From the sudden silence in the room and the stony look on Mr. Crandall’s face, Jax guessed that Miller’s business was not Jax’s business to know.
12
JAX TRIED NOT TO pounce on Mrs. Crandall’s dinner like a starving hyena, but A.J. and Riley didn’t hold back. Jax figured he’d better grab what he could before it was all gone, and dived for a chicken leg.
“Eat up, Jax. You look undernourished.” Mrs. Crandall glared at Riley.
“He eats everything in sight,” Riley protested, his own mouth full. “I can’t keep groceries in the house!”
Jax looked up, startled. He thought the exact same thing about Riley.
“Nobody can eat like a teenage boy.” Mrs. Crandall slung a ladle full of mashed potatoes onto Jax’s plate. “The pair of you together are probably like piranhas.”
After dinner, Mr. Crandall looked at Riley and jerked his head toward the door. Riley nodded and the two of them left the room. A.J. made a move to follow, but his mother ordered him and Jax to clear the dishes. “I cook. You clean up,” she said. “That’s how it works. And scrape the plates before putting them in the dishwasher, Arnold Joseph.”
“I do,” A.J. protested.
His mother smacked him with a wooden spoon. “Will you ever learn not to lie?”
A.J. looked contrite until Mrs. Crandall left the room; then he waggled his eyebrows at Jax. “It sucks—having a mom with a talent for truth. But she can only detect literal lies. If you lie by omission, she can’t tell. Once in a while you have to throw her a bone, though, or she gets suspicious.”
“How many kinds of talent are there?” Jax asked.
A.J. disposed of some leftovers by stuffing them into his mouth. “Probably as many as there are families,” he mumbled around the food. “Melinda’ll teach you about this better than I can.”
Jax bundled up the trash and carried it out the back door. He was stuffing the plastic bag into a metal can when he heard Mr. Crandall say, “What’re you going to do about the kid, then?”
Jax froze. Mr. Crandall and Riley were around the corner in the backyard.
“I dunno. I really didn’t think he’d be a Transitioner, let alone busting out with talent before he was trained.”
“He’s a little young to swear his loyalty, but he’d be safe with us, and we could use an inquisitor.”
“No.” Riley’s voice was firm. “Do you have any idea what it was like for me to rip him away from his cousins?”
“You didn’t have a choice.”
“He had family willing to take him in. I’m gonna get him back to them if I can.”
There was a long silence. Then Mr. Crandall said, “Son, you always had a family in us. We wanted to take you in. If you hadn’t been so stubborn . . .”
“I had a bull’s-eye on my back,” Riley said. “I knew what I was doing.”
At school, Giana looked at Jax as if he were dog poop she’d found on her shoe. Jax couldn’t get out of sitting across from her in science class, but he stared straight ahead and pretended she wasn’t there, even when Billy gave him a blow-by-blow account of her every move.
“Dude, she just gave you the most evil look. What did you do to her?”
“Nothing.”
He hoped Giana’s revulsion for him would wear off. His own aversion for Riley had subsided, but he was still mad. Now that Jax knew what his guardian could do, he realized Riley must’ve ordered the caseworker to think Jax was happy. He probably used his magic to make sure Naomi quit fighting for custody, too. It even explained why the hearing had been canceled.
An eraser bounced off Jax’s head, flicked across the aisle by Giana’s friend Kacey. Jax clenched his hands, willing himself not to snap. Giana didn’t know why she hated him so much; she only dimly understood that Jax had compelled her to talk to him and resented him for it.
He hadn’t meant to scare her, and he was sorry he had, but he didn’t dare speak to her. Riley had sent him off to school with the warning, “Try not to interrogate anybody until you know what you’re doing, okay?” and Jax was half afraid to open his mouth. It kind of burned him up, though, that Giana had no idea the massive coolness she was missing out on.
Busting out with talent. Jax had an extra day of the week and magic of his own. He had a connection with people out of legends, like Merlin and the Lady of the Lake. He even had a mysterious neighbor “haunting” the house next door—a girl who lived one day a week and would be back tomorrow, in fact. A girl nobody wanted to explain to him. A girl Riley had told him to stay away from.
But you didn’t order me, Riley. Your mistake.
Mrs. Unger waved cash when Jax dropped off a few groceries for her that night. “I have your money. Plus extra.”
“You don’t have to pay me extra, Mrs. Unger.” Jax put the last of her groceries in the refrigerator and pulled one final item from the bag. “I got this for you. Well, for your garden, actually.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Unger exclaimed. “Isn’t that the cutest thing ever?”
Jax hoped so. He’d finally realized who must be doing all the weeding and tending of Mrs. Unger’s garden, and he figured this goofy item might appeal to someone who enjoyed that kind of thing. It was a twelve-inch-high figurine of a smiling garden gnome standing with a bunch of mushrooms, holding a sign that said, Have a FUN-gi Day!
To make sure the message was understood, Jax had glued a large index card to the sign that read: GREETINGS FROM YOUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR JAX.
Mrs. Unger wanted to be able to admire his gift from inside the house. “I don’t get out in the yard much,” she said. So under her direction, Jax put it on the stoop outside the kitchen door among her potted plants.
Now, what could be friendlier and less threatening than that?
13
EVANGELINE BIT HER LIP and scrutinized the thing on the kitchen stoop, trying to decide if it was supposed to be a kobold or a goblin. Whatever it was, it was surrounded by poisonous toadstools, and the pun on the sign was practically a crime against humor.
She assumed the note added to this strange item was meant for her. Mrs. Unger knew who he was. Evangeline put her hands on her hips and wondered what in the world New Boy was thinking, leaving kobolds on her stoop and pushing notes through the mail slot suggesting she “hang out” and “have a soda.”
He didn’t seem to realize she was a prisoner, living a lifetime sentence for a crime committed by others—first by her race in general, then by her father individually.
In spite of this, Evangeline had to admit that Red had treated her decently over the last eight months—or four and a half years, depending on whether one was counting by her viewpoint or his. Sometimes, he was even friendly.
One day the winter before last, she’d awakened to the surprise of new snow. Light flakes had been falling from the sky, so it must have been snowing at the moment of change. There was never any accumulation on an eighth day—only so much snow could fall in a sliver of real time—but Evangeline loved that rare sensation of flakes landing on her face, like cold kisses.
She hadn’t left the house while Red was home, shying away from the chance of meeting him, but when she’d heard his motorcycle leave, she’d dug in the closet for Mrs. Unger’s galoshes and wool coat. She’d burst out the back door, and that was when she’d seen three snowmen in a row on the property line, facing the Unger house. Each one had a branch sticking straight up from its shoulder, as if waving. Hello. Hello. Hello.