Chapter Eleven
So findingout my boyfriend was half Jinn was a surprise. So was the little tidbit of info about how he could see what everyone in Ordinary really was beneath their masks ofhumanity.
He didn’t know if he’d gotten the vision from his dad, the jinni, or from his mom who had some mild magical talent of her own, but he said he’d learned to be quiet about it since he was a kid. People who wore masks got twitchy when someone pointed out who they really were beneaththem.
He’d adopted a live-and-let-live attitude about the people in Ordinary, and had never brought itup.
“You have no other powers?” Delaney asked. She and Myra had come over when I’d called, and we were all sitting in my living room. Hogan and I were curled into each other on the loveseat.
I hadn’t known what to do other than to call in my sisters. I was too close to this situation, my heart too close to Hogan, to make any kind of call that dealt with his absentee father, of allpeople.
“Not that I know of,” he said. “Baking, which I think is talent more than power. The ability to know what someone really is. That’s aboutit.”
“Have you ever tried to make a wish come true?” Myraasked.
“I’ve made a lot of wishes. Most of them haven’t cometrue.”
“Someone else’s wish, though?” sheasked.
“Back when I was a kid, I used to wish my dad would stay away forever. For my mom. She…she didn’t handle him leaving verywell.”
“Have you seen him since?” Myraasked.
“No.”
“Have you tried to make any other of your mom’s wishes cometrue?”
“Honestly, no. I never really thought about it. I was a pretty happy kid. We werehappy.”
Delaney put her coffee cup down on the side table, then leaned back and stared at the ceiling,thinking.
“Okay,” she said. “Let me see if we’re all on the same page here. We don’t have the jinni who originally animated the gnomes, but we have his son, who is half Jinn, but hasn’t tested or tried to invoke his powers, if he has saidpowers.
“We also have a rise of the zombies tonight, that if not stopped will land us with a permanent zombie gnomepopulation.
“On top of that, the penguin has been stolen, possibly by the zombie gnomes who possibly want to destroy it. We have a couple thousand people wandering the streets—most of them children small enough to be bitten by zombie gnomes. Everyone in town will be wearing disguises, costumes and masks, and Death himself is prowling through our harbor for what he says is a benevolent visit. Do I have itcovered?”
“You people know how to keep it fun,” Hogansaid.
Myra speared me with a sharp look. “You still aren’t willing to tell us who alerted you to the penguin beingmissing?”
Okay, so maybe I wasn’t playing exactly by the rules here. There wasn’t a hard-and-fast reason why I was keeping Bertie’s involvement with the penguin kidnappings on the down-low. But the truth was…she was right. That penguin had netted us a lot of good press. It drew people to the town who were generally looking for a bit of quirky, family-friendlyfun.
The kidnapped penguin was good for the town. Good for Mrs. Yates, too, who loved showing off her quasi-famous yard. Good for the kids–or whoever–in town to put their own spin on decorating the little concrete statue, and set it up in funny situations that were blog-worthy once it wasfound.
Knowing that Bertie had stepped in like some sort of well-organized mob boss to coordinate the penguin’s liberations insured that the little statue wouldn’t bedamaged.
I had a feeling anyone who wanted to steal the penguin had to run the kidnapping, photoshoot, and outcome past Bertie first. Probably had to fill out forms intriplicate.
By pushing her way into the whole penguin thing, Bertie had effectively taken one responsibility off us. We no longer had to worry about the penguin being in danger, or being handled in a way that would put others indanger.
I kind of dug the secret underground Fight Club aspect of the whole thing. Might even volunteer to be one of the people involved in the penguinsnatching.
If Myra and Delaney were really worried about it, they’d push a lot harder to get a name out ofme.
“Still not willing to rat the source out,” I finally answered. “But trust me, my source knows exactly what’s been going on with the penguin and by whom. My source wouldn’t panic if there wasn’t a reason forit.”
Delaney picked up her coffee cup, tipped it before realizing it was empty, then frowned atit.
