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

by Angela Pepper

  To say I was stunned by this revelation would be an understatement.

  For an instant, my heart rose. I wanted to believe what she was saying was true. But then the wise part of me took over and punched down my stupid, weak heart. It wasn’t true. My daughter had been brainwashed. Clearly.

  Through clenched teeth, I said, “You can’t believe what that man says. He’s a trickster. He’s a foxy trickster.”

  “Not all men are bad, Mom. I know you’ve had a few bad experiences.”

  I snorted. “A few?”

  “I know Mr. Moore tricked you and lied to you, but not all guys are like that.”

  “This?” I sputtered, trying to get the feelings out in words. “This from the girl who wanted to cast an anti-love spell on herself? Suddenly you’re on Team Men?”

  “Mom.”

  “What’s changed? It must be love. Love has made your head soft.” I crossed my arms. “After I abandoned you at the museum today, that young man in the caveman costume must have shown you around his cave.”

  She shook her finger at me. “Don’t try to change the subject. Don’t smoke me out. We were talking about my half-siblings.”

  Don’t smoke me out? What an excellent idea. Witches had many ways to change the topic of conversation. Violence was one way, but sometimes the simplest parlor tricks worked best.

  I twirled my tongue and cast a spell. I didn’t use that particular spell frequently, but it was easy enough to cast without accidentally inverting, even under tense circumstances. The Witch Tongue flew from my mouth effortlessly. The air around us glittered. It was working. Billowing plumes of pink smoke rose from the floor all around us.

  Zoey made a startled noise.

  Brightly, I said, “Hey, did I ever show you how good I’ve gotten at the pink fog?”

  “Don’t you dare fog me out!”

  It was too late. The foggy pink clouds filled the entire kitchen, including the space between us. I could no longer see her face, or her accusing expression. I could barely see the tip of my own nose.

  Zoey’s voice was muffled by the pink clouds. “We need to talk about this eventually, Mom. If I have brothers and sister, I have a right to know.”

  “Do you? Really? What about your right to privacy? What about theirs?” The pink clouds ebbed, and the fog thinned enough for me to be able to see her face. It wasn’t a pretty sight. I quickly doubled the pink clouds in the room, then doubled the spell again.

  “Screw privacy,” she said.

  “Honestly, Zoey, I don’t even know for sure if you have any siblings. It’s all theoretical. That’s the truth.”

  She made a grumbling, displeased noise.

  I paused to take in the situation as calmly as I could.

  Mother-daughter relations were at an all-time low.

  I should have cleared the fog and made things better. But, for whatever reason, I didn’t. Was it the lingering effects of Ishmael’s tantrum or just my own stupidity? I’d never know for sure.

  What I did next was truly shameful.

  If I’d been in the running for Mother of the Year, this certainly would have disqualified me.

  I used my telekinesis to grab a mug, plus the nearly full pot of coffee, and floated both over to me. I silently climbed off my chair and edged my way blindly toward the door to the basement.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” I said through the pink haze. “Now get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  I didn’t wait for a response. I slipped through the door to the basement with the coffee, locked the door behind me, and retreated to my basement lair.

  I reached the bottom step. My daughter was stomping around the kitchen, cursing me.

  In the basement, there was a whipping sound, the movement of bat-like wings, and then the scrape of talons on stone. Ribbons landed on the stone ledge over my desk. Orange light flared. He used his wyvern fire to light the candles above my desk. I had plenty of electric lamps, but the flickering of candles helped me do my best work.

  “You must have heard everything,” I said. “What a day, huh?”

  “Poor Zed,” he said, his Count Chocula voice echoing telepathically in my head. “You have had a very long day.”

  “I sure have.”

  “And, worst of all, Zed, I’m afraid you are no longer in the running for the Mother of the Year Award.”

  Chapter 25

  Ribbons let out a sigh that was much louder and longer than his tiny wyvern lungs should have allowed. “You’re being so boring, Zed.”

