Behind her, I raised my hand politely. “Ditto,” I said to Chet. “And you should be warned that I know a few swear words that aren't so current but still have bite.”
Zoey wheeled around to face me. “Are you here to call me off, or tag in?”
“Officer Riddle, here to tag in.” I puffed out my chest in my best cop impersonation. “I see you've cornered the perp.”
Chet rubbed his temples. “You two win,” he said wearily. “A wise man can see when he's outmatched. I'll tell you anything you want to know.”
I jumped on the opportunity with the first question that popped into my mind. It was something that had been bothering me all day.
“What is Steve, other than a lawyer?”
Zoey put her hands on her hips. “Yeah, what is Steve? I've looked everywhere for the iguana-lion monster Mom described, and I can't find anything.”
“He's not a monster. Steve is a rare chimera called an Iguammit, which is a sort of second cousin to the Egyptian Ammit. He was much smaller when he came to us, but our scientists have been working on a Shifter Growth Hormone.” Chet squeezed past Zoey, out of the corner, and took a seat in his computer chair, which squeaked as he leaned back. “And Steve would be mortified if he knew we were talking about him this way. He's a very private person.”
“How private is he?” I asked. “Does he post on internet message boards under a screen name?”
Chet frowned and answered carefully. “I wouldn't know.”
I took a seat on Chet's desk. Zoey came over to join me. “Interesting,” Zoey said, resting her chin on her elbow thoughtfully.
I pressed on. “Would your Iguammit lawyer, Steve, lie to a woman and tell her they were friends on the internet sixteen years ago, even though they were not acquainted at all, and a recent text search of the internet chat logs from her old computer confirms he's a liar and a manipulative phony?”
Chet looked from me to Zoey. He had evidently decoded my subtext to realize I wasn't talking about Steve the Iguammit Lawyer. He shrank in his office chair and gave my daughter a pleading look, his dark eyebrows forming a peaked roof.
Zoey sniffed and waved one hand in a sassy gesture. “If you think we're going to play Good Cop, Bad Cop, boy, are you in for a surprise. Spoiler alert: we're both the Bad Cop.”
“It's true,” I stage-whispered. “More like Bad Cop, Worse Cop.”
Just then, Corvin appeared in the doorway. I hadn't noticed the door opening, but there he was, watching us.
Chet shifted forward in his chair. “Buddy, can you give us a few more minutes?”
Corvin didn't move. “What are you talking about?”
Zoey slid off the edge of the desk. “Boring grownup stuff,” she said with a playful eyebrow waggle. “Let's go play Ninjas while these two talk boring grownup stuff.” Corvin agreed happily. Before Zoey left, she leaned in and whispered, “Don't pull any punches.”
The kids left, and I used my magic to close the door. “Oops,” I said. “I keep using my distasteful magic.”
“It's fine,” Chet said. “I'm getting used to it.”
His gaze was on the desk, to the side of where I was sitting. There was nothing on the desk, but as I looked at the smooth, dark-stained oak surface, I remembered something. Being on that same desk, with the door shut, my skirt pushed up while Chet kissed my neck, breathless. It wasn't a fantasy, though. I was far too annoyed at him to be thinking such things. I was reliving one of Chessa's memories. One of her precious moments with her lover. It had been hasty and furtive, a brief reconnection after something bad. A trip? No, an argument. A silly fight over nothing in particular. He could be so stubborn, so quick to walk away, so obstinate about hiding his feelings. But there were ways to draw him out of his shell. Removing his clothes was the first step. A few light scratches down his spine was the next.
Meanwhile, in the present moment, Chet seemed to sense something was going on inside my mind.
He said, “Anything you'd like to share?”
“No,” I said, a little too quickly. Could he see my cheeks flushing, my pupils dilating? The small computer den was not brightly lit, and the book-themed wallpaper was dark. I leaned back, trying to hide what I was feeling.
“Your daughter must have used magic to get inside my house. The house was quiet, and then suddenly she was in here, threatening me, but in a very polite fashion.”
