're bound to crack a molar.” I turned and looked out the side window at the passing scenery of shrubs and houses. “Of course, given your wolf-boy healing powers, you'd probably spit the cracked molar out and grow a new one in five minutes.”
“It would take more than five minutes,” he said gruffly.
I clapped my hands. “It's a miracle! The wolf boy's hearing has been reinstated! And now I shall brace myself for the flurry of answers that are surely coming my way.”
“I don't like being called wolf boy.”
“Fair enough.” I gave my head a sassy shake. “I don't like being left alone with an easily offended gorgon.”
Chet sighed. “She wasn't going to turn you to stone, Zara.” He glanced over at me. His eyes had settled to a shade between emerald and black, their regular moss green. “What did you say to upset Chloe, anyway?”
“Nothing. Which is ironic, because, as you may have noticed, I can be rather colorful and outspoken at times. I set her off when she noticed I was avoiding eye contact, which I naturally did once I realized what she was.” I rubbed my forearms. “Gorgons are real.” I studied Chet's stony profile. “And your own fiancée is a gorgon. Wow. I bet you guys never fought, not even once. Or if you did, you always let her win.”
He didn't respond. We were back to the stonewalling silence.
I kept the rest of my thoughts to myself until we arrived at the front of my house, where Chet pulled the van up to the sidewalk. He shifted into park but didn't shut off the engine.
“Just dropping me off?” My voice sounded high and squeaky, betraying my emotions. Now that we were going our separate ways, I felt bad about leaving things on a sour note.
He said, “I'll let you know when I can get you in to visit Chessa in the coma ward.”
“Oh, goody. I can't wait to go back there, to the spooky underground hospital.”
He growled, “If you don't want to help, say so.”
“You don't know what you're asking me to do.”
He shifted in his seat, making the leather squeak, but didn't say anything.
“The other spirits never gave me a choice in the matter.” I reached for my seat belt but didn't unfasten it yet. “Chet, you don't know what it's like to have your body taken over by powerful forces.”
He turned to face me, one eyebrow quirked. “I don't? What do you think happens when I turn into a wolf? Do you think I'm still me, with all my human thoughts and emotions?” His expression was part amusement and part fury. I was used to Chet's mood falling on the spectrum between warm and awkward. This belligerent side was more upsetting than when he'd questioned my parenting skills.
He said, “You're not the only one who struggles. Why do you think we keep our powers secret from the world?”
“I wouldn't know, Chet.” I said his name like I was spitting on it. “My handbook for How to Make Friends and Influence Shifters, Gorgons, and Other Scary Monsters must have gotten lost in the mail.” I released my seat belt with a mighty click.
“You can do it,” he said gently. “If you're worried that you can't find Chessa, don't be. You've caught the spirit of someone who wasn't dead once already.”
“At least once,” I said. “Twice, if you count the boss spirit who you knocked out.”
His upper lip curled. “I told you already, that was still Pressman. We'll both be better off if you accept answers for things and move on. If you keep expecting to see monsters in the shadows, you'll find them. Witches have a way of manifesting things they expect.” He paused. “Like what happened to your friend, the flamingo.”
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