“I fell in the pool.”
“In the pool.” The way she echoed me dripped with doubt like I dripped water.
“Yes, I… was admiring it, and I leaned over too far, and, well…” I trailed off with a helpless shrug and what I hoped was a goofy grin.
“Uh-huh,” she said. “And what exactly were you doing down there?”
“Doing?”
Her eyebrows went up another level, like side-by-side elevators. Aloysius reared back in alarm.
“I was…” Suddenly the fire witch with the tiny levitating fire stars came into view. “Hot! I was hot.” I fanned myself. “It’s the change, you know. All hot flash-y and sweaty.” I plucked at my soaked shirtfront, realizing I might have been overdoing it.
Azure blinked in tandem with the owl. “Well. Well, then. I’m glad you were able to… cool off”—she waved her hand around—“or whatever.”
“Thanks,” I said, moving past as quickly as I could without seeming outright rude.
“Oh, and Zelda?” Azure said. The owl clacked its beak like punctuation.
I froze.
“Falling in the pool doesn’t usually leave your back dry.”
I winced but didn’t dare turn around. Instead, I hoofed it over to our table.
“Where have youbeen?” Mom said. “I was about to send out a search party.”
“I ran into an old acquaintance.”
Poppy looked up from what appeared to be her third plate. “An old acquaintance? I wouldn’t have thought you knew anyone here apart from me. And Azure and Malkin, of course.”
I shifted in my seat and leaned over to examine the tea sandwiches on Poppy’s plate. “Are those good? They look good.”
“They are quite, quite yummy,” Poppy said, brandishing one happily. “At first I thought I liked the chicken curry and mango chutney one, but then the smoked salmon one snuck up on me and—” She put the sandwich down. “Hello, are you trying to change the subject?”
“I’m just hungry.” I swiped one off her plate and crammed it in my mouth, removing the possibility of talking.
“She is definitely changing the subject,” Mom said. “She’s no better at lying now than when she was a teenager, sneaking out of school to go someplace exotic to eat.”
I swallowed. “It wasn’t exotic, Mom. It was a chain teppanyaki restaurant.”
My mother leaned close and lowered her voice. “What happened? You’re soaking wet and you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Leave it to Mom to nail it in one. “I’ll tell you everything,” I said. “Just let me eat all this nice, expensive food first.”
“You act like it’s your last meal,” my mother joked, possibly to cover the fact that she looked worried.
“It’s not my last meal. I promise,” I said. “But I have a feeling I’m going to need my strength.”
11
Thedemolishedpastries,cookiecrumbs, and jam turned the plates into an art installation that wouldn’t have been out of place at the Museum of Modern Art. “Come on,” I said. “I want to show you something.”
“Ooh, an adventure!” Poppy said.
“Try to look nonchalant,” I added.
“Nonchalant,” Poppy repeated, with a broad wink that would have looked highly suspicious to anyone in a twenty-foot radius.