“No magic,” I said, snapping back to reality. Thinking about my daughter brought me out of Chessa's memories, and not a moment too soon.
He rubbed the plastic armrests of his chair, which brought back another of Chessa's memories, even more vividly. I shook my head and looked around for something non-sexy to focus on. There was a cactus sitting on the windowsill. Good. I stared at the cactus until the images left my mind.
“I got my keys and phone down using a stick,” Chet said. “Took about ten minutes, tops.”
“Next time, I'll have to put them higher.”
He rested one elbow on the armrest and leaned to the side casually, his chin on his hand. “You should. I deserved it for messing around with your life. Zara, I want to make it up to you.”
“Start by telling me what you did. I don't mean the part about pretending you were one of my Internet fanboys. That's pretty obvious. A quick search online would have been all the research you required, then you told me one lie, and I bought it. Like a fool.” I took a deep breath. “Serves me right for being so gullible. What I want to know is, how did you get me to Wisteria?”
“You're not angry?”
“More curious than anything. You'll know when I'm angry.” I made a twirling motion with my fingers. “Also, you'll find yourself transformed into a tiny tree frog. Now spill the beans.” I didn't have a spell to turn him into a frog, but he didn't know that.
His chair squeaked as he swiveled slightly to the right, so his shoulders were no longer square to mine.
“The three of us did what we had to do,” Chet said. “Chloe did most of the research, since she was on bed rest from the pregnancy.” He gestured to indicate computer typing. “Charlize was able to hack your home computer network. It was easy to feed you the librarian job posting. We pulled some strings on this side, and we were monitoring your online activity in case we had to massage the deal”—he paused, his hands midair—“but then we didn't need to do much after all. You wanted the job, and you accepted with no problem. To me, it felt like maybe fate had always meant for you to move here, and I was simply one of fate's pawns.”
“But why the subterfuge? Why didn't you come visit us, and ask? I've always tried to help people in need.”
Chet let out a low laugh. “Because I'm not an idiot. I know how it would have gone if some guy showed up at your door, asking you to help him find a ghost. You would have called the cops, assuming you even gave me five minutes at your kitchen table to explain myself. How do you think it would have gone over?”
“That's a trick question,” I said. “I wouldn't have buzzed a stranger up from the apartment entrance. My old neighborhood was pretty sketchy.”
“And that's exactly my point, more or less,” Chet said. “Your guard would have been up instantly. Plus it's difficult for me to leave town except on official DWM business, which this wasn't. They're paying for Chessa's ongoing treatment, but there's nothing in the budget for what they deem experimental treatments.”
“You guys have the equivalent of an HMO?”
“It's complicated. They prioritize being battle-ready over anything else.” He swayed his chair from side to side. “But you and I, we're both on the same team. We're the good guys.”
“Good and bad are highly subjective. That's what Zoey always says.”
“You're doing a good job raising a kid who questions everything.”
I glanced at the closed door. “Speaking of my daughter, do you have any idea why she didn't get any powers on her sixteenth birthday? It seems like this Soul Catcher power went to me instead. Or maybe I didn't get her power. My aunt calls my s
ituation being Spirit Charmed, which sounds much less active.”
He looked genuinely perplexed, holding out both hands, palms up. “Honestly, I don't know. Chessa's the cryptanalyst. Once we get Chessa back, she can tell us both what's happening.”
I looked from Chet's face to the wallpaper. Then at the closed door. Then the four walls of the tiny room. The cactus on the windowsill had spikes that looked as soft as a kitten's whiskers but weren't. Things were not always as they appeared.
Chet's words echoed in my head like a hypnotic suggestion. Once we get Chessa back, she can tell us what's happening.
Was it that simple? Catch the spirit and shove her back into her body, then I'd get all the answers I was looking for? Seemed awfully convenient. What else would reviving Chessa do for me?
“Enough,” I said, sliding off the desk to stand, towering over Chet in his chair. “I don't like the way this is going. This feels too much like the job posting, all over again.”
