Wardens of Wisteria (Wisteria Witches Mysteries - Daybreak Book 1)

by Angela Pepper

  She crossed her arms and huffed.

  I went on. “You can’t protect yourself from growing up. Not with an anti-love spell.”

  She snorted. “But it’s okay for you to cast one on yourself?”

  “I’m an adult. I’ve already been in love.”

  Her hazel eyes blazed with an uncharacteristic fire. “Were you in love with my father?”

  Her father. Archer Caine. The genie. I’d certainly felt something for him when I was fifteen. Was it love? It had felt as powerful as any magic. He’d been a boy then, with a different face and a different name. But he was still the same charming devil. He was nothing but trouble.

  My face burned as though my cheeks had both been slapped. Zoey’s paternity was a topic we didn’t discuss, and she knew bringing it up would only hurt me.

  I kept my tone neutral. “I’ve already been in love,” I repeated. “The details are none of your business.”

  She was watching me intently. “Did you love my father?”

  “Maybe,” I said, surprising myself. Memories of that night came flooding back. I usually made a joke of it, focusing on the too-sweet wine coolers with the ridiculous name, but there’d been more to the night than that. He had been there. Archer Caine. His new name was blotting out my memory of his old name. Had he called himself Andrew? Or Alex? It was all blurring. Even his face was changing. The golden hair and soft, boyish features he’d worn all those years ago were being replaced with those of Archer Caine’s.

  There was a soft pat on my hand. It was the cat, letting me know she was ready to receive more adoration. I moved my hand to pet her, but it wasn’t easy. My memories had ensnared me in another time, and I wasn’t present. My hand looked foreign, like a puppet hand barely under my control. My whole body felt hot and heavy. Something inside me wanted to remember that moonlit night with absolute clarity. But I couldn’t go there. I couldn’t indulge in that fantasy, that false reality. It had all been a lie. He’d promised to love me. He’d sworn that I would be his and he would be mine. Forever. For... what had he said? Eternity.

  There was a warning growl from the white fluffy beast, and then a scratch. The pain of talons on my forearm brought me back to the present.

  I was in the kitchen with my daughter—my daughter who was the product of the night I couldn’t think about. Boa was letting me know I’d gone too far. My hand had strayed into the no-touch zone on her belly.

  “Boa,” Zoey said. “No scratching! Bad kitty.”

  I rubbed my arm. The cat had drawn blood, but the scratch would be healed in a moment, thanks to my powers. “It’s okay,” I said softly. “That was my fault for touching her belly. We have an agreement, and I broke it.”

  “She’s a brat,” Zoey said.

  “Bratty Boa.”

  Zoey grabbed the cat and held her in her arms. The cat went limp and purred loudly.

  A minute passed, and the purring only got louder.

  Zoey said, “You’re not going to tell me if you loved my father, are you?”

  “Do I need to? You’re a smart kid.”

  She pursed her lips. “But I want to hear you say it.”

  “Why?”

  Her hazel eyes burned. “Do I need to tell you why? You’re smart, too.”

  “I...” I shook my head dazedly. “Zoey, I don’t know everything. I don’t know why you’re so upset right now. You’re going to have to give me a hint.”

  She narrowed her still-burning eyes. The air around us crackled. The cat stopped purring with a single hiccup.

  Through gritted teeth, she said, “You do know.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “You’re lying.”

  The pain and anger in her voice did its magic. Something within me shifted, softening. I reached across the counter to give her a reassuring pat on the arm. When my fingers touched her skin, the crackling air between us ignited. Bright blue light blazed. My defensive magic blasted from my palms, through my fingers, and straight into my daughter’s arm.

  The cat in Zoey’s arms erupted, an explosion of white fur. She jumped straight up in the air, landed on the counter, and skittered across it before flying to the floor. Her cartoonish movements would have been funny if not for the frightened look on my daughter’s face as she tipped backward on her barstool, hurtling toward the ground.

  I jumped to my feet and used a web of telekinetic energy to catch my daughter before she hit the floor.

