She thought she heard a note of … maybe rawness, maybe desperation slip into that “please.” It occurred to her that he might not be as calm, cool, and collected as he seemed. Kayla dropped onto the ground and sat on the grass, several yards from him and her mother’s bench. “Tell me a story, Danny-boy. I’m all ears.” She picked up a gnome by the ears and wiggled it, then set it down next to her.
For an instant, he looked disconcerted. He recovered fast, but not fast enough for her to miss it. I’m right, she thought. He wasn’t as in control as he pretended to be. It was an act. She could unbalance him. “Five days ago,” he said, “my mother was kidnapped.”
“And you came to harass me instead of going to the police like a normal human being.”
“I did go to the police. Would you let me finish?”
“Sorry. Carry on.” She waved her hand like she was a queen granting an audience. She’d seen Selena make that gesture a thousand times. It never failed to infuriate whoever was demanding her attention.
Daniel glared at her, but he continued. “A few nights earlier—”
“Hotel California” piped up from Kayla’s pocket. “One sec.” She held up a finger as she took her phone out of her pocket and answered it. “Hey.” No better way to irritate someone than valuing a phone call above their problems.
Selena. “I hate my mother. I hate my father. I hate myself. I am moving in with you. Except not really because I hate your food. And because my parents would say ‘no,’ and it doesn’t seem to matter how ballsy I can be with anyone else—the second they frown, I fold. Apparently, with them, I have the backbone of an invertebrate. But I need to vent so I am coming over.”
Kayla’s heart sank. She did not want Selena mixed up in this, whatever “this” was. She kept her face neutral and her voice light. “It’s really not the best—”
The red gate bashed open, and Selena charged in. Phone held to her ear with one shoulder, she strode through the herbs and flowers. “Seriously, I brought ice cream, the comfort food of choice for people with relationship issues, and—oh, you have a guy. Hi, hot guy. I’m Selena, the best friend.” She clicked off the phone.
Daniel stood. “I hate to be rude, but I am discussing a personal matter with Kayla, so I have to ask you to come back later.”
Selena blinked at him with her heavily mascaraed eyelashes and then turned to Kayla, who rose to face her friend. “Who talks like that? Seriously, where did you find him and why did you not mention him?”
“He kind of just popped into my life,” Kayla said.
“You could have texted. Texting is fast.”
“Believe me, he moves faster than that.”
Both Selena’s eyebrows shot up. “If you’re putting the moves on Kayla, you need my approval. She’s a special girl, and I don’t care if you do look like you walked off one of the nicer LA billboards … Actually, that’s a plus, but do you have a brain, a sense of humor, and ready cash?”
Daniel looked so confused that Kayla nearly felt sorry for him. Nearly. “This is Daniel. His mother’s been kidnapped, and he’s trying to blackmail me into helping him.”
Since her eyebrows couldn’t shoot up any higher, Selena settled for another exaggerated blink before she scanned Daniel top to toe. “Did he try asking you to help?”
“Nope. Jumped straight to blackmail.”
Daniel scowled at Kayla. She noticed he had a vein in his temple that popped up when he scowled, and she wondered if she was pushing him too hard. If what he said about his mother was true, maybe she should be kinder. “I told you this in confidence—” he began.
Selena waved her hand dismissively. “Kayla and I tell each other everything.” To Kayla, she said, “What does he have on you?”
Kayla shrugged. “Everything.” She tried to keep her expression as bland as possible. Keep him off balance. She wanted control of the situation first, then she could decide how to deal with it. Selena was helping just by being herself.
“Even that time in eighth grade when you wore boy’s underwear to school and—”
“Not that,” Kayla said.
“Skinny dipping?”
“No.”
“The thing with the pencil?”
“No.”
“Or the—”
Kayla shook her head. “This is serious.”
Selena’s mouth formed an O. “So you mean the you know.” She tapped her forehead and then made a fluttering-flying motion with her fingers.
“You’re going with that as the sign for it?” Kayla asked. Really, that looked ridiculous. She was a professional, if it were possible to be a professional telekinetic. At any rate, she took it seriously. “Shouldn’t it be—”
“I think it’s perfect. Mind equals pixie dust.”