  I looked up from my spell notes, which I’d been focused on despite the constant interruptions. An hour earlier, I’d had to unlock the basement door for the cat before she scratched a hole in the door. Since then, she’d been chasing an insect around the basement and yowling pitifully about her failure to make the kill.

  “So terribly boring,” Ribbons reiterated.

  The wyvern was slouching, hunchbacked, on the stone shelf above my desk. With that posture, he looked less like a tiny dragon and more like a gargoyle. A bored gargoyle.

  I tapped the eraser of my pencil on my chin thoughtfully. “If I’m so boring, why do you hang out with me?”

  Ribbons sighed again, his nostrils flaring as he emitted the pretty orange ribbons he’d been named after.

  “I am what you humans call a homebody,” he said.

  “A homewyvern?”

  He reached down with his arm, flapping out the attached bat-like wing, and snatched the pencil from my hand.

  “Tell Zoey who her father is,” he said. “I want to see what she does when she finds out.” He gnawed on the pencil eraser tentatively, then bit it off and began chewing. “Tell her, Zed.”

  I gave him an oh-really look. “Tell her what, exactly?” I leaned forward, so I was eye to eye with his glossy black wyvern eyes. His breath smelled of sweet peppermint and chewed pencil eraser. “What is it you think you know, Half-Pint?”

  “I know what I know, Giraffe Pants.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  Ribbons dropped the eraser-less pencil on the desk and drew himself up to his full height, which, excluding the tail, was slightly taller than a single-serving soda bottle. He tended to puff up like that when he had nothing to back up his claims. I grabbed my coffee mug and took a sip while I waited for him to admit he was bluffing.

  His green scaly eyelids changed shape, giving him a malevolent, evil expression. He spat the words into my mind. “Oh, but I do know, Zed.”

  “Sure, you do.”

  “You fornicated with a demon, Zed.”

  I was so shocked, I choked and spewed out my coffee, spraying the desk.

  Ribbons was faster than my volley of coffee spray. He jumped in the air, unfurled his wings, and flew straight up like a rocket. He rotated and stuck a landing on the ceiling. The wooden ceiling beam creaked as his talons dug in.

  He continued, his voice taunting. “You fornicated with a demon, and I don’t mean last month at the castle when you almost did, but didn’t. It was years ago, Zed. You know it. I know it. Are you going to make me say the rest of it?”

  “Say it,” I managed.

  “I know that the genie who calls himself Archer Caine is Zoey’s father.”

  The basement was quiet. Even Boa had settled down. There was a wet, smacking sound as the white cat noisily consumed the insect she’d finally captured.

  Ribbons’ telepathic voice rested. He used his throat to make a chittering sound similar to a squirrel’s warning chatter. It was how he laughed.

  I craned my neck and looked up at his upside-down face. “You knew? This whole time?”

  He flicked out his purple tongue and licked one beady black eye and then the other. Eye-licking was one of his many smugness indicators.

  “I’ve known for a while,” he said. “Let’s tell her right now, Zed.”

  “It’s late.”

  “She’s not sleeping. I can hear her tossing and turning in bed.” He swung from side to side hypnoti
cally. “Let’s go upstairs and tell your daughter that you fornicated with a demon, Zed.”

  “Would you please stop saying fornicated? What a horrible word.” Accurate, but horrible.

  “What term would you prefer? Making the beast with two backs? Dancing the Paphian jig? Shooting ’twixt wind and water? Shaking the sheets? Groping for trout in a peculiar river? That last one’s Shakespeare, by the way.”

  “You are a vile little creature. I can’t believe I let you talk to me this way. I can’t believe I let you live here rent free.”

  He stretched out his wings. “But you like meeeeeeee. You like Ribbons.” His beady black eyes seemed to double in size.

  “I suppose I do appreciate your knowledge and your honesty,” I replied evenly.

  “You looooove meeeee!”

