She lifts her head and dismisses the conversation. “No matter. We’re this way.”
She pushes past the hostess with a tight, polite smile, andCarter and I follow, him holding my arm as I do my little limping dance of a walk.
I stop—so abruptly that Carter nearly trips over me—when I see where she’s leading us.Notto our usual spot by the large windows overlooking Firefly Mountain. She’s taking us to a huge circle table in the darkest corner of the restaurant, where there are already people seated. Nadia, Sage, Sky, and Tenn, to be exact.
“Well?” Amá turns when she sees that I’ve frozen. “We don’t have all afternoon. Ándale, Teal Alegría.”
“But—why is everyone here?” I begin walking slowly and turn to Carter. “Did you know about this?”
“Baby, I didn’t even know you had brunch today.”
I can barely notice the way my body responds to him calling mebaby—like we were together like that for real, or something—because what the fuck is happening here?
I sit down carefully in the chair Carter pulls out for me, and he sits to my right. Amá is to my left. Sky sits next to Nadia, and Tenn is next to Sage, who is directly across from me, her fingers templed over her chest. She’s wearing a black jersey dress with long wide sleeves, and an enormous rainbow moonstone glints at me from the hollow of her throat. She reminds me of an overlord about to pronounce a verdict over someone who’s betrayed her.
God, I didn’t betray her, did I? I rack my brain. Me not wanting to take a leather class wouldn’t result in this bizarre scenario, would it?
“Is this an intervention?” I blurt out before anyone can explain. “Because of the class you wanted me to take?”
“Not exactly,” Sage says.
The waiter arrives with five flutes of their orange champagne, and one wineglass of ice water for Sage.
I throw my drink back and down it in two swallows. Beside me, Amá Sonya gasps.
“So I guess the whole family doesn’t normally join you for brunch like this?” Carter asks after a few minutes of very awkward silence.
“No, they do not,” I respond. “So will someone just get on with it? I’m about to have a panic attack, here.”
It’s a bit of an exaggeration—there are some dark clouds outside, but it’s mostly sunny still—but Carter reaches for my hand under the table anyway. “Breathe, mami,” he whispers at my neck. I do what he says, until the clouds lighten softly, so that their dark undersides are now silver.
Sage clears her throat. “Last time we talked—”
“You mean last night.”
“Yes, last night. You said something I found very alarming.”
I roll my eyes. “I was being dramatic, Sage. My ankle hurt like a bitch”—another gasp from Amá—“and it had been a long day. I was hangry.”
“So you didn’t mean it when you said you couldn’t fix your gift until we found Mama?”
Before the last syllable is out of her mouth, thunder rumbles so loudly, the whole restaurant goes silent for a few tense moments.
Ohshit. Did I actually say that aloud? To someone who is not Carter?
I try to backtrack. “I don’t actually remember saying anything like—”
“Teal. Mira.” Nadia gestures to the windows, where lightning streaks so closely, a few women to our right gasp in unison. “We know you said it. We know it’s true. The weather would not look like that otherwise.” She exchanges a glance with Amá, who lookslike she normally does—equal parts bored and disgusted. “Cora took something from you, didn’t she?”
“Breathe,” Carter says, squeezing my hand. I listen to the count of his voice, and in only a couple of minutes, the weather calms down enough that people all around us have gone back to their conversations, convincing themselves it didn’t go to hurricane level and back again in the span of sixty seconds.
“Damn,” Tenn says, looking around, running a hand over the scruff on his chin. “That was wild. I didn’t know it was likethat, with the weather.”
Sky snorts. “You should see her when she’s mad.” Then she turns to me. “I’ve always wondered, though—what happens, when. You know. You”—she then mouths the wordorgasm. “Do rainbows come shooting out of you, or—”
“Sky Temple,” Amá says, her eyebrows practically to her hairline. “I don’t know how you went from an innocent sixteen-year-old to—”
“What do you mean, innocent?” Sky retorts back. “I wasn’t a virgin when the old gods took me into their sacred oak tree eight years ago. In fact, I’d totally done it a total ofseventimes.”
