So I unraveled the braid, combing it out with my fingers, until my hair fell in waves around my shoulders. That fixed, I grabbed a tube of lip balm out of my bag and coated my lips. I didn't own any makeup, and I knew Mom didn't have any either, so it was the best I could do.
Finally, I took the towel off the mirror to look at myself. Torin was still there, and I scowled, trying to see around him. "Lovely, Isolde," he told me, and I had to admit, I looked... Okay, maybe I was no Leslie, but my hair actually looked...pretty all down around my face like that.
Still, my hands itched to braid it again. Brannicks never wore their hair down, because it only got in the way of staking vamps or shooting shifters or taking out witches.
I heard the front door open. "Iz?" Mom called. I gave myself one last look before grabbing my jacket and heading downstairs.
Mom's hands were full of books, old ones that were flaking little bits of leather binding everywhere and filling the room with the smell of musty paper. "Everything I could get from the university library on-Oh."
She paused in the doorway. "That's a new look."
"There's this boy," I blurted out. "Adam. And he, uh, asked me to go meet him at the school for a basketball game, and I was thinking you could drive me there. If that's all right. It's part of my cover."
Mom blinked a couple of times before shifting her stack of books to her other hip. "Like a date?"
"Like a mission," I corrected, and I thought the corner of her mouth tilted up a little bit.
"Okay, then. Just let me...um, put this stuff away."
I walked over to help her, scooping up a few of the books. As I followed her to the guest room, I glanced at the spines. Two of them appeared to be about hauntings, but one had a title so faded I couldn't even read it. "What's the deal with all the books?" I still had no idea what Mom was up to while I was busy at school all day, although she'd mentioned driving to the university in the next town over to get some "materials."
Sighing, Mom shouldered the door open. "Research." From the tone of her voice, I knew that's all I was going to get.
Once again, a twist of guilt and anger coiled in my stomach. Did the research have something to do with Finn? If it did, I didn't understand why Mom was being so secretive about it.
"Izzy?" Mom said, and I realized she'd asked me a question.
"Sorry." I laid my books down on the bed next to Mom's half of the stack.
"I was just asking if you've found out anything at school yet."
"Yeah, actually," I told her, tucking my hair behind my ears. "For one thing, I'm pretty sure who the ghost is." I filled her in on Mary Evans and what I'd learned from PMS. When I was done, Mom raised her eyebrows. "Sounds pretty typical."
"That's what I was thinking." I perched on the edge of the bed. "Some stories become legends for a reason, I guess."
Mom nodded. "And how was the ghost hunter club? The usual?"
"Yeah. EMP detectors they ordered off of TV, files of local legends. That kind of thing. And they want to do a seance at some point, so I need to come up with a way of stopping that."
Sighing, Mom glanced down at one of her books, the one called Ghosts and Hauntings. "Make sure you do. Last time I dealt with one of those civilian ghost hunter groups, they did a seance. Ended up opening a portal to the Unseelie court instead, and brought through some seriously nasty faeries. I don't want to clean that up again."
I didn't know if she meant clean up in the "closing the portal, banishing the faeries" way, or if it was more a "and then I mopped the humans' blood off the wall" kind of thing.
I decided maybe it was better just to wonder.
"Anyway," I said, fiddling with the ends of my hair, "it seems pretty cut-and-dried. The frog and Barbie thing is odd, but-"
Mom held up a hand. "The what?"
Oh, right, I'd forgotten to tell Mom about Romy's theory that Mary was somehow warning her victims. As briefly as I could, I filled her in.
When I was done, Mom was frowning. "That is odd," she said. "But it doesn't really matter. If this Mary Evans is the ghost you're after, get rid of her."
"Planning on it," I told her. "But you have to do a banishing on the last day of the month, right? That's still a couple of weeks away."
Mom made a noncommittal sound in reply, and I thought of what Torin had said. Was coming here really about protecting the students of Mary Evans High? Or was it Mom's attempt at letting me have a taste of normal life?
"So this Adam," Mom said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Is this part of the job, or is it-"
"Part of the job, for sure," I said quickly, and for some reason, Dex's face suddenly appeared in my mind. How would I feel if it were him I was meeting tonight? Just the thought sent my heart racing in a way that wasn't totally unpleasant.
Mom peered at me. "You're blushing."
I just stopped myself from covering my cheeks with my hands. "What? No, I'm not. I'm just...it's kind of hot in here."
But Mom was not so easily fooled. "Iz, I know we haven't talked much about boys."
"And we don't need to," I hurried on. "Dex is just a friend."
I didn't realize my mistake until Mom frowned at me. "I thought you said his name was Adam."
"It is," I said, turning away and heading for the door. "Dex is just this other boy. He's in that ghost hunter thing, and you had mentioned that, so it was on my mind. We should go if-"
Mom stood up. "Two boys?" she asked, and I wasn't sure if she was horrified or impressed.
"Friends," I said again. "Nothing else. And didn't you say it was important to blend in? Going on a...er, going to a basketball game is totally blending in."
I could tell Mom was struggling between the Brannick part of her that wanted to believe I was doing all of this for the mission-which I so was-and the Mom part that suddenly realized she had a teenage daughter. A teenage daughter who was hanging around teenage boys.
She reached out, and I think she was going to lay a hand on my shoulder or something, but in the end, she just let her arm drop to her side. "Izzy, I'm glad you're so dedicated to this, but...you have to remember that these kids you're spending time with are just part of a job. You can enjoy spending time with them, but in the end, there isn't any room for them in your life permanently."