“What? Oh. Yes.” She closed the laptop. “Have you considered the possibility that you’re a witch and not Rasha?”
I pressed a hand to my heart, my relief that nothing bad had happened supplanted by a rushing in my ears as she regarded me with professional curiosity and not an ounce of maternal concern. “Uh, yeah. Turns out I am. Ari doesn’t know yet, though. This other witch I know confirmed it.” Mom didn’t say anything and I kept babbling. “I think you’d hit it off with her. She’s in the hospital now, but I’ll introduce you when she gets out. She’s a physicist.”
“Maybe she’ll influence your academic choices,” Mom said dryly. Goody, there was the mother I knew, and well, knew. She opened her desk drawer and handed me a letter. “If you don’t confirm your registration by the end of the month, UBC will force you to withdraw. I’ve pulled all the favors I can.”
I took the letter, not bothering to complain that she’d opened my mail. “No one asked you for any favors.”
“From what I understand, most of the Rasha have degrees. You won’t get anywhere within the Brotherhood with your high school diploma.”
I stuffed the letter in the back pocket of my capris. “I won’t get anywhere because I don’t fit the definition of ‘brother.’ Aside from that, I think the only real criteria is staying alive and I’m not dead yet.”
“Don’t be so morbid.”
“You’re right. It’s all sunshine and rainbows fighting demons.”
Mom slammed the drawer shut so hard that I flinched. “You think I don’t worry every single day about my kids dying?” I shrugged. Mom muttered something under her breath about me.
“I’m not going back to school. Not now. You can bask in your golden boy’s achievements.” A tight smile on my face, I spun around. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
“What ‘golden boy?’ Nava, stop.”
I froze, conditioned to obey that sharp tone. I forced out a breath to the count of three. “Ari. It’s what you always called him, right?” I didn’t mean to sound so bitter. I mean, I was, I just hadn’t intended for her to hear it.
A fleeting sadness crossed my mother’s face. “Nava,” she said. “He wasn’t my golden boy. He was my golden-haired boy. The same way you were my raven-haired girl. You and Ari shortened it to Golden Boy and Raven, when you were about three. You told me they were your superhero names.”
I wrapped my arms around my chest. “Nope. No memory of that.” Mom pushed me out of the room. “What are you doing?”
“Disabusing you of this ridiculous notion of yours that Ari is more important to me.”
Mom forced me down the stairs and into the TV room. She pulled an album off the bookcase, quickly flipping through the pages. “Here.”
The photo showed me as a preschooler, sitting in our kitchen on top of a pile of candy. “Yeah, the year I went as a crow.” Good haul.
“The year you went as a raven.”
I took the album from her. “Are you sure?”
She glared at me. “Yes.”
“Why did you stop calling me that then?”
“Because you’re the most stubborn child imaginable. I don’t know what your brother had done to set you off, but you stomped in one day when you were about seven and announced that name was done.”
I sat down hard on the sofa. Those were pretty much the exact words I’d said to Ro when I’d told him to stop calling me Lolita. That part was plausible but… I bit my bottom lip. “You treated Ari like your golden boy. My entire life.”
Mom sat down next to me, fiddling with her wedding ring. “When Rabbi Abrams told me about your brother, I cried for three days.”
“Because you were proud of his big destiny.”
She tucked a curl behind my ear. “Because I was terrified. How could this tiny baby fight demons? Would I,” her voice cracked, “outlive him? I swore to enjoy every second I had with him.”
I ripped a tissue out of the box on the coffee table and blew my nose. “Never mind that you had twins.”
“You had Ari and you had dance and you seemed so together, I didn’t need to worry about you.” She reached past me for her own tissue and her Chanel perfume teased a memory from when I was little of falling asleep in her lap all the times she and Dad had stayed up late playing cards. How she’d held her cards with one hand so she could keep me snuggled against her chest with the other.
I blew my nose again.
“Sweetheart. You suffered the fallout of my fears and I’m so, so sorry.” She gripped my hands. “The day you realized you couldn’t keep tapping and accepted your place at UBC? My heart broke for you.”
I’d lost the battle not to cry. “Why push so hard for me to go to school then? Even now?”
“I was scared of how empty you were without dance. But I was always proud of you.”
“Really?” My skin was tingling, a warmth radiating through my body.
“Well, except maybe the past couple years. You’ve been a disaster, my girl.”
I choked out a laugh through my tears.
There wasn’t much talking after that, just the clock ticking and Mom’s arm around me as we looked at the photo of the girl I used to be.
17
Any lingering anger at Rohan evaporated after my visit with my mom. She and I had wasted too much time on misplaced emotion and misunderstanding and I wasn’t about to do the same with him.
Ro waited for me on the front stairs at Demon Club, but he jumped to his feet when he saw my red-rimmed eyes. “What happened?”
“A good thing.” Things weren’t fixed between Mom and me, but they weren’t broken either and that was better than they’d been in a long time. I kissed him. “I don’t want to fight and I don’t care about anything except us being okay.”
“I don’t either. I love that we get to share everything about our lives, but it’s hard.” He gave me a wry grin. “I’m used to my autocratic ways.”
“I may be somewhat intractable myself. Not confirming or denying.”
“Best not to. We deal with danger all the time and I don’t want to add to yours. I never want to be the reason you get hurt. Physically or emotionally.” Rohan stroked my cheek. “Being thrown into all this? The way you’ve held your own and proven time and time again you can hunt with the best of us? You’re amazing.”
I blushed and mumbled my thanks.
“This is touching. Now we will all go into the bathroom and discuss douching together, sì?” Drio lounged in the front door.
I batted my eyelashes. “You’re the douche expert.”
His lips quirked.
“I had an idea about Candyman.” I led them back into the library, scooping up water bottles from the fridge on the way, and tossing them to the guys. “What if his name applies to a physical attribute, not a dealer handle?”
We entered all kinds of keywords into the database, scoring a match with “sugar.”
“Hoc demon. Rings a bell.” Drio spun his bottle on the table.
“Hoc is an acronym,” Rohan read. “Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon. They survive off this compound.”
“They eat sugar?” Drio said.