SUNDAY CAME AND went quietly. Sparx spent more time out and about and, reluctantly, I went back to Oscar’s secret lair with a big sketch pad and did my best to copy the spell. The diagram on the floor continued to glow faintly, which was deeply alarming. Afterward, because it was bucketing cold rain and my brain had turned to goo, I wandered up to the attic and spent a few hours lying on my back and watching the water roll down the skylights while I half read a book.
The wait for the bus on Monday was damp and chilly, though the last of the snow had gone with the rain. It was also lonely, since Sparx was off looking for answers again. But by the time I got to school, a surprisingly bright sun had already started to steam the worst of the wet out of the ground. That meant spring cleanup after our morning advisory meeting—which I’d forgotten completely—was still on. Fortunately, I didn’t really own any clothes but jeans and tees or sweatshirts, so at least I was dressed for mudding it.
I don’t know if normal schools do this kind of thing, but at Free, we’re big on community learning and service. One of our graduation requirements is a certificate for service to school, and another is for service to community. Every year in the spring, as soon as the snow melts, the whole school takes a day off classes and cleans up the surrounding area. We divide up the neighborhood and go out in our advisory groups with garbage bags and those pokey sticks for picking up litter, and we try to clear away all the trash that piled up over the winter.
There’s a big hill behind the school that used to be a miniature urban forest with a ton of trees and low brush and all these little trails and hidden clearings. I loved sneaking up there to read a book or just enjoy the afternoon sun. It was one of my favorite places in the whole world. Then, when my fire powers were first coming in, I’d screwed up really bad and burned the whole slope bare. Since then, I’ve felt guilty every time I looked that way.
It wasn’t too awful during the winter when the whole thing had been covered in snow and it all just looked white and clean. But now, with the melt, burned stumps and charred stone poked out everywhere. It was a punch in the gut at the best of times, and, lucky me, Evelyn’s group got to clean it up.
The only good thing about the exercise was that I could focus on the physical task at hand—stabbing bits of trash and stuffing them in my bag—and ignore the fact that Dave had chosen to work on the opposite side of the hill. He was up above the court building while I was over on the east by a little spring-fed creek that carved a gully into the slope before vanishing down a culvert. By lunchtime, after three hours of working in the wasteland I’d created, I was covered in dirt and soot, and I wanted nothing to do with anyone.
I took the brown-bag lunch the school had supplied and sat on a rock by the creek—the damage was less visible from there. The sun on the water was dazzling, striking rainbows off a streak of oil and making my eyes tear up. Dave was off somewhere around the slope, though several other kids from my group found spots nearby. So did a couple from Tanya’s class. They’d been cleaning the grounds of the apartment building which abutted the hill. I was just finishing up when I saw Tanya and decided I might as well catch her now.
“What’s up, Kalvan?” she asked when I waved at her.
Once she got close enough to speak without being overheard, I described what we’d found below my basement and showed her my sketch.
“Hmm, I’d have to see it in person to be sure, but that doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever studied.” She looked it over carefully. “Are you sure you drew it properly?”
“I’m sure.” I really didn’t want her to come by the house. Not only would I prefer to avoid any of my teachers seeing the shape my mother was in, but I figured Tanya and my aunt should be kept as far away from each other as possible.
“I don’t like the look of that thing one little bit. Did Sparx say what he thought it was for?”
“I … no.” Why hadn’t I thought this conversation through in advance?!? Of course Tanya was going to want to know what the spell did, and that led straight to my mother’s problems, and from there on to anything from Child Protective Services to foster care. A pit opened in my stomach like the world’s biggest sinkhole. “He didn’t mention it. Something to do with the Crown of the North is all. He thought I should check with you if it looked familiar. It’s nothing important, just curiosity.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Maybe I should stop by your house. Just to take a look.”
“I, uh, I don’t think that’s a great idea, but let me ask Sparx.”
“All right. Speaking of which, where is he?”
“Oh, you know, out and about.” I glanced at my watch—I know, I’m a dinosaur, but my mom won’t let me have a phone yet—and thankfully realized lunch was almost over. I quickly got up off the rock. “I’ll let him know you want to talk to him.”
Tanya sighed, but let me off that hook for the moment. “All right.” She traced a couple of the lines on my drawing. “Did you make any more notes? Let me see your spell journal.”
“It’s, um, at home.”
