Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance (35 page)

“That’s right.” Atlas snapped and took over Edmond’s pacing. “We heard her on the phone. It was the day we picked her up outside the gallery. She told someone that she was a failure and the elephantini was dying.”

“No, not that
she
was a failure. That the
experiment
had failed,” Edmond said.

“That’s right. The experiment failed and she’d been discovered. You know what, I bet she was talking to her spy company.”

“Spy company?” Sofie echoed, her eyes wide.

“She worked as a lab spy in Japan for an American company,” I explained. Sofie blinked glazed eyes, then patted my hand.

“What’s Aunt Selah going to say?” Edmond moaned. “We have to find Jenny.”

I glanced around at our ragtag group. We were hopeless, hapless, and running out of luck. Clearly, we weren’t capable of rescuing Jenny ourselves. We had no idea how much time we had, and we had no plan for where to go from here. It was time to take matters into my own hands. The framework of a plan formed in my mind, seeded with a kernel of hope.

“It’s time to go to dinner.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“How can you think about food right now?” Edmond asked.

“Every minute we waste, the less likely it is we’ll find Jenny,” Hudson said.

Sofie tapped her nose, mouthed,
“Miriam,”
and smiled at me. It felt damn good to see that smile.

“No, no, Eva’s right,” Sofie said. “Where’s your bag? I’ll draw you some sketches of the ninjas. That should help.”

“Great idea,” I said.

“We don’t need to know what they look like; we need to know where they are,” Atlas said, speaking over me.

“We need the sketches,” I said, louder. “I know someone who can use them to help. She’s Ari’s sister’s wife, and she works for the FBI. I trust her.”

“Sister’s
wife
?” Edmond’s eyebrows shot skyward.

“No, we agreed no FBI,” Atlas said.

“We’re not going to the FBI,” I said. “I’m going to Miriam. She’ll help, and she won’t turn us in.”

“How do you know?” Hudson said.

“She’s family.”

“She’s
Ari’s
family,” Hudson countered.

I forgot how little Hudson knew about me. “Do you have a better idea? Does anyone? Miriam has resources and training. A fresh perspective.” No one moved. “An actual chance at finding and rescuing Jenny.”

Atlas and Edmond shared a look. I understood their hesitation and their muddled, panic-fogged thinking.

“Maybe we should trust her,” Edmond said.

“Jenny said Eva was the key to
hiding
the elephantini. Which she did a bang-up job of. Thanks, Eva.”

“No, Jenny said she was
the key
.”

“Damn it, Ed. I knew watching those
Lord of the Rings
movies was going to mess with your head. This isn’t some prophecy. Eva isn’t destined to be the key to rescuing Jenny or to saving the elephantini. She was just good at lying low. She bought Jenny a few days.”

“Don’t treat me like an idiot,” Edmond said, straightening from his slouch to get in Atlas’s face. “Jenny’s exact words were, ‘Eva is the key to solving the elephantini problem.’ You’ve been doubting Jenny since the gallery job, but everything’s worked out just like she said: Eva showed up right on schedule and was so good at hiding the elephantini, we didn’t even know it was a real elephant until Jenny told us. We need help, and if Jenny trusted Eva, we can, too.”

Jenny didn’t
trust
me; she’d
blackmailed
me. And . . . My thoughts snagged on the unique phrase
gallery job
. Not
gallery meeting
or
gallery getaway
. They weren’t talking about being the getaway driver for Jenny when she’d left me handcuffed in the trailer with Kyoko. I let go of Sofie. “You? You!
You
!”

Everyone turned to stare at me with confused expressions. I jabbed a finger at Atlas. “Art thieves!”

Atlas’s mouth fell open and his eyes widened until white showed all the way around his irises. Edmond hunched his shoulders, and in sync, both cousins stepped away from me.

“No, we didn’t . . . I don’t know what you’re . . .” Atlas sprouted a paper-clip crown that fell to pieces and slithered down his body.

