Wisteria Warned Read online

  “Nobody wants to be called a troll.”

  “But that doesn’t change the fact she is a troll.”

  “But is she? Really? If nobody calls them trolls anymore, are they still trolls?”

  Zoey frowned. “I don’t know.”

  “Wow. Now there’s a phrase I don’t often hear coming out of your adorable lips.” I turned to address the fluffy white cat who was weaving around my ankles in a figure-eight pattern. “Did you hear that, Boa? I’ve stumped my genius daughter with a philosophical question.”

  “It’s more of a linguistics question,” my clever teenager said, correcting me. “Or a crossover between philosophy and linguistics,” she further corrected herself.

  I chuckled. “You should have seen the way Kathy put away that cake. One enormous bite and it was all gone.”

  “What a waste. She didn’t even taste it?”

  “Not unless sprites have taste buds in their stomachs. I already phoned Chloe to order another replacement cake for tomorrow.”

  “That will be your third birthday cake, or your fourth if you count the cherry cheesecake.”

  “What else am I supposed to do? I deserve to get at least one big slice, to be eaten in peace, and allowed to fully digest. My official birthday cake got ruined when your father knocked it on the floor. I wasn’t going to eat floor cake.”

  She smiled. “Since when are you too good for floor cake?” Her smile faded to a frown. “And what do you mean by ‘your father’?”

  “Archer Caine is your father. I could call him ‘the genie’ if you prefer. Or ‘the demon,’ or ‘the devil’ with a lowercase d.”

  The wrinkles on her brow deepened. “You said ‘your father’ as though him being my father was my doing, somehow. Archer Caine being my father wasn’t my doing.”

  “You’re right. It was the doing of a six-pack of Barberrian wine coolers.” I took a breath. “Or so I believed, until I read that prophecy scroll with your name in it, and now I’m not so sure.”

  She raised two red eyebrows. “I caused myself to be conceived?”

  “Well, kid, you are part genie. How should I know how genie magic works? When we moved here, your father was out and about, floating around inside people’s heads, or in the ether, or who knows, and then he made himself a body out of spare Chet Moore parts. That sounds an awful lot like what you did inside me.”

  She rolled her eyes. She was half genie, but she was also a quarter witch and a quarter fox shifter. Only the fox shifter aspect had manifested so far. The teenager aspect superseded everything else.

  I went on. “Ask your father how genies get out of their bottles and into new bodies. And find out of the bottles are actual bottles or just a metaphor. I’m pretty sure he was the guy I heard talking to a disembodied Dorothy Tibbits inside Josephine Pressman’s head. In fact, I’m ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure it was him. Then, after he got that new body of his, he dated the poor girl up at Castle Wyvern, and got her killed.” I shook my head. “I know it was Morganna Faire who got the genie-melting poison from that nasty little gnome, but Josephine wouldn’t have drank it by accident if she hadn’t been mixed up in their genie business.” I let out a low whistle. “It’s a good thing Jo’s spirit has moved on, or he’d always be looking over his shoulder for an angry ghost.”

  Zoey opened her mouth, but I cut her off, talking faster.

  “Ask your father about the prophecy, too. That old scroll they have at the DWM. Get as much information out of him as you can. You’ve got your deadbeat dad back in your life at the moment, for better or for worse. Why not make the most of it?”

  She shook her head. “That’s enough, Mom. You’ve made your point. He’s connected to a lot of bad people and unfortunate events. He may even be directly or indirectly connected to everything weird that’s happened to us since we moved here.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe you shouldn’t have let him into our lives.”

  Her jaw dropped open. She blinked at me furiously. When she regained the ability to speak, her words came out fast and angry. “I let him into our lives? Me?” She thumped her chest with an open hand. “I wasn’t the one who invited him to your birthday party. It was your wish that brought him into our lives.” She pointed her finger at me. “Your birthday wish.”

  “But my wish was on your behalf. I had to do something. Whenever the topic of your siring comes up, you always look at me with those sad puppy-dog eyes.”

  “My siring? Don’t you dare distract me by using a weird, old-timey verb.”

