Brittany Bends: Book Three of the Daughters of Zeus Trilogy
Author: Kristine Grayson
Date: 2015-10-12 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Juvenile Fiction; Fantasy & Magic; Fantasy
Description: **"Grayson's clever, humor-tinged writing is absolutely delightful."- Booklist** Brittany misses her sisters-and her magic. After being fired from her job as Interim Fate-which she only had because her dad, Zeus (yeah, the Zeus), tried to get rid of true love-Brittany finds herself living with her mom and stepfather in someplace called Superior, Wisconsin. Oh, and her eight half and step siblings live there, too. Eleven people, one house, and a whole lotta new things to learn about. Things like snow and sunburn and, well, being mortal. But that might prove harder than she thinks. Because Zeus
Publisher: WMG PUB

Copyright Information

Brittany Bends

Copyright © 2015 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover and Layout copyright © 2015 by WMG Publishing

Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright © Jsheldon86/Dreamstime, Leeloomultipass/Dreamstime, Valuavitaly/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

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About the Author

More Books by Kristine Grayson

Copyright Information

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Interim Fates books have been in the works for a long time. I’m sure my husband Dean Wesley Smith got tired of hearing about them. But I greatly appreciate all the help and support he gave me over the years.

Thanks to Allyson Longueira for shepherding the books through the various processes, and to Colleen Kuehne for her enthusiasm.

Thanks also go to Greg Vose, Robert James, and the Facebook Brain Trust for answering an important question so very fast and so very well.

Mostly, though, thanks to the fans who’ve been asking about the Interim Fates for a very long time now. I greatly appreciate your support.

ONE

AS MY STEPBROTHER Eric pulls his car into the nearly empty parking lot behind the Burger King, he keeps one finger on the door lock, frowns at me, and asks, “Do you want my coat?”

Eric’s totally nice to me, and he doesn’t have to be. We’re not related, and he thinks I’m pretty weird. He’s heard of me, of course. Everyone in the Johnson family had heard of me before I moved in. I was Mom’s “mistake,” a cautionary tale for all the girls, because if they “do it” just because they “lose their head,” they might end up pregnant and alone and faced with lots of tough choices.

Tough choices doesn’t even begin to describe the complicated stuff that happened around my birth, and tough choices doesn’t even begin to describe what’s been happening since July, when I finally moved in with Mom.

Besides, I don’t like to think about Mom “losing her head” and “doing it” with my dad. Like, shudder.

And that’s the kind of stuff I say that makes Eric cringe. Not the mom and dad stuff, which is bad enough. But what he calls Outdated Valley Girl Speak. He says it makes me sound totally stupid, but then I tell him that his accent makes him sound totally stupid, and he says I don’t know anything about Northern Wisconsin, which is true. I don’t.

I don’t know much about anything in the Greater World, which is where I live now, without magic, and without any real support.

Mom tries, but she doesn’t know what to do with me. I’m her oldest biological kid, but not the oldest in the Johnson Family, which is how the brood I’ve found myself attached to now describes itself.

Eric is the oldest kid, and he goes off to college next year. He says he can hardly wait.

He’s holding out his coat to me. It’s a tweedy plaid thing that hasn’t been in style maybe ever, but he’s really not asking about coats. In the month that I’ve lived with the Johnson Family, I have learned sideways speak that they all use. Or at least, I think I’ve learned it. And I’m pretty sure that Eric’s coat offer is sideways speak.

“What’s the real problem?” I ask, groping for the door handle. I hate being seen in this car. I’m not from this town, and even I know the car’s a piece of junk. The outside isn’t painted and the inside smells of mothballs.

Karl, my stepdad, says that the upholstery has to be removed, because Eric had it steam cleaned and that only made the smell worse. Plus, now that he turned on the heater, little white pieces of something that looks like paper keep floating out of the ducts or whatever they’re called.

It seems that before Eric bought this thing (long before I moved in), some mice had nested under the hood. They chewed through wiring and stuff, and Eric’s really proud of himself for fixing that.

I think if he fixed wiring and stuff, he could’ve taken a little extra time and fixed the leftover mouse nests too.

“What’s really going on?” Eric repeats. “Pretty simple, Brit. You’re walking. You’ll freeze.”

He calls me Brit. Everyone here calls me Brit. I guess Brittany is too big a word for them. (And okay, that’s mean, but sometimes, all this nicey-nicey stuff the Johnson Family does makes me want to be mean.)

I look at him. He actually seems concerned.

I frown.

Eric looks like his father, all brown hair and square-jawed handsomeness. His head brushes the car’s ceiling, and his wrists stick out of almost every shirt he wears. The Johnsons are big and bony.

I take after Mom, mostly. She’s willowy and blonde. Pale blonde. So blonde that her hair almost looks white. She says she always thought she was the whitest person on the planet until she met me. I’m even fairer skinned than she is, which wasn’t a problem until July.

Then I learned what sunburn really is.

Now I’m going to learn what “cold” really is. Or at least everyone says that’s what’ll happen. Apparently, I live in the coldest place in the world—well, maybe not the world, but the United States, anyway. (And yes, I’m just learning what the United States is.)

I now live in the Midwest or, more specifically, Wisconsin, or even more specifically, a place that calls itself Superior, even though I have no idea how it can be superior when there’s an even better place (Duluth, in something called Minnesota) across a giant inland sea from here.

The giant inland sea, which everyone insists on calling a lake (even though they try to cover up their mistake by calling it a great lake), is also called Superior and it is superior because it’s bigger than all the other inland seas (I mean Great Lakes) combined.

The inland sea—I mean lake—has an effect. So it’s colder here in the summer and even colder in the winter.

I’m braced for it, kinda sorta, but what my stepbrother Eric is referring to is that for that first two months I was here (July and August), I kept asking if the fifty-something degree nighttime temperatures (in this scale that everyone adds the word “Fahrenheit” to as if they expect me to know some other scale) were the “really cold” temperatures I had heard of.

That made my step and half siblings laugh so hard my mother would shush them for being rude. To be fair, she’s their mother too, even though she didn’t give birth to some of them. My step siblings lost their real mother to cancer. (I’ve seen the movies; I know what cancer is [again, kinda sorta, but I understand enough of it to know it’s a real tragedy and it makes even the strongest people cry].) Mom married Karl about a year after I was born, not that it matters, because by then my father was raising me.

Well, my father wasn’t raising me. He’d assigned me to some wood nymphs at first, and that was when I “met” my sisters Tiffany and Crystal, who also have the same dad but different moms. Tiff, Crystal, and I were Interim Fates together, which is a long story. But we’ve been each other’s best friends and close family before we became Interim Fates. We’ve known each other since Tiff and Crystal got assigned to the same nymphs I had back when we were all babies. Of course, none of us remember this because we were preverbal, even if we did have our magic by then.

Magic, which is now gone.

“I am not going to freeze,” I say to Eric archly. I’m good at archly. If there’s one thing I learned from my Greek family, it’s how to be arch when I need to, especially with mere mortals.

“Brit, I know you,” Eric says, even though he doesn’t, not really, because Mom won’t let me tell any of my eight half and step siblings the truth about who I am and who my dad is and who my other half siblings are. “You’ll start shivering the minute you get out of this car. It’s nearly freezing out there.”

I square my shoulders. I hate this part of my new life, the way that everyone takes care of me or makes fun of me, and I can’t tell which it is just from the tone.

“You’re just saying that.” I gather up my denim purse, which is the most embarrassing thing I own, but I can’t get rid of it or trade it away because Mom accented it with this thing she has called a BeDazzler, and the purse has all these rhinestones and fake jewels all over it, and tons of fringe underneath. It looks like the 1970s vomited all over the purse, which I muttered one day to my half sister Anna, and she said archly (maybe the whole family is good at arch), That stuff is back in style, Brit, and Mom worked hard on that purse. Be nice.

Be nice. Be nice. That’s all they ever say to me here. I have no idea how to be nice. We weren’t nice back at Mount Olympus, which is where I’m from (kinda sorta because I was actually born here in Superior, believe it or not). And the Mount Olympus I’m referring to isn’t the Mount Olympus that shows up on Google maps. I mean the Mount Olympus that people here call “mythical” because they think it doesn’t exist, just because they’re not magical enough to get there.

Yeah, I’m a snob. My half and step siblings accuse me of that all the time. When they’re not berating me for failing to be nice.

Eric shakes his ugly plaid coat at me.

“I am not just saying that you’ll freeze to be mean. It’s barely forty degrees and there’s a wind. Let me drive you to the store. Mom’ll be mad if I don’t.” Eric has this tone that he uses when he’s frustrated. It’s kinda nasal, but kinda not.

Everyone in this town speaks with a sing-song accent that I’ve never heard before, except in the movie Fargo, which everyone here says makes fun of the people of the real Fargo (and I don’t even know where that is. I didn’t even know there was a real Fargo until I moved here). Besides, everyone says real Fargo is far away, and they all claim that no one here sounds like anyone in the movie, although they do sound like that all the time.

Heck, I’m beginning to even sound like that, like using the word “heck” and stuff, although my half brother Leif says I’ll never sound like I’m part of the Johnson Family because I have this snotty accent. And by snotty, he means British, but really, my accent isn’t British.

I speak English with a mixture of accents. I mostly learned English from American movies, but I also had tutors from what Crystal’s mother calls The Continent (it took forever for me to figure out that she meant Europe), and yes, a few British teachers as well. Plus, the base-line accent is Greek. Not modern Greek, but Ancient Greek, because, you know, my family invented it.

My dad invented it. Or part of it. Or at least he helped coin a few terms.

It’s hard to tell with my dad, because he lies all the time, except when he’s telling the truth. And usually the truth is harder to believe.

Like who my dad really is.

My dad is Zeus. Around here, they call him the Greek God Zeus, like there’s some other Zeus in the world.

There is only one Zeus. He’s my dad, and he’s a real pain in the rear most of the time, although when I said that to Mom shortly after arriving here, she pursed her lips together (which I would learn is something she does a lot when she disapproves) and reminded me that no matter what he does, he’s my father so I should show him some respect.

Yeah, whatever.

“You want me to drive you or not?” Eric asks. “Because if you sit here much longer, you’re going to be late.”

I sigh and open the car door, and this blast of totally frosty air hits me. I didn’t even have to get out to start shivering. I hate it that Eric’s right. I’m not sure how I can walk the six blocks to the shopping plaza without turning into some kind of gigantic blue ice cube.

I mean, it’s not like I’m dressed for this. I’m dressed for success, or at least, I’m dressed for success Johnson Family style.

Nine kids, all under the age of eighteen, two parents and only one with a full-time job. Even though Karl works as some kind of major project manager and has something called an engineering degree and gets paid pretty darn good (whatever that means), it doesn’t cover the cost of housing and feeding and dealing with all of us. Mom works part time in an accounting office (full time at tax season, whatever that means), but that doesn’t bring in enough to “make up the difference,” whatever that means.

Since I added a strain to their budget (and I do know what that means), I have to get a part-time job so I can start saving for school (whatever that means, since I’m already in school, not that I’m very good at it, because my education at Mount Olympus is nothing like my education here).

Which is all a long way of saying that what I’m wearing is a hand-me-down dress from my stepsister Lise (and the dang thing, while it’s a lovely sky blue, is one size too big for me) and panty hose that are all my own (and what a joy those things are [and Lise says no self-respecting teenager wears them, so I guess I’m not a self-respecting teenager]) and the only pair of dressy high heels that fit me (not that they really fit me; they’re one size too small because they’re my half sister Anna’s, which means they hurt like a son of a gun, as Karl would say).

“Last offer,” Eric says, “because I’m starting to get cold now.”

I look at him, and can’t really decide what the heck to do. Karl says you have to show up for a job interview looking like you don’t need the job, and Eric’s car screams I need money (at least, that’s what my half brother Ivan says). You can hear the car from miles away because it needs a muffler, and it needs a bumper and it needs—well, a lot of stuff. But Eric is giving it some TLC, which I don’t entirely understand but take to mean he’s trying to fix it, and—

“Screw it,” he says, and puts the car in drive. He starts to pull out, and I have to yank the door to close it, which is hard because there really is a wind, and it’s turning the door into a sail.

“Hey!” I say, because really, I can’t say much more given that I’m fighting with the door and something’s beeping and thank heavens I still have my seatbelt on.

“You don’t get a vote,” he says. “I’m driving you. You dithered.”

He has to stop before he pulls onto Caitlin Avenue, which is when I finally get the car door closed. I want to glare at him, but I’m still shivering and I think he might’ve saved my butt, since these heels aren’t that stable either.

He pulls onto Caitlin and I peer at the red brick buildings of the University of Wisconsin-Superior (which always look nice unlike the rest of the town, which needs paint) and then he turns onto Belknap Street and heads the few blocks toward the store.

It’s in this old plaza. There’s a grocery store “anchoring” it, at least that’s what Mom says, and a liquor store that’s been there “forever” (even though I don’t know how long forever could be since this town didn’t even exist until 1854, which certainly isn’t forever ago [and I know how old the town is because I had a stupid “forever” argument with Ivan, who’s ten and thinks he knows everything about everything, which I’m beginning to realize he doesn’t]).

There’s an AT&T store, which I keep wanting to go into, ever since my sister Crystal bought me and Tiff iPhones that our mothers made us give back, and a pizza place and a Subway across the parking lot, and a couple of other retail stores. One of them went out of business and a new one is opening, and it’s pretty easy to tell which one that is because it’s got a big sign on its only window that says, Now Hiring. Apply Online, which is exactly what I did (with Eric’s help).

The store is some kind of chain bargain store, at least that’s what Eric says, and he says they’re putting a toe into Superior to see if they want to open a big box store outside the city limits. I have no idea why a place that sells a little bit of everything wants to open a store outside of town that sells only large boxes, but hey, I don’t understand most things about this world I find myself in.

Eric seems to know that I’m nervous and he also seems to know that I don’t want anyone to see the car, so he parks behind Subway.

“Walk on over,” he says. “I’m getting a snack.” Then he smirks at me. “And don’t freeze.”

Sometimes he’s really nice, and sometimes he’s a real jerk, and sometimes he’s both at once.

Can you tell that I’m confused by just about everything? Including everyone in this town, I swear to God (as Anna always says before Mom tells her to stop swearing to anyone).

I get out and totter my way across the parking lot. Now I regret not having Eric’s coat no matter how terrible it would look. Every part of me is cold. And the wind reaches under my skirt like it works for my nephew Pan (who is waaaaaaay older than me, by the way, like by centuries).

I clutch the purse to my side, and the stupid bedazzled fake jewels are turning cold under my palm, which means that my hands are as cold as I think they are, which is just not a good thing.

I get to the sidewalk and almost trip climbing up the curb. Up close, the store looks dark and creepy and empty, but as I wonder if I should turn around, a woman opens the door.

“Are you Brittany Johnson?” she asks. I can barely see her through the gloom.

“Um, yeah,” I say, even though technically, I’m not a Johnson. Mom just decided to give me Karl’s last name to avoid the confusion. Because my birth certificate calls me Lundquist, which is Mom’s old last name, and Mom doesn’t want me explaining to everyone why all her other kids are Johnson and she has one Lundquist because no one in town, apparently, knows she gave birth “out of wedlock,” which is, I guess, something totally frowned on here.

(Pretty dang common where I come from. In fact, all except like a handful of my half siblings on my father’s side are the product of his wandering eye. His wife Hera has other choice words for us kids, which I don’t want to use. She doesn’t like the fact that he’s spent the past several thousand years fathering kids on other women, but she can’t really complain too much since her eye wanders too. Which I said to Mom once, and she held up her hands and said, I don’t want to hear it, Brittany, I really don’t in a tone I haven’t heard her use before or since.)

“Well, come on in,” the store lady says, “before we both freeze.”

I want to pump my hand in the air and say, Yes!, like Leif does when his favorite sports team scores, but I don’t. Instead I smile and slip inside.

The store is warm, and I let out a little sigh. It’s nice to be out of the wind.

It’s not dark and gloomy in here as it looked from the outside. It only seemed that way because the store lady has the lights off up front. Toward the back, there are lots and lots of fluorescent lights, and shelves that are in pieces, and boxes everywhere. Some tubby guy who’s older than Karl and wears a plaid shirt that makes Eric’s coat look stylish is piling even more boxes against a far wall.

The store lady smiles at me. She’s wearing blue jeans and a denim shirt that would actually look pretty good with my ugly purse. She has on no makeup (which is unusual around here), and her dark brown hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She pulls off some big gloves and extends a hand toward me.

“I’m Jill Larson,” she says. “I’m the manager here. And, I’ll be honest, I know your mom.”

Ah, nepotism. I know the word because it was the center of my life not too long ago. My dad excels at nepotism.

That’s why he chose me and Tiff and Crystal to become the Interim Fates. And that’s how we got approved. You see, my dad decided (in a fit of pique, Hera says) to get rid of true love, and he figured the best way to do that was to make the actual Fates step down.

The Fates are like the judges over life and all of magic and in that capacity also handle true love. And somehow (well, I know how, but for the sake of long-story-short), my dad convinced the Powers That Be (who are in charge of everything [and my dad was/is one of them, depending on whether or not he’s still being punished]) to fire the Fates and have them reapply for their old jobs.

Me, and Tiff and Crystal became Fates in the interim (hence Interim Fates) and we sucked at it. (Sorry, Mom. Sucked is the only word.) The only thing we did right was we didn’t let Daddy screw up true love. Somehow we blocked that. But the rest of it? Oh, man. Imagine if a first grader replaced Judge Judy.

So, nepotism. It’s like the story of my life.

Mrs. Larson smiles at me. (Mom told me I should always call adults by “Mr. or Mrs.” and their last name, to be respectful, even though a few women have corrected me and said that I should just call them Miz, which really confuses me.)

“Your mom,” Mrs. Larson says, “told me about—you know—your special circumstances.”

I frown at her. I’m not sure what special circumstances she means, although she did lower her voice. That, in the sideways speak of this strange town, sometimes means that the person who is talking doesn’t want anyone else to overhear the “sensitive” subject being raised.

“Um,” I say, feeling a blush start to warm my neck, “what, exactly, did Mom say?”

“Oh, you know. How she gave you up and then your family situation…well, you know…wasn’t ideal, and so she brought you back here.”

That blush climbed up my face and down my chest at the same time. I went from being too cold to being embarrassingly hot. (Or maybe that isn’t why I was embarrassed at all.)

“She’s a good woman, your mom,” Mrs. Larson says. “She also said you were brought up overseas, and you don’t know a lot about the US, but you’re a quick study.”

“Oh.” I can’t manage much more than that.

“She didn’t tell me, though, that you’re the spitting image of her at that same age. Your mom was the great beauty of our high school, doncha know, and she could’ve had any man, but that Karl Johnson, he had his eye on her. If it weren’t for the scheming of that Ava, his first wife—well, I’m not supposed to speak ill of the dead. But your mom and Karl, they were meant for each other. They were prom king and queen, you know. I’ll bet she never told you that.”

“She didn’t,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say. I know about prom king and queen, partly because of the movie Carrie (both versions) and partly because of Never Been Kissed, one of my favorite movies of all time. Yes, I’m a romantic. Yes, my sisters tease me about it. (Yes, I miss them.)

“Well, they were, and oh, they were perfect together,” Mrs. Larson says, still talking about Mom and Karl. “But that’s neither here nor there. Your mom asked me to give you an interview, nothing more, and I’m going to do that, even though I’m doing all the talking. So, let’s head to my office, shall we?”

She turns around and weaves through the boxes. They’re all labeled, and none of them are really big, so I figure they’re going to supply the store rather than be the boxes that the store wants to sell outside of town.

But what do I know? I hadn’t really had to deal with stores much at all until I moved here. At Mount Olympus, I could wave my hand and conjure anything I want.

Megan, my counselor (yes, I have a counselor, and yes, she’s magic—kinda. Another long-story-short), she says that the ability to do magic from such a young age was corrupting me and Crystal and Tiff, and it’s good for us to live without it. Yeah, maybe, but that doesn’t stop me from missing it.

Particularly now, when I’d use the magic to help me figure out how to deal with all the people and strangeness in Superior, Wisconsin.

Or maybe even in this building.

Mrs. Larson skirts around the last pile of boxes and goes into this tiny room in the back.

A plywood door separates it from the main part of the building (and yes, I know what plywood is, thanks to projects my siblings here are working on). Inside, the fluorescent lights are even brighter, making everything this kind of squinchy gray color.

There’s a metal desk that is too wide for the room (in my opinion), a big desk chair behind it, some cabinets that match, a trashy orange couch that looks even more uncomfortable than the couch at the Johnson Family Manse (which is what Karl calls their house), and one bright orange chair that looks like it was once a part of a kitchen set.

Mrs. Larson almost sits in the big desk chair, then seems to think the better of it. She grabs a yellow legal pad, rounds the desk, and waves her hand at the orange chair.

“Have a seat, Brittany,” she says, and it sounds friendly, not like a command at all. (And it’s really nice to hear someone use my full name.)

“Thanks.” I smooth the skirt as I sit. Lise will complain if I bring the dress back too wrinkled.

I’m about to set the purse on the floor, but as I look down, I realize the floor is covered with dust and goop and dried mud and something that looks like oil, and even though the purse is ugly, I don’t want to ruin it. Mom did work hard on it, after all.

So I hang the purse on my knee, which makes the fringe brush the top of my foot (which looks dumb, I know, but Mrs. Larson already knows I’m Not From Around Here).

Her smile is really friendly. She puts the legal pad on her lap. Then she writes my name along the top sheet of the pad.

“Okay, Brittany,” she says, “your application is pretty spare on details, so I’m going to ask a few questions.”

The application was spare on details because I can’t say a lot of things. Mom says that’s all right, because I’m so young, no one expects me to have a lot of experience, and those online applications are designed for adults.

I’m going to have to lie. Mom says lying is something we should all try to avoid, but she’s making a special case for me, because the truth is so unbelievable.

Still, I hate being in this situation. I’m really bad at lying.

I fold my hands together, and brace myself.

Here comes the hard part.

And, as usual, I’m probably going to screw it up something royal.

TWO

CAN MRS. LARSON hear my heart trying to pound its way out of my chest? Because her expression softens even more as she studies at me.

I’m not shaking, not really, at least I hope I’m not. But I have woven my fingers together so tight that I’m probably leaving bruises. My hands rest on top of the dress’s skirt, which has ridden up a little more than is proper (the Johnson Family is big on proper. I’m just starting to figure it out).

Plus, I keep swallowing like something’s stuck in my throat.

The little room is too hot, and I’m closer to Mrs. Larson than I want to be.

She looks like she’s got some horrid terminal illness under the bright fluorescent light in this office, but I like her. As much as I can like someone who’s going to think I’m crazy in like two seconds flat.

“So,” she says, “you have no retail experience, and you say you want to work here to help your family pay the bills, which is admirable. You also say you want to learn how retail works from ‘the other side.’”

I swallow harder than I have before. Helping to pay the bills, that was my answer, but the other part about “the other side,” that was Eric’s suggestion, seconded by Lise, who has already gone through three different jobs (each better than the last, she says whenever anyone asks. I think there’s a story there she’s not telling).

“Yes, that’s right,” I say. My voice is actually wobbling. And I’m keeping my answers short. On all those TV shows about cops and lawyers in America, they’re always telling their clients to keep the answers short so that whoever is questioning them can’t trip them up.

Only this is a job interview, not an interrogation, right?

“I know the application only asks for relevant job experience,” Mrs. Larson says, “but do you have any work experience? Because sometimes, just knowing how to work for someone else is more valuable than having relevant job experience. I have to untrain half of my employees when they have relevant job experience.”

I almost didn’t hear that last part of what she said, and, honestly, I’m not sure I understand it. Besides, the question itself—work experience—makes my heart pound even harder.

Jeez. How do I tell her that?

As much of the truth as possible, Mom says, but she didn’t prepare me for this.

“I—my—we….” I bite my lip. I usually don’t stammer. My face feels like it’s going to explode from the heat building up inside of it. I want to look down, but Eric and Mom say that’s the worst thing to do, so I struggle to keep my gaze on Mrs. Larson.

She tilts her head a little, and her smile goes inward, almost like she’s holding back some amusement.

At me. Oh, great.

Mrs. Larson doesn’t tell me to go on or anything. She just waits quietly, which is kinda worse, because that means I have to continue talking.

“My real dad, he…um…he made me and my sisters work this job we weren’t qualified for. He’s like this super-powerful guy overseas, and he fired the women who were in the job ahead of us, and then made us do it, and we didn’t know what we were doing, but we tried….”

I don’t know how to explain any more of this without involving magic and true love, so I just stop talking.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Larson says. “Is that why you moved in with your mom?”

Then she waves her hand.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Don’t answer that. I’m not supposed to ask personal family questions when I’m acting as manager. It’s hard for me because I’m just the most curious woman you’ll ever meet, but sometimes, you’re just going to have to forget I asked something inappropriate.”

Her cheeks are a little red too. Is she blushing?

I swallow nervously again. She didn’t ask a question, so I don’t know if I’m supposed to talk.

“I’m sorry about the job,” she says into my silence. “It sounds awful. What kind of job was it?”

I swallow a third time. It actually hurts to swallow, because my throat is so dry.

But I’m kinda prepared for this question, because Mom said someone might ask it at school. She was wrong about who was going to ask it, but right that it got asked.

“Um,” I say (and Tiff or Crystal would laugh at me, because they know I um a lot when I’m lying), “it’s really specific to the place where my dad works. It’s upper management, and me and my sisters, we hadn’t even graduated from school, and it was our first job, and we were really bad at it. I’m sorry, Mrs. Larson. I’m probably not what you want here either.”

I stand up and grab my purse before it falls on the grimy floor.

“That’s all right,” she says, reaching out. She almost touches me, then stops herself.

I struggle to hang that stupid purse on my shoulder. The strap keeps sliding off, and I look even dorkier than I did a minute ago.

“Sit down, Brittany.” It’s a command, yes, but she uses this really nice tone, so it doesn’t sound harsh.

I slowly sink back into the seat. I clutch the stupid purse to my stomach.

There’s a little frown bunching up the skin between Mrs. Larson’s eyes.

“I’m the one who was out of line.” She sighs. “I wish I could say I don’t have the first idea how it feels to be put in a management position at a company you don’t know how to run, but it happens every day. Just not to girls who’ve never graduated from school. Your father….”

Then her voice trails off. She shakes her head once.

“And there I go, being out of line again. But let me just say, I do understand how overwhelmed you must have felt.”

I know she meant to reassure me, but her words just make me even more tense.

“If you were to work here,” she says, “you’d have to be familiar with the merchandise, learn to run the cash register, and be nice to the customers. Can you do all that?”

I shrug one shoulder. I’ve seen cash registers. I have no idea how they work.

I decide to be honest. “I’m just learning how money works.”

She nods. I didn’t expect her to nod. Nodding’s weird. Why would she nod?

“Ah, yes,” she says, “currency differences. I hadn’t thought of that. But you can do math, right?”

“Yeah.” I’m not as good as my sister Crystal, but I’m okay at math. My sister Athena says if you understand math, you understand how the universe works, so she really drilled a lot of math concepts into us before we left Mount Olympus.

“Well, then,” Mrs. Larson says, “you can learn all the currency differences and how the cash register works.”

Now I’m frowning. What, exactly, is she talking about? And do I ask? Or is that rude?

She must have seen my confusion, because she smiles at me.

“Your mom just asked me to help you by giving you a practice interview,” she says.

My heart sinks. Of course. I didn’t even get this on my own. Someone had to beg just to get me an interview.

“But,” Mrs. Larson says, “I like you.”

It takes me a second, then my gaze meets hers. She’s still smiling. She has, like, eighty thousand smiles and each one is different. It’s weird. I’ve never met anyone like that.

This smile is tender.

“I’ll be honest,” she says. “It’ll take some training to get you up to snuff, and most people in town will see that. I know what a burden all those children are on your family—even though I’m not supposed to say that—and I know that you all need a little bit of help now and then.”

Great. Now I’m a charity case. Wonderful.

“But that’s not really why I’m saying this. When your mom asked, she was clear that she didn’t want me to do something that would harm my job, if you know what I mean.”

I don’t, but I don’t want to admit that. Mrs. Larson seems to be on a roll.

“Besides, you’re really pretty, and I know that in retail sometimes really pretty brings in customers as much as the merchandise does.”

My cheeks, which were getting cooler, heat up again. My sister Artemis says that no one should ever make objects out of us women (and she doesn’t mean statues, because there’s like a million statues of her). She means no one should objectify us, which I think Mrs. Larson just did, which I didn’t expect from another woman and really, should I protest? Because she’s right. I need the job and the family needs the money.

She is still studying me really hard. The smile leaves her face.

“Not, you know, that I’d let anyone be inappropriate,” she says. “It’s just people come into a store for a variety of reasons, and a pretty clerk doesn’t hurt, and Lord knows, young people today just aren’t the most attractive bunch.”

Mrs. Larson really does say what’s on her mind. It startles me, especially given the sideways speak of the Johnson Family.

