Kindling the Moon (40 page)

“That's true, but it doesn't mean you should just give up on the whole damn concept. Believe me, I know a thing or two about pain and grief. I could be bitter at this point in my life and unwilling to trust anyone, but I'm not.”

“Hmph.”

“I'm older and wiser,” he teased. “You should listen to me.”

I laughed as the patio glass door slid open behind us. A frenzied rush of dog feet clamored down the redwood stairs. Foxglove whooshed by us, barking madly.

The sheen of black fur and fluorescent purple collar blurred past the edge of the cliff and into the adjacent woods where a narrow, dirt back road teetered down the mountain toward the rocky beach.

“What the hell?” I murmured as we sat up in the grass and watched her bound away.

Jupe stomped across the deck in pursuit. “It's that mermaid ghost,” he explained, breathless. “Below the sea stack. Can you see her? Foxglove always knows when she's down there.”

We stood up, brushing off our clothes, and ambled across the yard together toward the cliff's rocky edge. Lon's “moat” lay at my feet: the circular house ward. Like the one he'd helped erect back at my house, it dimly glowed with charged Heka. I stood behind it like a bowler avoiding the foul line
and peered over the cliff at the dark bit of rocky land jutting out from the Pacific. “Hmm … I don't see anything.”

“Me neither,” Lon agreed.

“Look, I know you both think I'm stupid and that neither of you believe in ghosts, but I
know
she's there. It's not an imp.” Jupe padded up behind us in his pajama bottoms, a T-shirt, and bare feet. “I bet if we went down there right now, Foxglove would lead us straight to her.”

I laughed. “There is no way in hell I'm walking down there right now. It's a twenty-minute walk down the side of the cliff.”

“Not to mention the walk back up,” Lon added. “Inside. Now.” He loosely gripped the back of my neck and prodded me forward. “You too.”

Jupe looked at me. “Will you come up and watch TV in my room?” He shivered once, wrapping his arms around his chest.

“Ye-e-e-s,” I drawled, “for Pete's sake, I already told you I would five minutes ago.”

“Just checking,” he mumbled, grinning sheepishly.

I winked at him.

“Make sure the dog door is unlatched so Foxglove can get back in,” Lon said.

As we climbed the stairs toward the house, I took one last look down at Mermaid Point, straining my eyes across the beach to the sea stack. Maybe it was just a trick of the moonlight or maybe Jupe was right, but I could've sworn I saw something. For a split second, I considered using my new ability to be sure; if there really was something out there, surely I'd be able to see it better in the black void that my power conjured up. Then I changed my mind—not because I was afraid that if I started using it I'd turn into my parents.
But if I used my ability and discovered that there
wasn't
any-thing there, then Jupe would lose his ghost, and I didn't want to take that away from him.

Besides, maybe he wasn't wrong. God knows I'd run into plenty of strange things that most people wouldn't believe existed. Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it's not there.

My thanks and gratitude to:

Laura Bradford (the Dorothy Parker of literary agents), who believed in my voice long before I did, and who laughed—not winced—when I sent her a framed packet of Cock Soup;

Jennifer Heddle (the George Lucas of editors), who liked Arcadia enough to take a chance on her, and quietly made this book
far
better than it originally was;

Tony Mauro (the Tony Mauro of fantasy art), who graciously listened to my tedious vision of Arcadia and the Tambuku Tiki Lounge, and created a cover that is both gritty and beautiful;

Brian (the Mark Mothersbaugh of creative partners), whose cognitive skills are the stuff of legend. He let me bounce ideas off him, helped brainstorm plot solutions, and warned me when I was heading into Baroque Nightmare (a place all my books go sooner or later). But mostly he just told me to keep going when I didn't think I could. I love you dearly.

Additional thanks to my support teams: the Skunk Girls; the Bradford Babes (especially Jedi Master Ann); my lovely
family (hands down, the nicest conservatives I know); my beautiful in-laws, who've always made me feel like a super-star; Bill Skeel, who volunteered to take photos of the least photogenic person in the world; and the generous people in the online writing/reading community, who befriended me without knowing what kind of writer I really am (I hope you're not sorry).

