“Don’t worry, Keiran and his friends will help,” Kim said confidently.
“How do you know that?” Sykes asked then he smirked. “Ah, I forgot you two are joined at the hip now.”
“We’re not,” Kim protested.
Everyone laughed while she blushed. My cell phone dinged again. I reached inside my pocket and muted the phone.
“Dante and Kael might help too,” I said, “if they don’t hate me for hurting him.”
“The big guys can handle pain,” Remy said dismissively. “They’re nature-benders. Who wants something to drink?” He got to his feet.
Everyone nodded. While he went and got sodas, my phone dinged again.
“Give me that,” Kim snapped and stuck her hand toward me.
I cocked my brow. “What?”
“Your stupid phone keeps making that annoying ding,” she explained. “I know you and Kylie are tight, but she can’t monopolize your time. She’s always calling with some cockamamie excuse about needing your help or…”
I tuned her out, pulled the cell phone out of my pocket and checked the last text. Kylie was desperate. Her ‘get here now’ had exclamation marks. I powered it off. “Are we done? Because I’ve got to go.”
“Did you hear anything I just said?” Kim asked.
I grinned. “No. See you guys tomorrow morning.”
Izzy gripped my arm. “Wait a sec. Do you know that Kylie’s family moved?”
Another lost memory. “When? To where?”
“Beginning of summer. They live in Nibley now. I’ll show you. We’ve had to drag your behind from her house a few times in the past few weeks.”
- 11 -
TRUTH AND LIES
A big dresser stood in the middle of Kylie’s bedroom and I would have bumped into it if I hadn’t slowed down my teleport. Izzy wasn’t so lucky.
“Dang it, Kylie. What’s this doing in the middle of your room?”
Kylie looked up and grimaced. She had been watching something on her laptop while lying on her bed. She sat up, a frown on her face. “Sorry about that.”
“Never mind. Gotta go.” Izzy glanced around and whistled softly. “Nice décor. You two have fun.”
Kylie wore a confused expression. “What was that about? I mean, what was she doing here?”
“Long story. But seriously, what’s this,” I pointed at the dresser, “doing in the middle of your room?”
Kylie wrinkled her nose. “Dad had it repainted and brought it in an hour ago. I tried to move it, but it weighs more than I do. What time is it?”
“Nine-thirty-ish,” I guessed without looking at my watch, my gaze on the Celtic symbols all over the dresser. With the black background, the squiggly drawings popped. Her new bedroom was spacious and beautifully decorated. “This is beautiful.”
“I know.” Kylie stood and stretched, her tank top hiking up to reveal a tattoo on her hip. “It’s perfect. Matches my curtains, don’t you think?”
“And your tattoo.” Kylie was a petite five-foot-four with a pixie face, grey eyes and brown hair—her natural hair color. Before, she’d dyed it black during her Gothic phase.
“So what took you?” she asked. “I texted you, like, an hour ago.”
I laughed. “What took me? Who do you think I am? Your servant?”
“Clark Kent to my Chloe Sullivan, faithful sidekick and best friend ever.” She grinned when I scrunched up my face. Still grinning, she walked to where I stood beside the dresser, hands going to her hips. “You’re not just the Chosen One, you are Lil Fáthaig. That means—”
“Lil the Mighty, I know.”
She made a face. “I hate that you can speak, like, a gazillion languages.”
“Okay. From now on I’ll pretend I don’t know Gaelic.”
“Don’t bother, smarty-pants. Anyway, when I need heavy lifting, you’re the one I text. When you need R&R from Guardian biz and computer research, I’m your girl.”
I made a derisive sound. “You can’t be Chloe. You suck with computers.”
“Nitpicking, and not my fault. My parents gave all the smart genes to my brainiac brother.” She pouted. “It’s so unfair. You can find me any time and any where, while I have to send a stupid text.”
“Texts,” I corrected her. “As in five of them. What is the emergency anyway?”
Kylie frowned. “What are you talking about? I sent you one text message because of this,” she waved at the dresser, “not four.”
“Four more after the first one. My cell phone kept vibrating while I was in the middle of a conference.”
She searched for her phone “That doesn’t make sense.”
“What?”
“I texted you once.”
She was getting pissed. “Forget it. It’s not important.”
“Is too.” She marched toward the door, her frown fierce. “I’m going to kill the slimy worm.”
Before I could ask her what she meant, Kylie had yanked open her door and stomped to the one down the hall. It had a quantum physics poster and a picture of Albert Einstein. She banged on it with her fist. “Jesse!”
No response.
“Open up or I’ll break it down!”
The door jerked open to reveal her brother, pimpled face red, a mop of curly brown hair falling over his forehead. He wore a T-shirt with the writing Schrödinger’s Cat, Dead and Alive, and a drawing of cat in a cage. Two of his friends appeared behind him and stared at Kylie with wary expressions, video game controllers clenched in their hands.
“Break it down?” Jesse asked. “Physically impossible since you are only five-three and weigh about one—”
“Shut up, you freak,” Kylie snapped. “You took my cell phone again! Where is it?”
“I don’t have it,” her brother protested. Then he saw me and smiled. “Hi, Lil.”
I gave him a tiny wave.
“Don’t talk to her. Just because she’s played a few video games with you doesn’t make her your friend. You can’t pretend to be me and text her.”
His brother shook his head. “I didn’t touch your stupid phone, Kylie. We’ve been in here playing video games all evening.”
“Liar! My phone is missing and you’ve been bugging me for days to ask her to come over.” She thrust her face forward and hissed, “She’s got a boyfriend, you loser.”
Jesse glanced my way one more time, face redder than before, then whispered through clenched teeth, “Ask Mom. She’ll tell you we haven’t left my room for hours. Maybe your witches,” he wiggled his fingers, “took it.”
“Goddesses,” Kylie snapped. “Celtic deities.”
“Get a life.” He slammed his door.
“I have a life,” she shouted through the door. “And it’s not in some online gaming world.”
Feeling bad for Jesse, who’d had a crush on me since the first time Kylie had invited me to their home, I retreated into her room. He was a year younger than her, tall, gangly, and going through the zits stage. The few times we’d played video games, I had had fun, though.
“I swear my parents found him in a crashed spaceship,” Kylie snapped when she re-entered her bedroom. “He’s so weird.”
“I’m sure he just wanted my help with a game. Where do you say you wanted the dresser?” I asked, hoping to distract her, but I shouldn’t have bothered. She continued to search for her phone while muttering under her breath.
“I’m telling on him, the worm.”
“It’s no big deal, you know,” I said, trying to calm her down.
“Is too. He’s always stealing my phone to text his friends. It’s not my fault he lost his.”
I stopped trying to help and studied her room instead. It was done in black and white, from the bed cover to the draperies; the only colors were the wooden floor and colored pillows on her bed. Celtic spirals and knots dominated everything. It was beautiful and so Kylie.