Warped (Maurissa Guibord)

No. Wait a minute, Dad. I'll be right out!"
    She grabbed Will by the arm and pushed him toward her closet. "Come on, Elvis . I don't want my father to find you. I am so not ready to have that conversation."
    Will allowed himself to be pushed, but ambling backward, he shot a smile down at her. A real smile that went straight into her eyes. "That was King Elvis, I believe," he said in a low voice as she shut the door.
    "Is Opal staying over tonight?" Tessa's father asked when she scrambled downstairs to the kitchen.
    Staying over? Tessa thought, suddenly panicking. Was he? Where was she going to put him? What could she do with the sixteenth-century-tapestry-unicorn-turned-really-good-looking-though-very-disturbing-and-kind-of-snotty guy upstairs, hiding in her closet?
    "Staying over? Yeah, I think so," she choked out. "Is that okay?"
    "Of course. I wanted to tell you about what the appraiser said." Her father sat down at the kitchen table. He wore white cotton gloves, and he carefully picked up the old book that had accompanied the tapestry. Through the protective plastic sleeve Tessa saw the title once again: Texo Vita .
    "Believe it or not," her father said, "this book seems to be from somewhere around the sixteenth century."
    "Really," said Tessa. She turned away, opened the fridge and peered inside. She could have probably narrowed its age down a bit more than that. But she wasn't ready to tell her father what had happened.
    Jackson Brody watched as his daughter took out cheese, milk, sliced ham, pickles, mustard, mayonnaise, two sodas. "I'm sorry, honey," he said. "I promised you some dinner, didn't I? You must be hungry."
    "Starved." She pulled a loaf of whole-grain bread from the drawer and grabbed a thick handful of slices from the bag. "So's Opal." She began constructing sandwiches and piling them on a paper plate.
    "I guess I haven't been paying too much attention to you lately, have I? I'm sorry about that, Tessa. You know, about Alicia and me--"
    "Dad," Tessa interrupted. "You don't need to say anything. Please. I'm fine with you guys going out or whatever."
    Her father gave her a perplexed look and shrugged. "Okay. But we're going to have to talk about the 'whatever' sometime."
    Tessa's eyes dropped. "What were you going to tell me about the book?"
    Her father tapped the spine of the thick tome. "Professor Waterhouse has never seen anything like this or even heard of anything like it. He also can't explain the level of preservation. The paper, the binding, even the vegetable inks are all consistent with this book being roughly five hundred years old." Her father shook his head. "The paper should be crumbling by now, but it's not. And the text is in Medieval English, interspersed with Latin. It seems to be a journal, detailing local tales around a particular region in Cornwall, especially about witchcraft but also, strangely enough"--her father frowned--"about weaving." He laid the book down and pulled off the gloves.
    Tessa stopped. "Weaving?" A cold tingle of fear passed from her core along her arm to her fingertips, retracing the streak of warmth she'd felt when she pulled the silvery thread.
    "Yeah." Her father came over, popped a gherkin into his mouth and munched. "Very intriguing. In fact, translated, Texo Vita means 'the weave of life.' " He frowned. "Waterhouse was really disappointed that I took it back. He'd already contacted someone at Yale to do further testing."
    "Listen, Dad." Tessa worked nervously, slapping bread on the last sandwich and squishing the whole stack down. "We can't give the book back. Or the tapestry. At least, not yet."
    "But Tessa, we've discussed this already." Her father's plump, easygoing face looked puzzled as he watched her. "I have to return it. The lawyer for the Gerome estate will be here first thing in the morning."
    "I just--" Tessa hesitated. She looked away from her father, plucked up a dish towel to wipe her hands and smoothed it out on the countertop. "I just have the feeling something isn't right," she said. Now, that was completely true. Down to her Jell-O-y bones she knew something was not right. Like the whole world, maybe. She wasn't lying to her dad. She was just ... not sharing. Yet.
    Her father smiled. "Well, I certainly wouldn't want to mess with a woman's intuition. Why don't we see what this lawyer fellow says in the morning? Maybe we can work something out. But you know, we could really use that money."
    Tessa put the food and drinks on a tray.