by Diane Farr
“I saw a motorcycle in front of our house,” she said crisply. “And I didn’t recognize it. So I came over to find out whose it was. Now I know.”
We had reached the front parlor. She turned to confront Lance. “I hope,” she said—and her voice was deadly quiet—“I never see that thing in front of my house again.”
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.
“We can explain,” I began, but Lance cut me off.
“No, Zara,” he said. His voice was just as quiet and level as Nonny’s. “We can’t.”
He opened the door to leave, but paused on the threshold. His green eyes focused on Nonny’s, his expression grave. “We’re both trying to keep Zara safe,” he told her softly. “You have your ways, and I have mine. But we’re on the same side.”
Her tight mouth did not relax one iota. “Goodbye,” she said. And he left.
The house immediately seemed unnaturally quiet. Even when the motorcycle roared into life, it felt quiet. Nonny beckoned me into the kitchen and sat me down. “Talk to me,” she said. “Because I’m too mad to talk.”
I was miserable. “I forgot you didn’t want him here,” I said. “I honestly forgot. I know that sounds feeble.”
“It sure does. I can’t believe you’re even friendly with that boy. Zara, he hit you! What are you thinking?” She was so upset, her voice was shaking. “What’s this b.s. about him being on your side? I don’t believe that for a minute, and neither should you.”
But I did believe it. I saw it in his mind. How could I explain that to Nonny? I couldn’t. And while I was trying to figure out what I could say and what I mustn’t, she was watching my face—and getting even more upset as I didn’t answer right away.
“And what were you doing in my bedroom? Great Scott!” She was so worked up, she almost bounced out of her chair. “I tell you I don’t want him on my property, and then I find him in my bedroom? With you?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Honest. I didn’t think how it would look.”
“Why were you going through my things?”
“We were trying to find…”
And I suddenly had one of those brain flashes that strike a person, sometimes, in a moment of stress. I remembered sitting at this same kitchen table with Nonny not that long ago, and Nonny telling me the story of how I came to be ‘her’ little girl. You were wrapped in a white blanket… someone—your mother, I suppose—set you down at the commune gates and rang the bell…
I felt the hair rise on the back of my arms. If my power stone was anywhere, it was there. Had to be.
“My baby blanket,” I said. “We were looking for my baby blanket.”
She looked puzzled. “Baby bl—“ and then the penny dropped and she understood. “You mean the one I found you in?”
“That’s the one.”
Fresh anger snapped in her eyes. “Did you tell Lance that story? Of all people—“
“Nonny, it’s important. Please. I’ve got to see it.” I placed my hand over hers. “You may have to trust me a little on this. Lance is…”
I couldn’t say it. I literally could not make my mouth form the words to tell her what Lance is. Every instinct in me was screaming, stop! Generations of my kind had bred me to secrecy. My very blood warred with my desire to confide in Nonny. And won.
I shook my head and gave her a weak smile. “It’s complicated,” I said weakly. “But he’s okay. Really.”
“Why didn’t you just ask to see the darn thing? I would have shown you whenever you wanted.”
“Well,” I said, trying to sound reasonable, “that’s what I’m doing now.”
She pointed at me. “You stay here.” She disappeared down the hall. And came back with something that looked like a shawl, folded and wrapped in tissue paper. She set it on the kitchen table in front of me and sat down again, watching me.
I was so nervous I couldn’t move. I sat with my hands in my lap and just stared at it.
“Zara, honey.” Her voice was gruff with her own emotions. I wondered, fleetingly, what they were. “Open it.” And then, when I still didn’t move, she said, “It’s just a baby blanket. It won’t bite.”
I reached out, then, and pushed the tissue paper back. A whiff of cedar told me where she’d been storing it—in her grandmother’s hope chest. Duh! I should have thought of that. And there it was: a baby blanket. But it wasn’t like any baby blanket I’d ever seen.
I touched the fabric, puzzled.
“I think it’s homespun,” Nonny told me. “Very fine work, I must say. Unusually soft.”
