Harper somehow managed to swallow her grin. If she could kiss karma on the mouth right now, she would. Sticking Little-Miss-Perfect Cecelia with a grumpy, moody, sullen, half-dhampyre teenager was positively poetic.
Putting on her best responsible-adult voice, Harper said, “Well, Riddick has been waiting for the opportunity to be a father to her for the past, oh, thirteen years. And I’ve always got his back. So I’m sure we can handle it. You don’t have to worry. She couldn’t possibly be in better hands.”
Because I’m a great mother who isn’t afraid of one little teenage dhampyre, she thought smugly.
Except that…
When they got to the lobby, Harper found Benny, one of her skip-tracers (who also just happened to be a half-vampire/half- wererat shifter with dubious morals and an impressive criminal record), teaching Adrianne how to run a three-card-monte scam.
“See, the thing is, there’s really only two moves you gotta know to run a monte,” Benny said as Adrianne leaned forward, intently watching Benny’s hands move expertly over two black fours and a red ace, “and that’s the throw, and the bent-corner move.”
“Benny!”
Benny flinched and shoved the cards into his jacket pocket so fast his hands blurred. “Hey there, gorgeous, I was just keeping the kid entertained.”
Cecelia looked over at Harper with the pinched expression of someone who’d just sniffed a fresh pile of dog crap. Harper sighed, rubbing her suddenly aching temples.
So much for her plan to convince the child’s mother she was a good role model.
Chapter Two
If moodily brooding was an Olympic sport, Harper felt confident Adrianne would place respectably in her weight class. Hell, she might even take her weight class. She was just that…teenager-y.
Dressed in head-to-toe black with her long, black, stick-straight hair hanging in her face—which sported two visible piercings and an angry scowl—Adrianne was the epitome of youthful angst. Harper had only seen the kid’s resting bitch face slip once, and that had been when her mother fled the building like her sensible pumps were on fire, leaving her only child behind with a total stranger.
For a split second, before she was able to school her features back into a grumpy frown, pain and disbelief that her own mother would abandon her had flashed through Adrianne’s cornflower-blue eyes. And that split second of pain was enough for Harper to wish she’d shoved that pencil up Cecelia’s nose when she’d had the chance.
And now that they were alone, stuck in a car together, driving to Wee Ones Preschool to pick up Haven, Harper could practically feel the rage pouring off Adrianne.
“It’s OK to be pissed, you know,” Harper said. “I would be if I were you.”
Adrianne turned in her seat, arms still crossed over her chest, and shot Harper a sneer that was pretty damn impressive for someone so young. It had taken Harper decades to develop a sneer that powerful.
“Is it OK, Step-mommy dearest?” Adrianne said, disdain positively dripping from her tongue. “Thanks ever so much for giving me permission to be pissed about getting dumped on some stranger’s doorstep like a flaming bag of dog crap.”
Oh, the sarcasm is strong with this one. Harper was vaguely impressed again. She knew grown-ass adults who couldn’t deliver sarcasm like that. The kid was clearly a prodigy. Riddick was going to be so proud.
“Look,” Harper began, “I’m not exactly a fan of your mom’s, but she’s just…scared for you. That’s all. Leaving you with me probably wasn’t easy for her. She just wants you to be safe.”
“Wow, and here I thought you were a psychic,” Adrianne shot back. “You don’t know anything about my mom. I’m an embarrassment because I’m not a blonde, shiny, happy cheerleader like she was at my age. Not to mention she’s terrified of me. So’s her husband. They couldn’t wait to get me out of their house.”
Some of that was true. She’d picked up on it herself just by doing a quick read of Cecelia when the twit had been dumb enough to shake her hand. But there was no way she was going to confirm any of that for Adrianne. It’d just be too cruel. “I have no doubt that your mom was the blondest of blonde cheerleaders back in her day, and probably about as shiny and happy as they come. But that doesn’t mean you embarrass her. I think it’s more likely she thinks everything would be easier for you if you were more like her. Moms don’t want their kids to struggle. And I’m sure she’s not terrified of you, but terrified of what you can do. She doesn’t have any frame of reference for helping you learn how to be…what you are.”