“Looks crazy.”
“Well, it is a little crazy.”
“It’s not that kind of crazy. Unusual, yes. Impossible, maybe. But ‘crazy’ implies a whole lifestyle choice that I don’t think I’ve embraced.”
“True. And the negative connotations of the word—”
Daniel vanished. One second he was standing in front of the bench, and the next it was as if he’d been deleted. A second later, he stood between Kayla and Selena, and they both jumped backward. “Stop. Just stop. Please. My mother has been kidnapped. I don’t know how long I have before she’s killed. This isn’t a game to me. Or to her.” The cockiness was gone. The casual attitude, gone. He looked scared and alone and desperate.
Around Daniel, Kayla met Selena’s eyes. She’d known Selena since her first day in Santa Barbara, her first real day of school since Amanda died. She and her mother had been on the run for half a year, never staying more than a few days in any place, when her mother chose California, picked this cottage, changed their names, and inserted them into life here. Kayla had walked into school in the middle of third grade, targeted the girl who seemed the opposite of her in every way, and informed her that they were going to be best friends. Selena had laughed in her face. But Kayla had shrugged and said, “You’ll see.” Later, when Kayla used her power to remove the shoelaces from the sneakers of the worst bully in class (from several rows away and without anyone knowing how she did it), Selena had been sufficiently impressed to invite Kayla over to play. Eight years later, the two knew everything it was possible to know about another person. So they didn’t have to discuss anything to know they agreed.
“She’ll help you,” Selena said. “But you have to tell us everything.”
Inside, Kayla served oatmeal raisin cookies that she was pretty sure did not have pot in them. The brownies were iffy. Sometimes Moonbeam made them with the “special ingredient” as part of her persona—no one would think the hippie chick who made pot brownies knew anything about real magic—and Kayla was always careful not to eat them. As she’d explained to Selena once, no one with mental powers has any business eating or drinking or inhaling any substance that messes with the mind. Besides, Moonbeam would have killed her. Or worse, cried. So Kayla served the store-bought cookies with Selena’s ice cream and pretended that this was a normal conversation and she had everything completely under control. Selena and Daniel sat on the stools at the table. Kayla perched on the counter next to the sink and bit into her cookie. She could have been eating cardboard for all she tasted it.
Daniel didn’t eat at all. “My mom’s an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, one year away from tenure. She’s an expert in comparative anthropology, specializing in rituals and ritualistic items. In lay terms—”
“She studies magic,” Selena finished.
“Yeah. Exactly.” He sounded surprised.
“Being Californian doesn’t mean being stupid,” Selena said.
“I didn’t say—”
Kayla shot Selena a look. “Can we not get sidetracked?” They didn’t have forever before Moonbeam came home from work, and she’d rather finish this conversation before then. “The false eyelashes do make you look dumber.”
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“Crap. Really?”
Kayla handed her a mirror that was embedded in the belly of a Buddha. Selena held it close to her nose and frowned at herself while Daniel continued. “For years, she’s been working on what she calls her secret project. She’s never applied for a grant for it. Never published a single paper or given a talk about it. She kept every scrap of research in a single notebook, handwritten, no digital record anywhere. I always figured she was saving up for a big reveal that would shock all her colleagues and guarantee her tenure—she started late on the academic track and constantly talks about how much she has to prove because of it—but then the other night, I found her burning the notebook in the fireplace.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Kayla saw Selena lower the mirror to stare at Daniel. Daniel took a sip of water. His eyes were misty, as if it were a struggle to stay unemotional. Kayla tried not to notice. She did not want to pity him.
“It was her life’s work. It was the reason she took the path she did, studied what she studied, traveled so much, worked so hard. And she was destroying it. I tried to stop her, but she said it was endangering her. Us. She began talking about an incantation written on three stones, a very old and very powerful incantation. A man she used to know had one stone, and he wanted the other two. Her research could lead him to them, and she couldn’t let that happen.”
