A Little Rhine Must Fall (19 page)

Cecily sat down on the hope chest.

“Well?” I asked belligerently.

She shrugged. “Nothing. I’m just waiting ‘till you’re done.”

“Done what?”

“Done freaking out.”

I sat down beside her. “I think I have a right to freak out.”

She nodded. “Not disputing that.”

“There was a homicidal vampire with a grudge hiding in my bedroom.”

“Not disputing that either.”

“He could have killed me.”

“True.”

“He could have hurt my kids.”

“Doubtless.”

“The hole in my mattress probably isn’t that big a deal by comparison.”

“Probably not.”

I kicked my heels against the chest. “It just makes me mad. I really liked that comforter.”

“Comforters can be replaced.”

I sighed. “I know.”

She got up and examined the stake. “Is this the one I gave you?”

“Yup.”

“Maybe you should carry it with you.”

I gave her a look.

“I’m just saying …”

I leaned back against the bed. “This has not been my day.” I thought about it and added, “Or my week.” I sat up quickly. “How did he get in? I thought ya’ll needed an invitation!” I was offended. Bad enough to discover that vampires could walk around in the daylight, was the threshold thing wrong too?

Cecily looked puzzled. “We do,” she said.

A whiff of wet paint floated across the house. “The painters!” I realized. I leaned back again. “I should have known it was all Carolyn’s fault.” Somehow, blaming her made me feel better.

Cecily was stripping the bed, I thought about standing up to help her but decided that pregnant women shouldn’t have to do manual labor. “How is the alien?” she asked.

I sighed again. “Not good. She’s still determined to call home.”

“Call home?”

I giggled, “Sorry. Like, E.T.”

“Oh.”

“Anyways, I thought if I showed her a good time on Earth that maybe she’d want to, you know … stay.”

Cecily easily flipped the mattress over so that the hole was underneath. It had taken Mark and me both struggling, sweating, and snipping at each other to man-handle it into place when we first bought it.

“And shopping with your mom and daughters was your idea of a good time?”

I glared at her. When you put it
that
way, it sounded stupid. Of course, if you said anything in that tone of voice it sounded stupid.

“It’s out of my hands now,” I said. “Sarah has taken over.”

Cecily raised one eyebrow in question.

I nodded. “Yup. Sarah. I have no idea where they went, what they are doing, or what her plan is. I’m just hoping that the alien doesn’t decide that there is no intelligent life here and blow up the moon to save the rest of the galaxy.”

Cecily snickered.

“It’s not funny. I wouldn’t totally blame her. Watch the news long enough and anyone would want to hit the restart button.”

“Let’s hope that Sarah is more convincing than you were.”

“I had a lot going on!” I protested. “It’s hard to show how wonderful life on Earth is when your toddler is sticking french-fries up her nose.”

Cecily quickly made the bed with clean sheets. I stood up, opened the hope chest and pulled out a blanket that I kept for those cold Florida nights when the temperature dropped into the fifties.

“I’m taking a nap,” I announced.

“I’ll be outside,” Cecily answered.

“You don’t have to do that,” I started to say, but, when she looked pointedly at the note Matthew had left on the bed, I changed my mind. “Thanks.”

Harvey chose that moment to wander in and give a huge yawn and stretch as if to say, “It’s naptime, what’s all the commotion about?”

Cecily left, shaking her head and muttering something about useless guard dogs. I realized that Bastet and Otis were also missing, but, with the excitement over, I didn’t spend too much time worrying about it.

What with the threat of alien invasion, an angry vampire, and my sister not sharing her plan to save the world, you would think that sleep would be hard to come by. I was so exhausted though that I didn’t even have time to try and pick which worry was the most pressing. I fell quickly asleep and didn’t wake until I heard the girls bouncing off the walls in their bedroom.

Cecily had left a note on the counter to let me know that she was taking turns watching the house with Annabeth and to not worry. Ha. Worrying was what Pipers did best.

The rest of the afternoon passed peacefully. I called Sarah’s cell every fifteen minutes and my messages got increasingly urgent and snarky, but she didn’t pick up or return my call. I read books aloud to Megan and Cassidy, colored with crayons, and even found time to fold some laundry.