I’m not sure I agree with her either. There’s some really good-looking kids in my school, and most of the Johnson kids are pretty stunning in a pale, never-seen-the-sun kinda way.

“These days,” Mrs. Larson says, “you get attractive or smart, but you usually don’t get both. And I can tell just from your questions and the light in your eyes that you’re very smart.”

Questions? I asked questions? I don’t remember asking questions.

“So, I’m thinking we’ll start you on stocking shelves and slowly train you to do other things. I’ll work with you on the cash register, so that by the time we open, which is in two weeks, you’ll know where everything is and how to make change for a twenty. What say you?”

I’m biting my lower lip and thinking really hard. What say me? I don’t know. I’m not sure what she’s asking me. I’m not even sure what she’s talking about.

That softer expression comes over her face again.

“I guess I wasn’t clear, Brittany,” she says. “I’m offering you a part-time job. It’s minimum wage, and I probably can’t give you more than ten to fifteen hours, but every little bit counts, right?”

The breath leaves my body. Seriously? I got a job on the first interview? Lise says that never happens. Eric told me to prepare for lots of people telling me I’m not right for the work. Mom said that if I didn’t get a job the first time out, I shouldn’t feel bad. Practicing job skills, including interviews and applications, is all that matters.

“Brittany?” Mrs. Larson says. “Would you like to work here under those conditions?”

“Yes!” I blurt. I have no idea what minimum wage is and I’m not sure what she means by stocking shelves. About the only thing I understand is the hours part, and that’s because Eric explained it to me as we looked over the job listings online. He told me I can’t have more than a part-time job (ten to twenty hours) because of school.

Mrs. Larson extends her right hand. “Welcome aboard.”

I know enough to shake her hand, but do I stand? What next?

“We have some paperwork, and I’ll explain a few things,” she says, “and then we’ll figure out when to start your training. I hope that’s okay.”

“It’s great,” I say. “It’s really great.”

And it really, really is.

THREE

IT TAKES ANOTHER fifteen minutes to do all the paperwork (with Mrs. Larson hovering, and I honestly don’t mind, because I have no idea what any of this stuff is). Then she says there’s going to be more paperwork on my first day, and before I get there (that day) I need to ask Mom for all my identification, and do something about immigrant/visa/illegal alien stuff, just in case it applies.

Like with most of this stuff, I have no idea what Mrs. Larson is talking about. I just sit in that uncomfortable chair with my purse hanging off my knee, balancing the clipboard on the other knee, and writing as best I can on these forms.

The only thing I ask about is the illegal alien thing, because—hello!—aliens aren’t real, at least that we know about, and if they are, they’re not going to apply for jobs in a chain store in Superior, Wisconsin. I mean, even I know that.

I’ve learned to ask my questions carefully. Like, “Why do I have to fill out a document about aliens?”

Mrs. Larson doesn’t clear up my confusion. All she does is laugh nervously, and says, “Obviously, you’re not an illegal alien, Brittany, but the government requires documentation.”

I nod, like I understand, but really, the more I learn about this government thing, the happier I am with the Powers That Be. They’re in charge of everything in the magic world, and they’re capricious as hell, and they include my stepmom Hera (although she doesn’t like to be called “Stepmom”) and my dad Zeus when he’s not being punished for violating rules, but even the Powers seem a lot more consistent and sensible than this government everyone talks about.

But I’ve decided I’m just going to go along with all this stuff, and maybe do some reading or something until I can figure it all out. (My sister Tiffany would frown and shake her head at me if I told her about my plan to read stuff. Because she tried to get me and Crystal to read all the magic books in the library where we were stationed [imprisoned?] as Interim Fates. Me and Crystal were kinda mean to Tiff about all of that. We made Tiff read everything and just tell us about it.)

Anyway, I finish the paperwork, shake Mrs. Larson’s hand (again) and finally manage to say thank you. I’m glad I did because Mom would’ve had my head (I love that expression, which is new to me!) if I had forgotten it.

The old be-nice thing and all that.

I head outside and the minute I walk through that door (and Mrs. Larson locks it behind me), I get hit with a blast of frigid air. The sky is darker than it was when I went in—not nighttime darker, but clouds-coming-in darker, and the air feels damp in addition to cold.

I’m going to freeze my butt off just getting to the car.

I slide the purse over my shoulder and hold the strap like Mom taught me when I first got here (just in case I get mugged or something. I don’t know), and step off the curb.

I want to run to the Subway, but the high heels seem even more unstable than they did when I put them on. They make my entire legs wobble as I move. And my feet hurt. In fact, I can’t feel my toes any more.

The wind comes up and blows my skirt every which way, like Marilyn Monroe’s in that famous photograph, and so now, I’m holding the skirt down and the purse and trying to keep my balance and I can’t find the dang car.

I didn’t even think of Eric while I was inside. He said he had homework and he wanted to get home. He was the one who told me that the interview wouldn’t last more than fifteen minutes.

I don’t have a watch, but I know the interview lasted longer than fifteen minutes.

I reach the part of the parking lot where I last saw him, and the ugly rust-bucket car is nowhere in sight.

My heart starts pounding hard again, and I’m shaking from the cold, and I’m not sure what to do. I don’t want to wander the parking lot, looking for him. I’ll freeze to death, I swear.

And I don’t have a cell phone. Eric and Lise each have one that they pay for with their own money, and Mom and Dad have one each—not a smart phone, but a cheap no-frills version, because cell phones “can be expensive.”

In fact, Crystal got me in trouble with Mom—the one and only time I’ve been in real trouble with Mom—because she (Crystal, not Mom) sent me and Tiff an iPhone and signed us up for some plan without our permission. Mom just about hit the roof.

Mom sees cell phones, and she thinks about all the money flying out the door.

As if the money was blowing around in this wind. I peer inside Subway, partly to see if Eric’s there, and partly to see if they have a pay phone. I do know Eric’s cell number. I learned that in self-defense, because when he’s doing something, he sometimes forgets what time it is.

A horn honks behind me and I jump. My reaction is so violent, I wobble on my shoes (even though I’m not walking) and my right shoe topples, making my ankle bend in a way it’s not supposed to and scraping the side of my foot against the ground.

I grab the restaurant door in front of me to keep from falling over. The glass feels like ice.

And I thought my heart was pounding hard before. It’s just about ready to hammer its way out of my chest forever.

“Hey!” That voice belongs to Eric. Then the horn honks again.

I can see the ugly rust-bucket car reflected in the glass. Everyone inside Subway is looking at us.

I lift my right foot and then set it down back on the sidewalk, properly, ignoring the brand-new ache in my ankle. I do test the stability of my foot first, and it seems like it’s working.

I knew that mortals can hurt themselves doing the strangest things, but I hadn’t expected that a fall off my shoes would ache like that.

I turn around slowly, keeping one hand out for balance.

“Where were you?” I say, my voice trembling. I have never yelled at one of my Johnson siblings before, but I’m scared, I’m overwhelmed, I’m tired, and I’m really, really cold.

“I went to get the car.” Eric leans over and pushes the passenger side door open. “I parked far away, like you wanted.”

Normally, I would have blushed there—I just know it—because he did something I wanted him to and I yelled at him, but I think the cold broke my blushing mechanism.

“Sorry,” I say and stagger to the car. My entire right leg aches, but I can put weight on my foot. That means it’s not broken.

I learned that in August, when my little half sister Ingrid jumped out of a swing and landed wrong, breaking her leg. She just got out of her cast two weeks ago.

I slide inside the passenger seat, and the smelly upholstery catches the dress. I hope it doesn’t rip. Lise would be so mad at me. But at least the car’s warm.

I pull the door closed, put on the seatbelt, and then look at my ankle. The pantyhose is ripped, and there’s a big chalky mark on the side of the shoe. I hope it’ll rub off.

There’s also a scrape on my ankle itself, and now that I’ve noticed it, it’s started to sting.

“What took so long?” Eric asks. “Were there other people applying?”

I frown at him. How would I know that?

He raises his eyebrows. He expects me to answer that stupid question.

“No one else was applying,” I say. “I got the job and we had to fill out—”

“You what?” Thank heavens we’re in the parking lot, because he swivels his whole body as he looks at me, which makes him turn the steering wheel toward me, which makes the car swing to the right, which makes it drive over three empty parking spaces before he hits the brake.

If those spaces weren’t empty…

I force myself to think about something else.

“I got the job,” I repeat, a little softer. “Is that a problem?”

He grins. “Hell, no, but wow. Just wow. Mom says there’s something magical about your family, but I didn’t think she meant it literally.”

Now that I’m getting warm, my cheeks do heat up. I’m not supposed to talk about the magic at all. Ever.

“Mom said that?”

“Yeah, but she mostly says something about charisma. She didn’t say anything about luck.” He punches my arm gently. That’s Eric’s way of showing affection. “Go, you!”

I bit my lower lip and say around the skin, “Thanks?”

Fortunately, he still has his foot on the brake because he turns all the way toward me. The car rocks in the wind.

“How come you’re not happy?” he asks. “Is it a lame job?”

How do I know what kind of job it is? I haven’t started yet. But the first question…why am I not happy?

I have no idea.

I frown, thinking about how I feel. A little scared—no, a lotta scared. I have no idea what I’m getting into, and that always goes badly for me. And schedules, that’s going to be a problem. I’ll have to inconvenience everyone. And at minimum wage, I won’t be bringing millions into the household. Hell, I won’t even be bringing in thousands.

“What’s wrong, Brit?” Eric asks gently, and he’s rarely gentle. “Is there something you don’t like about the job? Because you can say no.”

I shake my head. I can feel tears threatening. I’m not going to cry in front of Eric, I’m not.

I take a deep breath, and instead of holding back words, the breath seems to inspire them. I blurt,

“It’s just that the last job I had, I screwed up so bad that I’m either a laughingstock at home or everyone hates me. Sometimes both. Me and my sisters, we were jokes and we didn’t even realize it.”

One of the tears has escaped. I can see it on the lower lashes of my left eye, hovering there, threatening to fall down my cheek, on the side of my face that Eric can see no matter what.

“I mean, that’s one of the reasons I’m here, because we screwed up so bad, and Daddy…”

My voice trails off. I can’t talk about Daddy in a rational way with someone who knows nothing about magic.

So I take another deep breath and this one calms me. Kinda.

“What about your dad?” Eric asks, and that ruins my calm. I can’t talk about my dad. Not with him, not with anyone except Megan, my therapist, who flies in every Sunday to talk to me special. Mom won’t even talk about my dad.

I shake my head and the dang tear wiggles, then topples off my lashes. It misses my cheek, though, and hits the back of my left hand, which, I just notice, is balled into a fist.

“After that job,” I whisper, “they took everything away from me. My home, my sisters…” my magic… “everything, and now I’m here, and I don’t understand anything, and I’m about to start a new job, and what if I do the same thing? I don’t have anywhere else…”

I can’t finish that sentence, because if I finish that sentence, I will cry.

“Jeez,” Eric says. “Jeez. I had no idea.”

He looks at me, and he sees how upset I am, and he finally reaches out an arm and pulls me into half a hug.

The Johnson Family is pretty touchy-feely, but me and Eric haven’t been because, as Eric said to me the first time he refused to hug me, we’re not related at all and that just makes everything weird, right?

I have no idea what the everything that is weird is, but he’s uncomfortable, which makes me uncomfortable, and right now (right then) I was all about disappearing into a corner.

His arm is pretty tight around me, holding me against the scratchy wool of his plaid jacket (which smells faintly of wood smoke) and his hand pats my shoulder in this kinda there-there way.

“I’m sorry,” I say into his jacket. “I’m sorry. I’m being a baby. I’m sorry.”

“No,” he says. “God, if I were in your shoes, I’d be scared too.”

He sounds uncertain, not like the Eric I know at all. Usually Eric sounds confident no matter what he’s talking about (whether he knows it in detail or not).

Tears squeeze out of my eyes, no matter how hard I try to stop crying. I haven’t cried much since I got to the Johnson Family Manse. Not after the first week, when Ingrid (who is only eight) plopped down on my bed and said, “So what’s it like to be a drama queen?”

I sniffle, and wish I had a tissue. I sit up and start to wipe my face with my bare hand, but Eric hands me three crumpled Subway napkins.

“Have you told Mom?” he asks. He calls Mom “mom” even though she’s not his biological mom. She raised him from the age of three.

I shake my head, and then I frown. “Told Mom what?”

“About how scared you are?”

I shake my head again, more firmly this time, because I really mean it now, and say, “She’s being just great. She has a lot to deal with and I don’t need to add to it.”

“She loves you, you know,” he says.

Tears start again. So what’s it like to be a drama queen? Awful. Just awful. Megan (my therapist) says I learned to cry so my sisters didn’t have to, and now it’s just a habit.

I hate that habit. I hate hate hate it.

I’m shaking my head at the tears, trying to convince them to go away.

“She does,” Eric says.

He must think I’m disagreeing about Mom loving me. I never doubted that. She just doesn’t understand me.

“When she had to go to Greece every summer,” he says, “she was so nervous. She always wanted you here at home, but she told us that you were better off there, and when we asked to meet you, she said the whole family thing was too hard, and then she’d be excited and thrilled to go, and when she got home…”

His voice trailed off. He shrugged one shoulder, then leaned toward the driver’s door and fished more napkins out of the pocket that Karl told him to use for maps.

I swallow hard. “When she got home,” I prompt.

“She’d go to her room for a day or two and cry,” he says to the floor.

That stops me cold. Mom cries? I’ve never seen it. She’s always so strong. And she cried over me? Really?

“You’re making that up,” I say before I can stop myself.

He shakes his head. “I’m not.”

Then he sits up and glares at me. “If you tell her I said anything, I’ll call you a dirty stupid liar.”

He sounds nervous and childish. Eric never sounds childish either. His whole tone actually makes me want to smile, but I don’t because that might make him mad.

“I won’t say anything,” I promise.

He hands me more napkins. “Good,” he says.

“How do you know she loves me?” I ask, because I can’t just leave it there. I mean, I’m a drama queen. (Megan told me to own that, and then change it. I’m still getting used to the owning part.) For all I know, being a drama queen is something you inherit like blue eyes and hair so blonde it’s almost white. So, Mom might be a drama queen, only with years more experience in controlling her drama queenness.

Eric closes his eyes for a minute, and I recognize the expression. He doesn’t want to say anything, but I’ve backed him into a corner, and what can he say? He’s going to answer me because he’s just that kind of guy.

“Before you moved here, she talked about you all the time, and she’d say she wished we could meet you.” He shrugs again. “She hated that you weren’t allowed to come here. You weren’t, right?”

I didn’t know that, but it makes sense. So I’m not going to contradict her without asking her, and I’m not going to tell Eric that I don’t know.

I nod, and wipe at my left cheek. It’s really wet.

“She’d tell stories about you,” he says, “and how pretty you are and how smart, and how she wished you could come home.”

I was home, but I don’t say that.

“She didn’t even have pictures of you, and I thought that was pretty weird, I’ve always thought that was pretty weird, but she’d say she forgot to take some, which I never believed, and…” his voice trails off. Then he sighs. “I’d ask about the pictures or someone else would and she’d leave the room or she’d tell us all to be really careful with, y’know, the kissing stuff, because you could end up in a tough situation.”

“Yeah,” I say softly. “With a baby you don’t want.”

He actually bounces on the seat. “She wanted you. Don’t you get it? She really wanted you. She still does. She was so excited you were coming home, finally. Jeez, give her credit.”

I sniff, then blow my nose with one of the napkins. I have nowhere to put it, so I crumple it up and set it on the seat beside me.

Then he peers at me. “Why couldn’t she take pictures?”

Because cameras usually don’t work on Mount Olympus. That whole magic-technology thing.

“What does Mom say?” I ask, hoping she had a lie at the ready.

“She never said. Not ever.”

I sigh. It sounds a little watery, but at least the tears aren’t pouring down my face any more.

I guess lies will calm you down, at least a little bit.

“My dad and his relatives,” my relatives, “they’re all pretty famous, and taking pictures of them would be like this revolutionary coup or something.”

Eric’s eyebrows go up. “He’s a political leader or something? And taking a picture would cause a revolution?”

“No, no,” I say, because that’s not what I meant. “It would be—like getting naked pictures of Beyoncé online. You know, everyone would be talking about them and some people would want to know if the pictures are fake, and stuff like that.”

I’ve already said too much. Mom’s going to be mad.

“Who is your dad?” Eric asks.

I shake my head. How do I answer that?

I’d say, Zeus. Eric would say, Some guy named Zeus? And I would say, No, the real Zeus, and he would say, There is no real Zeus, and then he’d get mad at me.

“He’s like...” I sigh. “Where I’m from, he’s like one of the most important people ever. But it’s hard to explain.”

“And Mom knows this?” Eric asks. Apparently my answer was good enough for him.

“Not when she met him,” I say. “My dad is weird-looking, but women seem to find him really attractive.”

Understatement of the century. Maybe the understatement of a thousand centuries. I have no idea how my dad, who looks like a bull in human form, became catnip for women, but there you have it. And I also know for a fact that he thinks using magic to make someone have sex with you is just wrong.

(Don’t ask me how I know that. It’s not right that a daughter should know that about her dad, but I do, because of this case that came up when me and Crystal and Tiff were Interim Fates and, yuck!)

“And…” I bite my lower lip, then realize I’m doing it, and stop, and finish, “Mom’s not supposed to talk about it. None of us are, because, y’know. Daddy’s married.”

“So’s Mom,” Eric says, clearly not understanding what I mean.

“No,” I say. “Daddy was married when he met Mom. And he’s still married.”

To the same jealous, nasty woman. Sometimes I thought Daddy deserved Hera, and sometimes I wonder if Hera would be nicer if Daddy were nicer, and sometimes I wonder if they would’ve been two different people (and the world a different place) if they hadn’t met.

Eric has gone pale. He looks really and truly shocked, like he never heard of anyone having babies “out of wedlock” before.

“Oh,” he says. “Wow. So when your dad took you, how did he explain it to his wife?”

I shrug. I don’t like to think about the details of Daddy’s and Hera’s relationship.

“She’s come to expect stuff like that over the years,” I say.

“Oh, wow,” Eric says again. He has, like, a million ways to say “oh, wow,” each one different. This one is quiet and full of shock. I think everything I’ve told him today shocks him.

I wipe at my face with yet another napkin. The car is shuddering, but I can’t tell if it’s the wind or because a car this old and rusty doesn’t like having someone mash his foot on the brake for so long.

“God, that’s so messed up,” Eric says, which is major swearing for him. “I had no idea. So when Mom is saying stuff like, ‘be careful, you could end up in a bad place,’ she’s speaking from experience.”

I nod.

He pats my hand—the one without a crumpled napkin. “I’m so sorry, Brit. I had no idea.”

“It’s okay,” I say, even though it isn’t. “I’m not supposed to say anything. Please don’t tell Mom I mentioned Daddy.”

Eric nods, then he takes his thumb and forefinger and moves them across his lips. Took me almost a month after I moved here to realize that means my lips are sealed, and even longer to understand that the gesture is supposed to replicate sealing. (To me, it looks like zipping, but what do I know?)

He puts the car back into gear, then looks at me again. “You okay to go home?”

“Yeah,” I say quietly.

“All righty, then,” he says. “But while I drive you, you practice.”

“Practice what?”

“Being happy,” he says. “You got a job. And I know it’s weird for you, but everyone will think it’s weirder if you’re not happy about it.”

I’m biting my lip again. I look at him, then nod. He’s helping me. That’s so sweet.

And it’s so strange to practice being happy.

But you know what? I never have. And I haven’t been happy a lot, even when I was living with my sisters on Mount Olympus.

So that seems like pretty good advice in general.

If only I knew how to do it.

FOUR

THE JOHNSON FAMILY Manse sits on a narrow road a few blocks and an large busy highway away from Lake Superior. The Manse is not a manse at all. (I had to look up the word. Tiff would’ve been so proud of me. [Or she would’ve rolled her eyes and said, About time, Brit.].)

Manse means vicarage (which I also had to look up) and the Johnson Family Manse certainly isn’t a minister’s house. That definition made me hoot with laughter when I saw it.

That leaves the other definition: mansion. And the Johnson Family Manse isn’t a mansion. It isn’t even an aspiring one. I think, maybe, the name of the house is some kind of joke, but I’m not sure.

I think about that every time I arrive at the Johnson Family Manse. It’s half-hidden in a grove of really large pine trees that Karl says need to be cut down, and Mom says are necessary for shade in the summer to keep the house cool, and Lise says just keep the neighbors from seeing how crummy the house actually looks.

I’m not sure I’d call it crummy. But it’s definitely a work in progress.

The Johnson Family Manse is a two-story sprawling building that retains none of its original shape. I’ve paced it. I’ve tried to see the original bones, and I can’t.

The Manse has a huge yard, which takes up most of the block. The yard slopes downhill to what Mom calls a stream and everyone else calls a puddle. (I think everyone else is right, because there’s a beginning and ending to that “stream” and the beginning is on the north side of that slope and the ending is on the south side—not very big at all. But apparently, everyone understands that Mom needs her delusions.)

Most of the yard’s behind the house, and Karl has used some of that space to expand the driveway. Right now, the Johnson Family owns four cars. Mom has one, Karl leases one (whatever that means), and Lise has one that she bought with her own money (and Ingrid says that was a big fight; Ingrid’s good for gossip). Eric has the rust bucket, of course.

Which he parks, right now, in the space just behind the two-car garage, next to three rusted Weber grills, a rusted kid’s wagon that was probably red once, and a whole collection of shovels. The rust bucket fits right in next to all of that, like it’s part of stuff about to be thrown out.

He puts the shift in park and the entire car rocks, then groans. The groan is new. Eric frowns.

“I’ve really got to fix that,” he says to himself.

But he’s been saying that about shutting down the car ever since he became responsible for driving me around, so I don’t wait for the next sentence, which is usually, Did that sound different to you, Brit?

The wind isn’t quite as cold back here, because the garage blocks it. Most of the winds in this town come off Lake Superior, and even though we can’t see the lake from our house (or from the street for that matter), the lake’s still this huge presence in our lives.

It controls the weather, and sometimes I think it controls the entire town’s mood.

I wrap my purse strap around my right hand and use my left to shove the car door closed. It slams with a bang and the car groans again. I wince. About two weeks after I moved in, I slammed the car door, and the muffler clattered onto the driveway. Eric yelled at me, and everyone else told me to ignore him, because up to that point, he’d attached the muffler with a metal coat hanger, which I guess is not the way mufflers are usually attached to cars.

I square my shoulders and take a deep breath. The air smells faintly of fish from the lake. My heart starts to pound as I approach the small flight of stairs leading up to the back door. The metal railing on those stairs isn’t rusted; Karl keeps it in tip-top shape, because if someone trips going up (or down), they’ll fall and “do a header” onto the driveway, meaning they’ll have to go to the hospital.

I guess it happened to some friend of theirs shortly after they moved in.

No matter why he does it, I’m grateful now, because I need that railing to stay upright. My right foot throbs, but it’s not really the problem. The problem is that these shoes are so tight, the bottoms of both of my feet have gone numb.

I pull open the screen door, then slowly push open the solid wood interior door because if you open it too fast from the outside, you might slam it into someone who is standing by the kitchen table.

We don’t eat at the kitchen table—it only sits four—but whoever is cooking that night often uses it to chop things or roll out bread or something. If it’s not being used for cooking, groceries are sprawled on top of it, waiting for someone (whoever is assigned) to put them all away.

We’re all assigned some chore or another. There’s a big long list written in multiple colors on the whiteboard beside the back door. The list separates out our regular duties (all the time) from our weekly duties.

That whiteboard is the one reason some of the younger kids loved it that I moved in, even though I caused bedroom, bathroom, and space issues. I ended up with chores too, and many of mine were the simple ones that the little kids do because Mom wasn’t sure I knew enough about the way the Greater World works to do stuff like cook dinner on a real stove. (I didn’t, not when I moved in. Lise, Anna, Eric, and Mom are teaching me now, along with Ingrid.)

I step inside. It’s hot, like it always is in the kitchen, and Beauregard, the gigantic brown dog, gets up from his bed next to the stove and runs toward me. I’ve never liked dogs much, but Beauregard and I have come to an understanding.

Mostly, I have to understand that he loves me, and will shove his cold nose in my crotch as a greeting whenever he sees me.

His tail wags, and I deflect the nose, and as I do, Ivan steps into the kitchen from the refrigerator room, clutching a gigantic package of hamburger. It’s almost as long as his forearm.

“Hey,” he says, which is his way of saying hello. Ivan is shorter than me. (He’s also shorter than Ingrid, and that makes him mad). He has hair as blond as mine, and it always needs a trim except for a few strands near his crown that stick straight up. They look like a little hand waving hello.

My eye always goes to those strands first, and then to the birthmark along his left nostril that can, in the right light, look unfortunately like a booger that’s been unattended for much too long.

“How’d it go?” he asks.

Everyone in the family knows about my job interview. It became this big production:

•Help Brit figure out what jobs to apply for

•Help Brit fill out applications on paper

•Help Brit fill out applications online

•Help Brit manage her expectations

•Help Brit prepare for her first interview

•Help Brit dress for her first interview

•Help Brit cope with the idea that she might never get a job, despite all that work

I felt like a dumb little kid who couldn’t do anything, and that feeling comes back up now. I’m about to tell Ivan, in a rather gloating tone, that I got the job, when Eric barrels into the door behind me, nearly making me stumble.

“Brit’s going to talk to everyone at dinner,” Eric says, glaring at me.

He doesn’t want me to dole this information out to one person at a time. He believes that in the Johnson Family, no one should ever tell one person something because “gossip can spread like wildfire since the family’s so big.”

He has no idea what a big family really is, and he doesn’t know anything about gossip. Gossip about my family (Okay, my dad’s family) has turned into myth and legend and just straight-up lies.

Plus, most of those stories leave out how painful gossip can be. Sometimes the gossip’s painful because you’re the center of it, and sometimes the gossip’s painful because you’re not being discussed at all.

Ivan sets the hamburger on the counter, and Beauregard ambles over there. He can almost put his nose on the countertop, so Ivan has to fight him off.

There’s a super large pot on the stove. The burner beneath it is glowing red, and as Ivan stirs that, the smell of olive oil and garlic rises. Anna comes into the kitchen from the basement door and she’s carrying a gigantic unopened package of brown sugar, a bottle of Worcestershire sauce, and one of the super-size bottles of Heinz Ketchup.

Anna’s as tall as I am and thinner. She has an angular face and sky blue eyes. She wears her wheat-blonde hair feathered, but that’s the only difference between us. It’s so obvious that we’re sisters, it seems like we should be as close as me and Tiff and Crystal.

But we only just met a few months ago, and every time I see Anna’s face, I feel like I’ve been magicked to a place filled with strange mirrors because I’ve never been in a place where everyone looks like me. Usually I’m the person who stands out, rather than the one who blends in.

“Brit!” she says as if she hasn’t seen me for days. “How’d it go?”

“I just asked her.” Ivan has his back to me as he does something on the counter. “But Eric says she can’t say until dinner.”

“Hey, you can’t do that.” Anna piles everything she carried on the table. For a minute, I think she’s talking to me, but she’s not. She goes to the counter and takes a huge serrated knife out of Ivan’s hands. “I said you could help if you didn’t touch the knives.”

Ivan is knife-crazy. And sword-crazy. And blade-crazy. He loves online gaming, and thinks someday he can be a superhero/warrior if he just learns the tools of the trade.

Which means he wants sword-fighting lessons. Mom says he can take fencing next summer as his summer class, but I have no idea why she tries to placate him by telling him he can build a fence when he really wants to learn how to swing a broadsword.

“You need help?” Eric says to Anna, using a tone that clearly states he’ll help her if there’s trouble, but he won’t help for any other reason.

“No, go read about integers or whatever you do.” Anna shoves Ivan to one side. “I told you get the burger. I didn’t say you could cut up the onions and green peppers. For one thing, you have to peel the onion first.”

They’re busy, and Eric has already left the room.

If you can call the kitchen a room. It took me a long time to do that. Because the kitchen doesn’t have a lot of walls, or maybe it has too many, only they’re not really walls, they’re more like strips of wall that might someday grow up to be pillars.

The kitchen was once closed in, or at least that’s what Eric says. Karl got “a bee up his butt” (Eric again) and decided to make the kitchen “open concept” but never really finished. So Karl took out the walls that didn’t carry the weight of the second story, making sure that the parts that remained could handle the weight so the house wouldn’t collapse in on itself.

Now the kitchen has more entrances than solid walls. I just came in the back door, which, as far as I can tell, was always in that spot. The basement door (which closes) is kitty-corner from the back door, and directly across from the back door is the missing wall/hallway that leads to the dining room.

The entrance to my left opens to the refrigerator room, because Mom got some kind of coupon or prize or something and won this stainless steel restaurant-size refrigerator with matching freezer, and of course none of that fits into the real kitchen. But the refrigerator does let the food stay organized. (The little labels that Mom glued to the shelves [like Milk only!] help.)

