Scary Cool (The Spellspinners) (4 page)

“No homework the first day, right?”

“Heck no.”

He tossed me a canvas apron
. “
So
m
ake yourself useful.”

I followed him inside
the shed
, wrinkling my nose against the smell of potting soil. “I’m not useful, I’m decorative. Haven’t you noticed?”

All he had to say was something like
Ha, ha
or
Yeah, I
noticed you’re not useful.
Because I was kidding. But
Tres
didn’t say anything, and his ears turned red. Which turned my stupid remark into something I totally hadn’t intended.

I wanted to bite the words back, but it was too late. So now I turned red. What a dope.

And then he said, “Yeah, I noticed,” and that made everything worse.

Tres
is great, and he’s probably even good-looking, but I just don’t think of him
the same way he obviously thinks of me.
So I pulled the ugly apron on over my
new school clothes
and struck a silly pose.

It’s times like this when I wish
I could just use the
freakin
’ P
ower. I’ve never tried to defuse social situations with it, but I bet I could. Briefly, anyway. Long enough to skate me past the awkward moments.

Unfortunately, you
can’t use Power that way. It’s not tame. You can’t pull it down off your shelf and play with it like a toy. I mean, you
can,
but there’s always some major cleanup to do afterwards, so you better think things through before you get cute with it. And social dynamics
never give you
time to think things through.

So I helped
Tres
water the flats and
the flower
six-packs, and told him about my day. I didn’t mention Lance.
Tres
is a good listener, but I didn’t think he’d want to list
en to me talk about another boy.

And s
peaking of that other boy, the whole time I was with
Tres
, trying to relax and get back to normal, Lance was whispering my name. The air around me pulsed with a voice that only I could hear.

I ignored him, of course, on general principles. If there’s one thing Lance Donovan has got to understand, it’s that Zara
Norland
is not at his beck and call. I firmly shut the door o
n him and concentrated on
Tres
.

I
t wasn’t easy.

I hung out
and
helped
Tres
close at 6:00, then crossed
Cha
pman Road and went around back to our
kitchen. Good dinner-y smells were
emanating from the oven and
wafting through the screen door
—
which banged shut behind me, announcing my arrival even before I yelled, “I’m home.”

“Okay.”
Nonny’s
voice floated down the hall from wherever she was. “Set the table, hon.”

“Okay.”

I turned to head for the silverware drawer and stopped dead in my tracks. Lance was there, hands shoved in his pockets, leaning lazily against the kitchen counter. He smiled when he saw my expression, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile.

“You know, you really should lock your doors. You and
Nonny
.”

“From now on, we will.” I yanked the drawer open and grabbed the tray. “I
f
Nonny
sees you here, she’ll freak.
”

He didn’t move.
“Let her
.”

“
I
think you’d better
leave.”

“I will, if you
’ll
meet me later.”

“I don’t want to meet you later.” I slapped forks and spoons down on the table.

“You should, Zara. Because if
Nonny
sees me here, she’ll freak.”

I shot him some choice thoughts. He smiled blandly and shrugged. “You shouldn’t ignore me, cupcake. I’ve been trying to get through to you for hours.”

“
I heard you.
And stop calling me ‘cupcake.’
You are such a
creeper.
”

“
Town square. Gazebo. I’ll be waiting. Come on, it’s a public place.”

A door shut in the distance. My anxiety level shot through the roof. Lance felt it, of course, and his smile widened. “Yes or no, babe. It’s not a hard question.”

Footsteps on the hardwood floor. I swore under my breath.

“
All right,
yes.
Now go.”

He slipped through the screen door like a ghost, remembering to catch it with his hand so it didn’t bang. That’s Lance. He never misses a beat.
I almost had a heart attack, though, because his fingertips were still visible when
Nonny
walked in. If she’d looked at the door, she’d have seen him.

She didn’t though.
That’
s the thing about grownups
.
They mostly see what they expect to see.

Maybe it was the cookies and maybe it was nerves, but I
wasn’t very hungry.

Lance had been back in my life for what, ten hours? Already it felt like he’d never left. I spent too much of last summer sneaking around behind
Nonny’s
back—and sometimes Meg’s—seeing Lance on the sly. No
way
was I falling back into that pattern.

No.
Way.

Chapter 3

I had to
go
, of course. But
I had to wait until
Nonny
went to bed, because if she called to me or, God forbid, came upstairs for any reason and found me gone, my life would get even more complicated than it already is. It was nearly midnight when I slip
ped into jeans and a sweater to
skatch
downtown.

