“Cool.” The conversation moved on.
Yeah, cool. I reached for the bowl of mashed potatoes.
“Do you really need that, Melina?” my mother asked, without looking up from her plate.
I set the spoon back in the bowl and took seconds on green beans instead.
AFTER DINNER, I ENDED UP CLEARING THE TABLE BECAUSE PATRICK and my father just happened to get into a good-natured argument about who actually wrote the song “Summertime Blues,” with my brother firmly in The Who camp and my father adamantly taking the part of Eddie Cochran. They had to go and look it up on the Internet in Daddy’s office. Patrick blew me a little kiss as he followed Daddy out of the room. I stuck my tongue out and crossed my eyes.
“Stop it, Melina. You’re too old for that kind of behavior.” Mama bustled past me with a stack of plates. My mother had never been one of those mothers who would tell you that your face would freeze that way. She didn’t believe in lying to children. She felt stories like that eroded children’s trust in adults and would lead to lives of crime and drug abuse. Throughout my childhood, if a shot was going to hurt, I knew about it in advance.
I might not have always liked what my mother told me, but I could always rely on it. I didn’t feel too old to make faces at my brother, but apparently I was mistaken.
As I trooped out of the dining room, balancing several wineglasses and a couple of salad plates, my grandmother smiled at me, crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. I snorted.
“Melina, do you have a cold?” my mother asked from the kitchen.
“No, Mama,” I called. “I’m fine.”
I found Ted sitting out on the back deck, his half-empty beer bottle dangling between his fingers. The stars starting to come out. I sat down next to him and leaned my head on his shoulder. I breathed in the sweet, spicy scent of him, now against a background of my mother’s roses with just the faintest hint of roast chicken thrown in. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“What for?” He looped his arm around my shoulder.
“For them. For them being so . . . weird.”
He chuckled. “Hello, Pot. Have you met Kettle?”
I punched him in the shoulder, but I totally pulled it. “Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe they’re way too normal.”
“They are pretty normal.”
“Distressingly so, sometimes.”
“You don’t know how good you’ve got it.” He leaned back on his elbows and looked up at the stars. “Your mother will warm up to me. Moms always do.”
“Is that so? I warn you. My mom is not easily manipulated.” In fact, my mother was nearly manipulation-proof.
“Not like you, huh?” he said, and pulled me onto his lap.
“I am not easily manipulated either.” I protested.
“And I am the King of France.” He kissed me.
I wiggled out of his grasp, but not too far. “Well, your majesty, I came out to tell you that dessert is being served.”
He froze for a second. “What is it?”
“Cheesecake.”
“With strawberries?” He sounded like a little boy. Ted loves cheesecake. He especially likes it with strawberries, although he will accept raspberries and won’t turn his nose up at blueberries.
“Yes.”
He shoved me off his lap and stood up. “Told you she was warming up to me.”
I followed him into the house, wondering if he might be right.
WE TOOK GRANDMA ROSIE HOME AT THE END OF THE EVENING. She hobbled out to the car, one hand firmly tucked into Ted’s arm and the other firmly on her cane. She’d had two glasses of wine, which was pretty much a bender for her, and wasn’t as steady on her pins. Ted helped her into the Buick. My mother tried to help, but Grandma slapped her hands away. “Let the boy do it, Elizabeth. He’s young. It won’t hurt his back.”
My mother had backed off a little, hovering nearby, but she’d let Ted get Grandma into the car. Grandma had then fallen into an instant sleep the second Ted turned on the engine. Norah dozed off by the time we hit I-5. Ted reached over into the backseat and took my hand. We rode in silence. Well, as silent as you can be with two women snoring in an enclosed space. They both woke, startled, as we pulled into the driveway of the assisted-living facility.
“Did I fall asleep?” they asked, practically in unison.
“Yes,” I said, just as Ted said, “No.”
Ted helped Grandma out of the car and I walked her back to her apartment. I unlocked the door for her and followed her in. As I helped her off with her coat, she said, “They’d understand you better if you let them.”
“Excuse me?” It sounded like one of those Zen koans, but that wasn’t really Grandma Rosie’s way.
