There was no need to answer, I supposed, because he could probably sense that his proposal not only pleased me, but also ignited an unexpected tenderness that echoed deeper. Too bad it was all being drowned out by the worry coiling in my stomach.

34

Morning sun blinded me as I sneaked out of Lon’s bedroom. He was taking a shower, and I didn’t have the guts to drag out our good-byes. Dodgy feelings about the trip to San Diego trailed after me like an annoying child underfoot. He said when we woke that he didn’t have a dream flashback of my memories. I took it from his abrupt manner that he was either anxious about not having had one, or he was lying. I preferred to believe it was the former. If the caliph really wasn’t on my side, Lon wouldn’t dare let me walk into a bad situation unaware; I knew that much for sure, and it gave me some amount of solace.

Last night before I came back here, I left Riley with the instruction to be ready to leave when I returned. She acted genuinely sad to be going home to San Diego, but was overjoyed to be leaving the house. It was just after ten now, so I wanted to speak to Jupe before I left. When I’d come back here last night, he was asleep, so we hadn’t seen each other since that horrible night at his school.

With my tattered navy hoodie zipped to the neck, I shoved my hands in the pockets and shuffled silently along the hardwood floors of the second-story hallway. I tossed a look over the railing at the open living room below and desperately wished I could just chuck the whole trip and stay there.

Lon had told me Jupe’s room was three doors down. I’d been worried about Jupe hearing us the night before, but he assured me that the place was built like a fortress. I counted doorways, navigating my way past a bathroom and a guest room, then I found a closed door. A sign hung on it that displayed a still of Gene Wilder wearing a white lab coat. The sign read, DO NOT OPEN THIS DOOR!

Pressing my ear against the blond wood, I listened for a second and heard rumbling chatter from a TV, so I knocked softly.

“Yep,” came the reply from within.

I cracked open the door a couple of inches. “Are you decent?”

After a short pause, Jupe answered, a little unsure. “Cady?”

I took that as a yes, so I pushed the door farther and leaned my head inside. Jupe was sitting up in his bed with wide eyes. He was wearing a faded Funkadelic Maggot Brain T-shirt and red pajama bottoms. He lit up like a Christmas tree when he saw me. I’d never felt so admired, but I tried not get too gooey about it.

“Hey, kid.”

“Cady! I tried to get my dad to let me call you on your cell but he said you were too busy so I called up your bar a couple of days ago but some bitchy woman answered so I hung up.”

He didn’t even take a breath when he spit all that out. My head was already spinning. “Uh, you probably got Kar Yee, then. She doesn’t have very good phone manners. Kinda like your dad,” I said with a smile.

His bed sat in the center of the room, a queen-size mattress resting on a low, modern platform a few inches off the floor. A corner of the bed was lit by a long slice of sunlight that streamed in from the large window above. I sidestepped over a hefty pile of books and magazines while evading another mound of dirty clothes to get there.

“How’s the arm?”

“It aches real bad when I don’t take the pain pills, but if I do take the pain pills then I forget that it’s broken and I do stupid stuff. I bumped it yesterday—on accident—and it hurt like hell.” Sitting cross-legged, he scooted back on the bed to make room for me. I plopped down while he muted the volume on a large TV hanging on the wall across from us that was twice as big as mine at home.

“The cast is huge, Jesus,” I said.

“It’s heavy too—feel.” He tugged my hand so he could rest the elbow in my palm. “See.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty heavy. When do you get to take it off?”

“The human doctor at the emergency room said six weeks, but my real doctor’s Earthbound, and he said I can probably take it off in two, and he can heal it up the rest of the way himself then.”

“Being a demon sometimes has advantages.”

“I guess.”

I surveyed Jupe’s domain. Pretty big for a kid’s bedroom, but hard to tell from all the clutter. A door opened to a private bathroom on one side of the room. On the other, old movie lobby cards lined the walls, along with a signed poster of some Brazilian soccer star and another of Pam Grier as Foxy Brown. The wall in front of us supported floating shelves from floor to ceiling, each packed with neatly arranged vintage horror movie toys. A vertical series of three large black-and-white framed photographs hung nearby.

“Who are they?” I asked, pointing to the photos.

“Oh, that’s Aunt Adella.”

“Your mom’s sister?” I guessed.

“Yeah, and that’s my gramma. My dad took those this summer.”

Adella had a darker complexion than her sister, and a softer, rounder face. Strikingly pretty with a kind smile. My age, maybe a little older. Her hair was a mass of spiral, electric curls that stuck out just like Jupe’s, barely tamed by a wide polka-dot headscarf tied just above her forehead. A gray wisp of a halo was just visible. “Christ, you look like her.” More than his mother, even, just going from photos.

“Yeah, my hair, huh? Nose too. She’s so-o-o cool. You would love her. She’s supersmart and really funny. She emails me almost every day and I talk to her on Sunday nights,” he bragged, then added, “and I already told her all about you.”