Gabriel put his cup down and steepled his fingers in thought, looking very much like an extremely serious graduate student of philosophy. Or something more magical. All I needed was to put him in a black robe and drape a scarf over his neck, and I could have cast him for one of Hogwart’s Quidditch teams.
“I guess I’m not approaching this quite right,” he said. “I’m worried that things might be a little sensitive. Let me think on how to handle it for a moment.”
“Take all the time you need, Gabriel.” I nodded towards the remaining scrumptious platters of food. “I’m going to go for thirds today. With that bombshell you’re trying to drop on me, today’s calories don’t count.”
He laughed at that. “That’s what she says, all the time.”
That one stopped me in my tracks. “Who is this ‘she’ you keep talking about, if it’s not Dora?”
“She’s the answer to that other, smaller question I was expecting you to lead with. Which, unless I am mistaken, is ‘How did you know exactly what I like for breakfast’.” I nodded mutely. Gabriel snapped his fingers. “Of course. I should have listened to her advice to begin with. I’ll let her explain these things to you.”
He stood, stepped around the table, and called for someone out in the hall. I didn’t quite make out what he said, but it was something along the lines of ‘Honey Bun.’ Ugh. It just seemed a tad too cute, especially for someone holding the job title of ‘Mortician of the Universe.’
The tic-tac of high heels echoed from out in the hall. A platinum blonde hourglass of a woman wearing an elegant black evening dress swept into the room. Her high-wattage blue eyes and her effervescent smile beamed at me, and her expression was at once a strange mixture of nervousness and pride.
What she said was even more curious.
“Hi there, Pumpkin,” she said, using my nickname, one that I hadn’t heard since I was eleven. And she said it in a voice so very familiar that it nagged at me where I’d heard it before. “Welcome home at last.”
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “Have we met before?”
Her bright, happy look turned to one of dismay. “I thought that you would know who I was, Cassie.”
“Wait…” I said, rummaging through the debris of the prop room I called a memory, “I think I have seen you before. At the party Mitchel threw at the Thantos’ ranch, just before I got married. I saw you there, in the back of the crowd, with Gabriel. You had sunglasses on, and you were crying.”
“Yes, that was me. Oh, you better believe that I was crying. Tears of happiness, at the time.” She smiled at me, bathing me in warmth. “All I’ve ever wished…was for my daughter to be happy. I thought that a loving marriage would have given you that happiness...”
All I ever wished was for my daughter to be happy.
The realization rocked me. Sent a twang through me, stole the air from my lungs. It was too much, too much to believe. The next word I spoke came out in a teary croak of a voice.
“Mom?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
My mother? That’s who this blonde bombshell claimed to be? God, I so wanted that to be true. And really, therapy buddy – who wouldn’t want that same thing? If you were in my position?
But after all I’d seen, all I’d been through…it was too good to be true.
Wasn’t it?
When the woman took a step towards me, I got out of my chair. But I didn’t move to embrace her. Instead, I slowly put my hands up, defensively. A genuine look of hurt crossed the woman’s face.
“Look,” I said, with a helpless gesture, “I don’t know who you are, but there’s no friggin’ way that you could be Fiona Van Deene.”
“Oh?” Dammit, the blonde crossed her arms, lip curled in just the way my Mom used to. “There’s no need to use that kind of language, Cassandra. I raised you better than that. So why not?”
“Because…” I hesitated, and then decided to go ahead and say it. “My mom’s wears her hair – her beautiful, silver hair, I might add – up in a bun. She also never had a figure that a Playboy Bunny would kill for, or a C-cup rack.”
A sigh. “Whatever am I going to do with you? I know I was always too critical of you, but really, you’ve got to learn to look beyond the surface of things.”
“You have to admit, Cassie, it’s sort of what led you into trouble with Mitchel,” Gabriel pointed out. “You accepted him simply as he presented himself – as a too-good-to-be-true man. On a white stallion and everything.”
Dammit, they did have a point or two in favor of those arguments.
