“Yes,” she said, removing the headlamp and shutting her laptop. “Since I’m stopped anyway, I’m going into town to pick up some supplies.” The list she recited didn’t mean anything to me until she got to “Vanilla Coke,” at which point I perked up.
“From Sonic? Will you get me a cherry limeade?”
“Sure.” She bent to rub Pumpkin’s belly. He’d followed me in and now lay panting on the cool stone floor, already missing the air-conditioning.
I did a cursory check to make sure Phin was appropriately outfitted for the bustling metropolis of Barnett, Texas. She was, in flip-flops, a UT Longhorns tank top, and a pair of baggy cargo shorts that somehow looked cute on her. Her damp, wavy ponytail said she’d already taken a shower.
“How did you have time to get clean and blow the fuse?” I asked, more envious than outraged. We both had, theoretically, an equal amount of work. She took the flora—overseeing the herb farm, tending the greenhouse, plus watering plants around the house—and I took the fauna. But plants were generally pretty obedient, while the livestock seemed to enjoy making my job difficult.
She picked up her wallet and sunglasses from the counter near the door. “You do everything the hard way.”
“Trust me,” I said, with a bit of an edge, “if I could use magic to shovel out the donkey pen, I would.”
“If you could do that,” she countered evenly, “you’d be Mary Poppins. I just meant you didn’t have to bathe the dogs.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Yes, I did.”
Opening one of the cabinets, she got down a canister and put it in my hands. In the light from the door, I read Dry Dog Shampoo. For a mess-free mutt. Under that was the Goodnight Farm logo and the motto So good you’ll think it’s magic.
Aunt Hyacinth had a sense of humor–and a healthy respect for what she could get away with saying on a product label. “This would have been nice to know about two hours ago,” I said, pretty calmly, considering how dirty and wet I was.
Phin shrugged. “Two hours ago I didn’t know you were going to do a Martha Stewart on the barn.”
Point for my sister. Besides, telling me might not have made a difference. I couldn’t get past the fact that things just didn’t feel clean without water. That was just me, though. If the label said something worked like magic, it did. Which was why Goodnight Farm products were so popular, even if people didn’t know why they worked so well.
Aunt Hyacinth had put together a binder of instructions, covering everything from what to do if the well stopped working to how to maintain the digestion spell on the septic system. I grabbed it and followed Phin out the front door.
The dogs, except Pumpkin, who hadn’t budged from the workroom floor, trailed us down the path to the wooden gate. Stepping out of the yard, I felt a subtle change in the atmosphere—almost like a shift in air pressure, but not quite. Over the past twenty-five years, Aunt Hyacinth had woven strong protections around the house and yard, a sort of arcane security system. It wouldn’t physically stop anyone, but it did have a subconscious effect on ill-intentioned trespassers.
A lifetime of living with witches and psychics had made spells a routine part of my life. I knew they worked, but I still preferred to put my trust in a locked door. My relationship with magic was like a president’s kid’s relationship with politics: I didn’t participate, but I couldn’t quite escape it. Especially not here, in the White House of the sovereign nation of Goodnight.
Stella, my not-quite-new Mini Cooper, and Aunt Hyacinth’s antique SUV were parked just outside the board fence. “Do you have your driver’s license?” I called after Phin. “Don’t forget to close the outer gate.”
She gave a typically distracted wave of acknowledgment and climbed behind the wheel of the Trooper, looking out of place in the big, battered vehicle. Along with her fair hair and pale skin, Phin had an elfin delicacy, in the Tolkien sense. It was hard to picture Galadriel driving an SUV.
I might have worried more about her if the sun-heated flagstones weren’t scalding my bare soles. Instead, I hot-footed it over to the main breaker box to reset the fuse. Phin might have seemed otherworldly and half elvish sometimes, but I had an earthy and one-hundred-percent-human appreciation for things like electricity, satellite TV, and long, hot showers—all of which were in my immediate,