Charms & Clouds

by Emilia Spring

  She smiled at me, and it was an indulgent smile. Like she would give to a child. “Tell her if she has questions, she can contact me.” Then she opened the door, standing to the side. “Thank you for visiting.”

  “Thank you for having me.” I smiled politely out of habit, inclined my head, and headed out the door.

  It closed and locked behind me, the click loud in the now-quiet. Well, holy motive Batman. It gave both of them a motive. It meant either of them could have done it, or could have framed the other. I hated love triangles.

  Although, at least a child wasn't in the middle of this one. That way, I didn't end up down at the social services office having to swab the child to run a genetic test in order to find out who should be prosecuted for child support. I’d had enough of those cotton swabs for the rest of my life, thanks.

  Mechanically, I got in Ruth, my mind still turning.

  I dialed Riley. That was the strange thing about Arizona, it was legal to drive and talk on your cell phone at the same time. I envied those fancy cars, where they had the Bluetooth things. I did it the old-fashioned way, by taking the slower, more careful back roads. And holding the phone to my ear.

  No, I didn't do it when Gianna was in the car. I wasn't that irresponsible.

  “Is it important?” Riley asked when she picked up the phone, her voice tense.

  “I think so?” I was a bit thrown off by the intensity of her voice.

  “Natalie?” Riley seemed to relax some. “What is it?”

  “Oscar was having an affair with Clara.” I bit my lower lip as I headed out of the gated community, back towards the main part of town.

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “How did you find that out?”

  I cleared my throat, feeling a little bit awkward. “His wife told me.”

  “His wife,” she said slowly. “As in Tiernan.”

  “Yes.” I clenched the steering wheel a bit tighter.

  “Didn’t we have a discussion about not investigating?” Riley said with a sigh. I could hear fondness in it. “Come to the station. I have news for you.”

  I glanced at the clock and shook my head, even though she couldn't see me. “I have to get Gianna from school.”

  She sighed. “What are you doing for dinner?”

  I blinked at the road in front of me. “Nothing,” I said slowly, because between Gianna and I, we were social recluses. Well, not really. Sam and Avery had invited themselves over plenty. I went over to the main house.

  Okay, sometimes I liked to be dramatic. Gianna still hadn't been brave enough to come to the main house again. We were getting there.

  “I'll be there around six?” Riley said, obviously distracted. I heard some shouting in the background, and then a loud sigh. It was probably Riley’s. I could almost imagine her rubbing her forehead.

  “Okay.” Part of me still expected her to shout “surprise!” or “joking!”, but she didn’t.

  “Thanks.” The line clicked off, leaving me driving down a back road, headed towards Gianna’s school. Ugh. I was going to have to cook dinner.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “How are you doing?” I asked Gianna as she got in the car.

  She rolled her eyes. “There's this boy in my class who’s really annoying.”

  I frowned, because my brain immediately went to what some people would say. Oh, because he likes you. Liking someone or not, you didn’t pester someone if they didn’t want it. “Is he a human?” It was never a question I ever pictured myself asking.

  I could see her looking out the window out of the corner of my eyes. I put the car back into gear and headed back towards the main road. I would give her the time she needed to answer. “I think so,” Gianna said, rubbing her nose absently.

  There wasn’t, like, some secret magic witch signal? You would've thought in a town like this, with humans and the supernatural together, those would be a thing. But apparently, they weren't.

  “Up for stopping at the shop before we go home?” I was already heading towards the road, but I figured I would ask.

  I bit back a smile when she snorted. “Always.”

  “The birds were chatty earlier,” I said.

  Fondness softened the angles of her face. “They're good birds.”

  “Have you ever held any of them?” I asked, thinking especially of the giant macaws.

  Gianna shook her head. Then she paused. “I've held Apple a couple times,” she said thoughtfully. “Grandma got him as a baby.”

  “What about Craig and Lemon?” I asked.

  Gianna shook her head. “Grandma always told me I was too small.”

