by Martha Carr
“Uh…Laura?”
“What?” She turned around and spread her arms at Nickie, who followed her sisters slowly and cautiously through the house. “I’m trying to apologize.”
“Maybe just leave it alone for like, I dunno, half an hour or something?” Nickie widened her eyes and glanced into the kitchen.
“Yeah, but…” Laura frowned and lowered her voice to a whisper, jerking her thumb over her shoulder toward the kitchen table. “Yeah, but then she gets to be mad at me for half an hour.”
“Better than a couple days like last time.” Nickie’s mouth drew down into a nervous-looking line as she eyed Emily.
The youngest Hadstrom sister was opening and closing cabinet doors and kitchen drawers like it was the only way to play Whack-A-Mole. She muttered to herself, clearly angry and clearly trying to calm herself down by cooking something.
“Right.” Laura blinked and walked toward the foyer. She stopped beside Nickie and whispered, “Don’t eat whatever she’s making right now.”
“Yeah, I know. I have no desire to be angry for no reason other than just wanting a gourmet snack. I haven’t forgotten how Em’s magic works.” Nickie shot her sister a confused frown. “Are you okay?”
“What? Totally. I’m fine.” Laura passed her and went into the living room. She settled into the armchair, crossed one leg over the other, and closed her eyes.
Nickie leaned back toward the kitchen and the sound of Emily cursing under her breath while whatever she was handling jumped and thumped and rocked all over the counters. “You need any help in there, Em?”
“That’s up to you,” her sister shouted, not even bothering to hide her frustration. “But I can’t promise that the next person who walks into this kitchen won’t get their fingers accidentally chopped off. You know, ‘cause the Hadstrom sisters apparently have the worst aim ever!”
Grimacing, Nickie turned slowly around, kicked her shoes off by the door, and headed into the living room. She picked her dark-blue Strat off the couch cushions and slumped in its place to strum a few chords. Laura didn’t look at her, which was more aggravating than Emily throwing a little fit in the kitchen—which wasn’t exactly unfounded.
Nickie stopped playing and stared at her sister. “Laura.”
Laura sighed and shook her head, staring at the area rug beneath the coffee table. “Okay, look. This whole thing is overwhelming. But we knocked down three energy cores today. Just us. And that giant Engineer bashing club.” Nickie nodded toward the dining room and the Velikan wrench resting on the table, hoping that would crack a smile on her sister’s face. It didn’t. “Nobody expects you to be a hundred percent certain and a hundred percent right all the time. You know that, don’t you?”
Laura closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and leaned forward so she could arch her neck and back to stretch some kinks out. “I do.”
“What?”
“I expect myself to be certain and right. All the time.”
“That’s not even…nobody can do that.”
The oldest Hadstrom sister rubbed the back of her neck and shrugged. “Most of the time, I’m pretty certain. Which is great. I used to be right when I was sure of something. That’s what got us into this mess. I was sure there was something behind those wards in the Greenbelt, and yeah, I was right about that, but then I screwed up and let that thing out. First Hadstrom in thousands of years to get anywhere near it since the witches who put it in that prison. And I let it out.”
“Okay. Please don’t turn this into a pity party.” Nickie set her guitar aside and pulled her legs up to cross them beneath her. “That’s not what we do, Laura. You know that. And the way I look at it, there are more cores in pieces right now than standing. That’s pretty good.”
“We still have the one that’s already been activated. And the one that got at least a little bit of Vanessa’s lifeforce magic before we destroyed it. And now there are planes falling out of the sky.”
Nickie tried hard not to smile, but it wasn’t possible when she remembered how they’d bashed in the other two energy cores the last five hours. “I don’t think Emily’s mad about the planes falling out of the sky.”
Her sister scowled. “I had no idea crushing that last one would make that pipe explode. The energy core was in a new neighborhood, for crying out loud.”
“Yeah, built on top of an old neighborhood.” A chuckle escaped Nickie, and she bit it off. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Just remember that. I mean, do you even know how to make spraying water curve around the corner and hit anything in a different room?”
Laura blinked, then her lips twitched into a half smile. “I bet I could figure it out.”