  I tapped the desk. “Get your skinny chicken butt down here. I’m getting a crick in my neck. Get down here, reheat what’s left of my coffee, and tell me everything you know about demons.”

  “Demons? Or genies? All genies are demons, but not all demons are genies.”

  I tapped the desk again. “You know darn well what I mean. If I’m going to tell Zoey, assuming there’s ever a time that feels right, I’d like to know something about genies. She is half genie, after all.”

  Ribbons descended to the desk soundlessly, like a drop of sparkling green sap falling from a tall tree. He waddled, duck-like, over to my half-full coffee mug. The wyvern was as ungainly on solid ground as he was graceful in the air. He dropped the muzzle of his seahorse-shaped head into my coffee, steamed it, then returned to his usual perch on the shelf above my desk.

  “Genies,” I prompted him.

  He used one of the green, claw-like hands connected to his wings to stroke an imaginary beard. “The first thing you should know about genies is their kind don’t belong in this world, Zed.”

  “Really? I’ll skip that part when I break the news to Zoey. Teenagers have a hard enough time fitting in without being told their kind aren’t welcome in this world.”

  “My word choice was inaccurate. What I meant is they’re not from this world.”

  “Are they from Hell?” I leaned forward. “Hell is a real place?”

  More stroking of the nonexistent beard. All he needed was a pair of round spectacles, and he’d be Professor Wyvern.

  “Any place can be Hell, or Heaven,” he said playfully. The ridges above his eyes waggled like sparkly eyebrows.

  I leaned back again. “I’m not interested in discussing the power of positive thinking right now, my beady-eyed barista.” I took a sip of the reheated coffee. The cheeky wyvern’s saliva added a mint flavor I’d more than gotten accustomed to. I waved for him to get to the point.

  “Genies,” Ribbons said, as though announcing the topic of his presentation before a large crowd. “Once upon a time, humans and demons and half-gods all lived together. This was known as the Time of the Four Eves. Do you know about the Four Eves?”

  “Morganna Faire told me a pretty crazy story about four ladies who were created for the first man, Adam. Although he wasn’t technically the first man, just the one the gods didn’t destroy and reboot. Was that story true?”

  “As true as any of the Old Tales, Zed. As true as the stories they tell today on the television and the internet.”

  “Hmm.” I took another sip of the coffee. As true as today’s news wasn’t saying much for the hairdresser-genie’s veracity.

  Ribbons elaborated on his opening theme and went on with the story.

  To summarize, long ago, humans and magical creatures lived together, not just on Earth, but on multiple worlds. They traveled between these worlds through space-time tunnels formed by burrowing creatures called timewyrms. From Ribbon’s description, the timewyrms resembled the sandworms of science fiction. The wyvern went on for quite some time about the timewyrms, which I thought was a random tangent until he got to the part where timewyrms were instrumental in separating the humans from the magical creatures, sequestering them to just one world. “For their own protection,” Ribbons said.

  I held up a hand. “Wait. For whose protection? The timewyrms, or the demons, or the humans?”

  Ribbons let fly one of his chittering laughs. “Oh, Zed. You do know how to amuse me. It was for the protection of the puny humans, of course.”

  “Right. The puny humans.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Remember, at that time, humans were many, many years away from inventing their weapons of mass destruction. They were easy pickings for the other predators.”

  “Blood-sucking ones?”

  Ribbons nodded. “That kind, and more. The humans would have died out, but the gods favored them for some reason. The gods took no pleasure in watching their favorite pets be enslaved, tortured, and eaten—by anyone but themselves, of course. And back in those old days, the timewyrms served the gods.” He looked down at his torso and smoothed some sparkling green scales along his belly. “The timewyrms only serve themselves these days, ever since the gods abandoned us.” There was a weighty sadness to his telepathic voice.

  “Ribbons, how old are you?”

  He gave me a coy look. “The age of a creature is of no importance, only the length of its memory.”

  “Fine. I’ll bite. How long is your memory?”

