A Witch Before Dying: A Wishcraft Mystery (31 page)

“‘The choice is yours.’ You said the same thing last night during class.”

Elodie stood up. “
You’re
the Peeper Creeper?”

“I had no choice,” Zoey said. “I need the Anicula. I have to heal Jonathan. I have to make him better.”

How did she still know about the Anicula if her memory was cleansed? Then I recalled what Elodie had said
about charms being for Crafters and mortals alike. The Elder must have cleansed Zoey’s memory only of the Craft references she’d heard.

“I’ve been looking for this amulet for a year and a half, ever since Jonathan was first diagnosed.” Her crazed gaze shot to mine. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve broken into this house looking for this charm.” She cradled it in her hands. “I can’t believe I finally have it. I wish Jonathan were here.”

I covered my mouth so she couldn’t see my lips moving and cast the wish.

My thoughts were spinning. Jonathan had been diagnosed with ALS eighteen months ago? Was it a coincidence that it was the same time frame Patrice went missing?

Zoey’s eyes gleamed as she grasped the amulet. They held a spark of insanity—of recklessness. She’d been breaking into homes around town to find the Anicula. The sicker Jonathan became, the more desperate she had acted.

But what about eighteen months ago? How desperate had she been then to cure her ailing husband?

A chill swept down my spine. “Was it you?” I asked softly. “Did you kill Patrice?”

Zoey waved the gun. Her hand was shaking. “She wouldn’t grant Jonathan another wish! How could she not grant him a wish that would save his life? She tried to tell me the Anicula had been stolen. Does she think I’m stupid? I knew she wanted him to suffer. She was jealous because he chose me over her.”

Elodie let out a sharp cry and barreled forward. Zoey ducked and missed the blow, but Elodie locked onto her legs. They toppled forward and into me. I fell backward into the wall behind me and shadowboxes rained down around me, crashing to the floor. Glass shattered and burst out like shrapnel, slicing into my skin.

“How could you?” Elodie cried.

“I have to save him,” Zoey shouted. “He’s all I have. He’s all I have, El.”

“That’s enough!” a voice boomed. “Zoey, stop.” Jonathan stood in the doorway. There were tears in his eyes. “What have you done?”

She burst into tears, but continued to wave the gun around crazily. “They’re going to tell. We have to get rid of them.”

“No, Zoey, no,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, taking aim at Elodie.

I had to do something.
Anything
. If only I hadn’t cleaned up the clutter in here. I could have easily reached something to throw at her.

And then I remembered I had a secret weapon. I reached into my shirt and pulled out the agate ball. Without thinking twice, I threw it at her just as she pulled the trigger. Zoey cried out and doubled over as the ball hit her in the head. The bullet hit the ceiling.

Jonathan rushed over to her. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close while taking the gun from her and tossing it across the room. Rocking her, he kept saying, “What have you done? What have you done?”

I tried not to look at my arms, which were dripping blood from the shattered glass (I didn’t want to faint again), as I rested my head against the wall. I saw the crushed pizzelle on the floor and said, “
I
really wish the police were here.”

“Me, too,” Elodie said, crawling over to Roger.

“I wish for an ambulance, too,” I added. “That would be nice right about now.” Roger didn’t look too well. His face was the color of chalk.

Suddenly, sirens split the air.

For a second, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. But within moments, Nick rushed into the house, gun drawn. He crouched down next to me. “Don’t move,
okay? The ambulance is right behind me. I’m not sure how they got here so fast, but I’m glad they did.”

“Roger’s been shot—he needs help first.”

Other officers filed in, including Glinda. She spotted Zoey in the costume and raw emotion flooded her face. She reached a hand out to her sister, then slowly curved her hand into a fist and withdrew it. A beat later, she turned and walked out of the house.

Zoey had said that Jonathan was all she had.

Maybe she’d been right.

I
was sitting on the porch swing the next afternoon, lazily swinging away when Evan came strolling up the walkway. I closed Melina’s diary and smiled at him.

“You look good in white,” he said.

“You’re such a flatterer.” He was referring to the white bandages that wrapped both my arms—the cuts were minor, all flesh wounds.

