front window and stood on his hind legs with his front paws on the windowsill, as if he were a very small man. His crisp bark echoed through the townhouse. He turned his fuzzy head and looked at me, a very familiar look that said: Mama! Mama! There’s someone outside!
“Of course there is, boy. It’s Aunt Belinda.” Jester downgraded his bark to a dubious grumble, and I went to the window. A yellow cab had stopped just outside.
When the car door opened, Jester whined loud and long. This was the noise he made when he changed tactics from world’s most ridiculous watchdog to world’s fuzziest welcoming committee. He pawed at the glass, making sounds that veered between peeping, whining, and yelping.
“Settle down,” I said, attempting to smooth my hand down his back.
He danced sideways on two legs, like a circus poodle—then bolted for the door.
“Jester!” I ran after him.
He leaped at the door like a dog possessed.
I lunged for his harness and managed to snag him. Then I scooped him up into my arms like he was a little black sheep. He wiggled but calmed down enough so that I could open the door.
And there, on the front step, stood Belinda Campbell. My mother’s sister. The mother of my cousin Luella, and grandmother of Luella’s daughter, Lily.
Although she had to be in her late sixties or early seventies, she gave off an air of wiry vitality. Silver-white hair pulled tightly back in a bun. Long skinny legs in cutoff jean shorts, like mine, but much shorter. Beat-up white sneakers and no visible socks. A black Bike Week tank top. Sunglasses so burned out you could see the plastic peeling away from the lenses. “Zelda, girl! How you been? Ain’t seen you in an age!”
“Aunt Belinda!” I tried to hug her with one arm, but Jester went wild, scrabbling frantically to get to the new person whose face needed to be kissed.
“And who’s this handsome lil’ gentleman?”
“This is Jester, and he”—the handsome lil’ gentleman somehow managed to kick me right in the face in his attempt to get free—“he’s a little overexcited right now.”
“Aw, that’s all right. I love dogs.” She hauled her suitcases across the threshold with surprising strength, then shut the door. “Lemme hold him.”
Jester’s legs were almost a cartoon blur as he attempted to run on air to get to Aunt Belinda. She lifted him to her shoulder like he was a baby, and he gratefully licked her ear. “Ain’t he precious,” she said.
“Do you have a dog at home?”
“Me? Naw. I ain’t gonna drop dead and leave a poor dog behind. My Luella, she got enough to keep up with.” Aunt Belinda cackled. “But I love me a good hound.” She nuzzled the curly fur at the nape of Jester’s neck, and he returned the favor by attempting to remove her hair scrunchie, very delicately, with his teeth. Then she walked further into the room, still carrying Jester like a baby on her shoulder. “This where I’m gonna stay?”
I blinked. “On the couch?”
“Y’all ain’t got but two bedrooms, right?”
“Well, yeah, but I figured you’d want to stay in a hotel—”
“Pshaw. Put a couple of blankets on here and I’m as right as rain. These old bones can sleep anywhere.” She lofted Jester and looked right in his eyes. “Ain’t that right, Mr. Poodle?”
He licked her nose.
Aunt Belinda peeked around my shoulder like I was hiding something. “Now where’s my grandchild? Where’s Lily?”
“She’s in class today.”
Aunt Belinda snorted. “I gotta make sure she’s eatin’ right. Girl could get blown over in a stiff wind.”
“She looked fine when I saw her—”
“And all these big city witches around, too. I don’t trust ’em. What else you got around here?”
“What else of what?”
“You know,” she said. “Funny business. Paranormal stuff.”
“Well, there’s the Blessed…”
“Them’s the vampires that can’t leave?”
I nodded. “And the Gentry…”
“Fairies,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Can’t trust none of them, neither. Your mama said you had something real important to do up here. What is it?”
She had dropped everything to come up and help without knowing any of the details. Now that she was here, it was time to tell her the full story. So, once I had settled her on the couch and Jester distracted with a rolling ball that dispensed kibble, I started all the way at the beginning. The birthday party and Victorine. Berron and the restaurant. My witchy roommate, Poppy. Daniel and the vampires. Azure and the Ladies Who Witch. The Mirror Seal and the dying realm of the Gentry.
I left out Daniel’s mofongo meeting.
“Shoot, girl,” Aunt Belinda said, when I was finished. “You been right busy.” She frowned, and wrinkles traced across her forehead. “Lily ain’t involved in none of this?”
“No.” I swallowed. That wasn’t strictly true. “Well, actually, she’s making some clothing for us. I forgot that part.”
