Page 42 of No Charm Done
“Girlfriend?” Luna mouthed at Delilah, who waved her off impatiently.
Jasper continued reading. “Kelly Melrose: matriarch, innkeeper, do not cross. Scarlett: middle sister, impulsive, agent of chaos. Luna Melrose: youngest sister, world traveler, chronically bad at innkeeping—” He looked up. “Sorry, just reading what it says here.”
“Nah, it’s accurate,” Luna admitted.
“The Earls (Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve): elderly pirates living on hardware store porch. Yes, really. Long story.” He looked up again. “Was I concussed when I wrote this?”
“Not so far as I know,” Delilah said. “You write yourself a new one every few weeks, just to keep it updated.”
“Huh.” He nodded down at his careful script. “Well done, Past Me.”
Delilah turned to her sisters. “So. What’d I miss?”
Luna and Scarlett explained rapidly, their words tumbling over each other: Ashton Vex, the mystery app, the tech blogs, the realization that he’d been staying at their inn the whole time.
Delilah’s expression grew progressively darker. “Let me get this straight. While you—” she looked at Luna “—were off gallivanting through time with Elias, this Vex character was here, pumping Scarlett for information about magic, and nobody thought to mention it?”
“I wasn’t gallivanting,” Luna protested. “I was trapped in 1977 during a blackout and then accidentally time-traveled to Christmas and then got sent to 2026 by—” She paused. “Okay, when you say it out loud, it does have a certain gallivanting aspect.”
“And Vex seemed like a regular nerdy hermit. After all . . .” Scarlett flicked her head in Jasper’s direction “we do get a lot of those. How could I have known this particular one was planning something nefarious?” She turned away, a flicker of guilt crossing her features.
Delilah was already in problem-solving mode. “Where is he now? Still here?”
“So far as I know, yeah. Hardly ever leaves room 12. Come on, let’s go confront him and—”
“And what?” Delilah interrupted. “Accuse him of . . . what, exactly? Being weird? We need additional information.”
“We already know what he’s up to: CastR! What additional information could we possibly need?”
“We could . . .” Luna suggested slowly, “use a spell on him? Truth spell?”
Scarlett groaned. “Again I ask: why? We already know.”
“Absolutely not.” Delilah’s voice had that concrete quality that she’d learned from their mother. It meant the discussion was over. “We’re not hexing anyone without talking to Mama first.”
“Mama’s out promenading with Elias, and since when do we need her permission to do anything?”
“This is different,” Delilah insisted. “This isn’t some local crisis we can handle with a few spells and some quick thinking. If this man is really developing an app that commodifies magic, that’s . . . that’s huge. That’s the ballgame for our entire culture. And magicians too. We need to think strategically, consider all angles, maybe even—”
“I agree with Delilah,” Luna heard herself say, surprising everyone. “Mama should be consulted.”
Scarlett’s eyebrows shot up. “You? Miss ‘I’d rather portal to the bottom of the ocean than ask for help’? You’re siding with Delilah?”
Luna frowned. The truth was, Mama had taken Elias for a walk well over an hour ago. A grand tour of Oak Haven, supposedly . . . but the town wasn’t that big. Even the grandest tour of Oak Haven was a twenty-minute exercise at most. What was going on, and, more importantly, why hadn’t he returned to her yet?
She wasn’t going to say that to her sisters, of course.
“Elias had a rapport with Vex when we met him,” she said, which had the virtue of also being true. “He should be involved in any plan we make.”
Delilah glanced at her watch. “How long have they been gone?”
“Pushing an hour and a half?”
“We should go find them,” Delilah decided.
“Fine,” Scarlett said. “But after that, we’re having it out with the code monkey in room 12.”
They headed for the door. “Hey, Jas,” Delilah called, “watch the desk, yeah? If anyone needs anything, just tell them we’ll be right back.”
