“I haven’t the foggiest. Does it feel warmer to you?”
The last star winked out.
The Vivian dream faded to blackness.
The next morning, disappointed I hadn’t had a chance to recap the most recent episodes of Easton Heights for my comatose sister, I snuck out past Lend. He was asleep on the floral couch, having passed out sometime in the wee hours of the morning. He’d insisted on staying the night and keeping watch in case anyone from IPCA showed up again. Tasey, my hot pink and rhinestone-covered Taser, looked kind of ridiculous still clutched in his hands. We’d have to get him a matching one, maybe in electric blue.
I didn’t think that a midnight attack was IPCA’s style; it was weird for them to show up here, yeah, but they weren’t the sneak-around-in-the-night type. They were the slowly-suck-the-soul-from-you-with-the-bureaucracy type. Even if they were restructuring again (which wouldn’t be shocking, given that they’d lost most of the senior members during Reth’s postfreedom revenge spree), it’d be a while before anything actually happened policywise. I’ve been around long enough to understand how international government agencies work. It doesn’t matter if they’re regulating the transportation of goods like socks or the transportation of mythical creatures like pixies. Papers, more papers, forms, documents, signatures, lawyers—trust me, the whole thing is scarier than a vampire with a slicked-back widow’s peak.
Which wasn’t to say that I didn’t feel a little bit nervous, but Raquel would know what was going on. She’d fix it.
David had just forwarded me a text from her saying she would meet me at our café in thirty minutes. He didn’t have more specifics, and I figured she meant the Jitterbug Café we talked in after my troll encounter this October. How David had gotten ahold of her I didn’t know. Since when were they texting buddies?
It’d take me at least forty-five minutes to get to the café, assuming I made the next bus. Lend would give me a ride if I woke him up and asked, but he’d gotten so little sleep last night, and I didn’t think I could deal with his attitude toward Raquel on top of all the other worries. They never got along.
I resisted the urge to sit and stare at Lend while he slept; when he dreamed, instead of his eyes moving behind his eyelids, his whole glamour shifted appearances like a stop-motion film. It was fascinating and wildly entertaining sometimes—also a bit freaky considering I showed up constantly.
I nearly ran over Grnlllll as I burst through the door into the diner. “What are you still doing here?” I asked, before seeing Nona swishing around the red tables, which were populated by several paranormals, including Kari and Donna, the resident selkies. “You were supposed to evacuate!”
When I told David about my non-Raquel IPCA visitor last night, he had made a snap decision to get all the paranormals out of town. I supported this, although it was harder than I’d expected to motivate Arianna to pack and leave. Finally she said she’d go to David’s secluded house, wanting to be around in case we needed help. But these paranormals had no reason to be here.
“Nona, you all need to leave! IPCA knows I’m here, which means they might know you’re all here, too!”
Nona smiled at me, waving a hand like a branch disturbed by the wind. “IPCA poses no threat to us.”
I ran my fingers through my ponytail, torn. I needed to book it to meet Raquel in time, but I needed to convince them to leave, too. I had no idea what IPCA would do taggingwise with a huldra, a gnome, two selkies, and, well, whatever those three mournfully beautiful but kind of scary-looking women with long black hair sitting—floating?—in the corner were.
“No, really, they might be a problem. Just go somewhere else until we figure out what’s up with IPCA. It’s probably nothing. Hopefully it’s nothing. But until we know for sure, I need to know you’re all safe.”
“Dear child,” Nona said, smiling warmly and taking my face in both her hands. She leaned forward and brushed my forehead with her moss-green lips. “Soon.”
She backed away and I frowned, adding her affection to the ever-growing list of Suspicious Things Nona Does, then pulled out my phone and looked at the time. “Crap! I missed the bus.”
Kari fixed her impossibly big, round brown eyes on me. “Do you want a ride? We can give you a ride! Anywhere! Fast!”
“You have a car?”
She and Donna barked their matching laughs. Torn, I looked back at Nona, who was calmly wiping the long barstool-lined counter. “We’ll talk more when I get back.”
I followed the selkies outside to a classic VW Beetle parked along the street. It was a sparkly midnight-blue convertible with white leather seats. “Seriously?” I asked. How did two creatures who spent the better part of the last few centuries as seals have a car this cool? And how pathetic did that make me that I still didn’t have one?
I slid past the passenger seat into the back, and Kari sat behind the wheel.
“How did you get a driver’s license?” I asked, curious. I was going to take a driver’s ed course in the spring, but maybe they could hook me up with an easier class.
“What’s a driver’s license?” Kari answered, before peeling out into the middle of the street.
Oh, bleep.
My eyes were squeezed shut, my fingers in a death grip around my seat belt, when the chorus of my latest favorite song played, muffled by my purse. I pried my hand free and dug out my cell. Kari took another curve at blinding speed, centrifugal force smashing me against the window.
“Slow down!” I screamed, putting the phone up to my ear. “What! I mean, hi!”
“Where are you?” Lend asked. I could hear the panic in his voice. Ah, crud, should have left him a note.
“I’m on my way to meet Raquel at the Jitterbug Café. Kari, tree!” We swerved violently and the car lifted completely off the right-side wheels before bumping back down. “Trees do not move for cars! Cars avoid trees!”
Donna’s barking laughter rang through the tiny space as she clapped her hands, delighted.
“What are you doing? Are you safe?” Lend asked, shouting over the background noise coming through my end.
“Not right now, no. Red light! Red light!” We sailed through anyway, an SUV coming so close to clipping our bumper I could have counted the other driver’s teeth, all of which were showing in a grimace of terror. “Pull over! I’m getting out!”
“But we’re not there yet,” Kari said, turning all the way back to fix her round, watery eyes on me.
“Eyes on the road! The road! Stop stop stop stop stop stop STOP!”
Kari blinked, then turned around and slammed her foot all the way down on the brakes. I flew forward as the seat belt locked and dug into my collarbone so hard I was sure I’d be bruised. A screeching sound echoed through the Beetle, and the acrid smell of burning rubber filled my nose as we came to a complete stop in the middle of the road.
“I’m gonna call you back,” I said, my voice trembling, then I hung up.
Donna jumped out and flipped her seat forward, smiling helpfully as I fell out of the car and scooted on my hands and knees to the sidewalk, resting my forehead gratefully against the freezing cement.
Okay, maybe there were some forms of transportation worse than holding a faerie’s hand.
Donna patted me on the back, her hand coming down too hard. “That was fun!” she said. “Where should we go next?”
“Nowhere with you two, ever again.”
I turned and sat down. Kari had left the car where it stopped and walked over to us. She raised her eyebrows quizzically at me. “Are you okay, Evie?”
“No!