There’s a second freezer in there for the deer meat from hunting season, and a third freezer for the fish that some family members catch on weekends, and behind all of it is a door that I can’t touch, built into the wall, and locked with a combination padlock and one of those touch security locks. That’s the gun cabinet, which I’ve only seen inside of once. Filled with long guns (rifles?) and two smaller guns on a shelf.

Karl won’t let anyone who’s not certified near the gun cabinet, and he changes the combinations every three days, only telling the trusted three (Mom, Lise, and Anna—the only ones qualified) what the combination actually is.

When you stand, like I am, right in front of the back door, you face the table and the stove, where some cabinets remain. The sink is to the right, and it’s a huge sink. (They call it a “farm sink,” for reasons I’ll never understand.) Next to the basement door is another door that leads to the garage. (You have to go down some steps to get there.)

If I come in the house through the back door, it always takes me a minute to get my bearings. When I first moved in, I’d always take the wrong door, usually ending up in the refrigerator room, facing the gun cabinet. Everyone thought I was obsessed with the guns, when really, I was just lost.

The smell of sweet onions hits me, and I blink. Anna is scraping a cutting board into the gigantic pot. I see onions and green peppers.

Ivan grins at me as he grabs the brown sugar off the table. “Sloppy Joes,” he says happily. It’s his favorite meal and he asks for it all the time, so apparently, Mom decided he needs to learn how to cook it.

I nod. I know Ivan. He’s going to ask more questions about my job interview.

“Where are the buns?” I ask before he can open his mouth again.

“Oh, dang!” he says.

“Ivan,” Anna says, sounding just like Mom. “Language.”

“Sorry.” He heads to dry storage, which is a cabinet near the double doors to the basement and garage.

I use that moment to make my escape.

Only Beauregard notices. He watches and whines just a little. I get a sense he would follow me if he could.

The animals in the household—and there are always a bunch of animals—love me. I have no idea why. If I didn’t keep my door closed, they’d join me on the bed, like they did when I first moved in. In fact, the animals were one reason why I got my own space in the first place. (It’s not fair to call what I have a “room.”)

I head there now. I walk into the dining room, past the faded redwood picnic table that serves as the formal dining table, and go into the living room, which is huge and sprawling and filled with traps for the feet like ottomans that move depending on who is sitting where, and old toy cars or toy trains or dolls on the floor next to super balls or fake mice for the cats or chew toys for the dogs.

A flight of stairs blocks the view of the front door. Once upon a time, the stairs were on a wall near the front door, but like other walls in this place, that wall got moved.

It took me forever to find my way around this place, and I still can’t do it in the dark.

Fortunately, my sleeping area is down the main hallway—the original main hallway—which dead-ends into one of the house’s three full bathrooms. My sleeping area was the linen closet until last month. Now it’s been converted to a “bedroom,” which is just big enough to squeeze in a twin bed. And when I say squeeze, I mean squeeze. The bed was shoved against the back wall, and it touches the side wall. Karl had to adjust the sliding doors just a little so they’d still work, but when I lay in bed, I’m surrounded on three sides by something solid.

There’s a little room at the end of the bed. Karl shoved a dresser there so I could keep my underwear private. Above the dresser, he left a hanger, so I can sort-of hang up my clothes. The dresses pool on top of the dresser. I could switch them so that they hang in front of the dresser, but then I wouldn’t have any space at all.

I have to sit on the foot of the bed and lean forward to open the dresser drawers. Making the bed (or taking the sheets off) make me wish I had magic still. (Okay, most things make me wish I had magic still, but this really does.) I have to make the bottom part of the bed from the hallway, then climb on the bottom part, straddle the bed, and pull the sheets up—oh, never mind. It’s hard, it’s complicated, and the sheets never really stay in place. Plus, the closet gets hot some nights, so I have to leave the doors open.

The doors are really the sliding doors from the original closet. They’re thin, made of some kind of fake wood, and don’t block any sound at all. So if someone walks down the hall in the middle of the night and needs the restroom, well, I get the full benefit of the creaks and moans of the floor, the opening and closing of the bathroom door, the sound of running water, not to mention the sound of everything else.

Karl has promised me a better room by spring, but I have no idea what that means. I’m just glad I have a little bit of privacy. I know Anna and Lise are glad I no longer share their room. I suspect they asked Karl to come up with something because (I’ll be honest) I was probably hard to sleep near. I did cry myself to sleep that entire first week and part of the second (even after the drama queen comment).

Now, I slide back the door to my room and sit on the edge of the bed. Even though the bedroom is ridiculous, it’s mine, and I’m glad for it. I don’t close the door because I’m not going to stay here long.

I pull off my right shoe, but I don’t look at the injured foot. Not yet. I try to pull off the left shoe but I have to twist it a little. It’s really embedded into my skin. Finally, the shoe comes off with a loud Pop! I half expect someone magical to show up after that sound, but no, it’s just me, the shoe-pressure, and the silly closet without shelves.

My left foot feels like it’s being stabbed with a thousand knives. I wiggle my toes, then flex them. I can see the movement, but I can’t really feel it. And through the panty hose, I can see deep red indents in the skin. I’m never wearing those heels again for any reason.

Then I look at my right foot. It’s scraped. It’s turning black and blue near the ankle. I’ve learned, after three months with the Johnson Family that you have to take care of scrapes right away or you get some kind of infection.

The difference between here and home is that if you don’t take care of an infection right away, you can’t magic it away. You need some little pills that Mom calls “horse pills” and Karl says cost a fortune, and if I’ve learned anything about the Johnson Family, it’s that they don’t have a fortune. They “make do.”

I grab a pair of jeans and a heavy sweatshirt, and yank the one and only towel I get for the whole week off the hanger where it’s drying from this morning, and head to the bathroom. Fortunately no one is there.

I’ve learned the art of the fast shower and an even faster change of clothes. Three bathrooms, nine kids, two adults means hogging any bathroom facility can lead to major fights and even more major crises.

The bathroom is barely big enough for me, the toilet, the pedestal sink, and the bathtub shower combination. I set my clothes on top of the shelf holding a few more towels (take them at your own peril) and start the shower.

Then I take a deep breath. Tears prickle again.

I have no idea what I’m doing. I have no idea why I’m here.

I wasn’t lying to Eric; I’m terrified of this new job.

I’m terrified of everything in this place.

And I don’t know how much longer I can keep myself together.

FIVE

DINNER AT THE Johnson Family Manse is one of the few times I feel at home. A crowd, sitting at a giant table, passing food around and laughing. The loud conversation, the fights, the spilled water, the dropped silverware clattering on the floor, the dogs circling, the cats sitting on the benches as if expecting to be fed—all feels like Mount Olympus to me. Whenever my dad’s family got together there, mostly in the summer, we divided up by table and it often got out of control.

Here, we have assigned seats. We go clockwise by age order. Mom sits at the head of the table. Eric sits to her right, followed by Lise, me, and Anna. Karl sits at the foot of the table and tries to keep the dogs under control. (Sometimes he leads a dog outside by its collar, and the dog whimpers the whole way. It knows it’ll be banished from dinner for days if that happens.)

The little kids sit on the other side of the table. Leif sits next to Karl, then Ivan, Ingrid, Hans, and Hilde. Mom mostly deals with Hilde, who is four and so blonde it hurts. She looks like I did at that age. In fact, all of the girls except Lise look like me at various ages. It’s really clear they’re Mom’s daughters.

Hans is six and thinks he’s much older than Hilde. He tries to keep her in line, and she won’t have it. Not a dinner goes by without a Hans and Hilde fight, usually broken up by Mom, with her patented do I have to make you leave the table? glare.

Tonight, they’re all focused on the food. Sloppy Joes aren’t just Ivan’s favorite. The entire other side of the table thinks Sloppy Joes are a nectar of the gods. Maybe it’s because we get to dish up our food in the kitchen. Or maybe it’s because the little kids get a meal the same size as everyone else’s (usually, they get kids’ portions).

On the table, full plastic water pitchers with gigantic white lids glisten with humidity. Yellow plastic bowls filled with plain potato chips sit on either side. Green plastic bowls with a mixed salad sit next to the potato chips.

There are food rules here: no chips without salad, but you can have salad without chips. Or you can just have the Sloppy Joe, making the hard rolls that Mom indulges in all soggy.

I eat my Sloppy Joe with a knife and fork and endure all the teasing. But I hate having hot burger and sauce slide down my arm, and I’ve ruined more than one shirt trying to get the stain out of the sleeves from tomato sauce. (We do our own laundry here, and I still haven’t gotten the swing of that.)

I ignore the standard teasing because I can actually predict how it’s going to go. I grin at it though, because it makes me feel welcome. I’m thinking we might make it through dinner without me having to talk at all.

Then Eric raises his right hand, the family sign for quiet.

“Brit has an announcement,” he says.

I sigh and glare at him.

Mom says, “It’s all right, Brit honey. You don’t have to tell us what happened today if you don’t want.”

“Yes, she does,” Eric says with a little too much passion. “Brit?”

I haven’t felt this on the spot since I moved here three months ago and had to introduce myself at the dinner table. That was fun. Not.

I take a deep breath and nearly choke on a potato chip I’d swallowed just a moment earlier. I grab the white plastic tumbler in front of me and take a sip of the ice-cold water.

Everything at the dining table in the Johnson Family Manse is made of plastic—old plastic. So old that a sip of water tastes like plastic that needs another wash (even when the glass is clean).

The entire family watches my every move. I swallow and the chip stops tickling my throat. Eric has leaned forward so that he can see me around Lise. When my gaze meets his, he tilts his head slightly, as if to say, Well?

I make myself smile. “I got the job,” I say.

Everyone starts to talk at once. Congratulations, Way to go, Brit! combined with Wow, you’re kidding me, right? and a ton of other sentences that I missed in the confusion.

Mom adds her congratulations, but her eyes have narrowed. I look just like her too—only instead of a flashback to what I used to look like, she’s what I will look like some day.

She’s thin (which Hera would call amazing, considering that Mom has given birth to seven children). Her wheat-blonde hair has some strands of silver mixed with a few strands of brown. Her mouth is thin and pale pink, which matches her cheeks. She never wears makeup.

She doesn’t need any. She’s stunning. Maybe the most stunning person of all of the mothers—or at least of the mothers of me, Tiff, and Crystal.

Mom’s eyes are a very deep blue, almost electric blue. They startle when you look at them. Karl says he would call them Paul Newman blue, only that makes her sound like a man, and she’s anything but manly. I know what he means, though, because of all the old movies I watched with Tiff and Crystal when we were trapped in that magical library. Paul Newman had the most amazing eyes; you could get lost in them—and that was through a movie screen.

I have no idea how they would have looked in person. Maybe like Mom’s. When she’s being intense. Like now.

Lise asks me how I got the job, and I tell her the entire story. My side of the table laughs when I mention my confusion about illegal aliens, and Ivan, know-it-all that he can be, says that’s an impolite way of referring to people who have entered this country without the proper documentation.

Mom compliments him on his diplomacy, Anna asks me a few more questions, and then my successful job hunt gets forgotten.

We listen to Hilde’s attempt at reporting on her day in preschool, Hans’s discussion of his first grade teacher, and the first gym class that Ingrid was allowed to participate in since she broke her ankle. Mine throbs in sympathy.

None of us can leave until the last person finishes. Usually that’s Hilde and that’s under protest, but she loves Sloppy Joes, even though she ends up wearing most of her meal, so tonight we waited on Leif, who got seconds.

When he finished, we lined up to take our dishes into the kitchen to scrape and rinse. I’m not on cleanup duty tonight, so I can try to make sense of my Biology homework.

But Mom slips her arm around my back.

“Come with me,” she says.

She leads me to the coat closet, pulls out a parka, and then grabs her regular jacket. She takes me out the back door.

It’s even colder than it was earlier, and the wind howls. Leaves swirl across the yard. The yard light illuminates the parking areas, but the rest of the yard is slowly disappearing into darkness.

Mom’s taking me to the part of the yard she calls “The Office.” I know this because I’ve gone to The Office before. It’s the only private place in the entire house. (Or, rather, out of the house.) No one can listen in, and no one can read lips or spy on body language.

The Office is a second patio on its own concrete slab halfway down the yard. The regular patio has several round tables (that had giant umbrellas shading them until school started, when the umbrellas came down), a huge grill that uses some kind of fuel that’s not wood, and another big cabinet for grill supplies.

The Office has a picnic table like the one in the dining room, only older (I think). But The Office is on the edge of that hollow right near the “stream.”

It’s not as dark down there as you’d expect. The light from the back of the garage hits that part of the hollow like a spotlight—again, only visible to the people who are at the picnic table. I sit down with my back to the house. I’m freezing, but at least the parka protects my butt from the picnic table bench. The first time Mom brought me down here, I got splinters on the backs of my thighs.

“What’s bothering you?” she asks as she sits down.

I shrug. Everything. Nothing. I don’t want to ask if she’s talked to Eric, because I don’t want to know that he betrayed my confidence.

“You smiled very beautifully, Brit,” Mom says, “but your eyes seem sad.”

I shrug again. Mom needs me to get a job, so I’m getting a job, and I’m not going to go all drama-queen on her and complain about something the other kids do as a matter of course.

“Am I pushing you too hard?” Mom asks. “I know that a job is a big step.”

“I’m going to be fine,” I say, and hope it doesn’t sound like the really big lie that it is.

She stares at me, as if she can pull the words out of me. “You’d tell me if something’s wrong, right?” she asks. “Because you don’t have to take this job.”

“I do, though,” I say. “We need the money.”

Her lips tighten. I’m beginning to recognize that look. It’s as if she’s holding back her first reaction so that she can remember to be nice.

“We don’t need money that much,” she says, taking my hand. Her fingers are warm. Mine feel like they’re slowly turning to ice. “We can make do, Brit. I told you that I didn’t expect anyone to hire you so soon. We’re prepared for that.”

“But Mrs. Larson did,” I say. “She likes me, and she thinks I’ll bring in customers.”

Mom frowns. “Why does she think that? You don’t know anyone here.”

A flush warms my face. “Because she says I’m pretty. She says I look just like you in high school. She says pretty brings in—”

Mom makes a sound of disgust. “She wants to display you. You call first thing tomorrow and decline.”

“I already told her that I’d take the job,” I say.

Mom’s lips get even thinner, something I didn’t think possible. “Well,” she says, “you’ll just have to apologize.”

The Sloppy Joes sit heavily in my stomach.

“I’m confused,” I say, and I’m not lying. It seems like with each passing moment, I get more and more confused. “I can get out of a promise by apologizing? Because a job seems like a big deal around here, and Lise says they’re hard to come by, and Mrs. Larson had me fill out paperwork and stuff.”

“Brit,” Mom says, “sometimes, it’s better to decline a job than to take it.”

If only we’d been able to do that with the Fates’ job. I wouldn’t even be here.

“Aren’t I kind of lying, though, by saying that I want the job when I apply and fill out all the paperwork and then saying the next day that I don’t want it?” I ask.

“I’ll take care of it,” Mom snaps. “I’ve known Mrs. Larson forever and she’ll understand—”

“That I’m fragile? You told her to let me interview. I appreciate that.” I want to slide my hand back, but I don’t. “You didn’t think she’d hire me.”

“You have no experience,” Mom says. “Of course, I didn’t think she’d hire you.”

“But she says most people who start in retail have no experience, and she likes me.” I surprise myself by putting emphasis on that last part. It matters more to me than I thought it would. “I know I get into these situations where I get hired even with no experience, but I’ve been thinking about it.” After talking to Eric, that is, but I don’t tell Mom that part. “It doesn’t sound like working in a retail store will be life or death. I mean, the fate of the world isn’t at stake this time, right?”

Mom chokes out a laugh, then she shakes her head. “My goodness, Brit. You are a treasure.”

I freeze—and not just because it’s cold out here. I’ve watched TV where they say that people use phrases like “you’re a treasure” to convey sarcasm, not love.

“I don’t mean to be,” I say.

She chuckles. This time it sounds freer. “Baby,” she says, “I meant that as a compliment. I didn’t think you wanted the job.”

I take a deep breath. “You talked to Eric.”

“No,” Mom says. “Why? What would he say?”

“Nothing.” I shrug. “He just—never mind.”

She stares at me for a moment. When I don’t go on, she says, “I know we’re forcing you into all kinds of things that you’ve never experienced before. I know everything is new. A job, on top of school, on top of dealing with the family, it might be too much.”

“But applying for jobs isn’t?” I almost feel like I did as an Interim Fate. People want something from me, but they’re not clear about what exactly they want, so I feel like I’m making decisions without having all of the facts.

Screw that. Without having any of the facts.

Mom squeezes my hand, then lets go. She sighs and looks up at the house.

I don’t. I kinda like staring at the edges of the hollow, the shadows building across the lawn, the dark shapes of the trees against the darkening sky. The air smells wet and cold, something I’ve never smelled in my life before.

“You were raised by so many people,” Mom says. “The lifestyle, the culture, it’s so different.”

“Tell me about it,” I say.

She grins at me. “I know you know. You’ve been dealing with that since you arrived.”

No kidding. But I don’t say anything. She’s going somewhere with this.

“When you’re two parents raising a gaggle of kids, you have to balance the needs of the family against the needs of the individuals,” she says.

“Like Spock,” I say. I know my Star Trek (which shocked Leif, who’s this major fan). “ ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.’”

“‘Or the one,’” Mom says, then nods. “I think I’ve seen that movie thirty thousand times.”

She has to be exaggerating, because time is linear here, and she would have wasted sixty thousand hours on one movie. That’s over six years. I don’t think Leif is that fanatical. But then, what do I know?

I don’t say that, though, because saying things like that has already shoved me into an advanced math class that seems both too easy and too hard.

I wait for her to continue. She sighs again.

“What I’m trying to say, honey, is that sometimes I do things because the other kids expect it. They’ve all been raised with several expectations. We tell them that they have to go to college, although I’m not sure how we’ll manage that.” She looks down, then shakes her head. “Sorry. Just thinking out loud. Anyway, they’ve also been told that by the time they’re sixteen, they must have a part-time job.”

“Oh,” I say. “That’s why you sent me to get a job.”

“I didn’t think you’d get one right away,” Mom says. “I thought you would be trying and trying, and everyone would know that, and they’d forgive you for not getting one because you’re new here. The fact that you have one is, quite frankly, a surprise.”

“But, shouldn’t I keep it? If everyone’s expected to have one, wouldn’t they wonder why I can get out of mine?”

Mom looks at me. The light from the garage makes her pale skin seem even paler. Her eyes look a little washed-out too.

“I just worry about you,” she says. “I know we’re throwing a lot at you, and you’re handling it really well, but it has to be hard.”

I shrug. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” she says. “I know you miss your sisters.”

I nod.

“And I know everything seems strange here. You can talk to me, you know.” She squeezes my hand again. I have no idea how her fingers are staying warm when mine are about to freeze off.

“I’m all right,” I say, which is what I always say when she offers to talk to me. I don’t know what I’d say to her. That I’m glad I’m here? I kinda am, but I’m kinda not. I like seeing Mom in her native environment, and meeting my half siblings is cool, but this town is so strange, and school is hard, and now this job….

“Do you want to quit the job?” Mom asks.

“I haven’t even tried it yet,” I say.

“It’s okay if you do,” she says.

“No,” I say, firmer than I expected. “It’s not. I gotta try, right? I mean, otherwise, I’m just a quitter.”

She frowns at me. “Where did you learn that word?”

I’m not going to lie to her. “Ivan.”

“Because you won’t play video games with him?”

I nod.

“Good for you,” she says. “Life is too short.”

Then she frowns even deeper. She knows that life isn’t too short for me. And it probably isn’t for her either. My dad usually doesn’t get involved with mere mortals. He can tell when someone’s going to come into magic one day. Mom will have magic. She just doesn’t want to deal with that yet.

“If the job turns out to be too hard for you or if you can’t keep up in school or if it’s all too overwhelming, you’ll tell me, right?”

“Yes,” I lie. Because what else can I do? I’m already overwhelmed. “I absolutely will.”

SIX

DESPITE BEING CRAMMED into my little closet, the next morning I wake up cold. Shivering, in fact. I put on my robe and slippers and manage to get into the bathroom just after someone steamed it up. Then, instead of taking my shower, I head to the kitchen to see if someone can turn up the heat.

As I walk into the living room, a weird white and gray light coats everything. I look out the windows. White blankets the yard and clings to the trees.

My breath catches.

That has to be snow.

I’ve never seen snow before. It’s dripping out of the sky, even as I look. Big thick flakes of white, like bread plates.

The house is cold and we’re going to get snowed in and even though we have a lot of food, there are eleven of us, and some are boys, and they eat too much, and that doesn’t count the dogs and the cats and—

Something bangs in the kitchen. I’m not the only one up.

I make myself look away from the windows and head into the dining room. Some Fruit Loops sit in drops of milk on the placemat in front of Hilde’s spot. The dogs haven’t gotten to that yet, but one of the cats—a sleek little black and white named Pixie—is standing on the bench, licking something off the placemat beside Hilde’s.

Pixie doesn’t even look up as I go by. I’m supposed to yell at the animals when they get on the table, but technically, she’s not on the table; she’s on the bench.

I slip into the kitchen. Leif is scrambling eggs. Ingrid sits at the kitchen table, a book open beside her spot. Ivan is making toast. The smell of eggs makes my stomach growl.

“Hey, Brit,” Leif says. He’s just starting to hit his full growth. His shoulders seem to have gotten broader since I arrived. He has the same wheat-blond hair as the rest of Mom’s children, but his face is square like Karl’s. “I’ll make bacon if you want. These two dweebles don’t like bacon or so they say.”

Everything seems normal. How can it be normal? We’re in the middle of a blizzard.

Ingrid looks up from her book. She seems calm.

Her voice comes to me clearly, as if she has just spoken: So what’s it like to be a drama queen?

Am I being a drama queen now? Megan says I need to take my cues from everyone around me. And they’re all acting like nothing’s going on.

I swallow. I’m going to try to sound normal too.

“They liked bacon last week,” I say. My voice doesn’t sound terrified. It doesn’t sound normal either.

I clear my throat.

Ingrid’s eyes narrow. “What’s going on with you? You never show up for breakfast in your robe.”

For an eight-year-old, she’s pretty observant. Dang it.

“It’s…snowing,” I say.

“Yeah, so?” Ingrid says.

“Isn’t it…?” I’m not sure if I should say something about a blizzard. Maybe they’re used to blizzards. The whole family calls this the Frozen Northland after all, and they warned me about the winters.

“Early? Yeah, October seems early, but it’s not.” Mom’s standing in the dining room doorway, holding Pixie. Pixie’s squirming. She wants to get down and get back to her snacks. “Who let Hilde leave such a mess on the table?”

“She’s done?” Ivan says. “She said she’d call me when she’s done.”

“She didn’t bring her bowl in here,” Leif says. He waves the spatula at me. “Bacon or not? Last call.”

“Bacon,” Mom says. “I’ll make coffee. And you, Ivan, will find out what Hilde has done with her bowl.”

“Why me?” he wails.

“Because you’re the one she said she’d tell when she was done.”

“Jeez,” he says. “Then Ingrid has to watch the toast.”

“No prob,” Ingrid says, still looking at me.

Ivan stomps toward Mom.

“And clean up that mess in there, would you please?” she asks.

“Why?” Ivan says. “I’m looking for Hilde.”

“Because your language has gotten foul,” Mom says.

I think back. I didn’t hear foul. Then I remember the jeez. Karl says it’s a short version of Jesus, which means taking the Lord’s name in vain. I always want to ask why is Jesus such a big deal, but Megan told me after my first week here that I had to respect the whole family’s religious beliefs, even if they’re unfamiliar to me.

“Jeez,” Ivan says, softer, as he passes me. I’m not sure Mom heard that.

“You’re pushing it, Ivan,” Mom says. Ivan glares at her, but he goes into the dining room.

She sets Pixie down, and Pixie runs back into the dining room. Clearly, Pixie is Ivan’s problem now.

Mom looks at me. “We get snow in October sometimes. You’ll have to wear something warm today.”

No kidding, I think, but don’t say. I nod instead. They gave me hand-me-down sweaters and stuff when I arrived. I wore one about a month ago, and everyone laughed—not because the sweater looked bad, but because (as Lise said) if I started wearing sweaters when it was in the fifties outside, I’d freeze my butt off when it got really, really cold.

Leif puts the bacon in a pan, and it sizzles to life.

“How much is it going to snow?” I ask. “I mean, are we…?”

I don’t dare finish that question. Because no one said anything about being snowed in.

And then I decide, screw it. Maybe they’re used to this stuff, but I’m not. “I mean, is this one of those…bli…um, snow storms you all told me about?”

“Were you about to say ‘blizzard’?” Ingrid asks. “Really? You don’t know what a blizzard is? Mom, is she that dumb—”

“Ingrid, enough,” Mom snaps. “You’re being rude.”

Ingrid flushes and sits back. Even I know that “rude” is a cardinal sin around here.

The smell of frying bacon makes my stomach growl. Leif dishes out the eggs, putting them in a gigantic serving bowl. The toast pops up as he does that, and Ingrid gets up to butter it, like she promised, probably happy for the distraction.

“This is just the first snow of the season,” Mom says to me. “It’s not a blizzard, but it is inconvenient, especially since Eric didn’t listen to me and put snow tires on his car.”

“I’ll be all right.” Eric’s voice floats into the room from behind Mom. He’s carrying the placemats from the table, and they’re dripping. He doesn’t seem to notice, but two cats, Pixie and the orange cat (named, conveniently, Orange), follow slowly, licking the floor behind him.

“You will not,” Mom says. She turns and surveys the mess he’s making. “Get that to the sink and clean up the floor.”

Eric looks down and rolls his eyes. He’s wearing skinny black jeans, a red-and-black plaid shirt, and a black t-shirt underneath, as if it’s not cold at all.

“Mom, I can drive—”

“One of the conditions of car privileges,” Mom says in her do-not-mess-with-me voice, “is that snow tires go on the car on the first day of October.”

“I couldn’t afford any,” Eric says. “I told you.”

“And I told you that you can’t drive without them,” Mom says. “Ergo, I’m driving everyone to school this morning.”

Leif puts the eggs on the table, and Ingrid puts the buttered toast there. Beauregard appears from nowhere and rests his head next to Ingrid’s book. She shoos him away.

No one seems freaked out by Mom’s announcement, but I am. This is the first time she’s driven us to school since my first day at school over a month ago.

“So,” she says, looking directly at me, “eat up, and get dressed, because the bus’s leaving in forty-five minutes.”

“B-Bus?” I ask.

“She means the van,” Eric says, setting the placemats beside the sink. “And you better hurry, since I saw Anna heading for the upstairs bathroom.”

Anna and Lise take the longest in the morning, and I hadn’t seen Lise anywhere. I grab a plate, serve myself some eggs and two pieces of toast just as Leif puts bacon on the table.

Mom takes a piece, and shakes it at Leif. “Thank you,” she says, then grins. “Some days it pays to have children.”

Then she leaves the room.

I eat standing up. I don’t want to fight off the dogs, and Pixie and Orange, who are now circling me and crying. Besides, I have to get back to the bathroom before there’s a line.

“Did you really think we’re having a blizzard?” Ingrid asks.

“Leave her alone.” Eric’s washing off the placemats.

“It’s just so weird,” Ingrid says.

“No,” Leif says. “You’re weird. Brit just moved here from someplace that never has snow, right, Brit?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Boy, are you in for it,” Ingrid says to me.

I frown. “In for what?”

“An education,” Eric says. “Snow’s pretty, but now we hit the danger season.”

“Says the kid who didn’t get snow tires,” Leif says as he sits down.

“It’s just a dusting,” Eric says.

I look out the window to the backyard. It’s covered in white. That’s a dusting? That means it could get so much worse, and I have no idea how.

I guess I’ll find out as the winter progresses.

I have no idea why I’m the one who got stuck in the Frozen Northland, but I did. And I was already wondering how I was going to make it through a day.

Snow seems like one more straw, something that’s almost impossible to cope with. And I haven’t even stepped outside yet.

I square my shoulders.

I’ll get through this. I have to.

I have no other choice.

SEVEN

SNOW IS WET and gloppy, like really cold, mushy rain. I pull the hood up on the hand-me-down puffy coat I got from Lise, but too late. My hair is coated with the icy goo, and I’m even colder than I was when we left the house.

Mom’s van fits seven. Eric sits in the very back, arms crossed, looking sullen. Mom took his keys away.

She pulls up in the parking lot near the natatorium. The high school is strangely shaped. It has a ring where most of the classes are held. Between the ring and the natatorium, where the pool is, there’s a huge auditorium that they use for music and plays and stuff.

Mom says I’m really lucky to be here, because Superior pays attention to its schools. Even though Superior is a relatively poor community (especially compared to Duluth, across the lake in Minnesota), the entire community makes a point of getting the best education possible for the kids. Apparently, the adults search for grants and special funding and provide all kinds of extra-curricular activities that schools in big cities don’t even have.

