Of Sorcery and Snow (6 page)

Mom was pretty strict these days.

Last year I had sort of run away from my dad, right after he told me he was going to marry my stepmother, Brie. I'd had a good excuse—Lena's life was at stake,
plus
the lives of almost every Character I knew—but Mom didn't know that. She just thought EAS was a “bad influence.”

It had taken me two months, one week, and three days to
convince her to let me go back. I'd had to get straight A's on my report card and promise that I wouldn't spend more than ten hours a week at EAS. She enforced it too—we had a calendar and everything. When I told about the ball, she said I could go, but I could only stay at EAS an hour and twenty-four minutes during the week.

It
was
a crazy system, but not really any weirder than getting attacked by the Big Bad Wolf. You can get used to anything.

But over by the chocolate display, which was almost as epic as the ice cream section, Mom's expression hadn't changed since she'd picked me up: her smile still looked distracted, her eyes pinched with worry. She'd definitely heard the news from Portland. She kept finding excuses to touch me—tugging my ponytail, brushing mud off my shoulder—like she was checking to make sure I was in one piece.

I couldn't take this much longer. “I'm okay, Mom,” I said as gently as I could. And despite the wolves and Hansel, I
was
okay. I just really wanted to find out what was going on back at EAS.

“I know.” Mom sighed. “I shouldn't hover. You're a teenager now—you
hate
that. Besides, Portland's pretty far away.”

Of course she was still worried. She didn't have an explanation for the kidnappings like I did. Sometimes, like today, I
wanted
to tell her. It would be nice to talk about what had happened—to let her know what I was really thinking.

Someday, but not now. I couldn't put her in danger just to make myself feel better.

“I'm sure they'll get the kids back,” I told her, thinking of Miriam. I seriously hoped her Companions were up to it.

Mom squeezed my shoulders, giving me her
Oh, Rory, I'm the mother
smile. “I would never be the same if something happened to you. You know that, right?”

I nodded, guilt twisting my stomach. If she freaked out this much over something a whole state away, she definitely didn't need to know about the skirmish in Golden Gate Park.

“Maggie, what kind?” Amy waved two packets of ravioli at Mom. “Pumpkin or arugula?”

“Pumpkin!” Mom said. Her favorite. Then she turned to me. “I think it feels like a movie night.”

“Definitely.” As long as I could sneak to my room and get an update from Lena beforehand.

Glass shattered near the front, and we all glanced back. I expected someone to apologize profusely for knocking over some wine bottle, but the woman in front of the purplish puddle just backed away from the entrance.

A white wolf stood in the doorway.

For a second I just stared, too shocked to move.

It couldn't attack me
here
, not when I was surrounded by people who knew nothing about magic, not when I was with my
family
.

But when its yellow eyes met mine, the wolf began to growl.

I'd left my sword in my carryall, sitting in the backseat of Amy's car. Useless.

Someone near the back of the store screamed, but it sounded far away.

Mom shifted forward slightly. “Stay behind me, Rory.”

Amy's hand crept into her purse, where I knew she kept a can of pepper spray. She was too slow. The wolf crouched, and if Mom was standing between us, it would just attack her before it got to me.

The wolf leaped.

I yanked Mom back so fast that her rain-booted feet flew out
from under her with a rubbery squeak. Then I struck out with the only weapon I had on me: my left fist, armed with the ring of the West Wind. A gust rippled over my arm as the punch connected with the wolf's snout. The furry body crashed into the canned vegetables section. Then it slid to the floor, out cold before it could even whimper.

It also left a big dent in the metal shelves.

I glanced at Mom, checking to make sure she wasn't hurt, but she was just staring at me. Amy too. Actually, every eye in the store stared at me. My face started to burn. Cans rolled on the floor past my ankles.

“Rory, what did you
do
?” Amy whispered.

But it was the look on Mom's face that scared me the most—like she didn't recognize me at all.

With a nod from Mom, Amy went straight into damage control mode. She walked up to the cashier and offered to pay for all damages.

Mom just got us out of there before the police, animal control, or the press showed up. With a hand clamped on my shoulder, she steered me out the door, around the corner, and to the car.

She wasn't saying anything. She wasn't even looking at me as she climbed into the driver's seat, and it was freaking me out.

“Mom . . . ,” I started, buckling my seatbelt.

“Hold on, Rory,” she said, turning the car toward home. She sounded as strained as she did when she had to drive in a blizzard back when we lived in upstate New York—she had the same distant look, the same tense focus making her entire body rigid. “Let me get us home.”

My hands shook as I unzipped my carryall. I fished around until
my fingers closed around my sword hilt. I didn't pull it out, but I felt the tiniest bit better with it in my hand.

Mom had come so close to getting hurt. And it was my fault.

But why
now
? I'd been on high alert for
weeks
after trolls invaded Lena's home in Milwaukee. I'd been
sure
that my family was next, but the Snow Queen hadn't sent anyone. Chase said it must have been because my family didn't know anything about EAS. Even Solange wouldn't cross that boundary. Not knowing kept them out of danger.

But the wolf had come after me. The Snow Queen would follow me wherever I was, whoever I was with.

The normal world wasn't safe anymore.

Mom turned the corner onto our street, and I jumped. But the big furry shape on the sidewalk was just the poodle that lived two doors down. His owner trotted behind him, poop bag in hand.

We reached the cheery yellow house Mom had rented, with its pale green trim, its giant upstairs window with crisscrossed panes, and its small front garden, full of tulips in bloom. Mom parked the car and turned off the engine.

