“Hey,” I said, tossing my bag on the couch, and coming to sit beside her. “How did it go with the lawyer?”
“Good. Just boring real estate stuff—leases and contracts. But I think it should all be sorted out now. Just waiting on a few things to be signed.”
“Were you there all day?”
“No, just for a couple of hours this morning. But then I had some stuff to settle over at the hospital, so that took a while, then I hit awful traffic coming back.” She said it all with a slightly desperate air, like she was trying to justify her absence to me.
“Well, that all sounds miserable,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. “I’m glad you’re finally home.”
The word hit strangely, I could tell, coming out of my mouth. Her face twitched with a momentary expression of distress, butshe composed it quickly enough that I could pretend I hadn’t noticed.
“Rhi told me you… you talked a little about affinities today?” she asked, sounding tentative.
I tried to catch Rhi’s eye, but she was keeping her gaze doggedly on the photo album in her hands.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m doing some reading about it,” I hedged. Had Rhi told my mother about her theory that I might be a pentamaleficus? I had no idea, but for some reason I didn’t want to be the one to bring it up, probably because my mother already looked so frazzled that I couldn’t bear to be the one to make it worse. Instead, I said, “So I guess we can start testing them, to see how I should study magic moving forward.”
“That’s… that’s great, honey. And I… I promise as soon as I get through all of this… this moving stuff, I’ll be right here to… to help.” The words were right, but the delivery was wrong. She sounded almost panicked. She seemed barely able to look at me, her eyes darting only sporadically up to my face, focusing instead on the box in her lap. I decided to change the subject before she lost her grip on the remaining threads of her self-control.
“What is all this stuff?”
“Oh, just some photo albums and memorabilia we had in storage. Rhi’s helping me sort through it all,” she said. She tried to smile at me, but all she looked was exhausted.
“Mom, all this can wait,” I said. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”
She opened her mouth to argue with me, but a yawn betrayed her immediately, and she stifled it with the back of her hand. “I know, I will. We’re almost done.”
“You’ve been running yourself ragged. I wish you’d let me come back to Portland to help you pack.”
She waved me off. “Absolutely not. You’ve got enough to do, starting your magical education. You’re behind, and it’s my fault. Besides, I broke down and hired movers. They’re even going to take the stuff we don’t have room for here and store it for us, until we can decide what we want to do with it.”
“I’d feel better if you let me help,” I pressed.
“And I’d feel better if you started learning to protect yourself,” my mom replied, glaring at me.
I sighed. There was no point in arguing with her.
“Where are you coming from?” my mom asked, in a clear attempt to change the subject. I let her.
“I was over at the playhouse. They were hosting a planning meeting for the Litha pageant, and Zale asked me if I would help out.”
If I hadn’t known my mother so well, I never would have noticed the tiny signs of stress at the mention of the playhouse; the way her shoulders rose just a bit toward her ears, and how her fingers fumbled the stack of picture frames she was organizing.
“That’s a great idea,” my mom said, in a determinedly even voice. “You’re wonderful at organizing shows, and that pageant can use all the help it can get.”
Rhi and my mom looked at each other, and burst out laughing.
“I’m missing the joke,” I said, looking between them.
“Oh it’s just… well, there was one year when Asteria was in charge of the pageant,” Rhi said, still laughing, “and she forced Persi to play the Oak King.”
“Oh God,” I said, trying to imagine Persi agreeing to such a thing.
Rhi was trying to tell the story, but she and my mother were laughing so hard now, that the words were coming out in chokedgasps. “And when the battle started… the boy playing the Holly King… hit her in the arm with his staff by accident…”
But Rhi couldn’t say anything else. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.
“Persi punched him in the face. Knocked him out cold, in front of the whole crowd,” my mother managed to say, between peals of laughter. “And then walked off stage. Two of the wood nymphs had to put the beards on and act out the rest of the battle, while the poor kid was dragged off the platform.”