I asked Tiff about her school on the West Coast, and it doesn’t have half the stuff we have at Senior High. Crystal goes to some expensive private school in New York, and it has the same kind of stuff, except some of sports, which are (her word) for “plebes,” whatever that means.

Mom takes the three of us going to the high school first, because our school is closest to the house. She’ll drive to the elementary school next, and end with the middle school. She calls this carpooling, even though I have no idea why.

She drops us off near what I think of as the back door. It’s not, really, because it’s right in front of the natatorium. There’s a big open area when you walk in, but this entire part of the school smells like chlorine from the pool.

When I first came and found out there was a pool, I asked if I could use it. Mom’s been apologizing ever since because she had no idea that I’m part fish. I love to swim, and we missed the deadline to get me on the swim team, although I could join the synchronized swim team if I wanted to. I don’t want to. It looks totally lame to me.

Still, I love the smell of chlorine, even though I know it’ll mess with my hair. I’ve mostly gone swimming in lakes and rivers and natural settings, which, my gym teacher says, makes me a stronger swimmer than people who just learn in pools. But I have grown fond of the pool since I’ve been here. I go swimming here sometimes on open swim weekends, and I just love it.

Lots of kids have shown up. They’re all chattering and carrying books and goofing around. They all seem wider awake than I am, and they all seem completely unconcerned by the snow.

I snuggle into my coat and walk past the wall of windows to the core of the building. My locker is here, away from everything. Eric told me I should get a better locker because I have to walk such a long distance to it, but I figured then (and I still think) that I shouldn’t call attention to myself.

I pull off my coat and get instantly cold. I’m wearing a pink cable-knit sweater—a fisherman’s sweater, Lise called it when she gave it to me—and my thickest pair of blue jeans. I’m also wearing boots that Eric once called “shit-kickers” when Mom and Karl weren’t around.

The boots at least are keeping my feet warm.

I hang my coat on a hook inside my locker. The coat sticks out because it’s so bulky. That’s new. I grab my drama textbook off the top shelf, along with an extra notebook and some pens. Then I shove the coat really hard into the locker and slam the door closed.

The door bounces open and I feel totally stupid. I shove the coat in harder, and it expands like it fills with air.

Five boys whose names I don’t know are staring at me. My face heats up. I know I look terrible, with my half-wet hair and bright red skin. I shove the coat inside the locker, and the door still won’t close. I’m tempted to kick that damn door and see if it dents. In fact, I want to kick the door and turn those kids into stone or something. If I still had my magic, they’d understand how terrible it is just to stare at someone.

Then I take a deep breath.

I’m sure Megan would say this is why most kids don’t get their magic until they’re grown. Men get their magic around age twenty-one, but women have to wait until they’re past the age of having babies. I think that’s stupid, especially now that my magic is gone and I’m going to have to wait decades to get it back.

When I do, I’ll snap my fingers at anyone who stares at me and make their stupid eyes bug out of their stupid heads.

The locker door bounces open again. I close my eyes. I can’t just leave it unlocked. I don’t have a backpack and my stupid denim purse only carries a few books at a time. If we lose the books, we have to pay for them.

“Here, let me.” One of the boys who was watching has come up beside me. He’s taller than I am, but just as blond. He’s not in my grade, and I don’t know his name, but I do know he’s on the basketball team because Lise told me (in a whisper one day, like it was important).

He smells of soap and he’s standing just a little too close to me. He pushes the coat inside the locker and makes sure that the edges of the coat brush against the interior edges of the door. Now the coat can’t expand outward.

Then he closes the door quietly, grabs the combination lock, and closes it.

“See?” he says. “Magic.”

Then he smiles.

My skin gets even warmer. Does he know about the magic? Is he making fun of me? Because if he is, and I don’t realize it, I’ll look even stupider than I already do.

“Thanks,” I whisper, because Mom says that be-nice covers every situation, even the situations where someone is trying to make a fool out of you.

He hasn’t moved away from me. His smile brightens though. He has lovely brown eyes—not that blue that seems natural to the Johnson Family—and a little bit of stubble on his chin.

“You’re welcome. You’re Lise Johnson’s sister, right? The one that grew up overseas?” His smile fades and now he just looks intense. “I’m Jake Krueger. I have AP English across the hall from your Modern World History Class.”

My flush travels down my face to my neck and into my chest. I must look like a giant blonde tomato.

He clearly expects me to say something.

I manage, “I’m…um…Brittany.”

I forget about the last name for a minute because I’ve never had one before, and Johnson doesn’t feel like me.

“And you’re Lise’s sister?” he asks.

“Stepsister,” I say, hating the word. That makes me sound like those idiots from the Disney movies, the ones that Cinderella’s Wicked Stepmother loves and no one else does. (I’ve heard that the stepsisters are actually nicer than the real Cinderella, but I heard that from Lachesis, one of the original Fates, and I’m not sure I can trust her.)

“That explains why you look different.” He’s still too close, but I’m pressed against the locker and can’t move away without being impolite.

Still, I slid toward the middle of the corridor. “Thank you for the help.”

“Looks like you needed it,” he says. “Sometimes there’s a trick to the simplest things.”

Don’t I know it. And I don’t know any of the tricks.

“What do you got now?” he asks.

It takes me a minute to realize he’s talking about classes.

“Drama,” I say.

He smiles. “I bet you’re good at it.”

I shrug. I don’t say anything in drama class. I just listen. I took it because the principal and Mom thought it would be both familiar and easy for me, since the other classes are so different from anything I had back home. (Except math. Thank you, Athena.)

“I’ll walk you there,” he says.

I don’t move. I’m not sure I like the attention. “What’s your first class?”

“Study hall,” he says. “Stupid way to start the day. And today, I have an excused absence because I’m trying out for the basketball team. Maybe this year, I’ll make varsity.”

I know that varsity is a big deal, although I don’t know why. Leif talks about varsity all the time. He plays a bunch of sports.

“I don’t want to keep you from it,” I say.

“You’re not,” he says. “First bell hasn’t even rung yet.”

Dang.

“Do I make you nervous?” he asks.

I shrug. “I’m just not used to talking to people here. Usually, no one notices me.”

“Oh, people notice you all right,” he says. “They just can’t get up the nerve to talk to you.”

He glances over his shoulder at the other boys, who are still standing down the hall. One of them gives him a thumbs up, which makes me even more uncomfortable.

“Did you win a bet or something?” I ask, maybe a little too pointedly.

“I just figured I could help you.” His smile no longer reaches his eyes, and he’s still a little too close.

“Well, thank you,” I say again. I step sideways to get away from him.

“I’ll walk—”

“I’m okay,” I say. “Really.”

I put my head down and head toward the drama room, walking faster than I usually do. That whole experience made me uncomfortable, and I’m not sure why.

It didn’t feel like he was interested in me. It felt like he (and those other boys) have been watching me and waiting for the right moment to talk to me.

And they only seemed interested because they saw me around, not because I said something witty or they thought I seemed smart in class.

I round a corner, and finally look over my shoulder. He hasn’t followed me, thank heavens. Or if he has, I can’t see him, because there are like two dozen kids crammed into the hallway.

I’ve been concentrating so hard on getting away from him, I hadn’t even noticed the other kids and the noise and the laughter and the slamming lockers.

I feel really weird because he was just being nice, but the nice felt wrong somehow. Like the nice was a cover for something else. Plus he stood too close, and Artemis always says you should protect your personal space. Although her solution—elbowing someone who is too close (or stabbing them with a knife that she says you should carry at all times)—is probably too extreme.

Besides, he was nice. And why should anyone complain about nice?

I’m beginning to think there’s a lot more to nice than I’ll ever figure out.

I duck into the bathroom closest to the drama room. I comb my hair, which doesn’t look as bad as I expected it would, and pinch my cheeks, trying to put some color in them. I don’t wear makeup because Mom doesn’t approve. I doubt I would anyway, because I don’t know how to put it on. I used to spell it on, and I used to use magic to pile my hair on top of my head too.

All those things were easy once, and now they’re so hard I can’t even figure out how to do them half the time.

After I finish, I glance out the door to see if Jake Krueger followed me. I’m not sure why he freaked me out so bad, but he did. I just can’t put words on it.

I don’t see him, and the number of kids in the hall is getting pretty sparse. So I head to the drama room.

It’s behind the theater, near the music room. There are two elective drama classes every year. One’s for the real theater kids. They have to audition to get in. The other’s a “lunch class,” which I didn’t understand until Anna explained it to me. A lunch class isn’t a class held over lunch; it’s an easy class—as easy, I guess, as eating lunch.

I’m in the lunch class version. I thought it would be lame, but I like it. I never raise my hand to read out loud or anything because my accent makes me sound weird and everyone looks at me. But I do my drama homework first because I love reading the plays.

My seat is to the back on the door-side of the room, so I can escape as fast as possible. When I first got here, I picked seats like that in all of my classes because I was afraid I’d get lost in this big weird building. But now that I know my way around, I use the extra time to find different routes to my classes. I’m still trying to learn this place, and learn things about the people here, and going different directions instead of on the same path helps.

I’m almost to my seat when Mrs. Schmidt, the drama coach, pulls me aside. She’s a thin, dark-haired woman who wears her black hair in a bun on the top of her head. Today, she’s wearing a black sweater over black pants and ballet slippers. I know if I look, I’ll see boots underneath her desk. She wears the ballet slippers most of the time, and they allow her to move quietly through any room.

She’s startled me more than once.

“Miss Johnson,” she says in her deep, musical voice. “A word.”

My shoulders tense. I have no idea what she’s going to say to me. I get my homework done and I answer questions when she calls on me. I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong, but as strange as this world is, I never really know.

She leads me to the room’s side door, which opens into backstage. She once said she wanted to hold classes there, but the administration wouldn’t allow it.

Backstage feels magical to me. It smells of dust and sweat and makeup. Mrs. Schmidt keeps a light on the stage, which filters back here. She calls the light a “ghost light” to protect the theater, even though it’s pretty new as theaters go, and I wouldn’t expect the theater to have ghosts.

So, I’m not sure what she’s protecting the theater from, because she also laughs at herself, saying the theater is full of superstitions that go back to the ancient Greeks. When she said that the last time, she looked directly at me, as if she knew that I know a bunch of ancient Greeks.

Only they don’t seem ancient to me.

She eases the door closed, but doesn’t shut it all the way. Then she leads me deeper into the wings, near the pull cords for the heavy velvet curtains.

“You know that we’ve entered into some theater competitions, right?” she asks.

I had heard that, but didn’t know what it meant. Like so many things I don’t understand, I just ignored it.

“I think so,” I say.

“Well,” she says, her voice echoing in the empty theater, “these competitions are practice for the State Drama Competition, which we participate in every spring. I want my kids to be used to performing onstage.”

I nod. I have no idea what this means for me. I thread my fingers together.

“I entered us into a small regional competition before I knew all the rules.” She rolls her eyes. “They are one of those silly contests that make everyone perform the same bit of a play and then judge based solely on interpretation. Honestly, Miss Johnson, had I known this before, I never would have signed us up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

She smiles at me. The smile seems fond. I have no idea why she would look at me so very fondly. “You don’t know why I object to that, do you?”

“No, ma’am, I’m sorry.” That phrase is almost rote to me. I have learned that it works in a lot of conversations, especially since I usually don’t know anything about anything.

She looks at the stage, as if someone is performing on it right now.

“Well,” she says, “not only is it dull for the judges, it doesn’t let individual school departments shine. Not all of us have the talent to perform certain kinds of plays.”

“Oh,” I say, as if I understand, which I don’t.

Apparently, she can tell, because her gaze meets mine. It seems like she’s assessing me. Maybe she is. I have no idea how I can tell.

“We have a choice,” she says, “between a scene from Henry the Fifth and a scene from Doctor Faustus, by Marlowe. Both are challenging.”

I nod, hoping that I look like I’m following the conversation.

“But this is early in the year, and all of my drama club students who can handle Marlowe or Shakespeare are male.” Her gaze remains on mine. “Which is why I’m thinking about Doctor Faustus, quite frankly. It’s Act four, scenes one through four, the most famous section of the play. You know, the Helen section?”

“I’m afraid I don’t, ma’am.” I’m still not sure what this has to do with me.

Her eyebrows go up in surprise. “I would have thought with your European education you’d be familiar with both the Bard and Marlowe.”

I’m not even sure who the bard is or how he relates to plays. I thought bards were musicians in royal courts. But language has proven my Achilles’ heel in this Greater World, and I’m finally becoming smart enough to know it.

“I’m afraid not,” I say as politely as I can. “I was homeschooled.”

Mom taught me to say that. When she told me that meant I was taught at home by my family, I decided the description wasn’t that far off.

“Oh, hmm,” Mrs. Schmidt says, “you’d think they would have covered Shakespeare at least.”

“I was raised mostly in Greece,” I say. Karl told me to add that when someone has expectations of me because, he says, no one knows anything about modern Greece. (Including me.)

“Well,” Mrs. Schmidt waves her right hand dismissively. “All of that is neither here nor there. We need a full cast for the act they’ve chosen from Henry, and a mostly male cast for the section from Faustus. Normally, I would protest the gender-specificity, but my hands are tied. The scene from Faustus is the one with Helen of Troy. I take it you know who she was?”

I do. I know that my sister Athena hates Helen, my stepmother Hera won’t let anyone even mention her name, and they both blame Aphrodite for the Trojan War, when Daddy says they should blame Eris. (The Fates finally, finally, managed to get her to pay for all her crimes not too long ago. Before me, Tiff, and Crystal became the Interim Fates.)

Helen died a very long time ago, but it’s almost like she’s still alive at our house. Well, our house, back at home. On Mount Olympus.

But I can’t say any of that. So I say, “The woman that started the Trojan War?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Schmidt looks pleased. “ ‘The face that launch’d a thousand ships. And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.’ That quote actually comes from Faustus, did you know that?”

“No, ma’am,” I say. She’s acting like I should know the quote, and obviously, I don’t.

“Helen is an important part of the scene,” Mrs. Schmidt says. “She doesn’t have a line, and yet her appearance is the center of the play.”

I bite my lower lip. Mrs. Schmidt is going somewhere with this.

“I would like you to play her,” Mrs. Schmidt says.

“Me?” I ask. “I’ve never been in a play.”

Mrs. Schmidt puts out her hands in a stay-calm gesture. It doesn’t work. My heart is starting to pound.

“You won’t have to do much,” Mrs. Schmidt says. “You’ll walk on stage and be a subject of discussion. I’ll teach you how to react to everything said, and then, at the end of the scene, you’ll walk off with Dr. Faustus.”

On stage. In front of everyone. All those people who’ve been staring at me. Yeah, like I’m going to do that.

“You have better choices than me,” I say.

Mrs. Schmidt glances at the stage again, as if she can imagine someone else on it. Or me on it. Or something like that.

“I really don’t have better choices,” she says to the stage. Then she turns her attention back to me. “Have you looked at the girls in my drama club? Most are either too small, or won’t clean up well, no matter how much makeup I put on them. And the rest are a bit too heavy to play the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Mom would say that’s sexist, that beauty is different everywhere. But Helen was slender, in that athletic ancient way that so many statues got made of.

“They’ll be fine in the role,” I say. “Who knows what ancient Greeks look like?”

Mrs. Schmidt tilts her head at me. “We’re not going for historical accuracy here,” she says. “I need someone who would be credible as Helen of Troy.”

“Not me,” I blurt. “I look nothing like her.”

Mrs. Schmidt grins. “And you know that how? You just said no one knows what ancient Greeks look like.”

I can’t tell her how I know that, because then I have to discuss my family, specifically Daddy. He has often remarked on how much Tiffany looks like Helen. I used to think he would say that to piss off Hera, but Athena once told me it was true. Athena says Helen had skin the rich color of teak, black eyes, and matching dark hair. Athena says all of the poets got it wrong, because they wanted to describe what they considered to be beauty rather than what really was beauty.

“You realize that your statement isn’t true,” Mrs. Schmidt says.

My breath catches. How does she know what Helen looked like?

“We do know very well what the ancient Greeks looked like. They left a lot of representative art. I suspect your coloring is off—I have no idea how you survived the Mediterranean sun—but you have that willowy form that the ancients prized.”

I survived the sun with magic. I had the worst sunburns off and on all summer, and Mom says the sun isn’t fierce in Northern Wisconsin, not like it is back home.

I had had no idea my skin was magicked until I came here, and didn’t have my magic any longer.

“Um, I’m sure there’s lots of girls who do,” I say. I try to think about the girls who aren’t in the drama club. A few cheerleaders come to mind, and so do several members of the girls’ basketball team.

“But that doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Schmidt says. “What I need is a girl in the part who will command attention and whom the audience will believe is worth Faustus losing his one shot at redemption over.”

I have no idea who this Faustus is, but I know he had nothing to do with the original story. Paris is the one who fell for Helen, not Faustus, whoever he is. But I don’t correct Mrs. Schmidt. I’ve discovered the level of misinformation in this world about the history of my family is astronomical.

“Not me,” I say. “Seriously. I can think of half a dozen girls who’d be better, and they’re not even in drama.”

“That’s part of the problem,” Mrs. Schmidt says. “I want one of my people in the role, not someone that I have to rope into it.”

I know “rope” in this context doesn’t mean an actual rope. I made that mistake weeks ago.

“Maybe you should just ask,” I say.

Mrs. Schmidt’s smile fades. “I am asking.”

Me. She’s asking me. Again.

My heart is really hammering hard.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” I say. “I’d rather not.”

Mrs. Schmidt makes a face at me. “I can’t think of anyone who would be more perfect than you. Tell me you’ll consider it.”

“I can’t,” I say. “I just got a job and—”

“We can work around that,” she says. “After all, you won’t have a speaking role.”

Then she leans forward just a little. Why is everyone standing so close to me today?

“You did take my class because you’re interested in drama, right? Not because you heard it was easy?”

My stupid cheeks heat up again. They betray me before I can even open my mouth.

“I’m enjoying the class,” I say weakly.

“Well, good,” she says. “But you really can’t understand drama unless you participate in it. When do you work?”

“After school,” I say, because that’s all I know at the moment.

“Every day?” she asks.

“No,” I say, because I’m not supposed to lie. And besides, even if I did lie, she’d probably see me around here, and then she’d want to know why I wasn’t working, and I am just not that good at making up lies on the spot. Even if I do, I blush, which I’m really getting sick of and that’s something I’ve only done frequently since I moved here.

I hate not having magic. I hate hate hate hate it.

She sighs. “Look, Brittany, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t want to hold auditions for the part.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“Think about it,” she starts, then she catches herself. “Wait, you’re not familiar with the piece. Helen is not really a character. She’s an ideal. The play is very clear about that.”

“So?” I ask. I can sense that she’s trying to convince me, and she might actually succeed at it, because when someone pressures me, I cave, most of the time.

I have to learn how to bend, how to stand up for myself and not make people really, really, really mad.

“So,” Mrs. Schmidt says, “usually auditions are about the reading, the performance. This audition would be about what the girl looks like. I would have to pick a girl based on how she appears, and tell her that she’s not ideal.”

I frown. The bell sounds, but I can’t remember if that’s first bell or second bell.

Mrs. Schmidt doesn’t even look up. She’s still watching me. I have to say something, and there’s only one thing I can think of to mention.

“You’re picking me because of how I look.” I don’t add that this is twice in twenty-four hours, and that’s weird, because I think I look like everyone else in this town.

“Well, that’s not what I’m going to be telling my students,” Mrs. Schmidt says.

I tense. Is she telling me she’s going to lie?

“I’m going to tell them I picked you because you are from Greece.”

“But I won’t have any lines,” I say.

She smiles. “I know.”

“So everyone will know that’s not true,” I say.

“But they won’t challenge me on it,” she says, “and it won’t hurt their fragile teenage egos.”

I frown at her. The other girls have fragile egos? I hadn’t noticed. It doesn’t seem that way to me.

“I won’t take no for an answer,” she says.

I don’t think I can get any tenser. My entire body is humming. “Then why are you even asking?”

“Why indeed?” she says. “It’s done then. You’re my Helen. You’re Helen of Troy.”

EIGHT

I’M HELEN OF TROY. All day, I can’t get the words out of my head. My family would be so freaked out about this. My magical family. I don’t know if they’d make fun of me or tell me to quit or just say that it’s bad luck.

My family here—I have no idea what they’ll think, except that I have to brace myself for another announcement at dinner.

Eric picks me and Lise up from school. Apparently Mom had to take an early lunch so that he could go to the tire place, and she paid for his tires, and he’s going to owe her a fortune now (he says) but at least he can drive.

We stop at my new job and get my schedule, which starts on Saturday. I have to show up at nine. Fortunately, I don’t have to work on Sunday. Maybe Mrs. Larson remembers (knows?) that church attendance is required in the Johnson Family. (I find the whole ritual strangely fascinating.)

I also forget (neglect?) to tell Mrs. Larson about Megan, and I’m going to have to say something. Parts of Sunday just aren’t workable for me. I’m not sure what I’m going to say, but I’ll come up with something.

You see, Mrs. Larson, I’ve never lived without magic before or without my two closest sisters, so we all have a therapist mandated by the Powers That Be as a condition of our new lives. Megan sees us all on Sunday. She goes to New York first, then pops into Superior, and then heads to Eugene, and finally ends up at home in L.A. And, oh, yeah, I have to be honest with her because she’s an empath. Yeah, they’re real, magic is real, and all that stuff you call myths—real.

I know that won’t go over well.

Mrs. Larson doesn’t have a lot of time to talk to me. She gives me the schedule, says the store won’t be open yet so I should wear grubby clothes, and then says she’ll see me Saturday.

She also says she’ll give me a permanent schedule once the store opens. I don’t get a chance to talk to her about the play.

In fact, I haven’t told anyone. I don’t really want to tell anyone either, except that I’m going to need someone to drive me back and forth to rehearsal if it’s after school. So I might as well fess up right away.

By the time we get home, the snow has melted. I wouldn’t have been able to tell there had even been any snow, except for the tiny, sideways snowman sitting in the middle of the front lawn.

I’ve seen pictures of snowmen before, and they’re always perfectly symmetrical. But this one looks like chunks of rock-filled ice rolled into a half-assed balls, placed one on top of the other. Twigs form the arms and a somewhat green carrot sticks out of the face. The mouth is a line in the top ice ball, painted red with something I don’t recognize.

The eyes, though, are creepiest of all. They’re doll eyes with fringed lashes, and I actually recognize them. Ivan had glued them to a paddle from a ruined canoe and, for at least a week, used them to scare anyone who came around the corner into the dining room too fast. Then he scared Mom, and that was the end of that.

(Although I have to admit: her scream was one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.)

The eyes move in the wind, almost like they’re winking or blinking out of synch.

I can’t look at them, and fortunately, Eric drives the car to his parking spot in the back so I don’t have to.

I thank him, and get out, hurrying up the stairs. The wind isn’t bad either, thank heavens, but I want to get warm all the same. I’ve been chilled all day. If this is just a taste of what winter’s going to be like, I’m going to freeze my butt off.

No one’s in the kitchen, but it smells like hot cocoa and fresh-baked sugar cookies. The babysitter who comes in twice a week must have made something for the little kids when the snowman-building was done.

I head to the white board and double-check my chore schedule. I’m on cleanup duty after dinner, but that’s not too bad. I hope.

Then I hang up my coat in the coat closet and head to my room. I scatter my books on the bed until I find the copy of Doctor Faustus that Mrs. Schmidt gave me. It’s some kind of special school edition that has analysis in the back.

I tuck the book under my arm and go off in search of a quiet place to read.

The quiet places vary according to time of day. Once everyone gets home and the dinner crew starts working, the entire first floor is too loud for homework. Weekend mornings are another story, though, because Hilde and Hans are supposed to play quietly until everyone is up.

Usually that means they hang out in Hans, Ivan, and Leif’s room, playing games on the computer (in theory, Leif supervises) or playing a board game or something. That means the living room and the kitchen are usually pretty quiet.

If my room didn’t feel so dang claustrophobic, I’d stay in there, but it is. So, on days like this, I usually go to the attic and sit in what Lise calls “The lounge.”

Eric has made his own room out of one side of the attic, and he barricaded it with boxes that are probably older than Karl. Eric has taken one of the two windows as his own. The attic is pretty narrow. I can’t stand upright in the center. It slopes steeply to each side, and it’s filled with interesting stuff, from Mom’s wedding dress (which is just lovely) to old prom dresses and even older dresses that smell of mothballs. Boxes and boxes of old toys and photographs and letters are pressed under the eaves—for insulation, Karl says. Because they belong to family, Mom says.

Then, near the other window, there’s an old velvet couch-like thing that Lise calls a chaise lounge and Anna calls a divan and Mom calls something that needs recycling. Near it is an overstuffed chair that lists to one side, and a horsehair footstool that I liked until I knew what it was made out of.

That’s the lounge. Mom keeps threatening to make it go away, and Eric has offered repeatedly to turn it into a bedroom for me, but I can’t see how it would be much better than the room I have. No one is willing to toss all the boxes, which means I’d have even less space, even if I did have a window.

Besides, I like the lounge. It’s a great place to read (unless the little kids are fighting in Leif’s room, directly below). I brought up a reading lamp as the days started getting darker (and who knew they did that?) and now, I feel like whenever I climb onto the divan, I’m entering my own little world.

My own little cold world tonight. There’s no heat in the attic because, Karl says, heat rises. Besides, someone (Eric?) left the window partially open, and the breeze that’s coming in is frigid.

It takes some work to shove the window closed, but I manage. Then I climb onto the divan and open Doctor Faustus.

The damn thing is written in verse. I resist the urge to skip to the analysis at the end, and I also try really hard not to skip ahead to the section we’re going to perform.

As I start the play, I wish I had brought a dictionary with me. I also wish I could read it on the computer. I don’t know half the words. After trying a few times to read the opening, I go down to my room, grab a dictionary, and climb back to the lounge.

I look up “surfeits” and “necromancy” and start to feel really uncomfortable. My dictionary gives me two meanings for “necromancy.” One is plain old witchcraft (as if witchcraft can be plain) and the other is trying to use the spirits of the dead to predict the future (as if that works).

Still, neither is positive, and I find myself staring at the lines:

He surfeits upon cursed necromancy.

Nothing so sweet as magic is to him;

I’m beginning to think, as I read, that magic is the bad guy here. And I understand how this Faustus feels. Magic is sweet to me too (kinda). I suspect I’m not supposed to like this guy—and I don’t—but we have a lot in common.

We both like magic, and everyone is trying to take it away from us.

Tears prick my eyes, and I hear Ingrid all over again.

“Drama queen,” I whisper, trying to find some resolve to be something else.

I bring my knees up and keep reading, understanding maybe a third of what I see. I’ve given up reading along with the dictionary. I’m just trying to get a sense of this thing.

And the sense I’m getting is this: This guy doesn’t like the religious crap he’s fed, and he thinks smart people are magicians (well, duh) and he wants everything that magic can give him, so he makes a deal with the devil, which I’ve learned from watching a million movies is a bad thing.

This guy gets a choice: He can live a “godly” life or he can live a life of “sin and magic,” and he chooses sin and magic.

And apparently, I—as Helen of Troy—am going to be the symbol of his downfall.

Oh, wow. That’s just weird and uncomfortable and way too close to my own life.

Because, in a way, we three girls have made a deal with the devil—if you want to call Megan a devil, which I don’t. Or maybe Daddy is the devil. He made us the most powerful mages in all of the world, but without guidance and without knowledge, and tried to use us as tools of his own strange schemes. Then, when we failed (and boy, did we fail), he didn’t defend us.

Crystal says she doubted he even knew who we were when he picked us. He just thought we were the right age and easy to twist to his will.

So, unlike this Faustus guy, we’re turning our backs on magic, but it still feels odd, at least to me, and I’ll be the one on stage, as the representative of all that is magical and devilish and—

“Brit-tan-eee!”

I recognize that yell. It’s Anna. Someone told her to find me, and she’s yelling up the stairs because she doesn’t want to climb up here.

“Here!” I shout back. I shut off the light, grab my books, and head down the stairs.

I feel really weird, because I can’t tell anyone anything about what I’ve read and realized. Imagine me telling Mrs. Schmidt that it’s not good for me to be the representative of something that I might not believe in (and besides, I don’t look like Helen). Or trying to tell someone in my family besides Mom, who probably won’t listen anyway. Or Tiff or Crystal.

Tiff would probably be happy that I’m reading and figuring out stuff for myself, and Crystal has enough to think about. She actually thought of running away a few weeks back.

I couldn’t let her come here, because there’s not enough room for me. Then she disappeared for a few hours and won’t tell me or Tiff where she went. We’re worried about her, but she says she’s okay now.

Tiff says she’s adjusting too.

Me, I’m just going along.

The downstairs smells like fake cheese and hotdogs. I’ve come to recognize that smell as little kid night. Hans, Hilde, and Ingrid “cook,” while someone, usually Karl, supervises.

