The Coming | The House of Voices #2

Twenty Two - Parents

Parents

October:

Parish remained grumpy the entire walk back to the Black Tarot. He walked with his hands stuffed in his pockets and his feet dragging, and went out of his way to crunch on every fallen leaf he encountered. He also didn’t speak to me throughout the entire trip which, understandably, reminded me a lot of our first couple of days on the run, just after we’d broken out of Abercoster’s.

I didn’t know what had brought the bad mood on. He’d been fine when we were performing for the waitress, but his mood had completely plummeted once Darren— Once Darren told me that freedom looked good on me.

No, that couldn’t be it. I was cooking things up in my head. Because if that’s what had turned Parish’s mood around then that meant that he was… what, jealous…? No, that couldn’t be it.

I assumed that he’d talk to me eventually and decided to just let him stew, walking silently beside him back to the magic shop.

The shop was situated in one of the less populated areas of the Historical District, somewhere close to Massachusetts Avenue. According to Ace, being in the district made their Spellcaster powers more potent because of the shop was built pretty close to something she called a ley line which, apparently, “naturally amped up” their “Spellcaster juices.”

The outside of the shop, which Parish and I hadn’t seen until we left it this morning, was just as beautiful as the inside. It was, as Ace had told us last morning, a converted mansion made of brownstone, a larger more mysterious version of my own brownstone over in Colombia Heights. It had a long driveway, probably because a lot of people seemed to work there and they probably needed the space for their vehicles. That, or Ace and Spade just liked racing their bikes up and down the smooth driveway. The front yard was wide, to accommodate the length of the driveway, and there were tall, old Japanese maple trees planted at the boundary lines, giving the entire property a blanket of privacy.

Parish and I trudged up the driveway in silence and, once we’d climbed up onto the wraparound porch, made our way to the back of the house where we could enter from the kitchen. The sign on the front door said that the shop was open for business and we really didn’t want to run into any customers.

When we stepped into the kitchen we found Ace sitting at the kitchen table, cell phone pressed against her ear. She was running the shop on her own for the morning because Spade had lectures to attend at the university.

“Brainiac’s off getting smarter so that he can achieve his goal of world domination,” she’d told us in the morning as she’d handed me a bag of fresh clothes. She’d woken up early and gone out shopping for me and brought me back three pairs of jeans and four t-shirts and a whole truckload of underwear. All in my size. Evidently she’d sneaked a peak at the labels on my clothes when she’d put them to wash the previous day.

I’d accepted the clothes with a heartfelt thanks while Parish rubbed his head sleepily and said, “and you’re—”

“Not that smart,” Ace had cut him off with a humble smile. He’d been about to ask if she was skipping classes to be with us, he told me later. “Go get dressed or you guys’ll be late for your meeting. October, you can use my bathroom. It’ll be quicker.”

On the way to the café to meet Darren, Parish and I had decided not to bring up college again. She’d been pleasant about it, but neither of us had missed that flash of sadness in her eyes. It was clearly a sore subject for her.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Ace was saying into her phone when we walked into the kitchen, “but like I already told you they aren’t—” Noticing us, she cut herself off. “No, wait, hold up. They just walked in.”