Wisteria Witches Mysteries Box Set 3

by Angela Pepper

  “How should I know? You can ask him yourself, if you want. He’s an honest man, so I know it’s the truth.”

  “An honest man who gives people knives from the garbage?”

  “I ran it through the industrial dishwasher,” she said. “And he was right about it being handy for opening coffee bags, as you’ve seen for yourself.”

  My scalp itched. I wanted to scratch it, but my hands were still locked down to the table.

  “I believe you,” I said calmly. “I guess that if you had used that blade to chop off someone’s head, you wouldn’t bring it back into work the next day and use it for opening bags of coffee.” The table was cooling underneath my palms. “But you can’t blame me for being suspicious.”

  “I suppose not.”

  She snapped her fingers.

  My arms felt cool and light.

  “You’re free of the steadfast spell,” she said. “Give yourself a moment to recover.”

  I shook my arms and edged toward the exit.

  She said, “And please don’t try to blast me with any of your novice magic and force me to teach you a real lesson. My employees don’t know about my abilities. I’d hate to be put on spot, having to explain why I’m hauling your unconscious body out of here.”

  “I’d hate that, too.” I twirled my tongue and cast an easy spell. Plumes of pink fog rose from the floor around me.

  Maisy groaned. “Your aunt is right. You don’t listen.”

  “Just testing,” I said. “I’m not blasting you with anything, not unless you consider a few wisps of pink fog a threat.”

  She grumbled.

  We stood where we were, neither of us moving as the fog dissipated.

  Someone had to say something, so I did. “Well, that happened,” I said flatly.

  Maisy said, “This actually went pretty well for a first real meeting between two witches.”

  “Gosh. I’d hate to see a bad meeting.”

  “Power is a tricky thing,” she said. “Having it doesn’t make life any easier.”

  “If you say so. You weren’t the one permanently high-fiving a table.”

  She glanced around, as though looking for a topic change. “I’d offer to team up with you and Bentley to help with the Greyson case, but... I don’t want to.”

  “May I ask why? Aren’t you worried about this evil menace that’s on the loose in town?”

  “That’s not a fair assumption, Zara. I worry about a great many things. But a truly wise and powerful witch knows when to pitch in and when to mind her own business.”

  I looked around at the shelves of coffee beans. “Plus, you’re probably busy running this place.”

  She snorted. “You think this is all I do? You have no idea what I do for the people of this town. No idea.”

  “How could I know? I didn’t even know you were a witch until yesterday, when I tried casting that threat detection spell in here only to have it splash back in my face.”

  She shook her head. “I countered it by reflex before you’d even finished casting. Zinnia loves that spell, but it doesn’t do much. Sometimes I wonder if she’s an OCW.”

  “Obsessive Compulsive Wimp?”

  “Overly Cautious Witch.”

  I pressed my lips together tightly to keep from laughing. Overly Cautious Witch? They say nothing’s funnier than the truth. But I couldn’t laugh. I didn’t dare even smirk. Zinnia was my aunt, my family. I wasn’t about to throw her under the bus for a moment of mean-girl bonding with Maisy Nix. Zara tries to be a good niece.

  Maisy asked, “Do you know the punishment for being an OCW?”

  “No. What?”

  She deadpanned, “Old age.”

  I nodded. It was the truth, but the kind of truth that wasn’t funny.

  There was a scratching sound on the floor. Maisy was using magic to propel a broom to sweep up the fallen coffee beans. I was puzzled by this. It would have been easier and simpler to levitate the beans directly, but what did I know? The woman’s skills far exceeded my own.

  In the softest tone I’d heard her use that day, she asked, “Would you like to know what I was busy with the night Ishmael Greyson was killed?”

  “Your alibi? No need. I’m crossing you off my suspect list. We’re good.”

  “But wouldn’t you like to know?”

  I picked up on her second offer. She wanted me to want to know. “Yes,” I said, as I imagined she wanted me to.