That made them chuckle. Nickie ducked when the oven door slammed in the kitchen and Emily let out a curse. “Don’t tell her that. She knows magic’s acting super weird right now. She knows you didn’t have anything to do with spraying her down like a dirty animal.”
“Hey. Mom used to wash us off with the backyard hose when we were kids.”
“Well, maybe Emily’s working that out for herself now.” Nickie bit her lip. “She did always cry like she’d just fallen off her bike whenever Mom pulled out the hose.”
“Weird. We used to get dirty on purpose, just so she’d break out the hose and march us around the yard.” Laura relaxed under the memory of those summers when they were all young enough to have someone else clean up their messes for them. “Wish this whole thing was as easy as breaking out the hose.”
“I think it’s called adulting.” Nickie cocked her head and gave her sister a smile that was more joking than sympathetic.
“Good one.”
“You know, if it keeps being this easy to destroy the rest of the cores, we can have the rest of them done this week.” Nickie’s smile faded when she remembered what the rest of her week looked like. “Or maybe…I dunno. We’ll hafta work around this meeting I have with Chuck and Dave tomorrow and the shows I’m playing Thursday and Friday.”
“I hope music still works the way it’s supposed to by then.”
“Hey, don’t even joke about that.” With wide eyes, Nickie jabbed a finger at her older sister. “Seriously. First, I’d be crushed and would come home and do some angry tension-release like Em. Second, if that happened, Laura, how the heck are we supposed to fight off the Gorafrex?”
Laura blinked, sheepish for a few seconds, then burst out laughing. “I can’t believe I didn’t think about that. Me! I didn’t think about what would happen.”
Nickie didn’t know whether her sister was losing her mind or finally undoing the mask she maintained by always being firm and determined, certain and right. But they laughed together. “I feel like maybe we shouldn’t talk about the hypothetical worst-case scenarios of magic going sideways. That’s gonna give me nightmares.”
“I thought you never remembered your dreams?” Laura narrowed her eyes, still smiling.
“I don’t. Doesn’t mean I don’t have them. But seriously, I don’t want to—”
“Okay, you two,” Emily called from the kitchen. “Before either of you say anything, I’m opening this with an official peace offering, okay?” She stepped into the living room carrying a massive plate of Funfetti cupcakes with chocolate frosting. Her sisters stared at her.
“Who do we know who’s turning ten?” Laura asked, sharing an amused glance with Nickie.
“Couldn’t tell ya. I mean, Funfetti’s…fun.” They all snorted at that. “But I don’t think it actually has a flavor, does it?”
“Ha, ha. You’re both so hilarious.” Emily stopped beside the coffee table and set the plate down within reach of everyone. “Like I said. Peace offering.” She looked at Laura and shrugged. “I know you didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Well, thanks, Em. That’s good to hear.” Laura glanced at the cupcakes. “I still don’t think it’s a good idea to eat anything you made while you were angry. Even if it wasn’t at me.”
“No, no. You can eat them.”
Nickie leaned forward. “Didn’t we just watch a video this morning about what happens when people eat what you cook under the influence of intense emotional distractions?”
“Hey, that’s different.”
Laura folded her arms and sat back in the armchair. “How’s that?”
Emily flung her hand toward the cupcakes. “Those aren’t from scratch. Are you kidding me?”
“How do we know that’s true?” Nickie raised an eyebrow and tilted her head.
“Oh, yeah. I put all my incredible magical cooking skills to good use baking you guys Funfetti cupcakes. World-class talent at its finest. Thanks a lot.”
Laura and Nickie burst out laughing, and Emily shook her head. “Okay. So…eat the cupcakes or don’t. Whatever. They probably taste like packaged mix and chocolate that doesn’t have a shelf life. The point is, we’re good.” She eyed Laura sideways. “Right?”
“Yeah, Em. We’re good.”
Nickie sucked in a sharp breath and clenched her eyes shut. “Uh, no.”
“What?”
“We’re not so good.”
Emily frowned. “Hey, I thought you and I were always cool with—”
“Em, stop.” Laura stood from the armchair and knelt in front of Nickie, who gripped both sides of her head. “It’s the drums, isn’t it?”
