Crystal Caves Read online

  I grab his fist and pull it down.

  “Not here,” I hiss.

  “I can use magic anywhere I want,” Daddy says.

  I pull him off of the sidewalk toward a tall round table on a small patio in front of one of the delis. As I sit down, a guy in an apron says, “You sit here if you get food. This table’s for customers.”

  “I know,” I say.

  I pull Daddy onto one of the tall stools, and point at him.

  “You stay,” I say, like he’s a dog or a little kid or something.

  Then I go inside and get us both toasted bagels with cream cheese (take that, Mother!) and some regular coffee. I use Mother’s credit card to pay for it all, and I’m tempted to add like half the stuff in the dessert display—partly so she sees how much I’m spending and partly so she can see what I’m spending it on. Then I remember that she probably doesn’t even look at the bills. She has People for that.

  The guy behind the counter (wearing a similar apron to the guy outside) hands me paper plates with my toasted bagels, napkins, and then looks at me and how I’m about to carry it all.

  He sighs, grabs the coffee cups, and carries them outside for me, plunking the cups down in front of Daddy, who looks surprised.

  I thank the guy, set the bagels down, and hand Daddy a napkin.

  “I didn’t come here to eat, child,” he says. “I came to talk to you.”

  “Lucky me,” I say for like the eighth time today. “As if my day isn’t going bad enough.”

  I take a bite of the bagel. There’s a lot of cream cheese on it, and beneath it, butter, and it drips on my chin, and I don’t care because the damn thing tastes so good.

  After I take my giant bite, I clean off my chin.

  Daddy’s watching me like he doesn’t recognize me. Maybe he doesn’t. I doubt he’s ever seen me eat.

  “What do you want?” I ask as I chew.

  He doesn’t yell at me for talking and eating at the same time. (Take that, Mother!)

  “I hear you’re pretty miserable here.” He opens the coffee lid and tentatively sniffs at it. He puts the lid back on the cup.

  “Who told you that?” I ask, kinda stunned that he knows something about me, especially something like this.

  “A little birdie,” he says.

  “Really?” I ask. “Because I wouldn’t have believed that even when I was little.”

  Although sometimes, people can make birds talk. I just know that birds don’t really care about what humans are going through, and besides, I haven’t spoken to or even seen a bird (that I remember) since I came to New York.

  “Does it matter?” Daddy asks. “It’s true, right? You’re not happy here.”

  “Yeah, well, I agreed to it,” I say, just in case Megan’s found a way to listen in or something.

  He wraps his big hands around the coffee cup. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

  I take my fingers off my bagel. “What about her?”

  He closes his eyes for a minute, then takes a deep breath. “I…um…kinda forgot which one she was when we made this deal thing with Megan.”

  My cheeks get hot again. Okay, if I ever get my magic back, I’m stopping all uncontrolled visible physical reactions to emotional stimuli (and that sentence alone makes me realize I’ve been talking to E too much).

  “She’s making your life hell, isn’t she?” Daddy asks. “That’s the expression, right? She’s making it difficult for you?”

  “Actually, no,” I say. “My life is fine. Everyone tells me it’s really good. I have all the money I want—which is what everyone wants here, money, money, money. I live in one of the best places in the city, at least that’s what everyone says. I wear the latest fashions and I’m in the best school, so no, my life is not hell. Or Hades or any other kind of underworld.”

  Daddy looks up at me. He’s frowning, and not one of those magical I’m-about-to-turn-you-into-stone frowns. It’s a sincere I’m-not-sure-I-understand frown. “But, I heard—”

  “She doesn’t want me,” I say. “She’s never wanted me. She didn’t want to be part of this bring-your-daughter-to-the-real-world experiment, and she would really like me to disappear. She didn’t even tell her other kids about me before I got here, although I guess Owen knew.”

  “Owen?” Daddy asks.

  I wave my hand, dismissing that comment. If I’m going to get this out, I’m going to get it out all at once.