‘
Downtown
’
is a pretty laughable way to descri
be the Cherry Glen town square—it’s just a
literal
square
,
a
one-block
park with a gazebo band-shell-thing in the center—
but that’s how we think of it.
Not having
anything
better
to designate ‘downtown
.
’

I stood on the rag rug beside my bed. Closed my eyes. Pictured the path leading to the gazebo. And
skatched
.

Cool air surrounded me. I breathed in the fresh, green dampness of the summer night and opened my eyes.
Lance
was
waiting for me
on the gazebo steps. He stood up when I appeared on the path before him. He’s so polite, if I didn’t know better I’d think he was well brought-up.

And he’s so hot, I wish he had been. Well brought-up, that is.
He was wearing some sort of motorcycle jacket that made him scary gorgeous.

It was hard to read his expression in the shadows, but I don’t need to see Lance’s expression to know what it is
.

His smile was warm this time.
I didn’t return it.

“I can’t keep doing this. Tell me whatever it is you need to tell me, and let me go.”

He sighed
. “
You’re still pissed at me.
Would it help if I apologized?”

I shrugged. “
I doubt it. But why don’t you try?
”

I was just being flip, as I usually am with him—but he
took the offer
.
Lance’s remorse
immediately
wash
ed
over me in waves of regret. Regret tinged with embarrassment. He was genuinely sorry
for trying to break me
. And even sorri
er that I’d made a fool of him.

He was sorry he scared me.
He was s
orry he lost his temper.

Sorry he roughed me up
.
Sorry he tried to come between me and Meg.

Sorry for a lot of stuff.

But there were qualifications in there, too. He wasn’t showing me everyt
hing he thought or felt
.
And in my opinion, he wasn’t sorry enough—especially for trying to come between me and Meg. His methods in that
attempt
had been way ugly.

I frowned. “
See, here’s the thing.
It’s always
just
half-way with you. You’re sorry
, but only for some of what you did
. You’re here to help me,
but only if
I
do what you want
. You’re on my side,
yeah,
to a point,
but n
ot entirely.
”
I took a deep breath. “Apology not accepted.”

He felt me getting ready to
skatch
home
and
jumped
off the steps. “Don’t go.”
He automatic
ally reached out his hand
to stop me.

And
an interesting thing happened.

Tiny purple spark
s fizzed in the darkness
between us.

They were like sparks of static electricity, so faint that they would have been invisible in
daylight
.
I felt nothing. Lance, however, flinched. His hand jerked back as if it had been stung.

He stared at me and swore.

“What was that?” I asked
, intrigued
. “A
nd I can feel you searching for a good lie to tell me, so knock it off.
Give
me
the truth
.
”

He sighed and stuck his hands in his pockets. Looked off into the middle distance. Shrugged. And
decided to tell
the truth
—I felt it.

“
After you banished me, I couldn’t
skatch
back
to Cherry Glen.
I told you about that.
Rune brought me
here.
Physically brought me, in a car.
W
e had no trouble coming into town,
so
I thought I was home free.
I mean, I t
hought we’d
done an end run
around
my
banishment
by traveling
here
like a couple of sticks
.
Guess not.” He looked a
t me. “
I can’t touch you.”

I felt my eyes widen. “Sweet.”

“Hey, thanks.”

“No, really. This is great. You don’t get it—why would you? But all my life, when I use the Power, whatever I’ve done unravels eventually. So it’s cool to find out that this spell still holds. At some level, anyhow.”

The mos
t important level, bab
e
.
Lance was pi
ssed. Or disappointed. Or both.

He must have had plans that involved touching me.

I had to hide the flash of pleasure that realization gave me. Because I didn’t want Lance to know, quite frankly, that the thought of him touching me—or at least
wanting
to touch me—was kind of a thrill.

Okay, there’s no ‘kind of’
about it. It thrilled me to the core. But
still,
I felt safer knowing that however much he wanted to, he couldn’t do it.

“What about me?” I wanted to know. “Can I touch you?”

Something flashed across
his brain.
He didn’t bother to hide from me that he enjoyed hearing me say those words
. But there was something else, too—something he did hide. I sensed it, but couldn’t make out what it was. “Try it,” he suggested. All innocent-like.

And I immediately knew that I could
, in fact,
touch him
. And that if I did, I’d regret it.

I eyed him warily. “What’s up with that? Come on, Donovan. Stop holding out on me.”

“Well, I’m not sure.”

Hah. H
e was ninety-nine percent sure. “Not sure about what?”

“What would happen if you touched me.”