by Jen Klein
I made my way to the couch and placed the saucer on the side table. The trunk doubled as a coffee table, so I had to clear the knickknacks off the top before I could open it.
A soft rapping startled me. It took me a second to make the connection that someone was knocking on the front door. I closed the trunk and hopped up. Even before I yanked the door open, I knew who would be there. Apparently my day was going to both start and end with this guy. Sky held a white paper bag against his body, almost like he was cradling a baby, and shouldered past me, ignoring my huff of indignation. “We didn’t discuss our plan for tomorrow.”
“Are you kidding me?” I was past being polite. “Enough already! You have my phone number. Use it!”
Sky didn’t seem perturbed by my outburst. “I did use it.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Yes I did.”
“No you . . .” My voice trailed off. I stopped and ran my hands down the front of my jeans, then the back. My phone wasn’t in any of those pockets. I stormed back to the sofa where I had dropped my backpack and ripped it open. I was starting to rifle through it when Sky spoke again.
“Looking for this?” I turned to see him holding up my phone. “You left it on the bench.”
A long moment passed—one in which I could have screamed or kicked him again or called the police. But I saw his smile in the uncertain light, and more importantly, I caught a whiff of whatever was in that white paper bag. He held it up before me. “Hungry?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. If he wouldn’t leave me alone, I might as well get a free meal out of it. I gestured toward the couch. “Have a seat.”
Sky’s head turned to the right and then to the left. “I appreciate romance as much as the next guy, but I can barely see you.”
One of his hands moved toward the panel of switches by the front door, and I panicked.
“No!” I shouted, leaping forward and grabbing his arm.
Too late. His fingers brushed over the panel, and of course, nothing happened. He looked down at me, but I was frozen, still grasping his arm, humiliated. I had gotten used to the dimness in the room. I had forgotten. Of all people in the world, why did it have to be Sky Ramsey who knew the electricity had been turned off?
His hand floated back to where mine was clenched on his arm, and he gently disengaged my fingers. He was still looking at me, puzzled. Or worse, pitying. Paralyzed with shame, I could only stare back. We stood like that for the barest moment, and then I felt a pressure on my fingers—a squeeze—and he let go.
“You must have blown a fuse,” he said and headed toward the couch.
I swallowed. “Yeah. Old houses.”
“Old houses.” I heard him pat the cushion beside him. “Come on.”
I sat and waited while Sky pulled out burgers. He handed one to me. I lifted it to my mouth and took a bite. It was beyond delicious. I took several more bites.
He handed me a napkin, then set two Cokes on the trunk. When he shifted his weight, some of the knickknacks on the cushion beside him clinked together. Sky picked one up from the pile and held it near the candle. It was a photo of . . .
“Dr. Cade,” Sky said in a voice that was hushed and reverent.
I took another bite of burger, watching him.
“When will he be back from his leave of absence?” Sky asked me. “All the info online said that he left to . . .” He paused, looking at me. “To help your mom,” he finished.
I didn’t plan to snort, and yet I did.
“What?” he asked.
I didn’t have to tell him the truth. I could have lied to him like I did to everyone else. I could have given him the party line: Dad was overseas when Mom suddenly got sick. She passed away before he could get home. It was tragic and unexpected. I could have said that, but I didn’t have the energy to spit out another lie.
So instead, I set my half-eaten burger down. I reached over and plucked my father’s picture from Sky’s hands and tossed it on the other side of the couch—my side, out of his reach. Instead, I told him what had really happened.
“She took months to die,” I said.
Sky set his burger down too. He stared at me.
“The doctors did tests until our insurance ran out, and she got sicker and sicker and then lost her mind. I had to lock her in her room so she couldn’t run away. I almost failed out of ninth grade because I skipped school so many times, and my aunt and uncle moved back from North Carolina . . .”
I could feel something right behind my eyes. Hot. Prickling. Unfamiliar. I turned away from Sky, toward the photo next to me.
“During all of it, Dad was gone,” I went on. “He wasn’t here when she got out and came to school and broke the cafeteria windows. He wasn’t here when she wrote, ‘Burn the bridge’ a thousand times across the floor. He wasn’t here when she . . .”
I paused. And swallowed. Hard.
“. . . when she hurt herself.”
I felt rather than saw Sky move closer to me.
“He was in Egypt.” Every word was a struggle. “He was in Jordan and Greece and Algeria. He was everywhere else.”
Sky’s fingers covered my own.
“He wasn’t here the night she stopped breathing,” I said, yanking my hand away.
That’s when the tears came.
Sky started moving toward me. “Jillian—”
“Get out,” I said.
And he did.
Ten
I slammed my father’s bullshit red box onto my bed. Except it wasn’t even red. It was more like burnt orange. Old coral. Rotting peach.
Whatever.
I slung my handbag down by it. The latch popped open, and my cell phone skittered out onto the mattress. I grabbed it and checked the tiny screen. One missed call. I thumbed the screen as I plopped down next to the box. The message was from Ernie Stuart.
“Hey Jilly, hate to tell you, but I got nothing on your fake obituary. I’m thinking it’s a joke. How many guys you juggling?”