I make it to the table to find Ivan setting out the pitchers of ice water. “It’ll be about five minutes,” he says.

Mom is standing near the door, still wearing her work clothes. My gaze meets hers.

“Can I talk to you?” I ask.

She runs a hand through her already messy hair, but gives me a small tired smile. “Sure,” she says. “If it won’t take long.”

“It won’t,” I say.

I lead her into the living room. Anna zooms past, looking for the other kids, probably.

“Mrs. Schmidt is kinda making me take a part in this play,” I say.

“‘Making you?’” Mom asks.

“She says she doesn’t want anyone to audition for it, just wants to give it to someone,” I say. “And that someone is me.”

“And the part is?” Mom asks.

I’m already disappointed. I was hoping she would disapprove of plays or something.

“Helen of Troy,” I say.

Mom lets out a bark of laughter, then puts her hand over her mouth. “I suppose she cast you because of your accent?”

“No,” I say. “It’s a nonspeaking role. It’s in Doctor Faustus, this play by some guy named Marlowe and it’s about—”

“I know the play,” Mom says. “I majored in theater in college.”

Well, those are two new facts. I had no idea Mom went to college or that she was interested in theater at all. She barely watches television.

“It’s like anti-magic, and I’m supposed to be this symbol, and the part—”

“Is mostly about standing there, looking beautiful,” Mom says.

“Yeah,” I say, hoping she understands how upset I am.

“What’s the problem?” Mom asks.

Do I tell her I don’t look like Helen of Troy? Or that it’ll upset Hera? Or that I don’t like the magic theme?

“I’m…not sure I can do it, with work and all,” I say, and fortunately that’s partly true so I only half blush.

But Mom sees through me. “What’s the real problem?”

“I was kinda hoping you could forbid me from doing it,” I say.

“Because…?”

“Because I’m not Helen of Troy,” I say.

Mom doesn’t say anything for a long minute. Finally, she says, “This is about your dad, isn’t it?”

“She’s not the most popular person in my family,” I say, then get even redder. “Sorry. You know. The family that I grew up in—”

“Is she still alive?” Mom asks.

“Oh, no,” I say. “She’s been dead for centuries.”

Mom sighs. “You don’t want to do this because of the portrayal of Helen?”

“It just feels weird, Mom,” I say.

“You’re uncomfortable because your drama teacher has cast you as the most beautiful woman in the world,” Mom says. “Right after you got a job partly because you’re pretty.”

I stare at her for a minute. She’s right. That does make me uncomfortable.

“Yeah, I guess,” I say. “I mean, neither of those things have anything to do with me.”

“But I beg to differ,” Mom says. “You’re beautiful, Brit, in a way that is really admired in this country. It’s something you’re going to have to deal with.”

I’ve never thought of myself as pretty. I’ve always been the strange pale person in my family. Only Apollo is as fair-haired and that’s because he’s filled with sunlight half the time.

“Why will I have to deal with this?” I ask.

“Because,” Mom says, “your looks will cause people to act differently around you.”

I frown at her. She glances over her shoulder. Anna hurries through the living room, with Lise behind her.

“Seen Eric?” Anna asks.

“Not in the last hour,” Mom says.

“Crap,” Anna says, then pales. “I mean, dang. I mean—”

“Language,” Mom says, although her tone is flat, like she’s tired of repeating that.

“Sorry,” Anna says, then whirls and heads back up the stairs. Lise walks past us into the dining room.

Mom faces me again, then leans just a bit closer. “Brit, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to deal with your looks for a long time. I’m sure you already are. People probably stare at you sometimes. Boys might ask you out, even if they’ve never spoken to you—”

Like that Jake kid from this morning. And his friends. And his comment about having a class across from one of mine.

“—and,” Mom says, “you’ll get things, like your job, because of how you look. But there’s a downside too. People will think you’re stupid because, for some reason in this country, blonde and beautiful also mean dumb.”

“I’m not dumb,” I whisper, even though I’m afraid it might be true. I’m not as verbal as Crystal and I’m not as smart as Tiffany, and I do tend to overreact to things, which Crystal says is just plain predictable.

“I know that, honey,” Mom says softly. “All I’m trying to say is that how you look is part of you, and it’s something you’re going to have to accept.”

“I don’t know why it’s a problem,” I say. “I look like Anna and Ingrid and Hilde. And you.”

“Yes.” Mom has a tone in her voice I’ve never heard before. “You look just like me at that age.”

My gaze meets hers. “This all happened to you,” I say. “And you think it’ll happen to me.”

“I hope you’ll be smarter than me,” Mom says. “I made mistakes.”

“Like my dad,” I say.

She shakes her head. “I can’t consider that a mistake. If I hadn’t met your father, I wouldn’t have you.”

My eyes fill with tears. Damn drama queen. I will them back. “I’m a lot of trouble.”

“No, honey, you’re not,” Mom says. “I’m happy to have you here. I wished I could have had you from the start.”

“But you didn’t,” I say.

“Caring for a baby with magic is hard,” Mom says. “If I knew then what I know now, I would have insisted on going to Mount Olympus to raise you or having your father send someone here to help. But then, I didn’t know what to do. I was really alone.”

“You have family here,” I say.

“And they had no idea who your father was. I didn’t tell them, and I couldn’t tell them about you. Not the magical part.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“Have you read Faustus yet?” Mom asks.

“I’m trying to,” I say.

“What that play says, in part, is that magic is a tool of the devil.”

“But the devil isn’t real,” I say.

“Why not?” Mom asks. “Zeus is.”

I frown at her. “Magic isn’t a tool of any devil.”

“I know,” Mom says. “But my family would think it’s a sin. That’s why we’re really careful, honey.”

“They’d hate me?” I ask.

“No,” Mom says. “They think you’re wonderful. But they won’t understand the magic. They never will.”

I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Anna stomps down the stairs, Eric behind her. They’re arguing about chess moves, of all things.

“I think we can have dinner now,” Anna says as she hurries past us.

Eric glances at both of us, frowning, then keeps going.

Mom reaches out her hand and takes mine. “I advised you to take drama for a reason.”

“Because it would be easy, you said.”

She shakes her head. “Because drama—literature—teaches us about ourselves. The best way for you to learn our culture is through the arts. And you will need extracurriculars, so why not drama?”

“Why do I need extracurriculars?” I ask.

“Because I’m sending you to college,” Mom says.

I’m shaking my head even before she finishes the sentence. “There’s no need, Mom. I won’t be caught up enough to go to college, and you can’t afford it, and—”

“We can afford it if you get a scholarship, and put in the work,” Mom says. “Extracurriculars help.”

From the kitchen, Ivan yells, “Mom! Dinner!”

She smiles. “I’m not usually the one who’s late. Shall we?”

“You’re not going to help me get out of this play,” I say.

“No, I’m not,” she says. “But you can quit if you want to.”

I know she hates that word “quit.” And I know she used it on purpose. “But you’ll have to drive me—”

“We have four cars in this family,” Mom says. “Someone can drive you until you learn to drive.”

“Me? Learn how to drive?” I’m not sure how I feel about that either. I like the idea of the freedom, but cars are big scary things, and I have trouble getting in and out of them, let alone commanding one.

“Not this winter.” Mom puts her arm around my shoulder and steers me toward the dining room. “But maybe next summer.”

Next summer. That’s a long ways away. I haven’t thought that far ahead. I have trouble thinking about the Winter Holidays coming up. Crystal, Tiff, and I promised we’d get together then, but I have no idea how we’ll pull it off.

There’s no money for travel.

Maybe Megan will have an idea. I haven’t asked yet though.

Mom and I step into the dining room. Everyone else is sitting at their spots. Two gigantic bowls of macaroni and cheese glisten orangely. Two more bowls have hotdogs cut up into the mac and cheese. A bowl of salad sits on the table untouched.

The mac and cheese steams.

“Yay!” Ingrid says. “You’re here. We can eat.”

My stomach growls. If you’d asked me before I moved here if I would eat something that looks like plastic food, I would’ve said no. And if I had said yes, I would’ve thought that I would’ve hated it.

But I secretly like this stuff. I like all of it.

I even like that weird moment before we eat when Karl says grace. Maybe it’s because we all join hands. Maybe it’s because we are quiet for just a minute.

Maybe it’s because grace is all about saying thank you.

I don’t know. But I’ve gotten used to grace and plastic food.

I guess I can get used to being Helen of Troy.

If I try hard enough.

I hope.

NINE

SATURDAY COMES AROUND pretty fast. I have to be at the store by nine, and that takes some doing because everyone wants to sleep in. Karl finally agrees to drive me, not because he wants to, but because he thinks Mom deserves at least one day of rest and, as he said, we all know that’s not Sunday.

I’m wearing an old blue-and-white sweatshirt with the head of a Spartan on it. At least, that’s what everyone tells me is a Spartan. I don’t think of Spartans as this two-dimensional square-jawed guy wearing a Trojan helmet, but what do I know? Besides, it’s the team logo.

The shirt started out as Eric’s, then Lise stole it and ripped it, and then she gave it to me as a junk shirt. It’s too big, but I’m wearing a t-shirt underneath—also blue and white, also with a Spartan on it. But this t-shirt was once Leif’s and now he’s too broad for it. Or something.

My jeans are also hand-me-downs, this time from Mom. They’re her painting jeans, so they’re covered with splotches of white, pink, and yellow paint. I don’t know where the white came from, but the pink is from Hilde and Ingrid’s room, and the yellow was apparently part of the kitchen before Karl decided to make it open concept or whatever it is.

Mrs. Larson gave Mom a start-time for me, but neglected to say when my shift would end. So, Karl handed me one of the precious no-frills cell phones. I’m supposed to call home when I’m done and someone will pick me up.

I don’t use the phones very often. All I know is that I tap one of the buttons until I see the word “home” on the screen, and then tap the “call” button. I hope all of that works.

But I don’t have a lot of time to think about it.

I arrive five minutes early because Karl says early is on time, and on time is late. The door’s unlocked, even though the front of the store lights are off and a big Closed sign dominates the empty display window. I step inside.

The store smells like fresh paint and sawdust overlaid with a coat of varnish. Those are all smells I wouldn’t have recognized at a year ago, but now I know them like the back of my hand. The Johnson Family Manse often smells like one or the other of them or all of them in a slightly different combination.

I shout hello, and someone shouts something from the back. As I wait, I look around. Shelves cover the entire back wall now, and a whole pile of boxes sits beneath the lip of the display window. Four check-out counters dominate the area right in front of me, and all four have computers with screens that glow faintly in the gloom.

“Hello?” I call again.

“Hello!” Mrs. Larson comes out of the back. She looks younger than she did on the day of my interview. Her hair is pulled into a ponytail, and she’s wearing a white t-shirt with the name of a local hardware store emblazoned across the front. Her jeans are ripped. “Welcome, welcome.”

The warmth in her voice makes me smile.

“Come with me,” she says. “I’ll show you where to put your coat.”

There’s a tiny employee room near the one and only bathroom. A small coat rack fills one entire wall, and some big bulky coats hang on the rack. I use the only remaining hanger and hang up my coat.

Mrs. Larson tells me I can put my purse inside the coat, and it should be safe. Then she sweeps her hand toward the office door.

“I’m afraid I have more paperwork for you, and then we can get to work. But first, let’s punch you in.”

She hands me a white plastic card with my name typed along the bottom. “This is your punch card,” she says. “Treat it like a credit card and don’t get it near magnets.”

Like I have a credit card.

“Then wave it in front of the time clock.” She points to this little computer thing attached to the wall. “You have to see your name on the screen. Once you do, then you’re clocked in and you’ll get paid. You also have to wave it as you leave. This tracks your hours for me. Since you get paid by the hour, this makes sure we’re accurate down to the minute.”

Okay. I get it now.

“Go ahead,” she says. “Try it. Let’s see if it works.”

I wave the card and my name appears, just like she says. My stomach is all twisty, because when I was magic, technology didn’t work really well for me. But I’m not magic now, so I’m hoping this will work okay.

“Now,” she says, “more paperwork. When you’re done, leave everything on my desk and come out to the warehouse.”

She leaves me in the office with a pen, a clipboard, and pages of paperwork. I try to read the accompanying paperwork—the explanations and stuff—but they’re more confusing than Doctor Faustus. At least in that, I can follow the action of the play. This just explains stuff with more stuff I don’t understand.

I think I’ve signed everything, then I head to the back.

The warehouse isn’t as big as some warehouses I’ve been to. I’d actually call it a back room. But it is a lot more organized than it was just a few days ago. Boxes still litter one area, but a thin boy from my math class stands in the back with an X-Acto knife, breaking down empty boxes and throwing them on a pile.

Another boy, who I recognize from the halls, is putting stickers on decorative cardboard boxes that he pulls out of a larger undecorated box. He hands the smaller boxes to the heavyset guy I’d seen the first time I was here. That guy puts the boxes on the shelf.

“We’re unpacking,” Mrs. Larson says, “and familiarizing ourselves with inventory. Go talk to Mr. Davis. He’ll tell you what to do.”

She nods toward the heavyset guy. He’s wearing the same kind of plaid shirt that he wore a few days ago and has on suspenders to keep his baggy pants up. He grins at me when I come closer.

“C’mon, hon,” he says. “Let me show you how to use a dolly.”

I’m thinking dolls, but he takes me to this metal contraption with a handle and two wheels at the base. He loads boxes on it, then tips it back and waves me over. I’m supposed to wheel that thing to an entirely new area of unfilled shelves.

It takes me a while to get the hang of the dolly. I have to load boxes onto it and then hold it properly so that I can slide the boxes off of it. It’s weird work: lifting, carrying, moving, driving the dolly, unloading, and then doing it all over again.

If I still had magic, I could do it all in an instant, but I honestly don’t mind. I get into the rhythm pretty quickly, and I can actually see what I’ve accomplished, which isn’t like anything else I’ve done (except cook—and I’m not allowed to do much of that yet).

I move boxes for a long time. It seems like hours, but I know it’s not, because I’m entitled to a break in the morning sometime, and those regulations Mrs. Larson had me read say I’m supposed to have lunch after four hours.

Mr. Davis showed me how to pick up a box so that it doesn’t hurt my back, but after a few loads, I feel the lifting in my legs and arms. I feel like I’ve stretched them out. My hands are getting sore too from the box edges, but I like the feel of the cool metal dolly handle under my palms. That’s kinda soothing.

Mr. Davis calls me Dolly Girl whenever he needs something, and then he giggles. He says, “Hey, Dolly Girl! Here’s another stack of boxes!” or “Doing great, Dolly Girl!”

He makes me smile, but he makes Mrs. Larson wince every time he says it. Finally, she tells me that I shouldn’t take him too seriously, a command I’m not sure how to follow, since he’s the one who is giving me orders. She also says I should ignore his language because she can’t educate him out of it.

I have no idea what she means by language. He isn’t swearing and Mom wouldn’t bark language at him for any reason. He’s organizing me and the two boys (whose names I didn’t catch), and he keeps us moving.

Finally, he calls a break, and we get to sit down in the break area. We have to pay for soda and stuff, which I didn’t know, and we were supposed to bring a lunch, which I also didn’t know. So I get myself a drink of water.

When I sit down, my knees actually creak. My arms are shaking. I drink the water. Then Mr. Davis asks if I have some quarters. I have to confess that I only have a five, and that’s because Karl gave me the money for lunch when he found out I hadn’t packed one.

So Mr. Davis goes over to the Coke machine (that’s what he calls it, even though it looks like it doesn’t have any Coke), and buys me a lemon-lime Gatorade—his treat, he says. I’m not sure if I should take stuff from people I work for, but one of the kids—whose name, it turns out, is Nathaniel (“Not Nate,” he tells me firmly. “No one should ever call me Nate”)—says I should drink it because it has electrolytes, which will make me feel better because I’ve been sweating.

I blush—jeez, me and blushing. I don’t like thinking about other people seeing me sweat. Athletes do it, but I’m not an athlete. I’m just working.

Like the mortals do back home. The people that Hera says are beneath us and Tiff says are there to do the things we don’t want to waste magic on (although, she says now, she’s learning that she was wrong), although my brother Hephaestus always tried to tell us we should value mortals who worked, because it was noble.

I’m not sure about noble. Most of the family ignores him because he’s always grimy from his work on his forge, even though he does make the best jewelry and everyone loves Hermes’ sandals and winged helmet, which Hephaestus both designed and made.

I’ve always liked Hephaestus, even though he’s really old (older than Athena) and never really says much. He once told me there’s value in work that the rest of the family doesn’t understand.

I don’t know about value, but I do know about sore muscles. And grime. I’m new to grime, but I know I’m coated in it. The boxes give off dust, apparently, and we’re moving stuff around. Before we go back to work, I go into the bathroom and take off my sweatshirt. The t-shirt is almost too much, given how hot I am.

I leave my sweatshirt with my coat and purse and get back to work. For another hour and a half, I’m Dolly Girl, and then Mr. Davis sends us away for an early lunch. I’m ravenous and buy a full-sized sandwich at Subway, which I devour. I’ve never been so hungry in my whole life.

By the time I’m back at work, Mrs. Larson takes pity on me and tells Mr. Davis to give me work I can do sitting down.

So I learn how to use the label gun—which is a real trick—and I spend the afternoon comparing prices, using the label gun, and making sure I put the right label on the right product.

Who knew there were so many details in putting together a retail store?

By the time afternoon break comes around, Mrs. Larson watches me stand up and groan just a little. She puts her hand on my back and says, “Let’s figure out your schedule for the week.”

Then she leads me into the office.

My heart’s pounding for no good reason. Or maybe it is a good reason. I have no idea what she thinks of the job I’ve done. But she wants me to continue, so I guess I did okay. I don’t know, and I don’t want to ask, and I’m worried, and she says, “What’s your schedule look like?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” I say. “Mrs. Schmidt put me in this contest play as part of my grade and there will be rehearsals, which Mom says have to work around my job, and I have a standing appointment on Sunday—”

“With God, I know.” Mrs. Larson smiles at me. “I’ve known your mom a long time.”

I frown, and try to parse what she’s said. I don’t think she’s talking about my father’s family, but I don’t know exactly.

“Can you work after church?” she asks, and I let out a breath of air. She doesn’t mean a god. She means the same God that the Johnson Family says grace to every day.

“Um,” I say, “I have another appointment after that. It’s…personal.”

Lise says that when you use the word “personal” at a job they have to respect it, and not ask about it.

“Okay,” Mrs. Larson says. “Why don’t we just do Saturdays and Wednesdays after school for now, and when you know your play schedule, you tell me and we’ll work around it, okay?”

I let out a breath. That was easier than I expected. “Okay.”

“So,” she says, “I’ll see you on Wednesday. Now, don’t forget to clock out.”

“I’m sorry.” I’m so dumb. “I don’t know what ‘clock out’ is.”

Mrs. Larson looks up, and grins. “Of course not. It’s your first job.”

She leads me back to the little computery thing on the wall.

“Now,” she says, “wave your card in front of that until you see your name.”

I wave my card, and the tiny screen says, “Thank you, Brittany Johnson.”

Even the machines are nice here.

“That’s clocking out?” I ask.

“It means you’re no longer getting paid for being here,” Mrs. Larson says. “So head on home, honey, and tell your mom you’ve had a successful day.”

“Thank you,” I say. I have to go to the employee room to get my coat and sweatshirt. It’s a slog to get there. I’m a lot more tired than I expected, and my legs actually ache. But I’m in a good mood underneath it all.

I thought I would hate work. But I liked this. It felt useful, not at all like being an Interim Fate. As an Interim Fate, I was faking it most of the time, and the rest of the time, I felt like I was screwing up.

Here, I actually think I can get good at the tasks they’ve given me. And the fate of the world isn’t in my hands. Just the fate of a few boxes, and maybe a shelf.

I like that better.

I wave good-bye to Mr. Davis, Nathaniel, and the other kid (whose name I never did learn) and then head out the door.

When the cold hits me, that’s when I remember I was supposed to call home to get a ride.

I cross the parking lot to Subway. I still have a dollar, and I can get myself chips or something while I wait.

I pull the phone out of my purse and flip the phone open so that I can press the right buttons to make the call.

The phone slides out of my hand, hovers in the air, and explodes.

Then my father appears as the bits of phone are falling to the parking lot. He’s short and square and, with his big nostrils and prominent eyes, looks terrifyingly like a bull. I always forget just how much until I see him.

It doesn’t help that his nostrils are flaring and his eyes are more intense than usual.

“So, little girl,” he says, “you really think you can make fun of all of us?”

He sounds angry. I’ve seen him angry before, but never at me.

“What?” I say. “I haven’t—I’m not—”

“Oh, yes, you are,” he says. “And we’re going to sort this out right now, with the help of your evil little empath and her friends, those meddlesome Fates.”

Then he claps his hands together and shouts, “To the Fates!”

And everything around me disappears.

TEN

I HAVEN’T BEEN magicked anywhere in months, and I forgot how disorienting it is, particularly when you’re not the one wielding the magic.

One minute we’re standing in the cold parking lot and I’m thinking about Subway and my purse and the phone and being grimy and wondering what the heck my dad wants and the next minute, we’re in this blankness.

It’s not really blank. It’s more like we’re inside a giant cone of glare. We’re surrounded by white and yellow light, and it’s a lot warmer than that parking lot, and quieter too. The wind had been whistling, and there had been traffic noise I’d already learned to tune out, and then so much silence that the only thing I can hear is my own breathing.

At least I’m still breathing.

Then we arrive in that damn library where I worked with my sisters for a really long time. The actual Fates—Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos—are stretched out on three different couches, reading books. All three women are wearing white satin tunics over flowing white satin pants, and white mule slippers with fake feathers on the top.

Daddy picked me, Tiffany, and Crystal, not because we were brilliant or anything, but because our hair color matched the actual Fates. Apparently, all he saw was eyes and hair, because Tiffany looks nothing like Atropos, who is dark-haired. Tiffany’s hair is not straight or quite the same kind of black. Her skin is much darker, and her eyes are much prettier.

Atropos looks like one of those women on the Greek urns, with skin that turns dark in the sun, but isn’t dark if she stays out of the sun. Her hair and eyes are a startling contrast to her skin (and she really shouldn’t be wearing white. Just sayin’).

In Daddy’s grand scheme, I was supposed to take the place of Clotho. Clotho, in her normal state (not some magical persona she puts on, which she does a lot), is a tall, willowy blonde. Her voice is higher than mine and Tiff once said that Clotho was the prototype for the dumb blonde. Only Clotho isn’t dumb. Not at all. I’m a dunce compared to her.

She has blue eyes like mine, but the comparison ends there. Hers are filled with a sharp intelligence that I can only aspire to.

Right now, she has those eyes trained on Daddy. He doesn’t seem intimidated as he stares back at her.

Slowly, all three Fates stand up. They tower over Daddy, but not over me. That’s when I realize I’m taller than he is. That’s a surprise.

“We are not going to say to what do we owe this pleasure.” Clotho lowers her pale eyebrows at me. Her stare is disconcerting.

“We had a hunch we would see you,” Lachesis says. She’s the redhead, and the only one of the Fates who looks like an Interim Fate. Or, really, the only one that shows the resemblance. She’s curvy and red-headed and beautiful, just like Crystal.

The Fates have a prescribed speaking order. They cannot interrupt each other. They don’t quite share each other’s thoughts, but they do seem to have a sense of what the next sentence is.

Or at least, we did when we were the Interim Fates. We also had to speak in a prescribed order, even when we were by ourselves. It drove us crazy.

But then the whole job drove us crazy.

I turn toward Atropos. She’s going to speak next whether she wants to or not.

She frowns at me.

“We have already denied your sister’s request to return to Mount Olympus,” Atropos says to me.

“What?” I ask. It’s not the best way to start a conversation with the Fates, particularly since they hate all of us Interims for taking their job and getting them fired (or term-limited, as the case may be) even though we had nothing to do with it.

“Your sister Crystal,” Clotho says. “We told her she cannot return to Mount Olympus.”

“With her magic intact, that is,” Lachesis says.

“It doesn’t matter how much she wants it,” Atropos says.

I knew that Crystal was unhappy, but I had no idea she had found her way to the Fates and tried to go back home. She didn’t tell us anything.

Then I gasp as I realize something. I missed the phone call. For the very first time, I forgot that we have our conference call on Saturday. I didn’t even tell anyone to give my sisters a message.

“We shocked you?” Clotho asks.

“No,” I say, “I mean, yes, but not for the reason you think.”

I glance at Daddy. He has his arms crossed over his chest and he’s looking mighty pleased with himself.

“I didn’t know about Crystal,” I say.

“Or that your other sister made us take away her magic?” Lachesis asks.

“Well, yeah,” I say. “You took away all of our magic.”

They collectively frown at me, which is mighty impressive. I feel like a dweeble.

“Again,” Atropos says. “We took your sister’s magic away again.”

“Although,” Clotho says, turning her ferocious gaze from me to Daddy, “the second time was not her fault.”

“What?” I ask. “What happened?”

“And….” Lachesis has also turned her gaze on Daddy. “I did not expect to see you here so soon after the last time.”

“Don’t tell us that you can’t refuse one of your daughters, because we know that you usually don’t notice them,” Atropos says.

Daddy has a half smile on his face. There’s something going on here that I don’t understand. But he’s scheming again.

I don’t want to be in trouble with the Fates. Anymore, that is. I don’t want to be in trouble with them anymore. They hate us for what we did, and we promised we’d be good, although it sounds like my sisters haven’t been, and they haven’t told me, which actually makes me feel better about missing the phone call.

I take a step forward, my heart pounding. “It wasn’t my idea to come here.”

The Fates do something with their bodies that I’ve never seen before. They seem to have grown taller, stronger, more dynamic. I have no idea how they did that, but they look even more powerful than Daddy.

They are more powerful than Daddy, but now they seem to dwarf him.

It doesn’t freak him out. (It freaks me out, though.)

He doesn’t even seem to notice that they’re different. Nor does he seem to notice that I spoke at all.

Or if he did notice, he doesn’t care.

“We’re missing one other person from this discussion,” Daddy says and claps his hands.

The air sparkles for a moment and then Megan topples onto the wooden floor. She’s wearing an LA Clippers sweatshirt, gray sweatpants, and no makeup. Her feet are bare. Her toes are painted this great shade of purple.

She looks around, startled, as if she can’t believe what she’s seeing.

She stands up and I realize that all she’s wearing are sweats. No undergarments, nothing. She’s a heavyset woman—plus size, they call it in the stores—and she has red hair too, although it’s not as red as Crystal’s or Lachesis’s.

Megan also has a redhead’s temper. I can see it, as her cheeks get red and her green eyes spit fire.

“Now what’s he done?” she asks the Fates, turning slightly away from Daddy.

Megan’s my therapist. She’s therapist to all three of us, actually, and she helped us confront Daddy last summer. She says he was pretty shocked that we disliked him so much, and that we felt like he had mistreated us for our whole lives—or ignored us (which is what he constantly did with me).

Megan’s also the one who went to the rest of the Powers That Be and figured out how we could stop being Interim Fates and start being “real people” —her words—and come into our magic the way that most female mages do, which is after about fifty years of mortal living.

It all sounded like a good idea, but it’s been hard, and it sounds like my sisters wanted out of it, even though they didn’t say anything to me.

Good old Brittany, trying to get along.

Good old clueless Brittany, unaware that the choices everyone else made for her were choices they decided no longer worked for them.

I clench my fists. Clotho glances at me, as if she can sense my rising anger, but she doesn’t say anything.

Of course, I haven’t been paying attention to their speech order. She might not be able to say anything because it might not be her turn to talk yet.

“I haven’t done anything,” Daddy says, responding to Megan’s comment. He gives her a sideways victory glance, as if he has just bested her at soccer or something. “I am merely pointing out something that the four of you should know about.”

Four. Not me. I’m confused.

Megan raises her chin. I know that look. It’s combative and angry, but she’s willing to listen. She had that look during the meeting with me, my sisters, and Daddy back when we decided to give up our Fateness, confront him, and become “normal.”

Daddy takes a step forward and opens his palms at his sides. I’m hoping that’s a submissive movement, because if it’s the beginning of a spell, then we’re all in trouble.

The Fates will destroy him.

He should know that.

I think they’re just waiting for the opportunity.

“My daughter,” Daddy says, his tone reasonable but concerned, “is in hell. I think you need to release her from her sentence.”

I’m frowning. Which daughter is he talking about? I don’t know of any daughters who are serving a sentence. But that doesn’t mean that some aren’t. The Fates are known for giving out sentences.

The worst one I ever heard of was one that a guy named Darius had to serve. He had to find one hundred couples who were fated for each other, and make certain they ended up together. Took him thousands of years.

But I’m here, and my sisters have been here before, and maybe Daddy just misspoke.

Maybe he’s referring to Crystal, and he wants me to testify about what she’s going through. Because, in my opinion, she really is in hell, and we all consigned her there when we made this deal.

Megan glances at me. She’s an empath, so she must feel both my anger and my confusion, as well as whatever everyone else in the room is feeling.

