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“I don’t suppose you know of any magical tricks that would clean this room for us, huh?” he murmured into my neck.
I shook my head. “Does knowing the number for the Magic Maid Service count?”
“Probably not.” He sighed.
* * *
Jed and I slowly, but surely, set Jane’s shop back to rights. I put the knickknacks back in their little cubbies. I put the boxes of random stock back in the stockroom. Eventually, it began to look like the respectable establishment it was, and not a supernatural yard sale. I grabbed a bottle of juice from the fridge and plopped into a chair, propping my feet up on a table.
“Big. Fat. Failure.”
“Aw, baby, I still love you anyway,” Jed said, pushing my hair out of my face. “Or I can see myself in that particular predicament pretty soon.”
My eyes popped open. “Love me? Really?”
“Well, it’s not the confession I had in mind for this moment, but yeah, I do. You pulled me in with your wily, witchy ways. I don’t see any other woman kissin’ me after seein’ me turn into a giant alien Smurf.”
“You’re not the first man I’ve brought down.” I laughed, closing my eyes as he stroked a hand down my face.
“You just sit here a minute, OK? I’m gonna take these out to the garbage.” He hefted up two large bags of debris we’d cleaned out of the store. He winked at me and transformed into a sort of man-raccoon hybrid. “Just adjustin’ to my environment. Raccoons love garbage cans.”
“Showoff,” I muttered as I sat back in the chair.
A giant raccoon-man loved me. How many girls could say that?
Jane hadn’t bothered to close the sunproof shades before she left. Orange-gold sunlight flooded through the windows and the glass transom, giving the shop a cozy glow. I picked up Mr. Wainwright’s copy of A Guide to Traversing the Supernatural Realm, running my fingers over the embossed gold title. I opened the book and was surprised to find that the title page was signed by the author: “The point of any quest is not the prize but the lessons learned along the way. Keep your eyes up and open. You never know what you might find.—Warm regards, Jacques LeMoir.”
“And ambiguous messages prove unhelpful once again.” I sighed, remembering the last thing Mr. Wainwright said to me just the other night. “So the lesson is that failure is OK as long as I come out of it feeling like I’ve learned something. That’s a little condescending.”
I closed my eyes and yawned.
“I tried, Grandpa, Nana,” I whispered to the empty room. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t figure it out.”
I sat there a long time, trying to figure out what would be the best course of action from here. If I asked very nicely, I wondered if the flight attendant would let me drop the Elements out of some sort of hatch while flying over the ocean. It would be safer than leaving them out in the world where the Kerrigans could get hold of them and make trouble.
I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyelids, wishing I could make time go back so I could relive this whole journey over again without making any silly mistakes. I would have confronted Jed earlier and pulled him over to our side. I wouldn’t have reacted so badly when Dick paid attention to me and spent more time getting to know him. I might have brought Penny with me.
Keep your eyes up and open. A soft, warm voice whispered over my ear like a spring breeze. I jumped. You never know what you might find.
I blinked blearily around the room. The sun shifted through the window, bouncing off of a mirror on the wall and reflecting in a bright silver circle over the door. I wiped at my tired eyes and blinked a few times. That wasn’t a silver circle. It was a bell, the old Indian cowbell Jane said had been hanging there since before she worked at the store.
I pushed to my feet, studying the battered silver shape.
It couldn’t be that simple.
I grabbed a footstool and dragged it over to the door to get a better look. The designs I’d assumed were Indian were tiny rows of Celtic knots.
It was that feckin’ simple.
This was the bell. This was the Sea bell. I’d been searching this stupid shop all this time, and the bell had been hanging over the door the whole time.
“If there is a Goddess out there, you have a really mean sense of humor,” I griped.
I’d found it. Just in time. I’d found it. I could do the binding and go home.
Home to my family, but far away from Jed. I blew out a long breath. I would miss him so much. We were so new, so tentative, that we’d never even broached the subject of what would happen when I went home. We hadn’t made promises to each other, and now . . .>Jed spent a lot of time on the phone with his parents, asking questions, informing them of our discoveries. It took him a few days to grasp that there was no cure for his “condition,” because he wasn’t actually cursed. He was a genetic anomaly, like were-creatures or people who could curl their tongues. Understanding that potentially he could eventually control it, he seemed to be more accepting of it.
I was sure there was an object lesson in there somewhere, but I chose to ignore it.
