“No, really, they might be a problem. Just go somewhere else until we figure out what’s up with IPCA. It’s probably nothing. Hopefully it’s nothing. But until we know for sure, I need to know you’re all safe.”
“Dear child,” Nona said, smiling warmly and taking my face in both her hands. She leaned forward and brushed my forehead with her moss-green lips. “Soon.”
She backed away and I frowned, adding her affection to the ever-growing list of Suspicious Things Nona Does, then pulled out my phone and looked at the time. “Crap! I missed the bus.”
Kari fixed her impossibly big, round brown eyes on me. “Do you want a ride? We can give you a ride! Anywhere! Fast!”
“You have a car?”
She and Donna barked their matching laughs. Torn, I looked back at Nona, who was calmly wiping the long barstool-lined counter. “We’ll talk more when I get back.”
I followed the selkies outside to a classic VW Beetle parked along the street. It was a sparkly midnight-blue convertible with white leather seats. “Seriously?” I asked. How did two creatures who spent the better part of the last few centuries as seals have a car this cool? And how pathetic did that make me that I still didn’t have one?
I slid past the passenger seat into the back, and Kari sat behind the wheel.
“How did you get a driver’s license?” I asked, curious. I was going to take a driver’s ed course in the spring, but maybe they could hook me up with an easier class.
“What’s a driver’s license?” Kari answered, before peeling out into the middle of the street.
Oh, bleep.
My eyes were squeezed shut, my fingers in a death grip around my seat belt, when the chorus of my latest favorite song played, muffled by my purse. I pried my hand free and dug out my cell. Kari took another curve at blinding speed, centrifugal force smashing me against the window.
“Slow down!” I screamed, putting the phone up to my ear. “What! I mean, hi!”
“Where are you?” Lend asked. I could hear the panic in his voice. Ah, crud, should have left him a note.
“I’m on my way to meet Raquel at the Jitterbug Café. Kari, tree!” We swerved violently and the car lifted completely off the right-side wheels before bumping back down. “Trees do not move for cars! Cars avoid trees!”
Donna’s barking laughter rang through the tiny space as she clapped her hands, delighted.
“What are you doing? Are you safe?” Lend asked, shouting over the background noise coming through my end.
“Not right now, no. Red light! Red light!” We sailed through anyway, an SUV coming so close to clipping our bumper I could have counted the other driver’s teeth, all of which were showing in a grimace of terror. “Pull over! I’m getting out!”
“But we’re not there yet,” Kari said, turning all the way back to fix her round, watery eyes on me.
“Eyes on the road! The road! Stop stop stop stop stop stop STOP!”
Kari blinked, then turned around and slammed her foot all the way down on the brakes. I flew forward as the seat belt locked and dug into my collarbone so hard I was sure I’d be bruised. A screeching sound echoed through the Beetle, and the acrid smell of burning rubber filled my nose as we came to a complete stop in the middle of the road.
“I’m gonna call you back,” I said, my voice trembling, then I hung up.
Donna jumped out and flipped her seat forward, smiling helpfully as I fell out of the car and scooted on my hands and knees to the sidewalk, resting my forehead gratefully against the freezing cement.
Okay, maybe there were some forms of transportation worse than holding a faerie’s hand.
Donna patted me on the back, her hand coming down too hard. “That was fun!” she said. “Where should we go next?”
“Nowhere with you two, ever again.”
I turned and sat down. Kari had left the car where it stopped and walked over to us. She raised her eyebrows quizzically at me. “Are you okay, Evie?”
“No! You almost killed me!”
She shook her head vehemently. “No! We’re here to keep you safe. Always safe. We’re in charge of you.” She smiled proudly.
“You aren’t—” I paused and forced my face into a calm smile. The selkies lacked any artifice or pretense. Nona dodged my questions, but maybe they wouldn’t know they needed to. “Yeah. Of course! Remind me who put you in charge of keeping me safe?”
“Nona!”
Donna nodded in agreement. “And the shiny man.”