The eyebrow went up again. “All right, but I’ll want to see it tomorrow with extensive notes about that thing.” She poked my sketch before looking around and raising her voice. “Come on, gang, it’s time to get back to work.” She headed out, and so did everyone else, either following Tanya, or—in the case of the kids from Evelyn’s group—heading up the way I had come.
I held my breath until Tanya vanished around a bend in the gully with all of her advisory students. Man, this day just couldn’t get any better, could it?
“That’s a very interesting little drawing.” Josh’s voice whispered practically in my ear, just dripping with sarcasm and contempt.
I whipped my head around but didn’t see anything. Then, the rainbow shimmer on the water twisted and Josh sort of faded into view. Before I could say anything, he pulled the sketch pad from my hands.
“Your technique sucks, Monroe. You can’t draw a straight line to save your life, and someone needs to teach you how to shade. But the subject is fascinating. Mind if I borrow this?” He tore out the sheet without waiting for my answer and dropped the pad on the muddy ground.
I wanted to punch him in the nose so bad, but I’d gotten lucky last time and there was no one around to stop him from beating the crap out of me this go-round. I was angry enough I might have tried magic if we weren’t standing in the middle of the charred mess that was the worst magical mistake of my life. Instead, I just picked up the sketchbook and cleaned off the mud before putting it away and getting back to work.
Tuesday, I woke up feeling sicker than I had in years. Fever, chills, stuffy nose, the whole works. So I unplugged my clock, crawled back under the covers, and decided the universe could live without me for a while. I woke again around noon to find Sparx snuggled against my side and snoring away, with tiny stutters of smoke coming out of his nose to go along with the snorfly noises. I slid out without waking him, wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, and staggered off to the bathroom.
On the way back, I stopped in the kitchen. I was thirsty, my throat felt gooey, and I really wanted some orange juice to clear out the gunk. But the only things in the fridge were half a jar of pickles, some butter, and a plastic container full of something green and fuzzy my dead aunt was probably saving for a snack. The freezer had nothing but ice cubes, and the cupboards weren’t in much better state. I did finally find a thing of bouillon cubes, so I dropped one in a mug I fished out of the sink, ran some water over the top, and stuck it in the microwave.
Then, because I was hungry as well as thirsty, I went back to staring at the cupboards. They remained stubbornly empty. That shouldn’t have been a surprise, because no one had done any real shopping in at least two weeks, but somehow it was. When I’d beaten Oscar I sort of expected the world to go back to normal, and there’d been a few weeks right afterward where my mother seemed almost “here and now” and up to doing things like grocery shopping. But that was well in the past. My mom was hanging out on planet ten these days and my aunt had seriously weird ideas about fresh food.
I’d brought home a few things picked up at the gas station or Doughboy, but had mostly been scavenging through the increasingly empty pickings without ever really thinking about the fact that no one was doing the shopping till now, when I was too sick to deal with anything. But, sick or not, it was all on me, and it would stay that way until my mother got better. The realization made my chills even worse, and I pulled the blanket tight around my shoulders. That’s when the phone rang. I wanted to ignore it. But when I looked at the caller ID, I saw it was school, which meant not answering could make things go very bad very quickly.
“Hello?”
“Hello, this is Jan, the administrative assistant from the Free School. Is this Kalvan?”
“Id is,” I replied, playing up my stuffy nose.
“You sound terrible.”
“I’b sick.”
“I’m sorry, dear. You know you’re supposed to let us know when you’re staying home sick.”
“Oh, righd, I’b sorry. I’b sick. Mighd be a couple of days.”
She laughed. “Not you, you, dear. You should be resting. We need a parent or guardian to confirm you’re ill. Can you get your mother or stepfather for me?”
“Uh … sure. Hang on.” Now what?!?
I set the phone on the counter and looked around frantically. I didn’t dare put my mom on. There was no telling what she might say. If I didn’t sound like someone had corked my nose shut I might have tried to fake her voice, but there was really only one option.
I hurried down the basement stairs. “Aud Noelle?”
“What is it, Kalvan?”
“I’b sick, and school wads do dalk with Mom or Oscar. Can you…”
“Do Genny’s voice?” she asked, mimicking my mother perfectly. “Of course.”
“Dank you. Der’s a phone on da desk.”
She quickly walked over and picked it up. “Hello, this is Genevieve Monroe.”
