Gone With the Witch (33 page)

"
Salem,
Massachusetts
. We have a house on
Picke
ri
ng
Wharf
"

"The house your father grew up in, you mean?"

"Yeah, it's Vickie's house now.
I'd
give you the address
and telephone number. If Pepper wanted to come back, I'd bring her."

"She wouldn't."

"If
you
wanted her back, I'd bring her."

Marvelanne raised a skeptical brow. "You'd have to hog-tie her, shove a gag in her mouth, and put her in your trunk to transport her. What about school?"

"I wouldn't let her quit school."

Marvelanne bit her lip. "If her school returns his tuition
checks, he'll know something is up, and he'll get nosy, or worse, he'll stop sending child support."

Storm wished—"Marvelanne, what name did you use
to sign our birth certificates?"

"I was in hiding
. '
I used M. Anne Buford"

Storm sighed in resignation. Marvelanne was, indeed, for good or ill, her biological mother. "For all the support you shower on Pepper, you're already taking money under false pretenses. You're not raising her. She's raising you. That place is a sty."

"Pepper lies."

"She took me home with her.
Showed me her room,
your
room, and your big screen TV.
She put in a batch of
laundry and vacuumed while we
talked,
the first in a list of
chores with her name on them. When does Pepper play?"

The mother of the year huffed.

"Look," Storm said, "if you keep taking child support,
it's on your karmic credit card. All 'I want is Pepper:'
"Why, in God's name?"

"Nice thing to say about your own kid. She's my sister, and 'I love my sisters. I want her to grow up better than we did."

"What will Harmony and Destiny think about the brat gumming up their lives?"

"They'll take Pepper in and love her the same way
Vickie took us in and loved us"

"Pepper is exactly like you," Marvelanne snapped. "I
knew it the first time I held her. She looked right at me, and
she defied me to screw up, as if she knew I would."

Telepathic communication at birth?
"Which one of you
is psychic?" Storm asked.
"You or Pepper?"

"Both of us, I think.
You and your sisters are, too,
right?"

Hmm.
They must get their magick from their father's side of the family and their psychic abilities from their mother's side. Who knew?
`All three of us."

Marvelanne snuffed her cigarette and placed the flat of her hand on the casino door. "Then you already know that I'm keeping Pepper. End of discussion."

Chapter.
Forty-Six

WHEN
Storm returned to Marvelanne's house, Pepper
was sitting on the curb, with a stuffed dog under her arm,
drawing in the dirt beside her backpack, a blue suitcase
with a broken handle, a radio box, and two grocery bags.

When Storm got out of the car and Pepper looked up, she was furious. "She thinks she's going to stop me from going, doesn't she?"

Uh-oh,
Storm thought. She knew that confrontational look. She'd worn it plenty in her day.

"Come inside," Pepper said. "Marvelanne's got a surprise in store." Her sister ran into the house and left all her
earthly possessions on the curb, except for the stuffed dog,
and Storm followed her.

She found Pepper in Marvelanne's room dragging a cardboard box of what looked to be bookkeeping records from the bottom of her mother's closet. She hefted the box and dumped the contents on Marvelanne's bed.

Storm cringed. "Pepper, 'I don't think this is a good—" Pepper pulled out a folder and stopped her scold with a practiced cheer, her body forming the letters. Give me an

E ... Give me an X ... By the time she ended on the floor
in a full split, she'd spelled the word
extortion
with a catate-the-canary grin.

Storm pretended not to be charmed. "Have you lost
your mind?"

"Nope.
Here's my ticket out." Pepper handed Storm a folder of canceled child support checks, different colors, different addresses, and different signatures. Four sets. "I
have four fathers," Pepper said proudly. "Kind of makes
me a medical marvel, don't you think?"

For a minute, Storm lost her ability to speak.

Her mother was a con artist.

A thief.

Pepper really did need her.

"What exactly do you think 'I should do with these?" Storm asked, slapping a wad of checks against her palm.

"Tell Marvelanne that you know about her scam, and if she doesn't let you take me, you'll tell my fathers about
.. .
my
other fathers."

"Okay, let me get this straight," Storm said. "Your
mother is an extortionist—"

"Your
mother, and, yes, big time."

"And you're a blackmailer?"

"No," Pepper said. "You'd be the blackmailer. I've been picking my battles and waiting to use this info for something big, like a car when I was old enough to drive, but now I'm giving it to you."

"How very generous of you" Flying foxglove, she and her sisters had played the system, Storm thought, but this kid was ready for juvenile hall. "I'm gonna have sooooo
much to unteach you, young lady, starting with the fact that
I'm
not
blackmailing your mother."