“Don’t lie to me,” I thundered, pent-up tension adding unintended volume to my statement.

“Jenny told us to steal the paintings. She wanted a way to guarantee you’d show up.”

“Shut it, Ed. You’re making it worse.” Atlas turned to me, hands raised. “Eva, we didn’t mean anything by it, I swear.”

Jenny had planned the whole thing? Was I surprised? I waited a beat, and no new emotion emerged. This answered the nagging question of the coincidence of running into Jenny. She’d had the blackmail in line, the sucker all picked out to hitch to her crazy plan; all she’d needed was to find me. Since I didn’t have any sort of routine in my life, she’d created a reason for me to be in a particular place at a specific time. An insane, over-the-top reason. Why not just set up a consultation with me? Or wait for me outside my loft?

I opened my mouth to ask, and then I saw Sofie’s face.

“You didn’t steal my paintings because you liked them?” Sofie asked in a small voice.

Everyone turned to look at her. Sofie looked like she was going to cry. I glared at Atlas.

“It was a job, just another one of Jenny’s plans that didn’t make any sense until later,” Edmond said.

“But the paintings are beautiful,” Atlas said. He slugged Edmond’s arm. Edmond didn’t look like he noticed Atlas’s punch, but he flinched when Sofie swiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

“Oh, yeah, I really like them. All the other pieces in the storage room were bland and ugly, but yours practically begged to be stolen.” Edmond was completely earnest, as if he were paying Sofie a high compliment.

“They looked like they should have been stolen?” Sofie echoed. “That’s the sweetest compliment I’ve ever received.”

I rolled my eyes, but the steel band squeezing my heart eased. Hudson’s silver terrier stood at his feet, but he was smiling.

“Damn straight,” Atlas said. “A bunch of stuffed shirts in some black-market auction would pay top dollar to put your art in their private collection.”

“Thank you.” Sofie smiled at the group at large. Paintbrushes danced around her skirt, and when the blindfold flickered over her eyes, it was detailed with a swirling design in sky blue.

I wondered if banging my head against the truck would help.

Hudson leaned close to me. “Would it be wrong if I said I was glad they stole your aunt’s art, too?” he whispered as the cousins continued to heap praise upon Sofie.

I jerked my eyes to his. The light in his blue eyes reflected his soft smile, and my heart wriggled in response. He could easily have seen it the way I had been thinking, that if the artwork hadn’t been stolen, I wouldn’t be involved in this illegal mess. I hadn’t considered I would have missed out on Hudson.

He winked before turning back to join the main conversation.

“If Jenny wanted you to trust Eva to take care of the elephantini problem, you have to trust her,” Hudson said.

I wanted to protest right along with Atlas and Edmond, but I kept my mouth shut and savored in the glow of my crush on Hudson.

Atlas’s golden wings deflated to a prison suit—the striped kind worn by chain gangs and not seen in California in decades—and a crown of thorns. Someone thought they were making a noble sacrifice. Edmond rained glops of runny flan, but they both finally gave me their consent. I prayed Miriam would be able to help without us all going to jail.

I turned to Sofie. “Are you ready to go to dinner?”

“I think I’m going to sit this one out, Eva. I’ve had all the excitement I can take.” The blindfold obscured her eyes, and claw marks wounded her arms in quick succession. A fresh wave of guilt assaulted me. I should have realized she’d want to go home. I should have been going home with her, making sure she was safe and protected and that she could get to sleep without nightmares.

Sofie pulled me into her arms. “None of that,” she whispered against my ear.

“What?”

“All that guilt you’re spewing. Let it go, baby girl. This wasn’t your fault.”

Her words were meant to soothe, but they stabbed my heart. I tipped my head back, but the tears refused to be trapped, and they ran down my cheeks and dripped onto my shirt. “This
was
my fault,” I whispered.

“Nonsense. You no more control those wicked women than you do me or Hudson.”