Her gaze sharpened into the distance, as if seeing something far away. “Girl’s gotta finish her schooling.”
“Believe me, I understand. She doesn’t know about any of us.” I couldn’t bring myself to share Lily’s uncanny assignment of roles to Berron, Daniel, Poppy, and me. Not yet. Not without real evidence. “I mean, it wouldn’t be bad though—if she turned out to be a witch?”
Her smile made wrinkles appear around her ice-blue eyes. “Heck, Zelda. My mama was a witch. I’m a witch. My only child is a witch. I ain’t scared of witchery. But Lily ain’t got nobody here to protect her.”
“I’m here,” I said, vaguely insulted that I didn’t qualify as Lily’s protector.
“Of course you are, girl. You got your hands full though, don’t you, what with looking after the restaurant and the Mirror and all those Gentries and such. And now you’re going someplace we don’t know nothing about.” She laced her fingers behind her head and leaned back. “I mean, someone may know about it, but that’s the trouble with us witches being cut off from one another. You got witches in one city, witches in another city, and they can’t call each other on the telephone, or send an email or nothing, for fear of being exposed. You got no idea what’s going on anywhere else.” She paused. “Sometimes I wish it weren’t a secret no more.”
“Didn’t your mom ever talk to you about anything? About the Mirror? Or anything else?”
Aunt Belinda shook her head slowly. “I think she was protecting us. Kinda like how I never told Luella a thing till she was over forty and magical herself.” She paused, as if lost in thought. Then she sat up and thumped her hands on the couch cushions, once, like gavels bringing a court to order. “Right. I’m gonna take care of things on this end, don’t you worry. You go fix those fairies. And Lily can take me to see the Statue of Liberty and so on. I ain’t leaving till I’ve had the full New York experience.”
“Pace yourself,” I said. “It’s a different kind of heat than what you’re used to.”
She laughed. “I’m tougher than the Devil and twice as mean. Ain’t no New York weather gonna stop me.”
There was a scrabbling noise outside—the telltale sound of Georgiana’s massive paws coming up the steps. “And there’s Poppy now.” I got up and opened the door for the two of them.
Poppy entered and peered at Aunt Belinda like she was a new addition to the Central Park Zoo. “Is this your aunt?”
I nodded.
“Oh, how lovely! An aunt of Zelda! And you’re a witch?” she added, without waiting for an answer. “How perfectly marvelous!” She bustled over with Georgiana and held out her hand. “Very pleased to meet you. I’m Poppy Spencer-Churchill, Zelda’s roommate.”
“You’re the fire witch, then,” Aunt Belinda said, shaking the extended hand. “Belinda Campbell.”
Poppy was smiling and shaking hands when suddenly she let go and drew back with a look of concern. “Does she know…?” She made an odd gesture, like flashbulb pops, around her own head.
Her mind-reading, of course. I hurried to explain. “Aunt Belinda, Poppy’s fire magic comes with mind-reading, and she can’t turn it off. When she’s within about six feet of you, she can see little pictures of what you’re thinking about. She likes to be upfront about it, at least with magical people.”
“Well, I’ll be darned,” Aunt Belinda said. “That’s right strange. Never heard of it being uncontrollable before.” She cocked her head and looked Poppy up and down before nodding once, decisively. “I ain’t worried. If I’m gonna think something rude, I’ll step back a few paces.” She winked at Poppy.
Poppy smiled with relief. “That’s very kind of you, Mrs. Campbell.”
“Ain’t nobody calls me that, child. You just call me Mama.”
Georgiana, freed from her leash, accepted a scritchy-scratch from Aunt Belinda, then ambled after the kibble toy Jester was chasing.
There was something cozy about having Aunt Belinda here. Seeing her and Lily made me miss my mom, though Mom and Aunt Belinda were as different as sweet tea and hot sauce. I even missed Bruce, a little. It was like we were all different pieces of the same puzzle.
Jester paused wrestling with the kibble ball, and peered at me with his head cocked and ears lifted as if I’d said something aloud.
I hadn’t, but his curious gaze encouraged me to speak. Or maybe it was the sound of my grandmother chuckling to herself in the great beyond. “Hey, Aunt Belinda,” I said, easing into one of the side chairs. “What do you think about having a family reunion someday?”
She and Poppy were comparing elemental spells, sending swirls of air and tiny fireworks around the room. Aunt Belinda clenched her casting hand neatly, bringing the breeze to a stop. “Why, Zelda girl,” she said. “I think that might just be a marvelous idea!”