“And what—“ My voice caught in my throat as I picked the blanket up and the folds fell out. I had started to ask what all the bumps were, but now I saw: The hem was weighted with small, colorful stones. All the way around the edge of the blanket they danced, each individually sewn in place.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Nonny touched the design with one finger. “Kind of a crazy thing to wrap a baby in, though. You’re lucky they didn’t scratch you.”
The stones were beautiful, all right. I saw amber and peridot and aquamarine, sapphire and garnet and topaz. And amethyst. Yes. There, in the corner of the blanket, one special amethyst had been placed. It was slightly larger than the others. And above it, in delicate script, someone had embroidered Zara.
Someone had been very clever.
Shooting out from my name was a web of embroidery. The stones ran along the edge of the hem, but above them was more decoration, sewn into the fabric. Were there hidden messages in the flowers and stars and little animals? Or was it all to camouflage the strangeness of the stones? Those were questions for another day. I would have to ask Lance. Or, more probably, Rune.
I swallowed, and found my voice. “Have you ever had it appraised?”
“Appraised?” Nonny chuckled. “Oh, honey, the jewels aren’t real. They’d be worth a lot of money. Rich people don’t…”
She cut herself off—evidently afraid she would hurt my feelings. I finished the sentence for her. “Rich people don’t abandon their babies.”
It didn’t bother me one bit. I had other things on my mind.
I ran my fingertips along the stones, touching each one separately. What did it mean? Were they fake, meant as decoys to hide the true stone, my amethyst? Or were they real? They must be spellspinner colors. Some I knew, and had seen in the eyes of the spellspinners I had met—peridot, amethyst, topaz, aquamarine. The others I had not seen. Yet.
Garnet. Wow. I was glad I didn’t have garnet eyes. Amethyst was hard enough to get away with.
My fingers came back to the Zara corner. Traced my name. And finally, touched the stone.
The instant my fingertip touched it I knew. This was it. This was definitely it. My power stone.
It emitted something that felt like a low hum of electricity against my skin. The sensation was odd, somewhere between a buzz and a pulse, difficult to describe but unmistakable. The other stones had felt cool and hard, but this one felt warm to me, as if it still glowed from the faraway heat at the planet’s core.
It was hard to have Nonny sitting across from me at this moment. I should have been alone, or with my own kind. I had to keep my eyes lowered. I struggled to hide the knowledge of what this was. Of what the stone was doing to me. Of what it meant.
I dropped the blanket back down on the table, took a deep breath, and smoothed it—being careful to touch only the cloth. “May I keep it?” I asked. My voice was hoarse with the strain of keeping my excitement in check.
“It’s yours, I suppose,” said Nonny. “But the safest place for it is in my cedar chest.”
I nodded, thinking fast. Nonny’s cedar chest had a lock on it. I didn’t want it to go back in there before I had a chance to snip the threads around that amethyst.
“I’d like to show it to Meg. She’ll love it.”
“All right, but I don’t want you riding around with it on a bicycle. Have her come here.”
“Sure thing. I’ll go call her.” I grabbed the
blanket and headed for my room. Belatedly, I remembered my manners and turned back when I reached the doorway. “Thanks, Nonny. And I promise to keep Lance out of your bedroom. Really.”
I took the stairs two at a time.
“Out of my house!” she shouted after me.
Maybe I could pretend I hadn’t heard that.
Chapter 9
Meg has been my sounding board forever, and she’s kind of been out of the loop lately. I was feeling bad about that.
My first thought, of course, was a sort of combination impulse: (1) show Lance the blanket and (2) nick the amethyst. What made me turn to Meg instead was (1) old habit, (2) loyalty to my BFF, and (3) the realization that Lance never told me what, exactly, one does with a power stone. Other than not have it made into a ring.
So once again, Lance was withholding information. After all that talk about how much he had changed towards me! Incredible.
Meg, I trust. Even on a bad day, I trust Meg. Besides which, I needed a more impartial, less spellspinner-y brain to help me analyze the data. Because my own brain was on overload.
