Glimmers of Scales

by Emma Savant

  The vibration startled me. My phone hadn’t gone off much since Imogen and I had stopped speaking. That should have been enough of a clue, but I still felt a flush of surprise and anger when I saw her name on the screen.

  Imogen: I’m really not in a good place right now. There’s some stuff going on in my life and I know you’re mad at me but I need you. Can we talk? Please?

  I ignored it. The time for talking was before she’d gone behind my back. And the time for asking for moral support with Maia’s stupid wedding, or whatever she was freaking out over now, was definitely not right after she’d made out with Lucas and then acted like it was my fault.

  I’d never thought I’d let some guy get between us. More to the point, I’d never thought I’d care enough about a guy to let this become an issue. Imogen got the boys. That was just how it was.

  But this time was different. If the Oracle was right—and the Oracle was always right—Imogen had taken Lucas from under my nose, before he’d even had the chance to choose for himself. He’d been interested in me. I’d felt that, and I’d never done anything about it because he’d had a girlfriend and I’d tried to not be a sucky person.

  We could have turned into something. But Imogen couldn’t let me have even one victory if it meant she might lose out.

  I’d spent our entire friendship handing her the spotlight, consoling her through her dramas and listening to her talk about her dozens of boyfriends. And now, the one time in our entire friendship I’d actually had a shot at some excitement of my own, she’d swooped in and snatched the possibility away from me.

  Imogen Dann did not deserve a response.

  The front door opened and then slammed, and I felt my stomach sink a little.

  Dad was home.

  Imogen’s dad was yet another thing about her life I envied. He was a sweetheart, full of bad jokes and boundless affection for all seven of his daughters. And he was just one more thing Imogen took for granted.

  She had no idea how good she had it. Maybe that was what made it so impossible for her to think about other people.

  “Dinner is at six,” I heard Mom say.

  He didn’t reply, probably put off by the way her voice sounded like it was about to snap like a rubber band. I heard his footsteps go up the stairs. His bedroom door closed. Mom came into the kitchen and I busied myself with pulling spinach out of the fridge.

  She sat down on the other side of the marble island with her elbows on the slick surface and watched me. After a few minutes, she ran her hands through her hair and then propped her chin on her fists with a sigh.

  “I’m going on a quest,” she announced.

  I looked up from the bag of spinach and stared at her. She was waiting for my reaction, so I decided to hold off on giving one.

  “No kidding,” I said.

  “I’m leaving this Saturday,” she said. “The timing isn’t great, but the timing is never going to be great, is it?”

  I blinked. “I guess not,” I said.

  I scraped the garlic and onions into a pan to brown and turned back to her, my elbows on the counter across from hers.

  “Um, why? What kind of quest?”

  “I don’t know yet,” she said.

  She twisted her favorite ring, an antique gold one with a piece of quartz carved to look like a rose. A faint warmth always seemed to radiate from it, and no wonder. The thing was loaded with more charms than should be allowed on one piece of jewelry.

  “I’ve signed up with an agency that matches faeries to Glimmering royalty around the world,” she said. “There’s a good chance I’ll be down in Argentina.”

  “Why?” I repeated.

  She knocked her knuckles together with her hands curled into loose, restless fists. A strand of dark hair had escaped from her ponytail, and it brushed against her cheek.

  “I need to work on my gifts,” she said. “I’ve spent a long time being your father’s arm candy and he doesn’t seem to appreciate it, so I’m going to go spend some time on me.”

  I couldn’t fault her line of thinking. This announcement was the very definition of left field, but now that she’d said it, I couldn’t even pretend to be surprised.

  It wasn’t like she hadn’t been dropping hints for months. She’d been full of offhand remarks about moving across the country, or renovating an old Glim mansion hidden up in northern Washington, or starting an after-school enrichment program for Glimmering kids. It was like she’d been trying on ideas in a desperate race to make one of them fit. Some kind of midlife crisis had been brewing, and I was strangely relieved to find out that all she’d ended up doing was getting a job.

