Scary Cool (The Spellspinners) (8 page)

“I love this bike,” I remarked, a little too loudly.
“It’s vintage.”

He shrugged.
“Good.
I like mine too.”

My eyes slid over to the
chopper
he’d parked nearby
,
gleaming
black and silver
. “It wouldn’t be my choice.” I started walking my
dusty
Schwinn across the parking lot.

He walked with me. “It wouldn’t suit you.”

“We are different,” I agreed.

“Just enough to make things interesting.”

The parking lot was chaotic, swirling with kids heading for home one way or another. Parental vehicles lurked and prowled, seeking their prey. Lines were forming for the buses
hunkered by
the curb. Juniors and seniors who were lucky enough to have their own cars were jumping in and revving their engines while their friends crowded in beside and behind them, slamming doors and rolling down windows to lean out and converse in shouts with those left behind. Girls were squealing, boys were yelling, everyone was laughing. But Lance and I might as well have been entirely alone.

We looked up when we heard a coughing sort of honk. Alvin’s jeep-thing trundled by with Meg hanging halfway out, waving enthusiastically at us. Her wounded
street
cruiser was still
sticking up
in the back
end
of it.
She had texted me, of course, so I knew they were heading for Meg’s house, where Alvin had promised to work on the chain for her.

I stood there with my dorky old Schwinn, watching Meg sail
past in a boy’s car
, and suddenly felt like an orphaned child.
I usually stop
a
t Meg’s
on my way
home, but today I
kinda
felt like that might be a bad idea.

“
You can
hang with me,” Lance
said
.

I looked sideways at him. “I can’t take you
to my house
.
I’d be grounded for sure.”

He
snorted with disbelief. “Has
Nonny
ever grounded you?”

“No,” I admitted. “But I’ve never disobeyed a direct order before. I’m under orders to keep you off our property.”

“So come to my place.”

He sounded so casual, a
s if th
is were a perfectly normal suggestion
.
I stared
at him. He
grinned. “You thought I didn’t have a place? I told you I came here with Rune. We
rented
an apartment.”

“Wow. Just you and your uncle, huh? A bachelor pad.” Visions of the Playboy Mansion danced in my brain.

He laughed aloud at that. “In my dreams. Hey, Zara, I’m serious. You should drop by and meet Rune.”

“What’ll I tell
Nonny
?”

Silence fell. He was going to let me figure this one out for myself.

I sighed. “Okay. I’m not telling
Nonny
. But that means I can’t stay long.”

“Works for me.”

This
situation
left me with a bad taste in my mouth. In the final analysis, who do I trust?
Nonny
. Who has my best interests at heart, no matter what?
Nonny
. Who has earned my loyalty and respect through years of unwavering devotion?
Nonny
. And who do I start deceiving
and disrespecting
the minute Lance enters the picture?
Nonny
.

Something tells me I am not the first teenager
who has faced this dilemma. Th
at doesn’t make it any
easier
.

To save time, we decided to leave our bikes at school and
skatch
. But t
he rul
es of
skatching
are a tad
complex.
We returned my Schwinn to the bike rack and sneaked behind the gym to a place where we could be alone, arguing about how to accomplish the delicate maneuver. 
Since I’d never
been to L
ance and Rune’s apartment
, I
couldn’t
skatch
directly
to it
.
So
we finally agreed that
Lance
would
skatch
h
ome and then immediately walk
out to meet me, while I took a huge, stupid risk by squatting down, then
skatching
to a phone booth
I knew,
on
the corner near where he lives.

It worked, but only because we were right that nobody uses phone booths anymore
. M
y destination
was empty
. The
hunker-down move placed me in the booth below the glass part, so my sudden arrival didn’t catch anyone’s eye. Of course, had anyone been
looking
at the phone booth, they would have seen me pop up like a jack-in-the-box, but at least I didn’t materialize out of thin air
.

Like I said, it was a stupid,
risky thing to do.

The booth stank of mildew and I had a bad moment or two when I couldn’t open the folding doors.
I
fought feebly with them for a few seconds, feeling like an idiot, and finally managed to exit
the booth
, wrinkling my nose in disgust. I cast an anxious glance at the people in the vicinity, but the only person looking at me was
Lance
. He
was strolling
down the sidewalk
toward me, grinning.

I
swear, the boy
enjoys danger for its own sake.
I don’t.
I don’t even like
roller coasters
.

H
is grin was infectious
, though
.
I couldn’t help smiling back.
I guess it
is
kind of exciting to run an
moronic
risk and get away with it.
But I’ll never be a danger junkie
.