“I know you feel like none of us understand you, and we probably don’t. It’s not our fault, though, dear. You don’t let us.”
I made myself busy hanging up her coat while I figured out what to say. I couldn’t let them understand me. It was part of the gig, to be alone.
“You know me better than anyone. You’re my family.” I turned to face her.
“We know that you got new mats for the karate studio. That’s not knowing a person.” She waved me away. “I get it. You don’t think we could possibly get it. You think we would be shocked. Let me tell you something, Melina. I’m eighty-one years old. There’s nothing that shocks me anymore.”
That was true. Grandma Rosie took pretty much everything in stride. A few things made her press her lips together in disapproval, but she was rarely surprised. That said, I was pretty sure that finding out her granddaughter regularly associated with denizens of the night, cavorted with werewolves and was on a first-name basis with several goblins and trolls would at least make her raise her eyebrows, if it didn’t make her tell my mother to lock me up in the loony bin.
“Grandma,” I started, but she cut me off.
“No, Melina. I can tell. You’re just going to make some excuse. I love you, dear. When you’re ready to let us in on whatever your big secrets are, I’ll be first in line.” She paused. “No. I take that back. I’ll be second. Tell your mother first. She’s dying to know.”
NORAH AND TED WERE WAITING PATIENTLY FOR ME AT THE Buick. Honestly, I don’t know how they did it. It was hard enough for me to walk next to Grandma down the hall without hustling her along. To just sit in the car and wait? I’d probably claw my own eyes out.
Not them, though. Oh, no. Ted just stood, leaning against the Buick, arms folded across his chest, legs stretched in front of him. Still as a magazine ad. Norah was asleep again in the backseat. She’d had more than two glasses of wine, and as skinny as she was these days, it didn’t take much.
Ted opened the front door for me and I climbed in. He gave me a kiss before he shut the door. I waited until he got in to start talking.
“Do you think my grandmother knows what I am?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Norah said from the backseat, suddenly awake. She popped up, leaning her chin on the front seat between us. I used to do the exact same thing when I used to ride in the backseat of this car with Grandpa driving and Grandma riding shotgun. “She’s a wily one, Rosie is.”
I had to grant her that. “What about my mom? Do you think she knows?”
“Definitely not.” Norah sank back into her seat. “Elizabeth would have you in some kind of twelve-step program or rehab thing so fast your head would spin.”
She was probably right about that. It was precisely what I’d always thought.
“Of course, we could be completely wrong. She might totally embrace it. Maybe it’d be like when your brother was playing soccer. Remember how she’d go to every game and cheer her head off? She didn’t understand that either and she got totally behind that,” Norah said.
“I don’t think you can equate delivering axes to dwarves with playing outside mid for a Select soccer team.” Although, she had a point. My mother would probably understand what I did about as well as she grasped “offsides,” which was not at all.
Ted pulled into a parking place less than a block from our apartment. He had some strange parking karma. It wasn’t the first time I’d wondered if he had something magic to him that I’d yet to detect. I sniffed at him. Nope. Nothing numinous, just a faint scent that reminded me of muffins.
“Why are you sniffing him?” Norah asked, as she unfolded herself from the backseat.
“Because I found a good parking place.” Ted locked the car and we started down the street.
“That makes no sense.” Norah hurried after him.
I trailed along behind the two of them, listening to Ted trying to explain my suspicions of his good parking karma. That was probably why I didn’t hear the guys coming up behind us until right before they started swinging.
I DIDN’T FEEL A TINGLE. THESE GUYS WERE JUST GUYS. THAT was something to be grateful for. “Ted,” I yelled, as I whirled to face the footsteps I heard coming up behind me fast.
I ducked and his first punch swung wildly over my head. Never underestimate the power of a good, fast ducking reflex. It has saved my jaw more than once. Plus, from my crouched pose, I could give the fist strike that I landed on his jaw a lot of power. I’ve got strong legs and they can propel me into quite the attack.
