Watchful Wisteria (Wisteria Witches Mysteries Book 4)

by Angela Pepper

  WATCHFUL WISTERIA

  (WISTERIA WITCHES BOOK 4)

  Angela Pepper

  WWW.ANGELAPEPPER.COM

  Chapter 1

  This is the story of how a little red fox saved my life.

  Wednesday morning, I was walking to the library, enjoying the dappled sunshine in Pacific Spirit Park. I’d taken my headphones out of my ears so I could listen to the chirping birds in the canopy above. One particularly squawky bird began making a ruckus, silencing the others.

  About five feet ahead of me, there was movement at the side of the trail. The bushes rustled, and a red-furred animal emerged, staggering toward me before dropping at my feet. It was the size of a Shiba Inu breed of dog, but its tail was nearly as long as its body, and distinctively bushy with a white tip.

  A fox.

  In the middle of a woodsy city park. Early on a Wednesday morning.

  I looked around, my fingers crackling with potential. I noted, with cool detachment, my witch powers surging through me. I was almost good at this! After only a few months of practicing my novice witch powers, the sensation of blue plasma pooling in my hands had become regular. Not normal, because normal’s just a setting on the dishwasher between Lite Wash and Heavy Pot Scrub, but regular. Common. Typical.

  This fox, however, was new.

  And new meant dangerous.

  I took a few cautious steps back, my boots crunching through dried leaves. I smelled the coppery tang of blood coming from the fox. There was a dark streak of blood along its side, where the red-orange fur turned to white underbelly.

  The fox lifted its glistening black nose and whimpered. Gold-green eyes dotted with oval-shaped pupils stared up beseechingly. The animal’s long white whiskers shivered as it took panting breaths. Even as pity squeezed my heart, I noted that its white fangs looked very sharp. I was glad I’d worn leather ankle boots that day.

  We locked gazes, and I felt something unexpected. Familiarity. I had healed a wounded wolf in this same forest, which accounted for some of the déjà vu sensation, but there was more.

  Was this fox the shifter version of someone I knew? The supernatural residents of Wisteria were all so secretive about their powers. Those familiar gold-green eyes could belong to anyone. Then again, the fox could simply be someone’s pet. I scanned the woods again for signs of trouble. It was still early on a Wednesday morning. The weather was cool and sunny, the air thick with the promise of summer heat by afternoon. I hadn’t seen another soul since I’d stepped on the trail that ran through Pacific Spirit Park. All was quiet. Too quiet. The songbirds were silenced. The tall redwoods didn’t even whisper in the breeze.

  The fox whimpered and reached out one black-socked paw to touch the toe of my boot. With the movement, the fox’s thick fur on its side parted, revealing a deep wound that cut through muscles. I winced as I felt a sympathetic pain in my own ribs. I heard heavy, pained breathing. My own.

  I got down on my knees on the dirt. The fox needed healing. And wasn’t this exactly what I’d been training for? My aunt had been stabbing, burning, and slicing herself repeatedly—all in the name of my education. And now here was a wounded animal. Here was my final exam.

  I rubbed my hands together, turning the blue plasma from destructive energy to healing energy. I chanted the focusing spell in the Witch Tongue. I reached toward the fox, whose trembling was making the dry leaves of the trail rustle like a chorus of pleas for help. The tangy scent of blood made my eyes water.

  I hesitated, hands tingling.

  My awareness stretched out, so that I saw myself frozen in that moment, as though drawn in a storybook. How could this be a final exam? I was in the woods, not my aunt’s floral-decorated sitting room. This wasn’t a controlled environment. Since when does a fox emerge from the bushes of a city park and throw itself at a person’s feet?

  The animal licked its dark lips and fixed me with a too-calm expression. The eyes shifted between green and gold and back again. What was this magic? Who was this beast? A chill slipped in between my muscles and my bones, snaking up and twirling around my heart. This constriction in my chest was something I hadn’t felt much until recently.

  Fear.

  A shrill voice pierced my thoughts. “Careful! Careful!”