“You mean a part-vampire, part-psychic, part-human freak show?”
Harper side-eyed her. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. Some of my favorite people on the planet are part-vampire, part- psychic, part-human freak shows. My kid, for example.”
Adrianne’s angsty mask slipped again for a split second. “Haven’s…like me?”
Harper shrugged. “Minus the facial piercings and ‘tude…but, yeah.”
A loaded pause on Adrianne’s end. “And it doesn’t scare you? What she is? What she can do?”
“Why would it scare me? She’s awesome. She’s smart and talented and stronger than any ten kids her age, so I don’t have to worry about her getting picked on at school.” Harper shrugged. “I love her, and I can’t wait to see all the cool stuff she’s going to do one day. Especially since she told me yesterday she wants to be a ninja ballerina when she grows up. That has the potential to be epic.”
She didn’t look over so she couldn’t see it, but Harper sensed the suspicious narrowing of Adrianne’s eyes. “How do I know you’re not just telling me what I want to hear so that we can…bond or some shit?”
Harper took one hand off the wheel and thrust it in Adrianne’s direction, palm up. “Go ahead. Read me. That should show you that what you see with me is what you get—the good, the bad, and the totally awesome.”
She wiggled her fingers when Adrianne hesitated. “Go ahead. I don’t bite. Most of the time, anyway.”
“My…my mom told me never to read anyone.”
Her voice was small, unsure. It was the first time Adrianne had actually sounded like the kid she was. Harper glanced over and gave her a smirk. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“How do I know you won’t read me, too?”
Now there was the suspicious little punk Harper was starting to know and love. “You don’t.”
She didn’t add, “I double-dog-dare you,” but Harper thought the challenge in her voice had been clear. It must’ve been, too, because Adrianne reached over and grabbed her hand without any further hesitation.
Harper took a deep breath as visions flooded her. Pain. Fear. Rejection. Adrianne was so, so lonely, and in her mind, it was because of her powers. She didn’t feel she fit in anywhere, not even at home, where it actually did appear that her mother and stepfather were terrified of what she could do and desperate to keep her hidden from polite society. Narrow-minded assholes.
She’d lost control of her strength several times, too. Adrianne mostly stuck to the shadows, avoiding everyone, making herself as small as possible to keep from attracting any attention…except for that one time, when she’d shoved a boy who’d been picking on her and calling her a freak for weeks. He’d ended up with a broken arm and a severe concussion.
Harper couldn’t bring herself to feel too bad about what had happened to a weaselly little bully who’d been making the kid’s life hell, but Adrianne did. She hadn’t meant to hurt him. She’d only wanted to get him to leave her alone. Instead, she’d accidently put him through a wall.
Cecelia had pulled her out of school and started home schooling her to avoid an expulsion that would’ve had all the neighbors talking. She hadn’t wanted to protect Adrianne, of course. She’d been concerned about anyone finding out her daughter wasn’t normal.
Man, where was that pencil when you really needed it?
The poor kid was all kinds of messed up, Harper realized. As if being a teenager wasn
’t complicated and confusing enough, Adrianne had the bonus of being stronger, faster, and smarter than her peers, thanks to Riddick’s genetics.
And as if that wasn’t enough to make her feel different and isolated and so terribly alone, she was also a psychic with little-to-no control over her power. She could bump into someone while waiting in line at the grocery store and pick up images of way more than anyone would want to know about a stranger’s past, present…or impending death.
All Adrianne wanted to do was fit in and be loved by her family for who she was, but she never would. Not when her mother had done her level best to keep her away from anyone who might even have a remote understanding of who she truly was—of what she could do and eventually be.
Cecelia had dropped Adrianne in Harper’s lap for 95% selfish reasons, but in all honesty, she’d done the very best thing for her daughter that she ever could. No one was going to understand what Adrianne was going through better than Harper and Riddick. Cecelia had never been powerful enough to fully understand how her daughter was feeling, but Harper was. Hell, she’d been Adrianne, only with a much better, more supportive mother.
