The Conjuring Glass (4 page)

Penny turned from Susan and stared at her hands, folded in her lap. She was close to tears again, but they were not precisely tears of sadness or loss this time. There was a touch of the old sadness behind them, but mostly they were tears brought by empathy. Empathy, and strangely enough, hope.

Susan was like her, an orphan with no real family left apart from her sister, but someone had cared for her anyway. Susan had been where she was now, and understood her better than any of the social workers ever could have. Penny couldn’t think of her as a mother, would probably never be able to, but that was okay.

Susan was more like a sister.

It no longer felt to Penny like Susan was letting her stay out of obligation—though she thought part of it was the repaying of an old debt—but because in a way, they were family.

“June, my sister, was eighteen and had her own place by then. She invited me to move in with her, but we never got along. I think she asked because she thought she had to, and she was insulted when I decided to stay with your mom instead.”

“Miss Riggs?” Penny interrupted.

Susan nodded.

“That’s why she doesn’t want me here,” Penny blurted, and immediately regretted it. She had resolved not to make an issue of her argument with Susan’s sister, but now she had brought it up.

Susan seemed unconcerned and unsurprised by this.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “I wanted to pick you up myself but I had to work. Owning my own business is a dream come true for me, but it means I get to work six days a week.”

Penny nodded her understanding. Her mom had worked long hours and many weekends at the agency in the city. “What kind of shop is it?”

“I own a bookstore,” she said, “but I also sell stationery and office supplies to most of the other businesses in Dogwood. The bookstore would never survive without the office supply side.”

Susan began to rock them in the porch swing. “Living here rent-free helps too.”

Penny relaxed a little now that the conversation had turned away from Miss Riggs. She was more than happy not to think about Susan’s nasty-tempered sister.

“Your grandparents died before you were born, so when Diana took you to San Francisco she let me stay as caretaker. I pay the taxes and take care of the place. She willed it to you,” Susan said, “but I’m the executor.”

“It’s all mine?”

“Yes. Once you turn eighteen you’re free to kick me out, but until then you just have to put up with me,” Susan said with a wink.

“Did you know my father?”

Susan cringed, and the porch swing stopped abruptly as she planted her feet on the floorboards with a loud
thump
. A tense silence followed as Penny waited for an answer. Any answer.

“I wish I could tell you about him, kiddo,” Susan said at last. She patted Penny’s shoulder, rose, and strode back inside the house, leaving Penny alone to wonder what her father could have done to turn her mom, and it seemed her mom’s friends, so completely against him.

Penny stopped walking at intervals to take in new scents, scents she’d never experienced in the city: wildflowers, dew-dampened grass, and acres of wild clover. She walked and walked, paying little attention to her direction. She heard the far off babble of running water, Little Canyon Creek maybe, but couldn’t locate its source.

The mostly flat ground became sloped and rocky; the wild grass and clover thinned, stunted scrub brush and scrawny trees rose up to meet her. She was determined to gain the top of the hill—to look back and see her house from afar.

“Ehem.” The sound of a cleared throat.

Penny jumped back a step, startled, and tottered until she found a handhold on a stunted tree twisting its way out of the ground to her left. She turned her head left, right, then peered down the slope behind her.

“Ah, my apologies miss. Didn’t mean t’ startle you.”

Penny faced forward again and saw the owner of the voice at the top of the hill, only feet in front of her. A large red fox, sitting on its haunches, its head cocked to one side, and grinning down at her. Penny had seen foxes in books and on TV, but none of them had been this large. None of them had talked, either.

“Uh …” Penny said. “Wha …?”

“I wondered when you’d make it this way. Fancy a chat?”

Penny did not fancy a chat.

Shrieking, she let go of the tree and ran straight down the hill as fast as she had ever run, very lucky to make it to the bottom still on her feet. She ran until the big fox was a speck sitting atop the distant hill. She ran until the hill itself was an indistinct lump in the green distance.

Panting, Penny stomped up the porch steps, threw the front door open, and rushed inside, slamming it shut behind her and locking it.

Zoe

The rest of that day and all of the next, Penny stayed safely shut in the house. She spent most of the time in her room, rereading one of her old books, which failed to hold her interest for more than a few minutes at a time, tuning her bedside radio endlessly in search of something that wasn’t country music or talk radio, and staring out the small round window across the room from her bed. She could see the fox’s hill in the far distance, and just past its crest, the high boughs of a grove of trees.

Sometimes she saw the fox, a far off speck moving in the distance.

When Penny had to go downstairs, she moved with speed, glancing cautiously through any window she happened to pass, seeing that weird talking fox more often than not. Sometimes it seemed to grin at her; sometimes it dropped a conspiratorial wink.

She thought about telling Susan, but couldn’t think of a way to bring it up that didn’t sound crazy. Besides, whenever Susan came home from work the fox disappeared.

On Wednesday morning Penny surprised Susan by meeting her at the door, dressed and ready to go into town.

“It’s about time, kiddo. Jenny wants to meet you.” Jenny was Susan’s only employee. “You need to get out anyway. Try to make a few friends before school starts.”

Penny mumbled a reply. Her stomach squirmed a little at the prospect of meeting new kids, trying to make new friends. She couldn’t banish the thought that every kid in this small town would turn out to be as annoying and stupid as Rooster.

Nevertheless, Penny knew she would have to try eventually.

Even if she didn’t manage to make any new friends, she might find something new to read at Susan’s bookstore.

Most importantly, she would be away from the house for the day, in town, where she hoped the talking fox wouldn’t follow.

