Watchful Wisteria (Wisteria Witches Mysteries Book 4)

by Angela Pepper

  Everything burned and turned to smoke.

  A dam broke, and a boiling hot wave of anguish gushed through me. My mind screamed.

  In the physical world, my body doubled over. My hands flailed, clutching at my aunt for support.

  Another woman’s voice roared inside me. I died? No! I don’t want to be dead! You’re a liar!

  My physical self was trembling, seizing in pain. I was standing, on shaking legs. My aunt was casting spells. My body convulsed.

  In my head, the boiling lava of anguish rose like flood waters, covering everything.

  The few remaining green leaves and flowers baked in the heat, turning black.

  There wouldn’t be another spring. Not another summer. Tansy was me, and I was Tansy. We were one, and we were done.

  My death was final. Everything I’d ever meant to do would remain undone. Bitter was the regret on my tongue.

  I’d never allowed myself to feel how precious everything was, because I’d always feared losing more than I could bear at the end, but now it was here, and what a waste. What a waste that I hid away by myself, that I never took it all—the pain, the sweet agony of loss, the triumphant beauty of surrender. Life. Ever fleeting, mysterious, unknowable.

  The world was dark now. Dark and smoking, charred wreckage.

  Dimly, I was aware of people walking by on the sidewalk, and the cold, stone police department building looming overhead. But that was not in my world. That was all some distant plane I viewed through borrowed eyes.

  Zinnia was pulling me off the sidewalk, guiding me over to a patch of grass. The blades were like shards of green glass under my skin.

  I was dimly aware of the woman in shorts and sandals writhing on the grass, shaking with gut-wrenching sobs.

  The other woman patted her—me—on the shoulder.

  “Hush now,” she sang soothingly. “Hush now, Zara. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Tansy and I didn’t believe her. Not for a second. We knew better. Everything was infected with a blackness, a dark mold that clouded the light and ate the sun. Nothing would ever be okay.

  Chapter 23

  Darkness lingered.

  It had been an hour, maybe two, maybe more, since I’d tried breaking the news of Tansy’s death to her ghost.

  My aunt had driven me back to my house and offered to come in with me. I’d assured her I would be fine on my on and simply needed rest. But now here I was, stuck in my hallway.

  I couldn’t get to my bed because my bedroom had no door at all. The wall was as smooth and featureless as a sheet of blank paper.

  I pressed my back against the wall and slid down to a sitting position. After the day I’d had, all I wanted was a nap before dinner, a little peace and quiet before Zoey and my father returned from the zoo. I needed the sweet oblivion of the dream world. Anything to block out the waves of sorrow that kept radiating from Tansy’s spirit. She was doing the ghost equivalent of sobbing in a corner, and it was all I could do to not join in.

  But I’d learned a valuable lesson.

  Never again would I try to break the bad news to a spirit that he or she was deceased.

  Beatrizz Riddle should amend her list to include a warning, I thought bitterly.

  I curled onto my side on the floor, crooked my elbow to use my arm as a pillow, and closed my eyes.

  I dreamed of the grave.

  Dirt below me, dirt above me.

  Bugs crawling over my hands, my face.

  The creaking sound of distant crickets singing down the sun.

  The squeaking of tree branches rubbing against each other in the night breeze.

  I was cold. So cold.

  “She’s still breathing,” someone reported.

  I knew the voice. Zoey?

  A man said, “She must have tuckered herself out doing all of this yard work.”

  Warm hands wrapped around my upper arms and tugged me upright.

  I opened my eyes to the glare of a flashlight. I couldn’t see the face of the person hoisting me up, but I recognized the hands as my daughter’s.

  I croaked out, “Is there a problem, Officer?” I used one hand to shield the bright light from my eyes. “Please tell me you’re the police and not aliens. I’m not in the mood to be probed.”

  “Mom, stop joking around. What are you doing?”

  The other person, my father, angled the flashlight down so I could see something besides the red veins inside my eyelids. I blinked away floating discs of burned-in light.

  Rhys chimed in, “Yes, Zara. What are you doing back here?”