“I’ve come bearing bad news,” he said, shifting uneasily on his feet.

How much worse could it be after the week I’d had? “Lay it on me.”

“Sylar lied about being sick yesterday.”

“Oh?”

“Turns out he and Dorothy ran off and eloped last night.”

I smiled. “They did?”

“You’re smiling? Why? That’s bad news. Isn’t it?”

“Long story,” I said. “But no, it’s not.”

“Incoming!” Archie called from above.

I glanced up, squinting against the sun. Archie circled overhead, a colorful flash against the summer sky. Pepe clung to Archie’s neck feathers for dear life as they came in for a landing on the porch railing. Pepe slid down Archie’s tail like a slide.

“Are you telling Evan of my bravery?” Archie asked, spreading his wings and taking a bow.

Pepe elbowed him. “
Our
bravery.”

“Our bravery,” Archie said reluctantly.

They had heard my scream the night before and followed Zoey and me to Patrice’s house. Then they’d gone for help, but strangely, Nick had already been on his way.

“Yes, you’re both very brave,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Has there been any word about what will happen to Zoey now?” Evan asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “Do you think Dorothy knows what happened?”

Evan nodded. The goose egg on his head was all but gone. “Apparently Glinda called her last night and told her.”

“Is Dorothy coming home?”

“Not until after her honeymoon.”

Poor Zoey. Her family life didn’t excuse what she had done—not by a long shot—but it hadn’t helped, either.

I had thought Dorothy warned me away from the Keaton job because she possibly had something to do with Patrice’s disappearance…. But what if it had been because she knew Zoey had something to do with it and had been, in her own way, trying to protect her daughter?

I doubted that there was any way to find out, unless Dorothy was willing to confess all she knew.

And that was never going to happen.

But that wasn’t to say she was going to get off scot-free. As soon as she returned from her elopement she was going to have to face charges of her own—for the assault on Evan. There hadn’t been enough evidence to charge her with the fire, though Glinda all but confirmed her mother had set it.

“What are you reading there?” Archie asked, hopping over.

I ran my hand over the diary. I’d been reading the page on spells, over and over. “Something illuminating, as Starla might say.”

“Care to share?” Evan asked.

I smiled. “A girl has to keep some secrets.”

“Does this have anything to do with why Godfrey was over here so early this morning?” Pepe asked, being inquisitive.

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

The fewer people who knew what I planned, the better.

“Well, I need to get back to the bakery,” Evan said. “Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Really. Just a little scratched up. In fact, I’m planning to go to Patrice’s house this afternoon to get some more work done.”

I wasn’t telling the whole truth. I had another hunch I wanted to check out. After that, I had a date…with Mimi.

“Alone?” Archie asked.

I raised my eyebrow. “Maybe you can sit outside and be my lookout?”

Archie fell backward onto the porch and covered his chest with his wings. “‘A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.’” He flopped around as if dying.

“Didn’t I tell you he was dramatic?” Evan asked. He waved and trotted off.

Archie was still on the porch floor. “Dramatic? Me?”

I smiled. “Was that a movie quote?”

“
Non
, it’s from an old English vicar,” Pepe said.

Archie sat up. “Pepe might have known him personally, he’s so old.”

“He’s amusing, is he not?” Pepe asked sarcastically.

They sat with me awhile longer, then went on their way. I picked up the diary again, said the spell Godfrey had
taught me, threw the book into the air, and watched it disappear.

I smiled. I had searched deeper within and finally realized what the Elder had been telling me.

I was a Crafter.

A witch.

I had spells at my fingertips. Literally.

But as I thought about the conversation I had to have with Mimi later, I knew that there was so much about my legacy that I still had to learn.

Patrice’s house was eerily quiet.

I walked around, looking at the mess the scuffle the night before had left behind. Glass littered the floor. Blood stains had turned a rusty color. My neat boxes had been overturned.

There was so much work still to be done.

But I wasn’t there to do it.

I was there about that hunch I had. About a wish I’d made—that the police and the ambulance would arrive—that had been granted immediately. And I thought about how Yvonne’s wish to find Patrice’s body, Zoey’s wishes for the pizzelle and Jonathan’s appearance last night might not have been granted by my spells at all.

