BARKING MAD

Pouting again?" Vivian and I sat on our usual dark hillside, but it seemed darker than normal, the stars winking out one by one as I watched.

"Hmm? Oh, no. Just worried about the usual. Weird stuff going on with paranormals. IPCA being obnoxious. Did you know dragons are real?"

She snorted. "You really should give the whole coma thing a shot. It makes life much less complicated. In fact, the only complicated thing here is you."

"As tempting as a coma sounds, I'd miss out on all the snuggling parts of life. I like those."

"Fine," she said, sighing. "It's lonely here between visits, though."

I leaned my head on her shoulder. "I know. What's up with the stars?"

"I haven't the foggiest. Does it feel warmer to you?"

The last star winked out.

The Vivian dream faded to blackness.

The next morning, disappointed I hadn't had a chance to recap the most recent episodes of Easton Heights for my comatose sister, I snuck out past Lend. He was asleep on the floral couch, having passed out sometime in the wee hours of the morning. He'd insisted on staying the night and keeping watch in case anyone from IPCA showed up again. Tasey, my hot pink and rhinestone-covered Taser, looked kind of ridiculous still clutched in his hands. We'd have to get him a matching one, maybe in electric blue.

I didn't think that a midnight attack was IPCA's style; it was weird for them to show up here, yeah, but they weren't the sneak-around-in-the-night type. They were the slowly-suck-the-soul-from-you-with-the-bureaucracy type. Even if they were restructuring again (which wouldn't be shocking, given that they'd lost most of the senior members during Reth's postfreedom revenge spree), it'd be a while before anything actually happened policywise. I've been around long enough to understand how international government agencies work. It doesn't matter if they're regulating the transportation of goods like socks or the transportation of mythical creatures like pixies. Papers, more papers, forms, documents, signatures, lawyers-trust me, the whole thing is scarier than a vampire with a slicked-back widow's peak.

Which wasn't to say that I didn't feel a little bit nervous, but Raquel would know what was going on. She'd fix it.

David had just forwarded me a text from her saying she would meet me at our cafe in thirty minutes. He didn't have more specifics, and I figured she meant the Jitterbug Cafe we talked in after my troll encounter this October. How David had gotten ahold of her I didn't know. Since when were they texting buddies?

It'd take me at least forty-five minutes to get to the cafe, assuming I made the next bus. Lend would give me a ride if I woke him up and asked, but he'd gotten so little sleep last night, and I didn't think I could deal with his attitude toward Raquel on top of all the other worries. They never got along.

I resisted the urge to sit and stare at Lend while he slept; when he dreamed, instead of his eyes moving behind his eyelids, his whole glamour shifted appearances like a stop-motion film. It was fascinating and wildly entertaining sometimes-also a bit freaky considering I showed up constantly.

I nearly ran over Grnlllll as I burst through the door into the diner. "What are you still doing here?" I asked, before seeing Nona swishing around the red tables, which were populated by several paranormals, including Kari and Donna, the resident selkies. "You were supposed to evacuate!"

When I told David about my non-Raquel IPCA visitor last night, he had made a snap decision to get all the paranormals out of town. I supported this, although it was harder than I'd expected to motivate Arianna to pack and leave. Finally she said she'd go to David's secluded house, wanting to be around in case we needed help. But these paranormals had no reason to be here.

"Nona, you all need to leave! IPCA knows I'm here, which means they might know you're all here, too!"

Nona smiled at me, waving a hand like a branch disturbed by the wind. "IPCA poses no threat to us."

I ran my fingers through my ponytail, torn. I needed to book it to meet Raquel in time, but I needed to convince them to leave, too. I had no idea what IPCA would do taggingwise with a huldra, a gnome, two selkies, and, well, whatever those three mournfully beautiful but kind of scary-looking women with long black hair sitting-floating?-in the corner were.

"No, really, they might be a problem. Just go somewhere else until we figure out what's up with IPCA. It's probably nothing. Hopefully it's nothing. But until we know for sure, I need to know you're all safe."

