“Your mother warded this car six ways from Sunday. It was originally hers?”
I nodded. “Until she died. When I was old enough to drive, I inherited it.”
“Ah. Well, she made it as safe as extra-humanly possible.”
“Too bad she wasn’t driving it when she was killed.”
Zo frowned and looked thoughtful, but didn’t comment.
“How come the spells still work?”
Zo said, “Some spells expire quickly, others last longer. Do you have any kind of yearly maintenance you do for the car?”
I nodded. “Once a year, I use a special wax to keep the paint from peeling. We used to sing this silly little song while we waxed, so I keep up the tradition, and holy crap, that’s not just a song, it’s some kind of spell.” I groaned. “And let me guess: the wax is ‘special’ alright, just not in the way I thought.”
Zo nodded. “It’s likely a way to charge the magic in the car.”
I looked her over. “So I see you do magic, too.”
Zo gave me a look that said “well duh.” She leaned forward and scrutinized the dangling charms, staring hard but not touching any of them. After few minutes, she pointed and said, “That one. Grab that one.”
I untangled the string of beads she pointed to and pulled it off the mirror. This string had black, purple, and turquoise beads.
Zo said, “You can take the string with you without weakening the overall protection on the car. Keep it on you at all times for the rest of the weekend.”
I asked, “What does the charm do?”
“For all intents and purposes, it’s a protection charm. But it’s a powerful one, specifically keyed to your immediate family. It will limit any damage you might incur.”
“And keep me from dying.”
“One hopes.”
I looked at her, my uncertainty showing.
Zo said, “You asked me for options. I’m giving you one.”
“Okay…is this all you can do?”
Zo rolled her eyes. “Of course not. But in this particular situation, it’s the best option for you. Given your lack of experience, if you attempt to do any magic, you’re likely to do more harm than good at this point. Your mother, on the other hand,” she swept a hand around the car, “knew what she was doing. You trust your mother?”
“Of course!”
“Then let her help you.”
Invoking my dead mother was a sure way to get me to comply, and I had a feeling Zo knew it. I said, “Okay.” I tucked the string of beads in my pocket.
“No, put them in your bra. Next to your heart.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
Well, I’d asked for her help. I did as she said. I yanked my necklace out of the way and tucked the beads in the best I could. I asked, “Do I need to take my necklace off?”
“No. Keep it on.”
I nodded and tucked the necklace back in my shirt.
I looked at all the other charms hanging from the mirror. “Hey, if it’s so safe in here, can I just stay in here until Monday? I’d have to go back inside to grab my and Fuzzy’s stuff. But right now, I’m scared enough that I’m willing to pee in a bottle for a day if that’s what it takes.”
“That was more information than I needed.”
“Well? Would I be safe in here?”
“You might be…Do you really want to give up your chance to make a choice for yourself and hide instead?”
I felt queasy. “No,” I said, while I looked down and toed the floor mat.
Zo was quiet for a long moment. “This is about choices. Yours and the house’s. The position of housekeeper is truly a great honor. There’s nothing and nowhere else on the planet quite like this place. The housekeeper wields a tremendous amount of power—magical and political.”
“But?”
“No prize this big comes without a hefty price.”
Zo opened the door and climbed out of Babs, saying, “Keep the beads with you. Think about the information I gave you. Take what help you can from Nor and Wil. And talk to the house. That should see you through to Monday.”
She turned to close the door, and as she stood framed in the doorway I had a sudden thought, “Hey, do you know if the house has a name, and what it is?” I don’t know why I asked, but I suddenly felt like Zo would know.
Zo gave me another of her long looks and said, “The fact that you even thought to ask that question—that, in a nutshell, is why you need to seriously consider being the housekeeper.”
Chapter Thirty
I watched Zo disappear into the trees. It occurred to me that her house was too far away for her to have walked here so quickly, and I hadn’t seen or heard her drive up. Huh.
Wondering about Zo only distracted me for a minute. Then our conversation sank in, and I slumped my head back onto the headrest.
“What am I going to do?” I said to the ceiling. I realized I had a death grip on the steering wheel. I choked out a laugh. An apt metaphor: white-knuckling the wheel but going absolutely nowhere.
Fuzzy climbed out of the backseat and curled up in my lap, purring softly.
“Thanks,” I said, concentrating on the feel of his soft fur under my fingers until I could take a deep breath again.
If I wanted the job, I had to stay here. Forever.
Just the thought sent my heart racing, my stomach clenching, and my foot edging toward the gas pedal.
If only it were that easy.
Okay, pros and cons. I could do a list of pros and cons.
I looked down. Well, if I stayed here, I could keep Fuzzy. That was a huge pro.
My gaze shifted over to the house. Pro. Like the biggest pro of all time, but not for the reasons these people thought. I didn’t give a soggy hairball about all their power and politics. I’d found my own version of a mermaid, right here on dry land. Imagine what I could do with that! There was so much to study, I couldn’t begin to wrap my brain around it. I could study the house’s history, habits, and personality. Then there was language development—just how far did its communication skills extend? And I couldn’t even begin to conceive how the magic angle would play into my daily existence with the house.
