The girl shrugs, her long, straight, black hair shifting with the movement. She’s about my height with narrow, dark brown eyes, soft rounded features, and a small mouth that has a pronounced Cupid’s bow.
She stops at the back of a purple van that has the decal “Mei’s Garden” written on the side. Waving her foot underneath the van, the hatchback door opens, and she starts rummaging through stacks of Tupperware boxes. When she pulls out a brown fleece blanket and a couple of juice boxes, she notices me staring at the logo.
“I was a miracle baby,” she comments, as a strange way of explaining. “My moms got a little overzealous in their celebrations and decided to rename the family business after me.”
“What did it used to be called?” I question.
“Frank and Son Home Gardening,” she answers. With the blanket and juice boxes in her hands, she gives me a long assessing look. “Frank was my grandpa, and it turned out he had a daughter. Not a son.”
I nod, not sure what else she wants from me, and take the blanket from her hands.
It seems to be the right response because she holds up the boxes and asks, “Does your aunt prefer apple or grape juice?”
“Um, apple, I guess?” I reply, hugging the blanket to my chest.
The banality of choosing juice boxes, while blood sacrifices are being held thirty feet down this dirt path, feels surreal.
Mei grabs another juice box from the Tupperware in the trunk before closing the door behind her. Looking at me, she shakes her head and grins, showing off a mouthful of braces. “I can’t believe you’re a real blood member of the Volkov Coven. One of the original bloodlines. That’s so cool.”
“Yeah, cool,” I mutter, because as per usual, I don’t understand the significance of anything past the literal.
Instead of walking back, she begins juggling the juice boxes, the red sleeves of her robes falling to her elbows. “So, rumor is you were raised human. That’s why you can’t control your magic.”
“Is there a question in there?” I inquire, startled by her bluntness and trying to figure out how much I’m supposed to share.
“Well, duh,” she responds, her eyes focused on the boxes flying through the air. “Is it true?”
There are too many secrets running through my head, and I can’t keep them straight anymore. Remembering Donovan advising to give people just enough truth so they don’t dig deeper, I decide that this seems okay to share. It wasn’t like I had any control over it, and I don’t know enough about the supernatural world to pretend otherwise.
“It’s true,” I answer as nonchalantly as possible, my toe digging small circles into the dirt path.
“Crazy,” she replies with a subtle shake of her head. “Knowing nothing then just bam, suddenly magic.”
“Bam is right,” I mutter, fighting the urge to wrap my hand around my amulet again.
Does it even work anymore? Leave it to me to break a family heirloom that’s millennia old.
Mei catches two of the juice boxes, while the third falls to the ground. She picks it up and dusts it off while giving me a guilty look. “Oops. Don’t worry. It was one of the grape flavored ones, and my moms won’t care. Earth witches and all. We practically breathe dirt.”
Attempting to hold all the boxes in one hand, she flips back her robes, showing off a pair of jeans and hiking boots underneath, and grabs her phone from her back pocket. After checking the time, she puts it away and drops the robes, the fabric whooshing around her legs.
“We can head back now,” she announces with a sad sigh, looking up the road. “They should be finished.”
“Sorry you had to miss your first blood sacrifice,” I mumble, readjusting the blanket in my hands.
Mei shrugs. “Oh well. There will be others.”
I give her a look.
“Oh, you were being sarcastic,” she comments, but doesn’t look remorseful.
I shake my head, and when I start to walk back, she falls in step beside me.
Mei seems nice, if a little weird. It makes me wonder if the guys might be wrong…or at least a little biased, and maybe not everyone in the coven is awful.
One way to find out.
“Can I ask you something?” I question, watching her profile out of the corner of my eye.
