“We’re right here,” Jessica replied gleefully. We emerged into the living room and she threw her arm over my shoulder like we were old pals.
Daniel slowly removed his coat. “So I see. What happened?”
Jessica steered me over to the couch and gave me a shove so firm I lost my balance and sat. She bustled around, humming and scooping up the empty plates I’d left behind, sashaying off to the kitchen. The way she went back and forth from venom to sweetness was enough to give anyone whiplash.
Daniel cleared his throat.
“Sorry,” I said, coming back to myself from yet another attempt to follow Jessica’s patented weirdness. “I was able to summon Prospero.”
“And?”
“The Mirror is now a flamingo drinking glass.”
“I can’t imagine that’s all of it.”
“The Arcade is coming back.”
Daniel blew out a breath and sank into a chair.
Jessica reemerged from the kitchen and stood behind his shoulder, at ease, in a pose that reminded me of her second-in-command status with Prospero. She smiled at me, secretly.
“What are you going to do?” Daniel said.
“Me? I have no idea. It took a stroke of luck to defeat her last time. I doubt I could even pull the same trick twice. Not to mention that it was Prospero who set that meeting in the first place—all we did was follow him to it.”
“Maybe he’s just messing with you.”
“He did enjoy that,” Jessica added. “Messing with you, that is.”
So do you, I wanted to add. “Maybe,” I said. “But I get the feeling it cost him to bring me this message. Cost him enough that I don’t think he’s coming back.”
“You don’t think you could summon him again?”
I shook my head. “I know I couldn’t.” I knew when a pizza was cooked by the smell of it; I didn’t even have to see it. This was the same. “I want Mom to go home. I don’t want her here if this goes to hell.” I stood and paced, trying to shake off the rising worry.
“Understandable,” he said. “Do you think she’ll agree?”
“I know she won’t.”
“Tell her if she goes back now, you’ll come visit her,” Jessica said.
I stopped. “That’s actually not a bad idea. What made you think of that?”
Jessica shrugged. “That’s whatmymother would want.”
I stared.
“What?” she said. “You people act like I didn’t exist before I got initiated. You’re not the only person with a mother. And—let me tell you—it getsreally hardto explain not visiting for twenty years.”
Daniel’s gaze turned to her with red-glowing sympathy.
Even when Mom and I weren’t getting along, I could always see her. Even if it was awkward.
The Blessed could not. Easy to believe they were too dangerous to roam, when they were midnight stories of blood and fear.
Harder when you had four of them as friends.
14
