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Sophie eyed me speculatively, like she didn’t quite believe me. I would have smiled guilelessly, but I couldn’t control all of the muscles in my face yet.
“See?” Mr. Marchand said, offering me a handkerchief to wipe the drool from my chin. “She doesn’t know anything about Mr. Calix’s whereabouts. There’s no reason to subject her to any more questioning.”
“Always the soft touch, Waco,” Sophie murmured.
I cradled my arm against my chest and smacked my dry lips against each other. My mouth tasted like old pennies and Gigi’s volleyball kneepads. I felt a hand at my elbow, leading me to one of the benches so I could sit. I was surprised to find that it was Ophelia, and she was gazing at me intently.
I nodded weakly and smiled at Mr. Marchand, handing him his square of crushed linen. There was a W embroidered on the corner and a strange little white-on-white flower. I would remember to ask him about it, once I could produce all of the vowel sounds.
“This is the last time we’ll discuss this matter,” Ophelia told me, her voice official and louder than was probably necessary. “Do not discuss Mr. Calix with anyone outside of the Council office. Do you understand me? Continue with your business as usual.”
Mr. Crown and Sophie left without another word to me—surprise, surprise. Mr. Marchand gave me a little bow before turning to the car to argue with Mr. Crown about the proper etiquette involved in calling shotgun.
Ophelia lingered, her eyes glued to the upstairs window. Without looking down at me, Ophelia said, “If you should stumble across Mr. Calix, let him know that we are looking for him. But he should stay where he is.”
While the use of the word “stumble” was eerily accurate, I kept an untroubled expression on my face. Behind Ophelia, Mr. Crown had lost the shotgun argument and was currently glowering at me from the backseat. Ophelia threw on a mask of smug indifference, which was her usual expression. Turning to the car, she tossed her hair and sauntered away.
When the SUV was safely speeding down the drive, I called over my shoulder, “Did you get all that?”
There was no answer from the upstairs window.
“Cal?”
Still nothing. I sank my head into my hands and sighed.
“If he’s thrown up again, I’m going to leave him outside and let the sun sort it out.”
A dark blur popped up to my right. I shrieked, picked up another of my mom’s soapstone sculptures—a squirrel—and brought it crashing against Cal’s head. Or I would have, if he hadn’t managed to duck at the last minute. The momentum of the swing carried my arm through the arc, and the statue was slung across the kitchen. Off-balance, I stumbled into Cal with an “uhff.”
I shrank back, sure that this would be enough of an excuse for Cal to sink his fangs into my neck and cease my attempts to brain him with ugly wildlife statuary. But instead, he seemed to think it was adorable that I had tried to drop him like panties at a KISS concert. He grinned down at me, leaning close and running his nose along my hairline. He murmured, “You’re a vicious little hellion when cornered, aren’t you?”
“No, you just seem to bring it out of me.”
“I like it. I do have a question for you, though.”
Cal took my elbow and led me to the little reading alcove near the top of the stairs. My dad had built a special window seat for my mom, who had always dreamed of a place where she could “think and meditate”—also known as hiding from us all.
After culling through most of their paperbacks and secondhand-bookstore finds, I’d filled the shelves with my old college textbooks, the family’s old botany books, the encyclopedias Dad had bought one letter at a time from the local Kroger. Cal was folded up in said window seat, poring over our copy of Rare Plants of Kentuckiana.
“Why do you have these books?” he asked me.
“Because my mom was an avid gardener. And I studied botany in college,” I said. “And my dad liked yard sales.”
“Why didn’t you mention that before?”
“Because you were being an enormous asshat?”
He scowled. “An enormous what?”
I ignored the instinct to clap my hand over my mouth at the use of such a naughty word. I shook my head, crossing my arms over my chest. “No, I don’t think I’ll be explaining that. I will enjoy your situational ignorance.”
“It didn’t occur to you that these books might be helpful to me?”
I smiled thinly. “Oh, no, it did.”
“Resourceful and resentful,” he muttered.
“Only toward asshats. Look through the books as much as you want. Though I don’t know how helpful they’ll be. None of them was written with the supernatural in mind.”
