“It’s really working,” Zoey said. “You’ve poked a hole through to the other side, and now a ghost is talking to you. Just like when Ms. Vander Zalm wrote on the bathroom mirror!”
“This is nothing like that,” Zinnia said defensively.
I gave my aunt an oh really look. This was exactly like that, except she’d been terrified because she’d attempted the tandem-witch spell on her own.
“How long will it last?” Zoey asked.
The arrow stopped spinning. I rotated the disc in my hand to be certain the arrow was pointing in a specific direction and not simply stuck. It was definitely pointing in a set direction.
“The connection won’t last forever,” Zinnia said. “We need to get to my car. Zoey, you can drive. I’ll sit in the backseat with your mother so we can focus on keeping the channel open.”
“She only has her learner’s permit,” I said. “She’s barely touched a steering wheel.”
“Pawpaw let me drive Foxy Pumpkin,” Zoey said.
This was news to me. I didn’t comment. A stream of energy was arcing through me, making my whole body buzz. I couldn’t spare the mental resources to get annoyed about my father teaching my daughter bad driving habits.
We had a job to do.
Find Tansy’s body.
The compass took us toward Tansy Wick’s property, which was surprising. I’d thought for sure Coco and the compass would take us to the rural property that belonged to Reyna Drinkwater. I even had a speech prepared to give Reyna as soon as I came face to face with her.
But that seemed unlikely to happen if Tansy’s body wasn’t on Reyna’s land.
I wondered, why had the location of Tansy’s body evaded the Wisteria Police Department? They’d brought a cadaver-sniffing beagle, which had turned up the canine bones, but nothing human. I wondered, was it because Tansy wasn’t human after all? Something snickered in the dark closets of my mind.
Tansy Wick, are you something other than human? No response. Tansy, what were you doing before you were inside my mind? What is Project Buttercup? Still no response.
I turned to my aunt in the backseat. The enormous Neo Mastiff seated between us was blocking my view, so I had to lean forward to ask her my question.
“I know we’ve been over this, but are you entirely sure Tansy was a hundred percent human with no witch powers?”
Zinnia replied calmly, “The only magic she had was in her plants, and I don’t even know who supplied her seeds.”
“Did you know she used to work for the DWM?”
“I didn’t even know the DWM existed until recently. I mean, I knew there were people who had power and used it, but I had no idea it was all so organized. I thought everyone else was operating in the dark the way I have been.” Her lower lip trembled ever so slightly. “I’m a clueless old fool, Zara. You should find yourself another mentor. One who actually knows things.”
I felt her power contribution to our shared spell waver with her flagging confidence. The effort of keeping the channel open was exhausting her. And like most people when they get tired, she was falling prey to negative thoughts.
I reached around the ghost dog and grabbed her hand.
“You’ve got me,” I said.
She startled. “I do?”
“Whether you want me or not. You’ve got me.”
The ghost dog licked my face. Thankfully its saliva was spectral.
“Oh,” Zinnia said softly.
From the driver’s seat, Zoey said, “And me, Auntie Z. You’ve got both of us. Whether you want us or not. Because that’s how our family is. We Riddles stick together, through thick and thin.”
My aunt swallowed. “I should have eaten more at your house. I’m just a bit tired from the spell.”
I squeezed her hand. “Let’s just run this body-locating errand quickly, and then we’ll get sundaes bigger than our heads. My treat.”
“Yes. We’ll do this... errand, and then have ice cream.” She settled in her seat and gazed out at the passing terrain, which was becoming wilder. The sun was low in the sky, causing a strobe effect as we passed slender trees that blocked the golden rays.
We reached the gate at the front driveway. There was no yellow-striped police tape, but the gates were closed. Zoey stopped the car with a lurching halt that was not unexpected, given her level of driving experience. I reached forward and gave her a pat on the shoulder. Her shoulder was noticeably moist to the touch through her T-shirt. She’d been sweating from the concentration of driving.
