57
But I get hunches, and they turn out right. And weird feelings when it's going to be a weird day.
Not very often. Peter says it happens to him too." Peter was James' older brother, on pilgrimage in California to find fame and fortune with his rock band. James idolized him, and I thought he was pretty cool, too--maybe the only other non-family member besides James that I could talk to.
James chewed his lip before continuing. "Yesterday was weird. And today was weird, too. I had a hunch I'd find you upset, so I left practice early. What's going on?"
All of a sudden, it seemed stupid not to have told him everything from the beginning. So I told him. I left out the bits where Luke had touched me, and the feeling of Luke's lips on my ear, but the rest I told him, as best as I could remember.
He took the key when I offered it, and the ring from my finger, and studied both. "They're both iron. Isn't that funny?"
"Funny 'haha' or funny 'strange'?"
James handed them back. "Funny 'occult.'"
"Ah. Funny 'strange.'"
James looked at me sternly. "Don't start that. I'm supposed to be the humorous one." He watched me put the ring back on and pocket the key again. "Iron's supposed to be a ward against evil supernatural creatures, if you're into that magic druid crap."
I couldn't help goading him. "If it's magic druid crap, why do you know about it?"
"A man should be well educated."
58
"Well, Granna is into that," I pointed out. "She's into all that holistic/natural/spiritual stuff.
Cosmic debris. She once told me the color of my aura."
"Mine's tartan," James said. He took my hand in his writ-ten-upon ones and turned the ring on my finger, absently. It reminded me of Luke's hand on mine, earlier. How can two hands feel so different? "And the clover? The one that you moved this morning? Do you still have it?"
"Thought I moved," I corrected, and shook my head. "Yeah." I shifted my weight so I could pull it from my pocket.
"So move it."
I looked hard at him.
"Well, if you can't move it, like you said, it won't move, and you won't have to worry about it anymore, will you? But if it does--well, then you're a freak." James grinned. He plucked the slightly crushed clover from my finger and set it in the sparse grass beneath the tree. "Go, go, magic clover."
"I feel foolish." I did. We were like two kids hunched over a Ouija board, part of us hoping for something strange to happen, proving the world a mysterious place, and the rest of us hoping desperately for nothing to happen, proving the world safe and free of monsters. I cupped my hand, like earlier that morning, making a little goal for the clover to shoot into. "Come on, clover."
A breeze kissed the sweat on my forehead. The clover tumbled end-over-end into my hand.
James closed his eyes. "It makes me frigid when you do that."
"It was the breeze." It was just the breeze.
59
He shook his head, and opened his eyes again. "I always get cold when I get one of my weird feelings, and that just about hit glacier-cold on the weirdness chart. Do it again. You'll see. Next to my leg, where there's no breeze."
I picked up the clover and set it down in the shadow of his leg. Cupping my hand, I said faintly,
"Come on, clover." The clover and several other leaves rustled, and then skipped across the ground into my hand. A huge, dry collection of leaves, the color of summer, pressed against my fingers.
"Telekinesis." James' voice was as soft as the rustling of the leaves, and when I looked at him, I could see goose bumps standing out on his tanned legs. "Suddenly the world seems a lot more interesting."
What it seemed was a lot less ordinary.
60
four
Tuesday. Wednesday. Two days crawled by. James came by, but he wasn't who I wanted to see.
I might be able to move spoons without touching them and make clover sail like tiny ships across my bedstand, but I couldn't bring back what Granna had driven off. Nor could I vanquish the little voice that said he'd been driven off fairly easily.
"Deirdre, you haven't practiced for days." Mom pushed open the door of my room and frowned. I was lying on my back, studying the ceiling, and the techno CD James had given me for my birthday was shaking every flat surface in the room in time with the bass line. Mom turned off the stereo. "I didn't know you liked that sort of stuff."
61
"I do now." It came out sounding recalcitrant, but it was actually true. I'd never listened to techno before, but I was a sucker for good music of any sort. And the pounding monotony of the tracks perfectly matched what was going on in my head. Time passing for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
Mom opened the door wide. "Don't be sour. Go practice. Get out of this room. You make me nervous when you aren't doing something."
"Fine, whatever. I'll practice. I'm going outside to do it, though."
"It's almost dark, you know."
I slid off the bed. I didn't want to sit inside and have an ordinary night practicing. "Cooler."
She followed me downstairs and watched me gather up my harp, then trailed me to the back door. Abruptly, she bent down and picked something off the kitchen floor. "Deirdre, I told you to press these things in a book if you want to keep them. I'm tired of picking them up." She stuffed a four-leaf clover into my hand.
Good for driving away snakes. Curing scorpion bites. Seeing faeries.
Feeling rebellious, I pulled off Granna's iron ring and set it on the counter before I went outside.
Maybe I didn't want evil supernatural beings scared away tonight. Maybe the person I
