Inherit (17 page)

“Oh,
elskede
, I’ve lost it. I can’t think of what, but I’ve lost it!”

Chapter 17

“Bestemor?” I have her wrapped in my arms, and she feels smaller since the last time I saw her. It feels like I’m the adult in the room and she’s the child. I’m used to feeling that way with my parents, but Bestemor has been my foundation for so long, this sudden role reversal makes the house of our love feel like it’s been sucked into a tornado.

Her head nestles on my shoulder, and I stroke her downy hair, my eyes searching the house for signs of a break-in. Maybe she got hit on the head? Maybe she’s only scattered because of the shock? What did she lose?

I convince her to get into her bed, make her a cup of tea, hold her hand until she falls into a fitful sleep, and head back to pick up the kitchen.

I wanted to ask her what she remembers, what she saw, but her eyes were too wild, darting around the room like a pair of trapped birds looking for an open window. I can still see them moving erratically under her eyelids in her fretful sleep.

I grab the broom and sweep the scattered sugar into a small pile, my mind whirring a hundred miles an hour. I think about calling Jonas or Vee, but something about this feels too huge to ask them to shoulder. Bestemor is losing her mind again. Stray grains of sugar crunch under my soles as I drag the garbage can over and scoop the white granules in absently. I told myself I wouldn’t take her good health for granted, but how could I help myself? She was doing so well, feeling so good. I wanted that to never change.

I should call Magda. It feels like tiny monkeys have taken residence on my shoulders, clashing cymbals next to my ears over and over. She told me Sakura would take revenge. Did she? Is this it?

Or is there more?

What was Bestemor looking for?

The dustpan clatters to the floor, and I run so fast down the hall I nearly break my neck on the throw rug that bunches under my feet.

“Loki!” I sweep the towels and blankets away. “Loki! Loki!” I drop on my belly and slither under my bed. There’s no sign of her. I creep through Bestemor’s room, search the living room top to bottom, even check the bathroom, the garden, up and down the street, but I know it’s a pointless waste of time.

She’s gone. She’s gone, and I knew there was someone who could harm her, and I did nothing to make sure she’d be okay. She’s gone because of me.

I slide down in front of Mrs. Pottberg’s gorgeous crocuses and let the sobs pour out. My heart aches, my head aches, and soon my eyes ache. I’ve shriveled into something so weak and small, I let myself whimper out the one word I
never
let myself say.

“Mommy.”

Wish harder.

My head snaps up and I crush two gorgeous purple flowers in my scramble off of the cement. “Loki? Loki where are you?” I look for her sleek red coat, the flash of her white-tipped tail, the glint of her gold eyes, but she’s nowhere to be seen.

Wish harder. Wish harder.

It’s Loki’s voice, more distant than it was before, but in my head, still connected.

I wipe the tears off of my cheeks with my knuckles and sit back down, cross-legged on the street, the smell of crocuses in my nostrils, Loki’s voice in my head.

I pull hard from every strong place in my body. I wrench from my guts, grab from my straight spine, claw from my racing heart, press from my brains and my eyes until I can see the wish like a swirl of sparkling white light in front of my eyes. I hold my hands up and let the wish shoot out from my fingers, and then I contract it. What I want, what I desire, starts to take a solid shape, like a pearl. I pile more on top and it extends to the size of a golfball, a peach, a globe, and finally explodes, all the sparkling, glittering particles swirling like the eye of a hurricane up into the sky.

For the second time today I feel like the life has been sucked out of me, but I can’t stay on the sidewalk, especially because Mrs. Pottberg will kill me if she finds out I wrecked her flowers. I drag myself back home, check Bestemor and see that she’s still fitfully sleeping, and collapse face-down on my bed, the weight of sadness so heavy it feels like there’s a boulder between my shoulder blades.

Tears roll out of my eyes, but it’s not even like I’m crying. I’m way too weak to do anything but let them leak. And, as petrified as I am of losing everything I care about, I’m triple scared over the possibility of getting what I wished for.

Bestemor made the call, but I never believed she’d come. I never for one second considered the fact that she’d get on a plane and come back to us. But that wish was hanging in the air in front of my face, and that made it feel real. I know somewhere deep down that it is real, more real than I’m ready to acknowledge.