Yeah, right.
“I bet one got pissed. I’ll ask my buddy to run prints, but I think it’s probably nothing. Take care of yourself, kiddo—”
My thumb pressed down.
“Message deleted,” said a mechanical voice.
I dropped my phone onto the mattress and lifted the box’s lid. Might as well get this over with, for Norbert’s sake—at least the night couldn’t get any worse. I had a concrete job to do: find my dead mother’s birth certificate. Easy. Depressing. Awful. Much like the rest of my life.
Inside was my father’s usual mess of illegible handwritten papers and files and typed documents. I flipped through until I found a folder marked birth certificate and then tugged a paper from between the faded flaps. There was my mother’s name—Gwendolyn Cade—right at the top. Perfect. I could give it to Norbert and let him deal with how to send it to my father. The last thing I wanted was to—
Hold on.
I drew the yellowed paper closer to my eyes. This birth certificate was the wrong one. It didn’t list my mother as having been birthed. It showed that she had given birth.
To a baby.
A baby who wasn’t me.
The certificate documented a live birth that had happened sixteen years ago. A live birth with a name.
Rosemary Cade.
If this was real, I had been fourteen months old at the time.
I scrambled to rip open my backpack and the envelope inside. The obituary copy fluttered out onto my bed. There it was, literally printed in black and white.
In addition to her father, Ms. Cade is survived by her sister, Rose—
And nothing more.
*
The next morning, Aggie and Edmund only waved from the window as my cousin headed toward my car. I was certain they wouldn’t give me any informatio
n about my potential sister—apparently the one thing my family does well is lie—but it would have been satisfying to make them squirm.
If they even knew about her, that is.
As I waved back, it seemed less likely they knew anything at all. My dad was the liar, not them. So instead of asking them about it, I took it out on Norbert. In my defense, I’d been planning to yell at him anyway.
“Now you’re Sky’s personal assistant?” I demanded as soon as he hopped into my car. “Who do you work for, anyway?”
Norbert scowled. “If anyone here should be mad, it’s me,” he shot back. “I’m your cousin. I get to do your grunt work.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So how come you partner up with Sky and not me?”
“Sky Ramsey and I are not partners!”
“Oh, really?” said Norbert. “So he just happens to know you’re Umbra Investigations. He just happens to have all the information on the Corabelle LaCaze case? He just happens to need a name run on a potential suspect?”
“He barged into my client interview. It was an accident!” I stepped on the gas and sped down the street.
Norbert made a noise through his nose.
“Look, he’s obsessed with my dad,” I said, gripping the steering wheel. “He was dying to be a part of Umbra. I didn’t go to him. He came to me.”
Norbert folded his arms and turned his body away from me. “Whatever. It’s cool.”
He was silent the rest of the way to school. When I parked, he reached for the door handle without a word. I needed to do something. It wasn’t his fault that my life was a series of surprise disasters.
“Norbert!”
He didn’t answer, but he froze in place.
“I need your help.”
His hand still on the door, he turned and looked at me, his eyes softening. “You do?”
“I need everything you can find on Todd Harmon. Cell phone activity, driver’s license, plates, parking tickets. Anything. I’ve never had a missing person case before, and . . .” I paused, but only because the next part was true, and truth is not exactly my specialty. “It’s a big deal. I can’t do it alone.”
Norbert grinned. “I’m on it. You’re welcome.”
I found Corabelle in the hallway before homeroom. She wasn’t her usual manicured self. Her ponytail had slid halfway down her head, and some strands had escaped the rubber band to straggle around her face.
“Did you find Todd?” she asked the moment she saw me.
“Not yet.” I pulled her into a corner so we could have some semblance of privacy. “But you’re right. It’s totally a curse.”
She blinked rapidly. Her hand went to her mouth. “I knew it.”
Sliding back into my Umbra mode was the easiest thing in the world. Ignoring the twinge of guilt over lying about Todd Harmon—a real missing person—was more difficult. Giving a crap had never been part of the Umbra plan. I shook it off. “There’s some dangerous magic at play here,” I told Corabelle. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but Van Nuys is the warlock capital of the world.”
“Really?” she breathed.
“Yeah, and I hate to do this, but I’m going to have to charge you an additional hazard fee.”
Corabelle didn’t even blink. “Whatever you need.”
“By the way,” I said, “I didn’t see anything on Todd’s parents in the information you gave me. Have you talked to them? Do you think they might know something?”
Corabelle shook her head. “No parents. Todd was a ward of the state. He got scholarships for college.”
Wow. Aside from the disappearing act, Todd was looking more and more impressive. He’d become a pre-med all on his own. But then again, what did I know? A “ward of the state” could mean anything. I didn’t have any parents either.
“Here, in case it helps.” I took the photo Corabelle handed me. It was Todd, posing in a body-builder stance under a big tree. Based on the landscape around him, I guessed it had been taken on the same outing as the photo of Corabelle I’d seen in his bedroom. “He didn’t want to stand like that,” Corabelle told me. “That’s why he’s making that goofy face. Isn’t he cute?”
