“Persephone Rose,” she said.
“That’s what I said,” I lied, feigning annoyance.
Rhys narrowed his gold-green eyes suspiciously. Had I overplayed my bluff?
He got to his feet and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you, Petunia.”
“Persephone,” she corrected.
I narrowed my eyes at my father. Was he onto us? His rubbery expression gave away nothing.
Zoey shuffled the deck. “Shall I deal you in?” She leaned over and looked behind us. “Where’s Mr. Bentley?”
“He’s coming in a bit. He and Zinnia went to pick up some snacks.”
My father stared at me, unblinking. “What’s the occasion?”
“Friday night,” I said.
He glanced at his other daughter, then at me, then nodded at the chairs. “Take a seat, ladies. The game’s about to begin.”
I nudged Persephone with my elbow.
She said, “Thanks, Dad.”
Everyone froze, except for their eyes, which darted from person to person to person in confusion, surprise, more confusion, and then mirth.
Rhys Quarry’s rubbery expression morphed into a huge grin. “You know!”
“Know what?” I feigned confusion as I turned to Persephone. “Did you just call my father Dad?”
“He, uh, looks like my dad,” she fibbed. “I got confused.”
“I’ll show you confused!” I summoned two balls of plasma in my hands.
She yelped and turned into a fox. A beautiful, silken-furred black fox.
My father was laughing hard by now, begging for us to stop our charade.
But, we’d made our plan, and we played it through anyway and ignored his tearful pleas for us to stop already, because that was the sort of thing siblings did.
* * *
After the dust had settled from our fake battle, we officially introduced Zoey to her aunt.
Zoey said, “I’m so glad to meet you, Aunty P.”
I grinned.
Zoey said, “Would you mind shifting again? I’d like to meet that way, too.”
Persephone looked at me, as though asking permission.
“You can shift whenever you want in this house,” I said. “We don’t have a lot of rules, except we try not to go to bed angry, and Zoey answers the doorbell.”
They both shifted. Rhys watched with fatherly and grandfatherly pride as the red fox and the black fox sniffed noses and made chirpy greeting noises.
After a moment of chirps and yips, Zoey-Fox and Persephone-Fox dashed out of the dining room. We heard their paws patter as they raced each other up the stairs. Boa, who’d crept onto my lap without my having noticed her arrival, dug her claws in painfully, then leaped off me to chase the two foxes.
Ribbons, who’d been perched on a chair watching over everything, squawked and launched himself in the air, clipping the chandelier with his wing as he joined the pursuit.
The swinging chandelier gave the dining room an interrogation feel.
Alone with my father, I looked across the table and said, “You can shift and join in the chasing games if you want,” I said. “We can play poker any time.”
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” he said. “At least not until you introduce me to your...” He looked pointedly at the space over my shoulder and behind me.
Bentley had arrived, with Zinnia, and two grocery bags full of party snacks.
Chapter 43
Rhys had been in town since the Blackstone funeral the previous weekend, and while he’d heard about Bentley, they hadn’t actually met.
Bentley set down the grocery bags. I was happy to note that he’d brought more potato chips. He circled the dining room table toward my father, who got to his feet.
My father was not what anyone would call tall, but he must have done something magic at that moment to increase his height. That, or he was standing on his tiptoes to reduce the height difference between himself and the tall detective.
“It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” Bentley said. He was unapologetically formal and sincere. That was my Bentley.
“I hear you’re a...” Rhys trailed off, still shaking Bentley’s hand.
Please don’t say something tacky about him being a vampire, I thought. That’s my job.
Zinnia interjected, “He’s the town’s top detective.”
We all turned to look at my aunt. She was giving Rhys a knowing, playful look.
“So that means you ought to behave yourself, Rhys,” she said. “This is the man who’ll be keeping tabs on you.”
