Watchful Wisteria (Wisteria Witches Mysteries Book 4)

by Angela Pepper

  “Your friend Tansy must be rich,” I said. “Good for her. Assuming she pays her fair share of taxes.”

  “Oh, Zara. Please don’t say anything like that when you meet her. I beg of you.”

  The estates were getting larger, judging by the distance between gated driveways.

  “How rich is she? Is she swimming-pool rich? I should have brought my bathing suit. Wait.” I reached in under my shirt. “Maybe I’m already wearing it. I haven’t done laundry in a while.”

  My aunt made a disapproving sound.

  “Nope,” I reported after getting a good feel. “You’ll be happy to know I’m wearing regular underwear. At least on the top.”

  “Tansy doesn’t have a pool.”

  “What a waste of being rich!”

  My aunt frowned. “I regret bringing you with me on this errand.”

  “What are we doing, anyway? Are you buying some weird magic herbs?”

  “Probably not. Tansy had some greenhouse issues, and she lost some crops recently. It sounded like perhaps a magical creature broke in and ate everything.”

  “Like a giant glowing, radioactive bunny rabbit?”

  My aunt shot me a frustrated look. “Must everything be a joke to you?”

  I shrugged. “When you won’t tell me stuff, I have to make up my own explanations. I wish there was a library just for magical resources, and I could go in and check out books whenever I wanted. Like Hogwarts, but for real.”

  “There used to be something like that, but the elders felt it wasn’t safe to have so much power concentrated.”

  “Did those same elders volunteer to keep the books for safekeeping?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Figured as much,” I said with a snort. I should have let the issue go, but my librarian side kicked in. “Knowledge belongs to the people. I’m all for the ownership rights of the individual but not when it holds back the academic and social advancement of the larger community.”

  “Your beliefs are admirable,” my witch mentor said. “But you must understand that there are good reasons for those with powers to keep their secrets.”

  “It’s always just two reasons. Money and power.”

  She winced. “You’ve heard of stealth wealth, right?”

  “Sure. It’s people with Old Money, who don’t flash it around like the nouveau riche do, with their tacky McMansions and driveways full of brand-new Lamborghinis.”

  “Yes and no,” she said. “With stealth wealth, the money doesn’t have to be old, but the established families do have more practice. By keeping their wealth private, they don’t have to worry about certain grim realities, such as having their school-age children kidnapped for ransom.”

  I sat up straighter in the passenger seat. In a flash, I’d recalled another of my one-day adventures with my father. He’d introduced me to one of his business associates. The young man was nondescript in every way, except for the contents of his beat-up green backpack.

  I told Zinnia the whole story. “There must have been a million dollars’ worth of gemstones in that ratty old bag,” I said.

  “A million dollars,” she mused. “That’s a lot of money. But let me ask you a question, and don’t answer until you’ve given it some thought. Is a million dollars more or less than the value you would you place on your witch powers?”

  I fell quiet. I hadn’t considered assigning a monetary value to what I could do.

  My mother hadn’t valued witchcraft at all.

  It had to depend on the individual, and what they planned to do with their powers. I liked using mine to chop vegetables without using my hands. That was worth about twenty bucks a week. Multiplied over the rest of my lifetime, that would be... significantly less than a million dollars.

  I wandered down the rabbit hole of possibilities. If I wanted to monetize my powers, it could be done, but every dollar earned would open me to more risk, and not the kind you could get business insurance for.

  “It’s hard to put a dollar value on magic,” I admitted.

  “But if the wrong people found out about your abilities, you’d find out their value in a hurry.” She let out a witchy cackle. “You’d have to protect your family. It would be private schools and armed bodyguards for Zoey, and I don’t think she’d appreciate that.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t like this mental exercise. I’m not sure how someone else would benefit from my powers.”

  “Use your imagination,” Zinnia said. “Let’s say you needed to fill your own backpack with gemstones. What would you do?”

  “Is there a spell to make gemstones out of rocks?”