  I waved a hand, accidentally casting a spray of iridescent magic sparkles. “All I did was blow out some candles and wish that you could have a better relationship with your father than I had with mine. A mother always wants the best for her child.”

  “And I appreciate that. I do. But I barely found out about Archer being my father before suddenly he was at our front door. I think I would have preferred more time to get used to the idea that my father looks exactly like our next-door neighbor, Mr. Moore, due to the fact he made himself a body using Mr. Moore’s spare parts.” She sighed. “Why Mr. Moore, anyway?”

  “We think he snuck in there, on a physical level, when Chet was stuck inside that fleshy mind-erasing horror in the Pressman attic during the incident that you pretend to know nothing about.”

  “Right. I certainly didn’t listen in on you talking to Auntie Z about it, because that would have been wrong.”

  I sighed. According to the DWM’s internal investigation, Archer Caine had likely been in his non-corporeal genie form the last sixteen years. Morganna Faire, his sister, used his essence to power some diabolical machines they were going to use to erase minds, so the genies could be immortal without having to lose their memories every time they were reborn as babies. But then Archer had jumped ship into Chet Moore, like a virus.

  “It’s a lot to process,” Zoey said. “My father, the body snatcher.”

  “You should probably call him a genie,” I said. “Or Djinn with a capital D. Or djinn with a lowercase d. All I know is they don’t like being called demons.” I turned away from her, opened the oven, and pulled out the casserole I’d made with various leftovers, covered in cheese.

  “Hmm,” was all she said.

  “Just like how trolls prefer being called sprites.” I floated the hot casserole dish over to a trivet. Witches didn’t need oven mitts. “Speaking of trolls preferring to be called sprites, don’t you love it when a conversation naturally comes around full circle?”

  “Hmm.” She swished her lips from side to side.

  A wyvern flew into the kitchen and landed on the back of a chair.

  Most people would scream at the sight of a mythological creature flapping into a room, but it was a regular occurrence in the Riddle household. And this mythological creature wasn’t that terrifying, since his body was all of seven inches long and his head resembled that of a large seahorse. Like a dragon, the wyvern did breathe fire, some of it in the shape of colorful ribbons. That was how he’d earned his name, Ribbons.

  Ribbons the Wyvern spoke telepathically into my mind and Zoey’s. “Did someone say floor cake?” The wood of the chair squeaked under the pressure of his claws. Having a wyvern as a roommate was as hard on the furniture as it was on the grocery bills.

  “There’s no floor cake,” I said.

  “I know.” He preened himself. “I heard the entire conversation from the moment you arrived home from work, Zed.” He communicated in his unplaceable Old Europe accent and semi-formal syntax. “But was it not delightful how I chose that particular phrase with which to make my entrance?”

  “It was pretty cute,” I said.

  He snorted, emitting a sulfur smell, like a struck match. “Ribbons is not cute. Ribbons is delightful, and charming, not to mention handsome.”

  Zoey said to me, “He’s extra cute when he refers to himself in third person, isn’t he?”

  “So cute,” I agreed. “Someone should make a line of greeting cards with Rib
bons saying all of his cute little catchphrases.”

  He snorted again, this time emitting a delicate ribbon of orange fire. “I will eviscerate anyone who dares capture my image for commercial purposes. I will rip them limb from limb, and spread their entrails across the land with great speed while their heart still beats. They will have no choice but to bear witness to their disembowelment, for I shall begin my revenge by removing their eyelids.”

  Zoey and I exchanged a look.

  “So cute,” we said in unison.

  Zoey giggled. “The word ‘entrails’ always cracks me up when he says it with that Count Chocula accent.”

  “It is your choice how you hear my voice,” he said wearily. “Stop hearing me as Count Chocula and choose something more dignified.”

  “You know I’ve tried,” I said. “There was that whole day I heard you as Pierce Brosnan, but it didn’t stick.”

  Ribbons puffed up his chest. “Pierce Brosnan is one of the finest actors who has ever lived. He made an excellent Bond.”

