Eileen Rendahl - 01 Don't Kill The Messenger by Eileen Rendahl

Author:Eileen Rendahl [Rendahl, Eileen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

AUNT KITTY SHOWED UP AT STARBUCKS IN ONE OF HER REAL-ESTATE-AGENT suits. Coffee with me was clearly just one stop among many in her busy day. I’d be willing to bet she had appointments stacked up from now until well into the early evening. You could tell what kind of day Aunt Kitty was planning on having based on her wardrobe choices. She’s a bit of a chameleon. I’ve seen her show up for coffee or even lunch wearing yoga pants and a tank top. Scrubbed free of makeup, she honestly doesn’t look all that much older than Norah and me.

If asked, she will tell you she owes it to a combination of good genes, no smoking of any substance and a good clean Citron martini once a week whether she needs it or not.

She’s also likely to show up at a Starbucks like she had today in an Ann Taylor suit with two-toned Ferragamo pumps with a matching bag and her hair sculpted into something that wouldn’t move in a hurricane.

“Busy day?” I asked, scooting in next to her, inhaling the rich dark aroma of my latte as though it were crack.

“It’s not easy out in the jungle these days,” she said. Sacramento real estate had gone from boom to bust in a precipitous fall that still had the region reeling. Somehow Aunt Kitty was weathering it better than most. I wasn’t entirely sure how, and I didn’t ask too many questions. I’d learned the hard way that asking questions about her work got Aunt Kitty thinking that I wanted to be a real estate agent just like her.

I could just imagine what would happen if I tried to show houses with imps showing up with stolen flutes and vampires hanging around with mysterious envelopes. I’m sure it’d be just great for sales. On the other hand, maybe I could make a specialty out of haunted houses. I knew where all the best ones were. People loved that kind of stuff for reasons that I can never quite figure out. If they could see how often the other world actually crept into their own without calling it up at all, they’d be way less likely to mess around with the creepy stuff in the first place.

“It’s good to see you,” I said.

She smiled, kissed my cheek and then rubbed the lipstick mark away with her thumb. “It’s good to see you, sweetheart. I don’t get to see you often enough. Neither does your mother. She said so the other day.”

I sighed. There was the real reason for the coffee invitation. I hadn’t called home in a while. I supposed I was overdue. This was so typically my mom. She said that she didn’t like to meddle in my life, so instead of just picking up the phone and demanding that I show up for a Friday night dinner with the family, she’d send cryptic little messages to me through my aunt or my grandmother. “I’ll call her today,” I said.

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