“I’ll help look for him. Torin is working on his next recruit, so I’m free. I might drag Ingrid from academy stuff.” She glanced over her shoulder at Ingrid, Femi, and Lavania. “She knows where reapers and Immortals hang out.”
“Talking of Immortals, did you know the Tolberts are Immortals?” By the time I finished naming all the Immortals around town, we both agreed we should have a meet-and-greet. “The reapers can come, too. I’d have to drag Echo, though.”
“Not Torin. He’s all about recruits now. Mystic Academy is going to be a mining field for him. They’ll have students from ages ten to twenty plus.”
“How many classes?”
“Three for juniors: ages ten and eleven combined, twelve and thirteen, and fourteen and fifteen. Sixteen and up will be senior classes, and those will depend on levels, not age.” She looked at her watch. “You better go unless you want to be late.”
“I’m skipping first period after lunch. Ockleberry is still subbing for Mr. Holland.”
Raine made a face. “He’s still staring at girls’ boobs?”
“Yep. I’m thinking of ways to make him squirm. I wish there were runes for that.”
“The perv. I have an idea. I should come with you, stay invisible, and poke him every time he peeks at someone’s cleavage.”
“Poke him where?”
“His ass or nuts. Somewhere he’d be embarrassed to scratch.”
Imagining Ockleberry twitching, I laughed. “You are evil. I was going to let Dev mess with him, but whatever. Let’s have some fun.”
We slipped into the room undetected and laughed while torturing Mr. Ockleberry. When he decided to stay behind his desk, Raine saluted me and left. I couldn’t wait until we were at Mystic Academy together.
Echo was by my car after school and acted like everything was normal between us. I wanted to punch him in the nose. The problem was I loved his nose. Who was I kidding? I loved every inch of him.
“Rhys already brought the body to Miami. Have you heard from Dev?”
“No. I’m starting to worry. Raine promised to try to find him.”
“I’ll look for him after this.” The drive home was awkward, a first for us. Even when he’d hounded me after our first meeting, he often made our drive to and from school fun. “About what I suggested yesterday,” he said when we pulled up outside my house. “Do you want to discuss it?”
“Yes.”
“What would you have us do?”
“Tell them we are together from the get-go.”
“How? When?” he asked, and I almost forgot I loved him. He was bringing up unnecessary obstacles. “The first time they meet you, they won’t care about who your best friend is or the identity of the person you are dating. They’ll want to know about you, Cora, their long-lost daughter. Your likes and dislikes. They’ll want to show you off to their friends, introduce you to their people. There’s no room to steer the conversation to me.”
He didn’t know me very well if he thought I couldn’t do that. “Sounds like you know exactly what they are going to do and how I’m going to behave.”
“Damn it, Cora.”
I engaged my speed runes and was out of the Elantra before he realized it. He caught up with me by the door but couldn’t do anything because Mom came around the house with empty containers of pyrethrum, the organic pesticide she used on the farm, and he went to help her.
“Are you two fighting again?” Mom asked.
Surprised, I didn’t respond. Echo also clammed up. Inside the house, I remembered a question I’d been meaning to ask since Echo came up with his stupid proposal.
“Mom, how did you and Dad meet? And did your parents approve of your relationship?”
Mom studied me then glanced at Echo. “Well, I don’t know if I can say they approved.” Dad snorted, and Mom threw him a quick glance. “Things were different then.”
“Different how?”
“Who you married mattered. Class mattered.”
Echo threw me a triumphant look.
“I met your father at a Winter Solstice festival in Kilkenny and recognized a kindred spirit. He had magic in him, and I felt it right away. He wrote beautiful poetry and was reading one of his poems sprinkled with Irish charm when he looked up and our eyes met. I’d never met a man like him before. His words touched my heart and made me dream of the impossible. Love. Adventures in far away lands.”
My jaw dropped. I’d never heard Mom talk like that before. Dad chuckled and left his desk to join us.
“I thought my emaciated body was the reason you took pity on me and invited me home. They owned a farm, and she claimed they were short of hands. So I helped her father on the farm, and they gave me room and board.”
“And at night, he played his fiddle and sang catchy tunes. He always added funny lines to popular tunes and made us laugh.”
Ignoring Echo, I sat on the nearest stool. “Then you fell in love?”
“I did.” Dad slid next to Mom and placed his arm around her shoulder. “I didn’t know how your mother felt. She was very good at hiding her feelings then until she found out what her father had planned for her.”
My eyes volleyed between their faces. “What?”
“Sit down, Son,” Dad ordered Echo, who stood a few feet away, before looking at me. “I’ll let your mother tell the story.”
“No, honey, you are the one with the gift of gab,” Mom said.
“Her father wanted her to marry Eoin, the only son of a neighboring farmer. A strapping lad with beefy arms and a mean right hook. I’d seen him leer at her at the marketplace. Whenever he came to the farm, I made sure I was close by. I wasn’t letting your mother near the cad.”
I laughed. “You took on a strapping lad with beefy arms and a mean hook?”
“Yes, he did. One day, Eoin cornered me at the marketplace and tried to force himself on me. Your father pulled him off me and socked him in the face.”
I grinned. “How chivalrous. I hope you knocked him out.”
“By the time the local butcher and his men came to help, I couldn’t see your father’s bloodied face and he couldn’t breathe.”
My jaw dropped. “What happened?”
“Eion was out cold on top of me,” Dad said.
She patted his cheek and smiled. “But I couldn’t pretend I didn’t love him anymore. I went home and told my parents how I felt.”
“So Dad won?”
“Yes, he did. With a rock.”
Dad chuckled. “I remember it differently. I landed one punch because I caught Eoin by surprise. Then he turned on me. He would have broken every bone in my body if your mother hadn’t intervened. She found the biggest stone her tiny hands could carry and hit Eoin on the head. It took me weeks to heal, but that boy was never the same.”
“And what did your parents say when you told them how you felt?” I asked.
“They knew and had been wondering when we would stop hiding it. By the end of the year, we were married.”
I looked at Echo and smiled. “Yep, you should have told them right off the bat that you loved each other.”
“That’s true,” Mom said. “I think your father taking on a bully on my behalf helped his case. My father wasn’t an easy man to please, and he didn’t think your father was the right suitor for me. In those days, a man had to be able to protect his family and he thought your father was too much of a romantic, a dreamer, and not a fighter. Your father proved him wrong.”
“Let me guess. They didn’t know Mom hit the village bully with the rock. They thought you did, Dad.”
“Yes, they did. I wanted to tell them the truth, but your mother flat out forbade it. We packed up and moved to America, and your mother remained the unsung hero of that incident.”
“Hardly a hero,” Mom insisted, but something in her voice told me differently.
It wasn’t until later, after dinner when I got Mom alone, that I asked, “They knew you did it?”
She smiled and nodded. “My father told me I defended the man I loved when he needed me and that was how it was supposed to be. A family that stands up for each other survives. Then he warned me to never tell your father he knew the truth because his ego would have been hurt.”
I sighed. “He was a very wise person.”
“He was. Now why are you fighting with Echo?”
“It’s stupid.”
“I understand stupid,” she said.
“No, you don’t. Everything you do turns out right. How old were you when you married Dad?”