  I answered defensively, “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  Then I tried to figure it out for myself. I recognized the red siding of my house as the flashlight glinted over. We were in the backyard. My hands felt grimy. They were covered in dirt. So were my clothes, my hair, and—by the taste of it—the inside of my mouth. I leaned to the side and spat dirt onto the ground next to me.

  “Classy,” my daughter commented.

  Rhys Quarry, who was crouched next to my daughter, gave me a look of genuine concern. Fatherly concern. It was the first time I’d seen the expression on his face. I only knew about fatherly concern from TV and movies.

  He grabbed my filthy, dirt-encrusted hand and helped me to my feet.

  “It looks like you were taking a dirt nap,” he said.

  “I was,” I replied brightly. “There’s nothing quite like a dirt nap, under the stars.” I waved up at the sky.

  “It’s overcast,” Zoey said. “There aren’t any stars visible. And I think there’s a summer storm coming.”

  As if magically summoned—and maybe it was—a bolt of lightning lit the backyard and briefly illuminated our faces.

  Zoey looked skyward and counted off. “One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand—”

  A sky-ripping crackle of thunder cut her off.

  I heard the rain going pat-a-pat-tat on the leaves around me before I felt the drops on my face.

  “Get your mother inside,” Rhys said to Zoey. “Her lips are gray. She’s freezing cold, and all that dirt’s turning to mud.” He made a parental tsk-tsk noise.

  They each grabbed an arm and walked me toward the golden light of the back porch lamp.

  “Look at those muddy footprints,” Zoey said, playing the grownup. “I think we should get the garden hose and hose you down out here so you don’t make a mess in the house.”

  I stomped my muddy feet defiantly.

  “The house can suck it,” I said. “She’s not my favorite dwelling at the moment.”

  Zoey asked, “Did your room get smaller again?”

  “I noticed my room’s been getting bigger,” said my father.

  “Congratulations,” I said flatly. “My door’s completely gone. I’ve been squeezed out.” I stomped dirt through the back entryway. “Stupid jerk house.”

  Rhys muttered about putting on the teakettle.

  Zoey muttered about getting my sandals off and then tossing me in the shower, clothes and all.

  With her help, I managed to get my sandals unbuckled and off. She led me through the house and past the kitchen, which smelled like food. Good food. My stomach growled.

  “You two ate dinner without me?” My voice was tinged with the hurt of betrayal.

  “When we got home, you weren’t around, so we thought you were still with Auntie Z. It wasn’t until a few minutes ago, when she phoned me to check on you, that we started looking for you.”

  I sniffed. Nobody had missed me. Tansy’s icy-cold fingers tickled my spine from the inside. We loners will never be missed, she whispered. Nobody comes to our funerals, no matter how virtuous a life we lead. The town drunk would draw a bigger crowd. Our dogs will grieve. Our cats will eat our flesh.

  I shivered so violently my teeth chattered.

  That’s enough for tonight, I told Tansy.

  She went quiet.

  My daughter and I reached the bathroom. I stood there s
tupidly while she got the water temperature set on the shower. I used the rubber plug to close off the drain, switched off the showerhead, and let the tub fill with hot water. I climbed into the tub, muddy clothes and all.

  My daughter watched with concern, saying nothing.

  “Look,” I said, waving at the muddy brown water pooling around me. “Witch soup.”

  “Something’s different,” Zoey said. “You’ve been acting weird ever since Pawpaw got here, but this is beyond your usual weird. Have you been Spirit Charmed?”

  “Right in the mouth,” I said with a weary sigh.

  “For real? Was it someone from the obituaries?”

  “Fresher than that. It was a woman named Tansy.”

  “The one Auntie Z gets her plants from? Well, that does explain your new passion for late-night gardening.”

  I sniffed the air. The insides of my nostrils no longer reeked like a harpy’s used dental floss. Suddenly I was very interested in what the two of them had eaten for dinner while I’d been gardening or dirt napping.

  Zoey read my mind the way only a daughter can. “I’ll bring you up some dinner leftovers on the tub plate, and you can tell me everything.”