“The shiny man?” I asked. “You mean Lend?”
“No, the shiny man with hair and eyes like sunshine.”
I held my smile firmly in place. “Reth? The faerie?”
“Faerie, yes! That’s not his name though; he’ll never tell. He’s shiny. And pretty. I like it when he talks to me.” Donna reached up and smoothed her luxurious walnut-brown hair, smiling dreamily.
“I knew it! I knew Nona was working with Reth!” I stood, shaking with fury. Despite David’s insistence that we could trust that wicked tree spirit, I’d known something was up with her for months. And now she was assigning the selkies to keep tabs on me for Reth?
“Are you angry?” Kari asked, concern pooling in her eyes like tears. “Did we do something wrong?”
I took a deep breath, the bitingly cold air filling my lungs and stinging my throat. This wasn’t their fault. The selkies were as innocent and happy as seals playing in the waves, their immortal lives nothing but an eternal game. They were just doing what they were told—what they thought was best. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. Thanks.”
“Okay! Let’s drive more, then!”
“NO! I mean, umm, I want to walk the rest of the way to the café, since we’re almost there. But you two can go. Lend is going to come and get me, and I’m always safe with him.”
Donna frowned dubiously. “Are you sure? We can stay. I’ll braid your hair!”
“And I have nail polish in the car!” Kari said, already bouncing in anticipation.
“No, you should go tell Nona that I’m safe. She might be worried.”
“Should we wait where you can’t see us, like we do when you’re in school?”
I froze my face into a mask of a smile, but the veins in my neck felt like they were going to explode they were pounding so hard with fury. I didn’t get out of IPCA’s controlling grasp to be spied on and monitored by a tree spirit and my crazy faerie ex. “You don’t need to. I talked to Nona today and she said it was okay for you two to leave me.”
Kari’s eyes narrowed, cutting their shape from near-perfect circles to almonds. “Are you sure she said that?”
“Absolutely.”
She held my gaze for another moment, then shrugged, smile bouncing back into place. “Okay then! See you later!”
Donna waved cheerily and they both got into the car, squealing away. I watched until they turned the corner, then ran as fast as I could toward the café. When I got there, I collapsed against the dark brick exterior, my breath fogging out in pants.
How long had they been tailing me? Which other paranormals were in on it? Nona and Grnlllll for sure, but them I already suspected. Those three weird women this morning—I’d seen them once before talking to Nona. The dragon? Did she have a dragon tailing me? I looked up at the sky, paranoid, but didn’t see any white monsters snaking through the sparse clouds.
What about…Arianna? I bit my lip. She lived with me, after all. Who better to watch me than my roommate? I put my head back against the rough, uneven bricks. I wanted Lish back. I’d never, ever had to doubt her or question her motives. I knew she was my friend no matter what. It had been the two of us against the world, and sometimes I didn’t know where my place was without her to talk to.
Arianna wasn’t the friend Lish had been. She was cranky and rude, and sometimes it seemed like she hated me more than she liked me. But then again, Arianna really wasn’t the same type of paranormal as Nona and her ilk. They came that way. Arianna was forced into t
he paranormal realm against her will.
Besides, surely anyone trying to spy on me and get in my good graces wouldn’t leave so many sopping wet towels on the carpet.
No, I trusted Arianna. Arianna, Lend, David, and Raquel. I sighed heavily, then pulled out my phone to check the time. I was still a couple minutes early. I’d missed three calls from Lend and had a new text from Carlee, my one normal friend. I’d kill to go get a pedicure with her today and debate the merits of the boys’ basketball team versus the soccer team. While I personally found shape-shifting artists superior in all ways, I did admire soccer player legs.
Alas. My fingers were too cold to type anyway. Ignoring the text, I hit dial and Lend picked up on the first ring.
“I need you to come pick me up after I talk to Raquel,” I said. “And I need to move out of the diner apartment.”
“Done and done. I was going to make you come to my dad’s place tonight anyway. And I assume you’re going to tell me what’s going on?”