He held his hand to his chest and blinked repeatedly, his eyes wide in an affected expression of surprise. “Zara, I've told you everything now. It's all out in the open.”
“Is it?” I backed up toward the small room's door. “I may not be a cryptanalyst, but I can spot patterns. I can see how neatly our interests are now aligned. You want your fiancée back so you can be with her, and—conveniently enough—she's the one person in the world who holds the key to my daughter's future.”
“We should call Zoey back in here,” he said calmly. “Corvin can entertain himself for a while. He did just fine before you two moved in next door.”
“You're not speaking to my daughter,” I said. “Not tonight, or ever. Not until I know who I can trust.”
“Zara, you can trust me.”
I shook my head slowly. No, I couldn't. And hearing him ask me to put my faith in him only set off my alarms louder.
“That scroll,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. “The only thing printed on it was a bunch of squiggles and triangles that didn't look anything like a name. That's why you needed a full day to prepare before you brought me in to see her body. You had to get into Chessa's files to set up the translation overlay. You set me up, showed me what you wanted me to see. And I don't know how you did it, but you fed me the perfect date to make me think the prophecy was real.”
Chet got to his feet and moved toward me slowly. “Zara, slow down. You're being paranoid. Chessa was like this, right before her accident. She was moody and anxious, and she even said people were plotting against her.”
I pressed my back against the wall next to the door, my hand on the door handle “Maybe people were plotting against her, Chet. Maybe one of those people was you.”
He stopped, facing me. Through gritted teeth, his face mere inches from mine, he said, “You can't believe that. Why would I hurt her? I loved her.”
“Consider the facts the way a good cop would see them. Two women in your life have been attacked by giant birds. First Chessa, and then me.”
“But I was with you that day in the woods. And you know I'm not an avian shifter.”
“You had an accomplice. Rob, or Knox, or both of them.”
“They would never— I would never—”
I yanked open the office door and yelled, “Zoey! We're leaving! Right now!”
She came running. When she saw the look on my face, my daughter took me by the hand. “Mom, you're scaring me.”
“You should be scared,” I snapped. “This man lives next door to us, and we've given him unfettered access to our lives, and we don't even know who he is.”
Chet crossed his arms. “Calm down and let's talk this through.”
“Not here,” I said. “And not now. I need fresh air.”
I led the way out of the house, using the conventional front-door method. Zoey followed, tight on my heels, her hand still gripped in mine.
We reached the sidewalk, walked past our house, and kept going.
Zoey was talking, trying to communicate with me, but there was such a din of voices and noise in my head. She wanted to know what Chet had shared in his den, but I didn't want to discuss it yet. And I could barely hear anything she was saying. I needed to get clear of all the confusion, all the noise.
She yanked her hand from mine. “Where are you dragging me?”
I stopped and looked around the neighborhood's houses, confused. “Which way to the beach?”
“The opposite direction of where you're heading,” she said. “Why?”
I looked up at the reddening sunset sky. “Because I need to go for a swim to clear my head.”
“What kind of a swim? Underwater?”
I turned on my heel and began walking in the other direction. “We'll find out once we get there.”
She made a squeaking noise, halfway between horror and excitement, and skipped to catch up with me.
Chapter 22
ONE HOUR LATER
“Do I look any different?”
My daughter, who stood on the shoreline under the darkening sky, crossed her arms and shook her head. “You look cold,” she called out over the water.
I adjusted the damp straps of my bra and forced myself to go deeper into the water. My legs were still pale and, well, legs. I hadn't changed or shifted. Against my human flesh, the water was chilly and unpleasant. Would it help if I went deeper? When I left Chet's house, I'd been dead-set on going for a swim. I thought for sure Chessa's spirit was with me, waiting to transform my body. I thought I'd become a mermaid, a sexy siren, but I was just a shivering witch. A shivering yet determined witch.
I took a dozen more steps, ever deeper, buckled my knees, and dropped my body all the way under the water line.
Change, I told myself.