  “Be more creative.”

  “I guess I could use my telekinetic powers to steal them. I could rob every museum and bank in town without lifting a finger. I could funnel jewelry through the air and out the building’s mail slot.” I smiled and quickly added, “But I never would.”

  “You say you wouldn’t, but what if kidnappers had your daughter and demanded a sack of emeralds and rubies in exchange for her?”

  “Then I’d phone you immediately and drag you into my mess, because you love it when I do that.” I gave her a huge grin.

  She chuckled. “I do believe that’s exactly what you’d do. And then I’d have no choice but to help you pull off the greatest jewel heist of all time.”

  I turned to study her profile. “Aunt Zinnia, what do you do for a living, anyway?”

  She laughed off my question, as she always did. Unlike me with my library job, my aunt didn’t have anywhere she needed to be on weekdays, yet she was always very busy.

  “Here we are,” she said, stopping the car. She got out and walked toward a pair of wrought-iron gates blocking our way down Tansy’s driveway. She began untangling the chain holding them closed, ignoring all the KEEP OUT signs.

  Zinnia was focused on the chain, with her head down, so she didn’t see the two dark shapes approaching.

  Running toward her, on the other side of the gate, were two of the biggest dogs I’d ever seen. By the looks of their bared fangs, they weren’t coming to beg for a dog biscuit.

  Zinnia got the chain free of the gates. Without looking up at the approaching monster dogs, she began pushing the gate open. I yelled for her to look out, but my voice was muffled by the closed windows of the car. She didn’t acknowledge hearing me.

  The dogs were only twenty feet away now, and running at top speed.

  As I pushed the car door open, I simultaneously used my magic to grab hold of the wrought-iron gates and keep them shut.

  Zinnia muttered under her breath, “Rusty old things.” I detected a spell being woven, counter to my own. My arms trembled, and the gates flew open.

  “Zinnia!”

  She turned toward me, her back to the dogs.

  “Behind you!”

  They were almost upon her.

  I cast a motion disruption spell at the dogs. It was a new one for me, and I hadn’t practiced it on anything bigger than a falling teacup. My telekinesis was only as strong as my body, and what I could move myself, but the motion disruption spell was more powerful. It could, in theory, be used to stop a moving vehicle or at least redirect it. Would it work on a pair of dogs? Purple sparks arced through the air from my fingertips to the enormous beasts. They passed through untouched, without a falter in their steps.

  Since I couldn’t move the dogs, I did the only thing I could. I focused all my telekinetic strength and wrapped it around Zinnia. It took everything in me to tug her straight up into the air.

  Her feet left the ground, and she rose up two inches.

  It was working!

  And then she cast a counterspell, whipping my spell off.

  The recoil sent me reeling backward.

  She touched down on the ground and gave me a stunned, annoyed look.

  And then the two enormous dogs tackled her.

  Chapter 19

  The dogs that had looked so vicious were surprisingly ineffective a
t ripping my aunt from limb to limb. She didn’t even cry out. The duo split up, and one came for me.

  The shadow that fell upon me blotted out the sky. I shot blue lightning from my palms, but the streams of blue light arced through the shadow, touching nothing. Fangs were flashing, but they didn’t connect. Was my motion disruption spell working after all? Was this the effect it had on living creatures?

  The shadow dog continued its ineffective attack. You could say the dark beast was “all bark, no bite,” except it didn’t even bark. The attack was silent. Eerily silent.

  The only sound was my wheezing, my effort to catch my breath. The recoil from my aunt’s counterspell had tossed me on the ground next to the car. Either the spell or the fall had knocked the wind out of my lungs.

  Aunt Zinnia didn’t react to the shadow dogs. She did look around to see what I’d been shooting blue fireballs at. With her feet spread apart in a warrior’s stance, she seemed to be guarding the open iron gates. Her tight leggings showed off her musculature. Even pushing fifty, she was formidable, like a red-haired superhero. One of the gates squeaked in the breeze. Other than my own labored breathing, there was no sound.