  But there was no need for me to catch her. She’d changed into her fox form mid-air. She would have landed on her four paws. Now, thanks to my magic, there was a fox hovering three inches off the floor, pawing at the air and yipping in protest.

  “Oh, sweetie,” I said. “I didn’t mean to shock you just now. Sometimes the energy builds up, like static electricity.”

  She yipped to be set down. I released her from the web of energy.

  Zoey-Fox stalked around the fallen stool and broken glassware. When Boa had been scared off, she’d managed to knock down not one, not two, but all three drinking vessels.

  Zoey-Fox gave me a hurt look. Deep down, she knew the shock had been an accident, but her fox face had a limited range of expressions. She might only have been surprised, but I read her expression as hurt, probably because of my own guilt. I should have told her about her father. I should have told her so much more.

  Chapter 4

  After the incident in the kitchen, Zoey-Fox skulked off to her bedroom in animal form. She closed her door with a soft thud that sounded, to her mother’s ears, passive aggressive. My lungs ached and my eyelids felt hot. We hadn’t fought, exactly, but it was as tense as things had gotten since our move to Wisteria.

  As much as I wanted to go upstairs, I stayed in the kitchen. I swept up the broken dishes and mentally rehearsed breaking the big news to her.

  Zoey, here’s the thing. Remember how I told you that your genetic father was a bratty rich kid who didn’t want anything to do with us? And that his family whisked him away at the first sign of the trouble brewing inside my belly, never to be seen from again? And how, when I hired a private investigator years later, the guy reported that the boy had never existed in the first place, so I assumed the punk had given me a fake name along with too many Barberrian Wine Coolers? Well, it turns out there never was a rich kid. There was only a demon, wearing a borrowed face and body. These days, he calls himself Archer Caine. Earlier this summer, he got a girl killed at Castle Wyvern, and I’m afraid that if you meet him, something terrible is going to happen to you. Or me. Or both of us. So, can we just forget this whole thing about your father and go back to pretending he doesn’t exist? That’d be great.

  What’s that? I’m all the parent you need? You made it sixteen years without a dad, and your life is perfect, so why spoil it? Oh, great! I was hoping you’d say that.

  * * *

  I gave my daughter an hour to cool off before I called up the stairs, “Are we still going to the museum today?”

  The door creaked open. “Sure,” she said brightly, as though nothing had happened. Since she could speak, that meant she was in human form again. Her fox form could communicate, but only in foxy yips and barks.

  She came down the stairs walking lightly, wearing a different outfit and a full face of makeup.

  “Foxy lady,” I said.

  She stuck out her tongue.

  “I’m really sorry I shocked you by accident,” I said. “How’s your arm?”

  She looked down at her bare forearms, which were both unmarked. “Fine. I don’t even remember which one you zapped.”

  “That must be your dormant witch powers at work. You heal quickly.”

  She gave me a skeptical look. “Or maybe your zaps are weak.”

  I laughed with relief. If she was teasing me about my powers, it meant she’d gotten over our fight already. Phew!

  I pretended to be offended. “You’re lucky I didn’t hit you at full power. It was just a little... accidental leakage.”

  “
All leakage is accidental. That’s what the word implies. Accidental leakage is redundant.”

  I clapped my hands. “Correcting my grammar! I’m so relieved my zap didn’t knock that particular trait out of you.” I tilted my head down and muttered to myself, “I’ll have to shock her a lot harder next time.”

  She stared at me blankly, then asked, “Did your ghost show up again?”

  “No. Unlike some library patrons, he was not pacing the front lawn, waiting for the metaphorical doors to open.”

  “Maybe he got confused about all the various municipal buildings and went to the museum instead.”

  “We’d better get going and find out.” I stretched out my arm and called for my purse. For a while, I had been casting a spell just to find it, then another one to float it onto my shoulder, but lately I’d merged the commands into a sort of macro spell. There was a rustling upstairs, and my pink leather purse appeared at the top of the stairs. Apparently, I’d left it in my bedroom the night before. It careened down the stairs on the handrail, only slightly more graceful than Ribbons, thumped Zoey on the buttocks, then bounced over her head and onto my outstretched arm.