Selena held up her hand. “Ooh-ooh! Let me guess. I think I’ve seen this movie. Since he couldn’t get her research, he went for her.”
He nodded unhappily.
“And so you … came to Kayla?”
Another nod.
“Instead of calling the cops.” Selena shook her head. “Look, I get that you guys are all ‘magical’ and stuff, but kidnapping is illegal. And no offense meant to Kayla, but finding people isn’t her specialty. She doesn’t even really like people.”
“I like people!” Kayla objected. “Some people. You. And Moonbeam.” God, what if this had happened to Moonbeam?
“I did call them,” Daniel said. “They opened a case and tried to put me in foster care. But I’m not going to sit around and let some stranger pretend to mother me while I wait for the police to find her.”
If it were her mother who’d been taken, Kayla would do the exact same thing. No way would she sit on the sidelines. She reminded herself she wasn’t supposed to be empathizing. “Can’t you, you know, hop wherever and save her?”
“Yes, if I knew where ‘wherever’ was.” Jumping off the stool, he paced. There wasn’t much room for pacing in the cottage. He circled between the cluttered coffee table and the kitchen. Piles of books teetered precariously as he brushed past them. “I need to have an image in my head before I can jump, and I don’t know where he took her. All I know is what’s on the note she left for me.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and tossed it on the table.
Both Kayla and Selena leaned forward to look at it. It was written in blue ink in cramped but precise letters. Kayla read out loud: “ ‘Find the thief. Ask the queen. Remember I love you.’ ”
She sat backward. She felt … She didn’t know how she felt. Fixing her eyes on the crystals in the window, she watched them spin and swirl. The bits of mirror winked in the light, and specks of dust sparkled in the air. Find the thief.
“And you think this”—Selena tapped the note with a very long manicured nail, painted in stripes today—“is related to her kidnapping. You’re sure it’s not just a strange grocery list. Because there are some health food stores with bizarre items. Like quail eggs. Or dandelion roots. Maybe ‘the thief’ is a type of lettuce.”
“She left it for me,” Daniel said. “She wants me to find the other two stones.” His fists were clenched, and his muscles seemed coiled, like he wanted to punch everything around him.
Selena frowned at the note again. “I’m just not getting that from this. It could mean anything.”
“But it doesn’t,” Daniel insisted. “I know my mother. It means—”
“Me,” Kayla interrupted. “I’m the thief. It means me.” She met Daniel’s eyes. “How did you find me?”
“She told me about you once, your name and where you live and what you can do, when I first started to jump between places. Told me never to seek you out unless it was an emergency. She knew I’d understand what her note meant.”
“She knew about me? How?” Kayla felt prickles on her skin. No one knew her. She had no past; she didn’t exist before they moved here.
“I don’t know. You can ask her when we find her.”
They were all silent for a moment. A breeze blew through the window, and the wind chimes clattered and chimed. It smelled like summer flowers, sweet and light, with the bite of salt water underlying it. It didn’t feel like the kind of day that belonged to a conversation like this. The sky should be dark and filled with fog. All this sunshine felt false.
At last, Kayla asked, “Who’s the queen?”
Daniel looked as if she’d just stolen his favorite kitten. “I was hoping you’d know.”
Chapter 5
Selena propped her laptop up on Kayla’s futon. She lay on her stomach and kicked her feet behind her. Her flip-flops dangled from her toes. “Queen of England. Queen of Hearts. Drag queens. Queen in a deck of cards. Queen, the band that sings ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’ She doesn’t want you to talk to Freddie Mercury, does she? Because he’s dead, and that could be tricky without a séance. Hey, do séances work? I mean, if you can do”—she made her sign for telekinesis—“then why can’t dead people talk?”
Across the cottage, Daniel perched on a stool with his face in his hands. He’d looked so crushed when she hadn’t known the answer. He must feel so lost and alone and powerless and … Stop it, she thought. She was not going to feel sympathy for the asshole who decided to approach her by blackmailing her. She was going to help him find this so-called queen and save his mother—and then ditch him at the first opportunity.
