Wicked Wisteria by Angela Pepper

Author:Angela Pepper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Angela Pepper
Published: 2018-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Zinnia greeted me at her front door. She wore a voluminous green skirt, paired with a cream blouse and a fitted vest in a tapestry-like fabric decorated with purple blossoms.

“No skort today,” I said.

“It's been washed, if you'd like to borrow it.”

I pointed to her vest. “Where did you get this? The fabric looks so familiar.”

“I sewed it myself.”

“Did you shoot a chesterfield and skin its hide for raw materials?”

She sniffed and led me through the house.

I got a closer at the back of her vest. “What are these purple flowers? Thistles? Why do I know this fabric?”

She turned to face me. “Because it's the same fabric I also used to upholster my ottoman.”

“I knew it,” I exclaimed. “That ottoman made quite an impression on me last time I was here. Literally. I fell asleep for a minute, and when I woke up, there was an imprint of the thistles on my cheek.”

She unbuttoned the vest and tossed it on top of the ottoman. “Happy now?”

With a flick of my wrist, I commanded the vest to flap up into the air like a moth. It circled the room three times before settling back down on the ottoman, aligning the print patterns perfectly so that it disappeared against the furniture, like a mottled insect resting in its natural habitat.

Zinnia said only, “Your fine motor control is improving.”

“And your outfit is actually cute, minus the vest. You have a great figure. You should show it off more. Maybe a certain Detective Bentley would take notice.”

“The last thing the Riddle family needs is a cop sniffing around.”

“Even if he is handsome, and capable, with steely gray eyes that peer deeply into your soul?”

“His eyes are rather steely,” she agreed.

“When was the last time you went on a date?”

“I should ask the same of you.”

“Hah! The answer is five minutes ago. I had coffee with an eligible bachelor.”

“Chet Moore dropped you off here. Was it him? Are you two back on again?”

“Again? We were never on in the first place. But we did have a pretty intense staring contest over coffee just now. I tried to enter his mind through his eyes, using them as windows.”

She gasped. “Tell me you didn't. That's an extremely advanced spell.”

“Don't worry. Nothing happened. Not with Chet, anyway.”

“You entered someone else?”

“Not on purpose. Earlier today, I was innocently waiting to get a haircut when I might have taken a wrong turn and ended up in somebody else's head. It gave me a taste of what it must feel like to be a ghost, actually.”

Her eyes widened, and she seemed to struggle for words before finally saying, “Floopy doop.”

I bit my tongue to keep from laughing. Floopy doop? I couldn't wait to tell Zoey that one.

“You'll tell me everything,” she said. “But first, let me take care of what I was doing before you arrived.”

“Can I watch?”

“Even better. You can help.”

My aunt led me into her kitchen

“Holy sweatpants!” I looked around, gawking. “What's with the horticulture emporium? Where did

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