First I ran to my dormer window, the one that looks out over our porch to Chapman Road. I saw Nonny already crossing the street, heading back to the nursery. Good.
Meg picked up on the second ring. “Meg,” I said hurriedly, “Where are you, exactly?”
“Sitting on my bed. Why?”
“Stay there,” I said. And with my phone in one hand and the baby blanket in the other, I skatched.
Meg wasn’t surprised this time when I appeared at the foot of her bed. Alvin, however, made a kind of croaking, gasping sound, dropped his guitar, and fell backward off Bridget’s bed.
It had never crossed my mind that Meggie might have company, let alone a boy, in her bedroom. Not that that’s an excuse. I hate to admit it, but Lance has a point: my emotions make me careless.
“Bloody hell!” cried Meg. She’s been reading Regency romances lately.
“Sorry,” I gasped. “Sorry!”
We rushed to help Alvin. He threw us both off and got up without our assistance. He looked a little wild-eyed, but unhurt. He was staring at me as if I were a bomb he thought might explode at any second. “What the—“ he began, then choked and pointed at me. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “I, um, I thought Meg was alone in here. I just, um—“ I swallowed hard. “I just sort of popped in. Ha, ha.”
“Ha, ha,” Meg echoed weakly.
Alvin didn’t laugh. His eyes never left my face. “I don’t buy it.”
“Um. You don’t?”
“No. There’s something going on with you.”
“Like what?” I put my hands on my hips and looked down my nose at him.
Showing a little attitude was worth a shot. Most people lack the courage of their convictions—at least when it comes to stuff they know nothing about. Sure, he’d just seen me do something impossible. But that’s the thing about impossibility: Let a few seconds go by, and nine people out of ten will convince themselves that they didn’t see what they just saw. Because, you know, it’s impossible.
Unfortunately, Alvin turned out to be that tenth person. The one who knows darn well what he saw, and can’t be talked out of it.
It sort of didn’t help that there were two of us trying to talk him out of it, because Meg and I kept accidentally contradicting each other, and Alvin caught every nuance.
Finally he folded his arms across his chest and glared at both of us until we fell silent. “Now tell me what’s really going on,” he said.
There was a knock on the door—which was already ajar, probably because of Alvin’s presence in Meg’s bedroom—followed immediately by the entrance of Meg’s mom. I’ve never been so glad to see Mrs. O’Shaughnessy in my life.
“I bet you kids are hungry,” she said brightly. “Oh, hi Zara! I didn’t know you were here.”
“Hi,” I said. “Gosh, do I smell brownies? Wow!” My enthusiasm may have sounded a bit over the top, but trust me, it was sincere. And Meg joined me in seizing the moment, as it were, and hustling Alvin out to the kitchen—because nothing distracts a teenage boy like food. Or so we’ve been told.
This teenage boy has an unusually tenacious mind.
He ate half a dozen brownies, and made chit-chat with Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, and almost convinced us we were out of the woods. But then it was time for him to go, and wouldn’t you know it, he dragged me out the door with him. In front of her mother—who naturally assumed I had ridden my bike over, and somehow got past her when I entered the house—Meg was powerless to stop this maneuver. And when the front door closed behind us, Alvin grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said. “I know it’s none of my business. But it sure looks to me like you’ve figured out how to make a cloaking device, or teleport, or make it seem like you’re teleporting, or something. Something cool. And I want to be in on it.” My expression must have tipped him off, because he added, “I can keep a secret.”
“No offense,” I said, pulling my arm free. “But how do I know that?”
He looked perplexed. And then I had a big, brilliant idea.
“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll make you a deal. You take Meg to Homecoming, and I’ll tell you my secret.”
I figured this would give me a week or so to figure out an explanation—and get Meg on the same page as me. And in the meantime, I could stop worrying about Meggie’s love life and concentrate on solving my own problems.
What I hadn’t counted on was Alvin’s reaction. He looked absolutely flabbergasted. And then he flushed bright pink.
“T-take Meg to Homecoming?” he stammered. “Are you serious?”
“Perfectly.”
“But—why?”