Which led to the overwhelming cons: giving up my plans and getting stuck here for the rest of my life.
I had to spend another few minutes taking deep, slow breaths and petting Fuzzy before I could return to that thought.
I forced myself to think it through. If I took the job, I’d have a guaranteed home for the rest of my life. And certainly money wouldn’t be a problem. With the salary Sarah had mentioned, I’d probably have trouble spending it all. Those were pros.
But I just couldn’t see it. I’d spent all this time cooped up in our tiny diner, watching travelers come and go, hanging on every word they said about the places they had gone. I was so tired of my same four walls that places like El Paso and Victorville seemed exotic to me. Now I was on the eve of finally achieving my jailbreak, and the universe was throwing this wrench at me?
I said out loud, “Dick move universe. Like orphaning me and burning down the diner weren’t bad enough, now you’re going to throw this shit at me. You suck. This is old news, granted. But still. You. Suck.” I gave the universe the finger for added emphasis.
Alright, what else was on the con list? I looked at the house, saw the door open, watched Tango and Cash exit, and sighed.
Another huge con: my extended family. Well, fine, Nor and Wil seemed okay. But if the rest of the council was like Sarah, Meg, and Doug, then I was not going to enjoy dealing with them. Worse, my contact would be strictly limited to Fosters—not a good thing.
As Tango and Cash approached my window, I realized with a sinking feeling that my con list was definitely outweighing my pro list.
They’d taken off their jackets, and I could see that both of them were armed. I wondered what had been happening inside that they’d just tossed the whole assistants pretense out the window.
I didn’t want to contemplate what it said about the way my day was going that I didn’t freak out when I saw the guns. Sure, they were holstered, and it’s not like the guys were waving them at me. Still, I should have been alarmed. Instead, my prevailing feeling was “Told you so.”
Well if they were going for the full-on, merc-looking bodyguard thing, I couldn’t give them action-hero names like Tango and Cash. Looking at the two of them, new names for them clicked in my head.
By the time they got to my window I was smiling. Tango reached me first and knocked on my window. Cash, long blond hair blowing in the breeze, took up position behind Cash and slightly to the left.
At the rap on my window, I rolled it down an inch. “Yes?”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Teaching my kitten how to drive.”
He looked at Fuzzy in my lap, sighed, and tried again. “Seriously, why are you out here?”
“I fail to see how that’s any business of yours, Lars.”
“Lars? I thought I was Heimdahl.”
I shook my head.
“Okay, I’ll bite. If I’m Lars now, then who’s he?” Lars jerked a thumb behind him.
I looked behind Lars and my grin spread. “The Real Girl.”
Lars just raised an eyebrow, but the Real Girl put both hands on his hips. “How come he gets to be Lars?”
“Have you seen your hair?” I asked, just as the Real Girl did a hair toss.
Lars looked over his shoulder at the Real Girl and shrugged. “She’s got a point.” Lars looked back at me, “You want to come on out of there?”
“Not really.”
“How about you do it anyway.”
I thought about testing Babs’s defensive capabilities, but decided I couldn’t take the risk of something harming her. I was still planning on driving out of here in another day, and I needed her in one piece.
I sighed and rolled the window back up. Clutching Fuzzy to my chest, I climbed out, gave Babs a pat on the roof, and followed the men back toward the house. But I took my sweet time, forcing both men to slow to a snail’s pace.
“I don’t suppose you have any interest in learning our actual names?” the Real Girl said.
“What fun is that? Your name’s going to be something totally normal, like Kevin.”
Lars snorted and I looked over in time to see the Real Girl doing an eye roll.
“What?” I asked. “Oh no, your name’s not actually Kevin is it?”
Lars was failing to suppress a smile.
The Real Girl said, “No.”
“Oh phew.”
“But my snake’s is.”
I stopped short. Fuzzy and I looked at him. “You have a snake named Kevin?”
“Yeah.”
I shook my head. “Of course you do.” I started walking again. “Well, I’m glad I didn’t go with any Conan the Barbarian names as an option. If I’d have named you after that snake guy Thulsa Doom, it’d have been a little too on the nose.”
The Real Girl perked up. “Thulsa Doom. Now that’s a good name.”
“Not gonna happen,” I said.
I reached the porch and stepped up on the first stair. The house let out a loud squeak. I dashed up the remaining steps and gave the porch post a huge, one-armed hug. “You’re okay! Oh thank whatever kinds of gods magical houses believe in! I’m so glad you’re okay!”
I stood clutching the post with one arm, Fuzzy in the other, bouncing on my toes a bit. The porch flooring made happy, grunting sounds under my feet.
Lars and the Real Girl stood at the foot of the steps, stone-faced. Well, they worked for Sarah, so they probably weren’t excited to see me buddying up to the house. And they were going to report everything I was doing to Sarah, so I whispered to the house, “We’ll talk later,” and let go of the post.
As I walked across the porch to the front door, I heard the guys coming up the steps behind me. Every time they took a step, the stairs made a fart sound. It was like they were walking on whoopie cushions. I was snickering when I walked in the front door.
Lars and the Real Girl intercepted me as I stepped inside.