It was a short drive from the end of Clover Hill Lane to downtown Dogwood. Penny looked out her window as they passed the school. Some younger kids played on the merry-go-round, slide, and jungle gym. The football field next to the school was empty, but Penny saw more kids, some her own age, in the city park on the other side of a tall fence. Most looked like they were just passing through, on their way to one place or another. But a small group of boys played baseball, and a girl sat alone under a tree close to an aged gazebo reading a book.

“She’s new here too,” Susan said, nodding toward the reading girl. “She comes in every few days to browse my books.”

Penny did a double take at the lone girl.

“Can I go to the park?”

“Of course you can,” Susan said, and smiled at her. “That’s the advantage of small town living, kiddo. You can go out by yourself.”

This was a new concept for Penny. In the city, her mom only let her out with the babysitter. So even though there was more to do there, she still didn’t get to go out often.

Here she was free to go out on her own, and the enormity of this new freedom was a little shocking.

Dogwood, small as it was, suddenly seemed huge with possibilities.

“There it is,” Susan said, pointing at a shop front with a blue awning and a sign that said Sullivan’s.

Penny peered through the front windows as they passed, catching a glimpse of a plump teen, Jenny, she assumed, with thick glasses and short brown hair, turning on lights inside. She also caught a glimpse of the shop next to Sullivan’s. The windows of that shop were still pitch black. The sign hanging above the door said: Golden Arts
–
Jewelry, Time Pieces, Minerals and Gems. At the end of the block, they turned down a side street and pulled into a parking lot behind the row of main street shops.

Penny followed Susan through the plain-looking back entrance, passed through a small storage area, then stepped into the shop as Jenny flipped the sign from
Closed
to
Open
and turned a key in the front door’s lock. When she turned and saw Penny standing there, her face lit up.

“Well, you finally decided to come.” She stepped forward and scooped Penny into an unexpected and awkward hug. “I was beginning to think Susan had an imaginary friend.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Penny said, forcing an uncomfortable smile as she waited for Jenny to let her go.

Penny let her eyes wander around the shop, taking in the aisles of shelved books in the back half. The front half was a less interesting maze of office supplies and stationery.

“Eyeballing the stock already,” Susan said, moving behind the till and turning it on. “Diana raised a reader then.”

Penny regarded her curiously for a moment, then understood. She was not used to hearing her mom referred to as Diana. “Well, I
can
read.”

Susan turned to Penny again her eyes narrowing. “Oh, I see.”

Penny felt like shrinking under the sharp gaze, but Susan couldn’t hold the stern look. She broke into a smile.

“If you aren’t a reader now,” Jenny said, “you will be by the time we’re finished with you.”

Penny left Sullivan’s an hour later with two new books under her arm
—
a compilation of classic ghost stories for herself and a fantasy story for the girl in the park. The lone girl in the park was as good a place as any to start
trying to make new friends
. They had one thing in common at least.

“Give this to her,” Susan said, shoving the book into Penny’s hands, “tell her it’s from you and Susan at Sullivan’s.”

Penny walked down to the end of the short block, pausing at the crosswalk for several seconds before stepping into the street. She wasn’t accustomed to light traffic and had to convince herself that traffic wouldn’t materialize the second she stepped into the road.

She crossed at a run and made it to the other side unscathed. A look back over her shoulder showed empty blacktop in both directions, with a handful of cars and trucks parked along the main street. Somewhere, distantly, she could hear the sound of running cars, but the sound of shouting and laughing children in the park drowned it out a moment later.

She scanned up and down the street, checked the distant park and school playground carefully, but couldn’t see the fox anywhere.

“Probably imagined the whole thing,” she said to herself, and set off. But when she arrived the girl was gone. A small bag lay beneath the tree, but the girl and her book were gone.

A shout from the group of kids farther along made her look up, and Penny saw the girl standing in the middle of the group of boys she’d seen playing baseball. They had abandoned their game in favor of another sport.

Most of them stood in a rough circle, watching and laughing, while three of them threw her book into the air to each other, making her run for it, jump for it, but throwing it before she could get it back.

“Give it back!” She lunged for it as a boy Penny recognized held it aloft, jumping when her fingers brushed the spine, and throwing it to one of his pals.

Penny dropped her books next to the girl’s bag and ran toward them.

The boys didn’t see her coming until she was a few feet away. A few of them pointed and laughed.

“Who invited the leprechaun?” A tall, skinny boy leaning on his baseball bat like a cane smirked at her. She kicked the bat out from under his hand as she passed, making him stumble.

Rooster turned and saw her, his eyes going wide a second before the book sailed his way again, whacking him on the back of the head.

“Ouch!” Rooster shouted and turned to see who had thrown the book.

Penny reached up and grabbed him by the ear, giving it a twist and bringing him to his knees.

“Leave her alone,” Penny said, giving his ear another twist when he tried to rise.

“Ouch! Let go,” Rooster shouted, flailing, grasping at her long red hair.

“No you don’t!” The girl, almost a foot taller than Penny, with long dark hair and deeply tanned skin, grabbed Rooster’s arm and forced his fingers open, releasing Penny’s hair. She twisted his arm behind him and sat on his back, forcing his face into the grass.

One of Rooster’s friends stepped forward and Penny scooped up the bat, holding it in her hands casually and grinning. The boy stopped and gave her a wary look.

Most of the others simply stood around, looking amazed and amused at the turn of events.

Still holding the bat, Penny bent down and picked up the book.

“Let me up,” Rooster said, his voice muffled by the grass.

“I think you should apologize first,” the girl said, and gave his arm a twist. “It’s not nice to pull a girl’s hair.”

“Sorry,” Rooster shouted. “Oowee!”

Smirking, the girl let him go and stood next to Penny. “Thanks,” she said as Penny handed the book over.