  “So, divination skills or what?” I said.

  She was good at divination. She hadn’t really practiced in years, but once in a while she’d see a vision in the steam from the kettle, and her knack for predicting the weather made the local newscast look like an embarrassment.

  “Yes, actually,” she said. She tilted her head like she was surprised.

  It struck me that I never acted like I paid much attention to her. The truth was, I didn’t. She was my mom. It rarely occurred to me to remember she was a person, too.

  “Good for you,” I said, and I meant it. “How long will you be gone?”

  “Just a week,” she said. “It sounds like I might get placed on a minor job. A queen down there is on bed rest with her second pregnancy and needs someone to find her grandmother’s enchanted dagger. It’s hidden in the wetlands. Sort of tedious but it won’t take long, and it’s a good chance to get my feet wet.”

  “Literally,” I said.

  Dad’s footsteps sounded in the hallway. Mom fell silent. I went back to sautéing onions.

  Dad was a nightmare at dinner. Mom must have told him about Daniel, because we’d barely sat down before he turned to him and said sharply, “The Portland Institute’s faerie-craft course starts Saturday and I expect you to be there.”

  It wasn’t a question or an invitation. Daniel was going to go in for the magical equivalent of ACT prep whether he liked it or not. My grades and work at Wishes Fulfilled had been enough to convince Dad that I’d make it into his beloved Imperial College of Faeries without extra help, but Daniel had nothing going for him in the school or work departments.

  “I’m not going to a prep course,” Daniel said flatly.

  Dad’s jaw twitched. He had the granite jawline of a model and spent most of his time clenching it.

  “I don’t believe that decision is up to you,” he said.

  “Well, I don’t believe I’m going to be there,” Daniel said. “And I don’t believe you’re going to skip work just to make sure I show.”

  He picked up a piece of drippy dark spinach, then let it drop back onto his plate with a plop.

  “What else are you going to do with your time?” Dad said. “Dress up and spout poetry for a living?”

  The silence was tangible enough that I expected it to shatter if anyone made a noise. Finally, Daniel let out a shallow breath. He glared at me across the table, but I widened my eyes and shook my head.

  “Olivia didn’t tell me,” Dad said, though the disgust in his voice made it clear it would have been better for me if I had. “Sometimes I think you both forget that I’m on the Council. I have eyes everywhere. I know what goes on in this city.”

  “Reginald,” Mom said, in a soft warning voice.

  “And you haven’t done a damn thing about it,” he said without looking at her. “Our son is making a fool of himself all around the city and you haven’t even noticed.”

  “Give me a little credit,” Mom said. I was surprised at the acidity in her tone. She hadn’t been that terse with him in a while, though maybe that was because they hadn’t been speaking. “Daniel wants to be a writer. I think that’s a fine profession.”

  Dad barked a laugh. It was an ugly sound with no humor in it.

  “A profession?” he said. “Living on welfare while he writes poetry in our basement for the rest of hi
s life?”

  “I guess you’d rather I sell my soul and become some shitty Glim corporate sellout,” Daniel said.

  Dinner lay forgotten on the table.

  Dad leaned forward, anger crackling around him like a warning. “You watch your mouth,” he said.

  “Everyone knows the Council’s just there to look busy while the queen tries to solve all your problems,” Daniel said. “Haven’t caught the guy baiting the Hums yet, have you? I thought you had eyes everywhere.”

  Dad gripped the table. His knuckles turned white with the pressure.

  “That Council has given you every goddamned opportunity you’ve ever had,” Dad said. “All of which you’ve wasted.”

  I was looking around for an exit when Mom decided to just lob a grenade into the conversation and let it all go to hell.

  “And Olivia’s not attending the Imperial College,” she said. “She’s going to Oregon State University to study biology.”

  My phone buzzed.

