She shrugged. “We both know characters never look like they do on the cover. Cover artists, am I right? Come in, please, Rainy. And from now on…unless I’m undercover, call me Nancy.”
Once we were inside, Penny, who was, of course, actually Nancy Drew herself, put a finger over her lips to warn me to keep quiet for the time being.
“Who is it, Nancy?” a man’s voice called from another room.
“A friend, Dad,” Nancy called back. “Be there in a minute!”
She waved her hand at me to follow her into the kitchen. She turned a switch, and a gas light slowly began to brighten overhead.
“Pie?” she said. “It’s cherry.”
“I’m not supposed to eat in books,” I said, which was a completely inane thing to say while standing in Nancy Drew’s house and having a mild out-of-body experience.
She grinned broadly as she cut two slices. “I thinkyou,of all people, can bend the rules,” she said.
She set a big slice of cherry pie in front of me, and it did look tempting.
“What do you know?” Nancy asked me as she took a bite of her pie. “Then I can tell you what you don’t know.”
“I think…I think I know this is where my mother was during that year she was missing.”
Nancy nodded. “Yes, she was. Keep going.”
“And if she was here and she came home pregnant with me…”
“So close,” Nancy said, grinning madly, eyes wide. “It’s staring you in the face again.”
I kept going as the answer dawned on me. “…and she left me your book and nothing but your book for a reason…”
“Go on, say it, Rainy.”
It sounded laughable in my own head. Impossible. Unbelievable.
Though my heart was beating in my throat, I whispered the question.
“Are you…are you my sister?”
She grinned and leaned forward. “About time you figured that out.”
“And your father is my…I’m going to faint.”
“Don’t faint,” Nancy said. “The pie will go to waste. Go on. Eat some. You’ll feel better.”
It’s almost impossible to say no to Nancy Drew. So I picked up my fork, chopped off the triangle tip of the pie slice, and took a bite.
Pure sweetness and heaven. I swallowed and the dizziness cleared and my eyes focused and all the tension left my body.
“I do feel better,” I said. “They tell us not to eat here. It’s fairy-tale rules.”
“That rule is for people,” she said. “Humans in fairylands. Even if this is a fairyland…you’re half fairy.” She winked at me and took another bite of her own pie.
“So my mother…and your father? How did that happen?” My mouth fell open at the very idea of it. And since my mouth was already conveniently open, I shoved more pie into it.
“Oh, it was an adventure,” she said with gleaming eyes. “I was out driving in my blue roadster when a strange man started pursuing me, even hitting my back bumper. He wanted to make me crash. I didn’t know at the time who or what he was, but now I know he was a Burner. Then it seemed like this woman appeared out of nowhere. Literally winked into existence to help me. In the rearview mirror, I saw her run into the road to stop him. He swerved, and she jumped out of the way, but she landed so hard, she was knocked unconscious.”
“My mother jumped in front of a car? Sounds like her.”
“You can imagine my surprise,” Nancy said. “The marshal arrived, but the driver had vanished into thin air, it seemed. They brought your mother to our house so the doctor could see to her. Hannah, that’s our housekeeper—”