  “You know who Pierce Brosnan is? Ribbons, you cheeky wyvern. You always claim you don’t know the names of any celebrities. What’s that thing you say? ‘The affairs of humans are of no more interest to wyverns than the affairs of an anthill matter to a dolphin.’ It’s one of my favorite catchphrases.”

  Ribbons unfurled one wing and made a rude gesture at me with one of his claw-like fingers. Then he tucked in the wing, hopped onto the kitchen island where we ate most meals, and inspected the contents of a large bowl.

  After a loud sniff, he asked, “Are these cabbage entrails?”

  Zoey said proudly, “I made coleslaw using the food processor Gigi gave us as a housewarming gift.”

  Ribbons wrapped both wings around the bowl possessively and gave us a malevolent grin, exposing sharp fangs. “My favorite. Cabbage entrails with Dijon and maple syrup dressing. But what are you two going to eat?”

  Zoey jumped off her chair and grabbed a second bowl from next to the sink. “I made two bowls, so you get your own bowl, all to yourself.”

  “Like popcorn night,” he said, sounding downright touched by my daughter’s thoughtfulness.

  Boa howled at my feet and pawed at my leg, as if to say, What about me? Is there a special bowl for me?

  Boa presumably didn’t speak or understand English—she was a regular cat as far as we all knew—but her timing could be eerie.

  “There’s a bowl of you-know-what for you,” I said to her adorable whiskered face.

  I looked up at my daughter, who was already putting Boa’s special dinner in the microwave for the optimal amount of warming—thirteen seconds. The thing about heating cat food was you always knew it was warmed to the right temperature when the smell made you gag. It wasn’t as noxious as Frank’s anchovy breath, but it came close.

  Zoey set the bowl on Boa’s floor place mat. “Here’s your you-know-what, Boa.” She tapped the side of the bowl, and the cat trotted over, white tail in the air like a flag pole.

  My daughter and I avoided saying the specific brand name of the cat food because it made Boa go crazy. And also because it was a really stupid name.

  We finished getting the human food ready, and sat for dinner. The conversation flitted between genies and sprites, Zoey’s father, and my boss.

  “You both have learned many secrets in a short period of time,” Ribbons observed as we reached the end of the meal. “Now you know what weaknesses your foes have. You can use this knowledge against them in times of battle.”

  “Kathy’s my boss, not my foe,” I said.

  “She is your work foe,” he said.

  “He’s not entirely wrong, Mom,” Zoey said. “You do complain about some of the things she makes you do. And her rules.”

  “She can be unreasonable at times. I mean, she actually wanted me and Frank to throw out our Cynical Librarian Bingo cards, and I was so close to getting five in a row.”

  “Sprites have many weaknesses,” Ribbons said sagely. “They are agitated by changes in routine, and by underlings not following their rules. Also, they have a powerful addiction to popular food-borne toxins such as those found in commercial snack products.”

  “Addiction to snacks? That sounds like a lot of regular people,” Zoey said. “Are you sure it’s specific to sprites?”

  “Do not question my wisdom,” he said tersely, shreds of coleslaw escaping his mouth. As much as the pint-sized creature enjoyed salad, it was difficult for him to eat, due to his teeth being designed for shredding rather than chewing.

  “What about genies?” I asked. “What are their weaknesses?”

  “As you know, they can be transformed into their gas and liquid essence—”

  “He means melted down,” I cut in, for Zoey’s benefit. I explained further. “Archer’s sister, who I suppose was technically your aunt, was killed with a poison made from red wyvern venom.” I looked over at our resident wyvern. “It’s a big mystery how someone got red wyvern venom, seeing as how they’re extinct, but we’ll have to take Ribbons’ word for it that he hasn’t seen any red wyverns around in millennia.”

  “So tragic,” Ribbons said. “Completely extinct.”

  A likely story.

  I set down my utensils and folded my hands on my lap for a somber moment. “Zoey, I’m sorry for the loss of your aunt or whatever she was.”

  “She was just a spooky old lady who cut my hair one time.”

  “In any case, I am sorry.”

  “Don’t be. That old kook was building a machine to wipe people’s brains,” Zoey said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m glad she’s gone. She was a bad influence on my father.”