I probably should have stayed to listen, but simply walking down the steps had left me lightheaded. So I dragged myself back upstairs, drank my bouillon, and crawled into bed. Food would have to wait.
The next time I opened my eyes it was dark. The only light in the room came from Sparx’s fur—the dim red glow of his fires at their lowest. I glanced at my clock, but, of course, I’d unplugged it hours ago. I poked the hare gently. “Wad time is id?”
He stretched and his fires brightened. “A bit after midnight.”
“I’b starving. I wad some soub and a grilled cheese.”
The hare stood. “I’ll see if I can get someone to make you something. I’d do it myself if I had thumbs.”
I caught him by the scruff before he could take off. “Der’s no food in da house. Nobody’s been shopping.”
“Oh. That complicates matters. If there’s nothing here, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.”
I thought for a couple of minutes. “Pizza.”
“What?”
“I cad order pizza onlide, and pay wid Mom’s debid card.” That would solve my problem for the moment but … “No, waid, dah’s id!”
Sparx gave me a confused look. “What’s it?”
“Domorrow I cad order groceries onlide, doo. Dave’s mom does id dad way when she geds doo busy.” I felt about a thousand pounds lighter as I reached for my laptop. “I jus need Mom’s purse.”
Wonder of wonders, it worked. Both the pizza and the groceries. It wasn’t until the next day, after the grocery truck left, that I thought to wonder what Mom would have done if I hadn’t taken care of the problem. She’d been in one of her lying-in-the-dark moods for a couple of days. She did pretty well some of the time, but what if she’d been in the place where she talked about conspiracy and the houseplants? I felt like an enormous dog had taken me by the collar and shaken me as a cold sweat broke out all over my body. This couldn’t go on.
I had to find some way to help her get better, or find someone who could. Right after I felt well enough to put away the groceries without going through a box of tissues and taking three rest breaks, that is. I ate a half pint of ice cream for lunch—I’d ordered lots—and crawled back into bed.
By Thursday, I was probably well enough I could have gone to school. But without anyone to make me do it, I couldn’t manage to get myself out of bed on time for the school bus. And I still wasn’t in any shape to walk or bike, as I found out when I brought a sandwich to my mom—I was sweating by the time I reached the second floor.
For a mercy, she was doing pretty well. Not one hundred percent, but she happily took the sandwich and kissed my cheek after setting aside a novel by Georgette Heyer.
“Thanks, Kalvan, that was very thoughtful of you. I saw you ordered in groceries, too. I really appreciate it. I thought about shopping on Monday, but I, well…” She sighed. “You know I’m not myself, and there’s no sense in pretending. I was too depressed to do anything. I’m feeling much better at the moment, but I don’t know how long it will hold. My medications don’t seem to be helping the way they should.”
“I know, Mom. I’m sorry I can’t do more.”
“It’s all right, honey. It’s not your fault. Look, I don’t want to put any of this on you, but I think you have a right to know. I’d go in to see my doctor, but I’m worried they’ll want to have me committed for a bit. That’s happened before, and it helped, but now, because of you, the thought terrifies me. After what happened with Oscar I know you can take care of yourself, but the state wouldn’t see it that way, and…”
I took a deep breath. “If you really need to go to the hospital, Mom, I’m sure I can deal with foster care for a while.” The idea terrified me, but if it would help my mom …
“I’m sure you could, too, but I don’t want you to have to, and that’s not the worst possibility.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“It’s Oscar. Noelle tells me he’s still alive and out there somewhere nearby. I can’t tell much more than that he’s not dead, but she has powers I never owned.”
“I can handle Oscar, too. I’ve already done it once.”
“No, you don’t understand. I’m still married to him, and he formally adopted you. If I have to go into the hospital, he’ll be your legal guardian.”
“Oh.” That hit me like an icy sledgehammer.
“I’ve been in a mental hospital before. Twice. The first time they diagnosed me with paranoid schizophrenia, the next with psychotic depression. They won’t take my wishes about what to do with you seriously … and, well, they probably shouldn’t when I’m in this state. But even if they did, what could I tell them: Please let my dead sister take care of Kalvan for me?” She laughed. “That’d make me look ever so much saner.”
I had to smile, if only for a moment. “You might have a point there. But what do we do?”
“We keep making things work for as long as we can. That’s all anyone can do, really.”