  I felt everyone’s attention on me. My dad stared like he was trying to shoot laser beams out his eyes and burn a hole through my forehead. I wasn’t entirely sure he couldn’t do it.

  “I need to take this,” I said, gripping the phone in my hand so hard I could feel my heartbeat in my palm. “Might be work.”

  I bolted from the room before they could stop me.

  I ran from the house and into the sultry evening air, my heart pounding. I was halfway around the block before I even looked at the phone. It was a text.

  Lucas: Sorry to pry… What’s going on with you and Imogen?

  My stomach curdled into lumpy knots. Why couldn’t it have been a stupid promo text from the world fusion pizza place a few blocks over letting me know about their weekly special? Or even Lorinda letting me know she’d decided to drop another hot mess of a case in my lap? Why did it have to be Lucas, and why did he have to mention her?

  After typing and erasing the message four times, I finally sent back, She’ll tell you if she wants you to know.

  It was only a few moments before my phone buzzed again. I ignored it for a while in favor of staring at a calico cat sitting on the rock wall surrounding someone’s front-yard-turned-vegetable-garden. The cat was always somewhere in the neighborhood. I had no idea whom it had originally belonged to. It blinked at me with lazy eyes and then sat down and started grooming itself with its back paw flexed high into the air like a ballerina’s.

  Finally, when I couldn’t stand it a second longer, I turned the screen back on.

  Lucas: She won’t tell me, but she misses you and she’s stressed about her sister’s wedding. Anything I can do to help?

  I was too tired to even laugh.

  Olivia: Too late. Imogen knows what she did. She was way out of line. I have too much respect for myself to be friends with someone who treats me like that.

  I had too much respect for myself, even if I wanted nothing more than to grab her away from whatever she was doing right now and have a panic attack over my parents and my client and even Lucas.

  I’d been too distracted to realize the wedding was coming up. It would be here in a couple of weekends, and I’d promised her I’d be there.

  But all bets were off. If we weren’t going to be friends, I wasn’t going to feel obligated to sit through another minute of her angst about her dress or her hair or her sister’s seventy-third consecutive emotional breakdown.

  Especially not when I couldn’t trust that she was telling me the truth about any of it.

  Especially not when I was about to have a breakdown of my own.

  Before I could think it through, I pulled my phone up again.

  Olivia: She knew I liked you. Friends don’t stab each other in the back over guys.

  I pressed Send. Immediately, I wished I could take it back. I was so stupid. And I was too crappy of a faerie to know any spells that could stop a text in midair.

  I shoved the phone back in my pocket and kept walking, trying to ignore the possibility of it buzzing again and unable to think about anything else. But Lucas didn’t reply.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Did you do anything fun this weekend?” I said.

  Madison, whom I had spoken to maybe twice so far this year, squeezed lotion on her hands. She massaged it in, sliding the ginger-scented goop in between her fingers and into her cuticles. She held out the bottle to me, but I shook my head.

  “It was okay,” she said. “I took my little sister to see a movie.”

  “How fun,” I said. “Which movie?”

  I forced myself to pay attention while Madison told me about the latest animated feature starring a bunch of talking animals. I looked at her to be polite, then realized she was looking intently at me while she spoke. So I kept looking intently at her. Every blink felt like a huge, meaningful gesture. Her eyes bored into mine.

  I had forgotten how eye contact worked.

  Making conversation with anyone who wasn’t Imogen was impossible. Elle was great, but she was busy with Pumpkin Spice and Kyle. And I didn’t have a lot of other friends.

  All friendships are awkward at the beginning, I told myself.

  But that wasn’t true. Imogen and I had clicked in half a second.

  Forcing friendships made them awkward at the beginning. But what else was I supposed to do? Sit around and wait for another Imogen to walk into my life? Or another Lucas?

  I kept staring at Madison and listening to her talk about some celebrity who did the voice of a llama and got it “totally right, it was hysterical.”