  “She doesn’t like me and she’s made it clear that she’ll take care of me until the agreed-on date and then I’m going home. So no matter what I do, she’s determined to ignore it. I didn’t know that until yesterday, and….” I look up at him, realizing this timing is weird. Someone has told him about Mother and me. “Who told you?”

  He’s shaking his head. “It’s not important. This is Monique, right? The one who—”

  “Didn’t want give birth in the first place?” I say. “The one you forced to have me?”

  “Oh, hon,” Daddy says, “that’s not as unusual as you think. This maternal instinct that everyone talks about? I’ve found it happens in only sixty-six percent of women who get pregnant. The rest are pretty peeved about it.”

  I am about to say something about Mother when I stop. Daddy’s gotten so many women pregnant over so many thousands of years that he probably actually has actual statistics to back up that number. Which is just weird and unpleasant and I can’t think about it right now or my brain will explode.

  “Yes,” I say after a minute. “My mother is Monique.”

  Daddy rolls his eyes. “I’ve got to stop screwing redheads,” he says, more to himself than to me.

  He picks up the bagel, looks at it, pokes the cream cheese with his finger, makes a face, and sets the bagel down again.

  “This is my fault,” he says, looking down at the plate. “If I had remembered that Monique was your mother, I would have spoken up and said the plan wouldn’t work.”

  I smile in spite of myself. “You did speak up and you did say the plan wouldn’t work. You just didn’t mention Mother.”

  “I did?” he asks, raising his head. Then he grins. “Oh, yeah. I did.”

  Now, I roll my eyes.

  “The point is, baby girl, you can come home now.” He pushes at the bagel. It’s almost like the food interests him more than I do.

  “And then what?” I ask.

  He frowns at me. “What do you mean ‘and then what?’”

  I’m still feeling contrary. I’m talking back to my dad, of all people. So magical that he can stop the world from turning if he wants to. Worshipped as a god (at least once upon a time). Able to quell any dissent with a single glare (unless the dissent comes from his daughters, I guess).

  “I mean,” I say, “do I get to choose who I live with or do I have to find new roomies. My sisters are still here, remember?”

  “How can I forget?” Daddy says drily. He starts to answer the rest of it, but I talk over him.

  “More important,” I say, “do I get my magic back? Because I’ve seen how people who are waiting for their magic to kick in get treated—”

  (I did some of the treating, and “treating” really is the wrong word. It was no treat for them)

  “—and it’s pretty awful.”

  “Well, someone has to do the grunt work,” Daddy says. “It’s good for everyone to learn how.”

  “You never did,” I say.

  He grins and shrugs. “Some of us are just special.”

  “So,” I say, “do I get my magic back the minute I arrive?”

  He picks up the bagel and takes a giant bite out of it. His eyebrows go up.

  “Hey,” he says around the food. I guess I got my bad habits from somewhere. “That’s pretty good.”

  A horn honks on the street—I mean, not a normal New York get-out-of-my-way-you-jerkwad honk, but a get-your-butt-over-here honk. I look.

  The car’s there, and Ron’s standing outside of it, staring at me. He’s leaning in so his righ
t arm can hit the horn.

  “You have to answer me or I’m leaving,” I say to Daddy.

  He has shoved most of the bagel into his mouth. His lips move and he says “wrrymmgnnago?” and sprays some crumbs as he does so.

  I think he said, Where are you going to go?

  I point at the car. He looks over, sees Ron, but doesn’t really see him. I think Daddy’s actually looking at the road.

  He’s stalling.

  “Am I going to get my magic back Day One or not?” I ask.

  He licks his lips and makes a smacking sound.

  I grab my purse and my book bag and get off the stool.

  “No,” he says after a moment. “You’d have to petition.”

  “Petition?” I know about petitioning. There were some things in the law books that Tiff made us read (okay, that Tiff read) that said that the Fates couldn’t make the final decision. Someone had to petition the Powers That Be.

  Ron beckons me from the curb. I nod at him, then look at Daddy.

  “You’re a Power That Be,” I say. “Can’t you make the decision?”

