The Heart of the Phoenix (25 page)

“We heard you got in a fight,” Zoe said, speaking to no one in particular.

Trey jumped as if goosed, and spun around. “Oh, geez, uh... hi, Zoe.”

“Mr. Cole said I could see if you were okay,” Zoe said, ignoring Trey’s words entirely.

“Tell him I’m fine,” Flanna said, and had to look away from Zoe. Ignoring her guilt was getting harder than she would have thought.

Zoe turned and marched back the way she’d come without another word.

“Oh man, I am so sorry,” Trey said. “I didn’t think she’d get so mad.”

I did
, Flanna thought.

“It’s okay,” Flanna lied. “She wasn’t interested in you until you liked me. It’s her problem.”

It’s not okay
, the small, distant voice of conscience shouted deep in her head.
How could you do that to her
?

“Sinclair and Miller, get in here now.”

The principal waited until they were moving again and stepped back into his office with Rooster to wait for them.

* * *

“No!” Penny’s eyes snapped open, and she felt a momentary confusion at her surroundings. This happened every time she came out of her meditations, but the confusion cleared quickly. She found Ronan sitting cross-legged in front of her, and looked around until she found her father curled up and sleeping a short distance away.

“Are you alright?” Ronan seemed to be doing his own meditating. He regarded her with one open eye, which quickly slipped shut again as soon as he saw she was.

“She kissed him,” Penny blurted. She leapt to her feet and began pacing. “Right in front of Zoe! She’s going to hate me now!”

“Good,” Ronan said. “That’s good.”

Penny screamed.

Ronan’s eyes popped open and Torin jerked awake.

“Whoa... what?” Torin stumbled to his feet and raised his fists in front of his face. He blinked and spun in place, then lowered his fists when he realized they were alone. “Why did you do that?”

“Apparently Flanna kissed someone,” Ronan said, closing his eyes again. “And right in front of Zoe.”

“Zoe likes him,” Penny explained, as if to idiots. “And he kissed me while she was gone. I avoided him all summer, and Flanna must have known, because she kissed him right in front of Zoe.”

She had their attention now.

“Why would she do that?” Ronan had given up on his meditation and stood towering over Penny.

“Your friend Zoe lives with you,” Torin said. “She would notice something amiss with her.”

“If she didn’t live with you,“ Ronan said, “where would she go?”

“Her parents,” Penny said, seeing where this was going. “On the road, or maybe her other grandma in Idaho.”

Flanna was trying to drive Zoe away.

“But you made contact,” Ronan said, as if trying to locate a silver lining on this new cloud.

“No,” Penny said. “I got inside her head but she couldn’t hear me.”

“Maybe next time,” Torin said, settling back down to resume his nap.

“Maybe,” Penny said, but couldn’t help wondering how much damage Flanna would do to the Phoenix Girls before then.

* * *

Flanna waited in one of the overstuffed easy chairs scattered across the reading area of Taylor and Pi’s while Susan spoke on the phone with the school principal.

“I understand she was in a fight,” Susan almost growled into her phone. “What I don’t understand is why she is suspended.”

Susan paused, visibly shaking with anger while she waited. The explanation did not calm her.

“You have witnesses who say he attacked her, knocked her down, and then tried to punch her, and you’re suspending her for defending herself?”

She glanced over at Flanna, and the sharpest edge of her anger seemed to dull a little. She tried a sympathetic smile that looked like a grimace of pain, then turned her back.

Flanna had expected Susan Taylor to be hateful, unfair, and cruel, as befitting a Phoenix Girl, and would have found her job here in Dogwood easier if Susan had lived up to expectations. In reality, Susan was pleasant, kind, and apparently fiercely loyal, to Penny at least.

“So there’s nothing you can do, huh?” Susan made it clear what she thought of that by slamming her phone into its cradle.

Susan said nothing for a full minute, and Flanna was beginning to think she would be punished after all.

She’ll wish she hadn’t
, Flanna thought.
Father will punish
her.

“Did you have to give him a bloody nose?” Susan plopped down into a chair facing Flanna and fetched a deep sigh.

Flanna shrugged and held her silence. She also held Susan’s gaze, refused to look away.