Then she looked me straight in the eye, dead serious. “Is Ever After School giving you drugs?”

This was so far from what I thought she was going to say that I didn't respond. My mouth just gaped open.

“Amy suggested that once. She thinks EAS is a cult—did you know that?” Mom asked, but she didn't give me time to answer. “And last spring, when you ran off to Lena, I almost believed her. Then I thought, No. It makes Rory so happy. But a grown man couldn't bend those shelves the way you just did. So I have to think . . . steroids.”

The human mind is a tricky thing: someone can be faced with
magic, and instead of believing what they see, they'll think of some “logical” explanation that fits what they know about the world.

I could tell Mom that my strength came from the plain silver band on my finger, but she would probably still go with her drugs idea.

“Rory, you need to tell me the truth,” she said.

The truth. In the two years I'd been attending EAS, I'd never once tried telling my family the truth, even if it meant getting grounded. “I'm not taking drugs, I promise.”

“So if I check your room, I won't find anything?” Mom said.

“You can if you want . . . ,” I replied, kind of hurt. I didn't mind her checking my stuff—all the inventions Lena has given me were disguised as regular things—but she usually just trusted my word.

“I know. I'm sorry. I do trust you. I shouldn't just accuse you with crazy things, but . . .” She pressed a hand against her mouth. Her hands were shaking too.

“It'll be okay,” I said, but my voice cracked.

And, like a mask fell over her face, she donned a smile. “Okay. Let's pause this conversation and reconvene in the kitchen. Today calls for tea.”

Mom only calls for tea breaks in stressful situations. She brewed it the same way she'd driven us home, distant and focused: filling the kettle and putting it on the stove, lining up all of her favorite mugs on the counter, and pulling out three different kinds of tea—mint for me, lemon for Amy, and chamomile for herself.

Moving around the kitchen, she shot me the same looks as she had in the weeks after I came back from Atlantis, like she didn't know what to do with me, but she was afraid I would vanish again if she let me out of her sight.

I definitely didn't break the silence. I didn't know what I was going to say.

Finally the door squeaked open, and Amy let herself in, looking a little harassed. She took in the sight of Mom's tea freak-out. “No trouble from the storekeepers,” she said.

Mom nodded, then turned to me. I braced myself for the third degree. “Listen, Rory,” she said. “What if we stayed in San Francisco? Got a house and everything?”

Well,
that
came out of nowhere.

“I'll get the folder,” Amy said and left the room, which kind of upped my confusion.

“Two more productions have approached me recently, asking me to commit to other plays here,” Mom explained. “I think this stage acting could be the next phase of my career. I would still do movies, but only in the summer, when school was out and you could come with me.”

I guess it made sense, Mom wanting to moving here: She had college friends in the Bay Area. The dean of students at my school had been her freshman-year roommate, and the theater director who had first convinced her to try out the San Fran stage had been in most of Mom's drama classes.

“This way, you could spend all four years at the same high school and make some friends.” Mom looked at me expectantly. She thought I would jump at the chance to stop moving around, to have a real life instead of just being the new girl all the time.

Two years ago, I
would
have.

Now, when I daydreamed about living in one place, I always pictured moving to EAS, like Lena and Chase. We wouldn't even have to move from city to city for Mom's movies anymore. She could just use the Door Trek system to travel the country. But my
mom would never go for that. If I told her the truth about EAS, she would only see that world as a place where the Pied Piper kidnapped children, wolves invaded Golden Gate Park, and the Snow Queen tried to kill me for having some sort of freaky destiny—not the place with easy magic transport.

When Amy came back carrying a red folder decorated with a silver door, I knew what Mom was going to say next: “You wouldn't need to go to EAS anymore.” That was putting it in a nice way. Staying in San Francisco meant she never wanted me to go back to EAS again.

“You could join the soccer team,” Amy added.

I
had
been into soccer—before sword training took over my free time. They still thought I was the same as I'd been at eleven, but so much had changed since then. They didn't know me at all anymore.

“And I've been looking at houses!” Mom reached across the table and opened the folder. Inside was a stack of glossy flyers. She pushed one in front of me. “This condo isn't even that far from here. Four bedrooms! I thought we could go to the open house on Sunday.”

Then I understood. The grocery store incident hadn't caused this conversation. It had just given Mom the excuse to bring it up. “You've been thinking about this for a while.”

“Yes.” Mom hesitated. “Since February—when your dad told you about, um, his news.”

Dad's news had been big. I'd known that it was going to be something major as soon as he called. He never called me unless we set up a phone date ahead of time. He also didn't normally waste long seconds taking deep breaths that whistled over the mouthpiece.

Then he'd said, “Guess what? Brie's going to have a baby!”

I had been so surprised at first. I think I'd only said,
“Huh?”

Dad hadn't noticed. “This summer. This
June
. That's what the doctor said. You're the first person we called. We haven't even told Brie's parents yet.”

“Cool.” I tried to remember what I was supposed to say. “I mean, congratulations.”

“Thanks. Thank you. I'm just—I'm overwhelmed, you know?” Dad's voice had gone all crackly, which meant he'd either had a bad connection or he'd gotten choked up. “Hold on. I'm going to pass the phone to your stepmother. She wants to talk to you.”

Brie hadn't been able to contain herself either. “We don't know if the baby's a boy or a girl yet, but we are so excited. And scared, to be totally honest. Rory, I need to ask you something.”