by Tegan Maher
Rather than Clara, though, Mrs. Kelly, an older lady who cleaned houses for a living, stepped onto the porch. “If you’re lookin’ for Ms. Clara, I’m afraid you’re outta luck. She said she had to go outta town for the night.”
I glanced at Hunter, then back at Mrs. Kelly. “Did she say where she was going?”
She shook her head, and the graying blonde bun on her head wobbled a little. “Nope, and I didn’t ask. That woman’s pricklier than a pin cushion. I was just glad when she told me to go ahead and go home after I was done. She usually makes me wait so she can approve it before she pays me. This time, she left the money on the counter. Most pleasant experience I’ve had since I started workin’ for her.”
I sighed. “Thanks, Mrs. Kelly. You have a good evening.”
“You, too.” She shuffled off toward an older-model Subaru in a way that made me think her back and her feet were both hurting. I sent a push of healing magic her way and smiled when she straightened and stopped limping. Sometimes it was extra nice being a witch.
“Now what?” I asked Hunter, and he shrugged.
“Now, nothing, I guess. Clara was the last person on the list I wanted to talk to other than Rory. He knew Curtis, so maybe he’ll know about any falling-outs Curtis has had with the business.”
“As much as I love Levana and Rory, I think I’m gonna sit that out. I just wanna go home and relax for a little bit. Maybe catch some time in the pool.” I was tired of running around and needed some time to decompress.
“Okay, then,” he replied, his brown eyes soft. Thank you for all your help today. I’ll go do that, then meet you at the farm. I guess we’re gonna have to wait to talk to Clara until tomorrow.”
I gave him a kiss, then jumped in my truck, grateful to finally point her toward home.
16
It felt like the day had lasted for at least forty-eight hours, so rather than cooking, I called a pizza into Duck's. Just the thought of the cheesy goodness made my mouth water, and I threw in a couple tiramisus just for fun. I figured after the day we’d had, we’d earned a treat. When I pulled in, the parking lot was blessedly empty, which hopefully meant a quick in and out. All I wanted to do was go home, kick off my flip-flops, and have a beer. Since we couldn't do anything until the next day, I wasn't going to sweat it, and I hoped Hunter would be able to relax, too.
“Hey, Noe! Long time, no see!” Duck, the gangly country-boy owner, stood at the chipped Formica counter, a paper bag and four large pizza boxes stacked by the register. “I have you all ready.”
I tilted my head. “Hey. Duck! If that's me, there's three pizzas too many there. I only ordered one.”
He grinned. “You did, but Shelby called in right after you did and ordered the other three. I told her you'd already ordered one, but she said that wouldn’t be nearly enough. I figured you knew. I also figured since you ordered tiramisu for you and Hunter, I better just through in a whole one. I know how Shelby and Cody love it. No extra charge but tell those kids to pop in and say hi.”
Excitement rushed through me. I hadn't seen my little sister in almost a month, and I'd missed her. If she ordered two extra pizzas, she must have Cody and Emma with her, too. Camille would be on cloud nine.
With a fresh spring in my step, I paid Duck and threw in a few extra bucks for the tiramisu upgrade. “Thanks, Duck. I’m sure you'll see them before they leave. They’re in for the week for the wedding, and you know how they eat.”
I almost skipped to my car and flew back home. When I got there, Shelby's Bug was parked in front of the house, and she, Cody, Emma, and a girl I didn’t recognize were at the wash rack by the barn. Not only did they have Shelby's horse, they also had my horse Missy and two others. From the saddle-shaped sweat spots on the horses’ backs, it looked like they’d just gotten back from a ride. I shoved aside a twinge of jealousy. It wasn’t like we couldn’t go again at some point during her visit. Besides, with as little as I’d been riding, the horses had needed the exercise.
The truck was barely stopped before I jumped out and ran over to them, a huge grin plastered on my face.
"I didn't think you were coming until tomorrow evening," I exclaimed.