Susan sighed again and dropped her face into her cupped hands. When she spoke again her voice was muffled.

“Well, I’m not going to punish you for defending yourself.” She looked up, and Flanna saw she was smiling. “I’ve wanted to do the same thing to his father for years.”

According to my father, he feels the same way about you
, Flanna thought.

Flanna returned Susan’s smile, but it died quickly. She would soon be working with that boy’s father against Susan. She liked that arrangement less and less.

“I’m sorry I caused trouble.” Flanna
was
sorry to have caused Susan trouble, but pleased with the other consequences.

“You’re suspended until next Wednesday. You can spend it with me at the shop if you want, or at home.” Susan looked up at the sound of the bell ringing over the front door.

Taylor and Pi’s was still a few days away from its grand opening, but interested town people and friends of both Susan and Erasmus dropped in from time to time. This time it was Erasmus, wandering in from his friend Bowen’s shop, Golden Arts.

“Good morning, ladies,” Erasmus said.

They both waved.

“Zoe can bring your school work home so you don’t fall behind,” Susan said, rising to go back to work. “You better head home for the rest of the day.”

Flanna rode away from Taylor and Pi’s, and a block from the edge of town had to swerve onto the sidewalk to get out of the way of an approaching car. Rooster glared at her from the backseat.

* * *

Penny spent the rest of that day oscillating between white-hot rage and lethargic despair, convinced in both states that her unwanted sister had ruined the most important friendship in her life. She paced or lay down curled up on the floor. She growled and cursed her absent sister until Torin shot her a sad and unhappy glance, then wrapped herself in a sullen silence and cried as silently as she could. She didn’t attempt more meditation that day, and Ronan didn’t press her on the subject, only left her alone to brood. When the light began to fade around them and the shadows merged together into a solid darkness, she curled up in her sleeping spot and closed her eyes without a word to her cellmates.

She decided she was finished with the day. She could begin again with the dawn, and she drifted off determined that she would break through the final effervescent barrier shielding Flanna’s conscious and give her sister a hard mental slap.

So it was no surprise when she found herself in Aurora Hollow facing her sister. The surprise was the lucidity of the dream, the texture of the duff and dirt beneath her bare feet, the scent of living green, the sound of the creek and the rustling of the willows around her.

Flanna seemed engrossed in a large flat object on her lap, a familiar oval mirror. She didn’t notice her company until Penny called to her.

“What are you looking at?” The desire to slap her sister silly vanished when Flanna looked up. Her eyes were red with tears, and she looked confused, not all there.

However lucid this dream was to Penny, it was just a regular dream to Flanna, one she may or may not remember upon awakening.

“My mom,” Flanna said, and pried a photo of their mother off the surface of the glass. “She died, and I never knew her.”

“I know,” Penny said. “She was my mom too.”

Flanna narrowed her eyes at Penny, doubt clear in her expression.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Penny,” Penny said. “Your sister.”

“No you aren’t. Penny looks just like me. You’re some kind of nightmare aren’t you?”

Penny realized she was still wearing her mask, even in the dream.

“King Tynan did this to me,” Penny said.

“He never would,” Flanna said. She jumped to her feet and the mirror slid off her lap. It hit the ground, but didn’t break. Forgotten, it simply disappeared. “He’s my father and he would never do such a thing.”

“He’s not our father,” Penny said. “He’s our uncle.”

Flanna froze in place, still as stone, and for a second Penny thought she would attack, or simply awaken and leave Penny alone in the dream.

“You’re lying!” Flanna lunged forward and gave Penny the slap Penny had planned to give her. The leather mask blunted the blow, but it still rocked her back a step.

The scene around them wafted away like smoke and they were standing in their mother’s tomb. Penny saw the cairn, the skull she had uncovered on her last visit, the spill of auburn hair.

Flanna forgot her anger with Penny, pushed past her and dropped to her knees next to the cairn, as Penny had on her last visit.

“Flanna!” Penny shouted, reached down for her sister’s shoulder, but her hand passed through it.

She was fading now, she could feel it, could see it. The ground felt less solid beneath her feet, the stone around her grew slightly fuzzy.

“Flanna!” Penny shouted again, and this time Flanna turned to regard her, confusion on her face.

“What do you want?”