“Are you referring to Brittany?” she asks Daddy. “Because she seems as confused as the rest of us.”

I lean back just a little. He’s talking about me? Why would he be talking about me?

I’m not in hell.

“Because,” Daddy says, “she has no idea what they’re forcing on her.”

My mouth opens slightly. He is referring to me. I have a sentence? And I’m in hell? How come no one told me?

Daddy isn’t looking at me. He’s facing Megan, who is, I think, the only woman besides the Fates who doesn’t smile at Daddy like he’s the handsomest man on Earth.

He’s saying, “I took her out of that situation the moment that I heard what they were doing to her.”

I let out a small breath. What is he talking about? He just got me. I have a job, a real job, and I like it.

“They?” Clotho asks. “This mysterious they are forcing something on Brittany?”

“Yes.” Daddy straightens and juts out his barrel chest like he does whenever he’s making a pronouncement. “Brittany is suffering quite badly.”

I am? How come I don’t know about that?

I want to ask, but I can’t, because Daddy’s still talking. He’s using that stupid rhetorical style that is left over from the days when everyone believed he was a god.

He’s saying, “Let’s not discuss the manual labor that they forced upon her today.”

Then he turns his head toward me. Those dark eyes grip me, and I feel like he’s trying to send me a message. I’m not sure if the message is Don’t you dare contradict me or Right, honey? or Who are you again?

“On second thought,” he says, “let’s discuss the manual labor after all. My child is being forced to lift and drag things about, as if she’s Sisyphus on a hill in Hades.”

“What?” I ask, because I can’t keep it in any longer.

Daddy steps in front of me, as if he’s trying to block my words from reaching the Fates. “My daughter is being treated like a servant, and not a well-respected one either.”

Daddy’s clearly offended, but I can’t tell if he’s offended because I’m being treated poorly, in his opinion, or if he’s offended because of the way someone is treating one of his children.

I’m shaking my head as I’m about to deny everything, when Lachesis asks, “Who is this they you’re referring to?”

“Yeah,” Megan says. The word is really charged, like it has magic all its own. “You’re saying that the Johnson Family is doing this?”

“They’re not doing anything,” I say.

“Shush, child,” Atropos says to me. “Let us figure this out.”

I open my hands in a what-the-hell? gesture. (Mom says it’s both rude and obscene, and I don’t care. I’m the one being discussed here.)

Clotho tucks a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “You’re saying that this family—”

“The Johnson Family,” Lachesis says, making sure she gets it right.

“This Johnson Family,” Atropos says, working in the correction as if she was the one who started the initial sentence.

“—is treating Brittany like a servant?” Clotho finishes.

“Because,” Lachesis says, “we really need clarification. If they are treating her like a servant, does that mean they’re making her work?”

“Or,” Atropos says as she crosses her arms and stares down at Daddy, “does that mean they’re treating her the way that you treat servants?”

Megan looks at me with alarm. I shrug.

No one else pays attention to me, because they’re still caught up in their questioning.

“Because,” Clotho says, “if they treat her one way, they’re making her labor.”

“And,” Lachesis says, “if they’re treating her another, it will result in labor.”

“Oh. My. God,” I blurt. “I’m not pregnant.”

Daddy has always slept with the servants, from the beginning of time, damn near, or at least, the beginning of his time. Half of my siblings are the result of Daddy sleeping with someone who worked for the family.

Everyone looks at me as if I just grew a third head. But I have to clear this up right now.

“I’m not pregnant,” I repeat. “I don’t even have a boyfriend and I barely have time to talk to anyone, and can I just go home, please? I didn’t ask to come here.”

Clotho tilts her head at me. Her blue eyes make mine seem pale and washed out. You can see the entire sky in those eyes.

But it’s Atropos’s turn to speak, so she asks, “You didn’t ask to come here?”

“No,” I say.

Clotho turns that very blue gaze on Daddy. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” I say, before he can answer. “He showed up when I got off work and blew up my phone and then brought me here.”

“He did what to your phone?” Megan asks. She’s probably the only one who understands cell phones in the entire room.

“He took it from me,” I say, “and then it exploded.”

Everyone looks at Daddy now. If I were Daddy, I would be blushing. But I don’t think he can blush. I’m not even sure he feels shame.

He shrugs. “I didn’t mean to destroy the bloody thing.”

Lachesis frowns. “He does have powerful magic.”

“He didn’t mean to do it,” Atropos says to her sisters.

“So that means ‘the bloody thing’ is some kind of technology?” Clotho asks.

“Yes, it is.” Megan tugs on her sweatshirt. She’s obviously uncomfortable wearing those clothes in front of the Fates.

“And why was the thing covered in blood?” Lachesis asks.

“It wasn’t,” Megan says. “He’s using a British swear word, which I’m rather surprised he knows.”

“I know a lot about a lot of things,” Daddy says. “I had no idea, however, that that little black device was a tech device.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I say, which would really get me in trouble with Mom. “All I was trying to do was get a ride home.”

“So that’s why you contacted him?” Atropos asks. “Because you want to return to Mount Olympus?”

“I didn’t contact him!” I say, trying not to yell at the Fates, but I’ve never been on the other side of one of these conversations (that I remember) and now I understand why everyone who came to us Interim Fates eventually yelled. It wasn’t because we were incompetent. It was because we were annoying.

“If you didn’t contact him, why is he giving you a ride home?” Clotho asks.

“He’s not,” I say.

Megan puts up a hand, stopping me from talking. “I’m sorry,” she says to the Fates. “There’s a misunderstanding.”

“Several,” I say.

But Megan pushes her palm toward me as if I hadn’t seen it the first time. I had, but jeez. This is getting out of hand, no pun intended.

“Brittany was using a cellular telephone—mortal technology—to call someone to give her a ride back to the Johnson Family house,” Megan says.

“We know what a telephone is,” Lachesis says in a haughty tone.

“If you had only said that,” Atropos says, “we would have understood you.”

I start, “We did—” but Megan talks over me.

“We’re very sorry for the lack of clarity,” she says in a reasonable tone. “What happened, apparently, is this: Brittany was using her telephone when Zeus appeared and took it from her, destroying it.”

All three Fates swiveled their heads to look at him.

“Why would you do that?” Clotho asks.

Somehow he manages to look contrite and smug at the same time. “I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s technology,” Megan says, as if she’s trying to smooth things over. I have no idea why she would want to smooth things over. We’re in some kind of mess here, and it’s Daddy’s fault, and she shouldn’t take his side. “Technology and magic—”

“Do not get along,” Lachesis says.

“We remember this from our time in the Greater World,” Atropos says.

“We, of course, did not have this problem,” Clotho says as she glares at Daddy.

“Because,” Lachesis says, “someone—”

“Took away our magic,” Atropos says.

All three of them spoke with great anger. They’re still furious at Daddy. (Yay!)

“It was most inconvenient,” Clotho says.

“Especially since all of our enemies were trying to kill us,” Lachesis says.

“But,” Atropos says with fake cheerfulness, “at least we didn’t have to deal with—what did you say? Exploding?—technology.”

Daddy’s smug expression fades as they talk. Now he’s backing away from them. His feet get caught on the thin rug they have near one of the shelves, and he stops.

“Look,” he says, “you girls need to let bygones be bygones.”

“Girls?” Clotho says.

“Did he just call us girls?” Lachesis asks.

“Did he intend disrespect?” Atropos asks.

“Or was that just the effect?” Clotho asks.

“Hmmm,” they all say together, as if they’re really contemplating that thought.

I can tell them the answer. He intended disrespect.

I’m about to say something when Megan warns me off with a look.

“We’re all here now.” Megan says with surprising calm. “Let’s just find out what crisis Zeus perceives, and perhaps we can resolve it to all of our satisfaction.”

“I would be most satisfied if we turn him into a toad,” Lachesis says.

“Very unimaginative,” Atropos says. “How about a rock?”

“Or a speck of dirt,” Clotho says.

Daddy has actually gone pale. I didn’t think his skin could change color like that.

“I really…I didn’t mean to insult you gir—ladies. You ladies,” he says. “I didn’t mean to insult you ladies.”

“He does not understand any of this, does he?” Lachesis asks her sisters.

“He never has,” Atropos says.

“I just wanted to tell you about Brittany’s problems,” Daddy says.

“I don’t have any problems,” I snap. “Except you.”

The words just came out. I didn’t force them. I didn’t even plan them.

My heart is pounding. I really haven’t stood up to Daddy before. Not alone. Tiffany and Crystal did, and then I piled on, but I have never ever spoken to him like that before.

Everyone is staring at me.

Daddy’s mouth has become a thin line, and lightning sparks in his hair. In a minute, there’s going to be thunder, and I have no idea what happens if he rains lightning down on this library.

“Yes, you do,” he says very carefully. “You have serious problems.”

“No, I don’t,” I say.

“Perhaps you don’t understand what they’re doing to you,” he says. Those brown eyes of his are filled with concern.

Part of me is honored that he actually notices me, that he feels concern for me. And another part of me is totally pissed at him. (Yes, pissed, Mom. I’m really, really, really mad.)

“They’re harming you, Brittany,” he says, and despite my best efforts, my heart lifts when he says my name. “It has to stop. It has to stop now.”

“No one’s—”

“What are they doing?” Megan interrupts me. She is frowning at Daddy, but I can’t tell if she believes him.

She wouldn’t ask him a question like that if she didn’t believe him, right? She’s an empath. She knows what he’s feeling.

I look at him. Does he actually believe I’m under some kind of threat? Who’s threatening me? And how?

Daddy nods at Megan. It’s as if he realizes she’s his ally all of a sudden.

“They’re trying to destroy my daughter,” he says. “And I, for one, am not going to let them.”

ELEVEN

THE LIBRARY HAS gotten cold. I spent forever here with my sisters, or at least, it seemed that way. We let it get run down. Now the shelves sparkle and the books glisten with magic, as if they are inviting me to read them.

I don’t want to read any of them. I don’t want to be here.

And now, Daddy has shaken me to my very core. What does he mean they are trying to destroy me? I agree with Lachesis. Who the heck are they? And why is he my protector all of the sudden? He didn’t even know me before.

I’m shaking. I don’t want to be destroyed. Especially by an unseen, unknown foe.

“Who is after me?” I ask.

“I didn’t say anyone is after you, child,” he says. He barely looks at me. “I said they’re trying to destroy you.”

“I think the question is a good one,” Clotho says. “Who is trying to hurt this child?”

I’m getting tired of being called a child. I’m not a child. I’ve been through more than most people ever go through in an entire lifetime, and I’m really, really, really tired of being thought of as less than I am.

But I do care about the answer to Clotho’s question.

“Everyone,” Daddy says.

The Fates and Megan all make sounds of disgust. Their gazes meet, and Megan shakes her head just a little.

The lightning is starting to dance around Daddy’s hair again. “Everyone who lives in that horrible place you’ve stashed her,” he says, speaking louder than before, as if louder makes him right or something. “You don’t know what they’re doing.”

“They’re making her work a job,” Megan says. “Mortal children—even mage children, before they get magic—work regular jobs.”

“That’s not a regular job,” Daddy snaps.

“Did you not once tell us that someone must shovel the horse manure?” Lachesis asks Daddy.

“Not my daughter,” he says. “Not any of my children.”

“You object to Brittany’s day job?” Megan asks.

“Yes,” Daddy says.

Atropos sighs. “So you have wasted our time again.”

She looks at me as she says that. I hold out my hands in supplication. “I didn’t ask to come here,” I say. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“He brought you?” Clotho asks.

“Yes,” I say. “Against my will. I did not call on him, I did not ask him to talk to me, and I certainly did not ask him to bring me here.”

All four women look at Daddy. He straightens his very broad shoulders. That lightning in his hair has faded again.

“I was going to take her home,” Daddy says. “But I knew I had to speak to you all first. And you’ll want to listen to what I have to say.”

“I would have gotten home if you hadn’t blown up my phone,” I say.

“You can call home with a simple technology device?” he asks.

“The Johnson Family Manse,” I say. “I wanted to go to the Johnson Family Manse.”

“The what?” Lachesis asks at the same time Daddy does, and with the same inflection.

They look at each other, startled, and then both back up a step, as if shocked that they could have the same thought at the same time.

“The Johnson Family Manse,” Megan says, “is what Brittany’s family calls their home. I think it’s rather cute, myself.”

Cute? It’s not cute. It’s a place. And, as this conversation goes on, I’m beginning to realize that it is home to me.

A home where something is wrong. Or at least, Daddy thinks something is wrong, which is both weird and worse, because I have no idea why he cares and I also have no idea if I should trust him.

“I’m Brittany’s family,” Daddy says to Megan.

My breath catches. He’s what? He’s never said anything like that before.

“You’re part of Brittany’s family.” Megan raises her chin. Her tone is crisp. “And, I would chance to say, a relatively small part at that.”

Daddy’s hair sparks. “I fathered her.”

Like that’s an achievement. Daddy has fathered people with a single thought—witness Athena.

I cross my arms. I don’t like this conversation at all. I wish I still had my phone. I wish I was in the parking lot. I wish I could call someone at the Johnson Family Manse to get me out of here.

“You fathered her.” Megan’s voice drips with contempt. “That’s all you did, until you decided to use her in your little personal coup,”

Megan says. She doesn’t have any real magic power yet, and even if she did, she probably wouldn’t be as powerful as anyone else in the room, yet she’s fearless.

I love that about her. She can face down anyone, and not worry about the consequences.

I can barely talk to anyone and I’m scared all the time. Megan, on the other hand, pulls no punches.

I can’t believe she just said that to Daddy.

The Fates have conjured some popcorn in a white and red striped bucket. They’re passing it back and forth, and watching, as if this was some kind of movie.

“I’ve reformed,” Daddy says to Megan. “I’m paying attention to my daughters now.”

Atropos’s hand stops halfway between the popcorn bucket and her mouth. “All of your daughters?” she asks in a voice I’ve never heard her use.

Megan tenses beside me, and I suddenly remember something that Dionysius said one day after he’d had too much to drink. (Okay, he’s always had too much to drink, but that day was particularly bad.)

He said that there were rumors that Daddy was the father of the Fates. No one knows, except maybe Daddy and the Fates themselves.

Not that it matters, because Daddy is subject to the Fates’ decrees just like the rest of the magical. That’s what he was trying to change when he put us in charge and that’s why he got suspended from the Powers That Be, and that’s why he lost big time when he got caught at his own game.

Daddy frowns at Atropos. Tiny lightning bolts sizzle from one strand of his hair to another. He’s getting really mad.

“I am paying attention to my youngest three,” he says, with emphasis.

Clotho takes the popcorn bucket from Atropos and puts it on the ground.

“If you believe that Brittany, Crystal, and Tiffany are your youngest daughters,” Clotho says slowly, “you are mistaken.”

“You have nearly three dozen children younger than Brittany.” Lachesis’s mouth curls in distaste.

“And, just like the statistics predict,” Atropos adds, “a little over half are girls.”

“You’d think that you would be able to keep track,” Clotho says. “After all, you took them from their mothers, just like you took Brittany, Tiffany, and Crystal.”

My lower lip trembles and tears prick my eyes. I take a deep breath. I am not going to be a drama queen here, I am not. I am not. I clench my fists.

Then Megan reaches over and puts her fingers around my wrist. “It’s all right,” she says softly to me. “We’ll figure this all out.”

“We have a lot to figure,” says Daddy, who clearly overheard her. “Because my child is in hell.”

“Right now, I am,” I say, and for that, all three Fates and Daddy glare at me.

“She’s speaking metaphorically,” Megan says.

“No, I’m not,” I say. “I’m in this stupid library, where I was imprisoned for I don’t know how long, doing what you wanted.” I whirl on Daddy. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t like it here.”

Megan is looking shocked, and I realize I’m insulting the Fates, which is a bad thing, but probably exactly what they expect, since they hate me so much.

I can’t see them, but I see that Daddy’s eyebrows have gone up, and his oversized nostrils have flared.

“I had to bring you here first to rescue you,” Daddy says. “Whether I like it or not, I have to get their permission to take you to Mount Olympus.”

“I. Don’t. Want. To. Go.” I speak each word slowly, like he’s the stupidest man in the universe. “Leave me alone.”

“You heard her,” Megan says. She looks at the Fates. “Let’s send her back.”

“No!” Daddy holds up his hand. Now the lightning bolts are traveling from fingertip to fingertip. “You don’t understand.”

“Enlighten us, then,” Lachesis says.

“Without threatening us with your magic.” Atropos waves her hand and suddenly Daddy’s fingers are wrapped in gauze.

“Hey!” he says.

“We’ll put you in a protective bubble if we have to,” Clotho says.

“This is our domain, Zeus,” Lachesis says. “You are not to use your magic here at all.”

Megan relaxes slightly beside me. I’m standing just a little behind her. I want her between me and Daddy. I’m probably the only one who would be caught by surprise if he tries something.

“You will tell us what this perceived threat is right now,” Atropos says. “Or you will leave.”

He glares at them. I think I hear the faint rumble of thunder, but all three Fates glare back, and the thunder dissipates.

“They are trying to make her into Helen of Troy,” he says softly.

The Fates gasp and clasp their hands to their mouths. They look appalled.

I’m just confused. Megan frowns at them. Apparently, she’s confused too.

“What are they talking about?” she asks me softly.

“My drama teacher cast me as Helen of Troy in a scene from Doctor Faustus,” I say.

“Do you have any idea who this woman was?” Clotho takes a step toward me. Her blonde hair falls about her face, and her blue eyes seem to glow.

“The most beautiful woman in the world,” I say.

“Oh, if Hera hears that,” Daddy says softly.

“Helen of Troy was not the most beautiful woman in the world,” Lachesis says. “She was a serious problem. She is one of the few magical we had to execute.”

Daddy looks at me, eyebrows raised in a see? kinda look.

“We hoped to never see her like again,” Atropos says.

“And now, these people, these mortal people, want you to emulate her?” Clotho says.

“This is unacceptable,” Lachesis says. “Much as it pains us, your father is right. You cannot stay—”

“Wait!” Megan says, holding up her hand. “You are rushing to judgment without hearing anything Brittany has to say. Tell them what’s really going on.”

My heart is pounding. The Fates executed Helen of Troy? For what? And how come I only know the myth? That’s not normal, is it? Or is it? I have no idea.

“My drama teacher—you know, theater—you know, it started in Ancient Greece…” My voice trails off.

Of course they know. They know better than I do. They were probably there when theater started.

They’re staring at me. Daddy is staring at me (and rubbing his hands together, apparently trying to take off the gauze).

Megan nods, as if expecting me to continue.

“My drama teacher, at school,” I say. “She wants me to be in a play. Just a few scenes, for some competition. She says I’m perfect for the role, but I don’t think I am. Anyway, I couldn’t talk her out of it.”

Atropos frowns. “You look nothing like Helen of Troy. Your sister Tiffany could be Helen’s identical twin, but you, you are the exact opposite physical type. Your teacher—”

“Has never met Helen,” Megan says, and she’s using that calm voice again. I’m beginning to think that’s a fake calm voice. Maybe it’s her therapy voice. “Remember, we’re dealing with mortals. They’ve never even seen a proper image of the real Helen.”

Clotho grunts. Lachesis mutters, “Huh.” And Atropos adds, “Humph.”

Apparently those sounds count as talking. I hadn’t really noticed that when we were Interim Fates because we tended to make surprised sounds at the same time.

Daddy looks at them, then at me. He lets his hands fall to his side. His eyes glitter.

Apparently, he sees an opportunity.

“See?” Daddy says. “These mortals don’t know what they’re dealing with.”

I glance at Megan. She gives me a small nod, then tugs on her sweatshirt again.

“Keep going,” she says softly.

I say, “The role isn’t even a speaking role. It’s just symbolic—”

“And we all know how potent symbols are,” Daddy says.

Megan puts a hand on his arm. “Let Brittany finish.”

Daddy looks at Megan’s hand as if he’s going to burn it off. But she doesn’t move.

See? Courage. I’d take my hand off Daddy’s arm in an instant if he looked at me like that.

I say, “The play is apparently a classic. It’s called Doctor Faustus, and—”

“That horrid Marlow,” Clotho says to her sisters.

“Almost as bad as Shakespeare,” Lachesis says quietly.

“I’ll never forgive him for ‘boil, boil, toil and trouble,’” Atropos says. “Never.”

They’re talking with each other and not paying attention to me.

Megan glances at me, sees (feels?) my distress, and says, “We’re not discussing Shakespeare. Marlowe was a contemporary—”

“We’ve met him,” Clotho says.

“Horrid little man, horrid,” Lachesis says.

“The things he says about magic and its practitioners,” Atropos says. She clucks and shakes her head.

“I know, right?” I say before I can stop myself.

They all look at me as if I’ve done something wrong. But I’m used to talking in this room, and besides, isn’t this meeting about me?

I force myself to continue. “I hate the play and I tried to get out of it, but if I want a good grade, I have to stay.”

The Fates all frown at me at the same time. I know that look. They usually don’t have that look. Tiff, Crystal, and I had that look a lot. The Fates don’t understand what I’m saying.

Clotho turns her piercing gaze on Megan. “What are these grades?”

“They’re the currency of school,” Megan says. “The better the grade, the better the student does.”

I look at her in shock. I’ve never heard grades discussed as if they’re money.

Megan gives me a tiny smile, as if warning me not to say anything.

“So,” Lachesis says to me. “If you perform this play, you will do well in your mortal endeavors?”

“One of them, I guess,” I say.

“And it is a play,” Atropos says. “Not an enchantment.”

I kinda think all plays are enchantments. “I—”

“It’s a play,” Megan says quickly. “I can get you the text if you like.”

Clotho snaps her fingers and the play appears before her, like a hologram. She waves her hand and the words fly past.

Daddy is watching all of us, and he’s not frowning. I would think he’d be angry that his plan got thwarted.

Unless he really and truly is worried about me playing Helen.

He can’t be, can he?

Lachesis leans over and helps with the text. Then Atropos touches some of the words. They glow, and I recognize the lines that Mrs. Schmidt quoted when she told me to take the part.

The face that launch’d a thousand ships…

“This is drivel,” Clotho says.

“And it has nothing to do with Helen,” Lachesis says.

Atropos peers around the words at Daddy. “Did you read this?”

“No,” he says, sounding offended that he had to read anything. “My daughter will not embody Helen of Troy.”

“Interesting word, ‘embody,’” Clotho says.

“Almost magical,” Lachesis says.

“Theater can be magical,” Atropos says.

See? I mouth at Megan. She makes a tiny downward gesture with her hand, essentially telling me to be quiet.

“Now, do you understand my concern?” Daddy asks.

“Not entirely,” Clotho says.

“If we worried about everyone in theater, we would be worrying all the time,” Lachesis says.

“But this is my daughter,” Daddy says, “portraying Helen.”

“Yes,” Atropos says, but I can’t tell if she’s agreeing with Daddy or simply saying that to get him to say more.

Daddy being Daddy, however, thinks she’s encouraging him to say more. “And, have you seen where she lives? Have you seen the hovel they put her in?”

Hovel? Is he serious?

“Daddy,” I say. “The Johnson Family is doing the best they can.”

“They are not,” he says. “You have never had such a horrible place to live.”

I let out an exasperated sigh. “You never saw where the wood nymphs put me and Tiff and Crystal when you had them take care of us. We didn’t even have a roof over our heads. We were living in trees. You didn’t care then.”

He shoots me a look that, had the Fates not scared him about the magic, probably would have had lightning bolts in it.

“I have already apologized for my earlier behavior,” he says unapologetically.

“Apologies are only effective if they are sincere,” Clotho says.

Daddy shifts his stance. He looks like a fighter. “I was sinc—”

“What is your real reason for bringing young Brittany here?” Lachesis asks Daddy.

“I want to rescue her from—”

“Your real reason,” Atropos says. “Not the lies.”

He glances at me. His entire expression is odd, as if he’s sad or desperate or worried. Is he that concerned about my role as Helen of Troy? Or is he that concerned about how I live? He can’t be, right? Because he’s never even seen the house.

Although he must have, because he’s talking about it. That creeps me out worse. He’s seen the house, and he hasn’t talked to me. Has he been stalking me?

I understand stalking. I watch TV, just like everyone else.

“Brittany,” Daddy says, and the fact that he says my name always sends a little shiver through me. For so long, I wanted him to recognize me, and now he is, and I can’t get over that.

Even though I want to. I don’t want to be that pathetic girl who takes crumbs of attention from her big powerful and neglectful father.

I want to be someone who is valued for who she is.

And I know that Daddy has no idea who I am.

But he thinks he does. He says to me, “This punishment they have inflicted on you, the loss of your magic, the loss of your home, it’s wrong.”

Punishment? What? No one is punishing me.

And then the rest of the sentence sinks in. He means “they” as in the Fates—they, not anyone-else-they.

I look at the Fates. They’re glaring at Daddy over the glowing words of the play.

“You punished me?” I asked them. “I thought we agreed that we’d have a normal life. That’s not punishment, is it?”

“I found a normal life trying,” Clotho says.

“But to us, this is normal life,” Lachesis says.

“Besides, your family came to us after your decisions were made,” Atropos says.

“That’s because we all decided, in my office, that the girls were being mistreated,” Megan says, moving herself closer to Daddy. “By you.”

He makes a face. “I elevated them to a position of honor. And when you all protested, I gave in to your silly demands. But this life that Brittany is living, it’s horrible.”

My mouth opens slightly? My life is horrible? Really? It doesn’t seem that way to me.

“Honey,” he says, “you need to defend yourself. They’re making you into someone you’re not.”

I’m having trouble focusing on any of this. I’m tired from my long day at the store, and my muscles ache in ways they never have before, and I’m getting a slight headache.

Besides, this library makes me really, really uncomfortable, and Daddy’s piercing gaze makes me even more uncomfortable.

It’s like he’s arguing in circles, and I’m getting dizzy rather than enlightened.

“What are ‘they’ making me into?” I ask.

“A pawn, a puppet,” he says. “Someone who does not think for herself, but does what everyone expects of her.”

A slight frown mars the skin between Megan’s eyes. Does she agree?

The Fates are all watching me, as if waiting for me to decide something.

“You mean like you did?” I ask him.

He glances sideways at Megan as if he’s silently asking her to stop me. But Megan doesn’t move.

I do. I take a step toward him.

“You expect something from me,” I say. “You expect me to do what you want. You’ve always expected that.”

“I know what’s best for you,” he says. “Losing your magic is not what’s best.”

I run a hand through my hair. There’s dust in it, and grit from the boxes this afternoon. I probably have dirt on my face.

I look at Clotho. She almost looks like a statue, with her blonde hair flowing down her back, her tunic draped beautifully around her willowy form, and her hands clasped in front of her.

She lives here, in this library. She understands it. She can call up an old play with the flick of a finger, and she can read it, and understand it immediately. She has forgotten more than I’ll ever know.

And she seems comfortable here.

So do Lachesis and Atropos.

But I’m not. Even though this library goes on forever, it feels oppressive. It makes me feel small and stupid and jittery, like the library itself expects me to screw up.

I never did anything right when I was here. I didn’t do what Daddy wanted. I didn’t do what Tiffany wanted. I didn’t do what Crystal wanted.

And all the mages who showed up for help, I didn’t do what they wanted either. They wanted us to be wise and we weren’t wise. We were just faking it.

“Brittany,” Megan says, “do you have something to add?”

For a moment, I forgot that she can feel what I feel. I look at her.

“I didn’t lose my magic, did I?” I ask the Fates.

“No, child,” Clotho says. “Your magic is waiting for you when you come of age.”

I nod.

“I think we should have a ruling,” Daddy says. “I think that Brittany should be released from this punishment, and—”

“It’s not a punishment,” Lachesis says.

“But that’s the end result,” he says. “She’s forced to be someone she’s not, she has to labor in a sweaty shop, and she has no room of her own. The conditions you’ve sent her to are terrible. The other girls have nice rooms and nice homes, and they don’t have to be a mass murderer to get it. But Brittany…”

My heart starts to race. Helen of Troy was a mass murderer? Who knew?

“She seems to have nothing at all. I think you should reconsider for her.” Daddy finishes quietly, rather than his usual rhetorical flourish.

“Are you acting as her advocate?” Atropos asks him.

My breath catches. Even I know what that means. I’ve seen it a few times as an Interim Fate. An advocate doesn’t mean he represents me. It means he’s speaking out against an injustice.

Usually the advocate speaks out without the person he’s advocating for even knowing that he’s pressing her case.

“Yes,” Daddy says.

“Then we must take this under advisement,” Clotho says, and waves her arm.

And the entire library disappears.

TWELVE

THE NEXT THING I know, I am standing, alone, on the sidewalk outside the store. It’s colder here than it was inside the library, and I shiver. The sky looks just as gray as it had before, and it seems to me that the same cars are parked in the same place in the parking lot.

I don’t have a phone, though, and I don’t have any way to explain what happened to the phone Karl gave me.

The Johnson Family can’t afford to lose a phone. I tear up, then force the tears back. I don’t need to cry over a phone.