  Zoey shot me a dirty look. “You did that on purpose.”

  I held out both of my hands. “Magic has a mind of its own.”

  * * *

  It was my first time visiting the Wisteria Museum. Zoey had been there already on a school field trip, but she hadn’t seen the new exhibit featuring artifacts from ancient Egypt. The showpiece was a 13-carat emerald worth over a million dollars. Due to the value of the emerald, the Egyptian exhibit had extra security, and the museum staff allowed only a dozen people at a time in to view.

  We arrived shortly after the museum opened for the day, and there was already a long line to get into the Egyptian exhibit. Zoey and I joined the line.

  A little girl of about eight stood in front of us in the line. She stared up at my red-haired daughter in wonder. The girl touched her own dark-blonde hair self-consciously, as though wondering if she might be able to change her hair color and grow up to be as lovely as Zolanda Daizy Cazzaundra Riddle.

  I saw my daughter in a new light, through the little girl’s admiring eyes. Zoey had a heart-shaped face with a broad forehead and a pointed chin. Her quick-moving, bright hazel eyes were fringed with thick eyelashes the color of caramel. Her skin was fair and baby-soft, her lips full and naturally deep pink. Her light-brown freckles were, in my opinion, perfectly sprinkled across the bridge of her nose and the tops of her cheeks. Her hair was red and thick, falling past her shoulders but not by much. She was average height for her age, and her narrow waist always attracted the envious gaze of older women if she wore her shirts tucked in. That day she wore a loose-fitting, peasant-style blouse with threadbare denim shorts. I didn’t think much of that particular outfit—it was a bit monotone and dreary for my taste—but the little girl in line ahead of us stared up at Zoey in naked admiration. Worship, almost.

  The little girl’s mother noticed her daughter staring and pulled the girl closer to her side. The mother confided to me, “Your daughter is such a lovely young woman. My little Rebecca thinks all redheads are mermaids.” She patted Rebecca on the head.

  “I was a mermaid once,” I said, more to the little girl than to her mother. “I found a secret journal at the bottom of the sea.”

  The mother laughed merrily. “Isn’t that wonderful,” she said, and then turned to greet someone else in the line.

  Zoey said to me, “Sweet kid.” She sighed and shifted from one foot to the other. “I’m not sure coming on opening weekend was such a good idea. This line’s not even moving.”

  “We could always come back here after hours when it’s not so crowded.”

  “After hours?”

  I grinned. “They might have high security in place, but there’s no such thing as a truly locked door to some of us.” I wiggled my fingers suggestively. “If you know what I mean.”

  She elbowed me. “Mom! You’re supposed to be teaching me values, not corrupting my young mind.”

  I shrugged. “I blame Ribbons. He’s a bad influence on the whole household. Remember, he wanted me to go into that apartment this morning. He was practically begging me to.”

  “I believe it. He loves stirring up trouble. And he always looks guilty.”

  “He does look guilty! It must be the black eyes, combined with the lack of eyebrows.” I rubbed my own eyebrows. “He’s got those ridges over his eyes that are eyebrow-like, but when they smooth out, he looks shocked, like you just caught him in the middle of a crime.”

  “I think he’s up to something we know nothing about.”

  “Charlize said the same thing.” Charlize was my gorgon friend who worked for the DWM—the Department of Water and Magic. That was the local secret underground organization. They supposedly kept an eye on supernatural disturbances so the townspeople of Wisteria didn’t find out magic was real, or that monsters lurked everywhere.

  Zoey leaned out, surveying the lineup in front of us. “I think we’ll be here a while,” she said. “Want me to get you a snack from the cafe?”

  “Bless your heart. I thought you’d never ask. It’s been at least an hour since I last ate.”

  She grinned and held out her hand for money.

  “Just a coffee,” I said. “Unless there are some pastries that look edible.”

  “You set a really high bar, Mom.”

  “Nothing but the best for the Riddle family.” I winked at her. “And get a little somethin’ for yourself.”

  She made grabby fingers, indicating she’d need more money. I handed over my whole wallet with a shrug. I trusted her. We often joked that my wallet was probably safer with her, anyway.