In the afternoon, Sparx and I went back to looking over Oscar’s big spell in the subbasement. My conversation with Mom gave the project a fresh urgency. Not that it helped. Sparx still didn’t know enough about the magic involved to even be willing to cross into the glowing diagram, and I knew less. We needed to find somebody who understood this kind of magic.
Friday saw me get my butt severely chewed by Tanya for not bringing in my magic journal—I’d looked for it again Thursday, but it hadn’t turned up and I was starting to really worry about what might have happened to it. If that didn’t make me feel bad enough, Dave was still not talking to me for whatever reason. I was so desperate for somebody to tell me something that might help with the magic Oscar had used on my mom, I actually tracked Josh down in the theater shop to ask what he’d done with my sketch.
“I gave it to Herself, Monroe.” Herself was Mississippi. “She thought it was a very interesting little spell.”
“And?” I demanded.
“And She might have something to say to you about it later. But right now, you’re irritating me. So buzz off before I push your face in.” He turned away.
I caught his arm and tried to bring him back around. It was like tugging on a lamppost. “But, Josh, I need to know now!”
He spun then and slammed me up against the wall so hard it drove the breath right out of me—why did this kind of thing always happen on the days when Sparx stayed home? “Look, Monroe, you don’t get to tell me when to do anything. And you certainly don’t tell Her anything. If She wanted to talk to you today, I’d be taking you to see Her whether you liked it or not. But She doesn’t. So, for now you’re out of luck. I’ll find you if She wants you. Until then, consider my not pounding you into a pulp as a huge favor.”
I didn’t like it, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it, so I went looking for Morgan and Lisa. They were the only other magic people I knew, even if Morgan was air like Tanya. I found them sitting together on a couple of cushions in the library loft.
“Hey, Kalvan.” Lisa smiled as I knelt on the other side of the low table.
Morgan’s expression was more neutral. “Hi, Kalvan. You might as well cough it up.”
“What?” I blinked at the older girl.
“Speak.” Morgan rolled her eyes. “You obviously want something. What is it?”
“I … uh, there’s this spell I found.”
“… and?” She twirled her fingers in a move-it-along gesture.
I grimaced—there was something about dealing with Morgan that made me feel like an idiot. “I’m trying to find out what it does.”
“All right…”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” I pulled out the sketchbook and opened it to the place where I’d made another drawing of the thing.
Lisa took one look at it and shook her head. “Not my kind of magic.”
Morgan’s expression was more thoughtful. “I might have seen something like that before.”
“Really!” I leaned forward. “What can you tell me about it?”
“Nothing yet. Can I take this?” She tapped the sheet. “There’s someone I’d like to show it to.”
“Sure, I guess.” I really needed answers and I could always sketch it out again. Sparx would even say it was good for me. I ripped out the sheet and handed it over. “Who?”
But Morgan shook her head. “Not my secret to tell.”
I couldn’t read anything from her expression so I glanced at Lisa, hoping she might know something. But if she did, her face didn’t give it away, either. An awkward silence stretched out between us as I realized we didn’t really have anything else to talk about.
Finally, I rocked back onto my feet. “Thanks. Uh, when do you think you might know something?”
Morgan shrugged. “Next week is spring break, so I should be able to see my … friend in there somewhere. I might have something for you the week we get back.”
I’d forgotten about spring break, but there wasn’t much I could do about it, any more than I could make Josh or Morgan get back to me, so I just nodded and left the sketch with her. Normally, spring break is something I look forward to, but the next couple of days were super frustrating. About the only good thing on my big list of life messes was that the delvers hadn’t tried to kill me in weeks. Sparx thought that might be because the whole dragon thing had scared them off, which sounded great, but I had my doubts.
I really wanted to talk with Dave about everything, but both times I tried calling him he pretty much shut me down, and there wasn’t anything I could really do about it over the phone. I spent a lot of time staring at Oscar’s big spell, but we still didn’t know enough to do anything useful with it. I also poked around in the magic books Tanya had lent me, but it was all basic stuff and none of it helped.
When I couldn’t stand to think about incomprehensible magic anymore or the way time was racing past while I was stuck, I paced around the attic or tried to lose myself in video games. That worked about as well as you’d expect in a house where what food I didn’t cook for myself was made by a dead woman and my mother kept going la-la land on me.