“Nice driving,” I said.
“You’re just saying that because you’re my mother, and all the parenting handbooks say you have to encourage your children with praise, even when they have no physical coordination skills.”
“Yeah, well, the handbooks also said to feed you five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables per day.”
She snorted.
My aunt opened her door, and we followed. The ghost dog jumped out my side and lumbered along next to me.
Zoey said, “Gate’s locked.”
After a brief discussion about battering through the gate with my aunt’s car—a discussion my aunt didn’t find funny at all—we decided to leave the lock in place and proceed on foot.
Zinnia and I had left the car by the open gate during our previous visit as well, because we’d discovered the ghost dogs and thought it wise to follow them. They hadn’t brought us to Tansy that time, but now we had our magical compass. The arrow wavered, but it seemed to still be working.
As soon as we squeezed through the narrow opening between the iron bars, we were greeted by Coco’s cohort, Jasper. Coco and I were the only ones who could see Jasper, so I described the scene to the other Riddles.
“They look like two old college buddies in big wrinkly sweaters,” I said. “Now they’re sniffing each other from nose to tail. Do you think they can actually smell each other?”
I leaned over and sniffed them myself. There was a faint aroma of dogginess.
Zinnia, who had started walking down the long driveway, paused to look back at me. “What on earth are you doing?”
“The ghost dogs have an odor,” I said. “Come here and see if you can smell them.”
Zinnia didn’t, but Zoey came right over. I guided her to where the dogs were, and she took a few deep sniffs.
“I don’t smell anything,” she reported grumpily. “You’re the special one, and I don’t have any skills at all.”
“You’re highly skilled at feeling sorry for yourself.”
She crossed her arms and fixed me with the most evil of teenaged glares. Attempting something she wasn’t immediately brilliant at brought out the worst in my sweet Zolanda Daizy Cazzaundra Riddle. Such is the curse of the gifted, for they give up too easily.
Tansy’s spirit surfaced and made me say, “Your mind is like soil, and your thoughts are all seeds.”
“You’re acting crazy.”
I smiled. “You can sow flowers, or you can grow weeds.”
She rolled her eyes. “Rhyming only makes you sound more crazy.”
Zinnia cleared her throat to get our attention. “The sun will be setting soon.” She shook the pair of flashlights she’d taken from the trunk of the car. “And these don’t shed much light.”
An hour later, the sun had set, and the novelty of stomping around bushy forest terrain by flashlight had worn off.
I regretted wearing the leopard-print dress for this expedition. A pair of jeans would have been much smarter. The skin on my shins healed almost instantly after being scraped by brambles and undergrowth, but I still felt every scratch.
The compass was only working intermittently. We’d move in the direction it pointed for several minutes and then find the direction had changed. Either the spell was busted, or Coco kept changing her mind about where her owner had played dead. Both of the dog spirits followed us around the property, from one greenhouse to another.
“At least I’m getting my exercise for the day,�
� I said.
“I have to use the washroom,” my daughter grumbled.
“There’s one behind every tree,” I said.
She smacked her lips. “We should have brought something to drink.”
Zinnia said, “Let’s go into the house, Zoey. You can use the washroom, and I’ll have a look around in there.” She reached out for the compass.
I held it possessively. “It’s not even pointing at the house.” I pointed to the greenhouse’s far exit. “The arrow wants us to check that way.”
“We already looked over there. It’s almost as though Tansy’s body is moving around.”
“Maybe it is. Bentley said there might be caves underneath the property.”
All three of us looked at the compass. The pointer was wavering again.
Zoey said, “She’s pretty active for a dead lady.”
Zinnia shook her head. “It was worth a shot, anyway.”
Zoey asked, “Can we still get ice cream? Can I drive?”
“Yes and yes,” I said.
I handed over the compass to my aunt. “Take this in case you get a reading in the house,” I said. “I’m the only one who can see the ghost dogs, so I’ll just keep following them around.”