  “Oh, I used to be able to,” he says, grabbing my bagel. I reach for it and drag it back. “Not too long ago, I could sway half the members, but I have to be honest, honey, the whole Fates debacle really screwed me over. That plus the diversity initiative. You know what that is, right?”

  “I know that a bunch of you have complained about it for hundreds of years. Other so-called gods and magical beings from cultures you don’t approve of are now Powers That Be, and you can’t influence them. They even think you’re passé.”

  “I am not passé!” he roars, and as he does, thunder booms overhead. Everyone—and I mean everyone—looks up. He sees that and grins. Lightning flashes across the sky, which is really eerie, since there are no clouds.

  “See?” he says to me, a little softer now. “I’m not passé.”

  My little brothers have gotten out of the car and are standing on the curb. They were staring at Daddy, but now all three of them are looking up.

  I’ve seen Daddy be this petulant before. It doesn’t faze me.

  “So,” I say, “you can’t handle the petition on your own. You can’t expedite it or anything?”

  He frowns at me, apparently annoyed that I’m unimpressed. “No,” he says. “I can’t do that these days.”

  “I want to talk to Megan,” I say.

  “Megan can’t help you,” he says. “She has no magic.”

  “She’s an empath, Daddy. She has magic.”

  “Stupid magic,” he says. “Girl magic.”

  That makes me mad. I almost say, There are boy empaths, right? but I don’t know, and there are gender-based magic rules that Daddy helped install thousands of years ago (men get their magic around 20; women have to wait until menopause. I want to say to Mr. Rosenfeld—that’s why you hear about hags, you jerkwad—and then I remember, he’s not the one who said anything about hags. That was Weird Girl Donato, at least with the negative comment).

  “Empathy is still magic, Daddy. It bested you,” I say, using Kit’s word. “Bested.” Interesting word.

  “Megan can’t help you,” he says, and people on the sidewalk look at him. New Yorkers usually ignore stuff unless it gets too out of hand. I guess Daddy’s getting out of hand.

  The boys are watching him now, and Ron has moved away from the driver’s side of the car to the curb. I guess he thinks Daddy might do something to me.

  “Empathy is not magic,” he says. “Not the kind you want that’ll bring all your powers back. Just come home. We’ll work on it.”

  “You didn’t answer my other question,” I say. “Where will I live?”

  “We’ll worry about that later, honey,” Daddy says. “I’m sure Athena will have an opinion—”

  I make a disgusted noise. In other words, he doesn’t know.

  “You’re just here to undercut Megan, aren’t you?” I ask. “To have some kind of control in the decisions with me and Tiffany and Brittany. You don’t like that someone else won.”

  “No, honey, that’s not true,” Daddy says. “I remembered how difficult Monique is, and I figured you needed someone in your court.”

  That phrase—that American phrase—brought tears to my eyes.

  “But you’re not in my court,” I say. “You don’t even know what a court is.”

  “It’s for kings and queens,” he says. “And you’re my little princess.”

  Really? I’m appalled. He actually said that? To me? He barely knows my name.

  “You want to help me?” I ask.

  He nods.

  “Do you really want to help me?” I ask again.

  “Yes,” he says, sounding annoyed.

  I take a deep breath and ask for something I never thought I’d ask for in a million years. “Then take me to the Fates.”

  FOURTEEN

  “OH, HONEY,” DADDY says, “the Fates can’t help you.”

  He looks a little odd. I’ve never seen that particular expression on his bullish face. He looks…scared? My dad—the great God Zeus—is afraid of the Fates? What kind of punishment did the other members of the Powers That Be assign to my once all-powerful father?

  People are still passing on the street. The boys have moved closer. Gordon’s really close. He clearly wants to hear this. Ron has a hand on his shoulder, holding him back.

  “Well,” I say to Daddy, “if you can’t get me to the Fates, you can’t help me either. So either get the hell out of here or take me to see them.”

  He opens his mouth and almost immediately closes it. Then he looks at my hair and says, “Redheads. I’m plagued with redheads.”