  I licked my lips. “Super.”

  She left, and I settled into the hot bath, letting the heat chase the chill deeper into my bones. My shirt and shorts billowed loosely in the water around me.

  Tansy had gone quiet, her spirit somewhat soothed by or tuckered out from digging in the dirt. All she gave me now was a line that kept rolling around in my head like stuck song lyrics: I feel good, from my head to-ma-toes.

  I tried to think of something else, but Tansy’s gardening pun was on a loop.

  I feel good, from my head tomatoes.

  From ma-head to ma-toes.

  My daughter returned with a heaping pile of food on the tub plate—a blue plastic serving platter that had a curved rim, so it could be floated on water like a boat. In the Riddle household, ever since Zoey was four years old, the blue platter had been called the tub plate. Most “normal” households would refer to such an item by its commercial name, Frisbee.

  I relaxed in the tub and ate dinner from the floating Frisbee. Tonight’s meal was a mélange of spaghetti and meatballs plus chow mein with sweet-and-sour chicken balls. It was a special dish we Riddle girls referred to as Balls to the Walls.

  While I ate, Zoey asked questions about Tansy, and I filled her in on the events of my day.

  When I was finished, Zoey stared at me with huge eyes that were nearly as round as the final chicken ball on the tub plate.

  She asked, “Do you think Tansy was murdered?”

  “Possibly,” I said, trying to be honest but not alarming. “But she could still be alive somewhere, in a coma.”

  “Along with her two dogs and a dozen chickens?”

  “Probably not.” I used my toes to work the faucet at the end of the claw-foot tub to blast in a warm-up.

  “Let’s hope that Bentley guy can find her body and figure it out. Maybe Pawpaw can help?”

  “Maybe.” I hadn’t told her about my suspicion that he could be involved, perhaps working for the real estate developer.

  “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Zoey said. “Not all hauntings are caused by violence. A surprise death, or a sudden illness, or even unfinished business can make spirits stick around.”

  I used my hands to make a whirlpool in the tub to distribute the fresh hot water. “Tansy might need one more summer of gardening to get closure.”

  “But now she knows she’s dead, right?” Zoey walked over to the counter and started brushing her wavy red hair with smooth strokes. “What does a ghost think when she looks in a mirror and sees your face staring back?”

  “We all see what we want to see.”

  Zoey kept brushing her hair as she came back over to the tub and sat daintily on the rolled metal edge. “How does she know it’s okay to dig up a backyard she’s never seen before?”

  “Maybe she’d been to our house before. She probably knew Winona Vander Zalm, since it’s a small town and they were both involved in magic.”

  Zoey’s hair-brushing hand slowed. “Do you think Tansy’s spirit believes she’s helping Ms. Vander Zalm with some landscaping? I wonder, what is she thinking?”

  “If you happen to catch me burrowing into the earth like a fox digging a new den, you should ask.”

  “You need to be careful,” Zoey said.

  I chuckled. “Honey, I try, but I think we’re past that point.”

  “With the dirt,” she said. “Have you had a tetanus booster shot lately? There are plenty of microbes in the local soil that could cause a serious infection if you get a cut on your hands. You should be wearing gloves.” She reached into the muddy water and picked up my hand. She eyed my dirty fingernails before giving me a serious look. “Mom, promise that from now on you’ll practice safe gardening.”

  “No glove, no garden love,” I promised.

  “And put the gloves on right at the start,” she said, pointing her hairbrush at me accusingly. “Not halfway because you got ‘carried away’ with the excitement and kinda-sorta forgot.”

  “Right from the start,” I promised. “The thickest gauge available.”

  She nodded. “That’s what I like to hear.” She let go of my hand, dried her fingers on her pants, and went back to brushing her hair.

  “I do appreciate these little talks we have,” I said. “Most teens wouldn’t be comfortable talking to their mother about safe gardening.”

  “Ours is a special relationship,” she said sweetly.