Zinnia looked down at the flashlight in my hand. “You’re a bit dim.”
“Ouch,” I said. “When you get tired, you get mean.”
She shook her head and traded me for her flashlight, which was still bright. Then she clapped her hands together, uttered a phrase I’d never heard before, and pulled her hands apart slowly. A skein of light stretched dazzlingly between her palms. It looked sticky, like warm sap.
Zoey whistled in appreciation. “Does it hurt, Auntie Z? It looks like your skin is melting.”
Through gritted teeth, my aunt said, “It’s not comfortable, or my first choice for light. But my energy is low from the channeling spell, so this will have to do for now.” She started walking toward the house.
Zoey paused, looking at me. I held my flashlight at my hips like a gunslinger.
“You look ready for action,” she said.
“Pew pew,” I said, pretending to fire the light at her feet.
“I think you should come to the house with us,” she said. “People in horror movies always get into danger right after the group splits up.”
“They’d be a lot safer if they didn’t get themselves into horror movies in the first place.”
“True.” She turned to leave, skipping to catch up with my aunt.
I was alone with one flashlight and two ghost dogs.
They circled nearby, sniffing the ground and the perimeter of a greenhouse. The white diamond on Jasper’s forehead glinted in the moonlight. He looked at me as he parked his big, wrinkled body in front of the entrance to the greenhouse. Coco joined him, scratching on the door.
“We already looked in there,” I told them. “Twice.”
They didn’t budge.
“Third time’s the charm,” I said as I pulled open the door and stepped inside.
The greenhouse had trapped the day’s heat. The warmth made me notice how much the temperature outside had dropped in the last hour. I should have brought the fifties-style cardigan that went with my Audrey dress.
The moon was bright overhead, shining through the clear plastic roof of the greenhouse. I clicked off the flashlight to conserve power for the darker, forested areas of the property. My stomach growled. I hadn’t noticed how hungry I was. I could eat something enormous. A whole horse. The spell must have already burned off all the calories from the red wine and fancy cheese. I would hike up my leopard-print dress and do a flirty dance for a granola bar. Unfortunately, this offer wasn’t on the table. It was just me, an empty greenhouse, and two ghost dogs.
Both Jasper and Coco had come into the greenhouse with me, unlike my previous search. They huddled together in one spot, near the center of the greenhouse. They began barking, or so I assumed, by the snapping of their muzzles. If a ghost dog barks and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?
My stomach growled again. My price was dropping. I would do a striptease for half a granola bar.
The dogs huddled so close to each other, they became a single wrinkled beast with two heads. It felt significant.
“Jasper, Coco, what is it? Is this the place where Tansy played dead?”
Coco rolled over on her side and splayed her paws in the air. Jasper circled and circled, walking through his sister. Both of them kept looking up at something. The moon?
I followed her ghostly gaze all the way up.
There was something twinkling in the moonlight on the ceiling. It was metallic and roughly triangular in shape. The hand trowel. I’d seen it up there when we’d been there during the day. It was up too high for me to reach with my hands—at least twenty feet—but I was able to use my magic. The trowel came free easily. I floated it down and caught it in my free hand.
It was just a basic gardening trowel. There was a hole in the handle, the right size and shape for a hook. It must have been caught on a hook that held up the irrigation hoses. But how? Tansy wasn’t a witch, so she couldn’t have floated it up there. Had she flung it during a confrontation?
Jasper continued to circle his sister, at a dizzying, supernatural speed.
“Slow down, boy,” I said. “You’re making me dizzy.”
Except he wasn’t. It was the ground itself that was losing cohesion. The ground beneath me was disintegrating.
Images from my nightmare flashed through my mind. The monster rising from the ground and snapping the blue jay from midair.
I turned to run, but there was nothing under my feet. I’d never felt like a cartoon roadrunner before, but here I was, legs moving through nothing.
I was falling, but not for long.