  She reached out with one long arm and grabbed the broomstick mid-sweep. Her hair loosed itself from the high topknot and flew out, as though electrified by contact with the broom.

  “I’d love to show you,” she said, her voice as silky as the black hair settling around her shoulders. “Have you ever flown, Zara?”

  “I’m guessing by the way you’re holding that broom, you don’t mean on an airplane.” I took a second look at the broom now that it was in her hands. It did not look sturdy enough to hold one witch in the air, let alone two. Was she actually talking about flying on a broomstick?

  “No,” I said. “Not like that.”

  She closed the space between us in two easy strides, and grabbed my hand. A static charge passed through me, and my own hair whipped up as though swept by wind.

  “Then let’s fly, Zara. Let’s fly.”

  “What about your Sunday crowd? What about...?”

  She blinked her coffee-black eyes slowly. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about a handful of church ladies having to wait a few extra minutes to get their decaf dry cappuccinos.”

  “I suppose they can wait a few extra minutes.”

  “They can.”

  “How’s your schedule?”

  “I believe I have some time right now for a flight.”

  She hooted with excitement, making her hair and mine whip up again.

  Chapter 28

  Of all the days to wear a pencil skirt, I had to be wearing one the first time another witch invited me to fly on her broomstick.

  “Just hike it up,” Maisy Nix told me, tucking her long, black hair behind one ear confidently. “Nobody’s going to see your underwear out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  We stood at the side of an old logging road, a few miles inland from the outskirts of Wisteria. We had gotten there in Maisy’s car, with the broomstick in the back seat. She’d explained that while she could cast a sky glamour to disguise us in flight, and thus we could have taken off from the alley behind Dreamland Coffee, it wasn’t worth the magical energy expenditure, not to mention the risk of being seen. The sky glamour was a sturdy spell, but not guaranteed to work on all beings and modern recording devices.

  I used both palms to draw up my skirt. “Are you sure I can’t ride side saddle?”

  She used one elegant, long-fingered hand to wave along the length of the broomstick in her other hand. “Do you see any saddle on this thing? Let alone a side saddle?”

  “About that,” I said. “I have a question about ergonomics and comfort. Doesn’t the broomstick ride up?”

  “It would ride up if you sat on it with your full weight.”

  With my full weight. Did she mean...? In a flash, the solution hit me. There was a spell that subtracted most of a person’s weight without affecting their size. I’d even seen it used, on my unconscious coworker, Frank.

  “The body buoyancy spell,” I said excitedly. “Is that what it’s for? For witches to lighten themselves for flight?”

  She gave me an appreciative look. “You have been learning!” She reached toward me. “Come closer and I’ll cast yours. You can do mine. It lasts longer when another witch does it for you.”

  I couldn’t help but take a step back.

  Maisy stomped her boot impatiently, sending up a plume of dry dust from the old road. “Don’t be such an OCW.”

  “Full disclosure,” I said with an emphatic hand gesture. “The last time someone cast that spell on me, I died.”

  Maisy frowned. “That’s not a known side effect of the body lig
htening spell. Did they make a mistake with the phrasing?”

  “There was an unexpected interaction. I had been electrocuted shortly before they cast the spell. And by they, I mean Zinnia. You’ve probably figured that out, since she’s the only witch I know, besides you.”

  “And Fatima.”

  “And Fatima,” I agreed. How quickly I’d forgotten about Fatima. Poor girl. Something told me she was easily forgotten by others, too.

  “Let me check something.” Maisy looked down and kicked some pebbles. The pebbles scattered, but not naturally. They rolled as smoothly as glass marbles on smooth pavement despite being lumpy, random shapes on rutted dirt. The pebbles, about two dozen of them, surrounded me in a tidy circle and rolled to a stop.

  I stared down at the pebble ring in wonder. I’d seen a lot of powerful magic in my short second life as a witch, but it was often the simplest things that surprised me the most.

