A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic (18 page)

                
Walter Grove is the first great-grandchild of Ralph and Edie Flabbergast (nee Allen). The couple would like to invite the public to an ice-cream social to celebrate the birth, as well as the occasion of their fiftieth wedding anniversary. The party will be held on the town green, Saturday, July 28, at 2 p.m. All are welcome
.

If you don't believe me, check the county records.

I
F YOU DON
'
T BELIEVE
me, check the county records, Kai read.

She stood up.

She sat down.

She stared at the book.

Kai stood up again. Adrenaline coursed through her body; she wanted to move, but there was nowhere to go. She was seated at a table in the center of the small, old library.

“You okay?” Carlos asked from his place behind the service desk. He was looking at her over the tops of his black-framed hipster glasses.

Kai blinked at him. How to explain that a magic book had just told her—what? That her father was related to
Ralph and Edwina? She plopped back down into her chair and looked over at Doodle, who peered at her curiously. “Is there a tack in your chair?”

Kai spun
The Exquisite Corpse
and pushed it at her friend. “Look.”

Doodle scanned the names. “I don't get it. What is this?”

“Walter Grove,” Kai said, pointing. “Walter Grove. That's my dad.”

“Oh my gosh!” Doodle stood up, her eyes bugging, froglike, from her head. Then she looked over at Carlos, who was watching them with narrowed eyes.
What?
He mouthed. Doodle shook her head and sat back down. “Ralph Flabbergast is Walter's great-grandfather. . . .”

Kai was tryng to work out what it meant. She couldn't quite—

“They're
your
great-great-grandparents!” Doodle hissed.

“It's so weird. . . .” Kai shook her head. “It's so weird. . . .” Her thoughts pinged off of one another like marbles in a jar.

Doodle stared at her.

“What?” Kai asked.

Doodle kept staring at her, like she was trying to beam a thought across the table.

“What is it?” Kai asked. “Don't just think it at me—tell me.”

“Don't you get it?”

“I thought I got it. . . .” She looked down at the book.
They're your great-great-grandparents,
she told herself,
just like Doodle said
.

“You're the heir,”
Doodle said.

“I'm the air?” Kai's brain wasn't really working at top speed. It's like when you put too much stuff in a blender, and the blade just spins, but nothing gets pureed. Kai thought Doodle was working on a metaphor, something along the lines of “You're the wind beneath my wings,” but she couldn't quite make sense of it.

“The heir
to the fortune
,” Doodle explained. “American Casket. You should own it.
You
!”

Carlos leaned against their table, arms folded. “You girls are freaking me out with all of the whispering,” he said. “What are you plotting?”

Doodle took one look at Kai's blank, stunned
expression, and said, “Carlos, we need to do a search of the local birth and death records.”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

“But . . . we can never prove it,” Kai said slowly. “Everyone thinks Edwina died in Lahore.”

“You have the book!” Doodle cried.

“A magic book is hardly proof, Doodle.”

“This conversation is mighty interesting,” Carlos observed calmly.

At that moment, the front door huffed open and Professor Hill wheeled into the library. A large manila envelope sat across his knees. “Carlos! I have a present for you!”

“What is it?”

Professor Hill steered right up to him. “I know that you're interested in preserving historical documents, so I've brought you some correspondence between prominent local residents.”

A very strange feeling crept over Kai's scalp. “Who—” she whispered. “Who is it from?”

Professor Hill smiled. “Hello, Kai. Doodle. An old friend and colleague of mine in Pakistan has sent me
these letters.” Opening the flap, he pulled out a bundle of letters bound with a pale ribbon. “These were written at the turn of the twentieth century, between a woman named Edwina Pickle and her brother, Parker. Heirs to the American Casket fortune. And speaking of that! This same overseas friend has been concerned about the shellac used at the American Casket Company, so I have sent that sign we took to a laboratory. We should have results in a few days.” His ran his hands through his white hair, which continued to stand on end. “But I have a feeling that those results might make someone very unhappy.” Professor Hill cackled gleefully.

“You sound like you
hope
the results make someone unhappy,” Doodle told him.

“I can neither confirm nor deny that.” Professor Hill looked at her very seriously, and then chuckled. “Oh, hell—I'll confirm it. I hope Pettyfer Jonas spends a little time in prison for putting people at risk. I wish they could bring his old great-grandfather back to life and throw him behind bars, too.”

Doodle wanted to hear all about this, of course, but when she looked over at her friend, she saw that Kai was in
a daze. She hadn't heard a word about the shellac. Doodle reached for Kai's hand and held it, but Kai barely felt her fingers. She wasn't attached to her body. She had floated out, somewhere beyond the ceiling, into the bright blue sky, and beyond.

“Lavinia!” Kai shouted as she flung open the front door. “Lavinia!”

Her aunt shone like a shell on the dark green velvet couch. She wore a brilliant turquoise and pink tunic over white jeans, and smiled as Kai, disheveled and sticky with sweat, burst into the living room, demanding, “What was the name of your uncle's wife?”

Lavinia made no comment on Kai's wild-eyed looks or rude question. Instead, she gestured to the armchair across the room. “Kai, sugar, look who's here,” she said gently.

A woman in a loose gray dress stood up. She had short dark hair, clipped into a bob that reached just below her ears, and warm gray eyes.

“Mom!” Kai raced to her mother and flung her arms around her, pressing her cheek to the soft folds of her mother's old linen sundress. She smelled of coffee and
baby powder. She had her arms around Kai and was kissing the side of her head, murmuring, “Buggy, buggy, my little love bug,” which was her pet name for Kai. “I've missed you so much. When did you get so
tall
? What happened? It's only been a few weeks!”

