Chapter Thirteen
It’s morning, and I’m sitting at the dining room table, half asleep over the laptop, when I hear Tammy’s bedroom door creak open.
Five days of waiting and watching, and still nothing. I’m starting to wonder if he knows I’m out here. How, I have no clue. Maybe he has some kind of super-sense. Dino-awareness or something. Whatever.
Meanwhile, Tammy tiptoes down the hallway, looking like she just rolled out of a fairy war zone: hair wild, clothing ruffled, and a spark in her eye that says she delivered a killing strike or two.
She also looks five years younger, about the age she was when she first started high school. I scream when I see her.
Anthony pokes his head out of his bedroom and comes out to investigate. He sees his older sister and chuckles. Of course, his older sister now looks younger than him by a few years. Heck, she looked younger than him even before her weird transformation.
I sit up, blinking. “Hey, kiddo. How’d it go last night? I heard a lot of banging and an explosion or two. Pretty sure the house lost power for like ten minutes. Did you have anything to do with that, young lady?”
She grins. “Let’s just say the Tooth Fairy is free to do that groovy thing she does.”
“Paying for teeth?”
“Something like that.”
“Tell me about last night,” I say. “And don’t skip the details. And why do you look like you just graduated middle school?”
She sits next to me, spills the tea, so to speak. As she does, I’m not sure if my eyes could bug out anymore than they do. “Wow, okay!” I hug her tight. “So glad you’re in one piece, sweetie. Pretty sure I never want you doing something like that ever again; at least, not without me.”
“Well, I did have my other mom with me.”
I narrow my eyes. “How dare you,” I say, playing along. Tammy knows I get a little jealous.
“You’ll always be my number one, Ma.”
“Better be!”
Next, I hear pots rattling in the kitchen and smell bread toasting. Paxton’s in there, humming something from The Lion King.
Tammy reaches into her jeans pocket and pulls out a shimmering crystal tooth, of all things. She sets it gently on the table beside my laptop.
“Thought you might want this.”
I raise an eyebrow. “A tooth?”
“Not just any tooth. A talisman. From the Tooth Fairy. For luck. You know, in case the whole dinosaur thing gets too big.”
“Too big for me? Really?”
“Ma, we’re talking dinosaurs here. Those things are ginormous.”
“They’re also extinct,” I counter, though I slide the tooth into my pocket anyway. Good luck never hurts. And I never look a gift horse in the mouth… especially when it came from the Fairy Queen’s sister.