  I turned, expecting to find bushes parting to reveal my aunt. But there was only the greenery of trees and ferns. No glamour disguise and no Aunt Zinnia.

  Up in the branches overhead, blue feathers flashed against the greenery. A blue jay fluttered down on silent wings, landing on the ground near me. He wore the colors of the male of the species, and he looked like the king of the forest with his downy white belly, black feather accents, and coat of many shades of blue. The bird cocked his head, fluffed up his perky, pointed crown, took three hops forward, and pecked the fox on the mid-point of its bushy red tail.

  “Hey,” I said. “Don’t be mean.”

  “Careful,” came the shrill voice again, in time with the bird’s beak opening.

  The fox glanced over at the blue jay then back at me. Was the fox thinking what I was thinking?

  A blue jay who talks? Ziggity!

  I nodded at the fox’s wound and asked the bird, “Did you do this?”

  The bird squawked, “No!”

  No? Maybe it was the limitations of the corvid’s speech, but his no had sounded a wee bit guilty.

  “A likely story,” I said.

  “Zara, be careful,” the blue jay squawked.

  Talking was one thing, but saying my name was a whole new level of weird.

  My mentor’s voice rang in my head. We ought to use our minds and senses before we resort to magic.

  I clasped my hands together, keeping the blue plasma compressed.

  The fox didn’t move except to breathe, which sounded laborious.

  The bird hopped around the fox and gave it a sharp peck on the haunches. The fox turned its long muzzle with surprising speed and snapped at the bird. The blue jay evaded the sharp canine teeth with an undignified retreat.

  “Go ahead,” the bird squawked, looking at me with cold, black eyes. “Do your trick.”

  Do my trick.

  “Okay,” I said evenly. I would do my trick, but first I had questions. “Blue jay, if you didn’t attack this fox, who did?”

  The bird gave me the tiniest of shrugs. The feathered crest on its head smoothed down.

  “Do you know who this is?” I pointed to the fox with one plasma-clad finger.

  The bird opened its beak and let out a CAW CAW.

  “I know you can talk,” I said. “Want to try that again? Who is this fox?”

  The bird gave me another shrug and a CAW CAW. He flapped his wings and took to the air with an indignant squawk. Seconds later, the blue spot winked out of sight, disappearing above the forest canopy.

  The fox, meanwhile, said nothing. Not even a whimper. Its pink tongue lolled out limply. Those eerily familiar gold-green eyes were losing their shine. Good or bad, trap or test, the animal was going to perish if I didn’t do something quickly.

  I rubbed my hands together once more, refocusing my healing powers. I wasn’t supposed to use my magic in public unless I had a really good reason. I’d already been grounded once for my carelessness. Was saving a fox worth the risk?

  My hands were trembling, and it wasn’t from the pulsing plasma.

  When had I become such a scaredy-cat?

  THIRTY MINUTES EARLIER

  I’d woken up that Wednesday morning with every intention to stop by my next-door neighbor’s house before work. Chet Moore had a book I’d negotiated for and won, fair and square. Not only had I
located his fiancée’s spirit and gotten her back into her body, but I’d also helped rid the Department of Water and Magic of a traitor.

  Now, a book of great knowledge was mine for the reading. And yet, for the past two weeks, I’d been coming up with excuses to not pick it up. When a librarian procrastinates the acquisition of a powerful book, you know there must be more to the story.

  As excited as I was to get my hands on what my daughter and I jokingly referred to as the Monster Manual, my eagerness was dampened by my fear of Chet’s fiancée, Chessa. She and I had shared many things recently, including my body. And this sharing had come with a cost.

  While I hosted her spirit, Chessa’s memories had embedded deeply and become my own. Her emotions became mine. Her love for Chet Moore had become my love. Her lust for his body had become my... Well, you get the picture. I felt what she felt, and still did. And the crazy thing was, my crush on Chet had been doing just fine on its own before I got a dump of her feelings. He was a handsome and responsible single father who lived right next door, conveniently enough.