“There’s a picture of our mom and dad in the album under the bed. You have to look at it.” There was something she was forgetting. She grasped for it, and floundered.

She awoke to almost perfect darkness. Only a faint light fell down through the bars of the ceiling gate, and the warbling whisper of Ronan’s snoring.

“I was supposed to tell her about the crystal,” Penny said. “And I was supposed to slap her.”

Ronan’s snores stopped for a moment.

Penny held her breath until they started up again, and then lay back down to try to sleep.

* * *

Flanna awoke with tears on her cheeks, remembering only vaguely how they got there. She dreamed of her mother, watching her alive, moving and laughing in the Conjuring Glass, then kneeling over her remains beneath a thin cairn of stone underground.

There was someone else too, but she couldn’t remember who it was. Someone scary.

She wiped her eyes and sat up, started to slip out of bed, thinking some alone time in the hollow would be nice. She liked the place, she found to her surprise. She also liked the moon. She thought the sky would be clear tonight, she would have a good view.

She found Zoe watching her.

“What?” Flanna didn’t try to hide her irritation with Zoe. She’d been sure the girl would be gone by now. She’d come home from school, asked if Flanna was okay, and then ignored her for the rest of the night. Flanna had expected Zoe to collect her stuff and then step through a magic door to chase down her parents.

“Nothing,” Zoe said, then rolled over onto her other side.

Flanna waited until she could hear the sound of Zoe’s snores from the other bed, then pulled her wand from the night stand, slipped her shoes on, and tip-toed to the wardrobe. She touched Penny’s wand to the door and opened it to find Aurora Hollow waiting for her.

The nights were getting cooler, but Penny’s pajamas were sufficient to keep the chills away. She didn’t want a fire this night. She wanted to see the enchanting cream glow of this world’s strange nighttime companion. She was staring upward at it when the fluttering of paper wings distracted her.

A small white bird dropped down through a gap in the limbs and hovered in front of her. She held out a hand, and it landed, unfolding as it settled on her palm.

A note from her father, and sitting atop the unfolding paper was a small wooden box and a small gold coin with the sigil of the House of Fuilrix on one side, and a profile of the Fuilrix patriarch on the other.

Flanna read the letter twice, then folded it and put it in her pocket with the coin.

Her father was on his way, and it was time to contact that boy’s father. It was time for Ernest Price to do his part, small as it was.

Tomorrow.

Flanna took a seat next to the cold fire pit and stared back up at the sky until the moon had moved out of her line of sight.

* * *

Penny dreamed she was watching the moon, and awoke the next morning expecting to feel the soft ground of the hollow beneath her. It was the same cold stone as the morning before. She sighed, decided to go back to sleep, then sat up instead.

It was still mostly dark, early dusk she thought from the low light, and her cellmates were still sleeping.

She had work to do and wanted to take advantage of the quiet while it lasted. She settled into a comfortable position, her legs folded beneath her, hands folded in her lap. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, in through her nose, out through her mouth.

After a few minutes she felt her consciousness wandering far, then settling somewhere near the back of her twin sister’s mind.

* * *

“Are you and Zoe fighting?” Susan had waited until Zoe was out the door and on her way to school before broaching the question.

Flanna shrugged, then nodded.

“You’ll make up,” she said, confidently. “You’ve been apart for a few months. You just have to get used to each other again. “

Flanna doubted it, but kept silent.

“I’m off to work.” Susan grabbed her purse and keys off the table. “You sure you don’t want to spend the day at the shop.”

“No thanks, I’ll just stay home today.” A lie. “I’ll study.”

She waited until the dust settled behind Susan’s departing van before going back upstairs and dressing for her trip, and was walking through the blackened and burned field between Susan and Price’s houses ten minutes later.

She remembered the fire that had decimated the field the previous spring, both from her father and from Penny’s memories of it. The events of that night had been the final straw for her father, who had only wanted to ensure the security of their world against the savages of this one. For years her father had tried to gain ownership of Aurora Hollow and the land surrounding it through his agents in this world, a man named Gentry, his son, and their agent in Dogwood, Ernest Price. The miraculous return of her sister, Penny, had prompted more extreme measures, and her father had sent his familiar, Turoc, to help Grant.