Note to self: give Mom a giant hug when you see her.
Adrianne yanked her hand away and didn’t say anything for several minutes. Harper gave her time to process everything she must have seen. Poor thing was probably overwhelmed. Harper’s friend Hunter, a scary-powerful vampire who was also head of the Vampire Council, had once told her that reading her mind was like head-banging in a mosh pit at a metal concert: loud, disorienting, and sometimes painful.
But Adrianne, like her father, rallied quickly. “You really aren’t afraid of what Haven can do—of what I can do—are you?”
“You’ll learn soon enough that I’m a really shitty liar,” Harper said. “That’s why I never do it. I’m happy you’re here, Adrianne, and that’s the truth.”
“And my…father wants me around? My mother never talked about him much, but when she did, she made it sound like he abandoned me and didn’t want anything to do with me.”
Harper ground her back teeth together to hold in the string of angry curse words that wanted to roll off her tongue. Fucking Cecelia! How dare she badmouth Riddick when he’d done everything under the sun to try and be a part of this kid’s life?
But calling the kid’s mom a bleach-blonde, silicone-boobed captain of the douchecanoe wouldn’t win Harper any points with Adrianne, so she swallowed all the horrible things she wanted to say about Cecelia. In her head, she told Cecelia to go choke on a dick. But to Adrianne, she said, “Do you remember when you played a turnip in your kindergarten dance recital?”
Adrianne glanced over at her like she was insane. “Yes. How do you know that? Did you see that with your…you know?”
Harper rolled her eyes. “You can say the word ‘powers,’ sugar plum. It’s not a dirty word. And no, I didn’t see that memory when I touched your hand. I know you were a turnip—and a damn fine, proud-looking turnip, at that—in your recital because I was there. Riddick and I snuck into the theater and hid in the balcony up by a lighting rig because he wanted to see you dance. He was so proud it was ridiculous. We went to all your dance recitals, talent shows, and class graduations. We might have also mildly stalked your birthday parties and sent you anonymous cards with money in them every year. He picked out the cards, by the way. You can tell because they were totally lame dad puns. I never pick out cards like that.”
“The one with the tiny horse on the front,” she whispered. “It said, ‘I wanted to sing happy birthday to you, but I’m a little horse.’ It came on my eighth birthday.”
Harper shook her head fondly, remembering the shocked looks on the other Hallmark shoppers’ faces when Riddick came in, dressed like a Sons of Anarchy biker, looking like a cross between a convict on work release and a Calvin Klein underwear model, to buy a silly horse pun birthday card for an eight-year-old. “Yep. He picked that one out himself.”
“It was my favorite,” she murmured. “It came with this.”
She held up her wrist, displaying a thin black leather braided bracelet with a dainty silver heart charm dangling from the center. Harper smiled. “Yeah, he picked that out, too.”
“I never knew. The card wasn’t signed. It just said, ‘Love, always.’”
Harper had advised Riddick against signing the card for fear that Cecelia wouldn’t give it to Adrianne—which, in retrospect, was an even smarter decision than she’d known at the time. “My point in mentioning all that was to answer your question about whether or not Riddick will be happy to have you around. Sugar plum, he’s going to be over the moon to have you around. There’s no way to express it without being cheesy, so I’ll just say it. Having you in his life is going to complete him.”
Adrianne swallowed what sounded like a choked-off sob and Harper fought the urge to reach for her hand again. She didn’t want to push her too hard. After all, she still had to get through meeting Haven and Harper’s mom, Tina. Harper shuddered. Poor kid had no idea what she was in for. She was going to be positively smothered with love, which didn’t seem to be something Adrianne had too much experience with.
“Harper?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“Did you really want to shove a pencil up my mom’s nose?”
Ugh. That’s what she saw when she read me? Just fucking great. She nodded sheepishly. “Sideways. Bygones, yeah?”
