Curiosity doesn't HAVE to kill the cat, right?

I don't know if it's just a thing wizards do to prove how incompetent poor east end villages are with magic, or if  they really think it's funny to drop off letters no one can open.   It's been two hours and the darn thing is still stuck there on the counter with mother's name on it.   The "Lucille Wilkes" part seems to be stitched  down solid, although I only know this from the two seconds I looked at it before mother gasped and shooed me out of the room.

Were we in trouble?    

She wouldn't let me near the front of the store while she worked on opening the letter, so I spent a lot of time out in the back yard clipping Heath's hooves and slowly grinding them up for the Halbern order.   Pig hoof wasn't a very glamorous cure for liverwarts but, it worked better than any fancy spell.   It did not however work to distract me from thinking of at least a thousand things that letter could contain.   

I like to think of myself as a calm and rational person, but so far my brain's tamest contributions to the "what-did-that-darn-wizard-leave" saga was that my mom was involved in an international pirate scandal,  our house was really some sort of portal to an underground dwarf lair (dwarves haven't ever lived underground Hogswallow, but it's never too late to start).    Or maybe it was a nefarious spying spell that would report to the secret league of secret assassins.  (Yeah, see?  Totally rational)

Really it was probably something boring like a clever dinner invitation to a party where you filtered out your guests by the ones who were smart enough to open it.   Mother got invitations all the time.  Or maybe it was someone who was trying to request my mother's services.  People often hired sirens to do everything from smoothing over treaties to being a calming presence when you told your respectable parents you were dating a half demon or something.   Pretty much no one is immune to siren charm, which is why I have a big snout in my lap and sweat trickling down my back instead of oh...trying out the two spells I've thought of that I'm nearly sure would do the trick.  

"Lucy darling, fetch me a glass of cordial."  

Ah, so she still hadn't gotten it open.  Drat.    Maybe if I didn't look at her too long, I could be strong enough to slip into the front and give a whack at it while she thought I was getting her drink.   I know I ought to feel chagrined for thinking such an openly sneaky thought, but really...when your mother is a siren, desperate attempts at disobedience are almost a life skill.  I've done so many cringe worthy things my mother made me do for her, that I couldn't say no too...but blurgh, it's not worth getting mad at my mother.   She's the only person I have in the world, and besides, it's so droll and overdone to hate your mother when you're seventeen, and I truly do love mine (when she's not trying to stop me from doing magic I DO want to do, and making me do magic I DON'T want to do...but see, there I go again.)

Of course I've always wanted to be a normal 17 teen year old, although I'm not sure what that even looks like, but I'm pretty sure it includes new boots at least once a season and a fresh wardrobe.  I think I'm supposed to be obsessing over boys?  (uppity wizards don't count)

Maybe we were being summoned before The Council.  The letter sure looked official enough to be from The Council, and that would explain mother's reaction.  Although what they'd want with us, I had no idea.   Mother liked to talk about her sister Emmeline who married a wizard on The Council, but I could never tell if she was proud or jealous, and the last we'd heard from Emmeline, she'd gone to the bottom of the sea with a band of rogue mermaids.

I gave mother her cordial and wiggled my big toe back and forth in my shoe.   I used to chew on my lip when I was impatient, but it made Mother anxious. 

"Really Lucy, you make me nervous when you stare like that."  Mother said  "You look like one of those creepy voodoo dolls with pins poked in it."

I knew the kind she was talking about.  All big eyes stick limbs with a big sewn belly...perfect for cursing someone.  They don't work very well though.  Toddler level magic at best, I mean you can barely make someone trip on a step with one, but somehow they never go out of style.    Now a vampire, they can really curse someone properly but almost never do because they don't have the temper for it and you can't choose to curse someone all calmly and objectively.  It's a "heat of the moment" kind of magic.

"Lucy, I'm serious darling...stop staring.  Don't you have the gorgoyle wash to mix up?"

Whoops.  I do that sometimes... go on a rabbit trail in my head (actually, I do it a lot, there are just so many things to think about).  Sometimes I think I need to create bookmarks for my brain.  Mother just laughed at me when I asked if that was possible, and Nanny Milgrin shook her head and said it was impossible for anyone but maybe the highest level wizard.   I wanted to get all stubborn and insist that if a wizard could learn to do it, then so could a siren, but who was I kidding?   They teethe on books the size of hippos when they're babies, and I barely have two of them that I rarely get to read (I'm not going to start whining again!  I promise I'm over it).

Gargoyle wash.  I don't actually have to make any, I made a five gallon jug of it yesterday, but clearly Mother wants me out of the way, and frankly I have decided I don't care what's in the letter.  That's something a kid would be curious about, and Nanny Milgrin would scold them and say curiosity killed the cat (although to be honest, I've never seen a cat die of curiosity).   But I am not a kid,  and I figure if I am going to be a very bad siren in a very small village, I had better work on my "calm and helpful" attitude. 

I was mixing glacier water with mountain shadows, when mother walked by with pieces of shredded paper filling her long graceful hands.  It didn't even occur to me NOT to crane my neck to see if the letter was gone from the front counter.

Of course it was. 

Darn it, I spilled the precious stone mixture as I gently followed (Careened? Dashed? Lurched?)  after my mother.

 Maybe I can start acting more mature tomorrow.