Crouching underwater, I opened my eyes. The saltwater stung. I blinked and willed my eyes to be resilient, the way they'd been on Monday. The sting faded, but I couldn't see anything in the murky water, not even the shape of my own body when I looked down at myself. I had to pat my sides and legs to make sure I was still human.
Change into a mermaid, merlion, sea lion, or whatever you are, I told myself. Go for it. Shifter powers activate!
Still no changes, and my eyelids closed protectively.
I straightened my legs, emerged my head and shoulders from the water, and gasped for a refreshing breath of oxygen. I must have had gills before, because I was no champion at holding my breath for ages.
On shore, Zoey shifted from foot to foot impatiently. “It's getting dark,” she called out. “We can try again tomorrow.”
I took one last look out over the calm, dark ocean. Why did I want so badly to swim away from the shore and dive down deep if my body wouldn't let me? It was cruel of Chessa to taunt me like this, to show me what I couldn't have. Like the memories of her joyful moments with Chet. Why wouldn't she show me helpful things, such as what happened to her, or how to get her back? Instead, her spirit was always showing me sexy stuff; she had a real one-track mind.
Zoey yelled, “Do I need to come out there and drag you in? I can see from here that you're shivering!”
“Coming!” I began trudging back toward her, stepping slowly. The loose rocks were quite sharp under my still-human feet. My previous visit to the ocean, only two days earlier, had been completely different. That night, the beach had felt as comfortable as my own house.
When I reached dry land, Zoey patted me dry with the hem of her T-shirt before helping me get my clothes back on over my salty, wet skin.
She said, “You must have done something different from how you did it on Monday. Auntie Z says some forms of magic are very particular about the details.”
“Maybe I was more relaxed before, because I didn't have any expectations.”
“Like a coyote in a cartoon, before he realizes he's walking in midair.”
“Exactly.” I shook the sand out of my shirt and started pulling it on. “Maybe it was beginner's luck. Remember the time I went to a bingo game with all the ladies from th
e apartment building? I did so well, I had to sneak out the bathroom window with my winnings so they didn't shank me with sharpened bingo dabbers.”
She twitched her nose. “How does one sharpen a bingo dabber?”
“I don't know, but the idea sure sends chills down your spine, doesn't it?”
She shook her head and used her sleeve to rub more saltwater off my lower back, where the hem of my shirt was sticking. “Those chills are because you're freezing. We need to get you home and warmed up.”
I gazed out over the calm, dark ocean. “I wish I knew what I did on Monday, so I could recreate it.” I touched my wrist. “I'm wearing her bracelet and everything.”
Zoey made a thoughtful sound. “I know.” She struck the air with one finger. “You were wearing black underwear that day, and it looked like a bikini, whereas today you're wearing a mismatched set of pink and blue underwear that's awfully transparent when wet. You look like an extra from one of those movies about girls gone wild.”
I twisted my hair into a rope to squeeze out the seawater. “Just an extra? I don't get a starring role in this theoretical wild girls movie?”
“Starring roles are for girls with matching underwear that's awfully transparent when wet.”
“Good to know,” I said.
“You know, if you really want to go diving, there are options for this sort of thing. You could take scuba lessons.”
“Or tuba lessons. Or underwater scuba tuba.” I grinned. “See what I did there?”
She rolled her eyes.
I used my socks to wipe the sand off my feet, stuffed the socks in my pockets, and pulled my shoes on.
We began walking back toward our house. The sun had set, and everything was flat and gray, like an underexposed photo. We didn't talk for a while, and I could feel the disappointment hanging over us like a dark cloud. Zoey still didn't know what the so-called prophecy meant for her, and I didn't know how I was supposed to help Chessa, or even if I wanted to.
Chet had assumed I was angry with him, but I'd calmed down since the big bombshell that morning. I loved my new career and my new home. Sure, I'd never trust him any further than I could throw him, but I had to give the man a few points for making my life better.
3-Book Series Bundle: Wisteria Witches, Wicked Wisteria, Wisteria Wonders - Cozy Witch Mysteries Page 62