My sweet little Anna. Am I that transparent? Was it obvious, the whole time, to everyone but me?
“She’s not weak anymore, you idiot,” I spit. “You won’t get within six feet of her, magical knife or no magical knife.”
“We’ll see,” he replies, and my heart sinks as I watch my athame, my father’s athame, disappear back inside the dark of his jacket. More than anything, I want to rush him, but I can’t risk someone getting hurt. To emphasize the point, Thomas and Carmel come and stand by my shoulders, ready to hold me back.
“Not here,” Thomas says. “We’ll get it back, don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.”
“We’d better do it fast,” I say, because I don’t know whether I was telling the truth just now. Anna’s got it in her head that she’s supposed to die. She might just let Will in her front door to spare me the pain of doing it myself.
We decide to scrap the pizza. In fact, we decide to scrap the rest of the school day, and head instead for my place. I’ve turned Thomas and Carmel into a right fine pair of delinquents. On the way over, I ride with Thomas in his Tempo while Carmel follows behind.
“So,” he says, then stops and chews his lip. I wait for the rest, but he starts to fidget with the sleeves of his gray hoodie, which are a little too long and are starting to fray at the edges.
“You know about Anna,” I say to make it easy on him. “You know how I feel about her.”
Thomas nods.
I run my fingers through my hair but it falls right back into my eyes. “Is it because I can’t stop thinking about her?” I ask. “Or can you really hear what’s going on in my head?”
Thomas purses his lips. “It wasn’t either of those things. I’ve been trying to stay out of your head since you asked me to. Because we’re—” He pauses and looks sort of like a sheep, all lip-chewy and lashy-eyed.
“Because we’re friends,” I say, and shove him in the arm. “You can say it, man. We are friends. You’re probably my best friend. You and Carmel.”
“Yeah,” Thomas says. We must both be wearing the same expression: a little embarrassed, but glad. He clears his throat. “So, anyway. I knew about you and Anna because of the energy. Because of the aura.”
“The aura?”
“It’s not just a mystic thing. Probably most people can pick up on it. But I can see it more clearly. At first I thought it was just the way you were with all of the ghosts. You’d get this excited sort of glow whenever you were talking about her, or especially when you were near the house. But now it’s on you all the time.”
I smile quietly. She is with me all the time. I feel stupid now, for not seeing it sooner. But hey, at least we’ll have this strange story to tell, love and death and blood and daddy-issues. And holy crap, I am a psychiatrist’s wet dream.
Thomas pulls his car into my driveway. Carmel, only a few seconds behind us, catches up at the front door.
“Just chuck your stuff anywhere,” I say as we go in. We shed our jackets and toss our book bags on the sofa. The pitter-patter of dark little feet announces Tybalt’s arrival, and he climbs up Carmel’s thigh to be held and petted. Thomas gives him a glare, but Carmel scoops the four-legged little flirt right up.
I lead them into the kitchen and they sit down at our rounded oak table. I duck into the refrigerator.
“There are frozen pizzas, or there’s a lot of lunch meat and cheese in here. I could make some hoagie melts in the oven.”
“Hoagie melts,” Thomas and Carmel agree. There’s a brief moment of smiling and blushing. I mutter under my breath about auras starting to glow, and Thomas grabs the dish towel off the counter and throws it at me. About twenty minutes later we’re munching on some pretty excellent hoagie melts, and the steam from mine seems to be loosening up the old blood still stuck up my nose.
“Is this leaving a bruise?” I ask.
Thomas peers at me. “Nah,” he says. “Will can’t hit for beans, I guess.”
“Good,” I reply. “My mom’s getting seriously tired of doctoring me. I think she’s done more healing spells on this trip than our last twelve trips combined.”
“This was different for you, wasn’t it?” Carmel asks between bites of chicken and Monterey Jack. “Anna really knocked you for a loop.”
I nod. “Anna, and you, and Thomas. I’ve never faced anything like her. And I’ve never had to ask civilians to come take care of a haunting with me.”
“I think it’s a sign,” Thomas says with his mouth full. “I think it means you should stay. Give the ghosts a rest for a little bit.”
I take a deep breath. This is probably the only time in my life that I could be tempted by that. I remember being younger, before my dad was killed, and thinking that it might be nice if he gave it up for a while. That it might be nice to stay in one place, and make some friends, and have him just play baseball with me on a Saturday afternoon instead of being on the phone with some occultist or burying his nose in some old moldy book. But all kids feel that way about their parents and their jobs, not just the ones whose parents are ghost hunters.
Now I’m having that feeling again. It would be nice to stay in this house. It’s cozy and it has a nice kitchen. And it would be cool to be able to hang out with Carmel and Thomas, and Anna. We could graduate together, maybe go to college near each other. It’d be almost normal. Just me, my best friends, and my dead girl.
The idea is so ridiculous that I snort.
“What?” Thomas asks.
“There’s nobody else to do what I do,” I reply. “Even if Anna isn’t killing anymore, other ghosts are. I need to get my knife back. And I’m going to have to get back to work, eventually.”
Thomas looks crestfallen. Carmel clears her throat.
“So, how do we get the knife back?” she asks.
“He’s obviously in no mood to just hand it over,” Thomas says sulkily.
“You know, my parents are friends with his parents,” Carmel suggests. “I could ask them to lean on them, you know, tell them that Will stole some big family heirloom. It wouldn’t be lying.”
“I don’t want to answer that many questions about why my big family heirloom is a deadly looking knife,” I say. “Besides, I don’t think parents are enough pressure this time. We’re going to have to steal it.”
“Break in and steal it?” Thomas asks. “You’re nuts.”
“Not that nuts.” Carmel shrugs. “I’ve got a key to his house. My parents are friends with his, remember? We’ve got keys to each other’s houses in case somebody gets locked out, or a key gets lost, or somebody needs to check in while the other is out of town.”
“How quaint,” I say, and she smirks.
“My parents have keys for half the neighborhood. Everyone is just dying to exchange with us. But Will’s family is the only one with a copy of ours.” She shrugs again. “Sometimes it pays to have a whole city up your butt. Mostly it’s just annoying.”
Of course Thomas and I have no idea what she means. We’ve grown up with weird witch parents. People wouldn’t exchange keys with us in a million years.
“So when do we do it?” Thomas asks.
“ASAP,” I say. “Sometime when no one’s there. During the day. Early, right after he leaves for school.”
“But he’ll probably have the knife on him,” Thomas says.
Carmel pulls her phone out. “I’ll start a rumor that he’s been carrying a knife around school and someone should report him. He’ll hear about it before morning and play it safe.”
“Unless he decides to just stay home,” Thomas says.
I give him a look. “Have you ever heard the term ‘Doubting Thomas’?”
“Doesn’t apply,” he replies smugly. “That refers to someone being skeptical. I’m not skeptical. I’m pessimistic.”
“Thomas,” Carmel croons. “I never knew you were such a brain.” Her fingers work feverishly at her phone keypad. She’s already sent three messages and gotten two back.
“Enough, you two,” I say. “We’re going in tomorrow morning. I guess we’ll miss first and second period, probably.”
“That’s okay,” Carmel says. “Those were the two periods we made it to today.”