“You can't stop them growing.” Lavinia's eyes sparkled.

“What are you
doing
here?” Kai asked. “Why didn't you tell me you were coming?”

“Well, I didn't know I was,” Kai's mother said. “But I had a Skype interview with Browning Solutions last week, and it went so well that they flew me in for an in-person interview yesterday.”

Lavinia perched at the edge of her sofa cushion. “Where are they located, exactly? What part of Houston?”

“It's right by Rice University,” Schuyler replied. “It's about a ninety minute drive out here. I was supposed to fly back tonight, but they offered me the job—”

“They did?” Kai asked. “To work in Houston?”

“Kai, honey.” Schuyler's voice was gentle, and she took her daughter's hands. “They need someone to start soon. In a few weeks. This is a great opportunity, and I hope that you will—”

“Fine! Great! Let's move to Houston!”

“—uh . . .” Schuyler stood still for a moment, blinking at her daughter. “Um.” She looked uncertainly at Lavinia, who shrugged. Schuyler looked back at Kai. “I had sort of prepared a speech. . . .”

“Oh! Sorry.” Kai sat down on the chair and looked expectantly at her mother. Lavinia pushed herself backward on the couch and did the same.

“Well—maybe it isn't necessary. . . . But . . . uh . . . Kai, the schools are very good, and a few people have suggested violin teachers.”

Kai put up a hand. “Look, Mom—about that.” She pressed her lips together, hesitating as her ears grew hot with shame. “I want to keep playing,” she said in a low voice.
I have to,
she thought.
I can't just put away my father's violin forever
. “But I don't want to be as—
intense
—about it anymore.”

“That's wonderful, honey. I'm so glad.”

It was Kai's turn to be nonplussed. The air conditioner hummed. A truck rolled by outside. “What?” Kai asked.

“Buggy, you love the violin. You always have. But all of that intensity—that wasn't healthy.”

“But—what about Dad? What about his dream, and . . . and having opportunities he never had?”

“Kai, your father loved the violin, but his father forbade him to play it. He said that it was taking time from his academics,” Schuyler explained.

“He used to practice over here, sometimes,” Lavinia put in. “It was his little secret.” Her eyes twinkled.

Schuyler took Kai's hand. “Walter wanted you to have the opportunity he never did—the opportunity to be whatever you wanted to be. I like it when you play because you seem to enjoy it. But I think we both got . . . carried away, maybe. It shouldn't be about being the best. It's about the
music
.”

Kai then leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling.

It's about the music.

It's about the moths.

And she laughed with a sound like bells ringing, clear and loud. She looked at Lavinia, then at her mother.

Everything was happening so fast.
They don't even know about Edwina and Ralph! They don't know about American Casket.
“I have to tell you something,” she
announced. “You might want to sit down.”

“Is everything okay?” Schuyler asked, turning to Lavinia.

“As far as I know it is.” Lavinia looked concerned and confused.

“It's all okay,” Kai reassured them. “It's great, in fact. It's just—unusual news. Highly unusual. And it's kind of a long story.”

“Well, then,” Lavinia said, standing up and straightening her tunic. “I'd better get us all some of your world-famous Luna Juice.”

“W
HAT ARE YOU LAUGHING
at?” Samir asked as he stood in the doorway to Leila's bedroom.

She was sitting on the red coverlet, her silver laptop in her lap. She turned the screen to show her sister being doused with water by a baby elephant.

Samir walked the twenty-three steps to take a better look. “Is that Nadia?”

“She has a blog,” Leila explained. “It's kind of fun to read, actually. I'll send you the link.”

“You must miss her a lot.”

Leila thought it over. She hadn't missed Nadia at all at the beginning of the trip. In fact, she had missed her friends more. But, over the past three days, Leila had started thinking about her sister. She had wondered if
Aimee really did have more in common with Nadia than with Leila. She had started to see that, even though she had known Aimee a long time, they were really very different. And Leila had started to wonder if, maybe, her real Best Friend was still out there, waiting for her. “I do miss her.”

“Well, you're going home in a few days.”

“Yeah.”

“What's Houston like?” Samir reached for the chair by the desk and sat down in it.

“Gah. Boring.”

“Not as boring as here, I'll bet.”

“What? It isn't boring here!” Leila closed the computer. “There are parrots in the trees and donkey carts and crazy dressed-up goats and fakirs and
your squirrels have stripes
and—how can you think it's boring? People are always visiting; there's always something happening. It's—it's
magical
.”

Samir smiled. “I'll bet Houston would seem magical to me.”

Leila thought about her safe little neighborhood, the pretty park nearby with the community swimming
pool and skate park, and the lady down the street who planted her whole yard with blooming cornflowers. She thought about the tornado sirens that wailed every night at six, just to make sure they were working, and the times that the sky would turn black with thunderclouds bitten by flashes of lightning. She thought about the strange traditions that her family took part in: the rodeo, the Houston Moonlight Bicycle Ramble, the way they could hop into the car and be at the beach in Galveston in forty-five minutes.
It isn't such a bad place to live,
she decided. It wasn't like Precious City, California, or the Dear Sisters' mansion . . . but it had magic all its own.

“Yeah—you'd like it,” Leila said.

Samir smiled. “Do you want to go downstairs? Everyone's watching
Pakistan Idol
.”

Leila stood up. “Did they kick that awful guy off yet? The one with the beard?”

“Don't say that in front of Rabeea—he's her favorite!” Samir scolded as they walked toward the stairs. They could already hear Wali shouting at the television set.

Leila missed her family, but
this
was her family, too. It
had taken time, but she felt at home here. Her trip hadn't been what she had expected, but it had shown her where she belonged.

Everywhere.