Ordinary Magic (23 page)

“Remember that next time you ask to get your ears pierced.” He kissed the top of my head and asked, “Do you want to talk
about it?” Because he knew. Of course he knew. Because there were a dozen people here who would have told him—the teachers, probably, or Dimitrios—or maybe he just knew the way dads know things sometimes.

I shook my head, because I didn’t, and managed, “He’s just
mean
.”

Dad sighed.

“Could you—” I leaned back to look at him. “Alexa’s going to hear about this, and she’s … she’s not really—”

“I know, I know. She’s nosy. I’ll talk to her.”

It took a little effort to convince Fred and Fran to sign up for the trip—well, none at all for Fred, actually, especially once he’d gotten official word from his dad’s secretary that Mr. Randalls regretted to inform him that it would be better if Fred stayed at school during the holidays, as the Randalls family would be traveling out of the country. “That probably means the Astrin Islands,” Fred told us. “We, they—there’s a vacation house there. My brother, Arthur, really likes it and we went—they
go
there every other Yuletide. We went last year. I guess they decided to switch things up. Have you ever been to the Astrin Islands?” he asked brightly, straightening.

Fran and I shook our heads.

“It’s nice. Pretty. Beaches and date trees everywhere. But Father”—he swallowed—“Mr. Randalls is right. It’s not a good place for an ord.”

Fran, however, needed a good twenty minutes of pleading and repeating that we really did want her to go, that we weren’t
just being nice, until Fred started shaking her by the shoulders, shouting “Peer pressure! Peer pressure! Give in!” and, laughing, she did.

We never did hear back from the Roses about whether or not Fran could visit, in spite of the fact that Alexa sent them permission forms twice and Mom called no less than four times. Luckily, no one mentioned that Mr. Rose’s signature didn’t exactly look right when we handed in the permission slips.

It took longer to arrange when we could go down, because while King Steve gave permission for us to leave, he insisted that we travel with proper security. Dad himself wasn’t considered enough protection for three ords. Jeremy offered to come up, since Thorten wasn’t that far away, but Alexa told him that he wasn’t considered any protection at all, and in the end we spent the first part of break up at the school, waiting for Alexa to get off work.

We got the first really good storm of the winter right before we left, which Becky and the older students greeted with outright applause. They’d watched the darkening skies for days, and exclamations of
it looks like rain
and
does it seem more humid to you
ricocheted along the halls. I thought Yuletide might be, like, a depressing time at school, but the students just got more and more cheerful. When the clouds finally opened up and the torrential downpour began, the cheering resulted in a couple of police officers showing up with noise complaints.

“It’s because of the red caps,” Becky explained when I asked why everyone was excited about the weather. “Rain washes the blood out of their caps. A bad enough storm could decimate a
conclave, so with the first really good rain, they head into hibernation. We won’t hear from them until spring. What will I do with myself? I’ll have nothing to worry about.”

“Other than Trixie,” I said.

“Yes,” Becky said, pressing her lips into a bitter line.

Flying into Lennox, I was surprised by how small it looked. I mean, it’s a nice size as far as towns go, and there always seemed to be people and stuff going on, but after Rothermere it looked so … empty. There was so much space, and barely any people. And that scared me. Everyone knows that home is supposed to look different the first time you come back from school. But I didn’t want that. I didn’t want it to change, I didn’t want anything to have changed—I just wanted it to be home.

When we pulled up in front of the house, though, it looked the same. Yellow stucco, red tile roof, and the wide shop windows on the first floor with block letters proclaiming:
REX’S TEXTILES
, “King of Handmade Carpets!” When we landed, the flowers in the back garden, which had been huddled against the rain, peeked over the fence to see who’d arrived. And then Mom burst out the front door, arms open, bearing down on us like a manticore, and yanked us up into crushing, cake-flour-scented hugs. Fred held out his hand for a proper handshake and let out this little squeak of surprise when Mom wrapped him up in her arms. Gil was at the kitchen table, still in his pj’s, though it was getting into the afternoon. He put his muse on hold long enough to help everybody get inside and get settled, and then
until Mom marched us down to the bakery to say hi to Olivia. Things were so swamped there that the hi turned into helping box up Yule logs and organizing orders for hot milk cakes. I caught myself glancing up every now and again, wondering if Cook Bella was going to appear.

Since it was just the two extra kids, we didn’t have to stretch any rooms. Fran bunked in with me and Olivia, and Fred was in with Gil and Jeremy, and casting up another bed, that’s easy. I found out later that Mom had invited over both the Randallses and the Roses—“they should know where their children are”—but of course the Randallses were traveling and the Roses’ ball must have been cracked or something. Mom set herself to coddling and catering to Fred and Frances from the moment they stepped into the house. On Twelfth Night, the stack of presents alone for each of them was intimidating, especially considering they’d only had a week to shop, but then, my family likes a challenge.

Mom had also invited Ms. Whittleby and Peter, and they’d politely declined, which I was totally okay with because if he didn’t want to be friends, then fine, we wouldn’t be friends. But Mom and Ms. Whittleby were friends, which meant they were talking; Ms. Whittleby had a neighbor who let her use their crystal ball. Afterward Mom would always tell me “Peter said this” or “Peter asked his mom to tell you this,” which was a lie because Peter never said anything. I knew his mom was probably doing the same thing to him, and I didn’t like the idea of unauthorized messages.

