Ginger was quaking in her seat, looked as if she was going to burst into tears.
“Jessie, for God’s sake stop it!” Cooper rose from his chair.
The fire flared brighter along with my anger, the flames turning purple. I’d saved his life, and now he wouldn’t back me in a fight?
“Set your skinny ass back down, honey,” I growled, my words thick with my long-buried Texas drawl.
The Warlock gripped my trembling flesh arm. “C’mon. Ginger didn’t mean anything by it. We’re all friends here.”
“Please calm down,” Mother Karen said, gripping the bowl so tightly it looked in danger of shattering.
I went cold at the fear in Karen’s eyes.
What the hell am I doing? I quickly dropped down into my chair, my heart pounding and cheeks hot.
“Sorry about that … don’t know what got into me,” I muttered as I pulled on the glove.
Ginger stammered, “Excuse me,” and fled the table, apparently heading toward the guest bathroom. Cooper shot me a look of mixed concern and irritation, then he and Mariette quickly followed the frightened girl.
The remaining Talents all sat in silence.
I completely jacked that up, I thought miserably. The pooch done got screwed. There didn’t seem to be any way to recover from it. Maybe I should leave the table, too, and commiserate with Pal in the backyard.
“Well, that happened,” the Warlock finally said. He nudged my elbow. “Want some potatoes?”
“Sure,” I sighed, taking the bowl of buttered, parsley-speckled russets from him. I spooned a few spuds onto my plate, and then cautiously forked one up and bit into it. Instead of a punch of agony, there was a slow, alien discomfort: the sting of rootlets being torn from the soil, the ache of broken eye-sprouts, the dull pain of a knife slicing through cold white flesh.
“How is it?” Cooper emerged from the hallway and sat back down at the table, acting as if nothing had happened. Mariette and Ginger weren’t with him.
“Unpleasant. Tolerable,” I replied. “Who knew taters felt so much pain? Meals are just going to suck all the way around for a while, I guess.”
“There’s always fruit,” Cooper said. “The plants want something to eat those.”
“With our luck, we’ve probably been cursed with deadly strawberry allergies,” I grumbled.
“Then consider the wide, wonderful world of tofu,” the Warlock said. “Soybeans are fruit, too.”
“Yay. Tofu.” I mournfully eyed the platter of untouchable rib eyes. “Please pass the broccoli …”
chapter
two
Cursed
Ginger never came back to the table. I tried to find her after dinner to apologize, but she and Mariette were nowhere to be found. Paulie and Oakbrown made hasty good-byes after dinner and left as well. Mother Karen sent Jimmy off to check on Cooper’s brothers, then gave me cheerful excuses as she pulled Cooper and the Warlock into her upstairs study for some kind of private chat.
Feeling frustrated and tired, I went into the guest bedroom and flopped face-first onto the homespun quilt. The “chat” was probably a prelude to Mother Karen telling me and Cooper that we had to go someplace else. Crap in a hat. We didn’t have anyplace else to go, except perhaps the Warlock’s bar, and the authorities would surely be waiting for us there.
Of course, the agents of the governing circle surely knew we were at Mother Karen’s, yet they hadn’t sent their goon squad after us again. What could the delay mean? It wasn’t so much a matter of waiting for the second shoe to drop as waiting for a whole cargo plane full of combat boots to come crashing through the roof.
“Crappity crap crap,” I muttered, pulling one of the poofy pillows over my head.
“You seem tense,” Cooper said from the doorway.
“Lemme guess … Mother Karen’s telling us to shove off, right?” I said from the darkness beneath the pillow.
“No, that’s not it at all,” he said. “She got a courier message from Riviera Jordan. Riviera is in charge of the Governing Circle now that her nephew Benedict’s out of commission.”
“What does she want? My severed head on a platter, I’m guessing.”
“No, apparently not. Karen’s supposed to open a mirror to Riviera’s office tomorrow at noon, and we’re all going to talk about arranging a neutral place to meet to discuss things.”
“Things?”
“Like getting someone to help us take care of my brothers. And there’s the trouble you and the Warlock and Pal got into on our behalf. Karen seems to think that Riviera is willing to listen to reason, even though you’ve apparently destroyed Benedict’s mind.”