Rhys let go of Bentley’s hand and puffed up his chest. “And I’ll be keeping tabs on him,” Rhys said with bravado. “He’s dating my daughter, after all. He’d better treat her right.”
“I will, sir,” Bentley said, still serious. “My word is my bond.”
There was a riffle of cards shuffling. The deck was shuffling itself in mid-air. The two men looked at me, eyebrows raised.
“That’s not me,” I said. “It must be the other witch in the room.”
Zinnia, smiling, said, “I picked up a few tricks on vacation. Shall I deal?”
The cards swirled in a spectacular spiral formation, forming the infinity symbol.
My father returned to his seat, Bentley sat at the head of the table, everyone promised not to use magic or other means to cheat, and Zinnia dealt the first hand.
For the next twenty minutes, the cards remained untouched while we chatted about other things.
Zoey-Fox and Persephone-Fox slunk into the room, panting from their play, and returned to their human forms. They joined us at the table, and Zinnia gathered up the unplayed cards for a reshuffle.
Six players.
Ribbons flapped in and made a fuss, so we dealt him in as well. I would have to translate his psychic transmissions to the others on his behalf.
Seven players.
Boa meowed on my lap.
“You can’t play poker,” I said to the white furball. “Don’t even act like you can.”
My father asked, “How can you be sure of that? She might be highly intelligent.”
“Dad, she drinks out of the toilet,” I said.
Everyone laughed.
And so began our first official Family Poker Night.
Persephone fit right in. I was pleasantly surprised to find she was the perfect ally for ribbing our father. We teased him mercilessly, about everything from his wardrobe choices to his high-flying friends. We revived old histories and reviewed them under the magnifying lens of new knowledge.
I brought up a perfect example of his strange habits, and he shed a new light on my memories.
“That wasn’t any old racehorse,” he said, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye. “Zara, you were only four years old. I would never have put you on the back of a mere animal.”
“That horse almost killed me! I was barely on its back and it took off at full gallop!” A bit of genuine outrage bubbled under my pretend anger. That day at the racetrack, I had been thrilled beyond my wildest dreams to ride the beautiful black horse. It had happened during one of my father’s annual visits. I had enjoyed our time together, but later, when my mother found out I’d ridden a racehorse at full gallop around the track, she’d been livid. That was when I first realized something wasn’t right with my father. He wasn’t like normal fathers. Something about him was wrong, and I was his daughter. I was half of him. So that meant something was wrong with me, as well. If I was to be all right in the world, I had to suppress that part of myself.
Clearly, that didn’t exactly work out.
However, that day at the racetrack had been the beginning of the divide between us.
“You were fine,” he said dismissively, reaching for the bowl of potato chips that were for eating, not betting. “The racehorse was my good friend David Freeman.”
Persephone squealed. “Uncle Dave? Zara got to ride Uncle Dave at full gallop around a racetrack?” She frowned and pouted. “No fair.”
My father stuffed chips in his mouth, then wiped his fingers on a napkin. “Now, girls. Don’t fight. Dave was already well into retirement from his racing days when I took Zara to visit him. Persephone, you weren’t even born yet.”
She crossed her arms, still pouting. I couldn’t tell how much of the pout was real. “All I got was that tired old donkey you brought to every one of my birthday parties and tried to pass off as a pony. I know a donkey when I see it.”
They joked about the donkey, and how it had—in Persephone’s opinion—reduced her social status with the kids at school. As they teased each other, I clenched my fists. I wanted them to stop talking. To stop joking about all of Persephone’s fun-filled birthdays, with her father dressed up as a clown and presenting various old friends to do magic tricks, or cook special meals, or show the attendees how to walk a circus wire.
My stomach felt hard, and it was swelling up, so that my breath came in shorter and shorter gasps. I wanted them both to shut up about all those joyful father-daughter moments in the sun.
“But the donkey was the worst of all your special guests,” Persephone said.
The others at the table laughed, but I didn’t.