I had just left the hundredth message on Sarah’s phone when Mark pulled in the driveway.

“How are the two of you doing?” he greeted me with a hug and kiss.

I had to do a quick head count before I realized that he was talking about the baby. I smiled. “We’re just fine. A little queasy, but not too bad.”

“Where are the girls?” He started shuffling through the mail.

“Playing in their room.”

“I’ll go say hi after I change.” He headed back to our room to put on shorts and a t-shirt.

I held my breath and hoped that he didn’t notice the shoe-sized indention on the door or the lack of comforter on the bed. I needn’t have worried. He was a man. They just don’t see things like that.

When I decided that there were not going to be any embarrassing questions I went to check on the girls. Cassidy was flipping through a picture book and Megan had out her Disney Barbie dolls.

“What are you doing, honey?” I asked Megan.

“Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are getting married.”

“Oh no, sweetie. They can’t get married,” I laughed.

“Why not, Mommy?”

“They’re both girls. You need a boy and a girl to get married.”

“Unless you’re in San Francisco!” Mark yelled from across the house.

“Thank you, Mark,” I yelled back.

“What San Fraco?” Megan asked.

“Don’t worry about it, baby. You just need a boy and a girl to get married.”

“But they love each other!” she protested.

“That’s what they all say!” Mark yelled again. I don’t know how he could hear
this
conversation, but if I called him to come change a dirty diaper he couldn’t hear me.

“
Thank you
!” I yelled again and hid a smile as I heard him laughing in the kitchen. What a dork.

We had dinner, baths, the usual bedtime routine, and still no call from Sarah. I was really starting to freak out. I called my mom, she hadn’t heard from them either. This could not be good.

I was antsy all evening. I couldn’t sit still long enough to watch a TV show with Mark, or read a book, or even finish the laundry. I kept checking my phone, hoping that I had somehow missed the call. Still nothing.

I lay awake for an hour staring at the ceiling and trying to make the phone ring with the force of my mind. It didn’t work. I had just drifted off to sleep at two o’clock in the morning when she called.

They were in jail.

Chapter Eighteen:

Jailbreak

I called Cecily. I should have felt guilty about bothering her for the second time that day, but I was too flipped out to care. I’d never had to bail someone out of jail before and I didn’t know how to go about doing it.

She answered on the first ring.

“Sarah and the alien are in jail,” I announced.

“What?”

“Yeah. That’s what I said. Jail. I just got a call.”

Mark stumbled out of the bedroom, looking bleary-eyed and tousled. “What’s going on?” he asked.

I covered the phone speaker with my hand out of pure habit. Cecily’s vampire ears would have no problem hearing. “Sarah and … Karen are in jail.”

Mark laughed. I glared at him. “It’s not funny.”

He yawned. “I’m sorry. It just struck me as funny.” He wrapped his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. “Is that your mom?” he asked, nodding at the phone.

“No. Cecily. I thought she could go with me to the jail since one of us needs to stay here with the kids.”

He yawned again. “You want me to go bust them out of jail?”

“Nooo,” I said reluctantly. “She’s
my
sister.”

“
They’re
your sisters,” he corrected.

“Yeah. That’s what I meant. I’m blaming Sarah for this until I know otherwise.”

“Ok. I’ll guard the fort here. Wake me up when you get back.” He kissed my head again and shuffled back to bed.

“Guard!” I whispered into the phone.

“Don’t worry,” Cecily answered. “I’ll call Annabeth. She can watch the perimeter.”

“What about Harry?” I didn’t want her to have to wake up her son in the middle of the night.

Cecily sighed in exasperation. “She can call Floyd. He can come watch Harry.”

That made sense. Floyd had a serious crush on Annabeth and would probably jump on the chance to do something for her.

“Ok. Let me throw on some clothes and I’ll meet you out front.”

Minutes later we were in the car heading for the police station. I knew where the station was but I had never had a reason to enter it. I had no idea what the proper procedure was for bailing someone out of jail. Thank you, Sarah, for new opportunities.