"Dear child," Nona said, smiling warmly and taking my face in both her hands. She leaned forward and brushed my forehead with her moss-green lips. "Soon."

She backed away and I frowned, adding her affection to the ever-growing list of Suspicious Things Nona Does, then pulled out my phone and looked at the time. "Crap! I missed the bus."

Kari fixed her impossibly big, round brown eyes on me. "Do you want a ride? We can give you a ride! Anywhere! Fast!"

"You have a car?"

She and Donna barked their matching laughs. Torn, I looked back at Nona, who was calmly wiping the long barstool-lined counter. "We'll talk more when I get back."

I followed the selkies outside to a classic VW Beetle parked along the street. It was a sparkly midnight-blue convertible with white leather seats. "Seriously?" I asked. How did two creatures who spent the better part of the last few centuries as seals have a car this cool? And how pathetic did that make me that I still didn't have one?

I slid past the passenger seat into the back, and Kari sat behind the wheel.

"How did you get a driver's license?" I asked, curious. I was going to take a driver's ed course in the spring, but maybe they could hook me up with an easier class.

"What's a driver's license?" Kari answered, before peeling out into the middle of the street.

Oh, bleep.

My eyes were squeezed shut, my fingers in a death grip around my seat belt, when the chorus of my latest favorite song played, muffled by my purse. I pried my hand free and dug out my cell. Kari took another curve at blinding speed, centrifugal force smashing me against the window.

"Slow down!" I screamed, putting the phone up to my ear. "What! I mean, hi!"

"Where are you?" Lend asked. I could hear the panic in his voice. Ah, crud, should have left him a note.

"I'm on my way to meet Raquel at the Jitterbug Cafe. Kari, tree!" We swerved violently and the car lifted completely off the right-side wheels before bumping back down. "Trees do not move for cars! Cars avoid trees!"

Donna's barking laughter rang through the tiny space as she clapped her hands, delighted.

"What are you doing? Are you safe?" Lend asked, shouting over the background noise coming through my end.

"Not right now, no. Red light! Red light!" We sailed through anyway, an SUV coming so close to clipping our bumper I could have counted the other driver's teeth, all of which were showing in a grimace of terror. "Pull over! I'm getting out!"

"But we're not there yet," Kari said, turning all the way back to fix her round, watery eyes on me.

"Eyes on the road! The road! Stop stop stop stop stop stop STOP!"

Kari blinked, then turned around and slammed her foot all the way down on the brakes. I flew forward as the seat belt locked and dug into my collarbone so hard I was sure I'd be bruised. A screeching sound echoed through the Beetle, and the acrid smell of burning rubber filled my nose as we came to a complete stop in the middle of the road.

"I'm gonna call you back," I said, my voice trembling, then I hung up.

Donna jumped out and flipped her seat forward, smiling helpfully as I fell out of the car and scooted on my hands and knees to the sidewalk, resting my forehead gratefully against the freezing cement.

Okay, maybe there were some forms of transportation worse than holding a faerie's hand.

Donna patted me on the back, her hand coming down too hard. "That was fun!" she said. "Where should we go next?"

"Nowhere with you two, ever again."

I turned and sat down. Kari had left the car where it stopped and walked over to us. She raised her eyebrows quizzically at me. "Are you okay, Evie?"

"No! You almost killed me!"

She shook her head vehemently. "No! We're here to keep you safe. Always safe. We're in charge of you." She smiled proudly.

"You aren't-" I paused and forced my face into a calm smile. The selkies lacked any artifice or pretense. Nona dodged my questions, but maybe they wouldn't know they needed to. "Yeah. Of course! Remind me who put you in charge of keeping me safe?"

"Nona!"

Donna nodded in agreement. "And the shiny man."

"The shiny man?" I asked. "You mean Lend?"

"No, the shiny man with hair and eyes like sunshine."

I held my smile firmly in place. "Reth? The faerie?"