“As much as I know.” My voice was as glum as I felt. Because, as usual, as much as I knew wasn’t nearly enough. At least Raquel would have some answers for me.
THE SHORTEST DAY OF THE YEAR
Thirty minutes later my knees were bouncing uncontrollably. Partly from nerves—where was she?—but mostly because I was on vanilla Coke number four. Caffeine and I had always been a bad combination, now made worse by the nervous energy I could feel constantly flowing through me from the part of Uber-vamp’s soul I’d taken when he attacked me on Halloween.
I checked my phone every thirty seconds, but I hadn’t missed any calls and there were no new texts from David. Did I get the café wrong? This was the one we met at last October. But maybe she was thinking of another place? I needed her to tell me everything was fine.
The door chimed, and I looked up into Raquel’s face. “Thank goodness!” I said, almost knocking my glass over as I stood up.
She rushed over to me. “Evie, I’m so sorry. This is the only chance I’ve had to get away, and—” The door chimed again, and Raquel watched as two men in itchy-looking wool coats walked in and stared at the menu. She turned back to me, her face smooth. “Sit down, please.”
“Yeah, sure.”
She sat across from me and put her hands up on the table, crossing and uncrossing her fingers like she couldn’t get them to fit together quite right.
“What’s going on? Who is this Anne-Whatever Whatever woman? Why is IPCA contacting me through someone other than you?”
Raquel took a deep breath. “I’m here to ask you to come back to IPCA in a formal capacity.”
“You’re what?”
“It’s been determined that this experiment”—she closed her eyes briefly at that word, then quickly opened them and moved on—“isn’t effective. You’re being asked to return to your position at the Center. With full employee rights and salary, of course. They will also grant you conditional clemency for rule violations.”
I sat back, stunned. “You’re the one who helped me get out in the first place. You know I can’t—I won’t—go back! Besides, there’s no point. I won’t travel with a faerie, which makes me pretty much worthless. And even if I was willing to work with faeries, there’s no way I’d go back to living in the Center! What are they thinking?”
She bit her lip. It was then that I realized she hadn’t uttered a single sigh. Weird, and very un-Raquel. “Evie, I really think you should consider this offer. Or at least be open to negotiating the terms of your employment.” She glanced over her shoulder, then leaned forward. “Please tell me you will consider it.”
“What the bleep are you smoking? I—”
Her eyes flashed, her brows knit together, and she leaned even farther forward, shaking her head in an almost imperceptible motion. “Evie! Please. Tell me you will consider this.”
Something was very wrong here. I trusted Raquel, I knew I could. “I—yeah, sure. I’ll consider it.”
She didn’t look relieved; if anything, she looked more agitated than ever. “Thank you. I will give you a couple of days to think things over.” She reached out and took one of my hands in hers, squeezing it way too tight.
“Maybe switch to decaf,” I muttered, scowling. “Now can you tell me what’s going on? And what about the town, are the para—”
“Thank you, yes, I must be going.” She stood up, smoothing out her charcoal-gray skirt. “I’ll speak with you at the end of the week when we’ve finished making the arrangements.”
“I didn’t say—Raquel!” I stood up as she turned on her heel and marched out.
Lend tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, frowning thoughtfully. “So, we know for sure Nona is keeping tabs on you. But she’s told us before she wants you to be safe.”
“Still, creepy. She’s having me followed by her little seal cronies. And what about Reth?”
“Are you sure it was Reth?”
I traced my finger through the condensation on the window, watching the leafless trees fly by. There wasn’t any snow out, which just made everything dead and flat and cold and brown.
I hate brown.
“Pretty sure. We know they’re in contact. But even if it isn’t him specifically, it’s a faerie.”
“Alright. No more Nona. You can stay with my dad more permanently than we had planned. Plus, it’s safer there if IPCA decides to come knocking with their pet faeries.”