“Very cute,” I agreed. She watched as I scribbled notes. When I looked back up, I noticed her lower lip was cracked from where she’d been biting it. I pulled a tiny container from my pocket. “Do you want some lip balm?”
“No!” Corabelle recoiled as if I’d offered her a dog turd. “Gross!”
“Lip balm is gross?”
“Sharing lip balm is gross,” she informed me before walking away.
I watched her disappear down the hall. She was willing to make out with almost any healthy male over the age of fifteen, but sharing lip balm was gross? Maybe this was the sort of distinction you formed when you had parents. Like I said, what did I know?
I didn’t see Sky again until Greek Mythology, which was fine with me. After the previous night’s breakdown, I felt way too vulnerable. But I had a plan: our interactions from here on out would only be about Corabelle’s case. Nothing about our pasts, nothing about our personal lives. Only the case.
I slid into my seat right as the bell rang, so it was easy to dispense with conversation. When I nodded in Sky’s direction, he gave me a brief head jerk: the international sign for “’Sup?”
Fine. Judging from that evidence, he very obviously wanted to avoid me too. Perfect. Just . . . perfect.
Mr. Lowe started off with a homework assignment. He claimed it would be simple. All we had to do was pick a character from Greek mythology who we felt was representative of ourselves, write the name on an index card, and turn it in Wednesday morning. He even gave us the index cards. No biggie . . . except for those of us who happened to be on a (fake) paranormal case and didn’t have time to research a bunch of (fake) mythological people. When the bell rang, I briefly considered texting Norbert to ask him to come up with someone but decided that giving him busywork might be pushing my luck.
So my “To Do” list now included the following: research Greek character, pay electricity bill, find and send Mom’s actual birth certificate to my father.
Oh, and locate a missing pre-med student, determine who sent the obituary, and figure out if I actually had a sister.
I only had so many brain cells. Since I needed money, Todd Harmon had to come first.
After class, Sky fell into stride beside me in the hall. “Are you all right? I was worried after last night.”
“I’m fine.” I stopped and turned to him. “It never happened. Okay?”
“Fine,” said Sky. He hitched his backpack up and grasped me by the elbows. Against my better judgment, I allowed him to crowd me into a corner by the wall of lockers. He gazed down at me. For the first time, I noticed that his eyelashes were really long. It pissed me off: both the eyelash length and the fact that I noticed.
“Look,” he said. “I get that you’re not happy about me barging into your life. Fine. But it’s not about me anymore. It’s not about what I want.”
“Agreed,” I said.
For reasons I cannot fathom, my eyes wandered to his mouth.
It was a nice mouth.
“It’s about Corabelle,” the nice mouth said.
Right. Corabelle.
I pulled away, glaring down a pair of hussies-in-training who were ogling him from behind. Enough.
“Meet me after school at the sundial,” I ordered, and left him standing there.
After suffering through the rest of the day, I found that my new partner was not alone. Norbert was at the sundial with him. Not just with him, but engaged in serious conversation. I marched over to them, hands already on my hips. “What are you guys doing?” I barked.
“Working on the case,” Sky said without looking up.
True, I’d already accepted that this would happen, t
hat Sky and Norbert would keep communicating, especially if either felt I was withholding. But accepting it and witnessing it were two different things. “I told you to stay away from my cousin—”
“It’s cool,” Norbert told me. I opened my mouth to remind him that his definition of “cool” was out of sync with the rest of the world’s, but stopped. I had to pick my battles.
“Okay, fill me in,” I said with a sigh.
“Fifth period was computer class,” Norbert explained before going on a two-minute tangent that involved words like “firewall” and “codes” and “security.” The upshot was that Norbert had run Todd’s license plate number through the DMV and police department and had discovered something interesting.
“He drives an eight-year-old Honda Accord,” Norbert said. “Teal. He bought it from a used-car lot in Crenshaw last year. Got a fairly good deal on it. High mileage but a low financing fee.”
“Is this relevant?” I asked.
“Not at all. I’m just showing off my dope investigative skills.”
I stole a peek at Sky. He looked amused.
“But here’s the relevant part,” Norbert said. “Friday afternoon, the Accord was towed from a no-parking zone downtown.”
“Do you have the exact address?” asked Sky.
“No, but I have the location of the tow yard. Clean Lee’s off Spring Street.”
Sky and I exchanged a glance.
“We’ll drop you home first,” I told Norbert.
Disappointment crossed his face. He looked at Sky.
“I’ll keep her out of trouble,” Sky promised. Norbert rolled his eyes, but nodded.
“Stay by your computer in case we need you,” I ordered, maybe a little tersely. I couldn’t help it. Because mostly I was wondering if he could sense my relief that I wouldn’t have an audience—him—for the tragicomedy that was my nonrelationship with Sky Ramsey.
It took sixty minutes to get downtown, an hour defined by heavy traffic and heavier silence. I couldn’t stop thinking about the sister I might have. Part of me wanted to mention the obituary to Sky. I burned to talk about it with someone, but there was no way to bring it up casually. And given Sky’s beliefs in the paranormal, I couldn’t imagine what sort of crazy response it might trigger. Anyway, it wasn’t part of the new plan. The new plan was to talk about the case and only the case.
