Maudlin's Mayhem (Bewitching Bedlam #2)(51)
After the gym, Sandy took care of several of her errands. She dropped off her dry cleaning, and I took the opportunity to pick up mine. She stopped at the health food store, on the pretext of needing a few supplements. But I knew she was giving me the chance to get what I needed. I stared at the list Wilson had prepared for me and finally just shoved it at the clerk.
“Apparently, I’m now a fixer-upper,” I said, already mourning the loss of my morning doughnuts and pastries.
“You are nothing of the sort. You’ll be surprised by how quickly you respond. The Mad Maudlin I knew back in the day was strong enough to take down ten vampires before breakfast, which—if I remember right—was usually bread and cheese, and maybe an apple if we were lucky.” Sandy narrowed her eyes. “We aren’t anywhere near old, so don’t use that as an excuse. Modern living has made us soft.”
“It hasn’t made you that soft,” I muttered as the clerk handed me a package and I swiped my credit card to the tune of two hundred and fifteen dollars.
“That’s because I happen to love exercise. But cheer up, at least you have a cute trainer.” She winked at me.
I snorted. “Right. That’s more of a distraction than a help. But he did seem nice, and as much as I hate to admit it, last night’s encounter with Thornton convinced me that I really need a good, solid tune-up, so to speak. Okay, now what?” I was actually happy to be out running errands with her. It took my mind off what I had hidden down in my basement.
“Well, we can’t break the hex until tomorrow night, if what Garret told you is correct. I have to make a stop at Neverfall, so want to come along?”
I had actually never been out to the school, and it seemed like as good a use of the rest of the morning as anything else. “Sure. I called the bank and made sure that everything was set, so I’m good. Will Jenna be there?”
She nodded. “Derry asked if I could pay for Jenna’s summer term. She sent me the money and I told her I’d be glad to.”
Derry Knight was one of Sandy’s socialite friends. The air-kiss, hug-hug, ladies-who-lunch crew. Shortly before Winter Solstice, Derry had asked Sandy if she would take over as her daughter’s guardian while she went on a worldwide jaunt that was scheduled to last two years. That way, if anything happened to Jenna, there would be somebody who could be reached immediately. Sandy had agreed, and she seemed to be getting into the spirit of pseudo-motherhood. Jenna only came home on select weekends from the academy, and she was old enough to where she really didn’t want constant mothering.
Sandy headed for the other side of the island, stopping at an espresso drive-thru. “I know how traumatizing this morning was to you. Go for it. Caffeine is your comfort food now, but don’t overdo it.”
I stuck my tongue out at her but ordered a triple-shot latte and was about to add a brownie on top of it when Sandy shook her head. I changed my order from a brownie to a banana.
As we pulled onto Rosewood Road, the traffic seemed brisk. The water was choppy today, and in the distance, clouds were rolling in, black and laden with rain. As we zipped along in that comfortable silence of friends who didn’t need to talk, I nursed my latte, realizing it would be the last of the day. The banana tasted surprisingly good, and I decided that maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad change after all.
“I wish I had had a school like Neverfall when I was young,” I said after a while.
“I know. Instead, we had the witch hunters after us.” Sandy shook her head. “At least now, even though there’s plenty of hate against the PretCom, it’s not as prevalent as it was and we can counter it more.”
“If humans find out that some vampires can walk during the day, that may change.”
“But are vamps really part of the preternatural community?” Sandy flashed me a quick look. “I mean, seriously, I want to know. That’s never been fully decided, and who—if anybody—is the one who gets to make that decision? Do humans get to decide who belongs to our ranks? Or do we, as a whole, define the meaning of what it means to belong to the PretCom? And what about humans with psychic and magical abilities? They do exist. Are they part of the PretCom?”
I let out a long sigh. “It’s too early for philosophical arguments. But if you want my answer? Yes, vamps do have a right to claim PretCom status. As far as humans with magical abilities, there’s a vast difference between being a psychic human, and being born a witch. Our DNA is different—that’s been proven. Just like a shifter’s DNA is different, and so are the Fae.”
“What would that make Franny?”
“She’s a ghost. A spirit. She was once human. Ghosts aren’t exactly PretCom, because you can be any race and end up as a spirit.”
“What about vampires? Most of them were human before they died and were turned.”
Sandy grinned as she steered the car around a slow-moving tractor puttering along. The road was long and winding, hugging the outside of the island as it made the entire circuit. It started at the ferry terminal, going around the entire island, and numerous businesses and beaches had sprung up along it.
To our right, the water stretched toward the horizon as the scent of brine and kelp filled the air. The tide was going out, leaving stretches of beach littered with seaweed and shells. They washed up on the quarter-sized rocks that formed much of the region’s shores. The rocky beaches were filled in with gravel, and seaweed draped over the driftwood logs that came thundering in on the stormy waves of autumn and winter. The giant logs rolled across the shore, lodging on the beach as reminders of just how dangerous the waters in this area could be.