Of course, I wouldn’t be crying over a phone. That entire experience…

I shake my head, trying to clear it. Daddy as my advocate. I have no idea how the real Fates will handle that.

I have no idea how he will.

I take a deep breath of the cold air. I can’t get back to the Fates. I can’t talk to Daddy. I’m going to have to get to the Johnson Family Manse somehow.

I turn back to the store, hoping the door is still unlocked. I’ll use their phone, and then I’ll tell Mom what happened to the cell phone. I’ll offer to pay for it.

Somehow.

I pull the door open and step inside. It’s warmer here, and darker than outside, because the front lights are still off. Just ahead of me, I see four silhouettes. I blink to help my eyes adjust, and as they do, I realize the silhouettes are women.

Four women. One of them is Mrs. Larson. She stands near some shelves, arms crossed.

The other women wear cloth coats with fur collars, stockings with lines that goes up the back of their legs, high heels, and jaunty hats that are more decorative than functional.

My breath catches.

The Fates.

Those three women are the Fates.

They can’t be. I just left them at the library—or rather, they banished me back here.

But if they’re taking an advocate seriously, they need to send a representative to evaluate the situation, and if there’s no trusted representative…

They have to do the job themselves.

“Crap,” I mutter, and feel Mom’s disapproval even though she’s not here. “Crap, crap, crap.”

I walk toward the women. Mrs. Larson looks up and waves me over.

I hurry to her side.

Clotho stands directly across from her. Clotho’s coat is a deep red and (gross!) the fur around the collar isn’t attached. It’s a real fur. A fox fur, with the dead fox’s head nipping its tail. Her hands are tucked inside a matching fur muff.

“Ah, Brittany,” Mrs. Larson says, waving me closer still. “I had told these ladies they had just missed you.”

My gaze met Lachesis’s. Her coat is green and it matches her eyes. The fur around the collar is white and spotted, and I worry that it’s from some dead endangered creature. Her hands are bare, and her fingers are covered in gold rings. Her fingernails are painted bright red, matching her lipstick.

“We are not here to see the child,” Lachesis says, forming her words very carefully.

“We are here to examine her work conditions,” Atropos says.

She’s wearing a blue coat, and her fur has no face (thank heavens!). The fur is sleek and black and drapes over the side of the coat like a scarf. She also has a muff that matches, only she’s holding it in one leather-gloved hand, while the other hand clutches a long cigarette holder à la Cruella de Vil.

“Who did you say you were again?” Mrs. Larson asks them.

The Fates don’t know enough about the Greater World to lie convincingly. They’d probably just end up magicking Mrs. Larson, which could go wrong in so many ways.

“My father—my real father—is having some custody issues,” I say to Mrs. Larson. “He sent them.”

“He did not send us, child,” Atropos says. “He advocated—”

“They’re, like, representatives of the government,” I say hastily. I don’t want them to explain who they really are or what they think the American equivalent of their job is. “They have to evaluate my situation.”

“Oh, I see,” Mrs. Larson says in a tone that implies that she doesn’t see at all.

“My dad is really rich and influential,” I say, “and he doesn’t approve of anything Mom is doing.”

“He believes she does not have young Brittany’s interests at heart,” Clotho says.

“Karin?” Mrs. Larson says, sounding stunned. “That woman adores this girl. Karin is doing everything in her power to make sure that Brittany has a good life here. Karin doesn’t have any money to speak of and she and Karl have a lot of children, but they do better than any other parents I know of. You give Karin a chance. She’s been waiting years to have Brittany at her side. She was so happy when she learned that Brittany was coming.”

“We are unconcerned about Karin Johnson at the moment,” Lachesis says. “We need to evaluate Brittany’s work conditions.”

I’ve had the job only one real day and already I’m causing trouble. My cheeks heat.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Mrs. Larson. “I didn’t mean for this—”

“That’s all right.” Mrs. Larson pats my arm. “I’ll take care of these ladies. Did you forget something?”

I frown, before I realize why she’s asking. From her perspective, I left and came back immediately. She probably thinks I’m trying to interfere with the Fates’ investigation.

“I don’t have my phone anymore, and I need a ride home.” I glance at the Fates. They watch as if we’re putting on a play for them. “May I use the phone here to call?”

“Certainly,” she says. “Why don’t you use the phone in my office?”

“Thanks,” I say. I walk in there, head down. What a disaster. Daddy can ruin everything without even trying hard.

As I approach the desk, I can hear Mrs. Larson say, “This was Brittany’s first day with us, and she did tremendously well. We’re just setting up the store right now. After we’re done stocking shelves, we’ll help customers….”

Her voice fades as she walks into the back. I hope the Fates understand what she’s talking about.

I hope she’s willing to keep me on after all of this trouble.

If, of course, I’m staying in Superior.

I call the house, and Ivan answers.

“Hey,” I say, “is Mom or Karl there?”

“Um, lemme check.” He sets the phone down with a clang. I hear voices, but all of them young. Then he comes back. “Haven’t seen either of them. I guess they’re not here.”

“What about Eric or Lise?” I ask.

“Eric just left, and I dunno where Lise is. Something I can do?”

“I wish,” I say, thank him, and hang up.

Then I stand in the office for just a moment. I can hear the Fates’ heels clicking loudly as Mrs. Larson gives them a tour of the front area.

I pick up the phone again, and dial the only other number I have memorized—Eric’s.

He answers faster than I expect.

“Hey,” I say. “Would you mind picking me up at the store?”

“No prob,” he says. “I’m a block away. Be outside.”

Then he hangs up.

I glance around, but I don’t see anyone. Even the footsteps have grown quiet. My heart is still pounding too hard.

I had hoped that I’d be able to spy on the Fates and Mrs. Larson, maybe explain a few things. But now I can’t.

I doubt they would have let me anyway.

I step out of the office. Through the big display windows, I see Eric’s rust bucket pull into the parking lot.

He’ll be upset if I’m not waiting for him.

I hurry across the floor, and shout, “Thanks!” as I let myself out.

The cold hits me like a slap. Then the rust bucket squeals to a stop in front of me. I hurry around to the passenger side.

“How’d it go?” he asks.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I say, and slink down in my seat.

THIRTEEN

ERIC DROPS ME in front of the house. I stand there a moment, feeling tired and achy and lost. The narrow road goes slightly downhill, and if I stand on my tiptoes, I can almost see the lake.

It’s probably the same gray color as the sky. The air smells damp, and twilight is coming.

It’ll get even darker.

I shove my hands in the pockets of my coat, bow my head, and walk toward the house. It’s almost invisible from the street. Daddy thinks the house is horrible, but I like it.

I like it here more than I realized.

And now Daddy’s going to ruin it.

I walk up the driveway, the cold wind stinging my face. The front door is down the sidewalk to my left, but no one except company uses that door. I’m not company—at least not yet.

I round the garage and go up the back steps to the kitchen door. I step inside, and smell peanut butter and coffee.

The coffee still sits in the coffeemaker, but the maker’s unplugged. An open jar of peanut butter sits on the counter, and two slices of bread sit on a plate, but there’s no one in the kitchen.

“Hello!” I shout as I pull off my coat.

I really don’t want to see anyone, but one of the rules of the household is to announce your presence. No sneaking in.

“There you are!” Ingrid leans in from the dining room. “Ivan says you called.”

“I needed a ride,” I say.

“Well, you can deal with everything now,” she says. “I want lunch.”

She heads to the counter, grabs the peanut butter and the plate, and carries it to the kitchen table.

“What everything?” I ask.

“Well,” she says, digging a butter knife into the jar, “let’s see. It’s just been a zoo. Three ladies wearing dead animals showed up and wanted to talk to Mom and Dad. Dad’s working, and Mom disappeared somewhere. We can’t find her, but her car’s around, so she’s probably at the neighbor’s.”

“Three ladies wearing dead animals?” I ask.

“Yeah, and they had strange names too. They wanted to see your room, and Lise showed them before she went to work.”

My stomach has tied itself into knots.

“Don’t worry,” Ingrid says. “We only said good things about you. And Leif showed them the place where Dad’s going to build your new bedroom.”

“He did?” I ask.

“Yeah. I would’ve made coffee, but they said I didn’t need to.” Ingrid is learning how to do some simple things in the kitchen, like making coffee. The Fates have no idea what a disaster they missed.

The Fates. Here. And then at the store.

I have no idea how they managed to get here before I saw them at the store, but they can bend time a little if they want to. (I suspect they can bend time a lot if they want to, but I’ve never asked, and we Interims never heard about it.)

“Oh, yeah,” Ingrid says, “and your other sisters called. Hans answered.”

Oh, great. They had to talk to a six-year-old.

“He told them you were working, then Leif took the phone and told them you’d call back. I think he hung up too quick, but what do I know?” Ingrid smooths peanut butter on both slices of bread, then slams them together. She licks off her fingers before putting the lid back on the jar.

I’m holding my breath. I force myself to breathe out.

“And your drama teacher called. She says the information you sent to rehearsal was strange but fun. I took that call. She says she’ll talk to you on Monday.” Ingrid takes a bite out of the sandwich. “Oof. Mned mill.”

She heads into the refrigerator room.

I watch her, my head spinning.

As she comes back holding a carton of milk, she waves it at me. “Want some?”

“No, thanks,” I say, even though my mouth is dry. “What information?”

“Huh?” She gets a cup off the kids’ shelf, which has plastic cups and things for them to use. Then she pours herself some milk.

“You said that I sent information…?”

“Some people showed up and gave your teacher information on Troy? Helen? Something.”

“Helen of Troy,” I say, closing my eyes.

“Yes!” Ingrid points her cup at me, almost sloshing the milk out of it. “That’s the one. Your teacher says it was funny and theatrical and she had no idea you knew such talented people.”

“What?” I ask.

“I guess your friends put on some kind of show for her? They were dressed like Agent Carter, or something. That’s what your teacher says.”

“Agent Carter from the TV show?” I ask. We’ve all been watching it.

“Yeah, like that.” Ingrid takes another bite out of her sandwich.

The Fates. They saw Mrs. Schmidt too.

My heart sinks. I finally understand how they’re doing it. They haven’t left the library at all. They’re sending parts of themselves to investigate and report back, probably because they don’t trust anyone else to investigate for them, not with Zeus involved.

“Oh!” Ingrid says, talking with her mouth full. “N therz sumun feroo ina lavnrum.”

“What?” I ask.

She holds up a finger, then drinks the entire cup of milk. She wipes off her mouth with the back of her hand, then looks at me.

“Don’t tell Mom I did that,” she says.

“I won’t,” I say. “What did you just say?”

“I asked you not to tell Mom—”

“Before that. When you were chewing and talking at the same time.”

She makes a face at me. She knows she’s not supposed to talk while eating, and she didn’t make me promise to be quiet about that, although I will. It seems like a minor offense.

“There’s someone waiting for you in the living room,” she says.

“Why didn’t you tell me that right away?” I ask. Can this day get any worse?

“I needed lunch,” she says. “Besides it’s been weird, and I had to tell you—”

“Who is in the living room?” I ask, hoping it’s not more versions of the Fates.

“Some weird guy with long hair, and his wife. They’ve been here since you called.”

“And you didn’t tell me then?”

“Ivan answered the phone, remember?” Ingrid peers at me. It would be a good effect if it weren’t for her milk mustache. “He hung up before I could tell him.”

I sigh. I don’t know any weird guy with long hair, but I’m sure I will.

I thank Ingrid because, you know, be-nice, and I sling my coat over my arm. Then I head for the living room and the next disaster that waits for me, whatever it is.

Hilde sits at the dining room table. She clutches a battered Barbie doll in each hand. They bob and bounce as she talks to herself, playing with them.

I stare at her for a moment. I don’t remember ever playing like that, making things up about toys or having quiet moments with myself. Someone always watched because I or Tiff or Crystal would set a leaf on fire or make an ant grow to five times its normal size.

Then whoever found us would always yell at us, reverse the spell, and try to get us to stop using our magic. Finally, Athena stepped in and found a few old mages who taught us rudimentary spells.

Hilde doesn’t even notice me. Her dolls’ whispered conversation is apparently a lot more important than anything I’m doing. I smile at her anyway, and take the remaining steps to the living room.

A couple sits on the couch, with their backs to me. He has long brown hair, tied with a leather cord. Her hair is red, but not as fiery red as Crystal’s.

“Megan?” I ask quietly.

She stands and faces me. She’s changed from her sweats to a pretty, pale green summer sweater and some flattering black pants.

The man beside her stands too. He’s wearing an LA Clippers sweatshirt over a pair of skin-tight jeans, and he looks gorgeous, as always. His narrow face has high cheekbones and his dark brown eyes are filled with intelligence.

We three girls mooned over him for weeks after we had met him.

Megan’s husband, Rob Chapeau.

The original Robin Hood.

Which is a long story, and Megan says I don’t know the half of it. I suspect I don’t know an eighth of it, but I also know that it’s none of my business. They’re meant for each other, and they look it.

“I asked Rob to help me reach you,” Megan says. “He couldn’t quite locate you, so I had him bring me here.”

Megan hasn’t come into her magic yet, if she ever will. She is one of the strongest empaths anyone has ever met, but simple magic—spells and transportation and transformations?—she can’t do them at all.

But Rob’s been doing them for centuries.

“Do you need me to leave?” he asks.

He’s very respectful of boundaries. He often brings Megan to Superior for our therapy sessions, but he’s never even in the building when I arrive—except one time, after she had some trouble with Crystal and was running late.

Megan glances up at him, apparently about to answer, but I speak faster.

“You may as well stay,” I say. “I’m not going to confess to anything private, and this is such a mess, I’m sure it’ll be the topic of conversation around Mount Olympus for years.”

“Still,” Rob says to me. “I never go to Mount Olympus. I come from a different history and tradition. If you don’t want me to stay—”

“Please,” I say. “It’s not important.”

“Actually, it is.” Megan slips her arm around Rob and pulls him into a sideways hug. “Can you give us a few minutes? I’m sure the little girl who wanted you to play Barbies still has her dolls.”

I smile. “That’s Hilde. And she likes handsome men like you, hottie.”

Rob flushes, like he always does when I call him “hottie.” I’ve done it from the start, but back then, I was angry and disrespectful. Now, Mom would probably have my head for disrespecting Rob.

But I have to keep a little of my edge.

“I’m not that good at Barbies,” he says. “But I’ll see if someone can get me that coffee your sister—Inga?—”

“Ingrid,” I say.

“Ingrid mentioned,” he finishes. He kisses the top of Megan’s head, then lets her go. He ambles into the kitchen, and I can’t help myself. I watch him go.

After he’s out of earshot, I say to Megan, “I’m sorry, but he’s still the best-looking man I’ve ever seen.”

She smiles. “I’m not going to correct you. Especially since I agree with you.”

She sweeps her hand toward the couch. It’s saggy in the middle, and the edges have been clawed to shreds by the cats. It’s covered with dog hair, mostly Beauregard’s.

I don’t see any of the dogs, which means that Leif or Ivan have taken them upstairs, to keep them away from the guests.

The Johnson Family is nothing if not polite.

I don’t sit next to her. I can’t. I sit on the matching (and equally saggy) armchair that half-faces the dining room door.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” Megan says as she sits down. “Your father caught me off guard. If I had known that he was planning something, I would have been prepared.”

I can’t quite tell, but it seems that she thinks I knew Daddy was up to something.

“He surprised me too,” I say. “I hadn’t seen him since we were all in Los Angeles.”

She shakes her head slightly. “And yet he was watching you.”

“I guess so,” I say. “He knew about the house and the play and the job.”

“He never learns,” Megan says, more to herself than to me. “Or, rather, he learns the wrong things. He tried different approaches with Tiffany and Crystal. I should have expected him to try something new with you.”

“It’s okay.” I’m surprisingly calm, for me. For the drama queen. Except for that moment when I got back and I was thinking about the phone, I haven’t teared up at all.

I don’t even feel any tears lurking, not even when I think about the phone. (If those tears were about the phone, which I kinda doubt.)

Megan is watching me closely.

“It is okay, isn’t it?” she says to me with obvious surprise. She knows what I’m feeling and how not-upset I am.

I nod. I have to explain because she can’t read minds, although it seems like it sometimes.

“We’re in a process now,” I say. “And the Fates know what they’re doing.”

Megan frowns at me. “You’re familiar with this process?”

I nod. “The advocacy system. It’s really complicated. When Tiff and Crystal and I were Interim Fates, we had to get some help when advocates came to us. Mostly, we decided it was best to send out someone experienced but not a Power That Is or Be or, you know what I mean.”

“I know.” Megan smiles. English doesn’t always work well with our various magical titles.

“We didn’t know that you could split yourself into groups and investigate on your own. It would’ve gotten us out of the library.” I sigh.

“That’s what the Fates are doing? They’re investigating?”

“They’re bound by the advocacy system,” I say. “They have to make a decision based on evidence. Daddy’s forced them into a tight position, again.”

“Because he feels that you are being mistreated.” Megan sighs. “He can’t see beyond the superficial, can he?”

I shrug. I can’t control Daddy. I can’t even control my own life. I just have to go with it. Be like a willow in the wind, as one of Karl’s favorite songs says. You have to bend so that you don’t break.

“Are you unhappy here?” Megan asks.

I give her a withering look. “You should know.”

She shakes her head. “I know how hard this has all been for you. But I want to know how you feel deep down about being here.”

I look around. The scruffy furniture, the toys on the floor, the battered lamps, the half-finished walls, they’re not what the Johnson Family Manse is all about. It’s about the chaotic dinners and being nice and learning how to be better people and finding a quiet corner even when everyone’s home.

“I like it here,” I say.

“And you said that,” Megan mutters to herself. Then she peers over at me. “Didn’t you? When we were talking to the Fates?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “It was so weird, and Daddy wants me to go back to Mount Olympus. I mean, he’s pulling out all the stops.”

Megan leans back, and then nearly tumbles into the saggy part of the couch. She braces herself with her left hand and moves slightly to the right.

“I should’ve warned you,” I say.

“It’s all right.” She scooches even farther to the right, but she’s still in danger of toppling into the saggy part of the couch.

I start to get up to help her, but she waves me back.

She says, “I didn’t ask—and I don’t know—what happens if the Fates decide your father is right?”

I sit up straighter. No one has ever really asked me about Fate information before. I’m not sure what I’m allowed to say and what I’m not allowed to say.

But I’m talking about me, and I’m alone with Megan. So I guess I lied to Rob. I am having a private conversation after all.

“If they decide Daddy has a case and I’m being mistreated,” I say, “then the Fates will reinstate me.”

“As an Interim Fate?” Megan asks.

“No, they’d need to change Tiffany’s and Crystal’s lives then, and Daddy didn’t advocate for them. Did he?” I peer at her.

“No,” she says. “I can’t tell you what he did to them, but they can tell you.”

“Something with Tiff’s magic,” I say, “and he kidnapped Crystal.”

“Not exactly, but yes,” Megan says. “He did something different with them than he did with you.”

“So if he didn’t advocate for them,” I say, “then nothing will change for them. Just for me.”

“What does reinstatement mean?” Megan asks.

I bite my lower lip, and shrug one shoulder. “I don’t know for sure, but it’s probably what he asked for. I’ll get my magic back and I’ll move to Mount Olympus.”

“Where you’ll do what?” Megan asks.

“Be ignored by my dad again, probably,” I say. “He just wants to win.”

“He seems genuinely concerned,” Megan says.

“For his daughter,” I say.

“Yes,” Megan says. “You.”

“No,” I say again. “His daughter. Someone connected to him. Not for me. He doesn’t know me. He hasn’t even really talked to me.”

Megan threads her fingers together, then taps her index fingers against her lips. “And I can’t advocate for you.”

She didn’t ask a question, but I answer her anyway.

“It’s too late,” I say. “They’ve already investigated.”

“And their decision is final?” Megan asks.

I blink hard, expecting tears. There are none. I’m still strangely calm.

“They’re the Fates,” I say. “No one can overrule them.”

“Well, that’s just wrong,” Megan says.

“Now you sound like Daddy,” I say.

She frowns at me. “No need to get insulting.”

“Sorry,” I say.

“It’s all right.” She stands. “We need to get Rob. And we need to find your mother. She has to know what’s going on.”

I stand too, and wipe the dog hair off my jeans. The back of Megan’s pants is coated in various kinds of hair. I almost tell her, then decide there’s too much to get off without some serious roller time.

“Rob,” she calls.

“Just a second,” he says from the kitchen.

We look at each other. He emerges without any coffee. I hadn’t smelled any either.

His amazingly handsome face is scrunched into a frown. (He looks hot even when he’s frowning. Megan is sooo lucky.)

“We have a problem,” he says.

“I know,” Megan says. “The Fates—”

“Not the Fates,” he says. “Well, yes, the Fates, but not the way that you think.”

I don’t like his tone.

“What do you mean?” Megan asks.

“Brittany’s mom,” Rob says. “Remember when we got here, Ingrid told us their mom disappeared.”

“Yes,” Megan says.

“She literally disappeared. I was talking to Hilde—”

“She’s four, Rob,” Megan says dismissively.

“—and she kept insisting that Mommy went poof! like some character from some movie I don’t know,” he says. “I remembered what Ingrid said, so I ran a see-spell, and there it was. One minute Brittany’s mom was talking to Hilde, and the next, she had vanished, right out of the dining room. That’s what Hilde’s dolls have been discussing. That’s why Hilde wanted to talk to us. She wanted grown-ups to know.”

I let out a small breath. A see-spell recreates a moment, exactly as it happened.

“Did Hilde look at the see-spell?” I ask.

“I’m not an amateur, Miss Interim Fate,” Rob says.

“And I’m not an Interim Fate anymore,” I say.

“That was a Fate question,” he says.

I don’t like his tone. “No,” I say. “That’s a sister question. And she doesn’t know about magic.”

“She’s four,” Megan says. “Their brains are pretty elastic at that age.”

“It sounds like she’s shocked,” I say.

“She’s okay,” Megan says, but I walk past her.

Hilde’s still in the dining room, and the dolls are bouncing as they talk quietly to each other.

“Are you worried about Mom, Hilde?” I ask.

She looks up at me and then nods.

“Would it make you feel better if I go get her?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says in a tiny voice.

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll do that. It might take some time, but I’ll make sure she comes home, all right?”

“K,” she says, and sets her dolls down. She slides off the bench seat and runs toward me. She body slams me with such force I almost fall backward. But I stay upright, because she’s hugging me, and she’s never hugged me like this before.

I put my hands on her tiny shoulders. She’s shaking.

I ease out of her grip and crouch.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I promise. I’ll bring her back safe.”

“Without the scary ladies?” Hilde asks.

“Without the scary ladies,” I say, mentally cursing the Fates.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

“You’re welcome,” I say, and kiss her messy hair. “I love you, Hilde.”

“Love you too, Brit,” she says. “Bring Mommy back.”

“I will, as soon as you let me go.”

She squeezes extra hard, then steps back. She gets a fierce look on her small face and glares over my shoulder. I turn slightly.

Megan and Rob are standing there, watching.

“Brit will do it,” Hilde says and there’s blame in her voice. Apparently, she thought she had asked them. “You help.”

“We will,” Megan says.

“Swear,” Hilde says.

I frown, wondering what swearing has to do with it. But Megan gives her a gentle smile.

“I swear,” Megan says.

Then Hilde nods and grabs her dolls.

“Make Mommy wake me when she gets home,” she says, and walks, proudly, into the kitchen.

I watch her go.

“The scary ladies took Mom,” I say. “They’ve been everywhere today.”

“All without leaving home,” Rob says, sounding disgusted. He never liked the Fates much. Not many mages do.

“Take me to Mom,” I say to Rob.

He claps his hands together. “To the Fates!”

And away we go.

FOURTEEN

WE ARRIVE IN the stacks. The bookshelves run from floor to ceiling. Dust motes float around us, disturbed by our arrival.

A few feet from us, a man and a woman yell at each other, their voices echoing down the rows and rows of books.

Megan grabs my arm, probably to hold me back, but I shake her off and walk to the edge of the row.

It opens into the big main room. I don’t see the Fates. Their couches are empty. Their mule slippers are lined up by end tables I hadn’t seen before, as if waiting for the Fates to return.

Daddy stands in the center of the room, his arms crossed in front of his round chest.

Mom stands only a few feet from him. She’s using the index finger of her right hand as emphasis, pointing at Daddy’s massive nose.

“You. Will. Not. Take. Her. Away. From. Me. Again.” Each time she says a word, she jabs at his face.

Daddy just leans back as the finger gets closer to him.

“Face it, Kathy,” he says. “You can’t take care of her.”

My breath catches. They’re talking about me. They’re arguing over me.

“Kathy?” Mom says, her voice rising. “Kathy?”

“Katie?” Daddy asks, sounding unperturbed.

“Are you kidding me?” Mom asks.

Daddy shrugs, his I-can’t-be-responsible-for-everything shrug. “You pretty blondes. You all look alike.”

Mom starts to launch herself at him, then stops. She lets her arm drop. It’s almost like she puts on her mom-self, her grown-up self. Her be-nice self.

She takes a deep breath and says in a voice that isn’t mad but isn’t calm either, “My name is Karin. I am the mother of your daughter Brittany, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“I haven’t forgotten Brittany,” Daddy says, “although it’s amazing how much she looks like you.”

Mom rolls her eyes.

Megan comes up behind me and leans forward. “You might not want to watch this,” she says softly.

I ignore her. I do want to watch this. I want to see everything.

“It’s amazing how little she’s like you,” Mom says. “She’s nice and considerate and loving. And that’s all on her, since you did nothing to raise her.”

“That’s not true,” Daddy says. “I gave her the best possible care.”

“You didn’t even know her name until this summer,” Mom says.

“I—I—I did too,” Daddy says unconvincingly.

My heart sinks. Of course, he didn’t know. He didn’t care either.

“She’s my daughter,” Mom says. “I’ve done everything I can to raise her from far away. She’s living with me now, and she’s going to stay.”

“Not when the Fates figure out how you’re raising her,” Daddy says. “Slave labor, impersonating a mass murderer, living in a hovel—”

“Enough!” The Fates appear in front of their couches. They’re wearing black robes and those rolled wig things that British judges wear in all the movies. The wigs trail over their shoulders, and don’t seem to fit properly.

But, come to think of it, they don’t fit actors well in the movies either.

Still, Atropos’s dark hair peeks out around her wig and Lachesis has kept her red hair long. Only Clotho’s hair is completely tucked under the wig.

“We have the floor now,” Clotho says. She’s holding a gavel as well. Daddy looks at it warily.

“Brittany, Megan, Robin,” Lachesis says.

“Please join us,” Atropos finishes.

We glance at each other. My heart is pounding. I step forward. Megan’s a few steps behind me, and Rob stays at her side.

Mom lets out a huge sigh and extends her hand to me. “I was worried about you. Your father said he had no idea where you were.”

I glare at him. “Liar,” I say.

“I didn’t know,” he says. “I didn’t send you back.”

“Then how do you know I went back?” I ask.

“Enough!” All three Fates speak together for the second time.

“You will listen,” Clotho says, shaking the gavel at us.

Lachesis puts her hands on her hips, bunching the robe over her wrists. “Zeus has appeared before us, not as a Power nor as a father, but as an advocate.”

“A what?” Mom whispers to me.

I shake my head. I can’t explain it quickly and besides, the Fates would think it rude.

“We are duty bound to investigate the claims of any advocate,” Atropos says.

I take Mom’s hand. She glances at me, startled, then threads her fingers through mine and squeezes.

Megan and Rob hang back, and Daddy straightens, as if he’s already proud of the decision.

Clotho looks at me. “We have investigated.”

“And we are appalled,” Lachesis says.

Atropos glares at Mom. “You are raising the daughter of a man some consider to be a god. You keep her in medieval conditions.”

“What?” Mom asks.

“Making her sleep in a closet,” Clotho says.

“Forcing her to lift and lower boxes for hours,” Lachesis says.

“What?” Mom asks.

Megan shushes her.

I squeeze Mom’s hand, hoping she’ll be quiet. She can make the Fates even angrier and then things’ll get really bad.

Not that they’re good.

“And letting an ignorant woman display her as if she’s a trophy for a bigoted man,” Atropos says.

“Huh?” Rob mutters.

“Doctor Faustus,” Megan whispers. “They’re not fond of Marlowe.”

“Who is?” Rob whispers back.

“Brittany deserves better,” Clotho says.

“She has been ill-treated by both parents,” Lachesis says.

Mom makes a soft sound of dismay.

“She shall return, with her powers intact, to Mount Olympus,” Atropos says.

“And she shall be a full adult,” Clotho says.

“Beholden to no one,” Lachesis says.

Atropos raises her chin, and intones, “Our decision shall stand—”

“No!” I step forward. Megan grabs my arm. Mom hasn’t let go of my hand. “Mom hasn’t treated me badly. You’re being unfair.”

All three Fates swivel their heads so fast that their wigs go askew in the exact same direction.

“How dare you question us,” Clotho says.

