Scary Cool (The Spellspinners) (17 page)

“Zara, honey.” Her voice was gruff with her own emotions. I wondered, fleetingly, what they were. “Open it.” And then, when I still didn’t move, she said, “It’s just a baby blanket. It won’t bite.”

I reached out, then, and pushed the tissue paper back. A whiff of cedar told me where she’d been storing it—in her grandmother’s
hope
chest.
Duh! I should have thought of that.
And there it was: a baby blanket. But it wasn’t like any baby blanket I’d ever seen.

I touched the fabric, puzzled.

“I think it’s homespun,”
Nonny
told me. “
Very fine work, I must say
. Unusually soft.”

“And what—“ My voice caught in my throat as I picked the blanket up and the folds fell out. I had started to
ask what all the bumps were
, but now I saw:
T
he hem was weighted with small
, colorful
stones. All the way around the edge of the blanket they
danced
, each individually sewn in place.

“Isn’t it beautiful?”
Nonny
touched the design with one finger. “
Kind of a crazy thing to wrap a b
aby in, though. You’re lucky they
didn’t scratch you
.”

The stones
were beautiful, all right
. I saw amber and
peridot
and aquamarine
, sapphire and garnet and topaz. And amethyst. Yes. There, in the corner of the blanket, one
special
amethyst had been placed. It was slightly larger than the others. And above it, in delicate script, someone had embroidered
Zara
.

Someone had been very clever.

Shooting out from my
name was a
web
of embroidery. T
he stones ran along the edge of the hem, but above them was more decoration, sewn into the fabric. Were there hidden messages in the flowers and stars and little animals? Or was it all to camouflage the
strangeness of the
stones? Those were questions for another day. I would have to ask Lance. Or, more probably, Rune.

I swallowed, and found my voice. “Have you ever had it appraised?”

“Appraised?”
Nonny
chuckled. “
Oh, honey, the
jewels
aren’t real.
They’d be worth a lot of money.
Rich people don’t…”

She cut herself off—evidently afraid she would hurt my feelings. I finished the sentence for her. “Rich people don’t abandon their babies.”

It didn’t bother me one bit. I had other things on my mind.

I ran my fingertips along the stones, touching each one separately. What did it mean?
Were they fake, meant as decoys to hide the true stone, my amethyst? Or were they real?
They
must be
spellspinner
colors. Some I knew, and had seen in the eyes of the
spellspinners
I had met—
peridot
, amethyst, topaz, aquamarine. The others I had
not seen
.
Yet.

Garnet. Wow. I was glad I didn’t have garnet eyes. Amethyst was hard enough to get away with.

My fingers came back to the Zara corner. Traced my name. And finally, touched the stone.

The instant my fingertip touched it I
knew
.
This was it. This was definitely it. My power stone.

It
emitted something
that felt
like a low hum of electricity
a
gainst my skin. The sensation was odd, somewhere
between a
buzz and a pulse
, difficult to describe but
unmistakable.
The other
stone
s had felt cool and hard, but this
one
felt warm to me, as if it still
glowed from the faraway heat at
the planet’s core.

It was hard to have
Nonny
sitting across from me at this moment. I should have been alone, or with my own kind. I had to keep my eyes lowered. I struggled to hide
the knowledge of what this was. O
f what the stone was doin
g to me. Of
what it meant.

I dropped the blanket back down on the table, took a deep breath, and smoothed it—being careful to touch only the cloth. “May I keep it?” I asked. My voice was hoarse with the strain of keeping my excitement in check.

“It’s yours, I suppose,” said
Nonny
. “But the safest place for it is in my cedar chest.”

I nodded, thinking fast.
Nonny’s
cedar chest had a lock on it.
I
didn’t want it to go back in there before I had a chance to snip the threads around that amethyst.

“I’d like to show it to Meg. She’ll love it.”

“All right, but I don’t want you riding around with it on a bicycle. Have her come here.”

“Sure thing. I’ll go call her.”
I grabbed the blanket and headed for my room. Belatedly, I remembered my manners and turned back when I reached the doorway. “Thanks,
Nonny
. And I promise to keep Lance out of your bedroom. Really.”

I took the stairs two at a time.

“Out of my
house!”
she shouted after me.

Maybe
I could pretend I hadn’t heard tha
t.

Meg has
been my s
ounding board forever, and she’s
kind of been out of the loop lately. I was feeling
bad
about that.

My first thought, of course,
was
a sort of combination impulse: (1) show Lance the blanket and (2) nick the amethyst. What made me turn to Meg instead was (1) old habit
, (2) loyalty to my BFF, and (3
) the realization that Lance never
told
me what, exactly, one
does
with a power stone. Other than not have it made into a ring.

So once again, Lance was withholding information. After all that talk about how much he had changed towards me! Incredible.

Meg, I trust.
Even on a bad day, I trust Meg. Besides which, I needed a more impartial, less
spellspinner
-y brain to help me analyze the data.
Because my own brain
was on overload.