“Too bad your dad is my legal guardian. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any way to find me through him.” My stomach dropped. “Oh my gosh, Lend. They can find him if they look, which means they’ll know that he’s not dead, either.” David had faked his own death almost twenty years before when he was an employee of the American Paranormal Containment Agency. Falling in love with a water elemental wasn’t exactly conducive to working for them anymore.
Lend shrugged dismissively, resting his right hand on my knee. “My dad’s been doing this a long time, Ev. He’ll be fine. Don’t worry about him. I’m just pissed Raquel is still IPCA’s lapdog and didn’t tell you what was really going on.”
I scowled, wiping away the hearts I’d traced along the window. “It wasn’t like that. Something was up—something weird. She’s definitely not acting like herself. I think she’s scared about something, or…I don’t know. It was like she couldn’t tell me anything. Maybe she’s trying to protect me by bringing me back in. Remember I told you I read all their documents about elemental paranormals going missing?”
He nodded grudgingly. “We still haven’t heard from my mom in months. But she usually doesn’t come out in winter anyway because of the ice.”
“It could be connected. Nona’s getting weirder by the day; now she’s having me followed. There could be something going on that Raquel knows about.”
“Why didn’t she tell you what it is, then?”
“I don’t know. But Raquel has my back. Always.”
“I have your back.”
I smiled and wove my hand through his elbow, leaning over to put my head on his shoulder. “I know.”
“Good. That settled, I hereby declare a moratorium on any and all talk of IPCA or paranormals stalking you.”
“Ooh, breaking out the fancy language. Why?”
“Because today is about fun.”
“I like fun days!”
“This is a special one.”
“It is?” Had I forgotten some sort of anniversary?
His face split into a sly grin. “It’s your birthday.”
“No, it’s not,” I answered, confused. “I mean, I guess it could be, but since we didn’t know when it was for sure we always said I was a year older on New Year’s.”
“Ah, but when was the last time you checked your birth certificate?”
I laughed. “You mean the fake document your dad had Arianna compel the county records office into making?”
“Yup. You never noticed the date we put on it?”
“No…”
“December twenty-first. W
hich is today.” He pulled into the mall and parked. “Happy birthday, Evie,” he said, leaning in and kissing me with his perfectly soft lips. I smiled under his mouth, letting everything else slip away. Best fake birthday ever.
“Okay, I never thought I’d say this, but I’m tired of the mall.” I sat on a bench, feet aching but heart happy. Lend had dragged me through the entire thing, even insisting I get a manicure and surprising me with a scheduled makeover appointment at one of the high-end salons. My hair twisted and curled just so, along with dramatic eyeliner, looked a little odd with normal clothes, but I felt special.
Lend finished texting someone and slipped his phone into his back pocket, then stood up. I’d never paid much attention to guys’ jeans before (not for lack of desire, but rather lack of opportunity in the Center), but in the past few months I’d come to realize that most guys’ jeans are really, truly horrendous. Too baggy, too tight, too low, etc. It’s like guys don’t realize that they can look great in a good pair of jeans. Shockingly enough girls, too, enjoy a well-framed butt.
Another area Lend was perfect in. His jeans choice, I mean. Well, his butt, too.
I smiled and stared at his face, watching his two profiles—the glamour one, which fit snugly over his real one. He looked down and caught me staring.
“Evie?”
“You, my dear boyfriend, are kind of beautiful, you know that?”
“That’s what all the old ladies tell me before pinching my cheek.”
“Which cheek?” I reached out and goosed him. He jumped and swatted my hand away, laughing.
“Okay, we’re going to meet Arianna and my dad at the house; they made a big dinner and cake. Then a movie?”
I shrugged, happy. “Sounds good to me.” It wasn’t huge or over-the-top, but that was never Lend’s style. I was glad that this wasn’t when I usually had my birthday. New Year’s would remind me how I used to celebrate. Every year I was in the Center, I figured out a way to sneak a ladder into Central Processing, climb the side of Lish’s tank, and cannonball in. It was my favorite tradition.
Endlessly (Paranormalcy) Page 2