  “You are tired right now,” Maisy said, her gaze fixed on the stones. She appeared to be reading them, like a witch in a fairy tale reading tea leaves or bones. “Your energy is low from lack of sleep and contact with a spirit’s death rage. However, you have plenty of energy in reserve. More than you’ll ever know.” She looked up at me, her coffee-black eyes twinkling within her angular features. “Zara Riddle, I deem you safe for flight. Now get over here, and stop being an OCW.”

  Here goes nothing, I thought. I stepped over the ring of pebbles so as not to disturb them. Her diagnostic reading hadn’t instilled me with much confidence, but it didn’t need to. I really, really wanted to fly.

  She talked me through a quick review of the body buoyancy spell, and then I cast it on her. Flawlessly, I might add. She took a test hop, soaring high in the air and whooping before floating down, landing with the grace of Mary Poppins, but without the umbrella. Seeing her float down jogged something in my memory. One time, I’d been falling from a bell tower window and in grave danger before I’d magically pushed out the skirt of my costume to cushion my descent. I should have used the body lightening spell! Quel stupide, as the French witches say.

  Or perhaps not. It did take some time to work through the phrasing. Given the height of the bell tower and the limited descent time, I would have needed to have begun casting it before I went out the window. And if I’d known what was coming next in order to start casting, if I’d had such powers of reading the future, I might have made a few other different choices. So many different choices.

  Maisy clapped her hands in front of my face.

  “Focus,” she barked. “No daydreaming on flights. Not unless you want to get intimate with the side of a mountain.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I mean, yes, ma’am.” I held out my arms. “I’m ready to get buoyant.” Holding out one’s arms had nothing to do with the spell, yet it felt like the correct body language.

  “It’s already done,” Maisy said with a smirk. “And, look. You’re still alive.” She turned toward the broomstick, which was hovering near us, at hip height and parallel to the ground. “Do you want front or back?”

  “Uh...”

  “I’m kidding.” She threw one long leg over the broomstick. “Novices always ride the rear. Hop on!”

  * * *

  You’d think flying a broomstick would feel like riding a motorcycle, and in some ways it did.

  As we banked left or right, I had to follow Maisy’s lead, leaning my torso into the turn. Diving downward felt like barrelling down a roller coaster, and soaring upward made my insides—though lightened by the spell—feel heavier than the rest of me. But a motorcyle’s movements are limited by the plane of the road surface. On the broomstick, there were no such limitations. Or so I quickly discovered when Maisy told me to hang on, then took us into a high Yo-Yo, an unloaded extension, rolling scissors, and finally, just when I’d relaxed my grip, a defensive spiral.

  She called back over her shoulder, “Maneuvering is all about making trade-offs between airspeed, which is kinetic energy, and altitude, which is potential energy.”

  “Consider me impressed,” I said, catching a mouthful of her silky black hair in my mouth. There was an anti-wind spell in effect that reduced our friction and kept the rushing air from affecting us, but a little wind came through, plus Maisy had a tendency to whip her head back and forth as she got more excited. I didn’t know my fellow witch very well yet, but she was, without a doubt, a daredevil.

  “You haven’t seen anything yet,” she said, whipping more silky black hair in my face.

  “Is this what you were doing on Friday night? Practicing combat maneuvers? Is there someone else who can corroborate your alibi?”

  “Look down,” she said.

  I leaned over and looked at the mountain we were cresting. The air here was ashy, and the ground was smoldering. The forest below us lay in charred ruins. Now I understood where she had been, and how she’d been of service to the community.

  No words came to my lips. The devastation below was heartbreaking.

  “I was with a team fighting the wildfire,” she said.

  The ruined land stretched out below us for miles. It must have been quite the battle to fight back the wildfire. I felt slightly ashamed. Now that I saw how much the mountainside had suffered, I wished I could take back my petty complaints about having a slightly dry throat from the smoke.

  “Thank you for your service,” I said in awe.

  “It’s hard work, but I have to admit it’s fun, too.”

  “Fun?”

  “Zara, I’m Flame Touched. The gift you have with spirits, I have it with one of the elements. Fire.”