“I dare because I know how the advocacy system works.” I’m standing as close as I can. I’m shaking, but I’m not scared. I hate how they’re treating Mom.

She loves me. She does her best. And she’s done nothing wrong.

“I know that I have the right to present evidence on my own behalf,” I say. “You haven’t spoken to me.”

“We spoke to you,” Lachesis says.

“This very afternoon,” Atropos says.

“Before Daddy declared himself an advocate,” I say.

Megan lets out a small breath. Mom reaches for me with her other hand, but I shake her off, disentangling our fingers entirely.

“I love living with Mom,” I say. “I have a good life there. You don’t understand it, any more than you understand cell phones.”

“We knew what they were when you said telephone,” Clotho says.

“No, you didn’t,” I say. “You don’t know the difference between a landline and a cell.”

“It is irrelevant,” Lachesis says.

“Brittany,” Rob says quietly, “you’re not helping.”

“Shut up, hottie,” I say.

“Brit,” Mom says, and I can hear the disapproval in her tone. “Be nice.”

“No!” I turn toward her. “There’s a time for nice, and then there’s a time to stand up for yourself.”

“Do it nicely, honey,” Mom says.

All three Fates are looking at her like she’s lost her mind.

“For me,” Mom says.

Daddy rolls his eyes. “I remember you now. Miss Goody Two-shoes. Boy, were you work to get into bed. But once—”

“ENOUGH!” All three Fates shout.

Daddy takes a step backward. He puts up his hands as if the words were flying knives or something.

I step into the spot he vacated. “Knowing the difference between a landline and a cell is not irrelevant. None of it is. You don’t understand modern life. I’m in a play, which you do understand, even though you pretend not to. I know, because you lectured Mrs. Schmidt on Helen of Troy, didn’t you?”

The Fates stare at me.

“Didn’t you?” I say.

“Well,” Atropos says, “if she’s going to depict Helen of Troy, she should do so properly.”

“We can’t abide errors,” Clotho says.

“Then stop abiding this one.” I’m shaking, I’m so mad. “Daddy’s lying to you. He always lies, and you know it. I’m in a closet, yes, because Mom and Karl are building me a brand new bedroom. I opted for the closet because I wanted to be alone. Otherwise, I could have bunked with my sisters Lise and Anna.”

“Is this so?” Lachesis asks Mom.

Mom looks at me. She knows that Lise and Anna didn’t want to room with me either, because of the pets and because I was crying all the time. I wish I had telepathy or magic right now, because I’d let her know not to say anything about that.

“Yes,” Mom says, still looking at me. “Yes, that’s so.”

“You saw the room they’re building,” I say. “Ingrid told me that they showed it to you. Why were you ignoring it?”

“It is not completed yet,” Atropos says. “You need it now. They should finish it.”

“This is exactly what I mean,” I say. “The Johnson Family has no magic. Building things takes time.”

“How much time?” Clotho asks.

“Well,” Mom starts.

“Months,” I say over her. I don’t care if I’m wrong. The Fates don’t get to make a decision because Daddy bamboozled them.

“That’s unacceptable,” Daddy says.

The Fates don’t even look at him. They’re still staring at me.

“And my job,” I say. “I’m the one who wanted a job, and frankly, in the Greater World, I’m not qualified for anything else. I only had to lift boxes today. I’m supposed to learn how to work with customers and run the cash register and do stuff that isn’t manual labor, but you’re making sure I can’t. And those are valuable skills.”

“If you’re mortal,” Lachesis says.

“You said I still have my magic,” I say.

“Before your father declared his advocacy, yes, we did,” Atropos says.

“But now we have ruled that you may have your magic back immediately,” Clotho says.

“You want that, right?” Lachesis says, raising her hands. She’s going to give me my magic back at this very moment.

“No,” I say. “I don’t want it.”

The room is suddenly so quiet that I can hear Daddy breathing. He sounds like a bull about to charge.

“Of course you want it,” he says after a moment. “She has no idea what she’s saying. She needs her magic. She is the daughter of a god, after all, and—”

“I’m the daughter of a has-been god,” I say as I turn to him. “You’re not a god any more. You’re a myth.”

“I am not,” he says.

“I can show you book after book after book,” I say, “in dozens of languages, all calling you a myth.”

“I’m real,” Daddy says.

“Maybe,” I say, “but no one worships you anymore.”

“Harsh,” Atropos says to Lachesis.

“Indeed,” Clotho says to Atropos.

“In most realms you are forgotten,” Lachesis says to Daddy.

“We all are,” Atropos says.

“It is a sad commentary on modern life,” Clotho says.

“Or maybe, that’s just the way the world works,” I say. “Out with the old—”

Megan touches my arm. “Probably not a good idea to finish that,” she says so softly that I can barely hear her.

My cheeks flush.

Lachesis frowns at me. “You do not want your magic.”

“Not until I deserve it,” I say. “I need to be wise enough to use it properly. You know that.”

Mom’s eyes are filled with tears. Daddy’s face is red. Rob has moved to the very back of the room, but Megan stays at my side.

“How do we know that you will be well treated?” Atropos asks me.

I think for a minute. They can’t see past the paint and the falling down house and the boxes in the store. How can they know?

Then a realization hits me. “You guys believe in love, right?”

“We are the guardians of true love,” Clotho says.

“You should know that. Did you and your sisters forget that when you wore our shoes?” Lachesis asks.

“No,” I say. “That’s why Daddy objected to you. Because of true love, right?”

“Right.” Atropos’s head is tilted slightly. “Why do you ask?”

“Because if you believe in true love, then you believe in familial love too, right?” I ask, hoping that is right, because we never discussed familial love, and my family—my Ancient Greek family—isn’t the best at the familial stuff.

“But of course we believe in familial love,” Clotho says.

“We spend all day every day with each other,” Lachesis says.

“We are sisters, just like you and yours,” Atropos says.

“I have a lot of sisters,” I say. “And I have one I’ve just gotten to know.”

I turn, hoping this will work.

“Rob,” I say, my gaze meeting his. “Can you do a see-spell for me? Can you show them Hilde?”

“She shouldn’t come here,” Mom says, sounding panicked.

“She won’t,” I say, putting my hand on her arm. “She won’t even know she’s being discussed.”

“Just give me some room,” Rob says.

He steps onto the bare spot in front of the rug. Me, Mom, and Megan, we step back. Daddy, of course, won’t budge.

His nostrils have flared, and it looks like tiny wisps of white smoke are actually coming out of his ears.

Rob whirls his fingers, and in front of him, a hole opens in the air. The dining room of the Johnson Family Manse appears, only just a little smaller, like we’re watching through a bubble-shaped TV screen.

Mom gasps.

I put my arm around her, as much to hold her back as to comfort her.

Hilde sits at the table, playing with her Barbies.

I don’t know, she whispers. She didn’t say bye or nothing. Did you see her—?

Then my voice, Are you worried about Mom?’

Mom jerks beside me as Hilde nods.

Would it make you feel better if I go get her? The images back up enough that I’m visible now. I am willowy, like Clotho. I had no idea.

I’m so focused on how much I look like both Clotho and Mom, I miss the next bit. Then Hilde runs at me and wraps herself around me. I look like a sturdy tree, but the expression on my face is one of complete shock.

Then I crouch in front of her. It’s okay. I promise I’ll bring her back safe.

Without the scary ladies? Hilde asks.

I freeze. Would the Fates know she means them?

I can’t glance at them, but Daddy does, as if he knows what Hilde means.

Without the scary ladies, I say to Hilde and I sound really calm.

Thank you, Hilde whispers, but the whisper sounds really loud in this quiet library.

You’re welcome, I say to her. I love you, Hilde.

She smiles at me. It’s a serious smile, and I missed it the first time. I missed how lovely it is, how precious.

Love you too, Brit, she says, and then the entire scene winks out, as if someone shut off the TV.

“Empath.” That single word, uttered by Clotho, echoes in the library.

Megan starts. “Yes?”

“Were you there when that child spoke?” Lachesis asks.

“Yes,” Megan says.

“Is it true?” Atropos asks. “Does that child love Brittany?”

“Yes,” Megan says. “Very much.”

“And does Brittany love her?” Clotho asks, not looking at me.

“Yes,” Megan says.

“And you, Karin Johnson,” Lachesis says. “Do you love Brittany?”

“Oh, my stars, yes,” Mom says. “More than you’ll ever know.”

“Is that true, Empath?” Atropos asks Megan.

“Yes.” Megan stands very straight, as if she realizes now that she’s testifying in some kind of court.

“Do you love Brittany?” Clotho asks Daddy.

“Yes,” he says firmly.

My breath catches. Really? He does?

“Empath,” Lachesis says, “is this true?”

“No,” Megan says.

Daddy takes a step toward her, hand raised. Rob raises his hand to stop Daddy, and the Fates snap their fingers in unison.

“No one shall use magic to harm anyone in this library,” Atropos says. “Is that clear?”

Rob lets his arm drop. “I was protecting my wife.”

“So noted,” Clotho says.

Daddy growls. “That woman—”

“Shut up, Zeus,” Lachesis says. “You had your chance.”

“We have asked a question of the empath,” Atropos says.

“So, Zeus doesn’t love Brittany?” Clotho asks.

There’s a lump in my throat. Mom slides her hand through my arm, as if she can sense my distress.

“I don’t think he loves anyone,” Megan says. “I don’t think he understands it. I’m not even sure he loves himself.”

“You don’t know anything about gods, Empath,” Daddy says.

Megan shrugs. “I may not,” she says. “But I can sense your emotions, and you’re pretty lacking on the love side of the equation.”

“Harsh,” Lachesis says to Clotho.

“Indeed,” Atropos says to Lachesis.

“If you do not love Brittany,” Clotho says to Daddy, “why do you want to save her from this place she lives in now?”

“She’s my daughter,” Daddy says. “No one treats my daughter like that.”

“Except you,” I say.

“Shush, child,” Lachesis says, but not harshly.

“Unfortunately,” Atropos says, “we have already ruled.”

My stomach clenches. Mom’s hand digs into the soft skin of my upper arm.

“But,” Clotho says, “we did not gavel down the ruling.”

“You, Brittany, may choose which life you prefer,” Lachesis says.

I don’t even have to think about it. “I want to go with Mom.”

“You may take your magic with you,” Atropos says. “You have earned it.”

“You mean I can practice magic again?” I ask. “I don’t have to wait for it?”

“That is correct,” Clotho says.

I glance around the library, at the millions of books that I haven’t read yet, and I think about all the rules I don’t understand.

My muscles still ache from lifting those boxes and the area above my left knee is bruised from the force with which Hilde hit it when she hugged me.

I bite my lower lip.

I’ve missed my magic, but in the wrong ways. I only want it to make my life easier or to irritate someone who has irritated me. My mom doesn’t have magic—yet, anyway—and she’s doing okay.

“Thank you,” I say, and everyone in the room relaxes at the same time. “But I’m not ready for magic.”

“What?” Daddy asks. “You can’t live without magic.”

“She has for three months,” Mom says to him.

“I can live without it just fine,” I say. “I’d like to stick to the plan.”

“You only have one chance at this,” Lachesis says. “We shall not make this offer again.”

“I know,” I say.

“Empath,” Atropos says, “is she making this decision calmly?”

“Yes.” Megan sounds surprised. “She is.”

“Then it is so,” Clotho says.

“We have ruled,” Lachesis says.

“Our decision shall stand from this moment forward,” Atropos says.

“Now,” Clotho says, “leave us.”

“Go back to your lives,” Lachesis says.

The Fates clap their hands, and the library vanishes.

Again.

FIFTEEN

MOM AND I tumble into the living room. Mom falls flat on the couch, and I trip over the rug, catching myself on the armchair. Pixie, who was asleep in the chair, bolts straight upright and flees toward the stairs.

Beauregard backs into the dining room and barks.

“Are you all right?” Mom asks.

I nod. “Are you?”

“I will be.” She gets up and puts her arms around me. “Thank you.”

I lean into her hug. “I hope you don’t mind that I’m staying.”

“Mind?” She pushes back from me and looks me in the face. There are frown lines around her eyes. “I love having you here, Brit. I’m sorry that we’re not treating you well.”

“You’re treating me just fine,” I say. “Really. I wouldn’t have come back otherwise.”

“Hey!” Ivan shouts from the stairs. “They’re home!”

“Shhh.” Karl steps into the living room from the kitchen. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

Mom gives him a look that I guess means I’ll talk to you later. “What time is it?” she asks.

“After eight,” Karl says.

“You missed dinner,” Ivan says.

“And I promised Hilde you’d wake her up when you got home,” I say to Mom.

Mom smiles at me, then kisses me on the forehead. “I do love you, you know.”

“I know,” I say.

“Bet you’re hungry.” Ivan has made it down the rest of the stairs in record time. “Dad saved dinner for you. We had pizza.”

“You splurged,” Mom says to Karl as she heads toward the stairs.

“It’s been a weird day,” Karl says.

“Yeah,” I say. Then I remember the phone. “Mom, wait.”

She stops at the base of the stairs.

“Daddy, um, destroyed—you know that phone you gave me?” I look at Karl. “My father showed up at work today, and broke it.”

“Your father?” Karl asks, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking at Mom. And he’s looking worried.

“You said it was a weird day,” Mom says to him. “You were right.”

“I’ll pay for the phone,” I say. “I have a job now, and I owe you, and—”

“We’ll get your father to pay for the phone,” Karl says.

“When pigs fly,” Mom says. Then she laughs. “Which might be sooner than we all think.”

She puts her hand on the railing and pulls herself onto the first step. She looks as tired as I feel.

“Don’t worry about it right now, Brittany,” Karl says. “Your mother and I will decide how to handle it.”

I blink hard, expecting tears at the kindness, but no tears come—not because I’m unnaturally calm, but because I don’t feel the need to cry right now.

Old habits might die hard, but they do die.

But not all habits should die.

“Do you think it’s okay if I call my sisters?” I ask Karl.

“After seeing your father?” Karl asks, and I tense. He smiles. “I would think it’s absolutely necessary. Use the phone in our room. You need quiet.”

“Thank you,” I say.

I have to stop at my room—my closet—because I haven’t memorized my sisters’ phone numbers. I hurry down the hall and pull open the door.

My bed is messy, because I didn’t make it well that morning, and my favorite sweater has fallen on the floor. I’ve never seen any place that looks nicer.

I grin at it, then rummage in my top drawer for the address book that Mom made me start.

I stop for a second and close my eyes, enjoying how it feels to be here. Enjoying my cramped personal space, right next to the busy bathroom.

Enjoying the voices of my family, having a loud discussion in the living room.

Enjoying the look of surprise on Orange’s face. He was asleep on the bed until I opened the door all the way. Apparently, my room is his hideout too.

Me and the cat.

I grin at him.

“It’s the best room in the house, isn’t it?” I ask him.

He squints at me.

“Shh,” I say. “Don’t tell anyone else. They’ll want one just like it.”

Maybe I’ll tell Karl to stop building me a special room. Maybe I’ll stay here until college, whenever that will be.

I have to focus on it.

Like I have to focus on my job. On the play. On school.

And on my family. My Wisconsin family—and my sisters.

I have a hunch my Greek family will take care of itself.

Because it always does.

I have no idea what the Fates are going to do to Daddy, but I have a hunch it won’t be pretty. And, as I think about it, I don’t really care either.

He’s had his chance with me. I hate the way he treated Mom. I don’t like the way he treated me and Tiff and Crystal either.

And I don’t have to deal with him anymore.

I find the address book with the precious phone numbers, and hurry toward Mom and Karl’s room.

I can’t wait to talk to my sisters. They’ll understand what I just went through. And maybe they’ll tell me about everything they went through too.

Because even though we’re far apart, we’re still close. Like the Fates. Only without the talking in order, the stupid library, and all the responsibility.

We get to grow up and make our own lives.

And I like that—more than I can say.

If you enjoyed the Interim Fates Trilogy, you might also enjoy the series that introduced the Interim Fates, the Fates Trilogy. Following is a sample chapter from the first book in the Fates Trilogy, Simply Irresistible.

ONE

“WHY DO ALL superheroes have to look like Superman?” Vivian Kinneally asked as she studied the interior of her nephew’s comic book. She was sitting on the stoop outside her apartment building, her eleven-year-old nephew Kyle beside her.

The sun cast its warm rays on the concrete steps and illuminated Kyle’s latest hand-drawn effort. In the week that Vivian had lived in Portland, the sun had been out every day. She had no idea how the city had gotten its rainy, gloomy reputation.

“He doesn’t look like Superman,” Kyle said, craning his neck over the double-page spread that rested on Vivian’s knees.

“Yes, he does.” Viv traced the hero’s chin, feeling the pen marks beneath her finger. “See? He’s got the same lantern jaw that Siegel and Shuster gave the original in 1938. He’s even got the dimple in his chin.”

She loved that dimple. She had always thought—and never admitted aloud—that the Siegel and Shuster Superman, the original, was the handsomest man she had ever seen. Even if he was only a creation of paper and pen.

“Superman doesn’t have a dimple,” Kyle said.

“Sure he does.” Vivian smiled at her nephew. Kyle was thin and bookish, his round glasses sliding to the bottom of his nose. His fingers were stained with ink, and the fleshy side of his palm had traces of the red he’d used to color the book. “Take a look, especially in the first thirty years or so, before he got associated with Christopher Reeve.”

“I didn’t want my character to look like Superman,” Kyle said. “Spider-Man doesn’t look like Superman.”

Kyle wrapped his arms around his waist and leaned forward, extending his Nike-covered feet down three steps. Vivian’s brother, Travers, kept Kyle dressed like the athlete he would never be. Vivian wondered how Kyle would do now that she had relocated here.

“Actually,” Vivian said, “they all look like Superman. They have to. They need the muscles and the strong chin. Could you imagine wearing one of those costumes if you had a weak chin? You’d look like—”

“Michael Keaton in Batman,” Kyle said before she could. She’d made that argument before.

“You said you wanted to know what I thought,” she said.

“After you’ve read it,” Kyle said. “I think this one is really different.”

Vivian smiled at him. Kyle’s greatest dream was to become a comic book writer. Travers said that was her fault. Vivian had the most extensive comic book collection of anyone she knew—and she knew a lot of comic book fans (although most of them weren’t twenty-seven year-old women).

When she was a kid, comic books had been her escape. In them, she found people with secret identities and super powers, mutants who decided to fight on the side of all that was good and right. She had a super power too, although she had never thought of it as that, at least not when she was growing up. Then it had simply been something else that marked her as different.

She hated being different so much. She was teased by her peers. She used to look at the superheroes and daydream that someday she would meet one, and he would sweep her off her feet.

She could even imagine the panel art: an entire page with Superman or Batman or some other square-jawed (and dimple-chinned) superhero with a cape, carrying her in his arms.

Vivian slid her own round glasses up her nose and stared at Kyle’s art. He was spectacular for someone his age. There was a confidence to his work that most young artists lacked. His stories were still derivative, but she knew that originality took time—and Kyle had plenty of time.

She raised her head, seeing if she got a sense of her brother Travers. She was psychic, and there were some people she was particularly attuned to. Her brother Travers was one of them. So was her younger sister Megan. And, until a few weeks ago, Vivian had been attuned to her Aunt Eugenia too.

“You okay, Aunt Viv?” Kyle asked.

The family question. Everyone was always worried whether Vivian was all right. It had started before she could even remember. She would say things or get a funny look, and everyone would panic. Then, at thirteen, she’d started to black out, and her parents had taken her to specialist after specialist to see if there was some physical cause.

Then her Aunt Eugenia had come to visit. Mysterious, wealthy Aunt Eugenia, whose age no one knew and whose exact relationship to Vivian’s mother was unclear as well. Vivian’s grandmother once said that Eugenia wasn’t a blood relation at all, but a close, close friend who had wormed her way into the family’s hearts through deeds of goodness.

With family members who talked like that, was it any wonder that Vivian had fallen in love with comic books?

She smiled.

“Aunt Vivian?” Kyle was peering at her, his face owlish in the bright light.

“I’m all right,” she said, the words so familiar she didn’t have to think about them.

Aunt Eugenia had told the family that Vivian’s blackouts were normal, that her power was growing stronger. Vivian’s mother had gotten upset over the use of the word power until Aunt Eugenia made Vivian’s mother admit what she had always feared about her daughter—that Vivian had an amazing psychic talent, a talent that seemed to be growing worse (or better, depending on one’s perspective).

The blackouts faded once Vivian hit high school, but by then, she was the weird kid. She wore glasses, she had been too skinny, and she had passed out all through middle school. Sometimes she blurted out things that other kids had only been thinking, and eventually they all stayed away from her.

Vivian put her arm around Kyle. He was going to face that horrible world in a few years. There was nothing worse than middle school, especially for a sensitive kid.

“Dad’s coming, isn’t he?” Kyle asked, looking down the street. This was a side street downtown, with a great view of the mountains, rivers, and bridges, and the added benefit of very little traffic.

“I don’t sense him yet,” Vivian said.

Travers had taken the car into the local Jiffy Lube to make certain it was ready for the long drive home. When he returned, he expected Kyle to be ready to leave.

Travers wanted to stay with Vivian—and Kyle had argued for it—but they had other obligations. School was starting next week, and Travers had enrolled Kyle in some expensive gifted and talented program that no one had even imagined yet in Oregon. Kyle was heading home, and Vivian didn’t argue with the decision.

She had a sense, just a sense—and she wasn’t even sure if it was accurate because her senses about herself often were not—that staying in Portland would be dangerous.

“You’re going to mail me your next comic, right?” Vivian asked.

Kyle’s gaze returned to hers. His eyes were a pale blue, like his father’s. He would be reedy and handsome someday, just like his father. The relationship showed.

Of course Kyle’s relationship to Vivian didn’t show. Vivian, like her brother and sister, had been adopted. All three looked very different. Vivian was small, skinny, and dark. Travers was tall, slender, and blond, and Megan was a green-eyed redhead who, at twenty-five, still hadn’t lost her baby fat.

“Mail?” Kyle made that sound as if Vivian were talking about communicating by Pony Express. “I was planning to scan it and e-mail it to you.”

She ran her hand gently over the comic he’d just given her. “I like the way this feels. I can see the work you’ve done, watch the paper curl—”

“And my original can get lost in the snail mail. C’mon, Aunt Viv. Let’s move into the twenty-first century.”

It was an old tease and an accurate one. It had taken Vivian years to get a computer. She had refused to buy a VCR, and now VCRs were almost obsolete. When she moved here, Travers had given her a DVD player as a housewarming gift, and Kyle had made certain she knew how to use it before they left.

They were both afraid she’d be lonely. They were right. She’d never lived so far from her family before.

But it wasn’t just her family she would miss. She had no friends here. All her friends in L.A. thought she was moving for a man. But there was no man either. There never had been.

That loneliness seemed permanent.

Then, for no particular reason, she thought of Travers, his hands on the steering wheel of his SUV, the radio playing Clint Black’s “No Time to Kill.” Travers was thinking about the words, worrying about Vivian, and trying to figure out a way to get her to come back to L.A.

“He’s almost here,” Vivian said to Kyle.

“Can’t we just stay here with you?” Kyle asked. “I’m scared for you, Aunt Viv. Dad told Aunt Megan that the old lady was murdered. What if that same person comes after you?”

“Aunt Eugenia wasn’t an old lady,” Vivian said. At least, she never seemed like an old lady, although she had to be at least eighty. She had looked the same all of Vivian’s life—and, apparently, all of Vivian’s mother’s life as well.

One of Vivian’s many tasks would be to track down a birth certificate—if that was possible. Aunt Eugenia’s mansion had burned down the morning after the police found her body.

“But what if, Aunt Viv?”

Travers had turned onto Burnside, which wasn’t very far away. He had the radio blaring in his SUV, and now the station was playing Alan Jackson. Vivian wanted to put her hands over her ears, but knew that wouldn’t solve the problem. Somehow Travers’ environment was leaking into her own.

“Aunt Viv?”

“Sorry,” Vivian said. “Your dad’s listening to country again.”

“Yech.” Kyle wrinkled his nose. “I’m not going to listen to that going home.”

“Good luck,” Vivian said.

“You’re not going to answer me, are you?” Kyle said. “Are you scared, Aunt Viv?”

“Scared?” She turned toward him. She was scared, but not of dying. Of living in a strange town for several months. Of testing new skills with her psychic powers. And trying to figure out all the clues Aunt Eugenia had sent her the week before she died.

Oh, and visiting the attorney who had contacted her about Aunt Eugenia’s will—the one that dated from the day Vivian was adopted. Apparently, Eugenia had left her entire estate—worth several million dollars—to Vivian.

Vivian couldn’t believe that Eugenia hadn’t updated the will after Travers’ and Megan’s adoptions. There had to be another version somewhere. She just had to find it.

“I’m not scared,” she said to Kyle. “Not of being murdered, anyway. They think she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I don’t,” Kyle whispered. “I think she knew something.”

That dramatic comic-book imagination of his. Vivian would have to quell this right away. “Why do you think that?”

But as she asked the question, Travers’ SUV turned onto her street and sped past the parked cars in front of the other apartment buildings. He drove twice as fast as anyone in Oregon, and Vivian was afraid he’d get pulled over.

Oregon cops wouldn’t be lenient on Travers. He had California plates and a California driver’s license. She’d learned, in her short week in Portland, that the only people Oregonians consistently discriminated against were Californians.

“That’s Dad!” Kyle said, standing and waving as if Travers had forgotten where Vivian lived during the hour he’d been gone.

The moment passed. Vivian clutched the comic book, careful not to crease its pages, and followed her nephew down the stairs. Travers stopped right in front of the building. The booming bass from his SUV’s speakers blended with the sounds in her mind.

When he shut off the ignition, Vivian heaved a sigh of relief.

Kyle stopped at the bottom of the stairs, waiting on the edge of the cracked concrete sidewalk. When Vivian stopped beside him, he whispered without turning his head, “I don’t want to go.”

“I don’t want you to either,” she said. “But there’s no point in staying. I might be home in a month.”

Although she doubted it. Eugenia’s estate was a mess. The fire created even more problems, and the murder—well, there were things about the murder that Vivian hadn’t told anyone. Things she had seen, things she had felt, while Aunt Eugenia had been dying.

In spite of herself, Vivian shivered.

“You won’t be home in a month,” Kyle said. “I don’t think you’re coming back to L.A. at all.”

Vivian peered at him. Her glasses had slid down her nose again and she saw a dual image of him—the young eleven-year-old, crisply outlined against the backdrop of his father’s black SUV, and a fuzzy, larger version, the man Kyle might become.

Vivian shoved her glasses back into place, pushing so hard she poked a fingernail into the soft skin on the bridge of her nose.

“You don’t know that, Kyle,” she said as she watched her brother get out of his car. He looked sleek, put-together, and expensive, something she always wondered how he managed to do on his accountant’s salary. “None of us know that.”

“You’re psychic,” he whispered.

“Yeah, but I’m not able to see the future. Just the present.” And sometimes that was more than enough.

“I thought psychics see the future,” he whispered.

“I wish I did,” Vivian said. “Sometimes I think it would make life a whole lot easier.”

“I don’t think it does,” Kyle said, and for the first time in Vivian’s recollection, he sounded a lot older than eleven.

She looked at him, feeling an odd sensation, as if she were missing something. But he was already running down the sidewalk to greet his father, as if they’d been separated for years instead of hours.

Vivian followed, sighing. For the first time, she realized just how difficult life was going to be here. She wouldn’t have Travers’ common sense to rely on, or Kyle’s jokes to give her joy.

But she didn’t want them facing the same thing Aunt Eugenia had faced. Vivian could take care of herself, but she couldn’t handle it if something happened to her family.

Her sixth sense had been working overtime—and she knew Kyle and Travers were leaving none too soon.

Read more in the first book of the Fates Trilogy, Simply Irresistible, available from your favorite bookseller.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Called “The Reigning Queen of Paranormal Romance” by Best Reviews, bestselling author Kristine Grayson has made a name for herself publishing light, slightly off-skew romance novels about Greek Gods, fairy tale characters, and the modern world.

She writes romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter and historical mysteries as Kris Nelscott. She also writes in a variety of genre, from literary to science fiction to contemporary romance, under her real name—Kristine Kathryn Rusch. She has won dozens of awards for her writing

As Kristine Grayson, she also edits the romance volumes of Fiction River: An Original Anthology Magazine.

For more information about her work, go to the Kristine Grayson website and sign up for her newsletter.

Look for These Other Titles from Kristine Grayson

The Interim Fates:

Tiffany Tumbles

Crystal Caves

Brittany Bends

The Fates Trilogy:

Simply Irresistible

Absolutely Captivated

Totally Spellbound

Holiday Novellas:

Up on the Rooftop

Visions of Sugarplums

Dressed in Holiday Style

Sign up for the WMG Publishing newsletter to receive updates about new releases, bonus content and more at wmgpublishing.com

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

Simply Irresistible Sample Chapter

About the Author

Look for These Other Titles from Kristine Grayson

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