"Tess?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm pulling you up now."
"Okay." I put the brooch back in my pocket and glumly contemplated our options while Jack pulled me out of the well. We had no way to contact the queen, no dagger, and no clues.
Possibly we had a way to get extra eggs, if we bought live chickens. Seemed like a lot of work to me.
Jack carefully lifted me out of the well, and I looked at the two men.
"Where's Lassie when you need her?"
Nobody laughed. There went my career in comedy.
I texted Aunt Ruby and Susan our news, both about Atlantis and about the well. They were happy to hear about Atlantis, but understandably unhappy about the idea that we might need the help of a sovereign foreign nation to protect our little town.
I wanted to throw my phone down the well.
"You know what? I've just had it," I told Jack and Jed. "If this is going to be our last week in Dead End because of some stupid Fae nonsense, I'm going to have a blowout party at my house tomorrow. I'll tell everyone to bring all the perishable food they want to get rid of, and we'll have a cookout to end all cookouts."
I didn't call it a birthday party, because I was sure everyone had forgotten about my birthday, despite all the chaos. But if I had to have a birthday party, better to do it on my own terms.
"Jack, will you drive me home?"
Jed, who'd put the dagger box on Jack's back porch, suddenly looked exhausted. I knew exactly how he felt.
"If you don't mind, Tess, I'll stay here and get some rest," he said.
I impulsively gave him a hug, and he surprised me by holding on tightly. When he let me go, I kissed his cheek.
"Of course I don't mind. Please take a nap and try not to worry. Jack and I are pretty good at finding our way out of impossible situations after the past year. We'll tell you some stories that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up when we're past this crisis."
Jack drove me home, and we spent the trip batting around more and more wildly improbable ideas, until his phone buzzed.
"Austin?"
Not having superior tiger hearing, I couldn't hear Austin's side of the conversation.
"In Savannah. Are you sure?" He listened and then grinned. "Right, right. I promise never to doubt your computer genius again. Up for a drive?"
By the time he ended the call, we were at my house.
"Dallas and Austin found Mickey Young. He's in Savannah at a very fancy hotel, but he refuses to answer the phone, and the hotel manager says she can't force him to talk to us."
"So you're going to Savannah?"
He nodded. "He told them he found something beneath the willow tree, and he's been acting odd, and now this. We can't afford not to go."
I leaned over and kissed him. "Okay. I'm going to do a little packing and put out the word about the cookout. Call me when you know anything."
"I will," he promised, and then he pulled me closer for a more thorough kiss.
"I like fancy hotels and Savannah too," I said wistfully. "Maybe one day we can go there together."
Jack's grin was more wolfish than tiger. "I'll hold you to that."
He drove off to meet Austin for the four-hour trip to Savannah, and I went inside to call or text everybody I knew.
