He tried to adjust it to hide more of her hair, shoving at her hairline until he got so frustrated that he gave up. Charlie had a memory of an elderly neighbor with a wardrobe of wigs and a lot of bobby pins, but she’d bet Rand had never even heard of those, much less thought to bring some.
“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered, more to himself than to her.
She put back on her own coat. It was a pink puffer with ratty and somewhat matted fake fur around the hood. It had come to her secondhand, via one of her mother’s friends with a slightly older daughter. They were always dropping off clothes—all of them a lot cheerier and more colorful than Charlie would have chosen for herself.
Nothing she had on was appropriate for a place like this. She was going to stick out like a sore thumb. She was suddenly filled with the terrible conviction that Rand had no idea what he was doing.
It only got worse as they approached the gates. Stone walls led to wrought iron bars with cutouts of horses on both sides.
He leaned over to the com on one side of the stone pilings, pressed a button, and gave his name. They waited as the wrought iron gates swung open.
“Won’t they notice us being on foot? It’s weird,” she whispered to him, looking down a very long driveway at a gigantic mansion. Three stories, the top floor covered in painted shingles, and stone on the lower section. Ivy crawling around the windows and big white columns flanking the front doors.
“Don’t worry so much,” he said, and pulled her off the road. “I am considered eccentric, which helps me be able to explain anything I do in terms of my eccentricities. Do you know what that word means?”
“Yes,” she said, annoyed. Hadn’t she fooled at least some adults into believing she was a dead warlock? Maybe he should give her some credit.
He pointed across a stretch of sparsely wooded lawn that led toward the side of the giant mansion. “Go that way.”
“Go where?” she asked.
He sighed and pressed a phone into her hands. “Go in through the side. Then, I told you—second floor, third door on the left. Go quickly, but don’t run. Don’t draw attention to yourself and don’t get distracted. No matter what happens, this phone is not for you to call me on. This is for me to send you a signal. When it buzzes, you get into position and you take off your jeans.”
Charlie’s heart was racing and her fingers had gone cold with anxiety. “I don’t want to go in there alone.”
“I’ll meet you by the side door. How’s that?” He glanced toward the gate. They might be hidden from the front of the house, but if another car came through their little conference would look extremely suspicious.
“I don’t think I can do this.”
He put his hand on her chin, tilted her face up. “Too bad,” he said impatiently. “Mess this up, and I will have a long talk with your mother. You decide which is worse.”
She shook off his grip. What he wanted her to do—sneaking into the mansion, playing some trick on the people inside—felt impossible, but losing her mother would be worse. Mom would never forgive Charlie, not just for the deception, or costing her a marriage, or making her act like a fool in front of her friends, but for ruining the magic. Charlie would get sent to her father and his off-the-grid experimental homestead with chickens and a composting toilet that wasn’t installed right. And his new wife would never let her stay. “I’ll say you’re lying.”
“You got your sister in on it, didn’t you?” Rand smirked. “She’s still a little kid. You really think she wouldn’t admit everything if your mother pressed her?”
“Posey hates Travis,” Charlie said. “More than me, even.”
There was something in Rand’s face, some calculation that hadn’t been there before. Maybe he hadn’t guessed why she’d played the part of Alonso; maybe he’d thought it was for fun, to mess with people, or even to get something from her mother: Alonso says you better buy me a brand-new Xbox. The spirits demand it!
Charlie wasn’t sure if she was in more trouble or less.
“Travis was a dick,” he said finally.
She gave him a half smile, not a real one, but not nothing either.
And so Charlie walked across the grounds, hands in the pockets of her coat, head down. Above her, the sky was overcast. As she walked, she realized that to be really convincing she should have put on the wig upstairs. But she didn’t trust herself to get all her hair into it again. And besides, it was better for her to be disguised the whole time. That way if Rand got in trouble later, she wouldn’t get in trouble with him.