Wood Sprites(36)
“You’re not going to lose your job, are you?” Jillian asked.
“Taliaferro and I butt heads but he trusts me. He knows how careful I am with the expense accounts. You have to be to avoid this kind of finger-pointing with charity work. He thinks Desmarais might be a racist because she made it clear from the first time she laid eyes on me that she didn’t like me.”
“That totally sucks,” Louise said.
Their dad reached out and took their mother’s hand. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Of course it is,” she snapped but squeezed his hand tightly. “We’re being audited on Monday. Taliaferro wants me to come in Saturday and Sunday to get ready for it.”
“So…we don’t have to go to Elle’s stupid birthday party?” Jillian smiled at the idea that they’d have all of Saturday to work undisturbed on the spell book.
Louise glared at her sister; this was not the time to push their mother.
“You’re going if I have to FedEx you there. This is exactly what I was talking about. You have to learn how to deal with these rich bitches while it’s just the school play up for grabs and not your job. You’re going to this party, smile until it hurts, and make friends.”
“Yes, Mommy,” Louise said, and Jillian echoed her.
“How is Plan Invade-and-Conquer going at school?” their mother asked.
“Okay.” Louise wasn’t sure what was safe to talk about since everything was kind of tangled together with the secret of the bank account and flash drive and them being elves.
Jillian tried to work her way around their mother’s edict. “We’ve got all the boys on our side since we showed them our music video. If two girls back us, or come up with another play, we’ll win. We vote on Monday.”
“Good! Never let your guard down until the fight is over.” Their mother tapped hard on the table to drive home her point. “You keep your guard up. You watch for an attack and you take every opening that you’re given.”
“Yes, Mommy,” they said together.
10: THE QUEEN’S PANTALOONS
Elle had a kitten.
She also had a huge brownstone townhouse filled with gleaming hardwood floors and crystal chandeliers and oil paintings but none of that mattered to Louise. A kitten beat everything Louise had, even being part elf and in possession of a spell book. Louise wasn’t pretty like an elf. Without magic, there was no point to being able to cast spells.
The emotional minefield of keeping so many big secrets from their parents had put Louise off-balance the entire week. On top of it all, yesterday had been Shutdown and they’d failed to contact Alexander. Even on the Pittsburgh Internet, they hadn’t been able to find a phone directory.
The last thing Louise wanted to do was engage in social warfare. Besides, with a real living pet, Elle had already won. While the rest of the party giggled and shrieked somewhere downstairs, Louise curled up on the second floor landing with the chocolate tortoiseshell kitten.
About an hour later, Zahara came creeping up the stairs. She was still in her silk tribal-wrap dress with thick gold bracelets that gleamed rich against her dark skin. While nothing had been done to tame her curly hair, someone had carefully applied glitter to her face, rich blue makeup to her eyes, and lip gloss to her quiet smile.
“You’re not going to be made up?” Zahara asked.
“I don’t feel like I’m seeing myself when I put on makeup,” Louise said. “I feel like I’ve put on a mask and I’m trying to fool people.”
Zahara settled on the stair just below her. “It’s not like a mask. It’s like a bracelet.” She slid off her thick gold band and twirled it so it caught the light. “This is beautiful as a piece of art. My arm is beautiful as part of my body.” She held up her arm, slim and graceful, as dark chocolate as the tortoiseshell. “Gold does not make you beautiful. Your arm does not make gold beautiful.” She slid on the bracelet and twisted her hand to show off the band in all its golden wonder against her warm darkness. “The two come together in a celebration of beauty. We exist. We are. One does not detract from the other. So you can not claim that they add to each other.”
“But they do add to each other. I don’t think that would be nearly as pretty on Elle.”
Zahara giggled and her quiet smile broke into something younger and joyous. “Everyone has been talking about your videos all week but I don’t think anyone has been talking to you.”
“No, they’ve been just staring.” If the twins hadn’t been so wrapped up with decoding the spell book and finding a method for generating magic, it would have been very upsetting. As it was, it was embarrassing and annoying.