The Crimson Brand (8 page)

Susan’s was a laptop computer, the tiniest one Penny had ever seen.

“I’m having internet installed this afternoon,” she said as Penny tore open the box.  “I’m always thoroughly sick of computers by the time I leave work, but I thought you might like to join the twenty-first century.”

Penny liked it so much she gave Susan another hug, which seemed to cheer Susan up a bit.  Her smile as Penny moved on to her second gift was less brilliant than usual, but also less fake than the one she’d offered after her sister’s quick exit.

Zoe and Katie’s gift was a pair of CDs, from the new/used music store in Centralia, Penny guessed, since Dogwood didn’t have one.  They had been trying desperately to introduce Penny to more modern music.  Her taste in music, old rock ‘n’ roll and classical, quite frankly disturbed them. 

Jenny, Susan’s only employee at Sullivan’s, arrived just as Susan was loading one of Penny’s new CDs into the living room stereo.  She parked and approached the house slowly, shading her eyes with a hand and scanning the growing crowd around the front of Penny’s house.  As if unsatisfied by her brief search of the partygoers, she turned her scrutiny to the cars and bikes parked around the edge of the driveway.

Penny waved and stepped down to greet her. 

She was young, only a few years out of high school, plump, with brown hair and thick glasses that magnified her wide eyes.  She reminded Penny of a cheerful owl.

“Who are you looking for?” 

Jenny gave up her search with a shrug and a grin at Penny.  “I thought Susan’s boyfriend might show up.”

Boyfriend
? Penny thought, then said.  “Boyfriend?  Susan doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

“Well, not
yet
,” Jenny said.  “Is that Adele?” 

Jenny danced her way up to the porch, depositing her gift into Penny’s hands before going inside to dance to Zoe and Katie’s attempt at bringing Penny’s music collection into the twenty-first century. 

Jenny’s gift was, of course, a book, but still one of the biggest surprises that day. 
The Aikido Student Handbook
, a volume Penny had owned a few years before when she still lived with her mother in San Francisco and her runty size had made her a favorite target of neighborhood bullies.  Her brief lessons had not turned her into the Karate Kid, but she’d learned to defend herself, and more importantly, as far as her mother was concerned anyway, to control the hot temper that would never let her walk away from a fight.  She supposed that Susan had known about the lessons and told Jenny.

“Aikido,” Chelsea said, almost sneering at the book in Penny’s hands, then at Penny.  Her expression seemed to say,
right … as if
.

At Chelsea’s words, the others gathered around to see what was up.

“You never told me you were a kung fu master,” Katie teased.

“Aikido,” Penny corrected, blushing all the way from her neck to her forehead.  “I was a novice.”

She’d never mentioned it to Zoe or Katie because it was a part of her past life in the city and not something she’d planned taking up again.  Her learned skills were rusty now, and the self-control she’d gained had gone out the window after her mom had died and Child Protective Services stuck her in that lousy children’s home.

 “Oh yeah, I knew that,” Zoe said, tipping Penny a not-so-sly wink.  “She beat Rooster up in the park the day I met her.”

“Fun, isn’t it?” Trey said, and nervous laughter filled the awkward silence that followed Zoe’s fond reminiscence.  “I shoved him in a trashcan once.”

They were gathering trash and seeing off the first of her guests
—
Trey, Jodi, and Chelsea
—
when Penny felt the little mirror in her front pocket begin to warm and vibrate slightly, someone trying to speak to her through it.  She wondered who other than Zoe and Katie, standing only feet from her and perfectly able to speak directly to her, would try to reach her through the mirrors, then remembered Ronan’s advice to always keep one handy.

Penny excused herself, ducked into the downstairs bathroom, and answered it.

“Ronan?”

Ronan’s face swam from a brief, obscuring mist, grinning his foxy grin at her.

“Didn’t have time to give you your gift before you ran off,” he said.

