It Never Rhines but It Pours (34 page)

Cecily looked at the still warm body on the floor and licked her lips. “I’ll stay here and start cleaning up,” she said.

I made a face. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know. “Thanks,” I said, pretending not to see the hunger in her quickly darkening eyes. “We’ll be back in an hour.”

“Take your time,” was the answer and she waited impatiently for us to leave.

Needless to say, we were out of there quickly. There was no one outside and I paused for a moment in indecision. Where would Annabeth take the girls? The first place to check was Carolyn’s house. I trotted back the way we came, Sarah running lightly behind me. I was wheezing and had a huge stitch in my side after the first block but Sarah didn’t even sound like she was breathing hard. Oh, to be young again.

Hmmph. Speaking of young, we’d have to have a little talk about her weight loss bracelet once things calmed down a bit. I couldn’t believe that she had been so stupid as to buy a spell from a witch. She was lucky it hadn’t made her
gain
weight, or grow a second nose, or make pimples break out all over her face. Oh no, all it had done was let the witches influence her thoughts and listen in on our plans. We were definitely having a talk about this.

We weren’t talking about anything right now though. I needed all the air I could get to keep jogging. Maybe I wasn’t in as great shape as I thought. We rounded the final corner and I started sizing up the distance to Carolyn’s driveway. I might just make it there before I passed out from lack of oxygen. That’s when I saw the house lights on. Someone was home, and I was betting it was my daughters. I got a second wind and sprinted the last couple yards.

“Hey,” Sarah panted behind me, but I wasn’t going to feel safe until I held my babies in my arms again.

I burst in the front door and saw Carolyn, Megan, Cassidy, and Harry sitting at the kitchen table. Floyd was helping Annabeth serve them steaming cups of hot cocoa, topped with marshmallows.

“Megan! Cassidy!” I exclaimed in relief. I held out my arms, wanting to squeeze them both and make sure they were real.

“Hi, Mom,” Megan said, calmly sipping her drink. “We got hot chocolate.”

Cassie was even less enthused to see me. “Hi, An-Sarah!” she said. “Wanna mashmillow?”

Sarah came to a stop behind me. “They don’t appear to be emotionally scarred,” she whispered in my ear.

Ha. Little ingrates. There I had been, tearing my hair out with worry, risking my life and lots of other people’s lives, sick at heart with missing them, and they acted like not a thing had happened.

I turned to Carolyn. She was dazedly looking around the room like she had never seen it before. “Piper?” she said weakly.

“Sarah?”

“I’m on it,” Sarah assured me. “Hey, Carolyn!” she greeted her gently. “Why don’t you come back to your room with me and we’ll have a little talk.”

Carolyn looked at me for permission. I gave her a big reassuring smile and a hand push motion. She set her mug down carefully on the table and followed meekly after Sarah. Wow. Pravus had really done a number on her. Speaking of which, I pulled out my phone and called my dad.

“Hey, how’s Mom feeling?” I asked, fingers crossed.

“Oh, hi, Piper,” he answered. “She’s fine. She woke up a little while ago and doesn’t remember much. She’s in the kitchen right now trying to put all the dishes away. I think she thinks I’m playing a practical joke on her.” He laughed, completely unconcerned. “We’ll just all have to pretend like this didn’t happen. You know how your mom gets when she’s embarrassed.”

“Okay, Dad. Mum’s the word.”

I hung up relieved and knelt down between Megan and Cassidy’s chairs. I put an arm around each of them and kissed the tops of their heads. All the tears that I had been holding back chose that moment to burst forth. I scooped them both into my lap and sobbed and sobbed.

“Mommy?” Megan asked. “You okay?”

“Yeah, honey,” I wailed. “Mommy’s fine. I just love you guys.”

“Wet,” Cassidy announced distastefully.

“I’m sorry,” I sniffed, wiping tears off her face. “Mommy’s just really happy to see you two.”

Sarah came back in and picked up Carolyn’s hot cocoa mug. She hesitated for a second then decided that she wasn’t really that worried about germs. After all we had been through, who could blame her. She took a sip and closed her eyes in bliss.

“All okay?” I asked, nodding back at the master bedroom.

“Everything’s squared away,” she said, taking another sip. “All will be back to normal in the morning.”

“Good,” I sighed. “I need to get these two little munchkins back to bed.”

Annabeth quickly collected the mugs and rinsed them out in the sink. I set a hand on her shoulder. “Thanks,” I said softly. “I owe you.”

She smiled. “You got rid of that witch. I’m the one who owes you.”

I looked over to where Floyd was putting the marshmallows away. “What do you want to do about him?” I asked.

“Floyd?”

“Yeah. Sarah can erase his memory again.”

She stopped and looked at him for a long moment. “It didn’t work too well last time,” she said slowly.

“No, he’s pretty persistent.”

She cocked her head to one side. “I could make some money off of this.”

“You could.”

We both looked back at Harry, half asleep at the table. “Harry and I could use some extra cash.”

I grinned, “All right then. Floyd can remember. But if you ever change your mind …”

“I know who to call.”

I collected the car-seats from Carolyn’s car in the garage and moved them back to my minivan. It would be a tight fit, but it was just a short trip across town. Cecily appeared at my side as I backed out of the car after arranging the seatbelts.

“Hi,” she said, making me jump half a yard in the air.

“Hey,” I held a hand over my pounding heart. “Thanks for that.”

She smiled. A cat in the cream smile. I shut down any thought process that might try to make sense of that. I didn’t want to think about it. Really.

“Do you mind if I take the girls home to bed before we go back to clean up?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It’s already done.”

“Really? That was fast.”

