“Anyway, hopefully I won’t have to see him again for a long time.”
Pen yawned as she nodded. “That’s good.”
“All right,” I said. “We’ll get out of your hair.”
I paused because I didn’t want another lecture, but I needed to know. “Did he say anything to you?” I said, finally. “About the argument?”
“I can’t talk about it if he did.”
I frowned at her. “Don’t pull that patient privilege crap with me, Pen.”
“And don’t take that cop voice with me.” She crossed her arms. “If I came running to you every time he vented about some fool thing you did, he’d never trust me again.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean, ‘every time’?”
She rolled her eyes but softened it by putting a hand on my arm. “Look, he’ll talk to you when he’s ready. In the meantime, just play it cool.”
I looked over at the back of my brother’s head, which bobbed to some beat I couldn’t hear. Meanwhile, seeing Volos had opened old scabs and a nagging voice in my head whispered dire predictions about having him slink back into my life. And now, my little brother, whom I’d struggled to save from the Cauldron, was trying his hardest to run right back to magic’s strangling embrace.
“Right,” I said, “I’ll just play it cool.”
Chapter Eighteen
The Blue Plate Diner had been around for as long as I could remember. Mom used to take me every year on my birthday. We’d sit at the counter and order shakes and burgers and giggle as if we were a normal mother and daughter, instead of a sex magic practitioner and her budding magical criminal of a kid.
The diner sat on the corner of a street just across the Steel River from the Cauldron. It was an institution at the crossroads between the Mundane and Arcane worlds.
The place looked exactly the way I remembered it from my childhood. It had been the one comfortingly Mundane thing in my life as a kid, so it made an impression. The red vinyl booths were cracked and slick from decades of greasy mist. The gold-flecked composite countertops had yellowed and warped from years of coffee spills. The old Wurlitzer jukebox boasted all the greatest hits of the ’40s and ’50s, which added to the time-warp vibe.
Once Mom was gone, I kept up the annual tradition for Danny’s birthdays. I told Danny I did it so he’d maintain a connection to Mom, but I suspected I got more out of it than he ever did. Like always, Danny got a vanilla shake while I ordered chocolate. We ordered that way so we could share and not have to choose between flavors. But he always ended up drinking both. He always got Tater Tots. I always got the famous crinkle fries. And when they arrived we dutifully divided them between the two plates. Like clockwork, we had been repeating this ritual for the last decade.
Danny dabbed a Tater Tot in the lake of ketchup on his plate. His eyes were downcast and he’d been unusually quiet. So it surprised me when he said, without looking up, “Did Mom do magic?”
Shock at the question forced a sharp intake of breath. The fries I’d shoved into my mouth a few seconds earlier slammed into my throat. The waitress was still making our shakes behind the counter, so I groped for the glass of water she’d brought in the meantime. I coughed until my throat was sore and the other patrons turned on their stools to gape. I held up a hand as the man in the next booth over started to rise, his face set in a determined line that hinted at a painful Heimlich in my future.
I waved my hands to show I was okay and gulped some more water.
Normally, we spent our meal people watching and laughing over stories I made up about Mom. As far as Danny knew, Mom had been a hardworking laundress who’d been hit by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting. Maybe over the years he’d realized there was more to that story, but he’d never pressed me about it until now.
By the time I recovered and saw Danny’s worried but determined expression through my teary eyes, I almost wished that guy had done the maneuver and broken a couple of ribs so I wouldn’t have to have this conversation. Not right then. Not ever, if I had my way.
But Danny, even though he hadn’t grown up in the family, was a Prospero through and through. I wouldn’t walk away from that table until I delivered the answers he wanted. I just prayed he was prepared for the truth because it wasn’t pretty.
“You know she was an Adept.” I sighed and took one last sip of water before I proceeded. “Why are you asking?”
He rolled his eyes. “Not all Adepts learn how to cook magic, Kate.”
He leaned forward and removed his wallet from his back pocket. From it he withdrew a small photograph and tossed it across the table. I cursed under my breath. The image was old, twenty years at least. In it, my mother wore the memento mori makeup of a member of the O Coven. White greasepaint, colorful shadows creating a sugar skull motif on the delicate planes of her face. Her hair was piled on top of her head and a tight red corset contained her … assets. I considered playing it off as if the picture was of someone else or maybe write it off as a Halloween costume. But when I flipped it over, the faded ink read, “Maggie Prospero, April 1985” in my mother’s own hand.
Shit.
“Where’d you get this?” I hedged.
His eyes shifted left. “In the attic with the other stuff.” The admission confirmed that he’d had this picture the other night when we fought but had hidden it from me. “Why is she wearing that weird makeup?”
I scratched my forehead, as if doing so would make my brain come up with the perfect response. When that didn’t work, I just decided to wing it. “Look, I’m sorry I yelled at you about all that. It just caught me off guard.” I blew out a breath. “You didn’t, um, take this picture in to school, did you?”
The look I received in response made me feel like an idiot. Teenagers have a way of reducing you like that. “Of course not. I found a normal one, too.”
Well, that was something, I thought. I couldn’t imagine the crucifixion my brother would receive if he brought a picture of his mom in full-on sex ritual regalia into that snobby school. “That’s good,” I said, slowly. “So you’ve never seen this makeup anywhere before?”
“No.” He drew the word out as if I’d asked the most obvious question ever. “But it’s not exactly normal, so I figured…” he trailed off.
Moment-of-truth time: I could either come clean and shatter my brother’s limited but positive impression of the woman he’d barely known or I could lie and risk his finding out later and never trusting me again.