White Witch, Black Curse

He looked at me and made his eyes wide. "It makes more sense than what did happen. For Christ's sake, you would have laughed your ass off if I had told you our real dad was a rock star. Then you would have asked Mom, and then she would have…cried."

Cried, I thought. Nice of him to not say "go off her rocker," because that's what she would have done. It had been bad enough when the truth came out. A sigh shifted my shoulders, and I scooted forward to the counter when the guy ahead of us ordered his tall latte something or other and moved off.

"I'll have a grande latte, double espresso, Italian blend," Robbie said, his eyes on the menu. "Light on the froth, heavy on the cinnamon. Can you make that with whole milk?"

The barista nodded as he wrote on the paper cup. "This together?" he asked, looking up.

"Yeah. Um, just give me a medium-size cup of the house blend," I said, suddenly disconcerted. I couldn't be sure, but I thought that Robbie's order had sounded exactly like how Minias took his coffee.

"You want a shot of something in it?" the barista persisted, and I shook my head as I ran my card through the machine before Robbie could.

"Just black."

Robbie was struggling with his stuff, so I grabbed both cups when they came up and followed him to a table too small and sticky to encourage anything but the shortest of stays. "I can carry stuff now," I said as I watched him stagger under it.

He gave me a sideways smile. "Not while I'm around. Sit."

So I sat, and it felt good as he bustled about, arranging his things and asking an old couple if he could have one of their chairs. I had a moment of panic when I realized the abandoned paper on the table was folded to show that shot of the Tilsons' house. Snatching it up, I jammed it in my bag just as Robbie joined me.

Landing heavy in his chair, he took the lid off his coffee and inhaled his first deep sniff, followed by a deep draft. "That's good," he said around a sigh, and I followed suit. For a moment he was silent, and then he eyed me expectantly over his paper rim. "So, how's Mom?"

The businessman who had been ahead of us had foam on his nose as he stood and looked at the departure screens. "Fine."

Robbie silently cracked his knuckles. "Do you have anything to say to me?" he asked so smugly that I turned to look at him.

There's a cop car outside Mom's house, and you'll want to know why. I'm doing a murder investigation, and it might spill over into my home life. The university won't let me attend classes. I have a date every Saturday in the ever-after with Big Al the demon. And thanks to Trent Kalamack's dad, I'm the source of the next demon generation.

"Uh, no?" I said, and he laughed, scooting his guitar closer.

"You bailed on the I.S.," he said, green eyes showing his amusement. "I told you joining them was a bad idea, but no-o-o-o-o! My little sister has to do things her way, then work twice as hard to get out of them. I'm proud of you for realizing it was a mistake, by the way."

Oh, that. Relieved, I took the lid off my coffee and blew across the top of the rich blackness, giving him a sideways look. "Bailed" wouldn't quite be the word I would use. "Stupidly quit" might be more appropriate. Or "attempted suicide." "Thanks," I managed, though what I wanted to do was start a tirade about how it hadn't been a mistake in the first place. See, I can learn.

"They aren't still after you, are they?" he asked, glancing to the side and shifting uncomfortably. I shook my head, and his long face became relieved—apart from a remaining hint of caution. "Good." He took a deep breath. "Working for them was too dangerous. Anything could have happened."

And usually did, I thought as the first hot sip of coffee slipped down and I closed my eyes in bliss. "Like what I'm doing now, is that safe?" I said as my eyes opened. "Jeez, Robbie, I'm twenty-six. I can take care of myself. I'm not the puny ninety-pound nothing I was when you left." It might have been a tad harsh, but the resentment of his trying to stop me from going into the I.S. remained.

"All I meant was that the people who run it are liars and corrupt vamps," he cajoled. "It wasn't just the danger. You would never have been taken seriously there, Rachel. Witches never are. You hit that glass ceiling, and there you sit for the rest of your life."

I would have gotten mad, but looking in hindsight at the last year I spent at the I.S., I knew he was right. "Dad didn't do too bad," I said.

"He could have done a lot more."