She smiled again and I decided not to ask any more questions. Later, I found out that Cecily’s idea of “cleaning up” was to pour gasoline on everything and set it on fire. The next week there was an article in the newspaper about a vagrant accidentally setting fire to the house he had broken into and burning it down, killing himself in the process. How the forensics explained his decapitated head, I had no idea, and I wasn’t going to ask. Some things are better left in the dark.

I did have one thing I needed to know though. I waited until Sarah was dropped off at her home, the girls were safely tucked in bed, Floyd had left and Annabeth and Harry had settled in at Cecily’s house for the night.

“Cecily?” I asked.

“Yes?”

“Why didn’t Pravus use magic on me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he used magic on you and Sarah. He kept you pinned to the walls. Honestly, when I picked up that sword I had no hope of using it. I thought for sure that he was just playing with me. Why did he let me pick it up and swing it?”

She smiled. “He was bluffing, Piper, and you called his bluff. By the way, thank you. Very few people would have been able to stand up to him.”

I shook my head. “He didn’t even really try to stop me!”

“He was using all his power to hold Sarah and me in place,” she explained. “All he had left was enough to try and convince you that you had failed.” She made a rueful face, “It was working on me. I thought it was over. I thought the best thing would be for you to kill me. I’m glad you didn’t though.”

I felt a flash of anger. “He thought I was the most vulnerable!” The anger turned to rage. “That little witch creep used up all his power on the two people he
thought
were the biggest threats!”

Cecily backed up a step and held up both hands. “Whoa there! It’s over!”

I stomped up and down to release tension. “He thought I wasn’t a threat! He really thought I wasn’t a threat!” I whirled on Cecily. “I
am
a threat!”

She grinned and patted my arm. “I know you are, Piper.”

I shook her off. “I’m dangerous! I should be taken seriously!”

Cecily edged towards the front door. “Yes, you should. But for once, I’m glad that Pravus underestimated you.”

I crossed my arms and scowled. I was glad I cut off his stupid head. That was the last time he would ever get to misjudge me. I showed him. I suddenly noticed that the house was empty. Cecily had slipped out quietly.

I tiptoed into the girls’ room to watch them sleep. They looked so peaceful. I knew that in a few days they would be driving me crazy again and I would threaten to sell them to the gypsies. But right now, with almost losing them so clear in my mind, I would treasure every little moment I had with them.

Chapter Thirty-four:

The Billboard

“Kind of vague, don’t you think?” Cecily, Sarah and I were standing underneath a gigantic roadside billboard off International Drive in Orlando.

I read the billboard again. It merely listed my cell number and instructed whoever could read it to call.

Sarah cocked her head to one side. “Yeah,” she agreed, “it’s vague. Maybe it should say ‘if you can read this you’re not crazy.’”

“That might not be true,” Cecily muttered. She was still a little piqued after our argument on the way over. She had insisted on bringing the Sword of Justice with her. I think she was more than a little jealous that
I
had gotten to use it and she hadn’t. It’s not like I wanted it to happen that way. The thing gave me the creeps, and I don’t care what she said, I still found it almost impossible to believe that it wasn’t clearly visible to everyone. Sort of like the billboard. How could everyone
not
read it? Would I be fielding calls from half the city?

“The witches came through,” Sarah pointed out.

“Thank you Captain Obvious,” I replied.

“I mean, you asked them to do a spell, they did it, and it worked.” I knew she was trying to make a point, and I knew what that point was, but I wasn’t going to help her.

“So far,” I said darkly. I didn’t know how the WAND could twist this to come back and bite me, and I was pretty sure that they hadn’t figured out a way yet either. But when they did …

“So,” Sarah plunged on, “Not all spells are bad.”

“Like weight loss spells?” I asked snidely.

Sarah fidgeted. “I’m just saying, we needed this billboard. It’s going to help our membership in the USB. And
that
helps protect all humans.
And
we’ll be helping people who think they’re crazy. So, in this case, it’s a good spell.”

Cecily took a step back into the shade. “There’s always another way,” she said.

Sarah crossed her arms stubbornly, “Yeah, maybe. I’m just saying, it’s not all black and white like Piper makes it out to be.”

I decided to back up Cecily, just to cause a little trouble. “Cecily’s right. We almost found another human with an ability all on our own.”

“Who,” Sarah scoffed. “The lie detector kid? He was a fake, paid by the WAND to lie to us!”

I turned to walk back to where we had parked the car. It was too hot to stand out here for long. I needed air-conditioning. “Yeah, well, he might not have been and then we would have found him.” It was lame for a retort, but it was the best I had at the moment. I could have pointed out that we never would have seen the newspaper article if Sarah hadn’t been wearing the bracelet and under the WAND’s influence, but I could tell Sarah was feeling guilty enough at the moment. I would save that for when I needed some heavy duty guilt-ammunition.

I bumped into Cecily who had been walking in front of me. She had stopped suddenly and was staring at something. “What?” I asked.

She pointed at our car. “Isn’t that the lie detector guy?” she asked.

I blinked and put up a hand to shade my eyes. Sure enough, standing awkwardly by the car was the kid we had just been talking about. I heard a sharp intake of breath behind me and then Sarah went barreling past.

“Hey, you!” she yelled. The boy cringed but stood his ground. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here!”

Cecily and I came to a stop, flanking Sarah. The boy looked like he wanted to run. He opened and closed his mouth a few times like a goldfish.

“Well?” Sarah demanded. “You here to
lie
to us again?”

“I never …” the boy finally sputtered. “I didn’t … I …” he blushed bright red. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was paid a thousand dollars to say that whoever you brought to see me was telling the truth.”

I crossed my arms and gave him my best “mom” stare. “How did you know we were the people to lie to?” I asked suspiciously. This could be another trick by the WAND. Get us to believe that a normal human had abilities and then after we tell said human about the USB, we all get executed for revealing magic to humans.