Inherit (13 page)

Golden.

“His sister. Your Aunt. Hina.” She spits the name out like it leaves a bad taste in her mouth.

“Aunt Hina?” I know very little about my extended family, and the name ‘Hina’ leaves me with a total blank.

“Hina is the daughter of the woman who destroyed your grandparents’ marriage and made your poor father’s life a living hell. Hina was raised as a princess in that house and your father was driven out! Disgraceful.” Bestemor shakes her silvery white head. “And I see she raised her daughter to keep the venom spewing.”

“Sakura?” It’s strange to think of Sakura having a mother. It makes so much more sense to think of her hatching from a huge, reptilian egg.

“Sakura.” Bestemor motions for me to pour her another glass, which I do not think is a great idea, but I know better to cross this woman when she’s made her mind up to do whatever it is she wants to do. “Tell me exactly what she said to you. Exactly.”

Now, under the pressurized glare of my two-sheets-to-the-wind grandmother, my mind shuts down. “Uh, she was pissed about Loki.” As if on cue, Loki trots down the hall and sits at my grandmother’s feet.

“What about? Think!”

I swallow hard and grasp at the strands of my memory, but it’s like a fog rolled in. I can hear Sakura’s phony little girl laugh in the recesses of my mind. “She’s in my head. I can hear her, and I’m confused.” My voice sounds far away in my ears, and I have to hold my head in my hands as the laughter grows louder, because it feels like my head might actually roll off my neck.

Bestemor grabs my shoulders as I slump forward, no longer able to stand. The lemony waxed linoleum is cool against my cheek, but it brings no relief from the splitting pain in my head, so sharp and cruel, it presses an acid wave of nausea at the back of my throat. I slit my eyes open, hoping that her pinch of shield-warrior-ness gives her some kind of ability to kick evil huss cousins out of her granddaughter’s head. But the terror on her face tells me that I’m on my own when it comes to telekinetic mental sabotage at the hands of Sakura.

Fantastic.

I swallow hard and try, really try, to squash the echoing laughter. I push at her. I stomp on her. I fight hard just to get back on my own two feet and keep my knees from buckling under me.

Laugh back. Laugh louder.

It’s Loki, her voice an intense balm to the burn that singes my brain. I focus on her voice, follow her instructions, no matter how ridiculous they sound. In my head, my own laugh breaks out.

At first it’s a little nervous laugh, no big deal. But it gains volume and force, and soon it’s a big belly laugh that has just a tinge of evil villainess. My laugh gets louder and more dominant, and it makes a little shiver break over my neck because of its sheer power.

Loki tugs at my pant leg, and I’m shocked to realize I was laughing out loud like some evil witch in front of a quivering princess. Bestemor stares at me, her fingers pressed to her lips.

I feel wild, alive, full of power, but I snap myself back into reality and quiet down. Sakura isn’t in my head anymore, and the scene from the party zips back into my memory like it had been there all along. I scoop Loki in my arms, careful not to crush her in a ferociously grateful hug.

Free of the shackles of my cousin’s mental interference, I feel jittery with energy. “She said that Loki’s name is actually Kaji, and that she’s not in the right hands. I mean, because she’s in my hands. Like my hands are the wrong hands. And she was super pissed when I called Loki a ‘pet.’ And other than that, her voice in my head told me that I’m a big idiot and a huge loser and not someone who is remotely a challenge for her to take down in whatever her lame evil plot to rule the world is.” I say it all in one long whoosh of breath, and once I’m done, I sag back against the fridge. I let Loki back down and she heads to her place at Bestemor’s feet.

“This is far worse than I imagined. Much worse that I thought.” Bestemor feeds Loki little tidbits of food under the table. “We need to find your mother and father. We need to bring them here. To protect you.”

I snort. “She has pink hair. I don’t need any protection from her.” Bestemor raises one pure white eyebrow at me, reminding me that a minute ago I was on the floor clutching my temples, my cousin’s evil mental torture wringing me out like an old dishrag.

“We need to find them.” Bestemor heads to the old, gorgeous desk with a million pigeon holes in the corner of the living room where she writes all of the household bills. She reaches her fingers in and pulls a small address book out of one of the holes with a sureness that proves she’s done it before. She sits at the table, and I look over her shoulder as she rifles through tissue-thin pages.