  I couldn't really blame Emmaline for that, because those birds were like a third of Gianna’s body length.

  “Do they talk?” I asked, trying to sound less freaked out that I was.

  Gianna looked puzzled. “Yes,” she said slowly. “They're birds.”

  I sighed. “Do they understand human speech?”

  Gianna gave me another look. “Yes.”

  I decided to stop asking questions, because I was starting to look stupid and that hurt my ego. Besides, she had basically confirmed that the birds could understand everything and knew what I was saying. I was going to have to apologize to them at some point.

  I parked in front of the pet shop. Gianna slipped out before I could turn the car off. We were going to have to have a discussion about safety, or something responsible like that, but at least she’d waited until the car was in park.

  Gianna unlocked the pet shop with her key and skipped inside before I was even out of Ruth. Locking the car behind me, in case of the very unlikely event that someone tried to steal Ruth, I turned and headed inside.

  “Who’s a pretty birdy?” Gianna cooed to Apple. Apple had his head pressed up against the bars of his cage, offering Gianna his neck. She had her fingertips gently in the down, in a way he obviously approved of.

  “He's nice.” I stopped near the door, not wanting to startle either of them.

  Gianna didn't take her attention away from Apple. “They're all nice.”

  I could feel Lemon and Craig staring at me. “I’m not entirely convinced,” I muttered. I didn’t want to make enemies of them, but I wasn’t sure how to be friends, either.

  Gianna smiled at Apple, and then pressed a kiss to his head. He made a clucky noise, and then gave her a kiss back with his beak. She gave him a few more scratches before she straightened up. She next went to Craig's cage, and he came close to the edge of it, looking at her.

  “How are you?” Gianna asked politely, her hands behind her back.

  I could see her hands moving, but I wasn't sure what they were doing.

  “She's got a treat,” Theodore said.

  Gianna shot him a dark look. “Shush.”

  “He knows,” Lemon said. She almost sounded amused.

  I wanted to laugh hysterically. How was I going to survive this? Was the sofa going to start talking? I groaned. Riley was going to meet Great-Aunt Mabel. And Great-Aunt Mabel was going to have a ridiculous amount of fun critiquing my cooking techniques.

  “Here you go,” Gianna told Craig, dropping a handful of nuts into his feed dish.

  “Those bird-safe?” I asked, coming close enough to peer at them. The feathers on the back of Craig's neck stood up, and his wings flared out slightly.

  “He thinks you're gonna try and take them,” Gianna said, hiding a grin.

  I held my hands up so Craig could see them. “Not going to take them,” I said. His feathers smoothed down, although I could see him glaring at me out of the corner of his eyes.

  This was going to be interesting. The birds would obviously need care, and they liked the 11-year-old a lot more than they liked me. Then again, they knew Gianna better. Maybe they would get used to me over time.

  “Hi Lemon,” Gianna said, going to the third cage. I was sort of envious of the ease that she went from bird to bird, but then again, she’d probably known them for most of her life.r />
  Lemon came straight up to the front of the cage, pressing her red neck up against the bars. Gianna reached through the bars, and scratched her neck gently. Lemon made a clicking noise, a bit different than chickens, and then gently rubbed her head against Gianna's fingers.

  I stood there, half a second away from dialing 911 in anticipation of Gianna losing her fingers. But Lemon kept making the soft noise, rubbing her head against Gianna's hand.

  “She's a good girl.” Gianna smiled at her. “Thank you, Lemon.” She slowly withdrew her hand.

  “More,” Lemon said, almost petulant.

  “Not today,” Gianna said. “But – I have treats.”

  Lemon climbed a few bars of her cage, heading back to the branch that led to her feed dish. She looked resigned, as if she was going to take treats as a substitution for head scratches, but only grudgingly.

  “Is everybody a drama queen?” I muttered.

  I looked up to see both Gianna and Lemon giving me a dirty look.

  I shut my mouth.

  Inwardly I laughed. This was so not what I'd expected my life to be.

  Gianna gave Lemon a handful of nuts, these slightly different than Craig’s.