I don’t know how long I sleep, but I do know the sound that wakes me up. It’s keys dropping into the crystal bowl on the table in the hall.

It’s a sound I haven’t heard in so many years, I’ve lost count. It’s the sound of…

“Mom?” I press up off the bed and run down the hall.

I want to be a tough bitch. I want to flick my hair over my shoulder, cross my arms, and roll my eyes. Say something snide and sarcastic. Flick a cigarette and crush it under my heel. If I smoked. And wasn’t in my grandma’s highly flammable old house.

But I don’t do any of those things. I fly down the hall and crash into my mother’s arms. I hug her so hard and tight neither one of us can breathe, and I don’t care how pathetic it is. I’m like a dopey little puppy whose owner keeps ignoring it, leaving it in various kennels, forgetting its favorite treats, paying no attention to new tricks or preferred sleeping positions. But it’s like my human brain melts and gets replaced by a lovable puppy brain when I see her. I love her. I love her. That’s all I can think, over and over.

“Wren.” She smoothes her hand down over my hair. “I’ve missed you.”

Ah, and the spell is broken. I try one last cuddle, but it doesn’t work anymore. I rip away with a quick, mean pull, like the no-nonsense beehive-haired ladies who wax my eyebrows with cruel exactness.

“Bestemor called you. Why didn’t you call back?” All the good, sweet, warm feelings need to get bottled up and tucked away to take out later, when she’s gone again. Right now I’m falling back on old standbys: rejection, guilt, anger, accusation; the main ingredients in the mess that makes up our relationship.

“Wren, I got on a plane the minute the phone call came through. You have no idea how many connections I’ve made! By the way, does Mor still keep the
akavit
over the piano?”

I watch her walk to the living room, her long gold hair swinging around her hips like she’s the teenager instead of me. Her face has a few more tiny lines here and there, but they only make her look more mature and beautiful. She has Bestemor’s awesome cheekbones and nose, but her eyes are even brighter blue. Like I guessed, she’s immersed in hippie culture. She wears a long flower-printed tunic, jeans, and high moccasin boots with lots of fringe and silver beads. She looks cool.

And it irritates me on so many levels.

She sniffs the bottle and closes her eyes, then takes two swigs, wipes her mouth and puts it back with a sigh.

So what if she smells even more like crocuses than the actual crocuses I crushed a few hours ago? So what if she’s so gorgeous, it’s mind-boggling she’s anybody’s mom, let alone mine? So what if the circle of her hug felt like the warmest, safest, strongest place in the world? It’s all a trick, and I have to remind myself of that. At her core, my mother is selfish, vain, and completely egotistical.

“Bestemor is doing really badly. Not that you even bothered to go check on her.” My words grit out through my clenched teeth.

She crosses her sliver-bangled arms over her chest and rubs them like she’s trying to break a chill. “I know she’s been a little off—”

“A little off? She’s lost her mind! And just when she was back to normal, I screwed it all up.” Oh, humiliation of all humiliations, I feel my chin start to jerk up and down. No! I cannot cry in front of her.

“Has it been that bad?” Mom looks at me with such a concerned Mom face, I have this split second where I want to pour my heart out and trust her to fix it all. Then I come to my senses.

“Worse.” It comes out like a hiss. “I need you, we need you, but not as a mom or a daughter. We all know you’re not very good at being either one.” My mother looks like she might protest, but she clamps her jaw tight instead. “I need you to make me the most powerful shieldmaiden you can, and then feel free to leave.”

My mother’s pretty face drains of color and she gulps like a fish. “What?”

“Let’s stop with all the pretending. I know what I am, no thanks to you, and using my weirdo powers almost killed me today.” Her eyes go wide, and I feel a single ping of regret for exaggerating, but it goes away instantly. I could have possibly almost died. “Magda Balto offered to help me, but I don’t know if I can totally trust her.”

My mother’s eyes zero in on my face, and she looks at me with more concentrated interest than she’s shown at any other moment in my whole life. Straight A’s, a science fair honorable mention, multiple tap and jazz recitals, my poem’s selection for All State at the Lodi Teen Arts Fair in fifth grade; none of it made her sit up and notice. But Magda Balto, her old nemesis? Now she’s all ears, and I regret not taking Magda up on her offer solely because I lost a golden opportunity to royally piss my mother off.