  The shadow dog who’d jumped on me now stood on my rib cage. It weighed nothing.

  Zinnia stayed where she was, still in her superhero pose. The fringed end of her corded belt swung slowly, like a pendulum.

  She asked in a low tone, “Zara, what is the threat?”

  “Ghost dogs,” I said, my voice raspy from having the wind knocked out of me. “If you can’t see them, I guess they’re ghosts, not holograms.”

  Zinnia whispered a spell and swept one hand in an intriguing gesture. In a low tone, she replied, “No living threats here. Not now, anyway.”

  A threat detection spell? I needed to learn that soon. I pushed myself up onto my elbows. The shadow dog on my chest jumped off lazily. The other dog stayed by Zinnia’s side. It was either licking or biting her left arm.

  “Zinnia, the dog is touching your left arm. Do you feel anything?”

  She looked from one arm to the other. “Are you sure? I don’t sense anything.” She rubbed her left arm. “Maybe a slight coolness.”

  The dogs blurred when they moved. They were a similar size, and either a mixed breed or a type I wasn’t familiar with. Both wore red leather collars with no identifying tags.

  Zinnia walked over to help me to my feet. Her hand was dry and hot. Touching it sent a jolt through me—like that time my friend got me to stir two pots at once on her grandmother’s ungrounded stove, and I got an electrical shock. Or that time Winona Vander Zalm nearly killed me with a toaster. I yanked my hand back, grazing my elbow on the dirt road.

  My aunt apologized, whispered something to her palms, spat on both of them, and extended her hand again.

  I didn’t take her hand. “No offense, but I’m not interested in becoming Spit Sisters with you.” I pushed myself upright on my own, groaning. “You really gave me a good wallop with your counter spell.”

  “You’ll be fine,” she said with a sigh. “If you need a bandage, ask Tansy for one when we get to the house. I certainly don’t need your blood on my car upholstery. Even a couple of drops of witch blood can cause an infestation of bloodweevils.”

  I checked my elbow. Thanks to my self-healing powers, my fresh scrape was already covered in a pink layer of skin cells.

  “Your concern for me is touching,” I said sarcastically. “Dial it back, or you’re going to make me cry.”

  “Your injury is your own fault,” she snapped. “Ghost dogs or not, you shouldn’t have performed spellwork on me without my consent.”

  “Oh, no you don’t.” I bobbed my head from side to side. “This is not my fault. The first spell I did was to hold the gates closed. I tried to keep the gates closed so I could warn you. If someone’s falling in front of a bus, you yank them out of harm’s way. You don’t lecture them about the importance of looking both ways before crossing the street.”

  She pursed her lips. “Is that so?”

  “Listen. If you actually trusted me, you would have turned around for an explanation about the gates. But oh, no. You had to prove a point. You’re so much stronger than me. Fine. I get it. But you didn’t need to bash through the gates like a battering ram and then knock me on my butt.”

  “My counterspell may have been an overreaction,” she replied coolly. “Even so, your spell was the wrong tactical decision.”

  I wiped the road dirt off my legs and shorts. “No way. I did the best I could with my limited knowledge of novice spells. The real problem is you don’t trust my judgment.” I pointed at her emphatically. “I did something unexpected, and your first assumption was that I was wrong. You had to cancel me out because you assumed I was... What? Just messing around?”

  “Yes,” she said with a certainty that made me think she’d been waiting for me to ask that very question. “Because you are almost always messing around, Zara. You choose to play the fool when you should be paying attention. Is it any wonder trouble keeps finding you? And can you really blame me for not taking you seriously?”

  I looked down at the two ghost dogs. Both were calm now, silently watching us. Two dark shadow dog heads tilted sideways in confusion. Human beings were so strange! But the dogs were also strange, especially the way they sat, with their non-corporeal bodies partly merged. One or the other wasn’t aware of its own ghost physics, and so they were overlapping in space, their bodies conjoining.