  If Chessa ever found out how I felt, it might conjure up that ol’ green monster, jealousy. And not just your standard garden-variety jealousy. Chessa was the descendant of powerful creatures. Her ancestors had ruled the depths of the deep blue sea, and other places across time and space.

  You would think that knowing my handsome neighbor had sleepovers with a mythical sea monster goddess straight out of an H. P. Lovecraft story would be enough to keep me away from his house. And you would be absolutely right. I hadn’t set foot in the yard since she’d returned to the land of the living. Chessa scared me to the brink of incontinence.

  I’d only caught a glimpse of the ethereal blonde’s “true form” for a few seconds, and my mind had blown a gasket. Ever since that day at her sister Chloe’s baby shower, I had kept my distance. Heaven forbid I slipped and said something flirty to Chet. All my witch powers wouldn’t do me a lick of good once a vengeful goddess decided to use the inside of my skull as a candy bowl.

  And so I stood on the sidewalk in front of the Moore family’s blue house that morning, frozen with fear. Yet I craved the book I’d won. Would the tome be bound in leather or wood? Would the pages have that wonderfully funky, decaying, delicious old-book smell? And what magical treasures awaited inside?

  Something chattered. My teeth. I was shivering under my leather jacket despite the warm summer weather. Well, Zara? Are you going to stand on the sidewalk like a ding-dong all day?

  No, I answered myself. I’ll have to go to work eventually.

  I clenched my fists, stabbing the tips of my fingernails into my palms as punishment for my cowardice. I wanted the Monster Manual so badly, but my feet wouldn’t move.

  Where had the real Zara Riddle gone? I was once the girl who had the courage at sixteen to bring a child into the world on my own. I’d had the guts to pack up my life and move across the country for my career. And recently, I’d taken the whole surprise-you’re-a-witch bombshell with grace and enthusiasm. I was the woman who, upon encountering a chasm, retreated just enough to gain speed for my leap. And now I couldn’t even walk up a few steps and knock on a door.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my neighbor, Arden, approaching on the sidewalk.

  He stopped beside me, thrust something in front of my face, and asked, “Have you ever seen the likes of this?”

  In his palm was a chunk of stone, in the shape of a rat. Someone with an active imagination might say he was holding a petrified rat. If that same person were to see the collection of stone hornets, mice, and single stone turtle displayed inside my daughter’s room, that person might wonder if there were a gorgon or two frequenting the neighborhood. And that person would be right. Chessa’s triplet sisters, Chloe and Charlize, weren’t as powerful as Chessa, but both had magical snakes in their hair and could turn living creatures to stone with a touch.

  “Wow,” I said to my neighbor, who was a friendly gentleman enjoying his retirement years. “The detail on this rat sculpture is exquisite. Who’s the artist who did the carving?”

  Arden dangled the petrified rat by its stone tail. He glanced left and right before answering in a hushed tone.

  “It’s not carved,” he said. “A monster did this.” He spat as he repeated, “A monster.”

  “Art is so subjective,” I replied with a light laugh. After years of working with the public, I was a master at avoiding certain requests. When it came to discussing politics or having a look at weird moles, I stonewalled by cheerfully misunderstanding unwanted invitations.

  I leaned over and gave Arden’s dog, a brown Labradoodle named Doodles, a pat on the head. “Is it true these Labradoodles are hypoallergenic? We’ve been looking for a pet. Just a low-maintenance one.”

  “Low maintenance? You have to walk a dog multiple times a day. You should get a cat.”

  “People keep telling me that,” I said, which wasn’t entirely true. Most people, upon discovering I’m a librarian, ask me how many cats I already have and don’t believe me when I say zero.

  “Doodles likes kitties,” Arden said. We spoke for a few more minutes about cats and dogs, and the joys of pet ownership.

  Then something interrupted our conversation.

  A blue jay. Tweeting at us from overhead, as though it wanted to join in the conversation.