“Will they let us bail them out in the middle of the night?” I asked Cecily, assuming that, in her many years of life, she had more experience with getting people out of jail.

“Who said anything about ‘bail’?” she asked mischievously.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah.” I thought about it a bit. “Can’t we do this the normal way?”

“Uh-huh,” she smiled. “And what happens when your real sister, Karen, has an arrest on her record? Or gets a phone call about showing up for a court hearing? Or a letter about paying a fine?”

“Oh.”

Cecily started humming AC/DC’s “Jailbreak.”

I rolled my eyes. “No one is getting shot tonight.”

She sighed. “You’re such a party pooper.”

It was my turn to sigh. “Okay. Here’s the plan. I’ll use the Voice to get to Sarah and Karen, and Sarah can use her ability to fix their records, and then we’ll be out. No bail. No records. No court sentence.”

Cecily raised a hand in the air.

“Yes?”

“Did it occur to you that Sarah could have used her ability to
not
go to jail?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m worried.”

“This is going to be fun!” Cecily laughed.

:Where are we going?:
The voice in my head made me swerve the car violently, earning an angry honk from the sole car traveling the road in other direction.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Piper!” Cecily said with gentle warning, “The Bast travels where she wills.”

I ignored her. “Why are you in the car?” I asked.

Bastet hopped up on the shelf between the two front seats and stretched.
:We were sleeping in the garage and saw you and the bloodsucker were going somewhere, so we thought we would join you:

“Ok,” I said. “I’m not even going to ask
why
you were sleeping in my garage when I’m sure you have a perfectly lovely home somewhere else, but this is really not a good time.”

:What are you going to do?:

“We’re going to bust Sarah and the alien out of jail!” Cecily sounded like a teenage girl being asked on her first date.

I rolled my eyes. “We are not going to
bust
them out of jail. We are merely going to go
get
them out of jail in a peaceful, under-the-radar, manner.”

:Hmmm. The alien is in jail?:

“That’s the rumor.”

:It seems rather foolish to run around on the strength of a
rumor
, Piper:

“That’s just an expression. I got a phone call from the police station saying that my sisters were there and I needed to come down.”

Cecily shot up straight. “Are you sure it was the police station?” she asked.

“Yes. Why?”

“What if this is another attempt by Matthew to get at you?” She sounded happy about it and, sure enough, she had that big, stupid sword whipped out in her lap in no time.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I said, turning into the police-station parking lot. “Why the huge sword? Matthew used a gun. Why don’t you?”

She snorted. “A gun? Seriously?
Anyone
can shoot someone from far away. No,” she stroked the flat of the blade, “a true Guardian looks into her target’s eyes and feels the spray of blood against her face.” She closed her eyes and licked her lips.

“Oookay,” I turned off the car. “That’s really creepy. Forget I asked.”

Bastet hopped down to the ground. I pointed back into the car. “I think you should stay.”

She yawned, showing me rows of sharp, white teeth.
:Your opinion is noted:

“Fine. Whatever.” I stomped off in a huff.

Cecily caught up with me. “Remember, Piper. This could be a trap.”

It was my turn to yawn. I was exhausted and saving up all my remaining energy to read Sarah the riot act for dragging me out of bed in the middle of the night.

We pushed through the front doors into the empty lobby. Not a lot going on in Melbourne at two o’clock in the morning, so there was no one to see a rumpled woman, a cat, and sword wielding vampire stroll in.

There was a bell on the counter and, after a moment of looking around, I rang it. We waited. Bastet hopped up on the counter and down onto the other side where she started tapping away at the computer keyboard.

“Hey,” I whispered. “You’re not supposed to do that!”

She gave me a look and kept typing with two paws. I hated to admit it, but she almost typed faster than I did with all ten fingers.

:Ah:
she said,
:Here they are:

“What did they get arrested for?” I wanted to know.

:They—:

A police officer walked into the room. Bastet quickly closed the file and jumped back to the floor at my feet.

“Can I help you?” the man asked.

“Yes,” I said. “My sisters are here. I got the call that I need to come and bail them out.”