  “They like to be able to crack them,” Gianna said. “Helps keeps their beaks from getting too long.”

  Given that she was the bird expert of the two of us, I nodded.

  “Want to see what's up with the tanks?” I asked.

  She skipped closer, casting a fond glance back at the birds. “Yes.”

  “These two tanks are ready for fish,” I said, pointing to the freshwater.

  “Then why are they empty?” Gianna looked skeptical.

  I looked at the bigger tanks. “Because these are going to be our quarantine tanks.”

  “Do we have to quarantine all the fish?” Gianna looked slightly less enthusiastic about the idea of only getting fish little by little.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “We’ll probably do a few at once, and then transfer them to the main tank.”

  “Why not just put them in the main tank?” She looked at me like I was a bit crazy.

  I winced at the larger tanks. “If we put fish in there, without making sure that they’re healthy, and they got sick – could you imagine treating that entire tank?”

  Gianna looked at the tank that was literally longer than she was tall. “No thank you.”

  I laughed. “This way, we make sure that they’re healthy before we put them in the main tank. That doesn't mean that they won’t catch something, but it makes our lives easier.”

  Gianna stepped forward, looking at the giant 125gal tank that was full of saltwater, with a couple filters hanging off the back. I needed to do some research on how to attach it to a sump, which was what the funny drilled holes in the back were for. A sump was a weird word for basically a second tank that helped expand the water volume of your main tank, and provided a place to put all of your equipment so you didn’t have to see it.

  “What are we going to fill this one with?” Gianna leaned almost impossibly closer.

  “That will be our first display tank,” I said. “With fish.”

  “Will we get other things than fish?” She looked back at me, her eyes bright.

  I nodded. “There's little shrimp, corals, snails. We could even get an anemone or something.”

  Her eyes widened. “We could have the ocean in a tank?”

  I winked. “Glass Oceans makes sense as a name, doesn’t it?”

  Something sad flickered across her face, but then the warmth was back.

  “Let's go home,” I said. “I promised Riley I would make her dinner.”

  Gianna stopped, shooting me a dark look. “Why is she coming?”

  “We’re going to discuss her new case.” I paused.

  “You stuck your nose into something, didn’t you?” Gianna rolled her eyes. “Who’s the adult here?”

  “Not you,” Theodore muttered. I ignored him.

  Gianna led the way to the car. “Isn't she supposed to not tell you stuff?”

  I wiggled a finger at her. “What you don't know won't hurt you.”

  She gave me that look. “As if you're going to get me to go to bed early.”

  I sighed and started the car. She had a point.

  “How did you make it to almost thirty and you still can't cook?” Great-Aunt Mabel complained, for what felt like the umpteenth time.

  I pointed a finger at her ghost. “You grew up in a different time,” I said.

  “You’re not that young,” Great-Aunt Mabel muttered.

  Gianna was perched at the counter at her favorite stool, a wide grin on her face. “What are you making?”

  “I was supposed to be making fajitas,” I said, narrowing my eyes at her. “My original recipe didn't turn out.”

  “Because you got distracted and you burned the chicken,” Great-Aunt Mabel said, apparently not wanting to spare my feelings.

  “Thank you,” I grumbled. “I'd completely forgotten in the five minutes since it happened.”

  Gianna snickered. “Here, try this one. It's an oven version.” She spun her phone towards me, and apparently, she’d managed to get some food blogs added to her safe sites. I would have to look into how she’d done that.

  Still, the recipe looked easy enough. Chop up some peppers, some onions, some chicken. Mix it together with spices, cook it in the oven, and then Bob's your uncle.

  Was that even a saying? I didn’t even know at this point.

  “Do you know how to do the cutting?” Gianna asked, an eyebrow arched.

  I pointed my finger at her. “I can cut vegetables, thank you.”

