Penny froze, completely tense.
"Penny didn't tell me she had a boyfriend!" The older woman had Penny's red hair, but she didn't have any laugh lines. Her smile was fake. I immediately disliked her.
"Hi, Mom," Penny said, her mouth a tense line.
"I’m Trisha," she said, extending her hand to me.
"Garrett," I said suspiciously.
"Your reputation precedes you. Penny, maybe you can invite me over for dinner so we can catch up?" she suggested with a laugh.
"Garrett has to go," Penny said, practically shoving me away. "He's a very important man with very important things to do."
"I thought you were in foster care?" I said quietly when we were back at the condo. Penny was silently packing.
"I was."
"So, she didn't look like a drug addict or mentally ill," I said carefully.
"Nope, just run-of-the-mill sociopath. Didn't want to be a mother. Dumped me with my father. He didn't know what he was doing. He died, and the state foster care took me. She ran off to Greece with her younger, richer boyfriend. Came back to the country when I aged out of the system."
"I’m sorry."
"It doesn't matter," she said brusquely. "We should think about how we're going to convince Meg to sign off on that factory!"
Penny brainstormed ideas in the car on the drive back. She was trying to be easy and breezy, but her hands were clenched on the wheel at the three o'clock and ten o'clock positions, when normally she had one hand at the five o'clock. Her shoulders were tense, and she was grinding her teeth. I hated to see her upset.
"I'm fine, honestly," she said when she dropped me off. "I should go make sure Morticia and Lilith haven't kidnapped someone in the basement. Thanks for the fun weekend!"
73
Penny
Iwas so furious at my mother. What had she been playing at, accosting me in the street? I internally debated with myself then called her. She picked up on the third ring.
"My wayward daughter, who is too busy snagging herself a billionaire to help out her own mother. What a surprise."
"Stay away from me and stay away from Garrett," I warned. "Don't run any articles about him or his family."
"Or what?" my mother spat. "You'll sue? Call the police? Then he'll know it was you."
I gulped. Garrett couldn't know that I’d had anything to do with my mother's plot.
"Don't worry," Trisha said. "When we publish something—and we will—it will be anonymous. No one will have to know. You can be the little plump gold digger after his money, and no one will be the wiser."
"You are a terrible mother," I hissed.
"And you are a disappointment of a daughter." Her voice lowered. "Men are there to be used. You know that in your heart. That's why you're after him and not a man like your father."
I felt sick when I went into the house after the call. Trisha had just ruined the entire magical weekend for me.
Maybe Lilith and Morticia would know what to do. I shuffled dejectedly through the house. When I opened the back door, I heard children screaming in terror. I ran across the backyard. The twins couldn'tactuallybe doing some sort of demon sacrifice, could they?
When I ran into the workroom on the bottom level of the carriage house in the backyard, Morticia and Lilith were operating some sort of torture device.
"What are you doing?" I yelled. The twins, along with two of Garrett's little brothers and Parker Svensson, all looked up at me, their eyes big through giant goggles.
"We're making dart guns. We're going to sell them to kids all around the world," Billy said seriously.
