“You never come home early unless something bad is happening.”
I put the letters on the counter and joined him at the table. “We sort of hit a dead end, so we called it a day. Pen’s coming over tonight. I’m ordering pizza.”
“Sweet,” he said. “I’ll eat in my room. Chemistry test tomorrow.”
Normally I would have found his willingness to study suspect, but ever since we left the snooty private school, his grades had been steadily improving. I guess without the distraction of being a working-class Adept kid in a school full of rich Mundanes, he had more time to focus.
“Need any help?” I asked, trying to be a decent parental figure.
He shot me a suspicious look.
“What?”
“What do you know about chemistry?”
“Um, I spent the majority of my youth cooking potions, so I know a thing or two about how chemicals behave.”
“Yeah, but that was dirty magic.”
“It might have been dirty but it was still alchemy, which was the foundation of modern chemistry.”
“All right,” he said in a challenging tone. “Which law states that the pressure of a gas is inversely proportional to the value of a gas at a constant pressure?”
The hand on the wall clock ticked five times before I answered.
“Boyle’s Law.”
His eyes grew wide. “I seriously didn’t think you’d get that.”
I crossed my arms and tilted my head at him. “I’m just saying if you need help, I’m here for you.”
His smile was genuine but surprised. “I think I got this one, but I’ll let you know.”
Quitting while I was ahead, I turned to resume my mail shuffling. “How’s everything else at school?”
“Fine.”
“You met any new friends in your classes?”
“Not really. There are a couple of guys that are all right, but people mainly leave me alone.” Instead of sounding depressed by this, he seemed relieved.
I didn’t comment on that, because the more I suggested he try harder to make friends, the more he’d withdraw from me. The trick, I’d learned, was to give him some space while also watching like a hawk. If I wanted to suggest something, I had to be tricky about it because teenagers could smell meddling from a mile away.
The fourth piece of mail in the stack looked different from the others. Instead of being another credit card offer or piece of junk mail, this one was a thick envelope made of high-quality cream paper. The return address was from something called the Conservatory for the Arcane Arts. It was addressed to the Parents of Danny Prospero.
“What’s this?” I asked, holding it up.
He came and took it from me. When he read the return address, his face paled. “Um.”
I raised a brow and let the silence speak for itself.
“So, uh, a few months ago, I heard something about a new school opening up—”
“What kind of school is it and where?”
“It’s a magnet school for Adept kids. They’re opening it in the Cauldron this fall.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I sort of applied.”
Tick, tick, tick went the clock. This time, the silence stretched until I could respond in a calm voice. It was a lot of ticks.
“You…applied? You would have needed a guardian’s signature.”
As if summoned, Baba came through the door in a cloud of white hair and patchouli stink. She was a seventyish-year-old witch who used to be our next-door neighbor, but she’d moved in with us several months earlier after the landlord raised her rent more than she could afford. The situation worked out well for me because she cooked and looked after Danny. Plus she was a hoot when she wasn’t meddling or forcing her witch’s brews on us.
She took one look at our stand-off and froze. “Uh-oh, what happened?”
I snatched the envelope from Danny and waved it. “He was just explaining how he applied to some school without telling me. You know anything about that?”
Two spots of pink appeared on her papery cheeks, but her expression remained neutral. “Why would I know about it?”
“Baba.”
“Kate.” Her bullish expression was the kind achieved only by women who’d lived long enough to know that patience won more arguments than shouting.
I turned to my brother. “Who signed the application?”
“I did,” he said.
“You forged my signature?”
He pointed at the old woman. “But she knew!”
The betrayal morphed Baba’s expression from innocence to a promise of retribution. “You’re a devil, Danny Prospero.”
“I’m not going down alone,” he muttered.
His response was so classic Prospero that I almost laughed. Almost.
Baba sighed. “Then you better tell her about Volos.”
No name on earth was guaranteed to ruin my mood more than that one. “What about Volos?” I enunciated each word careful so I wouldn’t yell them.
Mayor John Volos and I had a somewhat complicated and shady shared history. We grew up together in the Votary coven, and we’d been teenaged sweethearts. After I left the coven, we didn’t speak for about ten years. But ever since I got on the MEA task force, he’d been back in my life causing lots of trouble, including, apparently, encouraging my little brother to sneak behind my back.
Danny sighed. “He’s involved in the school somehow, and he told me about it.”
I threw up my hands. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about it?”
“It was a while ago. Back before I was in the hospital.”
The previous year, Danny had been targeted by a wizard I was chasing. He hexed my little brother with a potion that turned him into something like a werewolf. Then he unleashed my brother on me in the city’s abandoned subway tunnels. Curing Danny had required me to team up with Volos to create an anti-potion. Afterward, he tried to use the fact I’d cooked illegally to blackmail me.
Yeah, he was a real peach, that guy.
“Remember that day I went to see John and you came to get me?” Danny said. “He mentioned it before you got there. Later, he got in touch to tell me applications were available.”
I waved the envelope like a murder weapon. “Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“Because you were so rigid about magic back then,” Baba said.
The words hit me like a slap. My mouth opened and closed as I struggled to find words to deny her claim. None appeared, because there was no denying I had been completely irrational in my insistence that Danny stay far away from anything remotely related to magic back then.
Before I could come up with an appropriate response, Danny held up his hands. “Guys, can we hold off on the argument until we find out if I got in?” He nodded toward the envelope, urging me to open it.
Across the kitchen, Baba leaned back against the stove with her arms crossed and an annoyed expression on her face. But I could tell she was just as eager as the kid to find out if he got in.
I ripped open the envelope and pulled out the stack of folded sheets inside. The top page contained a letter. I cleared my throat and read aloud.
“Dear Parents of Danny Prospero, we are pleased to inform you that Danny has been accepted—”
The rest of the words were lost in a volley of squeals and shouts from my companions. Danny ran to Baba and high-fived her before she wrapped him in a big hug.
“You did it, kiddo!” she said.
I stood to the side with the letter, feeling a completely opposite set of emotions.
“We have to call Mez,” Danny said.
“Why would you call him?” I said, my tone quiet as a tomb.
“Oh, crap,” he said, face falling. “It’s just— after I started taking lessons with him, I mentioned the school thing. Turns out he knew the principal because they went to school together. He called her and put a good word in for me, so I thought he’d want to know I got in.”
Knowing that even Mez knew about this made me feel like I’d just swallowed a shit sandwich. “You might want to hold off on alerting anyone.”
“Why?” Danny asked.
“Because I haven’t said yes.”
The mood in the room plummeted.
“Kate,” Baba started, “don’t be like that.”
I slammed the papers on the counter. “Don’t be like what? Don’t be angry that you hid this from me?”