  He waves a hand, just like I had done in my bedroom the night before, and says in a booming voice, “To the Fates!”

  He disappears in a big white cloud of drama, and I’m still at the table, with his empty plate, full coffee cup, and my half-eaten bagel. Of course, I can’t go to the Fates. They don’t want to see me. I stole their job.

  Then a hand reaches out of that big fluffy cloud, grabs my arm, and yanks me upwards. For a half minute, we’re actually in a cloud. It’s not fluffy at all, but damp and misty and I can see everyone on the street staring at it.

  And then thunder booms, and we tumble into that damn library where I spent the last I don’t know how long trapped with my sisters before we managed to talk to Megan.

  The library doesn’t smell like old dog pee, pizza, and bubblegum anymore. It smells like rich wood and books. I kinda like the smell, even though I shouldn’t. And it almost feels like home. The huge shelves that go up several stories, the pretty wood floor (polished now), and the fog that appears as the shelves vanish into the distance.

  That fog used to intimidate me because we were supposed to read all of those books, but it doesn’t now since I don’t have to read them anymore.

  Me and Daddy are standing in front of a huge raised desk, which Tiffany always called “The Bench.” She hated the bench, said it made her feel old, and when we were near it, we sat on top of it.

  The Fates stand behind it. They’re wearing white tunics that run all the way to the ground, like the Fates in the books everyone is making me read at school.

  The Fate to my left is Atropos. She has dark hair and black eyes, and once upon a time (not that long ago) Tiffany stood in for her, probably because Tiff has dark hair too. Daddy is nothing if not superficial.

  According to the books (and the magic), Atropos cuts the thread of life when everyone dies. I’ve never seen the thread of life, but Clotho, Brittany’s counterpart (whom I have trouble looking at even now), is the one who spins that thread. If you ask me to spin anything, I can’t do it. I never learned any of that female stuff.

  In fact, when I first became an Interim Fate, I thought spinning meant (you know) going round in circles. Sigh. We really were too stupid to live.

  Clotho is staring at me. She is as thin as Brit, just not quite as pretty. Clotho’s eyes are a bri
ght blue, almost like they have power all their own.

  My gaze hits hers for just a minute, then floats on to Lachesis. She’s really pretty. I wish I were as pretty as she is. Her red hair shines beautifully, and her green eyes are more emerald than forest.

  It feels like she can see all the way into your soul, which she probably can, considering she’s the one who actually figures out the future. Or as the Fate instructions say, she’s the disposer of lots, giving everyone a destiny.

  I’m still not sure what a destiny is or how to figure it out, but I had enough integrity when we were Interim Fates not to assign anyone anything before I understood what it was.

  That used to make Daddy really mad because he said he would assign lots, and we wouldn’t let him.

  “Zeus,” Atropos says with great disgust.

  “Are you going to try to demote us again?” Clotho asks.

  “Because we’re not going anywhere,” Lachesis says.

  As they speak, I shudder. When we were Interim Fates, we had to speak in a prescribed order. It was part of the magic, and it drove me crazy. It was one of the reasons I decided we needed to leave the job.

  “I didn’t decide to come here,” Daddy says. “My daughter did.”

  He claps a hand on my shoulder, and I jump.

  “If you need me to get out of here, you just say so. If they pick on you, you call me by name. If they forbid you from doing that, I’ll be back here so fast—”

  “Do not threaten us,” Atropos says, her voice echoy and powerful.

  “Oh, I’m not threatening you.” Daddy’s sarcasm makes me wince. He really shouldn’t be sarcastic when he’s talking to the Fates. “I’m making sure my daughter remains safe.”

  “He’s pretending he cares,” Clotho whispers to Atropos.

  “I can hear you,” I say to Clotho.

  “You don’t know how heartless your father is, child,” Lachesis says.

  “Oh,” I say, looking at him. He’s got a mighty frown on his face. “I have a clue.”

  “I know when I’m not appreciated,” he says and vanishes. This time there isn’t a cloud or a puff of smoke. One minute he’s here and the next he’s gone.