“I want to hear Erika’s exact words,” Sage demands, pointing a breadstick at me.
I can feel the damn blood sinking from my face to my heart, and both Sage and Sky tilt their heads at me in confusion.
“Was it really bad?” Sky asks. “Did she try to curse Nadia as well?”
“Oh.” For some reason, my brain malfunctioned, and I thought they were asking about the other crap Erika told me. The stuff I was literally just repeating to myself. I try really hard to make my sigh of relief silent, but there’s no way I’m fooling either of these mujeres. I swear, both Sage and Sky have a secondary gift of sussing out people’s exact emotions.
“What did you think I was asking, exactly?” Sage asks after she finishes her pizza crust. Normally she goes for plain old four-cheese, but the baby must have ruined her taste buds for the time being, because she is now working on her second piece of bacon, olive, andpineapple.
I decide that ignoring her last question in favor of answering her first is the best course of action. “Erika said something likeYou Flores women think you’re all powerful and you hypnotize men with your evil, stupid magic, but you can’t get away with it while I’m around, and blah, blah, Gene chose me over Nadia despite her witchy and wicked ways!”
Sky laughs. “She didn’t say it like that, did she?”
I shrug and force a smile. “Look, it may not be verbatim, but that definitely covers the essence of her message.”
I check my phone again, where there’s been radio silence from Nadia over my asking her about Abuelo Gene.
“So Erika knows, you think?” Sage asks. “About…our gifts?” She lowers her voice so that Sky and I can barely hear her.
I shrug. “She seems to knowsomethingbut honestly, I wasn’t exaggerating that she thought it involved hypnotizing good men into behaving badly. So she obviously either didn’t get any true information, or she twisted it in her vindictive mind.” I cross my legs under the table and wince. Damn, I’d forgotten to bring my painkillers and my ankle’s already throbbing like a bitch. Car shopping after this is going to suck so bad.
“Do either of you have Advil?” I ask.
Sage murmursyesin response as she digs through her bag. “So you tripped on the beach, huh?” She hands me two Tylenol pills while surveying my leg. But she’s not seeing anything unusual because the lounge pants I wore are low and wide-legged and my comfiest Adidas cover everything else ankle-related. As in, my whole feet.
“Yeah, while running.” I don’t make eye contact with either of them as I down the pills and push up, holding almost all my weight on my good side. “Let’s go, chicas. The car dealership closes at four today.”
“Wait,” Sky says. “You were serious? About getting me a car? Like…what?”
“Yes. I am buying you a car. And you know what? Sage, I’m getting you a car, too.” It’s not really fair that Sage had to save up to buy that raggedy old van that she’s still driving over a decade later. I insisted that Nadia buy me anewcar—and it had to be new, because I was a brat—and I didn’t bat an eye when my sister came home with what is basically a warped, paint-chipped metallic rectangle stapled to wheels. There’s no way she can drive that for much longer, and it can’t be safe for a baby, either.
“So Erika gave you the money?” Sage asks.
“Yes. Sort of.” It feels too complicated that Carter gave me an advance on it, but whatever. “Come on, muévete, muévete!” I hurry out, putting too much weight on my bad ankle in the process. Tears sting in my eyes at the pain, but I push on.
Sky chatters about old books and dust motes all the way there, and at the car dealership, both Sage and I push her to make a decision, since she can’t seem to manage it even after an hour and a half of looking at the same three cars. “This feels like too expensive a gift,” she tells me, but it really isn’t. If we were at a Lexus dealership, okay, or even a new car dealership, I’d understand. But these vehicles are all used, and they’re working well, and they’re all around ten to fifteen grand.
Compared to eight years of her life gone? That’s fuckingnothing.
After only twenty more minutes of hemming and hawing, she chooses a two-year-old Volvo C70—a convertible!—in a shimmering baby blue. She’s so excited, she can’t stop clapping her hands together like a little kid. “Look! The interior seats are red!” she tells us with several hand claps. “Oh, gosh, it still smells new!” She somehow manages to clap her hands while sticking her whole head through the front passenger-side window.
“What about you?” I turn to Sage, who’s watching Sky with a faint, sweet smile on her face.
“Hmm?” She raises her eyebrows as she turns to me.
I gesture to the glare emanating off the vehicles surrounding us for a mile in each direction. “Which one do you want?”
“I don’t need a car, Teal.”
I scoff. “Uh, yeah, you do. You shouldn’t be driving that old garbage anymore.”
“Come on.” She laughs. “The van isn’t garbage! It hasn’t broken down once in ten years!”
“The back window is held together with packing tape, Sage.”
She sighs and I feel my heart lift, because I am certain she’s about to give in. But instead, she says, “I don’t need a car because Tenn’s giving me one for my birthday.”
It’s stupid that I’m disappointed by this news. Look, I’m not mad that her awesome, hot, soon-to-be husband is buying her a car. But how else am I supposed to make it up to her? All that crap I put her through, blaming her for Sky’s death? Punching her in the face so that she needed stitches? Growing a few dahlias doesn’t really cover that. “Are you sure, though? What if Tenn and I put our money together and got you something extra nice?”
