Kindling the Moon (Arcadia Bell #1)(87)

I squeezed my eyelids shut. “Maybe,” I said, then warily cracked one eye back open.

“Huh.” He sat back, wheels turning. “No one’s ever stayed over here before. Well, there was one lady, but my dad tried to sneak her out in the morning before I woke up. That was a couple of years ago. I guess he thought I was too young to see that. She never came back.”

“Hmm, well, you’re not weirded out about me staying here, are you?”

He contemplated this, then asked, “Do you like him?”

I nodded.

“I mean, do you like-like him?”

Lon’s whispered morning words still swirled in my head like a drug. Goose bumps blossomed over my arms and my neck became warm. I sighed, utterly defeated. “Yeah, Jupe. I like-like him. A lot, I think.”

A long pause stretched between us.

“Cool,” he finally said, grinning.

Whew.

“I’m just glad you gave him a second chance. He can be really dumb sometimes. I told him that if he didn’t apologize for acting like a dick that night at my school, he was the stupidest person in the world.”

“He kinda was a dick, wasn’t he?”

Jupe laughed, then gave me a confident look. “I set him straight. Don’t worry.”

I held up my hand. “Thanks for looking out for me.”

He smacked it with more force than I expected. “Anytime. Hey, wanna sign my cast?”

“Sure. Where’s a pen?”

He scrambled to snatch up a Sharpie that was sticking out from beneath his pillow and slapped it into my hand. I squirmed around to get into a better position and nearly knocked over a half-eaten bowl of Cheerios, wobbling in the covers at the foot of the bed. He was even more of a pig than I was.

On his cast were Mr. and Mrs. Holiday’s signatures, JACK in big, bold letters with a deformed Godzilla head drawing, and then in small, tidy print, a string of sentences that wound around the plaster near his wrist. “What’s all this?” I asked.

“Pfft. My dad thinks he’s funny.”

I leaned in and read it aloud. “IMPORTANT REMINDERS. One: I will not jump on the bed pretending to be a rock star and break my other arm. Sound advice,” I agreed with a smile. “Two: I will not leave dirty dishes in my room.” I looked at the cereal bowl. “Well, that one sure didn’t stick, did it?”

“That bowl’s only been in here a few minutes. It doesn’t count,” he argued with a grin. “Especially if I get it back down to the kitchen before he sees it.”

I shook my head and continued reading. “Three: I will only ask one question at a time. Four: I will not leave the freezer door open overnight and force my dad to throw away all the food inside and mop up the floor while I’m at school. Five: I will not call the dog a f**ktard.” Two bright red stars censored the word.

Jupe snorted loudly in amusement, and giddy peals of laughter incapacitated me for a few moments. He joined in halfway through, giggling like a fool. I had to force myself to stop.

“All right, all right, all right,” I said between breaths, fanning my face. After a brief string of hiccups, Jupe finally calmed enough for me to sign his cast.

I drew a circular, flat open rose with three tiers of petals and a crescent moon cradling it below. Jude watched in fascination and—miraculously—waited until I was finished to speak.

“What in the world is that?”

“It’s my personal symbol … as a magician.”

“You have a symbol?”

“Yep.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means Moon Rose. That’s my middle name, Aysul. It’s Turkish.”

“Whoa. Is that a Turkish symbol above the wheel thingy?”

“No, that’s my sigil. And it’s not a wheel, it’s a rose. See, these three inner petals in the inside represent alchemical elements. The seven petals around those represent the classical planets, and the outer petals contain the twelve signs of the zodiac. Twenty-two petals total.”

“Twenty-two,” he repeated, tracing the rose with his finger.

“It’s an important magical number. It’s the number of paths on the Tree of Life in Qabalah, the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and the number of cards in the Tarot’s major arcana.”

“Cool.”

“So, now you have my symbol, and that means you have my protection.”

“Whoa,” Jupe murmured.

“I’m real sorry about the mess that put you in that cast,” I said. “Your dad wasn’t being a dick about wanting to keep you safe. He had a right to be angry at me. It was my fault.”

“Don’t worry. I was never mad about that. You’re pretty strong. That was like an old-school wrestling move—you should be a luchadora!” An honest smile softened his face and lifted a huge weight from my shoulders.

I grinned back at him, suddenly much happier. “You, my friend, are insane.” Without thinking, I ran a quick hand through his springy curls. He leaned into my hand with the enthusiasm of a dog being scratched behind the ear.

“Will you teach me how you did that invisible spell? Because that was the best part of the whole night. I told Jack about it but he didn’t believe me. He thinks magick isn’t real.”