“Aww,” my father said, feigning hurt feelings. “That was your great-aunt, Elouise Quarry. She passed away when you were nine, so she never got to tell you.”
“No way,” Persephone gasped. “Is that why the donkey bit all the kids I didn’t like?”
He nodded. “Family looks out for each other,” he said. “We stick together.”
Something was roiling and boiling inside me, and it suddenly came out without warning.
“Except when we don’t,” I said, my voice curved, cold, and sharp as a karambit. “Sometimes we only stick together for three-quarters of one day out of three hundred and sixty-five.”
The table went silent.
My aunt made a single tsk sound then closed her mouth.
The rain pattered down on the window.
Everyone looked away from me, and then, one at a time, at me.
“Whoops,” I said. “I don’t know where that came from.” I waved my hands. “Carry on with the frivolities, everyone. Let sleeping dogs lie. The past is the past. Water under the bridge.”
I felt a warm hand on my back. Bentley’s hand. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “It’s okay to feel however you feel.”
There was a single yip across the table. My father had turned into a red fox. The fox stared back at me with big, gold-green eyes.
“Zara,” Persephone said.
“Don’t,” Zinnia said. “Some things are best left unsaid.”
“No,” Persephone said. “She needs to hear this.”
Zinnia made another tsk, then fell silent.
“Zara,” Persephone said again. “He would never tell you, because he doesn’t want to hurt you any more than you’ve already been hurt.”
My body felt like it was raw. I wanted to push Bentley’s hand off my back. I didn’t want anyone to touch me, but, more powerfully, I didn’t want to reveal how I felt. How much I loved the young woman who was my sister, but also how much some terrible part of me wanted to hurt her, to harm her the way our father had harmed me, by being in her life all those days and not in mine.
Persephone looked down at her cards and fanned them out, then shuffled them back together again. Fan, shuffle. Fan, shuffle.
“Persephone,” I said.
She jerked up her head and met my eyes. I locked on and asked, “He’d never tell me what?”
Since he’d rather turn into a fox than tell me, I had to get it from her.
She laid down her cards slowly.
The rain pattered.
“That it wasn’t his choice,” Persephone said. “Your family was going to kill him when they found out your mother was pregnant by a fox shifter. They almost did kill him; but, luckily, he had some friends who took his side. The man I called Uncle Dave was a racehorse, but he was also a judge. He’s the one who oversaw the agreement over your custody. He’s the one who got your family to agree to allow our father to see you one day a year. On his birthday.”
“His birthday?” How had I missed something so obvious?
I turned to my aunt for corroboration. Zinnia looked visibly rattled by the news. “I, uh, didn’t know the specific details of the arrangement,” she said.
I looked down at my hands, where I had a glowing blue bird nestled in one palm, sleeping.
After a moment, my voice gravelly, I said, “I knew that.”
Zinnia said, “You did?”
“No,” I said, correcting myself. “I mean, I didn’t know-know it, but somewhere, deep down, I knew that people were lying to me. And I guess I understand why. My mother didn’t want anything to do with magic. She renounced it, and it killed her, sort of.” I shook my head. “My, how the pendulum swings.”
“That it does,” Zinnia said. “The pendulum swings one way, and then the next. Nothing is ever still, ever at rest, ever unchanging, as long as it lives.”
I passed the glowing bird from one palm to the other. Everyone was quiet, even Ribbons.
I set the glowing blue bird of pure energy on the table. It looked around, and then hopped into an empty chip bowl, where it hunkered down.
Zinnia said, “How darling.” I touched the bowl to illuminate the spell so that everyone else could see it.
Then I looked across the table, at my father. He’d turned back into a human again.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes glistening. “I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” I said. “It’s my stupid family who should be sorry.” I growled, “Starting with my mother.”
“Your mother didn’t know,” he said. “It was your grandparents, and your great-grandparents, and people you’ve never met.”
“My life was ruined by people I’ve never met?”
