Al glanced over his shoulder at Junior’s. “I know you are, but Dali has accused me of shirking my parental duties, so until your aura is full strength, I’ll be with you when you’re out of your dwelling.”
“Parental,” Jenks snorted from behind my collar, and I flushed. Al wasn’t my parent or my teacher at this point, though I did go to him with questions he rarely answered. Chaperone, maybe? Bailer out of trouble? Okay, maybe parent was accurate.
“That’s a lame excuse to horn in on ice cream with the girls,” I said, but I was still riding the high of knowing that Al appreciated me standing up for him. “And when did you get a license?”
“Three days ago.” The satisfaction was clear in his voice, and he set his cup on the hood of my car to open the passenger-side door for me. It wasn’t the usual pride of a new driver getting a permit, but rather the affirmation that reality was making room for them, stretching the rules to accommodate their needs, and demanding that they adhere to the same laws as everyone else—at least on paper. For a demon craving the need to belong, it was heady. Edden’s mistrust had hurt him, and I doubted that Al would ever step foot in the FIB again. I knew I was questioning if I ever would.
“I heard it took six months and Kalamack three lawyers to reacquire your license. Thank you for getting that box on the form,” he added softly. “In you go, my itchy witch.”
Hearing more than the thanks for getting demon on the license permit, I slid in and he shut the door with a careful motion.
“He’s worried about your aura?” Jenks said as I dropped my coffee in the cup holder before fitting my key and starting the car up from the passenger’s side. Hot air blew from the vents, and I angled it toward Jenks.
“I know, right?” I said, my mood tarnishing as Al strode around the front of the car, his eyes on the nearby colorful trees. Dali freaking out over a thin aura was just weird. And then I realized Al wasn’t looking at the beauty of the leaves, but for the shadow of a ragged crow among them.
It wasn’t my aura they were worried about. It was that Hodin might be alive.
CHAPTER
7
It felt odd to be sitting in the passenger seat of my car, sipping my cooling sweet coffee and messing with my phone while someone else drove. Putting my phone away, I watched Al competently make his way through Cincy’s four o’clock rush hour. That was even odder. I’d say he was being overly protective, but I knew what it was like to have a brand-new license and want to try it out. I wasn’t surprised he was good at driving, being unexpectedly patient with people on cell phones and courteous at stoplights. He’d even put his phone on driving mode before carefully fastening his seatbelt and checking his mirrors. Everyone out here was carelessly and casually using a machine that could kill, and arbitrarily set rules were all that kept everyone getting along with minimal friction. That was a demon from top to bottom.
Al’s window was down a crack despite the chill, and the sun shone on his gently moving dark hair to make it look almost white. The cold breeze had put Jenks on the radio buttons instead of his usual spot on the rearview mirror, and true to his pixy nature, he’d been going up and down the dial, looking for God knew what.
“Wait. Leave it there,” I said as Takata’s latest spilled out, and Al and Jenks shared a snicker. But I’d liked his music before I knew he was my birth father, and I turned it up, right as it was ending.
“That was Cincy’s hometown boy himself, Takata,” the announcer said, bringing a smile to my face as Al stopped at a yellow light. “Tickets for his solstice concert will go on sale next week, but you can win them here first. Stay tuned for how to get them at the end of our interview with Sa’han Landon, the high priest of the elven dewar, which is-s-s-s coming up next.”
My smile vanished, and I stared at the radio. Jenks eyed me from the tuner knob, his dangling feet idly kicking. “You okay?” he said as I pushed back into the seat to stare at nothing.