“I got that,” Poppy said, frowning. Why were they all acting so strange?
“So I’ll just bring him to my apartment now.” Madison stepped forward.
“Maybe he should stay here until your mother’s home.” Poppy wasn’t going to let him leave. Especially with the girls. She still didn’t know for sure who he was, and now he was injured. The whole situation was pretty strange. Definitely a first for her.
Madison straightened and looked at Daisy.
“I think we should go see if your mother is home. And get him that key,” Daisy said.
“Good idea,” Madison instantly agreed. Emma nodded too.
Poppy watched them closely for a moment. Something wasn’t right here. Then she noticed the man rubbing his wounded head again. But they were asking to go see Madison’s mom. So he must really be their relative.
“Okay,” Poppy agreed. “But leave …” She realized she didn’t even know this man’s name. “Just come right back.”
She watched the girls go. Normally, she wasn’t too nervous about the girls running back and forth between their apartments, even this late at night. But, well, she was shaken tonight.
Once they disappeared, she turned her attention back to her strange houseguest. The cousin.
“Maybe we should put some ice on that bump.”
He shook his head. “It’s fine. Just sore.”
Poppy nodded, clasping her hands in her lap, feeling uncomfortable about what had happened and unsure of what to do now.
“So, Madison didn’t tell me your name,” she finally said, when it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything.
He frowned, as if thinking, then said, “Killian. Killian O’Brien.”
“Poppy Reed. But I guess I told you that.”
He nodded, then winced.
She sighed, shifting slightly on the other end of the couch. She hoped Ginger Cobb was home. She could look at this guy’s head and take care of it. And he’d be out of Poppy’s house. She hoped he wouldn’t be too irritated at her.
“So Killian O’Brien,” she finally said after several awkward moments. “That doesn’t sound Swedish.”
CHAPTER 2
“Sweden?” Daisy said to Emma as soon as they were in the hallway with the door firmly closed. “Couldn’t you have picked someplace like Worcester? Or someplace in Connecticut even? Why Sweden?”
“I’m sorry. I was just looking at all those Swedish fish on the floor, and it popped out.”
“It doesn’t matter where he’s from,” Madison said in her usual dry way. “It matters what the heck we’re going to do with him.”
Madison stopped outside her apartment. It had a cream painted door with ornate molding to make it look like the fancy front entrance of a colonial mansion rather than just a door in a six-story apartment building. She slipped off her key, which she kept on a black cord around her neck. When they stepped inside, the place was dark and silent.
“She’s not home yet,” Madison said, flipping on a light. They all herded into the little eat-in kitchen and slid onto the café-style stools around a small round table.
Daisy looked at each of her friends, for the first time really letting what had happened sink in.
“We have a freakin’ demon in our control,” she cried, setting all her giddiness free. She grinned. Craziness.
Madison smiled, but not with the same glee. Madison was too cool for that kind of emotional abandon. Well, except for when Connor Martin asked her to go to the movies, but he was a senior and by far the best looking guy at Cambridge High. Definitely worth a little giddiness.
Although, personally, Daisy thought this was even more amazing than Connor Martin.
“A demon,” Daisy repeated.
“I don’t know,” Emma said. She winced, worry clouding her bright blue eyes. “Demons are bad, aren’t they? How do we know we can really control him?”
“The book says so,” Daisy reminded them.
“But the book is fiction,” Emma said.
“Obviously not,” Madison said. “The spell worked.”
Both Daisy and Emma nodded.
“But we still do need to figure out what to do with him,” Madison said. “My mom does work a lot, but I can’t get away with him staying here.”
“No,” Daisy agreed.
Madison’s mother was often at the hospital, taking extra shifts because she was the sole support of Madison. But the woman was too savvy for them to sneak a rather …
Heck, Madison hadn’t even gotten away with the Connor Martin thing. Her mother figured that one out fast and vetoed the date. Because he
“Well, Poppy won’t let him stay with us,” Daisy said. “As it is, we’re lucky he isn’t in a coma or on his way to prison as we speak.”
Poppy was a great sister. And she’d been wonderful after the deaths of their parents, taking on the role of both mom and dad, but sometimes Daisy wished she wasn’t quite so uptight. Couldn’t she just go with a strange man/demon staying with them? Geesh.
“Well, I would have clocked him too,” Madison said confidently.
Daisy seemed to recall that Madison had screamed right along with her and Emma. Sometimes she was all talk—most of the time, actually.
“What about you, Emma?” Madison asked.
Emma was shaking her head before Madison even finished the question, her blond curls bobbing against her cherub cheeks.
“You know my parents. My mother notices when someone nudges one of the knickknacks on the end tables out of place. And remember when she yelled at my brother for putting his boots away in the front closet with the left one on the right side and the right on the left?”
“She’d totally notice him,” Daisy agreed. He’d be pretty hard to miss, even if her mother was half-blind. And she wasn’t half-blind. If anything, that woman had the second sight.
“Plus your dork brother would so narc,” Madison said.
Emma’s little brother, Harrison, lived to get Emma in trouble, which wasn’t easy, because Emma was darn near perfect. She was actually a lot like her mother—of course, she’d throw a hissy fit if anyone said that. And Daisy would give her the benefit of the doubt—she probably wouldn’t rearrange the shoes to be matched by left and right.
Not that shoes were the point, Daisy reminded herself. The point was, Emma’s place was totally out.
“Well, we have to figure out something,” Daisy said. “Because if all the other stuff in that book is true, he isn’t going anywhere until he fulfills the wish.”
“You know, if I knew he’d really appear, I would never have gone along with your wish,” Madison stated to Daisy. “Not that I don’t like your sister or anything. But wishing for him to find your sister a boyfriend. Really? Can’t she find one for herself? Totally lame.”
“What would you have asked for?” Emma asked.
“To get my mother to let me date Connor Martin,” Madison said as if that were perfectly obvious.
Daisy supposed it was. But wasn’t she wishing for a boyfriend too? Apparently, it was not such a lame wish when applied to herself.
“I’d have wished to pass French Two,” Emma said.