I looked around me. I’d been here before—well, obviously,
or I couldn’t have
skatched
—but now I assessed it with new eyes, knowing it was Lance’s neighborhood. The reason
why the phone booth remained,
relic of a bygone era, was that this block was
adjacent to the town square and was therefore
part of Cherry Glen’s “retro”
section
. I don’t
know if we’re
trying to appeal to tourists or attract more
ranchette
-dwellers
or what
, but our dinky downtown is
suffocatingly
cute. Which didn’t seem to suit Lance’s style at all.

“You’re smiling,” Lance said, sounding mildly surprised. I guess I don’t smile much around him. “What’s funny?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Picturing you, apartment-hunting in Cherry Glen.”

He glanced at my thought
s and gave a wry shrug. “Yeah. Cherry Glen
wouldn’t
be my first choice. But hey,
where you go, I go.”

I
rolled my eyes.

Actually, I was nervous. I don’t usually disrespect
Nonny
,
so
that
was buzzin
g
me
with a
low-grade anxiety current. Plus I was about to meet another
spellspinner
. Or was I?

Lance answered my unspoken question. “Yeah, he’s home. You think he’d miss this? Everybody’s eager to meet you, cupcake.”

I shivered. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. And don’t call me ‘cupcake.’”

But we were already climbing the stairs to the front stoop. It was a Victorian-era wooden townhouse, duplex-style. Two front doors side-by-side on the porch
; big bay windows swelling out on either side, one for each apartment
. Lots of architectural gingerbread
. I would have thought it charming if I weren’t shaking in my boots.

“Um,” I said. “What, exactly, is the point of my meeting Rune? Refresh my memory.”

Lance
looked grim
. “You want him on your side.”

His thoughts were unformed, wordless, but I caught the dark sh
ape of ominous images gathering there. H
ostile forces
were
marshalling
against us. Against me. My existence, hitherto a rumor, was now an established fact—thanks to
Lance’s s
ummer adventures in Cherry Glen.
Spellspinners
are a closed society. I hadn’t meant to crash the party, but apparently I was going to pay for my unknown parents’ rule-breaking
when they created me
. Not a pleasant prospect.

“Great,” I m
uttered as the door swung open.

One more thing,
Lance warned me silently.
Don’t let him know we have
wholesoul
.

Why not?

Just don’t.
And he
ushered me inside.

It took a few seconds for my ey
es to adjust to the dim light. A
ll the shades were drawn against the bright afternoon and only one lamp was lit, a stained-glass affair that was more useful for atmosphere than illumination.
A shadowy figure rose from the armchair beside the lamp.

Lance’s impeccable manners
stepped into the breach.
“Zara, I’d like you to meet Rune Donavan. Rune, this is Zara
Norland
.”

I don’t know what I was expecting, but this man wasn’t it. He was middle-aged, slim and silver-haired, with the lithe and lethal
spellspinner
grace I’d found so attractive in Lance. He moved like a cat. I stared, fascinated, as Rune set down his book and crossed the room toward me.
Most men nowadays are not graceful. The way
Rune
moved made him appear courtly,
for want of a better word
. He wasn’t wearing lace cuffs or
a plumed hat or
anything, but if
he had been, he would have looked right at home in them.

Another kinsman. I think I would have known it, had we encountered each other by chance in a shop or on the street.
Meeting him here, like this, I felt goose bumps prickling my arms.
As with Amb
er, I couldn’t read him
the way I
read Lance
, but the call of our shared nature was there, visible in our resemblance to each other
and all-but-audible in the air vibrating between us.
His eyes were deep-set, hooded, but I could feel them lock on mine and sense his mind searching to touch my thoughts.
Instinctively, I blocked him.

He smiled. “Zara,” he said cordially, reaching for my hand. “I’ve heard
so much
about you.”

I instantly knew that
was
an
understatement.

I shook his hand warily. When our fingers touched, my sen
se of him sharpened. I assumed
the same was true for him. I couldn’t read his thoughts word for word, but I picked up the tone of what he was feeling. Curiosity, mostly.
A little hostility, too.
He must have perceived my skittishness about being on his turf, but he didn’t let on. For the first time, I wondered about
spellspinner
etiquette. Was it considered bad form to notice or comment on a fellow
spellspinner’s
fears?

Yet another area where Lance had proven to be a less-than-ideal mentor.
I
added ‘manners and customs’ to my mental list of things I needed to
understand
.

Meanwhile, I offered a strained smile. “Hello, Mr. Donovan.”

“Call me Rune.” He waved me towa
rd a low sofa.
“Would you like something to drink?”

Yeah, a stiff one
,
I thought.
Shaken, not stirred.
 
“
A Pepsi
or something
would be great, if you’ve got it. Thanks.”

Lance disappeared into the kitchen while Rune and I sat opposite each other, sizing each other up.
I was
getting
some very strange vibes.