"Your
mother."

"I wish you'd stop reminding me of that"

"What's going on here?" Marvelanne asked, making
Storm
an
d
Pepper jump, and scream, and scare each
other ... and when they realized it, they fell over each other
laughing.

Marvelanne was not amused by this sign of sibling bonding. She grabbed Pepper by the shirt collar and shook
her, choking her, until Marvelanne yelped and let go to
grab her arm.

"You!" she said turning on Storm. "I only get zapped when that brat's pissing the hell out of me and
you're
around."

"So stop manhandling her." She needed to get her sister
out of here.

Pepper stepped in front of Storm as if to protect
her,
and Storm got the warm fuzzies. "Okay, here's the thing,
Mommie Dearest:' Pepper said
. "
I've known for some time
that 'I have four fathers, and I've talked to all of them on the
phone in the last year. The first time 'I called them, 'I said you wanted us to connect.
Short talks.
Nice guys. 'I think they like me better than you
do "

"Yeah, well they don't have to live with you." Marvelanne lit a cigarette and took a long drag.

Storm called in the big wings.

Guardian angels,

 
Hear my plea.

Set Pepper free

To her sisters, three.

Childhood hard won,

Hurt be undone.

So mote it he done,

With harm to none.

"I could get one of my fathers to take me," Pepper said. "Ralph, 'I think, but he'd probably want to tell the others they're not my fathers. On the other hand, I could go quietly and live with my sisters."

Pepper raided Marvelanne's makeup stash and stuffed
her pockets with goodies while her mother watched. "Think
about how nice life would be for you, if you didn't have to live with me:' Pepper added, as if to emphasize her little demonstration
. "
You wouldn't have to pay for my food, clothes, doctor, dentist, or send me to a movie every time you bring a man home"

Pepper turned to Storm and rolled her eyes.
"Different loser every week."

Chapter forty-Seven

MARVELANNE took another
puff on her cigarette, her
face impassive, but Storm saw that her nicotine-brown fingers were no longer as steady as they'd been outside the casino.

"I'll do you a favor before I go," Pepper added with an enticing lilt to her voice. "I'll call the `dad' who pays my tuition and tell him to send the check to you every month,
instead of the school. I'll tell him you don't want to ask,
but the school isn't respecting your rights as my mother,
and they would if
you
wrote the checks"

"Call him," Marvelanne said, with the confidence of someone calling a bluff.

Pepper knew the number by heart. "Ralph, Dad, it's Pepper
.. ”

Storm wanted to put a stop to the deception, but she thought about the day she and her sisters were thrown out of college for nonpayment of tuition. She remembered
driving their battered van home to find that their father had
sold the house and taken off for parts unknown.

She remembered their fear while driving toward the home of the grandmother they hardly knew, praying she'd take them in. She would have pulled a con for a place to sleep that night. Lucky for them, they found Vickie, who had inherited Nana's house and her big heart.

Now it was time for Pepper to have that kind of good
luck, even if she took a slightly skewed proactive stand.
She was only doing what came naturally, biting the
crooked hand that resented feeding her.

Pepper was, in essence, buying her way out of hell, and who could blame her for trying? She completed her call while Marvelanne's face turned the color of stripped drywall.

"Storm won't blackmail you," Pepper said, "because
you didn't raise her to be devious the way you raised me,
so negotiations are up to me. But look on the bright side,
this is our last battle. I wanna go home with Storm, and I'll
forget everything I know."

"Suppose one of your dads comes looking to meet
you?"

"Flying foxglove,"
Storm
said. "For a con, you're pretty
slow on the uptake, Marvelanne. You tell the truth. She's staying with her sisters.
Which reminds me, 'I need a copy of her birth certificate, before we go.
"

"Why, to prove she's your sister?" Marvelanne raised a knowing brow. "Not so generous after all, are you?"

"I need it to put her in school,"
Storm
said, placing a
hand on Pepper's shoulder. "I have a gift for rescuing kids,
Marvelanne, but this one, I'm keeping, whoever's name is on her birth certificate."

Pepper stamped her foot. "Marvelanne Buford, did you steal me to get all that child support money?"

"There isn't enough money in the world that could force
me to raise a kid, especially you, if I didn't have to." Mar
velanne snorted, went to the mess of papers on her bed,
and shuffled through until she handed Storm Pepper's birth
certificate and medical records.

"Then why have you been fighting us?"
Storm
asked.
"Storm," Pepper said. "For a rescuer,
you're
pretty slow

on
the uptake. She was looking to make a profit on the
deal. Leaping
lizards,
are you naive."