  After Zoey left, a woman with four children in tow joined the line behind me. Her kids were chatting away happily about seeing the Egyptian emerald, telling each other about the magical powers it had. At the mention of magic, they had my full attention. I turned to look them over. Uh-oh. I quickly rotated back, angling my body away before the mother could see my face.

  I knew the woman, and not in a good way. Bentley had mentioned her name: Margaret Mills. She was the rhinoceros woman with gray frizzy hair who’d chewed me out last month for allegedly wearing fur. It had actually been my father, in fox form, not a fur wrap. The bossy woman and I had also bumped into each other again at the mini golf course. That interaction had not gone well, either.

  Margaret Mills had taken a dislike to me from the minute she’d set eyes on me. It felt personal, almost as though she was jealous. Jealous of what, I couldn’t guess. My gorgeous red hair? I peered over out of the corner of my eye. It was just Margaret and her four children. I didn’t see her frizzy-haired, boxy-headed husband with the group. The lucky guy had gotten to sit this one out, apparently.

  While I was pondering what might have made Margaret Mills so cranky toward me, the second-youngest Mills child declared a bathroom emergency. A moment later, all five were gone in search of the restrooms. To my relief, some new people I didn’t know joined the line behind me.

  The new people were a group of four women, about my age—thirty-two—or younger. One of them wore a new baby in a sling, and her three doting girlfriends seemed to be having a competition for Best Godmother. Seeing them together gave me a pang of loneliness. I’d been sixteen when Zoey was born, and I’d been so busy keeping us from being homeless that I hadn’t enjoyed carefree Saturdays at the museum with friends my age. Of course, there was no way of going back and changing things, not unless someone had invented a way to time travel, ha ha, so I was determined to make up for lost time now. And my social life was improving. I had many new friends at the library, plus I got along with a couple of agents at the DWM. Unfortunately, none of them were witches. The only witch in my life was my aunt, Zinnia. She would eventually have to introduce me to the members of her coven—her coven she denied having—but she kept delaying it, saying I needed more control over my powers.

 
For a witch, I was a late bloomer. I should have gotten my powers at sixteen, but due to circumstances—being pregnant with my daughter—the magic had stayed dormant. It hadn’t emerged until I was thirty-two and living in Wisteria. I’d been working hard to catch up. Over the last four months, I’d been diligently mastering the Witch Tongue and spellwork, but I still had so much to learn. My daughter had a better grasp on the language theory than I did, which was ironic, since her powers appeared to be limited to changing into a fox. She’d inherited the shifter gene from her grandfather, which made her a shifter, not a witch, but my intuition told me she was more than just a shifter. After all, her father was—

  The baby I’d been staring at gave me a startled look and pointed a chubby finger at me accusingly.

  I quickly turned away from the women and the know-it-all baby. He or she was probably a mind reader. We were in Wisteria, after all, a magnet for supernaturals.

  The din of noise around me picked up volume. The museum was getting crowded and noisy. I scanned the center atrium for my daughter. She was talking to a prehistoric caveman. Or, rather, a teenaged boy dressed in a prehistoric caveman costume.

  After zero internal debate about whether or not to violate my daughter’s privacy, I did so. I cast a spell that was relatively new to me.

  The spell was a sound tunnel. It was an inversion plus modification of the sound-bubble spell my aunt and I used regularly to protect ourselves from eavesdroppers in public spaces. While the sound bubble spell kept energy waves trapped inside, the sound tunnel directed it outward and straight to the eager ear of the casting witch.

  “That costume looks pretty authentic,” Zoey was saying.

  The boy’s name was Griffin Yates. He and I hadn’t met, but Zoey had mentioned him a few times in what she’d thought was a casual manner. Being her mother, I’d immediately picked up that he was her crush. I did the usual social media research. He appeared to be a regular teenager, but looks could be deceiving.

  Griffin talked about his caveman costume. “It’s sort of authentic,” he said nonchalantly. “Some of the leather is real, but the fur is totally fake.” He put his hand to the side of his mouth and stage whispered, “We have to use a lot of cornstarch to prevent chafing.”