She raised a brow at me as she used the squeegee to shed the excess water from her horse. "Well, you know, if you want me to go back and come back then that's not a problem."
"Shut up, and come here," I said flinging my arms open.
She did and gave me a big squeeze. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed her until she was there in front of me again. I pushed her back to arm's-length and gave her a once over. I was happy to see that she wasn't covered in bruises like she was half the time I saw her.
She’d been chosen—or drafted, depending on how you looked at it—by an exclusive academy for people who'd been marked by an angel, and her job was literally to save the world. She was often dealing with shady people with massive magic and a will to do evil. I worried about her on a near constant basis, but I also knew she had a buttload of magic and was more than capable of taking care of herself. The Academy had trained her well and continued to do so. Still, that didn't stop me from worrying about her. She was, after all, my little sister.
"You look fabulous," I said. I turned to check out Emma and Cody and gave them each hugs, then smiled at the stranger standing a little bit back and looking like she wasn't quite comfortable.
I took a couple steps toward her. "Hey, I'm Noelle, Shelby’s sister. You must be Devon. She's told me a lot about you, and I'm glad you have her back."
The dark-haired girl, who was about Shelby's age or a little older, gave me a tentative smile. "She has my back just as much as I have hers, so I guess we’re even on that front. I've heard a lot about you, too, and it's nice to finally meet you."
Shelby hadn't told me much about Devon other than that she had some unique gifts. In our world, that could mean anything from she could make herself invisible to she could blow up small planets with the flick of a finger. It wasn't good etiquette to ask though, so I kept my musings to myself despite my curiosity.
I motioned toward the house with my hand. “As soon as y'all are done taking care of the horses, we can eat. I picked up our pizzas, and Duck threw in a pan of tiramisu to boot. He said the only payment he expected was for you guys to stop in and see him before you went back."
Shelby unhooked her horse from the wash rack and took her by the halter. “We’re all done. We just have to put them away. It's too early to bring the rest in yet, or I would've done that too. The feed’s in the buckets, and I threw a flake of hay into each, so all we have to do is bring them in. I did clean the stalls though."
Cody coughed and nudged her with his shoulder. "Excuse me? Who cleaned the stalls?"
Shelby turned to him and rolled her eyes. "I cleaned two of them and saddled your horse while you did the rest."
He grinned. "Okay, you've got me there. I suppose that's a fair trade-off.” He unclipped Ben, the old horse I’d learned to rope on, from the wash rack and turn toward the barn. "I'm starving, so let's get these guys put away and get to the house. We haven't eaten since this morning."
Shelby’s stomach rumbled in response, and she gave me a sheepish smile. "I guess that probably goes for all of us. That's why we ordered two large pizzas, and I was glad when Duck told me that you'd ordered one. I don't particularly want to clean up and get dressed and go anywhere.”
I walked along beside them to the barn. "Emma, does your mom know you're in yet?"
She nodded. "Yeah, I texted her as soon as we got here. She has to work for another half hour or so, but she’ll be here as soon as she's finished."
That made me happy. I knew Camille missed Emma as much as I missed Shelby, and she didn't get to see her as often, either.
"Then it's a good thing I ordered extra pizza."
"Yeah," Shelby said. "I also called Rae and let her know I was home, too, so she and Dave are coming over."
Nice," I said, cutting her a look. "You let her know, b
ut you didn't bother to tell me?" I nudged her with my elbow to let her know I was kidding. Sort of.
She nudged me back. "I wanted to surprise you. I haven't been home in a while, and I was hoping to have all the chores done before you got back. I know it's been a lot for you with me gone."
I shook my head. “Don't worry yourself about that. I've had Kristin here, and Gabi helps, plus Hunter's living here now, so between all of us, nobody has to put that much into it."
"It’s nice to know I'm not needed around here." She said it like she was kidding, but I couldn't help but notice just a little trace of hurt her voice. I rushed to soothe her. "Shoot, I miss you like crazy. There's nobody leavin’ dirty clothes scattered all over the house, and I don't have anybody to be cranky with in the mornings. All these insane people livin’ around here are morning people, and it's a wonder I haven't killed one of them."