“In here,” Lars said. He gestured me into the sitting room on the left. The Real Girl slipped around us to stand so that he was blocking me from going either up the stairs or down the hall.
I opened the door and found Nor and Wil hovering near the window.
When I stepped into the room, Lars shut the door behind me.
I stared at the closed door, opened it, and found Lars had taken up position outside the door, blocking us from leaving. I shut the door again.
Turning to face Nor and Wil, I said, “Hi guys.”
“How are you feeling?” asked Nor.
At the same time, Wil asked, “What happened? What did they say?”
“Okay, I think, and not much,” I said, as I walked over to a couch and flopped down. I put Fuzzy on the floor, and he immediately began exploring the room.
“How come we’re in here?” I asked as Nor and Wil seated themselves. Nor took the armchair, and Wil took the couch across from me.
Nor said, “Sarah sequestered us in here. While we were talking with her in the kitchen, she somehow signaled Doug to sneak around us and go check your room. He came back and reported you weren’t there, and we wouldn’t tell her where you’d gone, so she stuck us in here while they located you.”
Wil said, “What were you doing outside?”
“Sitting in my car, until Lars and the Real Girl came and got me.” Well, that was the partial truth.
Nor laughed. “Lars and the Real Girl? Tell me the Real Girl is the one with the hair.”
I grinned and nodded.
“Oh, that’s perfect.”
Wil just shook his head.
Nor said, “I don’t know how much time we’ve got, so we need to tell you some stuff, fast.”
Wil leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. His face looked drawn as he said, “Sarah moved up the next round of the test.” He glanced at Nor, then back at me. “We haven’t been able to figure out a way to force her to give you tonight to rest. It’s normal to do the last test on Sunday morning.”
“How come you look like you swallowed an eel?”
“Uh, given how drained you were after the last test—”
“Wil’s worried—we’re both worried—about you using any magic so soon after a burnout.”
Wil rubbed his nose under his glasses. “It’s just not done. I don’t know what she’s thinking.”
“Do you know what the test is?”
They both shook their heads, and Wil said, “The whole process is supposed to be super secret. But enough people make it through the first rounds of tests that, over the years, people have talked. Very few people make it to the third test, by the way.”
“Lucky me. I feel so privileged.”
Wil said, “And almost no one makes it to the final test. Given how few people have taken it—and that nearly all of them became the housekeeper—they’ve been able to keep the details of that test under wraps.”
“Well given how fun the last test was, that sounds super peachy.”
“There’s more,” said Nor. “In case you make it through the last test, it’s crucial that you know the, uh, fine print involved in being housekeeper before you make your final decision.”
“I’m listening.”
Nor said, “The housekeeper is a lifetime position.”
“Okay.”
Wil said, “I don’t think you understand. The housekeeper does a bonding ritual with the house. Once you’re bonded, it’s for life.”
I grimaced. “Okay. So it’s not like I delay school, work here for a year, and then leave.”
“No,” said Wil.
“What if I go through with it, and then I change my mind someday, and I just say ‘screw it’ and leave?”
“No one’s ever done it, but the common consensus is you’d die.”
Before I had a c
hance to start to process that little nugget, Nor said, “Moreover—”
I said, “Really? ‘Leave and you die’ wasn’t enough? Now you’re going to hit me with ‘moreover’? Because you know nothing good ever follows when a lawyer says ‘moreover.’”
Nor gave me a tight smile, “Finn, try and take this seriously. If you take the position—”
“The and-we-are-so-not-kidding-about-this lifetime position,” I said.
She nodded, “Yes the lifetime position—that even I couldn’t get you out of, by the way—there’s another major caveat. You also can’t leave the property. Ever.”
Well, I knew that from Zo. But now that I was with actual Fosters, maybe I could get some details. “Just to clarify, the housekeeper can’t leave the house or can’t leave the property?”
Wil said, “The property. Which is huge, so it’s not as confining as it sounds.”
“Uh huh.” I thought for a minute. “What about groceries? Medical care? What if Fuzzy needs a vet?”
Wil asked, “Are you considering taking the job, then?”
I said, “Hell if I know. But before I do another damn thing, I want all the cards on the table. No more of this stumbling around crap.”
Wil said, “Well, everything you could possibly need is provided by the Fosters. And, of course, there’s the Internet—”
“I’ll have access to the Internet?”
Wil said, “The housekeeper always has the latest technology. So, you’d have full cable and Internet, etc., along with whatever new gadgets come down the pike.”
I didn’t even have cable or reliable Internet when I lived in the desert, so that would be a welcome change. I said, “Back up a minute. Talk to me about the whole ‘provided by the Fosters’ thing. You guys said only Fosters are allowed in the house. Is that a hard and fast rule?”
Nor said, “Yes.”
Wil didn’t say anything, and he was looking at the floor.
Nor fixed him with a hard stare. “Wil?”
“Um.” Wil hopped up and started pacing.
“Wil…” said Nor. The look she was giving him would have made me pace, too.
Wil lowered his voice, “Look, this can’t leave the room. And if I divulge this, you’re both going to owe me one. A big one.”
A House for Keeping Page 21