First I ran to my dormer window, the one that looks out over our porch to Chapman Road. I saw
Nonny
already
crossing the street, heading back to the nursery. Good.

Meg picked up on the second ring. “Meg,” I said hurriedly, “Where are you
, exactly
?”

“Sitting on my bed. Why?”

“Stay there,” I said. And
with my phone in one hand and the baby blanket in the other, I
skatched
.

Meg wasn’t surprised this time when I appeared at the foot of her bed. Alvin, however, made a kind of croaking, gasping sound
, dropped his guitar,
and fell backward off Bridget’s bed
.

It had never crossed my mind that
Meggie
might have company, let alone a boy, in her bedroom.
Not that that’s an excuse. I hate to admit it, but Lance has a point: my emotions make me careless.

“Bloody hell!” cried Meg. She’s been reading
Regency romances
lately.

“Sorry,” I gasped. “Sorry!”

We rushed to help Alvin. He threw us both off and got up without our assistance. He looked a little wild-eyed, but unhurt.
He was staring at me as if I were a bomb he
thought might
explode at any second.
“What the—“ he began, then choked and pointed at me. “What
was
that?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly.
“I, um, I thought Meg was alone in here. I just, um
—“ I swallowed hard. “I just sort of popped in. Ha, ha.”

“Ha, ha,” Meg echoed weakly.

Alvin didn’t laugh. His eyes never left my face. “
I don’t buy it.”

“Um. You don’t?”

“No.
There’
s something going on with you.”

“Like what?” I put my hands on my hips and looked down my nose at him.

Showing
a little attitude was worth a shot. Most people lack th
e courage of their convictions—
at least when it comes to stuff they know nothing about. Sure, he’d just seen me do something impossible. But that’s
the thing about impossibility: L
et a few
seconds go by, and nine people out of ten will convince themselves that they didn’t see what they just saw. Because, you know,
it’s impossible.

Unfortunately, Alvin turned out to be that tenth person. The one who knows darn well what he saw, and
can’t
be talked out of it.

It sort of didn’t help that there were two of us trying to talk him out of it, because Meg and I kept accidentally contradicting each other, and Alvin caught every nuance.

Finally he folded his arms across his chest and glared at both of us until we fell silent.
“Now tell me what’s really going on,” he said.

There was a knock on the door
—which was already ajar, probably because of Alvin’s presence in Meg’s bedroom—
followed immediately by the entrance of Meg’s mom. I’ve never been so glad to see
Mrs. O’Shaughnessy in my life.

“I bet you kids are hungry,” she said brightly. “Oh, hi Zara! I didn’t know you were here.”

“Hi,” I said. “Gosh, do I smell brownies? Wow!” My enthusiasm may have sounded a bit over the top, but trust me, it was sincere. And Meg joined me in seizing the moment, as it were, and hustling Alvin out to the kitchen
—because nothing distracts a teenage boy like food. Or
so we’ve
been told.

This teenage boy h
as an unusually
tenacious mind.

He ate half a dozen brownies, and made chit-chat with Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, and almost convinced us we were out of the woods. But then it was time for him to go, and wouldn’t you know it, he dragged me out the door with him. In front of her mother—who naturally assumed I had ridden my bike over, and somehow got past her when I entered the house—Meg was powerless to stop this
maneuver
. And when the
front
door closed behind us, Alvin grabbed my arm.

“Look,” he said. “I know it’s none of my business. But it sure looks to me like you’ve
figured out how to make a cloaking device
, or teleport, or make it
seem
like you’re teleporting,
or
something. Something cool. And I want to be in on it.”
My expression
must have tipped him off, because he added, “I can keep a secret.”

“No offense,” I said, pulling my arm free. “But how do I know that?”

He looked perplexed. And then I had a big, brilliant idea.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll make you a deal. You take Meg to Homecoming, and I’ll tell you
my secret.”

I figured this would give me a week or so to figure out an explanation—and get Meg on the same page as me. And in the meantime, I could stop worrying about
Meggie’s
love life and concentr
ate on solving my own problems.

What I hadn’t counted on was Alvin’s reaction. He looked absolutely flabbergasted. And then he flushed bright pink.

“T-take Meg to Homecoming?” he stammered. “Are you serious?”

“Perfectly.”

“But—why?”

“Why?” I blinked at
him. “It’s a dance at our school. Meg
wants to go, but she doesn’t have anybody to go with, because she goes to St. Francis. So you take her.”

He raked one hand through his hair, making it stand up in little tufts. “What if she doesn’t want to go with me?”

He sounded frantic. I almost laughed, but then, somehow, I didn’t. Because it was actually pretty touching that behind those freckles and Harry Potter glasses lurked a
perfectly decent
boy who thought a girl like Meg wouldn’t want to go out with him. When, in point of fact, she was dying to.

Sticks
.
Honestly.
What are you
gonna
do?

“She’ll go,” I said. And then—because I knew Meg would die if she ever found out I told Alvin that
—
I added, “And if she doesn’t, I’ll let you in on the secret anyway. Just for giving it the old college try.”