“Why?” I blinked at him. “It’s a dance at our school. Meg wants to go, but she doesn’t have anybody to go with, because she goes to St. Francis. So you take her.”
He raked one hand through his hair, making it stand up in little tufts. “What if she doesn’t want to go with me?”
He sounded frantic. I almost laughed, but then, somehow, I didn’t. Because it was actually pretty touching that behind those freckles and Harry Potter glasses lurked a perfectly decent boy who thought a girl like Meg wouldn’t want to go out with him. When, in point of fact, she was dying to.
Sticks. Honestly. What are you gonna do?
“She’ll go,” I said. And then—because I knew Meg would die if she ever found out I told Alvin that—I added, “And if she doesn’t, I’ll let you in on the secret anyway. Just for giving it the old college try.”
He didn’t say anything for about a minute. He walked to his jeep-thing and put his guitar in the back. Then he turned to me. “If she says no, how will you know I really asked her?”
“Meg tells me everything.” That seemed to terrify him even more, so I amended it. “Well, maybe not everything, but if she doesn’t tell me this, I’ll just ask her.” I pointed at him. “So don’t chicken out.”
He smiled weakly. “I won’t.”
He hopped into the driver’s seat. I thought of something and ran up to him. “Don’t tell her I asked you to ask her.”
Now he looked disgusted. “What do you take me for?” And he gunned the engine and took off.
I went back in the house feeling pretty smug. I had made Alvin agree to ask Meg to Homecoming, and I hadn’t used Power to do it.
I found Meg dancing around her bedroom, alternately hugging herself and pumping her fists. “Yes!” she whooped when I came through the door. “He came to seeeeeee meeeee!”
“Maybe he likes your mom’s cooking,” I suggested.
Meg threw a pillow at me. Then she remembered what had happened. “Omigosh, I can’t believe you skatched here.”
Panic skittered through me. “Don’t say that!” I closed her door behind me. “Seriously, Meg, what if someone heard you?”
“They wouldn’t know what it meant.” But I noticed she’d lowered her voice. “
Sorry. But I think we handled it pretty well, don’t you?”
“Not particularly, no.”
“Well, don’t do it anymore. Because you will never know when Alvin might be here.” She was hugging herself again. “I can’t believe it! He just dropped by. I had barely gotten home—“
“Meg.” I hated to interrupt her, but if we started going over all the minutia attached to Alvin’s drop-by, hours would pass before we got to what was really important. Which was, I’m sorry, ME and MY problems. “Don’t you want to know why I skatched here?”
“Sure. I guess.” She picked up the baby blanket. I had left it on the foot of her bed. “Does it have to do with this thing?”
She sounded a little miffed. I guess I can’t blame her. I’m sure Alvin dropping by was really huge—to her—and she would have appreciated a few more minutes of squeeing before I forced her to change the subject.
“Remember when Nonny told me last summer that she found me beside the bell at the commune gates, wrapped in a blanket?”
Meg’s miffiness vanished. Her eyes opened wide. “Holy cow.” She stared at the blanket. “This is it?”
I nodded. “Look at the stones.” I was whispering. Somehow it was really hard to talk about these things. My throat seemed to be closing up on me. If it were anyone but Meg, I don’t think I could have spoken of it at all.
She sat on the edge of her bed and examined the blanket closely. Her attention was utterly focused; all thought of Alvin had obviously been shelved for the moment. When Meg goes into her scientist mode, everything else takes a back seat.
“I think these rocks are the real deal,” she said at last. “And I think the pattern means something. Look at this.” She pointed to a bit of the embroidery. I sat beside her and bent over the tiny stitches she was showing me. “Whoever embroidered this was telling a story. This is a man wearing armor, I think. See?”
It was very stylized, but yes, it looked like a man dressed for battle. “If you say so,” I managed to croak. My throat was dry as toast.
“It’s not Crusader armor. But it’s not Japanese or anything like that—it’s Western European, I would say. But light. Maybe seventeenth century.” She flew to her computer and started Googling while I frowned down at the embroidery.