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“Can’t be a pact if you’re the only person to have entered it,” I say automatically. Shane’s handled plenty of divorces, and one day, when drunk, he suggested that all of us enter a pact to never get married. Him, me, Burke, and Drew, because Leonard wasn’t around then. No one took him up on it. “Care to enlighten me about what I should know, oh scholar of the law?”
“Struck a nerve, huh?” he asks, giving me a knowing look that instantly annoys me. My throbbing wrist isn’t helping. I stopped by the store to get a wrist guard before picking Shane up, but I haven’t put it on yet. I know he’d remark on it. And I also wouldn’t look very intimidating if I showed up at this guy’s door with my wrist trussed up.
“Not at all,” I say. “I just want to get this over with so we can get that coffee.”
Shane nods, but it’s obvious he doesn’t believe me. He does me the favor of not calling me on it, though.
“Okay, but what I was getting at is there’s a chance that showing up like this might set the guy off.”
I have to admit he’s right, but I’m not ready to back down.
“You’re good at reading people,” I say. I almost laugh out loud when he sits up straighter in his seat, because I can hear Ruthie saying that he puffs up like one of her pastries every time he gets a compliment. “I want your read on this guy. I’m not going to feel comfortable until I get it.”
“Okay,” he says with a nod. “I can do that. But tone it down with the protective shit. We’ll just tell him that we know about the messages, and we won’t stand for him bothering her.”
I nod in agreement, but as we leave the car, my whole body feels tense—same way it does on the days when nothing will do except for a long punishing ride up the mountain.
ChapterThirteen
Mira
Inod to Shauna, and she knocks on the door of Byron’s apartment with as much aggression as if it’s his face. The hallway smells musty.
Delia’s with us too, standing beside me. When I asked her to stay in the car, explaining that we want Byron to know we’re angry and possibly dangerous, her expression hardened, and she insisted that she could do dangerous and, when it came to him, she very well might be dangerous. I’m proud, even though I know our mother would accuse me of corrupting my little sister. She always gets on Delia’s case about not being focused or ambitious. That used to be her refrain for me, too, but now that the bar is doing well, I’m “overly focused on my career and not soft enough to attract any kind of man but a deadbeat.” She’s a real sweetheart, our mother.
Speaking of whom…
Josie the Great might be a hack of the highest order, but she’s also in possession of good information, because when we got back into the car, Delia and I both had voice messages on our phones.Delightedvoice messages from our mother, who said she wasso sorrybut she met a silver fox named Alberto at a wine tasting, and he was going to whisk her away for a European vacation spanning Thanksgiving and Christmas. She apologized again, then slipped in a few barbs about how she deserved this because she’s always the one who does everything for the holidays, and it’s time for her to take some joy for herself. My message ended with an accusation that I’m selfish and a request for the recipe for the Old Fashioned we serve at the bar. Delia’s ended with a request for her to ask Burke if he wants to invest in Alberto’s dental instruments company.
Oh, and she offered to send me the menu plan for the Thanksgiving dinner she wanted to make and requested that I send her photos of the prepared food, proving she would still like to control us even though she’s bowed out of our plans.
“You know what this means, right?” Delia asked me in the car on the way to Byron’s. “Josie reallyispsychic.”
“Let’s not get hasty,” I told her. “Maybe she’s just nosy. Or good at making guesses.”
Did Byron know about my mom?
I intend to find out before my sister becomes Josie the Great’s first acolyte. It’s obvious she believes everything the psychic said, and I have a feeling she’s going to insist on doing every anti-hex cure she can find on the internet.
Given that I don’t have much else to do this weekend, and am reluctantly freaked out, I won’t deny her. Shauna seemed impressed too, and she more thoroughly messed with my head by telling us about another accurate reading Josie the Great did a couple of months ago.
It made me think about Danny and his supposed soulmate.
It can’t be Daphne, can it?
Daphne, of the severe bun and wire glasses?
Daphne, who understood him so little she called himbasic?
He deserves more.
There, I said it.
Shauna pounds on the door again, her mouth pinched. With her purple hair and all-black outfit, she looks badass, and I’m glad to have her by my side. Delia too. Because even though my little sister is the sweetest person I know, and usually looks it, no one would make the mistake of thinking she’s here to sell cookies.
I hear movement behind the door, and I can imagine Byron peering through the peephole. He’s probably wearing that scarlet silk robe he has, which he can fool himself into thinking makes him look like Lord Byron the poet.
“I hear you back there, you jerk,” I shout before realizing it might not be him. The band guys hang out here a lot—too much, if you ask me—and he’s had some women over since we broke up. I’d feel bad if I yelled at one of them. It’s not their fault that they too fell for the charms of some guitar dick.