Her fingers flip to the very back and find my mother’s name; Robin Jelle and the two pages of addresses underneath it. Most are apartments, and most are in big cities scattered across the entire United States. Detroit, Chicago, Austin, LA, New York City, and Las Vegas are a few cities, and sometimes there are three or four more specific addresses under each city heading. My mother moves often and fast, and all of those entries probably represent less than a quarter of her actual addresses.

The last one says she’s in Boulder, Colorado. It seems a little granola for my mother, but her identity changes with the wind or her newest love interest, or the current of the modern bullshit art scene, so maybe she traded her ironically retro snakeskin boots for Birkenstocks and let her Debby Harry white blonde bob mellow to her natural long, wavy gold. I can picture her with an awesome tan and a blindingly white smile, looking totally chic and sweatless as she hikes through pines and ravines and talks about
Gaia
and
chakras
.

“This address could already be out of date.” I reach an arm around Bestemor and press my fingertip to the entry.

I argue with myself that it isn’t
that
pathetic to hope that when we call, she might actually pick up. That I might hear her voice. That this whole situation might interest her enough to leave her current bearded, gnarly-toe-nailed boyfriend and fly out on Bestemor’s dime to see me. Maybe this time I’ll be old enough, interesting enough, cool enough to convince her to hang around for more than a few weeks.

Maybe.

“There’s only one way to find out.” Bestemor grabs the old phone that’s been around forever. It still has one of those coiled cords and it weighs a good ten pounds, but I can’t talk her into getting a cheaper cordless version. Nevermind a cell phone. As far as Bestemor is concerned, a cell phone is one step away from a flying car.

I can tell we shouldn’t be holding our breath as the phone rings. And rings and rings. Finally an answering machine clicks on. I can hear some kind of music playing, and I resist the urge to roll my eyes. My mother is one of those insane people who believe you’d like to hear “Across the Universe” by the Beatles in its entirety before leaving her a message she’ll most likely never return.

Bestemor doesn’t give up easily. I guess she can’t afford to, being my crazy mother’s mother. She waits out the song and the cheery message about ‘knowing what to do’ that I can hear my mother’s voice trill, and when the beep sounds, my grandmother leaves a message that’s no nonsense. “Robin, this is an emergency. It concerns our Wren. You need to get back to New Jersey immediately. I’ll leave our number just in case someone else hears this message before you do and can contact us with any information about how to reach you.”

Bestemor recites the phone number that was my mother’s childhood phone number and hangs up with a click, then holds her hand on the phone for a few moments longer than she needs to. We file back to the kitchen, clean up after dinner, and Besteomor kisses me goodnight, looking more exhausted than she has in the last few days. I vow to myself that I’ll make more dinners, not complain so much, start dealing with my problems on my own. I’ll do anything to keep that haunted look of pure confusion out of her eyes.

Back in my room, I collect my calc notebook and put it in my backpack and lie down with the books that Vee picked up for me, Loki stationed like a sentinel at my side. I’ve lost all track of time when the sound of my truck’s engine forces me to the window.

Jonas is sitting in the driver’s seat, one leg dangling out on the street. His clothes are filthy with grease streaks, and I can see from his slumped shoulders that he’s beyond exhausted. There’s a new battery next to the truck wheel.

I poke my head out of the window. “Jonas?”

He looks up and smiles, cuts the engine, hops the fence and stands under my window. “Bestemor gave me the spare.” He holds up the key. “I know you’re not into me doing you any favors, but if I didn’t replace the battery, I’d have to have picked you up for school tomorrow anyway. Not that I mind, but if you and I are going to spend more time together, I’d prefer to know for sure it was because you wanted to.”

The irony of that statement hits home. “I want to. It’s just a bad idea.”

I want him to ask me to explain, but he gives me a tight smile and turns back to the street.

“Hey!”

He turns back around.

“Come here?”

He walks back under my window and tilts his head up to look at me.

“I’m being weird,” I stumble.

“Not more than usual.” He tries a smile out, but it falls mostly flat.

“You know how you just said you wanted to know whether I was spending time with you because I liked you or if it was because I had no other option?”

“Yes.”