  I wondered whether Lily even knew llamas existed. There was so much I had to teach her about the Humdrum world before she transformed in a week. She wouldn’t know about Hum money, or transportation, or social norms, or anything else that would let her survive here.

  And she didn’t have to just survive. She had to pass as a normal-enough Hum that Evan could fall in love with her.

  Not that I wanted Evan to fall in love with her.

  When I was honest with myself, I wanted Evan to stick with his fiancée and for my twitterpated client to go back to the sea where she belonged. But the Oracle had ruled that one out, so it wasn’t going to be that easy. Things never were.

  I’d succeeded in Elle’s case because I’d done the right thing. But this time? I didn’t even know what the right thing was. Maybe it was Lily’s destiny to break up Evan’s relationship and become his wife. Maybe Evan and the fiancée, Isabelle, would have been miserable together. It was impossible to know without meeting them.

  It was impossible to know even if I did meet them.

  This whole case was nothing but shots in the dark, augmented by King Pacifica sending Lorinda angry messages every few days.

  Madison was staring at me, waiting for an answer to a question I’d missed.

  “What was that?” I said. “Sorry, I got distracted by Mr. Henricks coming in.”

  Our teacher had just entered the room, though he didn’t seem ready to start class. He was one of only two Glim teachers in the entire school. Beyond my glasses, I saw the dark bronze swirls of sorcery around him.

  “I said, have you been to the new dine-in theater downtown?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “I hadn’t even heard of it. What is it?”

  “It’s a movie theater, but they have a bunch of tables and you can actually order dinner before the movie starts and they’ll bring it to you while the movie’s playing. Their Mediterranean pizza is to die for. We had a girls’ night out there the other day and it was so amazing.”

  “That’s awesome,” I said. “I’ll have to check it out.”

  And then, finally, Mr. Henricks was trying to get our attention and I was able to escape. Small talk was the actual worst, even when I was the one initiating it.

  I hated Imogen, but in the privacy of my own head, I had to admit that school had gone by faster when she was around.

  I halfway listened as Mr. Henricks talked on and on about The Grapes of Wrath, which we�
�d read over the summer. It had been a good book, but I wasn’t in the mood to focus. Instead, I doodled in the corner of my notebook, tracing pictures of maple leaves and dahlias that looked like chubby fireworks.

  I didn’t even notice when the bell rang until people started to stand up around me and the sound of books and papers being shuffled around filled the air. Startled, I looked up, trying to act like I had been paying attention. But it didn’t matter—Mr. Henricks would never call me on it. He was one of those Glims who stood in awe of my dad and the rest of the Council. As far as he was concerned, I was a stellar student.

  A cluster of girls stopped in the aisle to talk, blocking my way out. It wasn’t worth trying to get past them, so I sank back into my seat and kept doodling.

  The other Glim teacher, Ms. Darlington, came into the room against the trickle of students. She was tall, with a large beaked nose. I’d had her for government last year and had a vague idea that she coached softball.

  “Can you still do lunch?” she asked Mr. Henricks. “Sophie’s coming but Bart got held up.”

  “Yeah, I’m coming,” he said. “I’m glad I caught you alone, though. Have something interesting to tell you.”

  “Yeah?”

  He glanced up at the students like he was worried one of them might overhear. But the cluster of girls ignored them as one of them started squealing about someone’s concert tickets.

  I tugged on my ear, and the noise in the room turned to a roar. I focused hard on the group in the aisle and tugged again. Their chatter slowly faded until I could hear Mr. Henricks’ low voice clearly.

  “The lights that have been going out at the park by my house?” he said. “They did it again last night.”

  She rolled her eyes, like she’d been expecting something interesting.

  He glanced up at the students and wiggled his fingers. I glanced over my glasses and saw a shimmering gray shield go up, a common glamour that would filter their words to sound like boring conversation about the weather to any nearby Humdrums.

  “Bart’s still convinced it’s an electrical failure but I guarantee there’s something living there,” Mr. Henricks said. “There were traces of enchantments all over the place in the morning.”