“What?”  Of all the people, or non-people, she expected a birthday gift from, Ronan was not one.  Not that he wasn’t a giving or generous … uh, whatever he was, but he couldn’t just trot into the Centralia Mall’s
Hot Topic
and buy her a gift card.

Ronan rolled his eyes, which was quite something to see a fox do, no matter how many times she’d seen him do it.  “I believe it
is
human custom to give the birthday girl a token of one’s friendship, is it not?”

“Well … yeah, but….”

“Then when you have a chance to get away, go to your back porch and reach under the bottom step.  No one but Kat and Zoe are to see it.  I had to leave somewhat precipitously when I brought it over.”  He wrinkled his upper lip, showing teeth.  “I think Kat’s brother spotted me going around the house.”

“
Michael can see you
?”  She didn’t realize she’d all but shouted until he shushed her.  “Does that mean what I think it means?”

It hadn’t occurred to Penny that any of the boys in Dogwood might have the same latent abilities that she, Zoe, and Katie had, but now that the idea was in her head, it seemed kind of silly that she’d never thought of it before.  After all, Tovar the Red, who had actually been the Birdman in disguise, had been able to see Ronan.  She was pretty sure that even without his human disguise, the monster had been male.

“That depends,” said Ronan shiftily.  “On what you think it means.”

Then the mirror clouded over, and he was gone.

*   *   *

If Ronan’s short surprise appearance had been a pleasant one, then the surprise that waited outside for Penny certainly wasn’t.  She hadn’t thought there was a person in the world she wanted to see at her birthday party, or anywhere else really, less than Miss Riggs … well, maybe Rooster … but the scene she found on the front porch after her chat with Ronan made Miss Riggs’s visit seem almost jovial.  

Katie’s father, red-faced and arguing, stood at the foot of the steps with Michael.  Katie was between them, her face bright red, staring down at her feet.  Michael had a hold on her left arm, her father her right.  She looked like she wanted to find a deep hole to fall into.

“You knew she wasn’t allowed,” her father boomed at Michael.  It was an impressive shout; Zoe jumped back at the sound, her back thumping against the wall behind her.  Ellen looked appalled.  Penny felt like slinking back inside.  “You went behind my back ….”

“Father, you’re being stupid!”  Michael was in full voice too, he leaned protectively over Katie.  “You’re punishing Katie because ….”

“Because she disobeyed me!”

“Stop it, both of you!”  Katie shrieked, pulling free from both of them.  She rounded on her father, and Penny thought that if they were giving out prizes for loudest shouts, Katie would have taken second place at least.  Her father reached for her but Katie slapped his hand away and ran for Michael’s Jeep.  “I hate you!”

The silence that followed was perhaps more excruciating than the high-volume discussion had been.

Michael glared at their father, unblinking.

Mr. West stood where he was for a moment, perfectly still, staring at the place where Katie had been, his hand still hovering as if to grab the air in front of him.  Then he turned and watched Katie climb into the passenger seat of the Jeep.  At last, his gaze settled on his audience on the porch.

Michael snorted in disgust and stalked off toward his Jeep, leaving his father standing alone.

Zoe was wide-eyed and angry, chewing on her bottom lip as if afraid of what might happen if she allowed her mouth to open.

Jenny’s mouth was open, but she seemed beyond words.  Her jaw worked up and down for a moment, as if she were trying to force speech, but nothing happened so she closed it and, a little weak in the knees it seemed, stepped to the nearest chair to sit.

Susan’s face was unreadable, but her brow was creased with deep lines that looked alien on her usually smooth face.  Penny thought a storm might be brewing behind those lines.

At last, Mr. West broke the silence.

“Didn’t you even think to ask me if she was allowed to come over?”  His voice was hoarse from shouting.  He gave Penny the shortest of glances before ignoring her again.  “You know how I feel about … them.”

“She never did anything to you!”  Zoe shouted and advanced on Mr. West, but Ellen stopped her with an outstretched arm.