  “What about water? Isn’t that a better way to fight fire?” Even as I asked the question, I heard my mistake. Water wasn’t the only way to fight fire. I knew that. But my brain wasn’t working the way it would have been if I’d been standing at the Information Desk at the library.

  “I was part of the squad doing a controlled burn,” she explained. “My main job is to cast lines of fire downward, to prevent the spreading fire from picking up more fuel as it travels across the land. I also drop off some of the smokejumpers—the ones who are members of a special elite squad.”

  “That’s incredible. You’re a hero, Maisy. And not just because you make the world’s best coffee.”

  She turned her head enough to look me in the eye. “And why do you think it’s the world’s best coffee?”

  “No way! You use magic to roast the beans?”

  “Every batch.”

  We suddenly dropped several feet. I gripped Maisy tighter. The broomstick shuddered like a motorcycle misfiring.

  “We should land soon,” Maisy said. “You’re a drag on my resources.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be. Once you get trained up, you’ll be an asset. Every witch has got to start somewhere.”

  We took a slow, comfortable bank to change direction, and flew back toward the logging road from which we’d come. The ash in the air faded as we passed from smoking ruins to lush green forest once more.

  There was a PING, not unlike the door-ajar warning of a land-based, normal vehicle.

  “That’s odd,” Maisy said. “We’re picking up something on the radar.”

  “You mean like an airplane?”

  “Smaller. But it’s not a bird.” She leaned to the side to lift one hand, and pointed to the sky ahead. The broomstick immediately shuddered again and lurched under us. Maisy quickly placed her hand back on the stick and regained control. “Sometimes I forget I shouldn’t try to point,” she said. “The incoming object is at two o’clock.”

  A shape that was familiar—to me, anyway—came into view. Ribbons flapped his way toward us on glittering green wyvern wings.

  “That’s no incoming object, that’s Ribbons,” I said. “Have you met my wyvern friend before?”

  “Not formally. And I don’t see anything. I’ll have to take your word for it, and the radar’s.”

  Ribbons soared past us, did a
n impressive aeronautical maneuver there was no term for, and flew alongside us at shoulder height.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” he said coolly.

  “Ribbons, meet Maisy Nix. Be polite and make yourself visible to her.”

  His appearance didn’t change for me, but I could tell by the jolt of muscle tension that went through Maisy Nix when she was able to see him.

  “A wyvern,” she breathed. “How wonderful to meet you, sir.”

  He must have replied telepathically to her only, and it must have been something cheeky, because she giggled like a little girl. I tried very hard to not feel pangs of jealousy. He was my wyvern. I kept him in clean towels and maple syrup. How dare he flirt with some witch he didn’t even know!

  To me, Ribbons said, “You’ve got to come home, Zed.”

  “That’s where I’m headed. More or less.” A note of alarm might have registered in my nervous system. It was hard to tell on top of the adrenaline and magic of flying. “Is something wrong? Is it Zoey?”

  “She’s upset. You left the house without leaving a note, Zed. You’re supposed to leave a note. You know the rules. You’re the one who makes the rules, Zed.”

  “I know, I know,” I said.

  Maisy asked, “What’s going on? Family emergency?”

  “My daughter’s upset with me.”

  “She’s sixteen, right? If I know teenagers, that’s got to be an everyday sort of problem.”

  “My teenager isn’t like the regular ones.” I leaned down and scanned for the road and the car. “Maisy, I appreciate you taking me for my first flight, but I should be getting home. When I left the house this morning, I forgot to leave a note.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” She clucked her tongue, like a rider asking her horse to speed up, and the broomstick nearly shot out from beneath of us. Ribbons used his throat to make a guttural sound similar to YEEEEHAW!

  We soared past the logging road, Maisy’s car, and over the outskirts of town.

  “But what about your energy?” I asked. “And the risks of using the sky-cloaking glamour spell over town?”

  “Hasn’t your aunt taught you the greatest skill a witch can master? It’s how to downplay your abilities so that everyone underestimates you.”