The corner of his mouth twitched up mischievously. “Zara, I wouldn’t say your life is ruined. Look around.”
I took a deep breath and looked around the table at my aunt, my daughter, my boyfriend, my sister, my father, and the resident wyvern.
“Oh,” I said.
The sleeping bird awoke from its nest in the bowl, and took to the air. It circled the table three times, then flew at the window. It passed through the glass with a tiny squeak and a final POP.
And with that, the pain in my heart was gone, along with the grudge that had caused it.
“You’re right,” I said, smiling. “My life is pretty much the opposite of ruined.”
Persephone reached across the table and squeezed my fingers.
Bentley patted my back, then kissed me on the side of my forehead.
Zoey rearranged her stacks of betting chips and said, “Are we going to get back to playing poker, or what? Don’t you guys dare quit while I’m up.”
Zinnia shuffled the cards and dealt another hand.
* * *
Gradually, something dawned on us.
It was dawn. Literally.
The dining room filled with a generous yellow glow. The sun was rising.
All six of us who were still awake—Ribbons had excused himself hours ago—put down our poker cards and turned to the window in wonder.
“The rain has stopped,” Zinnia said.
It was true. There was no familiar patter of rain falling. I’d almost forgot what it felt like to not hear rain around me.
Persephone said, “It’s probably just taking a break. People keep telling me it rains a lot in September. Like, for the whole month.”
“But it’s October now, Aunty P,” Zoey said. “It has been for a few hours.”
There was a creak and a pop from somewhere within the house.
My father pointed at something behind me. “Was that door always there?”
We all turned.
A new door had appeared on the dining room wall, behind me. It was made of the same weathered wood as the other interior doors. It even had wh
at appeared to be wyvern and cat scratches on it.
When I turned back to the others, Persephone’s eyes were wide and her face was pale. “What’s going on? Are we in trouble? That door wasn’t there a minute ago, I swear.”
The others chuckled. Everyone but my sister knew about the house’s ability to renovate itself without any encouragement, let alone permission. It was always changing room configurations, expanding and contracting areas as needed. The last time a whole new door had appeared, it had led to my new-old basement.
Zoey quickly explained to Persephone how our house remodeled itself. The door wasn’t completely out of the blue. The old gal had been banging away on some secret project through most of September. We’d grown as accustomed to the noise as we had to the patter of rain.
I stood and approached the door. The paint glistened in the orange dawn light as I reached for the shiny brass lever handle.
“Be careful,” Zinnia warned.
“Open it,” my father urged.
“I’ll go first,” Bentley said, already at my side.
“As you wish.” I yanked the door open. “Age before Beauty,” I said, waving him ahead of me.
The door was located on an interior wall, the one that split the dining room from the staircase. It should have opened to little more than a cramped storage spot at the mid-point of the stairs. Instead, it opened onto an impossibly voluminous foyer, and a spiral staircase. The stairs led up two stories, and the treads were made of gleaming, polished walnut.
Bentley and I exchanged a look. “This shouldn’t be here,” he said. “There’s no space for all of this.”
“I know,” I said. “The basement was different. It could have been there all along, just without a door for access.”
He waved an arm through the opening. “Feels real.”
“I don’t know about this,” Zinnia said. “Portals can lead to other times, other worlds.”
“A portal?” Persephone let out a nervous laugh. “Stop messing with me. That door was always there, wasn’t it? You must have cast some sort of witch spell to hide it until now.”
“It’s magic, all right, but I didn’t cast it,” I told her.
“But that shouldn’t be there,” she said. “I need to check something.” She slipped into fox form and trotted out of the room. We heard the tick-tick of her paws on the main stairwell, on the other side of the wall, as she ran up, down, paced to measure distances, and then returned. She was breathless and pink-cheeked when she returned to human form.
Wishful Wisteria (Wisteria Witches Mysteries - Daybreak Book 3) Page 25