My feet hit something soft, about five feet below the ground of the greenhouse. I was now eye level with Coco, who was still on her side, playing dead.
Sinkhole, I thought. Bentley was right about the caves after all.
I reached out to grab onto something so I could hoist myself out of the sinkhole.
No sooner had I grabbed one handful of loose dirt than I felt something snaking around my waist.
I still had the trowel in my hand, so I stabbed it downward, into the thing encircling my torso.
The thing, which was neither plant nor beast yet both at once, rumbled and gripped me tighter, squeezing the breath out of me.
But it couldn’t squeeze the fight out of me. I dropped the flashlight and used both hands to grip the handle of the trowel. I bought the blade down again and again. A chunk of something flew off. Take that, I thought.
And then, like a five-scream ride at an amusement park, the fun started.
Chapter 35
Whatever had grabbed me suddenly shot upward, sending me toward the peak of the greenhouse. My head struck the ceiling’s hard plastic panel.
“Ouch,” I complained, which was pretty stupid. The monster hadn’t hit my head on the ceiling by accident. It was trying to knock me out. This became painfully clear when it thumped my head on the ceiling a second time.
I yelled like a warrior and stabbed at the rubbery flesh wrapped around my torso. Except it wasn’t flesh at all. And it wasn’t a snake-like loop around my waist. My entire lower body was encased. My waist was encircled by the rim of something powerful. The lips of an enormous mouth? In the dim light of the moon, I examined one of the chunks I’d gouged out with Tansy’s garden trowel. The chunk was shades of green.
I’m being eaten by...
I could hardly finish the thought without hysteria.
A carnivorous plant.
Screeching choruses from Little Shop of Horrors danced merrily around my brain. I was about to suffer the same fate as the Broadway play’s character named Audrey. And I’d unwittingly dressed up for the part, too.
I screamed for help. My aunt and daughter were a quarter mile away from the greenhouse. Or was it farther? It didn’t matter. The
y were witches. Or at least Zinnia was. If she couldn’t hear me or sense me screaming for help, she wasn’t much of a witch.
But was I screaming? I couldn’t hear anything. I opened my mouth wider, clenched something in my throat, and tried to scream.
Nothing came out.
I drove the garden trowel down into the green flesh and scooped out a divot. But the plant was thick. At this rate, it would take me hours to dig myself free.
I clenched the trowel’s handle between my teeth, braced my hands on the green rim, and tried to wriggle myself free. No luck. Curse my adult hips!
But I wasn’t down for the count. Not yet. I hadn’t used a single spell. And I’d been learning so many new spells lately. The task of choosing one made me giggle hysterically. This carnivorous plant messed with the wrong witch.
To start things off, I cast the blade spell I’d used recently to core and slice an apple midair. The plant quivered as the magical blades of energy swept up the outside perimeter of the bulb that held the lower half of my body. The spell worked on most fruits and vegetables. Was my captor a fruit or a vegetable? I felt its grip loosen. I kicked, and my foot emerged through a slit. I kicked again, lengthening the slit as I searched my inventory of spells for some way to cushion my two-story fall.
But then the slit pulled back together and healed itself. The surface of the bulb crackled and turned a darker shade of green.
I cast the apple-slicing spell again. This time, it did no more than scratch the surface.
Think, I heard Zinnia say in my mind. Peaceful solutions before violence.
Had I jumped to violence too quickly?
I took the garden trowel out from between my teeth, cast a convincing spell, and tried to ask nicely to be put down. But my voice still wasn’t working. Whether the plant had ears or not, I couldn’t convince it of anything without my voice. It must have numbed my vocal cords somehow. Maybe a neurotoxin. All the better to quietly eat prey without calling attention to itself.
If my voice was numb, how much longer did I have until full paralysis?
Something soft squished against my bare legs. A tongue? I really should have worn jeans. It’s rolling me around on its tongue. Tasting me.
Watchful Wisteria (Wisteria Witches Mysteries Book 4) Page 26