But by the Anicula.

I recalled how Elodie had said the Anicula only had to be in close proximity of the person making the wish for the wish to be granted, and looked around.

I cleared the spot on the floor where I’d sat last night, and realized it happened to be almost identical to the spot Yvonne had stood when she made her wish to find Patrice’s body all those days ago. I looked around, a foot in all directions.

I was knocking on the wall, looking for a hollow spot, when the front door opened. I was more than a little surprised to see Jonathan walk in.

He looked worse than usual. I didn’t know how much of that had to do with his disease—or if it was a result of the trouble Zoey was in.

I tried to pretend I sat on a glass-littered floor all the time. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you,” he said, clearing a spot and sitting next to me. “I had a feeling you’d come back here.”

“Why?”

“Because your wish for the police and an ambulance to appear was granted last night.” He bent his knees and rested his elbows atop them. “Because I figured by now you’d suspect that the Anicula is here.”

I hadn’t been scared when he came in, but now I was getting a little nervous. Had Zoey acted alone in killing Patrice?

“Do you know about my past with the Anicula?” he asked.

“Some. What Elodie told me. That you used Patrice to get rid of the rats.”

“What else did she say?”

I saw no reason to lie. “That you were a womanizer and cheated on her mother. That you and Patrice had a huge argument that Zoey overheard, and the Elder had to do a memory cleanse on Zoey and you lost your powers as a result….”

He smiled a humorless smile. “There she is wrong. I didn’t lose my powers because of what Zoey overheard.”

“No?”

“I lost my powers because Patrice wished for me to lose them. She was angry about the breakup. Very angry.”

I drew in a breath. “She wished your powers away?”

“Not only that, but she wished that whatever I cooked from that point on would taste terrible and make people sick. I mentioned she was angry, right?”

A woman scorned. “Yet you still cook? Why?”

Sighing, he said, “Sometimes I forget. I jump into the kitchen fray and help out when there’s a crush. My customers pay the price.”

“You had no recourse? Through the Elder?”

“None. The wishes of the Anicula are binding. So when Patrice threatened to wish that Zoey and I would break up, I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t let that happen. I love Zoey. It’s such an incredible feeling to be in love. Even if it was wished upon me without my consent, I couldn’t lose it.”

“You know about that?” I asked softly.

“Patrice told me what Elodie had done. She hoped it would somehow change my mind. It didn’t. That’s when she threatened to wish Zoey and I would divorce.”

“What did you do?”

He grinned. “I stole the Anicula.”

“But…but…if you have the Anicula, why not wish you can cook again? Why not wish yourself well?”

“I made a decision the day I stole it to never use it. It’s dangerous. Evil, even. Life needs to be led the way it was meant to be.”

“Like the way you and Zoey fell in love?”

With a quirk of his eyebrow, he said, “Touché. But I stand by my decision. The kind of power the Anicula holds—it’s all-consuming. Devastating.” He took a deep breath. “It breaks my heart that Zoey has been looking for it all this time. I blame myself for what’s happened. For what she did to Patrice.”

Ah, so she had acted alone.

“For the break-ins. For what happened to you.”

“The argument I heard at the Dumpster the other day—you suspected Zoey, didn’t you?” It explained the police comment.

“I begged her to stop looking for the Anicula, that if she stopped the police would never figure out it was her.
I never dreamed how far she’d taken her obsession. I hadn’t realized what she had done to Patrice.” He held my gaze. “I wanted to let you know that I’m turning myself in to the police this afternoon.”

“Turning yourself in?” I didn’t understand.

“For the murder of Patrice. I’ll sign a full confession. Admit to the break-ins. Everything. I obviously can’t lie about what happened last night, but I hope the judge will be lenient on Zoey for what happened.”

“But you didn’t do any of those things…. Why take the blame?”

“I’m dying, Darcy,” he said simply. “And Zoey has her whole life ahead of her. She deserves to live it.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed with that. We sat in silence for a moment before I said, “Why are you telling me all this, Jonathan? Why track me down here today?”