But what did I know? I’d grown up seeing my father once a year. My perspective on paternal involvement wasn’t exactly normal. Also, my own father wasn’t a genie who’d been trapped in a metaphorical bottle for most of my first sixteen years.
The three of us stood chatting on the front porch.
“Great weather,” Archer said, ruffling the dark brown hair he’d cloned for himself from Chet Moore.
“For now,” I said. “I hear it rains a lot in September.”
“I’ve heard that, too,” he said. “The whole month.”
“People like to exaggerate about the weather,” I said.
“They sure do.”
“People like to exaggerate about everything,” I said knowingly.
“Such as?”
“Oh, the usual.” I looked around for a change of topic. The wisteria vines lining the porch were particularly lovely in the evening light.
“Plans for the weekend?”
“Laundry,” I said.
“Laundry. Is that the thing where you apply water to old clothes instead of buying new ones?”
I snorted. “You weren’t out of circulation that long.”
He grinned at me. “And you haven’t lost all of your sense of humor.”
I shook my head, then we both turned to Zoey. She was in charge of ending this exchange.
Zoey said, “Oh! Wait here. I need to run back to my room for something.” She asked me, “Is it okay if I show Mr. Caine some old photos?” We had a few shoeboxes full of pictures from before we’d fully switched to digital.
“Perfectly okay,” I said. “But not any of the ones where I’m wearing a corset.”
“How about the Halloween ones?”
“Especially not the Halloween ones,” I said.
Zoey darted back through the front door, pausing to say, “I’ll just be a few minutes.”
“Take your time,” Archer said.
“Hurry back,” I said.
Zoey scowled at me and mouthed the words be nice.
Once she was gone, Archer raised an eyebrow at me and said, “You have to be nice to me. Zoey’s orders.”
“I’m always nice.”
“Plans for the weekend?” Archer asked.
“Laundry. We covered that already. And you?”
“I’m thinking about joining a bowling league. You should, too.”
“Hah! That’ll be the day.”
I looked down and kicked a lumpy pebble. It stuck in the crack between the porch’s wooden floorboards. I tried to kick it back out again without using magic. It just dug itself in deeper. When I finally looked up again at my fellow parent, he was grinning at me.
His grin rubbed me the wrong way. Or maybe it was his face.
When Archer Caine had gotten himself back into the physical world, he’d cloned a body using Chet Moore. That meant he had Chet’s body and face, as though the two were identical twins. It had been confusing at first, but the fact that Archer was usually grinning and looking pleased about life made it easy to tell them apart. Chet had always looked uncomfortable. Perpetually awkward. Like someone who had no idea how he’d gotten to where he was, and desperately wanted to be anywhere else.
Whatever he was doing in London at that moment, I imagined Chet frowning.
Archer, however, was lazily leaning against my porch post as though he owned the Red Witch House and I was the visitor.
I kicked the pebble deeper into the floorboards, then cast the form-locking spell in my hand as a sort of nervous tic. Charlize bit her fingernails; I cast glowing birds.
“That’s pretty,” Archer said. “It’s like a steadfast spell, but for living forms?”
“You can see this?” I released the bird. It fluttered up from my hand and winged toward the tree branches before dissipating.
Archer’s gaze followed the bird the whole way. He could see it.
His gaze flicked to the open front door, then back to me.
“Zoey’s a great kid,” he said.
“Yes. She is.”
“A great kid,” he repeated.
“And she’d better stay that way,” I warned. My capacity for small talk had been exceeded, and the words started flowing. “You might think she’s all grown up, because she has a driver’s license and she’s wearing the clothes of an adult woman, but she’s barely sixteen. I’m sure it’s hilarious for you to flirt with waitresses in front of her, Mr. Caine, and joke about getting her a new stepmom, but you have to remember there’s a part of her that’s still a child, and children are impressionable, like damp clay. You might forget this, and say one dumb thing as a joke, a throw-away comment, and they’ll hold it inside. They’ll stew on it, and stew on it some more, and then one day, out of the blue, three years later, they’ll toss your dumb throw-away comment back in your face. You’ll find out they’ve been hurting over it the whole time. Then you’ll think back over all the many, many, many careless things you’ve said over the years and wonder how badly you’ve—”
His fingers were touching my cheek. He’d closed the distance between us, and I hadn’t even seen it. Not even a blur. He’d been leaning on the porch post and now he was touching my face. He seemed to move like a vampire, but he wasn’t a vampire, and he didn’t move that fast. He’d frozen me, stuck me in time, while he’d snuck up on me at regular speed.
“Don’t!” I jumped back, pulling free of his caress. I flicked both hands, tossing a Day Ruining zap at his center of mass.
He should have sizzled, or at least yelped.
Instead, he effortlessly caught my blue plasma in his hand. He made a fist, and when he opened his hand again, he was holding a sparkling glass marble.
Archer Caine had created mass from pure energy. Without batting an eyelash. The books hadn’t said anything about genies doing that.
“Zara, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, his voice strong and powerful despite being quiet.
