Page 17 of All My Witches
“You saw the footage reel,” I interjected. “Aunt Tillie wanted us to see it. She wanted us to understand therules.”
“What rules?” Landon’s temper flared. “As far as I can tell, this world has norules.”
“It doesn’t have much logic,” Thistle corrected, “but as for rules … it has rules. For example, in this world Bay is married to a mobster, but she’s having an affair with you. You’re an undercover cop working to bring down Bay’s husband. How do you think that’s going toend?”
“With me winning,” Landon answered without hesitation. “If he pinches her butt again, I’ll pinch his head off hisneck.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Thistle waved off Landon’s threat and focused on me. “She’s going to use every soap trope in her arsenal. You spent more time with her watching soaps as a kid than I did. What were herfavorites?”
Oh, well, that was an interesting question. “I don’t know. She liked the wackyones.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Landon muttered, rolling his eyes to thesky.
“Which wacky ones?” Thistlepressed.
“I don’t remember. There was one about analien.”
“An alien?” Landon was beside himself. “Why would a soap opera havealiens?”
“Dude, you need to stop saying ‘soap opera’ that way,” Clove snapped. “The longer you’re derogatory about the genre, the more likely Aunt Tillie is to punish you beyond belief in this world. It will be much worse than Bay getting her buttpinched.”
“She’s right,” I added. “You don’t understand soap operas. I’m not sure we do … at least not like Aunt Tillie. She’s going to throw everything she’s got at us. We need to beready.”
Landon pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. “Fine. You know more about what we’re going to face. What’s upfirst?”
“Thething.”
“Whatthing?”
“Whatever thing Michael wants us to find,” I replied. “We have to figure out what it is. It’s very clearly part of thestory.”
“I don’t really care about Michael’s thing,” Landon shotback.
“I thought he was handsome,” Clove announced, offering up a mischievous smile. “What is it with those dimples? What kind of mobster has dimples likethat?”
“He’s not a real mobster,” Landon argued. “I mean … how does he make his money? He doesn’t run drugs or move stolen merchandise. He doesn’t organize prostitution rings and employ pimps. How does he make hismoney?”
“You don’t understand,” I challenged. “In this world he’s supposed to be a bad guy, but you root for him anyway. You’re not supposed to know what terrible things he does, because that makes rooting for him more difficult. It happens all the time onsoaps.”
“Whatever.” Landon crossed his arms over his chest and stared across the empty highway. There was absolutely no vehicle traffic, and it looked to be something of a condensed area. The mega-mansion was practically on top of the highway, which wasn’t exactly aesthetically pleasing. I couldn’t think too much about that, because I had other things to worryabout.
“Okay, what kind of thing could a mobster want?” Clove adopted a pragmatic tone. “Maybe it has something to do with whatever business he really does. We should’ve hung around long enough to figure out what thatwas.”
“Please, if Michael pinched Bay’s butt one more time Landon was going to kill him, and then we would’ve found out what kind of jails they have in soap opera world,” Sam countered. “I think we’re better off figuring this out on ourown.”
“But what could it be?” Clove rubbed her forehead. “I just … I can’t think what a soap opera mobster would possibly want us toretrieve.”
“It’s not about what he wants us to find,” Thistle corrected. “It’s about what Aunt Tillie wants us tofind.”
“Why do you say that?” Marcus asked. “Why would it be about what Aunt Tilliewants?”
“Because she plays his mother in this reality, although her age means she should really be his grandmother, but we’ll let that slide,” Thistle replied. “These curses are always about Aunt Tillie. They’re about what she wants and propping up herego.
“We shouldn’t be thinking about what Michael wants,” she continued. “We should be thinking about what Aunt Tillie wants. She’ll simply bend the storyline to fit herneeds.”
“That’s smart thinking.” I scratched the back of my neck. “The little preview clip said Aunt Tillie had her fingers in a lot of pies, but her ultimate goal was to freeze the world so she could bring forth a group of mutant snow sharks. So, what item – or rather, items – would Aunt Tillie need to freeze theworld?”
“A death ray?” Landon was feeling snarky. “Don’t you use a death ray to freeze theworld?”