“What did Magda have to say?” She paces toward me, intent.

“Nothing,” I mumble. I step to the side and try to move out of the line of her sight. “Just that my powers could hurt me if I wasn’t trained. And that she didn’t know I was mixed blood. That’s all.”

“Didn’t know you were
mixed blood
? Like you’re some half-breed freak? And as if she didn’t chase Ryuu like a crazy woman the minute he came to town! She practically died of jealousy when she found out we were together.”

I roll my eyes and hope she notices, but she’s far away, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. In her mind, she’s probably reliving her glory days as the prettiest girl in Lodi with the coolest boyfriend, zooming around in some hot little car, wreaking havoc, and screwing up without a care in the world.

Until I came along and blew all her fun out of the water.

“Look, I need help. I need to know how to use my powers, I need Loki back, and I need Bestemor well again. When all that happens, you can go back to making pottery in Nebraska or whatever.”

She tilts her head and purses her perfect rosy lips. “I weave. On a loom. In Colorado.”

“Whatever.” I would never describe myself as an angsty teen, but my mother manages to bring out the worst in me.

“And who’s this Loki? Some boy?”

“No. Loki is my fox. My grandfather in Japan sent her to me.”

Mom was busy examining one of Bestemor’s little dog statues. She drops it on the mantle with enough force to crack its ceramic foot. “Ryuu’s father sent you a fox?”

“Loki. Only they call her Kaji. When Sakura came here, she wanted me to give her Loki. I said no, and she’s been harassing me, trying to force me to give her up. Today I embarrassed her in gym, and when I got home, Loki was gone and Bestemor was sick again.”

“Sakura? Hina Kochi’s Sakura?”

Now I have my mother’s full attention. It’s crazy that I had to lose my grandmother, my fox, my sanity, my crush, and control of my life to get it, but I have it. “Yes. My cousin, Sakura.”

My mother’s eyes turn wild and her hair seems to fly back around her face. Her voice vibrates with an energy that rocks through the entire room. “Oh, hell no. This is
war
.”

Chapter 18

I thought having an absentee mother was bad. I had no idea what it would be like to have her home. If Loki were here, I’d wish my mother back into the distant mountains of Colorado before her military general tactics kill me.

“It can’t be that bad, sweetie.” I hear Vee flipping through a book as she snaps her gum on the other end of the phone line, not a care in the world. Me? I’m so sore and exhausted I can barely move. “I mean, she’s helping you, right? She’s going to get Loki back and find some way to deal with Sakura?”

“That’s the plan.” I roll my aching shoulders. “But she’s kind of a bully.”

“I miss you at school.”

Mom invented a disease and got some quack doctor to sign off on it, so I’m being ‘home schooled’ for a few weeks. My mother, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to worry if my grasp of derivatives is steady enough to get me a passing grade in calculus. All she cares about is crafting me into the shieldmaiden of her dreams.

“I miss you, too.” I sigh. “Remember that Lifetime movie we saw about the mother who became obsessed with having her daughter win that pageant so she could relive her pageant days through her daughter? And she winds up going crazy and locking her daughter in a janitor’s closet so she can steal her spotlight on the big day?”

“Yeah! Was that one on again? No wonder you can’t get a grasp on derivatives. Turn. Off. The. TV.”

“No! I wasn’t watching it. I’m living it!” I grip the phone hard in my hand.

Vee’s gurgly laugh is that of a girl whose parents are nauseatingly normal and caring. “Sweetie, are you sure you aren’t exaggerating a teeny bit?”

“All she talks about are her glory days as the hottest shieldmaiden in her coven. And she’s working me to death. I had to offshoot 318 force-based energy attacks.” If I thought my little showdown with Sakura was draining, I had no idea what the word meant. I now know what it feels like to have my eyeballs sweat. “She won’t let me out of her sight. And I think—” I put my hand over the phone and tiptoe to my door, then check up and down the hall. When I tell Vee the next part, it’s in whisper. “I think she wants to use my powers. I think she’s going to challenge Magda or something.”

“That’s a little insane. Sweetie, you called her here to train you. You knew it would be hard. Now she’s doing what you asked. I know she’s let you down in the past—”

“This isn’t about that!”