“Scare me? You didn’t scare me. You jumped out at me like a maniac, and you got yourself a warning, fair and square. The next time, I won’t go easy.” I lifted my chin. “Consider this your first and last warning. Don’t freeze me and sneak up on me, and don’t you dare touch me. Never again.”
“But I just—”
I waved my hand for him to zip it. “And don’t you ever, ever, ever touch my daughter. If you harm one single hair on her head, so help me, you will never see her again.”
He gave me a hurt look, his pretty face crumpling.
I wondered if I might be overreacting. There’s nothing quite like someone with a pretty face giving you a hurt look to make you feel like you might be the crazy person in the equation.
I said nothing. I wasn’t going to apologize for being a mother.
After a moment, he said, “You’ve changed.”
“Since the castle? No, I haven’t changed one bit. When I met you, I thought you were someone else. I thought you were Chet, or his long-lost brother.” My chin had been retreating, so I lifted it again to show I meant what I said. “Don’t ever lie to me again.”
Gently, he said, “I mean you’ve changed since we were kids. Don’t you remember how it was?” He reached for my face again, but then wisely pulled his hand back and tucked it in his pocket. “Of course you don’t remember,” he said, looking down and shuffling his feet. “It’s been a lot longer for you than for me.”
I said nothing. Where was Zoey? How long did it take a person to grab a couple shoeboxes full of pictures?
Archer asked, “Do you remember the Ferris wheel?”
I answered quickly. “No.”
As the word came out of my mouth, it became a lie after the fact. I did remember the Ferris wheel. The pressure of pushing up through the air on the great machine. The shift and sudden weightlessness at the peak. The airy sensation of floating down. I remembered the scent of frying donuts, generator exhaust, and kicked-up dust. I remembered the laughter over the roar of all the machinery.
“I tried to meet you
that night,” he said. “I really tried.”
I pressed my lips together and tried not to remember. The cotton candy. The warm and moisture of his palm in mine. The feeling of cool water on bare legs.
“But you didn’t try hard enough,” I said. “I waited, and you never came.”
“Oh, Zara. You must know why. You must have figured it out by now.”
You didn’t want me, I thought. “Yeah, I know,” I said. “Whatever. The past is the past.”
His green eyes were locked on mine, unwavering. Behind his head, the wisteria leaves fluttered and filtered the sun. And then the leaves were gone, and there were only his eyes.
He said, “The only reason I didn’t meet you that night by the Ferris wheel was because my deranged sister broke me down and bottled me. I was primordial goo. That’s why I didn’t meet you. You must know I never meant to leave you waiting.”
But I had been left waiting. And nothing he could say would change that.
“You should have warned me,” I said. “About what you were.”
He took a step back, but his eyes still blocked out the rest of the world. “How could I? I didn’t even know what I was. I hadn’t grown into my memories from my previous lives. Being with you was helping me break through, but I didn’t understand what was happening with me.”
I squinted at him. “You know what’s weird? I can’t remember what your face looked like back then.” His hair had been fair, I thought, but that part of my memory was blurry now, messed up by my new memories. His old name had similarly been lost. My memory for everything else was excellent, so I knew his genie magic was to blame.
He shook his head slowly, ruefully. “If I’d known then what I know now, I would have run screaming from the woman I knew as Crazy Aunt Morganna. I would have met you by the Ferris wheel that night, and we would have run away together like you wanted to.”
I almost smiled. “Like I wanted to? I believe running away together was your idea.”
He smirked. The tension between us had changed, and he was pleased.
I tried to summon my rage again, but it was gone. I didn’t hate the man who’d fathered my daughter. Hating him was pointless.
He said, “After all this time, I still feel flattered that you wanted to run away with me.”
I snorted. “ My interest in you had nothing to do with you. I would have run away with anyone who had a car.”
“You mean that Nate guy?”
“Nate?” I smacked my forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that? My mother would have had a fit. She would have killed him.”
At the mention of my mother, Archer stepped back.
“Your mother,” he said hoarsely, rubbing his neck where she’d sunk her vampire fangs into him.
Seeing the genie cower at the mention of my mother put a big, proud smile on my face.
“Let that be a lesson to you,” I said breezily. “Don’t mess with the Riddles.”
That was when Zoey reemerged with an armload of shoeboxes and photo albums.
“What’s going on?” She gave me a stern look. “I told you to be nice.”
“She was being nice,” Archer said. “Nice enough.”
Zoey looked unconvinced.
Archer said, “Not as nice as she used to be when we were younger, but we’ll get there.”
“Haw haw,” I fake-laughed.
Being nice to the genie had only gotten me into trouble. That, plus a few too many Barberrian wine coolers. And possibly an ancient prophecy.
My daughter and her father wished me a good evening, and the two of them left for dinner.
* * *
That interaction on my front porch happened during the first week in August.
Life for the next four weeks continued with its usual ups and downs.
The weather was gorgeous.
Aunt Zinnia was still on vacation.
My father kept his word about staying away.
Mr. Blackstone came by the library a few times, but didn’t bring up whatever favor he had in mind. I didn’t ask.
Charlize spent her leave of absence haunting the Moore house next door, drinking tequila, and goading me into casting spells that were far above my level.
