But I couldn’t talk. Intense, jumbled emotions flooded my senses. And when he gathered me up, pulling me against his chest, all I could do was wilt inside his arms as he mumbled, “I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t. As much as I didn’t want to admit it to myself, it was all kinds of not okay. Something was wrong with my powers and it was getting worse.

Ma petite lune. My little moon. Only two people ever called me that, and both of them were supposed to be dead.

Jupe stuck his head between the front seats of the SUV on the ride back to their house, touching me with little pokes and prods, trying to get my attention. Trying to make me smile. I finally gave in—there was really no other option with him, as he’d mastered the art of pestering—and turned sideways in my seat, letting him hold my hand. His skin was soft and he smelled nice, like the coconut in his shampoo.

“At least we got the name of that punk,” Jupe said.

Noel Saint-Hill. Lon had tracked down the Plymouth guy, Freddie, before we left the racetrack. He didn’t know where the Saint-Hills lived, but we could probably do some Internet sleuthing and figure it out. Something positive came out of all of it, but I couldn’t shake the sound of my mother’s voice, repeating in my head like a bad song.

“I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong,” Jupe said as we sped along the dark highway that connected Morella with La Sirena. “Maybe I can help.”

“I wish you could,” I said. My tongue was fat in my mouth, swollen from me biting it.

“If I were you, I’d be bragging to everybody. You need a comic book hero name, like Silver Fog, or something. That was insane!” he said enthusiastically.

“Yeah, it was pretty crazy.” It was the other crazy thing I was more concerned about at the moment.

“And you didn’t know you could do that?”

“Can’t say I did.”

Lon grunted. His eyes were on the road in front of us, lost in his own thoughts. Probably wondering the same thing that was floating through my mind: how was my mother still alive in the Æthyr, and what the hell was I going to do about it?

“Well, you shouldn’t be upset,” Jupe was saying. “Because that fog spell was one hundred percent badass. When you jumped up on that van, I was all, holy shit! I thought—”

“Shut it, Jupe,” Lon warned.

“I’m just sayin’, maybe she should be happy about it. Who knows what she could do if she tried.” He poked me on my elbow. “Besides, you told me magick is unpredictable.”

“I told you that the results are unpredictable. And that talent is varied.”

“Oh, please. Don’t quote semantics to me.”

“You mean ‘argue’ and ‘with me.’ ”

He chuckled sheepishly. “I don’t really know what it means.”

“Well, you used it right, by some miracle.”

He made a pleased clucking sound with his tongue. “Because I’m smarter than I have any right to be. That’s what Mr. Ross says every time I prove him wrong in class.”

Lon made an exasperated noise and knocked the back of his head against the headrest.

“You aren’t supposed to prove your teachers wrong,” I said. “You’re supposed to listen and do what they tell you.”

Lon’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and answered in his usual terse manner, grunting and mmm-hmming his way through the call.

“What-ev,” Jupe whispered, eyeing his father as he conspired with me. “Mr. Ross is wrong, like, twenty times a week. He said yesterday that if I was so sure about myself, maybe I should be teaching the class. And I said, ‘Hand me the chalk!’ And I think he was this close to sending me to—” He glanced at Lon, then silently mouthed detention to me.

I almost laughed. He was making me feel better, despite everything swirling in my head. It was hard to be upset with all his energetic mile-a-minute chatter.

“Oh!” he said, suddenly changing gears. “Lemme read your palm. I read a book today in the library that teaches you how.”

Like that.

As Lon hung up the phone, I let Jupe spread open my palm and squint over the armrest, studying the intersecting lines in my skin by the soft blue glow of the dashboard and the brighter bud-green emanations from his halo. Skinny fingers traced flowing patterns as his spring-loaded, flouncy curls tickled my cheek.

“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re going to die, like, whoa! Three times. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on.” He squinted harder, peering an inch away from my hand. I was tempted to smack him in the face, Three Stooges style. “That’s not your life line. What the hell kind of line is this? I can’t tell jack about any of these lines. That palmistry book was junk.”

He continued to mumble to himself, exasperated but fully intent on solving the mystery inside my palm. I nibbled the back of his neck playfully. He giggled and shoved me back with the side of his head. We were laughing. It was all good. Then, out of absolutely nowhere, I started crying.

What the hell was wrong with me?

Jupe dropped my hand in alarm. “I didn’t mean it. You’re not going to die three times.”

I covered my face with my hands and slouched in my seat. “I don’t even . . . know why I’m . . .” I gritted my teeth and groaned, forcing back tears. I felt so out of control, like I could lose it completely at any moment.

I couldn’t just break down like this. I mean, so what if my mom really was alive? She was on another plane. She couldn’t touch me here. And if we shared some sort of connection through the stupid Moonchild power—God only knew what sort of ritual magick she’d conjured up when conceiving me—then I’d either find a way to sever it, or just stop using it completely.