Scary Cool (The Spellspinners) Read Online Free

law, because she hardly ever lays down the law. So when she does, you know it’s important.
    I didn’t exactly want Lance on our p roperty, either. But I have very little control over what Lance does or where he goes, so I didn’t like the idea that if he did show up on our doorstep, Nonny was going to blame me.
    “I'm not going to invite him here, if that’s what you mean,” I finally said. “We’re not friends.”
    “I should hope not.” Nonny stood up and started clearing stuff off the table. She has to move when she’s upset. “The boy struck you. It’s bad enough you have to see him at school. I hope I don’t have to report him to the principal or…or someone.”
    It was clear that this distressed her even more. Nonny has a problem with authority figures. Which may seem strange, since she’s totally old and everything, but she’s still kind of a hippie at heart. Also she’s been hiding me for, like, sixteen years, without ever actually adopting me, which is highly illegal. So she’s not comfortable with ratting people out—not even Lance.
    “I hit him back,” I offered, hoping to ease her mind. “It’ll be okay, Nonny . Really. Lance and me are even.”
    “Lance and I are even ,” she corrected automatically.
    “You too? Gre at,” I said. Then: “Kidding!”—because she immediately turned and gave me A Look.
    Meg was being awfully quiet on the subject. But s ure enough, she had an opinion. She gave it to me as she was climbing back on her bike to go home.
    “This isn’t real to you, Zara,” she said. She wasn’t looking at me. “With one side of your mouth you are saying, yeah, Lance is dangerous, no, I don’t want him around, gee, I'm so upset that he’s back.” Now she looked at me. “But the other side of your mouth is smiling.”
    And with that parting shot she took off, leaving me standing on the gravel path with (probably) a dumb look on my face . Because as usual, Meg was right.
    Lance was all the bad things Meg and Nonny said about him, and worse.
    And just knowing he was in town made me feel more alive.
    I didn’t care to face Nonny again just then, so I wandered across the street to the nursery. We were gearing up for fall planting, so Tres was out front, showing bulbs to a plump grandma-type. I hung back and watched him for a minute. I like Tres . B eing around him calms me down.
    He sold the lady a dozen narcissus c yclamineus ( daffodils , non-nursery people call them) and wandered over to where I stood, surveying the ranunculus bin. “Hey,” said Tres . “What’s up? How you doing? ”
    He tends to greet you three times, which (he says) is how he got his nic kname — tres , of course, being Spanish for ‘three.’ But he’s also Alejandro Palacios the Third , so I bet his family started it. Anyway, he followed it up with, “How was school?” which was technically four greetings.
    “You’re not missing anything,” I told him. “Same old, same old.”
    “Good.”
    Tres graduated last June. His part-time job at Norland’s Nursery had morphed into a full-time job long before he turned eighteen, and although he doesn’t talk about it, I kinda think he barely passed his senior year. Which , speaking purely selfishly, is a good thing for me and Nonny . W e’d be screwed if Tres went off to college.
    “No homework the first day, right?”
    “Heck no.”
    He tossed me a canvas apron . “ So m ake yourself useful.”
    I followed him inside the shed , wrinkling my nose against the smell of potting soil. “I’m not useful, I’m decorative. Haven’t you noticed?”
    All he had to say was something like Ha, ha or Yeah, I noticed you’re not useful. Because I was kidding. But Tres didn’t say anything, and his ears turned red. Which turned my stupid remark into something I totally hadn’t intended.
    I wanted to bite the words back, but it was too late. So now I turned red. What a dope.
    And then he said, “Yeah, I noticed,” and that made everything