“That said, I am your mother, Cassie,” the blonde woman declared. “You see, at death, we all revert to how, deep down, we saw ourselves in life. I had you pretty late, in my thirties…and after some really hard downs on that roller-coaster we call ‘living.’ But I guess I never really stopped seeing myself like this. Young, free, beautiful. As the twenty-year old woman who first drove out to California to get as much sun, fun, and sand as I could.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said, lowering my hands.
“Yes, but apparently it’s not enough for you. So here goes: around the time you turned twelve, after your father left us, I had to take three jobs to make ends meet. And the waitressing gig on the graveyard shift just about did me in. For a solid week, I was so dead tired that I let you eat anything you wanted for breakfast. Chocolate chip cookies. Scoops of Rocky Road ice cream. That awful canned pasta with the radioactive-colored cheese sauce.”
My mouth snapped shut. My throat went dry. Oh. My. God.
“At the end of that week, I felt so guilty for being such an awful mother that I broke down and cried. And you know what? When you saw that, you came over and just held me, told me how much you loved your Mom.” The blonde woman looked in my eyes again, and all my suspicions fell away. “And that was when I stopped calling you Pumpkin. Because on that day, you’d grown past that name. Took the first step in becoming the daughter I’ve been so proud of.”
My knees shook. I half-stepped, half-stumbled into my mother’s open arms, crying and wailing and bawling as I told her that I loved her. That I was so, so sorry for messing up my life, for being such a bad daughter. And she held me too, crooning to me that it was all right.
And it was all right, you know. Moms can do that. It’s some kind of superpower that they have, concentrated right in the heart.
I’m sorry if this is getting too much like the three-hanky picture off the Hallmark Channel for you, therapy buddy. It’s just that…come on. How many of us really get that second chance to say what we want to, to someone we love who’s passed on?
I wish I could tell you all about the things we reminisced on. All those hours we’d have spent catching up on those silly things that we always mean to say to the people we care about and never quite do, because the right greeting-card moment didn’t just materialize out of the friggin’ air. But I can’t.
We didn’t have the time to talk all that much. There were dark things approaching. Things that needed to be done.
“Mom,” I said, after I’d wiped my eyes clear of tears for the umpteenth time on my cloth napkin, “is this…I mean, are we in heaven, then?”
“No, dear,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m the only one dead here, after all. We’re at our summer home, outside of Boulder, Colorado. But it is very nice in the autumn.”
Gabriel cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but…”
Mom nodded in agreement before speaking again.
“My husband’s right. I would give anything to be able to spend more time with you. But it’ll have to wait. You need to know a lot of things, and fast.”
I nodded, listening intently.
“Gabriel fell in love with me,” she continued. “We were married on the Thantos family ranch, just about the time you went to Chiapas City to film Machupo. By the time you showed up at Sundance, Mitchel had seen how happy we were together. Now, keep in mind that the Horsemen are spirits, but they’ve spen
t millennia in human forms of one sort or another. That shapes them, makes them desire and crave things they did not before.”
“Like human company.” I realized. “Companionship. Romance. Sex.”
“That’s right. Mitchel realized that he wanted a wife of his as well. But he couldn’t just have anyone. Like all brothers, they compete with each other. Sometimes it’s a friendly thing. Others times, not so much.”
That was true. I remembered how easy it had been to goad Raphael using an example of Mitchel’s scorn.
“So Mitchel decided that he didn’t want just a human’s soul…but a real, live human being. And what better way to one-up Gabriel than to marry the daughter of his brother’s wife?”
My knees trembled again, once it had all become clear to me. Why Mitchel would never agree to let me go. Because it would humiliate him in the eyes of his family. Better to have me chained to him for eternity, to slowly be wooed to love him.
Or to be manipulated into it. Forced into it via torture, or sorcery, or God-knows-what-else to remove my free will.
Forever.
“And that’s why,” Mom concluded, “if you want to annul this marriage, you need to get on your way. And you need to do it now.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Without even a stop for me to brush out my bed-hair or put on a speck of makeup, Mom and Gabriel hustled me down a flight of marble stairs. I took the steps hesitantly at first, remembering the twinge of pain in my ankle from last night.
