Binding the Shadows (Arcadia Bell) (9 page)

Jupe stuck his head between the front seats of the SUV on the ride back to their house, touching me with little pokes and prods, trying to get my attention. Trying to make me smile. I finally gave in—there was really no other option with him, as he’d mastered the art of pestering—and turned sideways in my seat, letting him hold my hand. His skin was soft and he smelled nice, like the coconut in his shampoo.

“At least we got the name of that punk,” Jupe said.

Noel Saint-Hill. Lon had tracked down the Plymouth guy, Freddie, before we left the racetrack. He didn’t know where the Saint-Hills lived, but we could probably do some Internet sleuthing and figure it out. Something positive came out of all of it, but I couldn’t shake the sound of my mother’s voice, repeating in my head like a bad song.

“I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong,” Jupe said as we sped along the dark highway that connected Morella with La Sirena. “Maybe I can help.”

“I wish you could,” I said. My tongue was fat in my mouth, swollen from me biting it.

“If I were you, I’d be bragging to everybody. You need a comic book hero name, like Silver Fog, or something. That was insane!” he said enthusiastically.

“Yeah, it was pretty crazy.” It was the
other
crazy thing I was more concerned about at the moment.

“And you didn’t know you could do that?”

“Can’t say I did.”

Lon grunted. His eyes were on the road in front of us, lost in his own thoughts. Probably wondering the same thing that was floating through my mind:
how was my mother still alive in the Æthyr, and what the hell was I going to do about it?

“Well, you shouldn’t be upset,” Jupe was saying. “Because that fog spell was one hundred percent bad
ass
. When you jumped up on that van, I was all, holy shit! I thought—”

“Shut it, Jupe,” Lon warned.

“I’m just sayin’, maybe she should be happy about it. Who knows what she could do if she tried.” He poked me on my elbow. “Besides, you told me magick is unpredictable.”

“I told you that the results are unpredictable. And that talent is varied.”

“Oh, please. Don’t quote semantics to me.”

“You mean ‘argue’ and ‘
with
me.’ ”

He chuckled sheepishly. “I don’t really know what it means.”

“Well, you used it right, by some miracle.”

He made a pleased clucking sound with his tongue. “Because I’m smarter than I have any right to be. That’s what Mr. Ross says every time I prove him wrong in class.”

Lon made an exasperated noise and knocked the back of his head against the headrest.

“You aren’t supposed to prove your teachers wrong,” I said. “You’re supposed to listen and do what they tell you.”

Lon’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and answered in his usual terse manner, grunting and mmm-hmming his way through the call.

“What-ev,” Jupe whispered, eyeing his father as he conspired with me. “Mr. Ross is wrong, like, twenty times a week. He said yesterday that if I was so sure about myself, maybe I should be teaching the class. And I said, ‘Hand me the chalk!’ And I think he was
this
close to sending me to—” He glanced at Lon, then silently mouthed
detention
to me.

I almost laughed. He was making me feel better, despite everything swirling in my head. It was hard to be upset with all his energetic mile-a-minute chatter.

“Oh!” he said, suddenly changing gears. “Lemme read your palm. I read a book today in the library that teaches you how.”

Like that.

As Lon hung up the phone, I let Jupe spread open my palm and squint over the armrest, studying the intersecting lines in my skin by the soft blue glow of the dashboard and the brighter bud-green emanations from his halo. Skinny fingers traced flowing patterns as his spring-loaded, flouncy curls tickled my cheek.

“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re going to die, like, whoa! Three times. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on.” He squinted harder, peering an inch away from my hand. I was tempted to smack him in the face, Three Stooges style. “That’s not your life line. What the hell kind of line is this? I can’t tell jack about any of these lines. That palmistry book was junk.”

He continued to mumble to himself, exasperated but fully intent on solving the mystery inside my palm. I nibbled the back of his neck playfully. He giggled and shoved me back with the side of his head. We were laughing. It was all good. Then, out of absolutely nowhere, I started crying.

What the hell was wrong with me?

Jupe dropped my hand in alarm. “I didn’t mean it. You’re not going to die three times.”

I covered my face with my hands and slouched in my seat. “I don’t even . . . know why I’m . . .” I gritted my teeth and groaned, forcing back tears. I felt so out of control, like I could lose it completely at any moment.