Of them all, Susan alone seemed calm, but Penny had seen the expression on her face before, just once, when she’d caught Penny sneaking to see Tovar the Red’s show the year before.

Susan’s still face was a thin mask, barely hiding her wrath. 

“Honestly, no.  It never occurred to me that you would be childish enough to hold on to your ridiculous grudge this long.”

Mr. West seemed about to reply, but Susan pointed a single finger at him, and he held his tongue. 

“You had your say.  Now you get to shut up and listen to me.”

His eyes went even wider, and the flush began to drain from his cheeks.

“I also never thought you’d be childish enough to punish two innocent children, one of them your own daughter, because of a bit of foolishness that happened fourteen years ago.  Something neither of them was a part of.”

Michael’s Jeep growled as he tore down the driveway, throwing up a rooster-tail of gravel and dust.  Mr. West seemed to be grateful for the diversion.  He watched his children until they dropped out of sight.

When he faced his audience again, he avoided Susan.  His eyes fell on Penny instead.

Penny had no words.  She felt tears pushing at her eyes, prickly and hot, but resisted them.  She wouldn’t let herself cry in front of this … this man!

Again, he seemed about to speak, and again Susan stopped him.

“The only two words you’re allowed to say to Penny are
happy
and
birthday
.”  She stepped next to Penny and put an arm on her shoulder.  Penny had never been so grateful for an invasion of her personal space.  “But I think you’ve already ruined any chance of that for her.”

A moment later Zoe was on her other side, almost vibrating with anger, her arm on Penny’s other shoulder. 

Mr. West regarded them for another moment, then stalked away.

*   *   *

Most of the happy
had
left Penny’s day.

When the party was over, Susan had no objections to letting Penny help clean up and put things away.  Not much later, a van arrived and a uniformed man installed their new satellite internet.  Afterward they all seemed content to continue the afternoon’s silence while watching a movie that had been on Penny’s wish list for weeks.   A phone call from Zoe’s grandmother broke the trio up before the movie ended.  She’d changed her mind about Zoe spending a second night at Penny’s, and Zoe mumbled moodily under her breath while she hurriedly packed to leave. 

Penny paused the movie while Susan drove Zoe home, taking advantage of the unexpected alone time to reacquaint herself with
The Aikido Student Handbook
, remembering her old lessons and exercises, and missing them.  Maybe she could start again; Dogwood didn’t have any dojos or Aikido instructors, but she could try to do it alone.

Susan returned home just as she was putting her book down, and they finished the movie in near silence, exchanging only a few words for the remaining hour.

Susan seemed upset, too.  Her cheerful manner, usually quick to bounce back, was absent for the rest of the night.

Penny excused herself to her room, considered trying to read again, but decided to wait a while and try to get Katie on her mirror.  She fell asleep while she was waiting and didn’t wake again until well after dark.

Her first panicked thought upon waking was that there was something important that she was supposed to have done and forgotten about, and while she pummeled her half-awake brain in search of the forgotten thing, she remembered Ronan’s brief visit with her before the party ended and the unexpected present waiting for her under the back-porch steps.

Penny jumped out of bed and lowered the ladder to the hallway.  It descended smoothly and silently; she’d made a habit of keeping it well-oiled to cover her nighttime jaunts. She walked as quietly as she could down the stairs to the bottom floor, not wanting to wake Susan.

But Susan was already awake.

“Who else could have done it?  Who else would have?”  Susan kept her voice low, obviously not wanting to wake Penny, but all the calm was out of her voice now.  The one person who could make her lose her cool, apparently, was her sister.  After a few minutes of silence on her end, Susan spoke again.

“You weren’t looking out for anyone.  You did it to cause trouble.  You and that ….”  It seemed she couldn’t find the right word or simply wouldn’t allow herself to use it.  “That
man
has had it in for her since the day she showed up.  You never gave her a chance either.”