Nickie grimaced and let out a slow, shaky sigh through clenched teeth. Then, she nodded.
“Crap.” Emily scratched her head and ruffled her hair. “Clubhouse, then, right?”
“Yeah. Nickie, where are your keys?”
Nickie leaned to the side and reached for her back pocket. The Gorafrex’s ancient, primal drumbeat exploded in her head, and she swayed, coming close to falling forward off the couch.
Laura caught her by the shoulders and kept her steady. “You got it?”
Nickie tugged her keys from her back pocket, and she got the round silver charm separated from her keys. The drums got louder and more urgent, pounding faster and faster with the rhythm that went way back in the Hadstrom family line. She grunted, and her keys slipped from her fingers.
“Okay. I got it.” Laura retrieved her sister’s keyring, singled out the Clubhouse charm, and grabbed Nickie’s hand. “Just…like…” The second she slipped Nickie’s thumb over the thumbprint, the middle Hadstrom sister vanished. Laura slumped against the front of the couch, grasping for a second at nothing but air when the keys and her sister’s hand were gone. “That was weird.” She glanced at Emily and shrugged. “Never had someone pop right out of my arms.” Then, because that sounded so ridiculous, and because they had so many things on their plates right now, Laura burst into laughter and buried her face in the couch cushion.
“So…” Emily glanced around the room. “I’m gonna go with her. You okay?”
Laura nodded and waved her off, unable to talk through her hysterical laughing. Am I starting to lose it?
“Okay. You should come too.” When she got no other response, Emily thumbed her keyring and disappeared.
Shaking with unstoppable giggles, Laura reached into her own pocket for her keychain and had to stop to wipe away the tears pouring down her cheeks. “You got this, Laura.” The sound of her own cracking voice made her laugh all over again. After a few seconds, she pulled herself together, stared at her keyring, and blinked through watery eyes. “At least I’m laughing. Don’t know if that’s better or worse than freezing up around Nathan. But, whatever. We have a whole bunch of other stuff to get done first. Like finding which human the Gorafrex just jumped into this time.” That thought sobered her. She slipped her thumb over her coin and popped out of the living room.
The dog door in the mudroom flapped open, and Speed squeezed his chubby body through the opening. His nails clicked on the hardwood floor as he trotted across the living room. Despite having lived for almost as long as this ship had been caught off course, his sense of smell was still as strong as it had been when he was a pup. The bulldog cocked his head at the sound of a few grackles pecking at the side of the house, but the smell of something he knew wasn’t meant for him made him ignore the birds. They wouldn’t be able to tell him anything anyway, not as they were right now.
With a simultaneous snort from both his nose and his rear end, Speed followed the scent to the coffee table and found its source on the plate of cupcakes covered in chocolate frosting. He might have been a magical, undying pet, but he certainly wasn’t more immune than normal dogs to the opportunity of a treat left alone.
Chapter Fourteen
Nickie blinked at the ceiling from where she lay on the cherry-red futon in the Clubhouse. “I was just talking about how I haven’t heard the drums since last night and how that thing is still out there trying to find somebody to…stupid…”
“Hey, it’s not like you jinxed someone or anything like that.” Emily sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her sister. “The Gorafrex is gonna do what it’s gonna do if we talk about it or not. Which we should, by the way, seeing as we’re trying to stop it and everything.”
“Yeah, Em. I know.” Nickie rubbed her forehead and pushed slowly up to sit against the futon’s upright cushion.
“Are you sure you’re ready to—”
“Sit up on my own?” Nickie raised her eyebrows at Laura and couldn’t help but smile. “I’m pretty sure I can handle that much. If I can pull my car into a gas station with this happening, I think sitting’s covered.”
“Okay, just…take it easy.” Laura sat in one of the ratty, horridly-colored armchairs they’d squirreled away as kids, yet sitting still was almost as bad as sitting on a rosebush. “You think that’s what it was, though? That the drums were from the Gorafrex finding a new host and not…you know.”