I couldn’t just break down like this. I mean, so what if my mom really was alive? She was on another plane. She couldn’t touch me here. And if we shared some sort of connection through the stupid Moonchild power—God only knew what sort of ritual magick she’d conjured up when conceiving me—then I’d either find a way to sever it, or just stop using it completely.

I took a few deep breaths. Lon and Jupe were staring at me in that
Oh-Shit, Female-Is-Crying
sort of way. “I’m fine,” I said, sniffing and brushing tears off my cheeks. “I’m fine.

“Maybe you’re, you know.” Jupe squinted at me knowingly.

“Know what?”

He gave me a superior look. “Oh, you know. ‘
That
time.’ ” He made air quotations with one hand. “Women get weird then. I’ve noticed a lot of girls crying at school on the same days. Kiya said it’s because when girls spend a lot of time around each other, they start to,
you know
, on the same schedule.”

“Well, right now I’m not, ‘you knowing,’ ” I air quoted him back. “But thanks for teaching me about my own body.”

“You’re welcome,” he said seriously. “See. I’m learning all kinds of things at school. Last year none of the girls were crying. But this year?
Whew
! Watch out, buddy.”

“Why does God hate me?” Lon murmured.

The SUV began its familiar ascent up the dark roads that led to Lon’s secluded cliff-top property. Soft moonlight filtered through pines and redwoods. I blew out a breath and relaxed in my seat as a mind-numbing exhaustion settled over me. I wasn’t going to think about my mom anymore. Tomorrow we’d track down this Noel Saint-Hill in Morella. Maybe I’d even just do the normal thing and file charges against him. Let the police handle it. Not try to fix things with magick for once.

Two roads led to Lon’s house: a zigzag deathtrap of a road that visitors used—and on which I’d once wrecked my car and been chased down by an Æthyric demon sent to kill me—and a hidden side road that only family used. Both roads led to locked gates that required either a key code or a remote to enter. But the side road gate’s auto-open feature had broken last week. You had to get out and open the gate manually, then shut it behind you once you drove inside; the guy who installed it was supposed to fix it soon.

Jupe had closed it when we left for the racetrack, but it was now open.

“Lon,” I said, sitting up straighter. My galloping pulse cleared the emotional fuzz from my brain. “The gate.”

“It’s fine.”

The only other people who used it were the housekeepers who lived on Lon’s property, Mr. and Mrs. Holiday. And they were more anal about security than Lon.

“I
know
I latched it,” Jupe protested. “You think a wild animal knocked it open? Maybe an Imp?” A circular magical ward kept the acre around Lon’s house safe from intruders and Imps: small transparent demons that have the ability to pop back and forth between the planes—the only known entity with a free pass to travel at will. They were like ghostly cockroaches, irritating but harmless.

But we’d just crossed over the house ward, so it couldn’t be Imps.

“Maybe it was Foxglove,” Jupe suggested.

“Dogs can’t open gates,” Lon said as he stopped the car. “Go shut it.”

“What if something’s out there?”

Hey, I didn’t blame the kid. These cliffs were heavily wooded, and Lon owned ten acres of property. The only other souls up here were the Holidays. It was peaceful, but kind of creepy at moments like this. “I’ll shut it,” I said, jumping out of the SUV.

I scoured the dark woods around me as I walked. It was quiet and serene. A biting wind whispered through the brush and scattered the scent of cypress and dead leaves. If I stopped to listen, I’d hear the surf crashing against the rocks half a mile down the cliff below. But I didn’t want to try, not when I felt this creeped out. I thought of the man hiding in the shadows of the racetrack parking lot and moved faster. The gate screeched as I swung it shut and latched the handle. I hurried back to the yellow-lit interior of the SUV and slowed when I heard Jupe make a joyous noise. Lon shushed him.

“Okay, okay,” Jupe protested.

I stopped in front of my open door. Both of them stared back at me, wide-eyed, like they’d been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. “What the hell is going on?” I asked.

“Get in,” Lon said.

“Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s nothing. Just get in.”

A horrible worry cramped my stomach, but I got inside and shut the door.