Like me, Shelby was not a morning person. The entire time we lived together, we had an unspoken agreement that nobody said anything aside from ‘morning’ before the first cup of coffee was at least halfway gone. I really did miss those times with her, even though we’d mostly sat in silence playing on our phones. It had been one of my favorite times of day with her, and there was nobody who could ever replace her.
Shelby scoffed. "You mean you don't have anybody to grouch at without feeling guilty."
"Yeah,” I said, grinning. “That. It feels kind of mean of me to be crabby at people who are so happy. With you, we know and understand each other. You snipe, I snipe, and everything is all good."
"So, you're both like that?" Devon shot Shelby a smile. I could tell she'd discovered the hard way not to get in Shelby's way until she was caffeinated.
"Yep," I said. "But to be fair, we get it honestly. Our Aunt Addy was a bear in the mornings."
Shelby scoffed as she put her horse in the stall and latched the door behind him. "What do you mean, she used to be? As far as I can tell, she’s still crabby in the mornings. I wonder if they have ghost coffee somewhere that makes her more tolerable as the day wears on."
Devon put Ben in his stall, and with a final pat on his neck, shut the door and latched it. "She is a character, that one. I haven't noticed that she's different much in the mornings than she is in the evenings, though. She always loves me, but boy she and Shelby go some rounds."
I knew Addy checked in on her regularly even though nobody was supposed to be able to get into the academy, dead or alive. Somehow Addy, being the force of nature she is, found a way around it and could blink right in. I hoped for their sake that they’d closed the ghostly loophole and just made an exception for her rather than thinking that ghosts couldn't be much of a threat.
It made me feel better that at least one of us was able to poke and hover whenever we wanted to. Sometimes I got a bad gut feeling, and a couple of times it had worried me to the point that I was about to teleport there myself. The worst part was that I didn't even know where the academy was at, let alone how to get in by myself. They had it secretly hidden so it could only be accessed from certain points, and one of them was the closet in Shelby’s dorm room. That's the only entrance that I knew about because I’d used it once, but that had been a fluke. It didn’t make sense that they didn’t have more portals than that.
She wasn't able to tell me a whole lot about things, and she could never get specific, but she could give me the general lowdown on what was going on. Still, I had the feeling there was a lot that she didn't tell me, and it made me sad that she was having to deal with that at such a young age. It also made me feel a little helpless that I couldn't help her with it.
Rather than say any of that, I went with something light. "You didn't think you were going to get away from her just by moving away to college, did you?"
Shelby shook her head. "Oh noooo, I didn't think that at all. I knew the minute I pulled out that she’d probably beat me there and already have my dorm room set up for me by the time I got there."
Devon tilted her head. "How would she have done that? She's a ghost. She can't physically move anything, can she?"
Shelby cocked her brow at her, and her voice went a little higher than normal. "Have you met her? That woman's a freak of nature, living or dead. She would've found some way to have a whole crew of people carrying furniture up the steps for me."
Amusement crossed Devon's features. "Yeah, I guess that was a pretty silly thing to say. And I guess it's lucky for us that she didn't. Twenty minutes before you got there, I had half the people from the academy in the apartment telling me about you. It would've looked awfully funny if she'd have popped in and found them all there."
Shelby laughed. "Well, the only saving grace was that I didn't have any furniture to move. Everything I owned was in the back of my car, so there wasn't much she could do."
"Wait," I said to Devon. "You knew Shelby was going to be in the academy before she even got there?"
“Yep,” she said, popping the p. “We'd all already been briefed on her, though we weren't sure what all her magic entailed. For that matter, I'm not even sure at that point that Shelby knew what she could do. Boy we sure did find out quick though."
"Speaking of," I said, giving Missy a pat on my way past her stall. "Have you found any new tricks in your bag?"
She shook her head. “Nope, but we have found some interesting things that Cody can do."
I cast Cody a surprised glance. "Wait, you have magic?"