  “My memory stretches back to the First Days. All wyverns are one. We share a common memory. It’s the equivalent of an oral history.” He looked down and ruffled the scales he’d just smoothed. “Unfortunately, our memories are far from complete. They’re not at all like your human libraries. I must admit you puny humans have outdone us with your technology, with your books.”

  “Two points for the puny humans,” I said.

  There was a flash of white fluff as Boa jumped on my lap and bunted my hand for chin scratches.

  “So, let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said. “The timewyrms burrowed tunnels through time and space, and dropped all the humans on Earth, and all the other creatures in other places. Other planets.”

  “Same planet,” he said. “But in different dimensions, with other astral configurations. My own home world has two moons. Or so I recall through the shared memories. I was hatched here, in this world. Like you.”

  “You must be pretty old, because red wyverns, the female ones, are extinct.”

  He didn’t reply, but a neon sign in my head flashed NO COMMENT.

  “No way!” I slapped the surface of the desk, startling Boa enough to cease her purring. “Red wyverns aren’t extinct? Ribbons! Do you have a girlfriend?”

  Another flashing sign: NO COMMENT.

  “Naughty boy,” I said. “Though Aunt Zinnia suspected as much. She said the only potion that would be powerful enough to melt a genie like Morganna would be one made with venom from a female.” I leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “So? Where’d you meet her? Is it a cute story?”

  The neon sign flashed a third time, this time also accompanied by a horrible squealing, like feedback over a PA system. I yelped and covered my ears—not that it did any good keeping out a telepathic signal.

  “Genies,” Ribbons said in the ringing quiet following the squelch. “I’ll tell you what I know, and no more.” He yawned. “Then I need my beauty sleep.”

  I chucked back the remainder of my coffee and nodded for him to keep talking.

  “Their powers in the other worlds are nearly as limitless as those of the half-gods. They are the rulers in many kingdoms. But here on Earth, this particular Earth, their powers are limited. They can put humans into trances, and they can put lesser beings into stasis fields. But they are mortal, and live in borrowed bodies that age rapidly.”

  I felt a surge of concern for Archer Caine. Was he in hiding somewhere right now, dying of old age before Zoey could meet him?

  I interrupted to ask, “How rapidly?”

  “I misspoke. When I say rapidly, I mean at the same rate as humans. To a wyvern, that’s rapid.”

  “How do they borrow bodies? D
o they always make cloned copies of other humans, like Archer did with Chet Moore?” The genie had split a second body off the DWM shifter when he was transitioning into his wolf form.

  “That was a new development,” Ribbons said. “Made possible only because the genie had infected the shifter’s blood during Morganna’s first experiment that went awry.”

  I scoffed. Chet Moore had nearly been killed by a flesh-machine monstrosity. It had been a bit more dramatic than an experiment “gone awry.”

  “The point of the Erasure Machine was to allow the genies to use fully grown bodies,” Ribbons said. “Previous to this recent development, they had to respawn from life to life as infants. They had to wait until they were eighteen, or even in their early twenties, before their collective genie memories kicked in.”

  Something about what Ribbons said tickled away in my brain, unfurling ribbons of thoughts. The wyvern seemed to be aware of my reaction and paused his story. I chased the unfurling ribbons through my mind.

  If genies had human lifespans, and respawned as babies who didn’t know they were genies until they were over eighteen...

  “That’s right,” Ribbons said, responding to what he’d read in my mind. “Archer didn’t know he was a genie when he fornicated, I mean, made a child with you.”

  A new, horrifying thought struck me. If genies respawned as babies who didn’t know they were...

  “No,” Ribbons said. “Zoey is not a genie.”

  I sighed in relief. What an emotional roller coaster the whole day had been—and the night hadn’t gotten any less bumpy.

  “But she’s not not a genie,” Ribbons said.

  “She’s not not a genie?”

  “We don’t know what she is.” He brought his claw-like hands together and rubbed them. “Which is why you need to tell her. Then she can tell us what she is.”