  Chapter 24

  SUNDAY

  Sunshine warmed my face, gently waking me. And was that a soft pillow under my cheek? Oh yeah, it sure was. Without even looking, I could tell I was in the lap of luxury, or at least not taking a cold dirt nap in the backyard.

  I opened my eyes and stretched. The house had provided for me, in its own weird way. My bedroom was closed off, yet Zoey’s bed had given birth to a second bed, which was now stacked above the original one in a bunk bed formation.

  We’d been uneasy about the surprise furniture procreation the night before. We were both reluctant to take the bottom spot. It was, after all, a magical bed that might suddenly decide to become a single bed again. What would happen to a warm body between the mattresses? A smothered redhead sandwich, that was what.

  But then we’d concluded that if our house had wanted to kill us, it would have done so by now. To be heroic, I took the lower bunk. “Just one of the many sacrifices a parent makes,” I’d said before zonking out.

  Zoey’s bedroom was silent now, the only breathing my own. My teenager was downstairs already, having breakfast. The fridge held plenty of food left over from Saturday’s brunch, yet I smelled Pop Tarts toasting. Raspberry Pop Tarts. And something else. Eggo waffles.

  I climbed out of the lower bunk, careful not to bang my head on the upper bed’s support.

  As I crossed the hallway to the bathroom, I heard Zoey telling her grandfather about a TV series with a character who loves Eggo waffles.

  He replied, “Hey, maybe that can be my signature food! I like Eggos as much as the next guy, maybe more. Watch me eat this whole stack in five bites. No. Three bites.”

  I brushed my teeth, freshened up, and then automatically turned down the hall toward my bedroom. I bumped my hand against the wall where my doorknob used to be. Old habits die hard. I stood there a minute. No door meant no closet and no clothes.

  I returned to my daughter’s room and surveyed her closet. She had given me permission the night before to borrow anything I needed. We had giggled in our respective bunk beds like two teens at a sleepover. My father had actually knocked on the wall and barked at us to get some sleep, which only made us gigglier, of course.

  What to wear today? I had no idea, so I cast my spell. Zoey’s closet shimmered. The clothes slid left and right on the hanging rod. After a minute of fluffing things around, the closet off
ered forth a pair of green jeans, a minty blouse with a deep-green ivy pattern, and a green corduroy headband. I looked like someone you might find working a gardening-themed booth at a trade show.

  I got dressed and found that everything fit well enough. Why the garden theme? Was the spell responding to Tansy’s green thumb? If I would be doing more gardening that day, a better color would have been dark brown, for dirt. I considered overriding the spell’s choice with plain jeans and a white T-shirt. But my closet spell hadn’t let me down yet, so I decided to trust that my outfit was the perfect choice for the day’s activities.

  And what activities were those? My memory was foggy, but I did recall agreeing to something between giggling and falling asleep. Something tacky and regrettable, though I couldn’t put my finger on what.

  Decked out in my green jeans and ivy blouse, I went downstairs. In the kitchen, I found my father and my daughter laughing about some woman with a big hat.

  “She probably wanted a date with you,” Zoey said, laughing.

  “No way,” Rhys said. “The only sort of dating I would be performing on her would be carbon dating.”

  “Pawpaw, she was your age!”

  He made a horrified gasp. “How old do you think I am?”

  She laughed uproariously.

  I walked between them, toward the coffee maker. “Sounds like you two had fun at the zoo,” I said, pouring a cup of wake-me-up.

  “We got in for free,” Zoey said proudly. “Pawpaw turned into a fox and rode on my shoulders. The lady at the admissions believed me when I said we were hired to be weekend entertainers.”

  I shot my father the dirtiest of dirty looks. “That’s stealing,” I said.

  “I prefer the term creative payment,” he said loftily. “We still paid our way, trust me. I allowed myself to be mauled and poked at by dozens of children, and I didn’t bite any of them. Not even when they dribbled ice cream on my fur.”

  “He nipped at one,” Zoey said.

  “She pulled my tail,” he said.

  “That’s what toddlers do,” she said.

  I opened the drawer where I kept an old checkbook. “I’ll write the Wisteria Zoo a donation check equivalent to two admissions,” I said.