  I gave Doodles one more pet and then said goodbye. I walked down the street, the task of getting the book pushed off to tomorrow again.

  I’d taken the long route to work, through Pacific Spirit Park.

  I hadn’t remembered the blue jay until now—now that I was about to put my hands on the wounded fox and use magic to heal its injury.

  Zara, be careful. That was what the blue jay had said.

  “You’re testing me,” I said to the fox.

  The animal blinked slowly. The light was fading from its eyes.

  Chapter 2

  I ran.

  With the bleeding fox cradled in a sling I’d made from my leather jacket, I ran all the way to the nearest veterinary clinic.

  My aunt and witch mentor was always lecturing me about not using magic to solve problems that could be fixed with regular means. She would be proud of my choice this morning. Why risk using magic when modern medicine would do the trick?

  The fox didn’t even wriggle in the sling.

  As I burst through the door into the vet clinic, the fox was so still, and I feared I’d made the wrong choice. I clenched my jaw and fought back raw emotions as I hurriedly explained to the young man in the white coat that I had a small animal that needed emergency treatment.

  The veterinarian simply nodded and handed me a tissue. He knew the drill.

  When he saw that the animal wasn’t a dog or a cat, he barely raised an eyebrow. He took the fox into the back room and began shuffling things with an urgency that gave me hope. If the fox had been too far gone to save, surely the vet wouldn’t be muttering under his breath and banging around for supplies.

  “I should have been faster,” I muttered to myself. I stared down at the dark-red dirt on my hands. The light around me shifted, as though my mind was lifting a veil, and I saw that it wasn’t dirt on my hands. It was blood. My blouse was clean, but the inside lining of my leather jacket was soaked in fox blood, as were my hands.

  There was so much blood for an animal that barely weighed twenty pounds.

  “You can wash up in that sink,” the vet said in a soothing tone.

  I walked over to a sink and methodically washed the blood from my hands. When I’d healed Chet in the forest, there hadn’t been this much blood. The magic might have sopped it up, or maybe I’d been too distracted to notice. There’d been the bird attack, the new powers, and the nude man. Shifters are able to keep their clothes on when they turn into their animal forms, but Chet had disrobed. I later learned that Chet had a reputation for getting naked, especially when he prepared to do battle.

  “You can handle this,” the veterina
rian said, his tone still soothing and relaxed.

  It was exactly what I needed to hear. I dried my hands with paper towel and then used the wadded paper to soak the worst of the blood from the inside of my jacket.

  I asked the vet, “Anything I can do to help? Is it just you here today?”

  “My assistant, Fatima, will be in later,” he said. “You can go up front and write down your contact information so I can call you with an update.”

  I didn’t want to leave the fox, but I did as the veterinarian requested. I wrote my name and cell phone number on a notepad. I hovered in the reception area, catching glimpses through the doorway. The vet spoke to the fox in a hushed tone.

  I called out, “How bad is the blood loss? Can you do a xenotransfusion with canine blood?”

  Without turning to face me, the vet said, “I don’t want to risk a hemolytic reaction.” He reached up and adjusted the transparent tube snaking down from a bag of clear fluids. He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Are you a nurse?”

  “Librarian,” I called back. “I pick up all sorts of things.” I straightened up the pamphlets on the clinic’s front counter. “I should be at the library right now.”

  “Then go to the library,” the vet said firmly. “I’ll call you as soon as there’s news.”

  I stayed at the counter, watching. The only part of the fox I could see was the white tip of its bushy tail. The tail drooped over the edge of the stainless steel table, as limp and lifeless as a fake-fur Halloween costume.

  I checked the time again. I wasn’t quite late for work, yet I wasn’t much use here. I folded my leather jacket with the fox blood on the inside and draped it over my forearm.

  I should have healed the fox right there in the woods, I thought. This is the lesson I was supposed to learn today.

  The vet continued speaking softly, saying something about a needle to numb the area for stitches. He followed it with, “Promise not to bite me, and I won’t bite you.”

  The tail twitched, which I took as a positive sign.