Thief Eyes - Janni Lee Simner [11]
“That is the usual way of things.” His smile stiffened as he shook Dad’s hand. He quickly turned to me as I walked up beside Dad. “So you see, I have a name as well.”
My face grew hot. I realized I’d asked his dog’s name but not his.
“Mom went to get some things from the car,” Ari continued, still not looking at Dad. “She’ll be right back.”
“Wait—you’re Katrin’s son?”
“So they tell me,” he said dryly. He had more of an accent than his mother did.
Dad took the seat across from Ari. I sat down next to Dad and draped my jacket over the back of my chair. “It’s nice that you could join us,” Dad said.
“Yeah, well, I never turn down food. I invited myself, actually.” Ari stared at me through those green eyes, like he was trying to figure something out. “Flosi forgives you, by the way. The women do like to throw themselves at him. It is a problem.”
My face flushed hotter. Was he flirting with me? How did you say “no, sorry, I have a boyfriend” in Icelandic? Or in English, for that matter? It wasn’t like it had ever come up before.
Dad cleared his throat, and I realized I’d been staring back at Ari. I looked quickly down. “We met on my run,” I said.
“Would that be before you got lost or afterward?” Dad’s voice grew quiet.
“Before,” I said.
“She tried to kill my dog,” Ari agreed cheerfully.
“Well, Flosi does have a way of getting underfoot.” Dad laughed, but there was an uneasy edge to it. “So that’s how you tore your pants?”
“Yeah.”
“And is it also how your clothes got wet?”
“Well, no, but—” I fell silent as Katrin slid into the chair beside Ari and dumped a pile of geology books onto the table.
“Hello, Katrin,” Dad said.
Katrin didn’t answer him. She looked right at me. There were tired circles around her eyes. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d take the next plane back to the States?”
Right. Katrin really did want to get rid of me, though I had no idea why. I shook my head firmly. “Not unless you plan to put my mom and dad both on that plane home.”
Dad flinched, but Ari looked up with interest. Of course—his mom probably knew what had happened, and she’d probably told him. At least he didn’t look like he felt sorry for me, the way some of my friends at school had.
“Very well. If you insist on staying, there are some things you need to know.” Katrin’s expression turned businesslike. She handed me a small yellow spiral notebook from the pile, like one of Dad’s waterproof field notebooks. “For you, Haley. Had you grown up here, you’d have had a copy years ago, but there’s no helping that now.”
I flipped through the pages. They were filled with a mix of cramped writing and strange symbols—squiggles and circles and lines. The waterproof paper felt slippery against my fingers.
“Read it through,” Katrin said. “Let me know if you have any questions. Your mother—”
I pressed the notebook shut. “What do you know about my mother?”
Katrin drew a long breath. “There is no easy way to say this. Your mother got caught by a sorcerer’s spell.”
I stared at her, not sure I’d heard right. Dad set his hands down on the table. “Not this again,” he said in his quiet angry voice.
Katrin’s fierce gray eyes reminded me of the woman on the seawall. “Yes, this again, Gabe, and perhaps now you’ll listen.”
I was listening. I shoved the notebook into my pack. Magic seemed as good an explanation for this morning as anything else. “There was this woman, I saw her on my run—” I stopped, realizing how stupid I sounded. If I mentioned my missing six hours, I’d sound stupider still.
“You didn’t mention any woman before,” Dad said.
“With long hair,” Katrin said. Her face pinched into the same worried look as yesterday. “In a red cloak.”
“How—who is she?”
“Who is who?” Dad demanded. Ari looked back and forth between us, opened his mouth as if to say something, and closed it again. A waiter walked up, left menus at the edge of the table, and quickly departed. Ari grabbed one and disappeared behind it.
Katrin laced her hands together.