My mouth flapped open and closed, my teeth clicked, and I couldn’t get a word out.
Tad went on as if we hadn’t just talked about . . . what we’d talked about.
“Just because Damara is a satyr doesn’t mean she’s right about the heroes and old gods.”
I pulled myself together, doing my best to block the last few minutes from my mind. Despite everything else he said, he had a point about Damara. She could be as fanatical about Zeus as Mom was about the Firstamentalists.
We worked our way through the last of the bush and stepped out into a park that was cultivated and well groomed. Even in the dead of winter, it was green. All the rain we had kept things lush and growing despite the fact that we were on the forty-ninth parallel.
At the edge of the park we stepped out onto the sidewalk, and I took a deep breath. The differences on the two sides of the Wall were startling.
Grungy, dark, and untamed on one side with imminent death or confinement waiting on every corner.
Clean, proper, and cultivated on the other with no sign of someone trying to kill us.
I swallowed hard. I would never be a part of this again. Not really.
We flagged a cabbie, and he took us to our parents’ house over in the Madison Park part of Seattle. Posh. Comfortable and very, very human. Funny I’d never noticed before, but as we drove across town there were parts of Seattle where I saw glimmers of Super Dupers.
Almost as if reading my mind, Tad cleared his throat. “You know, Super Duper is not what most Supes want to be called.”
“Dahlia coined it in the . . . hospital.” I was careful of what I said, rather aware that the cabbie was listening in.
“You’re going to piss off the wrong person using it.”
I shrugged. “I don’t care.” I did care, but I was tired of him telling me how to act. I’d forgotten about that part of our relationship, burying it under my grief. I’d put him on a pedestal when he died. There were parts of Tad that irritated me.
Like his bossy-pants act.
The cabbie slowed. “Here we go, you two. Have a nice visit with your parents. Good luck telling them you’re Supes.”
My jaw dropped, and the cabbie smiled at me in the rearview mirror, his grin wide and white. A waft of musk flowed back to me. Another wolf. Damn, they were everywhere.
“Um. Thanks.”
Tad paid the cabbie and we slid out, silence holding us hostage.
“Mom’s going to freak out.” Tad broke the quiet first.
“Yeah.” There was no denying it. I hooked an arm through his. “She won’t recognize us at first.”
“Dahlia recognized you, and you her. And you knew who I was.”
“Maybe when you care for someone, the changes aren’t as big, like Merlin said.” I took a step, all but dragging Tad with me up the steps. The unspoken words were that maybe Mom wouldn’t recognize us at all.
The house was the one we’d grown up in, and yet it looked foreign to me.
“You think Mom doesn’t care about us?”
“I think she may make herself not care so she doesn’t get dragged down to hell with her two wayward, soul-damning children.” The bitterness in my words was evident even to me, though I tried not to think about how much truth I spoke.
The exterior of our parents’ house was painted a pale yellow with white trim. A two-story home, it had a great view of a soccer field from the back balcony where I’d spent more time than I liked to admit watching the boys’ soccer teams scrimmage.
I knew the interior would be clean, spotless to be fair. Mom cleaned every day, the perfect housewife as the Firstamentalists taught her. She’d made no effort to hide the fact that she felt the church had been her place of sanctuary. That it had been the place she’d learned to be an adult.
She always had gourmet meals on the table, hand-stitched the tears in our clothes, and folded fitted sheets like Martha Stewart. There was nothing she couldn’t do when it came to the home.
“Jesus, just knock,” Tad whispered.
“That is not my name.” I raised my hand and rapped my knuckles against the wood. Why we weren’t just walking in was beyond me. We never knocked. Surely that would be a tip-off that we were shysters there to try to pull the wool over their eyes.
The door opened and Yaya peeked out. Her eyebrows shot to her curly gray hairline. She called over her shoulder. “Sweet baby Cupid. Beatrice. Clark. You’d better get your hungover asses out of bed.”
She opened the door and we stepped in. Formal. “Yaya. Do you recognize us?” I asked.
“’Course I do. I know my grandbabies. Even when they do stupid things like get turned into supernaturals. Hera be damned, you’re going to get us all killed.” She swatted the back of Tad’s head first, then aimed for mine. I ducked out of the way while Tad rubbed his head.
“Yaya, we didn’t do anything stupid.”
She pointed a finger at me. “I told you to be careful of magic. And what did you do? Jump in with both feet like it was a contest to see who could make life the most dangerous. Pah. Stupid kids.” She pointed at the couch. “Sit.”
Tad and I sat, our hands clasped in our laps. Yaya paced in front of us. “Maybe we can still fix this.”
“Fix it? We’re both alive, Yaya. Unless you’re planning on killing us both and burying the bodies in the backyard,” Tad said.
She pointed a bony finger at him. “Don’t sass me, boy, or I’ll go get my shovel and start digging.”