I retrieved the paper, then moved under a streetlamp to read out loud: “Sis, borrowed the truck since Sherri left me stranded. I still had a key. I’ll get it back to you later. Get a ride home with Nita.
Dean.” I looked over at Nita. “Can I get a ride home?”
“No problem. That just keeps me out later, which is okay with me. Too bad there aren’t any bars in town so we could make it a real girls’ night out.”
“We both have early mornings tomorrow,” I reminded her, “and seeing as we both snoozed a little during the movie, I don’t think we’re up for a late night. Besides, your mom would kill you if you went out drinking, and then she’d be convinced I led you to your ruin.”
“I have got to get away from here. I’m too young to act like a senior citizen. Well, come on, let’s go.”
When we were back in her car, I said, “Drive by Dean’s house first. It will make life easier if I can pick the truck up now.” But the truck wasn’t there, just Sherri and Dean’s cars. It looked like Dean had started and then forgotten some kind of ambitious building project on the front of the house, which might explain why Sherri was peeved at him. “Oh well, never mind. I guess you’ll have to take me home. I wonder where Dean is.”
The truck was parked in the driveway at my parents’ house, which wasn’t a huge surprise. Dean ran straight home every time he and Sherri had a fight. Nita glanced over at me and said, “We’ve got empty rooms at the motel if you need a place to hide.”
I unbuckled my seat belt. “Thanks for the offer, but this shouldn’t be too bad. I’ll just go to my room and ignore it all. And thanks for the night out—it was fun.”
“No, it wasn’t really what I’d call fun, but it was about as close as you can get around here, and thanks for coming along. See you soon!”
I got inside to find Dean sitting at the kitchen table, being consoled by Mom with various pastries.
“Someday she’ll learn to appreciate all the things you have to offer her,” Mom was saying as I crept through the kitchen. The only time Mom ever said anything against Sherri was when Dean and Sherri were fighting, which meant I got to hear Mom criticize Sherri at least once a month.
“’Night, everyone!” I said casually once I was safely in the living room.
“Did you have a good time at the movies?” Mom asked.
“Just fabulous. And how did you know?”
“I saw you heading over there after you left the café,” Dean admitted. In other words, he’d blabbed about my night out, even though I was an adult and allowed to go out with a friend. On the other hand, that meant Mom had known where I was and hadn’t panicked, so I decided not to complain this time. I was a lot more disturbed by the magical activity I’d seen, some of which was actual criminal behavior instead of just the semi-benign manipulation the wizard had been doing earlier.
As soon as I was sure everyone in the house was sound asleep—including Dean in the bedroom he used to share with Teddy—I did something I hadn’t done since I was in high school. I opened my window and crawled out onto the porch roof, then went from there to an adjacent tree that allowed me to climb fairly easily down to the ground. The boys had made far more use of that escape route than I had, but I’d been dragged along once or twice. It was the only safe way to get out of the house without alerting my parents because there was a really squeaky spot on the stairs that woke everyone up if you hit it, and we’d never figured out a way to avoid it.
Dean had left the truck parked far enough away that I could start it without waking everyone, so I drove back downtown to the square, where I found Sam. “I never saw you as a night owl,” he said when he landed next to the truck.
“I needed to talk to you, and I figured this might be one time when I wouldn’t be interrupted. It’s nearly impossible for me to get away for any length of time around here.” I told him what had happened in the theater and then with Nita’s snake outside the theater. He flew quickly over to that stretch of sidewalk, poked around a bit, then flew back to me.
“Nothing,” he reported. “If there was any blood or if anything had died over there, then someone must have done a really good cleaning job. The sign’s kind of banged up, though. Say, do you think the bad guy is targeting you?”
“If he’s targeting me, it can’t be because he knows me from my work at MSI. He’d have known I was immune to magic and wouldn’t have seen an illusion of a snake. It was probably random, targeting two women who would probably react to a snake by screaming and running. He just didn’t count on Nita being so violently anti-snake.”