He shook his head. "No, it's not quite magic, but I have a feel for weapons and kinda know when bad things are going to happen. They say that the trauma with my parents dying the way they did might have given my senses a boost. Even though I don't technically have any magic running in my veins, I am extra sensitive to a lot of things, including magic and other people’s emotions They say that's probably why I wasn't more shocked when I found Shelby blowing stuff up on the beach."
"So, you can sense things with weapons?" I didn't understand how that could particularly help them since I couldn't imagine that they ran across many magical artifacts.
He nodded his head. "You'd be surprised how many things out there are cursed. I'm also fairly handy with my intuition. I get gut feelings about missions before they go out on them. It's worked out about ninety percent of the time that if I have a bad feeling, something bad's going to crop up. At that point, they can just change their plans if it's at all possible, and it's helped avoid a lot of chaos."
"You mean it saved our hides a few times," Devon said with a pointed look. "Between you being able to do what you do, and Emma being such an ace with potions and healing elixirs, we wouldn't be here without the two of you."
I pushed away the shivers of fear that caused and cast a surprised look at Cody. One of Shelby's biggest fears when she’d found out about the whole secret academy thing had been that they'd insisted she keep the secret from Cody. In all the years they'd been dating, she never kept anything from him. Shelby, being true to herself rather than let other people dictate her life, had told him anyway.
I glanced at the metal bracelet on her arm. It was a good thing she had it, because as it turned out, he'd had an antique shield that had been owned by some famous warrior or another. He'd given it to her as a precaution when she went into one of her first battles. It had ended up being magic and shrunk so that she could wear it on her wrist when she didn't need it. All she had to do was snap her hand, and it became full-size and was basically magic proof. As long as she had it in front of her, she could deflect any spell that came at her, or any regular weapon too, for that matter.
He blushed in typical Cody fashion and looked down at his Converse-clad feet. "It was really just coincidence, is all. That and blind luck."
"Blind luck, my backside," Emma said, huffing a breath out through her nose. "And there are no such things as coincidences in the magical world. I'd even go so far as to say that you and Shelby were fated to meet that day on the beach."
Shelby scowled at her, and I understood why immediately. Sh
e didn't like the idea of anybody or anything controlling her, and the implication that anybody other than her had made the decision to bring Cody into her life grated.
I happened to agree with her. "It might have been Fate that put him in her path, but she made the choice to keep him in her life. And vice versa," I added glancing at him as we left the barn. The banging of metal to the right would have made me jump if it didn’t happen every single day. Gabi’s horse, Mayhem, who wholly deserved the name, was banging on the gate with his hoof and bobbing his head.
Shelby laughed and pivoted in his direction. If we didn’t bring him in, he’d just stand there and cause a ruckus with all the other horses. He already knew there was feed in his bucket, plus it was fifteen degrees cooler in his stall. “We’re comin’, boy.”
“Fine,” I said with a mock scowl at him. “You know if you make enough noise, you get your way, don’t you?”
He bobbed his black head as if he knew exactly what I’d said. In fact, I was convinced he did. He stepped back like a gentleman as I unhooked the gate and swung it open. The other horses had heard the good news and were right behind him. Fortunately, there was little work involved in bringing them all in. Shelby flicked a hand toward the barn, and I heard the squeak of hinges and the sound of wood scraping concrete as the stall doors opened.
That was all it took. The rest of the horses trotted out of the gate and to their stalls. Everyone down to a man knew where home was, so all we had to do was close the doors behind them. She did that with a flick of her wrist, too.
“Don’t forget to put the clip on Mayhem’s stall,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve been gone for a while, but I’ve cleaned up enough of his messes that I’ll never forget that part.”
We headed toward the house, and I stopped at the truck. "Someone grab the pan of tiramisu. It's in the paper bag. I'll get the pizzas."
Cody went around to the passenger side and popped the door open, then pulled the bag toward him. "Wow. Duck really did include a whole pan of the stuff. This thing weighs a ton."