“Do you have their cell numbers?” asked Ronnie. “We could trace their phones.”
“Felipe gave us charms to prevent that, back when cellphones started coming out.” We’d inscribed the charm onto a set of scratch-and-sniff stickers. I remembered sticking mine to the inside of the battery cover of my blocky Motorola phone, the one with the big pill-shaped buttons and the pull-out antenna.
I’d transferred it from one phone to the next over the years, and I had no doubt the rest of the Slay Team had done the same. My enchanted popcorn-scented sticker currently resided on the inside of my phone case, though the smell had dissipated after the first few months. “He didn’t want anyone to be able to follow us home or to the Guardians.”
Ronnie stared at me. “You grew up before cellphones?”
Annette swatted the back of his head.
I pushed my empty mug away. “I have to make some calls.”
“The new batch of elixir is done. Stop by to pick it up after school. It should be stronger now that R’gngyk is stirring. We’re close to the final ritual. Just don’t lose any more of the damn pills!”
CHAPTER14
Jenny
Iended up stalling until eleven in the morning. I told myself California was three hours behind Salem and it would be rude to bother people so early in the day.
Finally, I asked Annette to cover the store, retreated to my bedroom, and made the first phone call. After four rings—just enough to make me hope no one would answer—a raspy voice with a hint of old Valley Girl accent said, “Jennifer? Is that you?”
Not the best start to our conversation. “You know I prefer Jenny.”
“I was just thinking about you the other day.”
I very much doubted that. “How have you been, Mom?”
“Well, my doctor says my blood pressure is too high, but I don’t know how that could be. You know I only eat organic. And I had to go in for my colonoscopy last month. They found three polyps. Is that a lot?”
I was already regretting this call. “That’s a question for your doctor. They should have sent the polyps to the lab to be checked.”
“They did, but I don’t trust that doctor. He’s not family.”
“Mom, you know I’m not a doctor, right?”
She hesitated. “Oh, totally. But you got that certification.”
“As an emergency medical technician. Not a doctor.” I’d also trained and studied with things that would make most doctors wet themselves, but none of that had given me the qualifications or the slightest desire to interpret my mother’s colonoscopy results.
I sat through six more minutes of updates about her health (not bad for a seventy-seven-year-old woman), her cats (Porgy and Bess), the wildfires last season (so much worse than when she was a child), and her neighbor’s lemon tree (which producedeighteenlemons this spring).
She didn’t ask a single question about me or the shop or Temple and Annette. I was fifty-six years old, and she still didn’tseeme. I pushed the old pain aside the best I could. “Mom, I need to talk to Felipe. Is he around?”
Shehmphedbut didn’t argue. “Felipe? Your step-daughter wants to speak with you.”
The words triggered a full-body clench. In my mid-twenties, I’d been foolish enough to believe the worst was over. I’d survived monsters and magic and all of the killing. I’d gotten away from the Guardians Council and begun to live my own life. And then Felipe had opened up a whole new world of trauma by marrying my mother.
By the time he came to the phone, I’d repacked most of those emotions enough to offer a civil, “Hello.”
“Jennifer? Are you all right?”
I didn’t bother asking him to call me Jenny. “I’m fine. When are you going to get your own phone?”
“Never,” he said firmly. “Those cursed things are the work of the darkest devils. They erode the brain and entrap the soul.”
I hadn’t spoken with Felipe in four...no, five years. His accent had thickened with age, and his words were a little slower, but he spoke with the same confidence and conviction I remembered. It was both comforting and infuriating. “I need to know if anyone’s taken Nabu-rihtu-usur’s spellbook from the Council’s library.”
He paused before answering. “Why are you interested in that particular book? It’s not the kind of thing you can sell in your little store.”