  There was a knock on the door, and I glanced at the clock. I groaned, rubbed my forehead. Then I went to wash my hands again before I started cutting things. Gianna stepped towards the door before I could catch her. Instead of chasing after her, and risking looking more undignified than I already was, I quickly tried to hide the remnants. I shoved the burned chicken and pepper as far down in the trash can as I could, then pulled out the ingredients for the second round.

  I was smart enough to have learned via my prior cooking attempts to know that I needed at least two of everything. Yes, I’d done well at the soup kitchen. But that was being supervised by Sam and being told what to do. Plus Sam could fix everything I screwed up.

  I had none of that here.

  “She hasn't managed to burn our kitchen down yet,” I heard Gianna tell Riley cheerfully as they headed my way.

  I paused in scrubbing the bell peppers under the faucet. I was grumbling, because there were things Riley didn’t need to know. The rest of me was trying to ignore the warm, bubbling feeling in my chest at Gianna calling it ‘our kitchen’.

  “She's right,” Great-Aunt Mabel commented.

  I glared at her. “You're dead. You don't have room to talk.”

  I heard a cough from behind me, and half spun to see Riley looking at me with raised eyebrows. Gianna was snickering.

  I groaned. “You can't see her?”

  “Come again?” Riley looked puzzled.

  “Where’s her partner?” Aunt Mabel floated closer, way too close to Riley for my liking. “Is he single?”

  I pointed the knife in her direction. “I’m cutting that off right now.”

  Gianna groaned. “Not the puns.”

  I pointed the knife at her, for emphasis, and then cut the top off the bell pepper and started breaking the veggies down. “Great-Aunt Mabel decided to come back and haunt her house,” I said. “She doesn't approve of my cooking skills.”

  “Oh.” Riley looked bemused, like she wasn’t sure what to say about it.

  “She thinks your partner is cute,” Gianna said helpfully.

  “Henry?” Riley raised her eyebrows. “I’m cuter, promise.” She winked into midair. Then Riley ruffled a hand through her hair, making it look all ridiculously, adorably tousled. Jerk. She winked into midair.

  My stomach did a flip. Why did sh
e have to be so cute? I couldn’t deal with it.

  “She’s in the kitchen,” Gianna said, obviously biting back a grin.

  “How do you know?” Riley looked at her.

  “She's the one who can see spirits,” I said with a nod in Gianna's direction. “I can apparently see it because she's around.”

  “Can anybody else see it?” Riley asked, tentative.

  “I am a lady,” Great-Aunt Mabel snapped. “A woman. Do you need to see proof?”

  “No,” Gianna and I both said in the same breath.

  Riley raised her eyebrows.

  I cleared my throat, my cheeks flushing. “She prefers to be referred to as a lady.”

  Great-Aunt Mabel was sulking so loudly that we could hear her now. With a loud harrumph she turned and stomped off through the wall, which had much less of a dramatic effect than she’d probably hoped.

  Gianna giggled, apparently unable to hide it. I grabbed an onion and winked at her. At least that was something we could bond over.

  Riley was quiet for a few moments, and then she sniffed the air. “What do I smell?”

  Oh God, not this again. “I burned dinner,” I cut Gianna off.

  Gianna pouted. “Not fair!”

  “I’m trying to maintain some dignity,” I told the onion as I sliced it up and added it to the baking dish.

  “Both the chicken, and the veggies.” Gianna looked way too pleased with herself.

  Riley looked almost like it was Christmas, her gaze wicked when she turned it on me. “You can't cook?”

  “In my day, every woman could cook –”

  “Go away,” Gianna said, glaring at Mabel's head when it poked through the wall.

  She huffed at us, and then disappeared with a crack. That was new. Maybe it was the ghostly version of a huff.

  “I take it that was commentary?” Riley said, remarkably unruffled.

  “Great-Aunt Mabel is a little bit of a traditionalist,” I said.

  “That’s putting it politely,” Gianna muttered.

  “I hope I’m not too gay for her.” Riley frowned, looking down at herself. “Maybe I should have worn plaid.”

  I rolled my eyes, but I was grinning. “Did lesbians wear plaid in her time?”