Not only does the countryside resurrect memories I’m not interested in reliving, but it also offers something else—allergies.
Unluckily for me, plants grow like jungle weedseverywhere. There are more trees than I can count, meadows the size of the Mediterranean, and fields filled with small bushy plants that look as if they may be some sort of food.
“Whyis Mom here again?” I ask.
“Sylvia”—Stone always calls her by name—“wanted to visit a small town in the area. Mystic Meadows. There are ley lines here, or something like that. Supposed to be unicorns.” Before I can ask my brother what “ley lines” are—and did he sayunicorns?—his phone pings with a text. “There she is. She needs to be in the air in twenty. I’m telling her that we’ll arrive in ten.”
“Neutral territory,” I murmur.
“What’s that?”
“That’s why she brought us here. We’re on neutral territory, where neither of us has the upper hand.”
“Yes, because she’s picking me.”
“She’s not picking you,” I snap.
He rakes his ash-blond hair away from his face. We’re twins, but not identical. Stone’s got lighter hair and a golden complexion. I’ve got dark hair. He tans at the beach. I burn.
If being twins isn’t already enough toalmosthate him for, just that fact is enough.
“Wait.” Stone does a double take out the window. “What isthat?”
He points to a faded-gray sign attached to a scraggly-looking steel-colored fence. I squint. “It says—”
“Look out!”
I whip my head back toward the road, and in that instant my mind races to catch up with my eyes. Because between the moment I looked away and when I now glance back at the road, a herd of small pigs has stopped directly in front of me.
And I’m going seventy miles per hour.
My heart flies into my throat as I hit the brakes. The SUV lurches, tires screaming violently. My automatic seat belt snaps tight, slapping me backward.
As the tires squeal, a woman wearing a T-shirt and ripped jeans jumps in front of the pigs, throws out her arms, and yells, “Don’t hit my piggycorns!”
The SUV screeches to a shuddering halt just inches from crashing into all of them.
My stomach fills with acid, and the taste of metal bleeds over my tongue. I curl my hands into fists as anger fills me.
I’m not in the mood for inconveniences today.
My gaze lands on the woman, whose eyes are brimming with thanks and something else. Anger? Can’t be. She should be grateful that I didn’t run over her and the small creatures thatlooklike pigs but, at the same time, don’t.
I turn to my brother. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“Whatarethose?” I growl, furious that I was inches away from plowing them down.
Stone drops a hand from his chest and exhales. He limply points to the faded-gray sign sagging from the weathered fence that readsWadley Farms: Home of the Piggycorn.“Piggycorns.”
That was the word the woman had screamed, a word I’m not familiar with. “What is a piggycorn?”
“Pigs that have a horn like a unicorn,” my brother expertly points out.
I spot it then. Every pig that is now sniffing the front of the SUV, instead of moving across the road, has a golden horn protruding from a small tuft of pink fur atop its head.
Never in my life have I heard of such a creature. “Are those real?”