“I know how that feels. I get it. And that’s why I’ve been weird.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t need a ride from you. There’s no ulterior motive on my end, if that’s what you’re thinking.” His eyes are dark grey-blue and startlingly cold. It’s unexpected, like visiting the beach in February and realizing that the happy blue waves of summer get mean, choppy, and dark when winter sets in.

“I know that. It’s, um…” I glance back at Loki, curled in a ball on my bed. I drop my voice to a whisper. “It’s Loki.”

“Your fox?” He raises his light eyebrows and moves his mouth over to the right side of his face.

“She influences things. You know that. What if she influences…you?” I twist my hands and wait for Jonas to answer.

“You think I hang around because of the fox?” His jaw tightens. I watch the tightness spread down his neck and make his Adam’s apple stick out.

“You’ve hung around more since Loki.” I want to hide my face in my hands.

Jonas breathes deep through his nose and exhales slowly. “The day you stopped at the gas station, I’d been waiting to get up the courage to ask you out. And there you were, so I took a chance.”

“But I—” And I have to stop, because telling him how much I liked him before counteracts what I’m saying now. “I don’t believe it. You could have said something any time. It’s too big a coincidence that the day I got a lucky fox was the day you started paying attention.”

It’s a good point. Mrs. McKenna would have complimented my logic in debate.

Jonas isn’t giving me any points at all. He stares at the ground, his mouth moving back and forth for a long minute. When he finally looks up at me, those eyes are as cold and grey as ever, but this time they’re stormy.

“So you think this whole thing we’ve got going on is based on that fox and some kind of weird magic?”

His words are bone-chillingly cold, like the winter winds when the electric lines are downed. I stomp my feet, half in frustration, half to get the blood moving so I stay warm against his chill. “You say that like it doesn’t make sense. How can you agree with everything else I’ve told you, but not even consider this?”

He jerks a hand through his hair. “Because everything else was small time. This is you and me.”

“You and me?” My voice echoes back at him, emaciated and uncertain.

“You and me. Something special. Something that I thought went deeper than all these magic tricks, Wren. Look, it’s weird. I get it. Paranormal stuff is just weird. But sometimes, things are…they’re just perfectly normal. And that’s more magical than any spell or lucky fox.” He rubs the back of his neck and shakes his head.

“I don’t understand. You’re saying you don’t think there’s any chance what we feel is part of this whole luck thing I have going on. You and me I mean.” I stop talking because I’m just tripping on the words.

“No. I’m saying that I’ve liked you longer than this whole situation existed. That you and me and what we feel, it’s all incredibly normal because I just like you. That’s it. You for you, Wren. Sometimes that’s the crazy answer. Sometimes the insane truth is that it’s just the goddamn magic of totally normal human attraction, okay? Does that sound possible?” He kicks at a very innocent clump of dirt with a lot of fury.

“It’s not that I didn’t…or don’t. You are so amazing and I did feel…I do feel…but Loki and the luck? My head is just all over right now, and the timing just seems like it’s too much of a coincidence, you know, when you throw in Loki—”

His furious glare chops my tongue at the base and leaves me silent. When he finally speaks again, it’s like ice burrowing into my pores.

“Funny, you keep talking about Loki and your luck that day. And all this time, I thought it was
my
lucky day.” He shrugs. “Even if this was about Loki, she only gives you what you want. You’re not seeing what’s right in front of your face.” He gives me a desperate look, and I know my mouth is hanging open. I’m too shocked to know what to say. He blows out a long breath. “Look, just let me put the battery in for you, and I won’t bother you anymore.”

I open and close my mouth, a stupid, dying fish out of water. I should call him back. I should think this through. But it’s too much all at once, and I wind up letting him go rather than facing what he said. My heart sinks a little more with each step he takes across the lawn and over the fence, a straight shot out of my life.

Chapter 14

I read long into the night, until my eyes ache and my head feels like it’s full of pebbles. The books contains some major contradictions, a ton of obvious old wives’ tales, but a few kernels keep coming up consistently, and I take those for truth because I have nothing else to go on. What they say is that my luck is much more complicated than thinking ‘I wish…’, and will get more complicated the closer Loki and I become. Because we just met, Loki and I don’t have a strong bond, but with time, it will grow until there’s nothing I can hide from her. There will even be things I can hide from myself that I can’t hide from this fox.