Bailey Morgan [2] Fate by Jennifer Lynn Barnes Page B

Cookie Day would have stopped when I was about eight, but my mom never got tired of Zo telling her how good her cookies were, and Zo never got tired of eating them. The two of them had a wonderfully symbiotic relationship. My mom was an überparent. She would have mothered a rock if the rock had let her, and even though Zo wouldn't have admitted it under threat of torture, my tough-as-nails friend kind of liked being mothered.
    “Rumor has it that it's double-chocolate-chunk day,” I said, knowing I was sealing both of our fates with the mere mention of chocolate.
    Zo's eyes rolled back in her head a little at the thought of cookies.
    “Okay,” I said. “My house it is.” I put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking place.
    “So what's the deal?”
    It took me a second to realize what Zo was asking.
    “With the moping. Twice in one day. What's the deal?”
    Because I knew she wouldn't have asked if she didn't actually want to know, and because I was out of thumping range should she decide that my explanation qualified as moping again, I answered her. Once I started talking, it all poured out at warp speed: worrying about the four of us splitting up, the Reckoningbeing all ominous, my torturous college counseling session, the green blood, and the fact that the boy from study hall was also in my physics class. Toward the end of my explanation, I didn't even bother to mask my distinctly crushlike descriptions of Cryptic Boy's mussy hair.
    I'd always sucked at hiding things from Zo.
    “Okay,” Zo said, when my explanation finally ended.
    “Okay?” I wasn't sure whether I was asking her to elaborate, or just trying to get her to tell me again that everything would be okay. Since kindergarten, Delia had been my stylist, and Zo had been my bodyguard. Delia made things fabulous; Zo chased the monsters and/or bullies away. I expected her to somehow make this better, even though a large part of the problem was worrying about what would happen when she wasn't there to do the chasing anymore.
    “Okay,” Zo confirmed. “The senior year thing you'll just have to deal with. You're a big girl, Bay, and you couldn't get rid of the rest of us if you tried. Do you really think that's going to change?”
    Did I?
    “The blood thing is freaky”—Zo didn't give me time to process my thoughts before plowing on to the next issue—”but since the necklace came from the Accessory Stand of Great Power and Responsibility, I'm not really surprised. We just need to figure out why it turned your blood green, so we'll know what else it does.”
    Huh. I'd been so distracted by real-world drama that I hadn't spent much time wondering about the implication of my blood turning colors in the mirror.
Note to self,
I thought:
work on that.
    “But what about the fact that Morgan is here at all?” I asked. Since we'd gone from sister mode to friend mode, I made an effort not to sound like I was whining. Considering that I was letting the whole “deal with it” thing slide, I thought I was doing pretty well.
    “Morgan being here just means things are going to get interesting.” Zo looked down at the pendant on her chest, and when she looked up, the expression on her pixie face was absolutely unholy. “Admit it, last time, with the tattoos …”
    “It
was
kind of cool,” I said. “If you forget the part where Alecca almost killed us.”
    Us.
Just saying the word made me feel like there was an us and like Zo was right and I was stupid for worrying, even for a second, that not too far in the future there might not be. We'd faced down the ultimate evil together, and here I was worrying about college.
    “Bay, Alecca never stood a chance.” Zo seemed very sure of this. Perfect confidence, aggressive to a fault. That was Zo to a tee. “As for the boy …,” she continued.
    “Yeah?” So far, Zo was doing a decent job of making me feel better (even if part of making me feel better entailed making me feel like an idiot for feeling