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“Fine, pizza, with a potential side order of repeat sex.”
He climbed out of the truck and craned his head back through the door. “If I place the order that way at Pete’s Pies, the lady who answers their phones will pass out.”
“But she will remember the order.”
“I’ll get the bags,” he called from the truck’s tailgate. “Can you grab my mail?”
“Sure!”
I was halfway to the door-mounted mailbox when I heard Jed yelp, “Shit!” and then a crunch. When I rounded the truck, I saw him standing over my suitcase, which was lying on its side in the gravel.
“What happened?” I asked, fumbling with the zipper. I’d placed the plaque inside a zippered pocket on the outside of the bag. I could only hope that Jed hadn’t dropped the bag on that side.
Jed’s expression was stricken. “It just slipped out of my hand.”
I scrambled through my overnight bag to find the cloth bag I’d wrapped around the plaque. My heart sank as the bag tinkled and crunched in my shaking hands. The clay was shattered. There were three or four pieces the size of my thumb, but everything else was practically dust. It wasn’t surprising, I supposed, considering how old the clay was. I took deep breaths and tried to keep myself centered. I couldn’t risk having a meltdown and blowing up Jed’s porch lights.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, his face ashen. “How bad is it?”
“Bad,” I told him, holding up the clay shards. I took a deep breath and forced my voice to stay steady. “Accidents happen, Jed. It’s not your fault.”
Jed bent to examine the bits in my hand. The outsides of the larger pieces were distressed and old, but the interiors were just as bright and fresh as a new penny. Maybe the hum of magic that had cloaked the plaque all those years had formed some sort of stasis?
“How angry is Jane going to be?” he asked, taking one piece and turning it over in my palm. “I can tell her it was my fault.”
“Jane won’t be angry at all,” I told him honestly. I tried to manage a smile for him, so he wouldn’t beat himself up over this. “It’s just an ashtray.”
* * *
Later that evening, I tried to piece the plaque back together like a jigsaw puzzle. I managed a flat, vaguely round shape, but that was it. I even tried to use the plaque’s own magic to get the pieces to call out to one another, to re-form to its original state, but it didn’t respond the way I thought a magically infused item would. They were just bits of clay. Instead of contaminating those bits with the fumes of Super Glue, I decided I would take them to the shop, put them in an unbleached cotton bag, and close the lot up in a drawer full of good Kilcairy soil. That was the extent of what I could do.
I heard Jed walk out his front door and listened for the sound of his truck, but I got distracted when the phone rang. My dear Penny didn’t have an opinion about whether the plaque would “work” when it was broken. It was possible it wouldn’t work, but at the same time, I felt sort of free. The Kerrigans couldn’t get all four items. They couldn’t bind us, which would ease my family’s anxiety and keep the clinic running smoothly. Of course, we couldn’t bind them, but that was another problem entirely. Still, I’d failed to protect centuries of family history. And I was depressed beyond the telling of it, and Jed was embarrassed. The evening I’d hoped would be spent having the aforementioned bendy-straw sex was spent in separate quarters. I sat in the kitchen, staring down at the dust, trying to figure out what to do.>“I’m staying at the Sleep-Tight Inn, aren’t I?” I muttered. “That’s adventure enough for me.” Glancing up the trail, I saw a decrepit whitewashed church in the distance. Its bell clanged loudly, although there was no one to yank the pull.
“Where are we?” I asked as he adjusted his dark-blue neckerchief.
“South America?” he guessed. “I hate to belabor the point, but it’s your dream.”
I hissed as a banana leaf snapped back and thwacked me across the face. “So what nonhelpful advice do you have to offer me this time?”
“Never trust a man with the middle name Wayne,” he said.
“What?”
He grunted, hacking his way through a clump of banana leaves. “You never said the advice had to be related to the Elements.”
“Why am I even bothering?” I sighed, following him. “You know, I managed to find two of the Elements on my own. I don’t need your help.”
“Of course you don’t,” he said as a large yellow butterfly fluttered past his shoulder. “But you’re the one who keeps bringing me back here.”
“Mr. Wainwright,” I growled.
“You’re still not going to call me Grandpa, are you?” he said sadly.
“Not for a while,” I told him. “I don’t know you that well yet.”
“I hoped that spending time at the shop would help you get to know me.”
“I thought you were a figment of my imagination. Do figments hope?”