The first guy went over backwards. That’s when I felt it. Not a big tingle. Just the smidge of a vibration. Whoever he was, he wasn’t magical, but he had something magical with him. A talisman, maybe? An amulet? There was no time to investigate because there were two more guys behind him, all of them wearing balaclavas. They launched their attack at me, but Ted was already by my side.
“Norah?” I asked.
“Running for the apartment,” he answered.
I didn’t have time to comment because our next two attackers were on us. Honestly, I almost felt bad for them. They weren’t street fighters. Thug Number Two telegraphed all of his punches so far in advance it felt like he was sending me an engraved invitation to duck under his arm and pummel his rib cage. He doubled over and I landed an elbow strike to his kidney area. He went down. I whirled to see how Ted was doing.
His guy was a little savvier. I guess they must have thought it would be better to send their better fighter after the man in the group. On top of that, Ted was still favoring the arm with the cadejo bite. As Thug Number Three began to back Ted up the sidewalk, I slid in and swept his legs from underneath him.
He never saw it coming.
By now, however, Thugs Numbers One and Two were back up. One managed to nail me right in the kidneys. You have no idea how much I hate that. It completely takes my breath away for a moment. While I gasped for breath, he whispered in my ear, “Stay away from Elmville, bitch.” He drew his arm back, readying for another punch.
The thing is, while a punch to the kidneys takes my breath away for a moment, when I catch my breath afterward, I am seriously pissed off. I reared back, smacking his nose with the back of my head. I heard a satisfying crunch. He let out a howl that distracted Thug Number One as he went after Ted.
Ted landed a beautiful uppercut to One’s solar plexus. I could hear the air whoosh out of his lungs over the pounding of blood in my ears.
Within seconds all three of them were running. “You stay away,” I yelled after them.
“Witty comeback,” Ted observed, shaking his hand out. I looked at the knuckles. They were so going to bruise.
“It’s all I had at the moment. Not everyone can come up with things like ‘bad dog,’ you know.”
“True that.” He looped his arm around my shoulder and we walked the rest of the way to the apartment leaning on each other a little more heavily than usual.
11
“THERE’S BLOOD ALL OVER THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD!” NORAH let us into the apartment. “Are you okay? Do we need to call Alex?”
“It’s not my blood. Unless Alex is going to lick it off my hair as a snack, I don’t think we need to call him.” I was going to have a fairly large bruise on my side, but it would heal quickly. “Ted needs some ice for his hand, though.”
Norah ran to the kitchen. “I’ve got arnica for his bruise, too.”
“That’s great, Norah. Thanks.”
We both lowered ourselves gently onto the couch. Just because we kicked some ass didn’t mean our own weren’t sore.
“Who were those guys?” Norah brought the ice to Ted in a bag. He wrapped it around his knuckles and leaned back against the couch.
“I’m not sure. They were just guys. They weren’t anything special. But they had something with them. I think maybe an amulet. It had that kind of feel to it. I didn’t have a chance to focus in on it, though.”
“They were special enough,” Ted observed, holding up his bruised hand.
“What did they want?” Norah pressed.
“Apparently for me to stay out of Elmville.” Fat chance of me doing that now.
“Why?” Norah asked.
“How did they know how to find you?” Ted asked. “Why did they want to find you? Melina, what are you getting yourself into this time?”
I didn’t know. All I knew for sure was that I would be going back to Elmville to find out.
Boy, did their plan backfire.
I WASN’T GOING TO BE GOING TO ELMVILLE ON SATURDAY morning, though. Saturday morning belonged to the Little Dragons. This morning, there was no buzz as I walked into the studio. I was grateful for that. Sophie was there, hair neatly pulled back into a ponytail. Ben was helping her sweep.
“Hey, guys,” I said as I walked past them into the office. “Anything I need to know about?”
They glanced back and forth at each other and said, “No.” In unison.
I froze for a second. Clearly they were lying. I’m not so far out of teenagerdom that I forget what that looks like. I considered browbeating it out of them, but decided I had more on my plate than I could handle at the moment. Speaking of which . . .
“Will you be taking the axe up to Ginnar on Wednesday?” I asked.