Kudos to everyone at Pocket Books, including Anne Cherry, Julia Fincher, and all the people behind the scenes who worked on this book. And my sincere thanks to librarians, book reviewers and bloggers, all booksellers (big and small), and supporters of genre fiction everywhere.

Read on for a sneak peek at the next Arcadia Bell novel, coming in Summer 2012 from Pocket Books …

Jupe pinched himself on the arm and grinned at me from the passenger seat of my Volkswagen. “Yep, I definitely feel different.”

I swiped my monthly pass through the card reader at the parking garage entrance down the street from my bar. It buzzed in acceptance, and the striped barrier arm began rising on the gate. “Well, you sure do
look
it,” I agreed, stowing the pass in a pocket on the sun visor.

“Different how?” Jupe tugged at one of the long, espresso curls jutting out around his face. Like other Earthbound demons, his head and shoulders were crowned by a swirling halo of hazy light. His was an alluring spring-green that matched his remarkably pale eyes and gave off a lightning-bug luminescence in the shadowed interior of my car.

“You look older … more sophisticated,” I teased.

“Really?”

I rolled my eyes and pulled through the raised gate into the dark garage. “No.”

He punched me on the arm.

“Dammit, that hurt,” I complained in the middle of a laugh, rubbing my shoulder. “See if I ever give you anything again, you ungrateful punk.”

Jupe snickered as he stretched out long, wiry legs and examined the savings deposit receipt perched on his knee. He thoughtfully traced his finger along the indented ink. The deposit was for fifteen thousand dollars. It was originally a check made payable to me from Caliph Superior, the leader of my esoteric organization back in Florida. The money was payment for the black-market glass talon Jupe's father had bought to help me out a few weeks ago. My magical order was loaded, so I didn't feel guilty that they offered to reimburse Lon. But when he refused their check, I couldn't keep the money for myself, so the only logical solution was to give it to his son … while Lon was away in Mexico on a three-day photo shoot. Sneaky? Sure. But if you're going to lie to Lon, you have to do it while he's away on business. Otherwise, he'll just sense it before you can make it out the door. Jupe taught me that trick. He should write a book:
How to Outsmart an Empath.
The boy has skills.

But who knew giving money to an underaged kid would be so hard? Jupe and I spent almost an hour arguing with tellers inside my credit union: No, I did
not
want to put it in some giftable trust fund that Jupe couldn't touch until he was twenty-one. He already had a fat college fund and enough bonds and CDs to start a third-world country.

Problem was, the credit union didn't allow minors on a joint savings account without a parent or legal guardian co-signing, and I was neither. Girlfriend of the Boy's Father didn't qualify, apparently. The branch manager couldn't understand why I wouldn't wait until Lon was back in town to get his signature. Yeah, right. I wasn't about to tell the manager that Lon would refuse—which he would. After a blue-faced argument, the manager finally, inexplicably, gave in.

“By the way, I know you still don't believe me,” Jupe said as he snooped inside the glove compartment, “but I really
did
do it. Me. I got the manager to make an exception and let us open the account.”

God, he really wasn't going to give that a rest. I swatted his hand away from the glove compartment and steered the car down the ramp to the next parking level; the Metropark garage sticks the monthlies in the dregs on the bottom floor. “You're a charmer, don't get me wrong …” And he was. Witty, geek-smart, almost annoyingly outgoing, and well on his way to becoming drop-dead gorgeous. Just yesterday he bragged that he'd overheard some girl in his class referring to him as “totally hot.” Did I mention he was cocky?

“I'm serious, Cady. I concentrated with my mind and twisted his thoughts around. I think it's my”—he leaned over the armrest and spoke in a lower voice, as if someone could hear us outside the car—“knack.”

Knack. Earthbound slang for demonic ability. Most Earth-bounds have one, but many knacks fall short of spectacular. A little foresight here, a little nighttime vision there. A whole hell of a lot of telepaths, most of whom are no more than bland party entertainment, unable to lift anything heavier than a freaking spoon a couple inches off the table. Don't get me wrong: the occasional impressive ability
did
exist. I'd met Earthbounds that could pick a lock with a touch, and others who could curse your unborn child. Those weren't exactly commonplace, though.