“What?” Emily turned to glance over her shoulder. “Are you talking about killing another witch. Or wizard.” Laura shot her a quick frown. “You are, though, right? I just wanna make sure I have this straight.”
“Yeah, Em. That’s what I meant.”
“It’s gonna be hard for us to get very much of anything straight, honestly.” Nickie ran a hand through her hair and sighed. “But I’m pretty sure it was the whole ‘new human host’ drums and not the whole ‘lure a witch or wizard into my clutches’ drums. Not the ‘power an energy core with my victim’s lifeforce and blood magic’ drums, either. I mean, they all sound the same, but there’s a pattern, right?” She swallowed under her sisters’ attentive gazes.
One of the dozens of magical origami animals they’d made as kids—a paper jellyfish the size of a baseball—lifted from its resting place beside an old lava lamp—that somehow still worked—and fluttered across the room. It headed for Nickie, and she leaned away.
Emily raised a finger, her copper ring flashed, and a spark of yellow light leapt from her fingertip to bat the irritating childhood creation aside. “Keep going.” She set her elbow on her crossed legs and cradled her chin in her hands.
“Thanks, Em. I mean, I know we’ve only come across these things happening a few times. Hopefully, we can keep it to just a few, but it’s been the same thing since we found the Gorafrex in the first host.”
Laura wrinkled her nose. “That super tall guy with the ponytail and the fringed vest.”
“Yeah, he was not happy about his peabrain waking up.” Emily’s eyes grew wide. “I’m pretty sure he thought he was tripping acid or something.”
“I’m pretty sure he already knew what tripping acid’s like.” Laura cocked her head at her youngest sister, paused, and frowned. “You don’t, do you?”
“What? No. Don’t be like Mom. But no.” Emily rolled her eyes and turned to Nickie. “Talk about the pattern.”
“Yep. Drums when the thing leaps out of its used-up host. That was the first time I heard them in my head. Drums when the Gorafrex is trying to find another victim. Drums when it’s looking for a witch or wizard who doesn’t know they’re being lured into a trap. Which is pretty much all of them.” Nickie shook her head and jumped back on
to her train of thought. “Drums pretty much any time the thing uses magic and, especially, when it’s trying to power up an energy core by killing one of us.”
“Nothing you can’t handle with your Strat and a portable amp, huh?” Emily wiggled her eyebrows, just trying to lighten the mood, and Nickie couldn’t help but crack a smile.
“Thanks, Em. Last part of the cycle. The drums get really sporadic when the human host is running out of power, I guess. Right before the Gorafrex needs to hop out and find another one. Just in little bursts when there’s not enough of whatever it is to keep the thing inside the person’s body and using its magic. Then it balloons out, like we saw, and there’s a newborn Peabrain in an adult body with no idea what’s happening, and the witch-killer flies around Austin a few more days to find another host.” Nickie frowned and chewed the inside of her cheek. “Except this time, it only took a day. Like not even twenty-four hours.”
“Do you think that means anything?” Emily asked. “I mean, besides the fact that it’s getting to know the ins and outs of the city.”
“Come on, Em.” Nickie gave her sister an almost imperceptible shake of the head.
“Hold on.” Laura stopped pacing the other side of the Clubhouse and came to stand beside Emily sitting on the floor. “Whether or not that was meant to be a joke, Em, I think you have a good point.”
“I do?”
“Yeah. So that first house. The witch’s house where we found the bloody symbol on the wall and the second host right before she woke up…”
“Yep. I don’t think any of us forgot about the house.”
“Okay, so I was going off the assumption how that witch’s house was on top of an energy core. That’s how I mapped the rest of them out, with the Greenbelt in the middle. Turns out I was right ‘cause the transport bubbles took us exactly where we wanted to go, which was any one of those dots on my map.”
“And?”
“And that thing took a couple days inside the second host to find a witch it could use as its first…victim. Man, I hate saying that.” Laura folded her arms and shifted her weight to one side. “I think it was probably looking for an energy core first and just got lucky an unsuspecting witch lived right above where it wanted to take her in the first place. So far, it’s had three hosts, and it just left the third one last night. It’s been out for two weeks.”