Phantom of the Library - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,60

here in California?”

“That would be pretty delicious,” Billie said. “Although what would make me really happy would be to sell Greenwood Manor so I don’t have to worry about it anymore! Is your Realtor doing anything about it?”

“Oh…yes. We had some viewings last week…”

“But you still haven’t heard anything? What’s it gonna take? Damn.”

“I’m okay with waiting for just the right buyer,” I said. “I’m still not that happy with the couple who bought Lockwood House. The wife was so annoying. I shudder to think what she’s done to the place. I’m kinda glad those faeries didn’t buy Greenwood Manor either.”

Billie tilted her head. “You’re not a Capricorn, are you?”

“No.”

“Yeah, I can tell, because you’re not that great at making money.”

I sighed. “Money isn’t everything.”

My phone rang as we were walking back. I thought it might be Hester, my Realtor, because it wouldn’t be the first time I was talking about someone and then they called, but when I took out my phone it said ‘Mother’.

“You call your mama ‘Mother’?”

“Don’t look at my phone! It’s what…she prefers.” I really didn’t want to answer the phone as the only thing I could think was that this was my official, “You are disowned” call. I braced myself. I really shouldn’t care. It’s my mom. I disappointed her, but she disappointed me too. So there.

“I—I better take this,” I said, rushing ahead of Billie so that she couldn’t overhear an unpleasant and private conversation.

“Helena! Oh, thank god you picked up.” My mother sounded short of breath. “Helena, I know what you did.”

“I know what you’re going to say. I am aware that I’m on the shit list with Harris now. I don’t care. It needed to be done.”

“No…no…I—I sort of agree with you, dear.”

“Whut.”

“Well, the rumors of the missing familiars has been spreading around the world very quickly. I already knew you were up to something odd. So I sent my familiar to see if Bevan was doing anything suspicious. She saw that he was basically running a shelter for familiars so she just fell in with the crowd and pretended to be one of them. She was very impressed with your familiar and moved by his kindness. And she was appalled at the conditions some of the familiars were dealing with as she spoke to them…” My mother swallowed. “To be honest, it was one of the few times that she has spoken to me so frankly since we were children and it had an effect on me. She said that Bevan’s charitable efforts were in the fine tradition of the best of our ancestors. But I do want to know what exactly you have done.”

I wish I didn’t care about my mother’s opinions, but I couldn’t help a surge of pride. I had grown up with those stories about ‘the best of our ancestors’. We rarely heard about all the terrible things our royal ancestors got up to unless we pulled books off the shelves, but our parents always reminded us about the princesses who personally nursed wounded soldiers or rode bravely into battles alongside their men, so that I used to think that I was descended from heroic, fairy tale characters.

“Well, we broke the walls between the worlds,” I said. “That’s really it. I found out they didn’t used to exist a thousand years ago, and it was Ethereal wizards who decided to put up gates around their world and decide who was worthy of being Ethereal. Harris and I both have Sinistrals in our lives that we love. It didn’t seem right to me. Plus, it all started because of a dirty trick.”

“How do you know what happened a thousand years ago? We hardly have any records from back then.”

I gave her a quick recap, even as I worried I was telling her too much. I didn’t really know if I could trust my mom. She did some pretty awful things to us growing up. Her punishments were harsh and her judgments were swift. But she was never one for tricks and I didn’t think she would call me just to turn around and put my life in danger.

She took a deep breath. “Helena, I am genuinely concerned that your cousin might try to kill you.”

“Yeah, no shit,” I said.

“Are you ready to stand up to him?”

“I hope so. We have a lot of familiars as our allies now.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Mom said. “Your father just heard that Piers has been hunting through the store rooms of