“You're crazy,” I said, waiting for another car to back out. A large, sparkling jack-o'-lantern clung to the top of its antenna; less than two weeks to Halloween. “For starters, you've got a couple more years before your demonic ability will start expressing. And second, you'll probably end up with your dad's empathy. It's genetic, you know—you don't just get a new ability out of thin air.”

“I know all that,” Jupe complained. “Who's the demon here, me or you?”

“You.”

“Yeah, and I got the stupid ‘knack' speech along with the ‘birds and the bees' from my dad when I was eight.”

“Poor, poor Lon,” I murmured. The car windows were fogging up; it was going to rain. I turned the dial to defrost and cranked up the compressor fan.

“All I'm saying is that I know about what's
supposed
to happen. But I'm telling you, Cady, I can make people do things. I can get inside their minds and change their thoughts. Permanently.”

“Pfft. I've never even heard of a knack like that.” Well, Lon could influence thoughts when he was amped up into his transmutated demon state, but that's nothing Jupe knew about, or would ever know. Not from me, anyway. Besides, Lon's influence was temporary, and he had to be touching the person. Plus it was more common for the inherited knack to be weaker than the parent's, not stronger.

“I think my knack is like”—he paused, as if he knew what he was about to say was going to sound ridiculous, but he just couldn't stop himself—“a Jedi mind trick.”

I snorted.

“I'm serious!”

“Dream on.” I shot him a sidelong glance as he snuck a couple fingers just beneath the waistband of his jeans and scratched—vigorously, with a teeth-gritting, pained look on his face. This was the third time today I'd caught him scratching. “What the hell is wrong with you? You have ants in your pants?”

He scratched harder and groaned. “I've got an injury.”

Dear God, have mercy.
I held up my hand to stop him
from saying more, waving away any mental images before they had a chance to pop into my head. “I don't
even
want to know.”

Affronted, he made a face at me. “Not
there.
It's … nothing. Never mind.”

No need to tell me twice. He could discuss it with the school nurse if he'd somehow managed to contract crabs from a gym towel in the boy's locker room. Not my job description. I promptly changed the subject. “So, what was all that jibber-jabber earlier about you wanting an Eldorado?”

He'd talked the branch manager's ear off, telling him what he was going to do with the savings account. Jupe swore to the guy—who couldn't have given a rat's ass—that he wouldn't touch his new money until he turned fifteen and could apply for a driver's learning permit … and buy a car. That's right: a year from now this ADHD mess of a boy would be plowing down the same roads I drove on. Heaven help us all.

“Umm,
Superfly
, duh. The Cadillac Eldorado is only one of the greatest cars in movie history—the original pimp mobile.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Driven by Youngblood Priest, played by Ron motherfucking O'Neal.”

I didn't even bother to curtail his obscenity-rich language anymore; getting honey out of a hornet would be easier. When I was his age, my parents would've slapped me for talking like that. Then again, my parents turned out to be evil, power-hungry serial killers, so what did they know? Compared to them, Lon was parent of the year. So I just stuck to the Butler house rule: no swearing around strangers. Unless Jupe was making an ass of himself in public, he could knock himself out.

“Yuck,” I complained. “Didn't Boss Hog drive an Eldorado in the
Dukes of Hazzard
?”

His wince told me that I was right.

“Anyway, I seriously doubt your dad's going to go for a pimp mobile.”

“Then how about a 1977 Firebird Trans Am?” He clicked the release on his seat belt several times. The boy was obsessed. He knew the make and model of every car that had been produced in the last fifty years—at least the ones featured in movies or on TV.

“Oh,
hell
no,” I said. “Not a Trans Am.”

“That's the Bandit's car. What's wrong with that?”

I puffed my cheeks out and made a puking noise.

“Hey, you're talking about Burt—”

“Yes, I know. Burt motherfucking Reynolds. Put your seat belt on, Snowman—we've still got two more levels to go.”