“But if I hadn’t—”

“There’s a million alternate universes of
ifs
. Let the people living in those universes deal with them.”

I dropped my head to look at Sofie. Her rich brown eyes were intent on my face; then they shifted to check the divinations swirling around me, visible only to her. She pushed a strand of hair behind my ear with fingers that trembled.

“I’m safe. Now we need to concentrate on Kyoko and Jenny. Get me some paper, and I’ll do what I can.”

Hudson was the only one thinking clearly enough to question how Sofie had seen the ninja’s faces when they were either wearing masks or Sofie was blindfolded. Sofie fielded the question like a pro.

“I’m an artist. A ski mask can cover up only so much to the trained eye. I’ll give you five sketches, my best guesses.”

Sofie’s sketches had nothing to do with an artist’s eye or guesses and everything to do with the power of her divinations. Clearly, she’d seen the women’s faces in their apparitions. Of course, there were only three women, so Sofie must not have been sure which of the five faces she’d seen were the women who had held her.

Hudson’s manners forced him to accept Sofie’s ridiculous explanation.

We didn’t leave the park until Bernie, Sofie’s boyfriend, arrived. Sofie called him from Edmond’s phone, which he’d left in the Tercel and was the only working phone in the group. Bernie raced over, no explanation needed. He was a business executive and Sofie’s opposite in so many ways, but he was a good guy. One of the few. Their relationship worked because Bernie gave Sofie the space she needed, and I got the impression that he was happy with whatever time she gave him. Bernie took one look at Sofie, then swept her into his arms and planted a tender kiss on her forehead. Dali swiped his fingers with an exuberant tongue.

I relaxed, knowing that Sofie was safe. She could let go of the tight control of her emotions, which was more than she would be able to do if I went home with her. For me, she thought she always had to be the strong one. With Bernie, she could be as fragile as she felt.

“I’ll have Ari call you,” I told Sofie as I tucked her into Bernie’s car.

“Don’t let them hurt Jenny or that sweet elephantini.”

“I won’t.”

“
We
won’t,” Dempsey corrected me.

Sofie kissed my cheeks and hugged me tight. “Thank you for coming for me.”

I squeezed her tighter. “Always.”

* * *

Every Sunday night, the entire da Via family congregated at Ari’s parents’ house for dinner. Attendance wasn’t mandatory, but Carmela’s cooking provided enough incentive to gather the whole clan most weeks, and today was no exception.

We took a cab to Hudson’s car at Ari’s before driving up to the foothills, and we arrived at the da Via estate just as Antonio and Ari were getting out of Antonio’s truck.

“Eva!” Ari ran to me. “Where’s Sofie?”

“Safe. With Bernie.”

Ari yanked me into a tight hug, and we clung to each other.

“I was so worried,” she whispered into my hair.

“Me too.”

“And the elephantini?” She pulled back a little. In the fading sunlight, Ari’s expression was abnormally serious, her deep dimples nonexistent.

“Not so safe.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Dempsey said, pushing out of the backseat.

Ari’s dark eyebrows shot upward.

“Leave the gun,” I said. Bullets or no, I wasn’t letting her bring a gun into Carmela’s. “I mean it, Dempsey. This is a family gathering.”

“She looks Italian.
He
looks Italian.” Dempsey’s gaze snagged on Antonio’s tight jeans and scanned up to his a creamy button-up shirt. With his thick hair tamed and a five o’clock shadow darkening his jawline, he looked every inch an Italian bad boy. It took Dempsey a deep breath before she corralled her thoughts. “Maybe this is a
family
, you know, mafioso. I might need protection.”

“No.”

“Hi, I’m Antonio.” He stretched a hand to Dempsey, giving her his charming smile. She half swooned and tossed Attila into the backseat.

“Dempsey’s been helping us out,” I said. I gave Ari and Antonio a brief recounting of the eventful day, ending with, “We need Miriam’s help. We need it to be quiet, too.”