My own house was up to something, but I didn’t know what. The attic joists creaked and groaned in the middle of the night, but I couldn’t see any changes from the street. All things in time, I told myself, and left the house to its business.
Zoey and Archer kept meeting once a week, and our co-parenting interactions on the porch continued to be fraught with all kinds of tension.
Bentley was a sweetheart. The perfect vampire detective boyfriend.
Zoey finished working at the museum, and prepared to return to school.
Life was good.
The calendar changed to September.
Then, one day, the clouds rolled in and the rain started.
And everything changed.
Chapter 10
One Month Later
~
Monday Afternoon
First Week in September
The sky flashed with sheet lightning. I was driving Foxy Pumpkin to pick up my daughter from the high school. I had the car radio on, and thunder rolled ominously around while the DJs on the local radio station cracked jokes about the gods bowling in the clouds. The DJs were Kaytlen and Kozmo, local celebrities who were known for their zany behavior. I had to give those two ding-dongs credit, because the thunder really did sound like a giant bowling alley. Especially after they’d put the idea in my head.
I got to the school and parked, mindful to keep my classic—by some collectors’ standards—car within the boundaries of the student pick-up zone. It was the first day of a new school year for my daughter, and I didn’t want to mar the year by getting a lecture about parking from the school staff.
There was no shortage of parking around the school, thus no need for the pick-up zone enforcers to be so persnickety; but, as a fellow enforcer of seemingly arbitrary rules, I did understand. Rules were rules, and they existed for a reason. Whenever I found myself in trouble, it was usually because I’d ignored some rule that had seemed arbitrary at the time but turned out to exist solely for my own protection. Wasn’t life funny that way?
I turned off the engine, as per the no-idling rules of the pick-up zone. Foxy Pumpkin made a sputter of protest, as though she didn’t want her engine shut off.
I patted the dashboard. “What’s wrong, girl? Do you need that tune up?”
Another sputter, and the engine went quiet.
“Was that a yes or a no?”
The car didn’t respond further.
I wondered about the man who’d built the car from parts, Mr. Harry Blackstone. I hadn’t seen him in several weeks. Had the man already passed away? Was that why I hadn’t seen him?
I pulled out my phone, clicked a bookmark, and checked the local obituaries. I should have been checking them regularly, to be prepared for any visits by spirits with unfinished business, but the ghost business had been slow lately.
There was no mention of Mr. Blackstone in the obituaries.
“Your creator’s not dead yet,” I said to the car, patting the dashboard again. “But here’s something interesting.” I read the item from the police blotter, and then summarized it for the car. “Someone spotted a black fox in their garden, menacing a trio of pugs. Sounds like quite the standoff. Just picture all those bulging pug eyes.” I cackled, and the sound startled me. I sounded just like a witch who talked to her car.
I put the phone away before things got really weird.
The rain started with a few splats on the windshield. They were the sort of big, juicy splats that told you the bowling-alley-of-the-gods thunder you’d been hearing was not an audio test of the Emergency Broadcast System. Rain was coming.
After a minute of splatting, the proverbial heavens opened, and then the water really came down.
It was only once the downpour had begun that I realized how pleasant
and rain-free our time thus far in Wisteria had been.
Zoey and I had relocated there from a large city on the East Coast known for short but intense rainfall, as well as flash flooding. I had not missed the rain at all. The bagels, yes. The rain, no.
The passenger door opened. The temperature inside the vehicle dropped as the humidity rose.
A damp and miserable teenager grumbled as she slumped in her seat and closed the door. She didn’t even look over as she gave me an impatient “Well?”
“Well, what? How was the first day of school?”
She used the side of her hand to wipe rain from her cheeks. “Okay, I guess. We didn’t even get any homework.”
“Aw,” I said, then, brightly, “Maybe tomorrow!”
“What do we know about this rain?”
“That it’ll be here for a month. I’ve heard from everyone that Septembers in Wisteria are very rainy.”
“I haven’t heard anything about that.”
“Of course you wouldn’t have. You’re a teenager. People don’t talk to you about the weather. When you become an adult, you’ll learn a lot more about the weather. Everything from what the weather is currently doing, to what it did yesterday, to what it might do tomorrow, and how any of that may or may not affect a person’s bursitis.”
She grumpily swept more rain from her cheeks.
In a librarian tone, I explained, “Bursitis is the inflammation and swelling of a bursa.” I smiled knowingly. “You’ll learn more about that, as well as other skin, bone, ligament, and joint issues, when you become a full-fledged adult.”
“Can’t wait.” She sniffed miserably. “I hate the rain.”
“Don’t say that. You used to love the rain. You said it was nice for staying indoors and reading.”
“Why don’t we have bubbles over our cities yet? We have the technology.”
“I’m not sure that would be such a good idea.”
“Stupid rain,” she muttered.
I sniffed the air. “Do you smell wet dog? I smell wet dog.”
“Not funny,” said the fox shifter who was in no mood for fur-based jokes.
Wishful Wisteria (Wisteria Witches Mysteries - Daybreak Book 3) Page 6