  I felt my eyebrows raise. “Is that what he told you last night?”

  She stared down at her plate. “We didn’t talk for very long. He was bleeding pretty bad from the puncture wounds he got when your boyfriend tried to eat him.”

  “Bentley apologized for that.” I didn’t correct her on the point about the reanimated detective not being my boyfriend. “He only attacked because he thought Archer was here to hurt us.”

  Zoey shook her head. “He didn’t think that. He wasn’t thinking at all. He just reacted.”

  “Reacting is a form of thinking. Sort of. Okay. Not really.”

  Zoey pushed her chair back and stood. “Do you mind if I do the dishes later? I’d like to be excused to my room.”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  She groaned. “Not everything is about you, Mom.”

  I started to say something, but Ribbons cut me off with a private message. “Let it go, Zed.”

  I looked over at the wyvern, who was licking his coleslaw bowl with his long, purple tongue. Let it go, Zed? For someone who claimed to not care about human affairs, the wyvern could be quite the family counselor when needed.

  “Don’t worry about the dishes,” I said softly. “I’ll clean up.”

  She turned to leave, still not meeting my gaze.

  “I love you,” I called after her.

  She left, and I listened to her light footfalls on the stairs, followed by Boa’s even lighter hops after her. The only thing Boa loved more than a bowl of lightly nuked you-know-what was being in the same room as her favorite person.

  I wondered if I should follow them up to Zoey’s room and make things better.

  Or worse.

  “Give her space, Zed,” the wyvern spoke in my head. “Even the strongest need some solitude.”

  And, right on cue, he left the kitchen to go spread wisdom and cause trouble elsewhere.

  The wyvern did have a point.

  Even the strongest needed solitude.

  But they also needed each other.

  I picked up my phone and scrolled through my contacts, to the letter C.

  All three of the triplets were there: Charlize, Chessa, and Chloe.

  I noted with amusement that their names all started with the same two letters, yet were pronounced differently. The English language was not
without its quirks. I’d always been good at spelling, but even I had to look up a few words, such as Caesar, as in Caesar salad. I also had a funny urge to spell the word dilemma with a letter N, as in dilemna. I couldn’t explain it, but that word in particular felt like it should have been spelled that other way.

  I wondered if I was living in an alternate timeline, and there was another Zara Riddle, in another universe, where everything was exactly the same, except dilemma was spelled differently.

  I send a text message to my gorgon friend, Charlize: Have you ever thought the word dilemma should be spelled differently?

  She wrote back: Yes! Dilemna with an N. You’re not the only one!

  I smiled as I replied: You totally get me. I like you. What are you doing?

  Charlize: Hanging out with the girls for a late dinner. We have five bottles of wine for three of us. Do you think that’s enough?

  Me: Probably not.

  Charlize: Chloe’s still breastfeeding, so she’ll only have a sip.

  Me: You might be okay then.

  Charlize: If not, there’s always tequila. You should come join us! We’re in Chessa’s cottage, behind Chloe’s house. Just the girls. You could sleep over again.

  Me, struggling to come up with an excuse: I have to be at work bright and early in the morning, so I’ll have to pass.

  Charlize: You’re not still worried about Chessa, are you? You big chicken. Relax! Her bark is worse than her bite.

  I’d rather not find out, I thought, and I politely declined.

  We sent messages back and forth for a while, chatting about life and making silly in-jokes. Then she had to sign off and interact with her sisters, so I wished her a fun evening without me.

  Then I cleaned up the kitchen.

  I resisted the urge to go upstairs and bug my teenager. Instead of causing more trouble, I retired downstairs to the basement to do some reading.

  With nothing specific in mind, I flipped open a magic book at random and found the story of the Four Eves. I recognized it as the same tale I’d been told by Morganna Faire, albeit in more formal language.

  I read about the four sister-wives who’d shared the original man, Adam. In one part of the story, the four women, Quenya, Mahra, Dinara, and Amora, bickered over who drank all the honey wine. It had been Amora, the lover. The text didn’t come right out and say it, but drinking all the honey wine was such an Amora thing to do.