Up until that point, Harper hadn’t been sure Adrianne even had teeth. But when the kid smiled at her, showing off a shiny set of metal braces with black rubber bands around the brackets, Harper felt like she’d been given a rare gift.
“Bygones,” Adrianne said quietly.
Chapter Three
Haven jumped in the car, tossed her SpongeBob lunchbox on the seat next to her, and started talking about the sloth painting she was doing in art class before she even noticed Adrianne. But as soon as she did, her jaw dropped and she squealed with joy. Then she leaned up into the front seat and threw her little arms around Adrianne’s neck from behind, squeezing for all she was worth.
“You’re my sister!”
Harper winced at Haven’s totally unnecessary volume. “She’s right there, baby. You don’t have to yell.”
“I’m sorry,” Haven said, her voice still at a volume of roughly 10 times what it needed to be in order to be heard. “But I’ve always wanted a sister and now you’re here!”
Adrianne’s wide eyes shifted to Harper as Haven continued to squeeze her and rock back and forth with her like she was a life-sized doll. Harper shrugged. “Did I mention that Haven sometimes doesn’t have to touch a person in order to read them and pick up a vision?”
Haven finally let Adrianne go and settled back to buckle herself into her booster seat. “Oh, I wouldn’t even need my visions to know her, Mommy. I can see all her colors. They’re just like Daddy’s colors.”
Adrianne’s brow furrowed. “My colors?”
Haven nodded. “Silver and blue with a little red around the edges. It means you’re magical and calm and strong, and just a little mad sometimes. Just like our daddy.”
Adrianne glanced back over at Harper as they pulled away from the curb at the school and turned in the direction of Tina’s house. “Best we can tell, she can also read auras,” Harper said. “That’s probably a genetic gift from somewhere in my family’s past, since I’m a psychic and my mom’s an empath. But there’s also some telekinesis and stuff like that in Riddick’s family, so…yeah…”
She trailed off because Adrianne looked like her head might explode. Maybe it was best to leave any further discussions of mystical powers for after dinner or something.
Adrianne and Harper stayed quiet after that, which was fine because they wouldn’t have gotten a word in edge wise anyway. Haven talked enough for both of them.
She talked about her day, and how excited she was to go see Grandma because they were going to make a fairy garden in the backyard, then bake a cake. Then she talked
about how Adrianne should watch Frozen with her because now they were sisters, just like Elsa and Anna, only they didn’t have a reindeer like Sven. Harper had only spoken up at that point to clarify that, no, they would not be buying a reindeer anytime soon.
Haven pouted a little about the lack of reindeer in her future, but rallied quickly, moving on to discuss how she’d be happy to share her bed with Adrianne so that they could have a sleepover, just like real sisters.
Harper didn’t want to stomp all over Haven’s sweet little five-year-old heart by telling her what having an older sister was really like. Back when they’d been forced to share a room, her own sister, Marina, had once held her down on the carpet and farted on her head. Harper had retaliated by beheading Marina’s Barbie dolls and leaving their headless corpses under her sister’s pillow.
Yeah, good times.
But Harper was glad she hadn’t shit all over Haven’s plans when Adrianne turned in her seat and faced Haven, eyes looking a little misty. “You don’t even know me. You’d share your room with me and have a sleepover?”
“Pfffttt, I know you,” Haven said with a dismissive wave of her little hand. “I’ve known you were coming to live with us for forever. I’ve just been waiting. I hate waiting, too. Waiting for you was like waiting for Christmas to come! What took you so long?”
Adrianne seemed at a loss, so Harper answered, “It just wasn’t time for her to be with us yet, baby.” She glanced over at Adrianne and locked eyes with her for a second before adding, “And now it’s time.”
“Well, it sure took long enough,” Haven said, sounding disgruntled. “But now that you’re here, everyone else is going to love you just as much as I do!”
Adrianne blinked rapidly a few times. “You…love me?”
The words were like a knife to Harper’s heart. This was a kid who’d never been told she was loved. That much was obvious. She sounded shocked by the mere idea that anyone could love her unconditionally.
Semi-Magical Page 2
