I bit my tongue before I echoed my mother’s usual reminder that she’d never been to the old country, but I figured her Texas accent—she hadn’t yet gone to Lucky Charms land—was clue enough for someone as smart as Owen. “I’m not entirely sure what my heritage is,” he said. “I suppose there could be some Irish.” Owen actually didn’t have the slightest idea who he was. He’d been orphaned young and didn’t know anything about his parents. I didn’t know the whole story, but I pictured him as a baby left in a basket on the front steps of a church. That’s the way it always happened in books.
“Ah, you’re Irish, I’m sure of it. I think you may even have a touch of the magic running through your veins.” And there she went into the land of marshmallow stars and clover. “I’d guess you often see the wee folk, as well.” She tapped the corner of her eye with a gnarled finger. “I can tell, I can.
They say I have the Sight.”
“Mother, you’re not telling those stories to Owen, are you?” My mother’s voice came from the kitchen. She then appeared in the living room. “Mama, would you mind making us some coffee? I’m sure Owen could use a pick-me-up after making such a long trip.” Granny gave Owen a long, searching look before she wandered back into the kitchen. Mom then dropped her voice to a whisper and said, “Don’t let her fool you. She’s never been outside Texas. We are of Irish descent, but everything she knows about the old country, she learned from watching movies. And if she has the Sight, well, then it’s got cataracts on it as bad as the ones she had on her eyes.”
“She’s very seldom right,” I agreed, but she had been right about Owen having magic in him. Had she actually seen that, or was it more of her usual blatherings?
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Mom said, “I need to start getting things ready for dinner. I’ve invited the whole family over to get to know you better.”
It looked like getting time to investigate—let alone time to work out whatever was going on with us—was going to be a real challenge.
F ortunately, Owen didn’t react in the way I wanted to, which was to run screaming from the house.
He also didn’t react in the way I halfway expected him to, which was keeling over in a dead faint.
Instead he said softly but with a firm undertone to his voice, “That’s very nice of you, Mrs. Chandler, but I was looking forward to catching up with Katie tonight.” With that he put his arm around me, proving finally that he was here for real and wasn’t just a cloud of magical mist. Oh yeah, he was definitely real and very solid, and I wanted even less to spend the evening with the entire family. I’d forgotten just how good it felt to have his arm around me.
Mom faltered. “Oh. I suppose I could see that. Yes. I’m sure you’re tired from traveling, anyway.
You already met the whole family. I should let you rest before you have to keep them all straight.
You two go on and have fun catching up.”
“Thank you for being so understanding. Now, I think I’ll go finish unpacking, and then I’d like Katie to show me around the town.” With his arm still around me, he steered me back toward the stairs.
“Wow, that was some trick,” I said once we were safely up in Dean and Teddy’s old room. “I’d have suspected you of using magic if I didn’t know she was immune. Though I suppose you are the dragon whisperer, and Mom isn’t too far from that.”
“You met Gloria. I learned a lot from her. That’s the way she always gets her way, by being polite and firm at the same time and by asking for something that they’d look like a heel for saying no to.”
Gloria was his foster mother, and quite a formidable woman. Putting her in the same room with my mother could possibly be dangerous—or else result in a cage match to which we could sell tickets.
“Well, you really pushed my mother’s buttons,” I said, sitting on one of the twin beds. “The only thing she wants more than to show you off to everyone is to give us enough time alone to make sure something eventually happens. And by ‘something’ I mean an event involving a church, flowers, and a white dress. Fair warning.”
He hung his clothes in the closet, shoving aside the coats and other winter wear stored there. “Don’t worry about that. I’ve got plenty of experience there, too. You saw what Christmas was like.”
When we’d been in his hometown for Christmas, the mothers of all the local marriageable young women had literally fought over him. Yeah, there was magic involved, but I got the feeling the inclination hadn’t been buried too deep beneath the surface. “It’s never a dull moment, is it?” I said.