  “Get her,” I told the dogs. “Bite that lady. Bite her right on the a—”

  “Zara!”

  “Absolutely fabulous buttocks,” I finished.

  She tugged her flowered tunic down over her hips. “That’s what I get for trying to dress in a more youthful manner.”

  One of the dogs stood and began pacing, crossing through the other ghost dog, which set off mute barks of alarm.

  “The dogs are pacing around,” I said. “Does your associate Tansy always send a couple of ghost dogs to greet visitors?”

  “Not ghost dogs.” She followed my gaze and turned to where the ghost dogs were pacing. “Jasper and Coco, is that you? Jasper? Coco?”

  Four dark ears perked up.

  “They heard you,” I reported. “And by the wagging of their tails, you got their names right.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “That’s not a good sign. Are they still here?”

  “Yes. They’re milling through each other’s non-corporeal bodies. Now they’re jumping through each other, trying to get petted, I think.”

  Zinnia put out her hand and petted the air. The dogs arranged themselves to share the space under her hand. This petting seemed to satisfy them. I gave her a running commentary of what they were doing.

  “I’ve never seen animal ghosts before,” I said. “Which was probably for the best, since I’m not vegetarian.” I shuddered at the thought of every chicken I’d eaten following me around, seeking closure before moving on to the Next Great Barnyard.

  After a minute of petting the ghost dogs she couldn’t see, Zinnia turned away from me. She pulled a tissue from her purse and wiped at her eyes. When she turned back, her eyes were gleaming, but her expression was composed.

  “The ghost dogs are more than a dark omen,” I said.

  She nodded. “Jasper and Coco were both alive and well the last time I came out to meet with Tansy. It was that day several weeks back, when you saw me bottling herbs in my kitchen. Speaking of which, I don’t know what you said to my Black Startwists, but they’ve been misbehaving ever since.”

  I’d used the plant for free talk therapy one night, but she didn’t need to know that.

  “I plead the fifth,” I said.

  “Zara, you must not touch, poke, or otherwise agitate magical ingredients. Magic has a mind of its own, and magical items are not to be taunted.”

  “What should we do about these ghost dogs? They’re still pacing.” The ghost dogs appeared to be agitated, perhaps by a nearby threat.
I couldn’t see or hear anything in the trees and foliage.

  “Whatever it was, it’s already happened,” Zinnia said. “Tansy’s beloved dogs never left her side.” She paused dramatically. “Something dreadful has happened to poor Tansy.”

  We both looked at the winding driveway ahead of us.

  “Time to call the police,” I said, pulling out my phone. “Or not.” I stopped short of pressing the numbers. What was I going to report? A sighting of two big ghost dogs that only I could see? Detective Bentley would love that.

  Zinnia must have been having the same train of thought. “We need to check the grounds ourselves,” she said solemnly.

  Chapter 20

  Under better circumstances, I would have enjoyed touring the lush country estate’s grounds.

  Tansy had a sprawling collection of potting sheds, gardens, and greenhouses. There were many interesting oddities, including one circular garden dedicated to left-handed snails. The condition of being a left-handed snail is extremely rare. On slow news days, newspapers run articles about the plight of some lonely left-handed snail who is unable to find a mate without boarding an international flight with a wingman human.

  My aunt and I discussed this, and she said, “Who knew snails were so picky about mating?”

  “It’s not a case of being too picky,” I said. “And it’s not prejudice, like shifters and witches.”

  “I wouldn’t expect so. They’re just snails. But why can’t the left-handed ones mate with the ones whose shells swirl the regular way?”

  “I’m glad you asked! It’s because the organs necessary for mating are over on the wrong side, and nothing matches up.” I used my hands to make some crude mating gestures.

  My aunt cast her gaze up to the blue sky. “Oh, Zara. Thank you so much for that particular visual.”

  “You asked,” I said. “If snail love makes you nervous, don’t look too closely at that gurgling fountain up ahead. By the look of the snails gathered around the rim, the fountain puts them in an amorous mood.”