"Faerie, yes! That's not his name though; he'll never tell. He's shiny. And pretty. I like it when he talks to me." Donna reached up and smoothed her luxurious walnut-brown hair, smiling dreamily.

"I knew it! I knew Nona was working with Reth!" I stood, shaking with fury. Despite David's insistence that we could trust that wicked tree spirit, I'd known something was up with her for months. And now she was assigning the selkies to keep tabs on me for Reth?

"Are you angry?" Kari asked, concern pooling in her eyes like tears. "Did we do something wrong?"

I took a deep breath, the bitingly cold air filling my lungs and stinging my throat. This wasn't their fault. The selkies were as innocent and happy as seals playing in the waves, their immortal lives nothing but an eternal game. They were just doing what they were told-what they thought was best. "No, you didn't do anything wrong. Thanks."

"Okay! Let's drive more, then!"

"NO! I mean, umm, I want to walk the rest of the way to the cafe, since we're almost there. But you two can go. Lend is going to come and get me, and I'm always safe with him."

Donna frowned dubiously. "Are you sure? We can stay. I'll braid your hair!"

"And I have nail polish in the car!" Kari said, already bouncing in anticipation.

"No, you should go tell Nona that I'm safe. She might be worried."

"Should we wait where you can't see us, like we do when you're in school?"

I froze my face into a mask of a smile, but the veins in my neck felt like they were going to explode they were pounding so hard with fury. I didn't get out of IPCA's controlling grasp to be spied on and monitored by a tree spirit and my crazy faerie ex. "You don't need to. I talked to Nona today and she said it was okay for you two to leave me."

Kari's eyes narrowed, cutting their shape from near-perfect circles to almonds. "Are you sure she said that?"

"Absolutely."

She held my gaze for another moment, then shrugged, smile bouncing back into place. "Okay then! See you later!"

Donna waved cheerily and they both got into the car, squealing away. I watched until they turned the corner, then ran as fast as I could toward the cafe. When I got there, I collapsed against the dark brick exterior, my breath fogging out in pants.

How long had they been tailing me? Which other paranormals were in on it? Nona and Grnlllll for sure, but them I already suspected. Those three weird women this morning-I'd seen them once before talking to Nona. The dragon? Did she have a dragon tailing me? I looked up at the sky, paranoid, but didn't see any white monsters snaking through the sparse clouds.

What about...Arianna? I bit my lip. She lived with me, after all. Who better to watch me than my roommate? I put my head back against the rough, uneven bricks. I wanted Lish back. I'd never, ever had to doubt her or question her motives. I knew she was my friend no matter what. It had been the two of us against the world, and sometimes I didn't know where my place was without her to talk to.

Arianna wasn't the friend Lish had been. She was cranky and rude, and sometimes it seemed like she hated me more than she liked me. But then again, Arianna really wasn't the same type of paranormal as Nona and her ilk. They came that way. Arianna was forced into the paranormal realm against her will.

Besides, surely anyone trying to spy on me and get in my good graces wouldn't leave so many sopping wet towels on the carpet.

No, I trusted Arianna. Arianna, Lend, David, and Raquel. I sighed heavily, then pulled out my phone to check the time. I was still a couple minutes early. I'd missed three calls from Lend and had a new text from Carlee, my one normal friend. I'd kill to go get a pedicure with her today and debate the merits of the boys' basketball team versus the soccer team. While I personally found shape-shifting artists superior in all ways, I did admire soccer player legs.

Alas. My fingers were too cold to type anyway. Ignoring the text, I hit dial and Lend picked up on the first ring.

"I need you to come pick me up after I talk to Raquel," I said. "And I need to move out of the diner apartment."

"Done and done. I was going to make you come to my dad's place tonight anyway. And I assume you're going to tell me what's going on?"

"As much as I know." My voice was as glum as I felt. Because, as usual, as much as I knew wasn't nearly enough. At least Raquel would have some answers for me.