“This is ridiculous, Abby,” my mom finally burst out. “He’s
your friend. If you two have a problem, you should talk to him and deal with it.”

“This is a free country,” I told her. “King Steve says I don’t have to talk to anyone I don’t want to talk to.”

“Not in my house. Under this roof there is one rule and one rule only, and its name is Mom.”

“Sorry, Mom, but I’m with Abby on this one,” Olivia said, tossing me a grin. She was at the kitchen table, flipping through a fashion magazine. “Make him suffer, Abs. Boys like it.”

“They do?” I asked, even as Mom told me not to listen to her.

Olivia stretched back in her seat with a satisfied, “Oh my goodness, you don’t even know.”

“But Peter’s not suffering, he’s just being mean.”

Olivia pinched my cheek. “You are so totally cute, I can’t even deal.”

Mom sighed and shook her head. “I keep telling myself that one of these days you’ll find a nice husband and settle down.”

“Mom, please, she’s
twelve
. Give her some time,” Olivia protested. “At least let her graduate first.”

“I meant you.”

“Mother!” Olivia pretended to be shocked. “You know I don’t go for married guys.”

Mom pinched the bridge of her nose and started muttering to herself.

It was a remembered luxury to sleep in my own bed again, to take a shower in my bathroom and curl up in my corner of the couch, and to eat at the kitchen table with everyone. Though
my hands did feel a bit empty and strange when Mom poofed the dishes away after each meal. I finally asked her to cast up a sink and a sponge and some soap. It might be break, but I had to keep in practice.

Every day rain drummed against the roof and spattered on the windowpanes, but there’s something about Yuletide that makes it seem cozy, not confining. Maybe it’s because it falls so early in the winter. Spending all day inside, sometimes not even changing out of your pj’s or having pancakes for dinner, is still nice and new. There’s plenty of time to go stir-crazy later, when the wet’s dragging on and it seems like you’ll never have dry socks again.

Gil rallied Fred and me, the only ones willing to brave the rain, and we tromped outside in the woods and picked through the fallen branches to find the perfect Yule log—a real one, not the chocolate dessert with candy mushrooms. (Though one time Gil tried to trick us by swapping in a real log that he stuck candy mushrooms on, but he didn’t get very far because, seriously, wood tastes completely different from chocolate.) We came back, drenched and muddy but triumphant, to the wonderful buttery smell of baking cookies.

Then there was the party.

I didn’t lie to Fred when I told him we’d go down in history for this party. Normally, it’s crowded and loud and confusing. Normally, the cops stop by to see about the noise, but really it’s just an excuse so Olivia can flirt with them while stuffing cake in their mouths. Normally, the living room is so smushed full, Mom and Dad have to stop every hour to stretch it a little more.

But this year, for the first time in Hale history, there was space. The town stayed away. Even some of our family stayed away, which should have bothered me, except it didn’t. I guess getting kidnapped and almost forced into service makes some people not wanting to party pale in comparison.

But quiet and empty doesn’t necessarily mean boring. Mom put a cauldron of mulled wine on the fire, and spiced and stirred until the whole house was tipsy with the scent of it. We turned off the lights and clustered around the soft, safe glow of the fireplace, sipping from steaming mugs and opening our presents, one by one. We sat around the fireplace until late that night, in a tangle of torn wrapping paper, sometimes talking and sometimes not, but mostly just listening to the Yule log crackle.

The next morning, we left. Alexa got called back to work suddenly, and rather than try to arrange police escorts or minotaurs or whatever they decided was proper for our trip back, she figured it’d be simpler to bring us along with her. Mom and Dad weren’t happy, but they agreed to it. However, they both agreed they were coming along, too, so with Jeremy it made for a full carpet, at least until we got to Thorten.

It took the whole carpet ride, though, for Alexa to convince Mom and Dad that they didn’t need to stay in Rothermere while I was at school. That I would be fine, that I would be safe, that it would take an army to break into the school, and Trixie did not have an army and even if she did, magic wouldn’t work on ords. “Abby will be fine. You two have nothing to worry about,” she said.

“I’ll have nothing to worry about when that woman is
caught,” Mom complained, but in the end, they agreed to go back to Lennox.

“But Abby—” Mom pinned me with one of her looks. “You are going to call me every single day to let me know you’re okay. You got that, young lady? Every single day.”

“I’ll run out of things to talk about,” I said.

“I sincerely doubt that,” Mom said.

I plopped down in the chair, let my books slide onto the table, and smiled my thanks to Dimitrios before focusing on the crystal ball. “Hey, Mom. Before I forget, everybody says thanks for the lemon squares.” (There was a haphazard chorus of
thank you
s behind me.) “They were a big hit.”

“How long did they last?” Mom asked.

“I clocked it at just under fifteen minutes. Also, Fred wants me to tell you he likes blackberries.”

Mom smiled. “I’ll see what I can do. What did you learn in school today?”

I crossed my arms on the table and leaned forward until my nose was almost touching the ball. It felt like Mom was in the room with me. “We’re starting a new section in Lit. Mr. O’Hara calls it realism, which apparently is another word for boring.”

“I’d like to think it depends on the author.”

“All the authors we read are boring. All the stories we read are about people hating each other and being miserable. And
there aren’t even any carpet chases or magic fights or somebody turning somebody else into a toad. There are no dragons. How realistic can you be without any dragons?”