I shivered. “I have to,” I said again. I sounded like I was telling the truth.
Mom stared past Casimir to the wall. She’d rehung Great-grandmom’s quilt. The only light was from the lamp I’d turned on in the living room, and the quilt gleamed in the twilight, green and gold and palest pink and cream and deepest red and purple. I thought suddenly that I was wrong about this being a boring little house: no house could be boring with that quilt hanging on the wall. Many of the squares had plants on them, mostly flowers, a few with just leaves; you could see where Mom’s gardening instincts had come from. But quite a few had animals on them, and the animals were often watching you through some plant or other. I hadn’t thought of it in years, because this particular square hung near the floor, but it had fascinated me when I was shorter: it had a little round, furry or feathery face, peering out through leaves so dark they were almost black. You couldn’t see much of the face—except that it seemed to have three eyes.
I was pretty sure Mom knew I’d go whatever she said, but I’d rather she accepted it. But she was my mom, and I was seventeen years old, and it was kind of a jump from being a reliable dog owner to being a magdag.
We were all silent. We should be making plans, I thought. What plans are there we can make? We didn’t even know where Val or Arnie was. Maybe if I took Great-grandmom’s quilt off the wall again and laid it on the floor it could do the enchanted-flying-carpet trick. I couldn’t remember if flying carpets in fairy tales could go through walls or not. And the armydar might mess up its homing instinct. Doshiyo, I thought. Doshiyo, doshiyo. What do I do?
At last Mom nodded, a stiff little jerk. “Gods’ holy engines,” she said grimly. “I don’t think I can stop you, much as I think I should. And it’ll be easier afterward for both of us if I say okay now. But I also think the usual systems have broken down. That’s the cobey, perhaps—or the armydar. And I find Casimir’s version of events rather compelling.” She smiled at me; it was not a happy smile. “You are so much like your grandmother,” she said. “It doesn’t really express it to call her stubborn. When she made up her mind about something . . . she made granite look soft and pliable.” She paused. “Your grandmother—like your great-grandmother—was also a powerful magician.”
“And you, Mom?” I whispered.
“I’m the sister who gave it up,” she said. “I’m the one of the four of us girls who wanted to be normal. I’m the one who fell in love with someone whose family had never been gene-chopped because there was no gene to chop, who went to secretarial school so I could get a job sooner, because Ber was going to graduate from Runyon in a year and we could get married. And then I went to accounting classes in the evenings before you were born, because I liked arithmetic. You know where you are with addition and subtraction.” She leaned forward, over Mongo, still attached to my leg, and put her arms around me. Hix (and perhaps Whilp) did her bodiless-shadow thing: I felt her patting my face and I think Mom’s too, not at all dismayed by there being no space between us for her to be. I thought I felt Whilp making a nest in my hair. I have bad hair most days; a gruuaa couldn’t make it much worse.
“Go with love and luck,” said Mom. “And with magic. I send you with all that I can offer you.” She kissed me on the cheek—and there was a funny little tingly feeling, almost gruuaa-like.
“Giving up magic didn’t work so well for Val,” I said.
“No, it didn’t,” she agreed. “Which is probably why I’m not shutting you up in a closet right now. But you’d better leave before I break down entirely—before I remember that I’m your mom and you’re seventeen years old. Ran and I will go to Gwenda as soon as he gets home, which had better be soon. Come . . . come after us . . . as soon as you can. That house is not called Haven idly. There is still magic there—Gwenda will help us. I wish I were taking you and Val there now.”
I turned and nearly ran out the door. I also nearly tripped over Majid. “Come on,” said Jill, grabbing my arm. “No falling down. I’m sure we need you in one piece.”
We went down the sidewalk together while I said to myself, I am not going to cry, I am not going to cry. It will be fine, Val will like Haven, and he’ll figure out how to get along with Gwenda (my dad used to call her formidable). Takahiro appeared on my other side carrying Majid, who was (astonishingly) purring again. Mongo had come out with us and then shot ahead and had his forepaws up on the rear door of the Mammoth (this was not allowed, of course: dog claws scratch paint) and was wagging his tail so hard it was in danger of coming off, while Bella strained to get her muzzle through the quarter-open window to touch noses with him. “That’s a yes then,” said Jill. “If I open the door, will he get in, or will everyone else come out?”
“He’ll go in,” I said, “if we make it obvious enough that that’s the plan.” By the time this had been achieved, not without a certain amount of swearing and being hit in the face by wagging tails, Casimir had joined us. “If we put this end of the rear seat up, I can get in the back,” I said, pulling dog hair out of my mouth. “It’s either me or the dog food—that’s an easy one. And it’s dumb to take two cars. Then Casimir can get in front.” It was nearly dark; the streetlights had all come on and there were shadows everywhere. Some of them were gruuaa.
“I’ll come in the back with you,” said Takahiro. “You can sit on my lap.” I didn’t quite laugh, remembering how crowded the three of us had been on the drive over—and Casimir was a lot wider than either Taks or me. Shoulders. Yes, I know, I’d been kissing Taks and liked it a lot. And I wasn’t minding the idea of sitting in Taks’ lap at all either. But Casimir totally won on the shoulders and a girl can look. And if Taks was in back with me we could stuff everybody’s knapsacks under Casimir’s feet. He’d brought one that looked like he was going camping for a week. I didn’t want to think about what he imagined the magdag was going to need.
Supposing we found Val and Arnie and wanted to take them away from wherever they were, where were we going to put them? On the roof?
“And Mongo, Majid, and Bella will sit on us,” I said loudly, to drown out my thoughts.
“Odoroku beki,” said Takahiro. “We’ll cope somehow.”
We were pretty cozy in the back. It had been crowded back here before Takahiro, me, Mongo, and Majid. I settled down—trying to be less heavy is not really very constructive—and Takahiro put his arms around me. Hix and a few of her friends redraped themselves around both of us. I was way more comfortable than I should have been. Briefly. Till Mongo ricocheted off one of the front headrests and ended up in my lap. Bella put her head over his back, and I could feel Jonesie whuffling in one of my ears. Oh well. At least Majid didn’t seem to be killing anyone. Yet. Casimir got in the front, and Jill last. I could see the bag of dog food through the gap in the headrests. Bags of dog food can’t laugh, can they?
Jill put her hand on the key and then sat back. “Er—where are we going?”
Good question. Suddenly I wasn’t comfortable at all.
Casimir turned around so he was looking out past us through the rear of the car—or would have been, if there hadn’t been a lot of hairy bodies in the way. “There,” said Casimir, pointing.
I looked at him. “What?”