Lon shifted into gear and drove toward the house, a modern long-lined construction of stack stone and plate glass. Very Frank Lloyd Wright. Expensive but not showy. It sprawled on a section of cleared land that overlooked the Pacific, with stunning views. But right now it was the house itself that was worrying me. I could see movement inside the golden light outlining the oversized windows. I’d usually assume it was just the Holidays. They came and went freely, and their snug cabin-style house was only a short walk down another side road.

But when I spotted the strange white Mercedes parked behind Lon’s dusty pickup truck in the circular driveway in front of the house, I started to sweat.

“Whose car is that? Is that a rental? That’s a rental. Is that car from the airport?”

Lon pulled up behind it. “Now listen. I didn’t know. Mrs. Holiday just called me.”

Jupe squealed in delight. “Cady, you are going to love them!” He opened his door before the SUV came to a complete stop and leapt out, then ran up the path to the dark red front doors.

“What’s going on?” I was close to sobbing again. Could this night get any worse?

Jupe’s voice carried to the SUV as he flung the double doors open. “Gramma!”

“Oh, God,” I said. “Why are they early? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Rose didn’t warn me. She does this sometimes.”

Rose Giovanni, aka Gramma. Lon’s ex-wife’s mother. And she was with Yvonne’s sister, Adella. Lon’s in-laws. Jupe’s real family.
Send me back to the racetrack.
I could deal with a supernatural fight. I could
not
deal with interpersonal family relations. Not yet. I needed more time to prepare.

I stepped out of the car in a daze. Lon walked around to my side. “I didn’t know,” he insisted, forcing me to look at him. “Hey. Stop worrying.”

“But I’m the enemy,” I whispered. “I’m Yvonne’s replacement. I’m young. I’m a dirty stinking magician.”

He lifted my chin up. “You’ll win them over.”

“Ugh.”

“Give them time to get to know you. They’ll accept you.”

I grunted.

“If you need time to go upstairs and get cleaned up, I’ll go in first. Come down when you’re ready, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Just remember, Rose can hear through walls.”

Clairaudient. Worst knack ever. I feigned a small weeping noise.

Lon pulled me close. “We’ll figure out what’s going on with your Moonchild power. And we’ll hunt down the rat who robbed you tomorrow. Can’t do much tonight anyway.” He kissed me softly, first on the lips, then on the tip of my nose. “Mmm?”

I nodded, and we made our way to the front door.

Giddy talk and laughter rang though the house as we stepped inside the foyer. My gaze swept over the living room as Lon walked toward the commotion.

The Butler home was minimally decorated, lots of pale wood and long, low seating. White lights covered the branches of the World’s Biggest Christmas Tree. It was heavy with Jupe’s ornaments (some were made in elementary school, some were miniature plastic models of comic book characters he collected) and took up half a floor-to-ceiling window.

Sliding doors led to an expansive deck in back. I could see figures reflected in the glass there. And as Lon rounded the foyer hallway wall, I paused, scoping out the visitors before they saw me.

At first, all I saw were the twin white-bobbed heads of Mr. and Mrs. Holiday. They weren’t actually a Mr. and Mrs.—that was just what Jupe had called them since he was a kid, and the names stuck. In actuality, they were two women in their late sixties. They looked like Martha Stewart stand-ins. They treated Jupe as if he were their own grandchild, and I was pretty fond of them and their no-bullshit attitudes. Right now, they were laughing with the Giovannis as if they were all best of friends. Mrs. Holiday moved out of the way, and I caught my first glimpse of the in-laws.

Yvonne’s younger sister Adella was as I imagined: tall and willowy, with a dark mass of curls very similar to Jupe’s restrained by a wide purple scarf. Pretty in an understated way. She wore a sheath dress the color of wine, and a long string of mismatched metallic beads. Her complexion was darker than Yvonne’s, a deep cinnamon-warmed brown. Round cheeks shone under the living room lights as she laughed. Jupe was flexing his barely-there arm muscles for her. “Feel that!”

She pinched his upper arm. “Here? Or here? Tell me when you’re ready to flex.”

“I’m flexing!” He gave up and tackled her around the waist, trying to lift her off the ground. “Urgggh! Damn, Auntie. Have you gained weight?”

She reached across his back and slapped him playfully. “Let go of me, fool, and give me a proper kiss, or you’re not getting any of Gramma’s blackberry bars.”

His head shot up as he turned to look over his shoulder. “Youmadeblackberrybars?”