Selena’s fingernails tapped on the keys. It sounded like a bird pecking at seeds. “And speaking of the dead … we have Queen Victoria, Queen Isabella, Queen Nefertiti … Can you give us anything else to go on? Did your mom study a particular region?”
Without lifting his head, Daniel said, “She worked all over.”
“Any chance she had a favorite? You said she traveled. Where?”
It was hard not to feel some sympathy. Kayla would be freaked and scared and furious too if her mother were kidnapped. Just imagining it made her want to drape the house in even more charms and amulets. She picked up a yarn doll that loosely resembled herself. It had stringy black-and-pink hair, and Moonbeam had said Kayla’s name as she drove a pin into it—to tie the doll’s protective charms to Kayla, not to harm her, she’d explained—and then drawn a few words on it. If Kayla looked at it out of the corner of her eye, she could see the shape of almost-letters on its body. She couldn’t read them—Moonbeam had refused to teach her how—but she could sense them, which was more than most untrained people could do.
“Everywhere,” Daniel said. “Europe. Asia. South America. Mexico. Guatemala. Lots of places in the United States—Appalachia, Louisiana, New Mexico … Anywhere that has rituals for her to observe. Always looking for that one big thing that would make her career. She specialized in this crap.” He waved his hand at the basket of polished stones on the floor; the scarabs on the shelf; the quartz crystals and dreamcatchers in the windows; and the handwoven borders of tassels, herbs, and roots over the doorway. “I usually stayed in the hotel while she did her work. She’d hire a babysitter when I was younger, sometimes even a tour guide. Rarely let me come with her to any sites. Said I’d be too bored. She never mentioned any royalty.”
“You are completely unhelpful.” Selena typed more into the laptop. “Do you know how many queens there have been?”
Kayla looked down at the doll in her hand. “Voodoo queen.”
Both Selena and Daniel looked at her.
“She said ‘Ask the queen,’ so it nee
ds to be someone alive. And this is about a spell, so it needs to be someone magical. There aren’t many living magical queens out there.” Kayla waved the voodoo doll in the air. “But Louisiana has a voodoo queen.”
Daniel shot off the stool. “I took her to New Orleans a lot.”
Selena rolled her eyes. “I asked if she had any favorite—”
“Look it up!” Daniel commanded. He shifted from foot to foot so fast that he looked as if he were vibrating. His hands were clenched, and his muscles were tense. So much for his cool, relaxed attitude. She knew he’d been faking it. He was hiding fear. Maybe anger. “Find me photos, and I’ll take us to the voodoo queen’s front door. All I need is a picture; then I can jump.”
Selena leaned over the laptop. Her black hair brushed against the screen. She frowned, a crease between her eyebrows. Kayla didn’t doubt that she’d find what Daniel needed. She was faster on her laptop than Kayla was with a cash register. After a few seconds, Selena said, “Every hit is Marie Laveaux. But she died, like, a century ago, and so did her daughter, who inherited the title. Looking for her descendants … and bingo.” Selena leaned back and rotated the laptop to show a picture of a beautiful black woman in a flouncy white dress, with a white scarf around her head and gold hoops dangling from her ears. She was seated in front of a blue door with a wrought-iron gate. She held drumsticks in one hand and a gris-gris bag in the other. “Queen Marguerite, distant relative of Marie Laveaux II and reigning voodoo queen of New Orleans.” Under the photo were three words: “Ira Reginae Dolorem.”
Kayla pointed at the Latin. “Any guesses what that means?”
Selena turned the laptop back around. “ ‘The anger of the queen brings sorrow.’ In other words, don’t piss her off. Seems reasonable for a voodoo queen. Can’t she shrink your head? Or is that another culture I’m maligning and marginalizing?”
“You read Latin?” Daniel sounded impressed.
“Regina, queen. Ira, anger. Dolor, sorrow. Again, smarter than I look.” Selena typed some more. “She has a shop. Also, a very cheesy website stuck in the nineties. Actually has flame wingdings.” She faked a shudder. “But seriously, don’t let her hoodoo you. She could be like Kayla’s mom—the real deal hidden under the tourist crap.”