“It’s okay,” Mom reassured me. “When I got rid of those clothes of yours last night, I borrowed a scroll of healing magic from Gabriel. That sprain you picked up should be completely gone by now.”
I couldn’t argue. I didn’t feel so much as a twinge. Gabriel spoke up as we reached the ground floor.
“This way to the garage, please,” he said. “Cassie, I did my best to shield my efforts to rescue you from my siblings, but it was only a matter of time before they pierced my veils. They’re on the way here now. Which means that you need to be on the road as soon as possible.”
I listened intently as we walked through the sprawling first floor of Gabriel’s summer home. Unlike the cowboy theme of the Thantos ranch, his dwelling had been done up in a style that Frank Lloyd Wright would have recognized: long, clean lines of rooms with only a few pieces of art-deco furniture. The architecture was inspiring, as was the color scheme. That is, if you liked the variances between the colors of ebony, coal, raven, jet, and onyx.
“You mean, you can’t just whisk me there?” I asked. “Perhaps my mother and I could–”
“Cassandra, think about it,” Mom said, “if we could have used Muerta to bring you directly to Dora Pahnn, then we’d have done it last night.”
“Dora’s one of the most powerful and wisest of the ancient beings,” Gabriel added. “Right now, she’s shielded herself by blocking any of my family’s powers from operating in her domain. That, alas, includes mine. Your mother and I will remain here. First to decoy my brothers, and then to fight them, if necessary. I should be able to delay them for several hours, but no more.”
“Any time you can give me, I’ll use it,” I promised.
“So you’ll have to drive, and fast. The powers that my brothers and I hold grow stronger once the sun is down. And it’ll take you until late afternoon to get to Taos from here.”
“Well, if you can lend me a car, I can lead-foot it down there.”
“We can do one better,” he replied, as we walked into a cavernous garage.
The parking bays were all empty, save for the one at the end. A silver Porsche Boxster sat in the far bay, looking almost as good as new. A splotch of flat gray primer mottled the passenger door like the scab over a cut.
“Gabriel was able to return and recover your car,” Mom explained. “I showed him how to repair the damage to the car frame, the engine, and the windshield. We weren’t able to match the exterior paint yet, but other things took precedence.”
“Believe me, I’m grateful,” I said, as Mom pressed a button on the wall, and the garage door hummed as it rolled up. Hazy sunshine flooded the interior.
“I also made sure that your GPS was in working order,” Gabriel said. “You should follow the directions, of course. But that will only take you as far as Dora’s mailbox. You’ve got a walk ahead of you after that. Follow the trail up the mountain. It ends at Dora’s place.”
I grimaced. Several hours of driving, followed by a hike. Uh-huh. Well, at least it explained why Mom had outfitted me with jeans and shoes better suited to cross-country travel than the heels I wore around the office.
We all stopped by the driver’s side of the car. I opened the door. The interior had been vacuumed and cleaned of any stray shards of glass from last night’s events. The comforting smell of Piña Colada air freshener wafted up from the passenger cabin.
“I should thank you, for everything you’ve done,” I said, turning to face Gabriel one last time. He gave a kind of ‘aw shucks’ expression that was absolutely endearing as he spoke in turn.
“I wouldn’t have let my brothers harm you.”
“No. That’s not what I meant.” He looked at me for a moment, puzzled. “I meant to say that…well, whatever else happens, thank you. For giving me my Mom back. At least this one last time.”
“Don’t say that, Cassie,” Mom gently admonished me. “Whether in this state or no, my soul is always with you.”
“You know what I mean,” I said, trying to laugh. Trying not to burst into tears again, as a matter of fact. My mother did the same. We embraced, I kissed her, and for that moment, all was right with the world.
“Get going,” she urged. “Before we both start crying again. You’re the big director in our family, after all. Two crying scenes in a movie is one too many, unless you’re trying to sell anti-depressants.”
That’s my Mom for you, always the sentimentalist.
I got in the car, started up the motor, and backed the Porsche out of the garage and into a freshly blacktopped driveway. The view was stunning.
Gabriel’s place perched halfway up the side of a lone mountain peak. Ahead of me stretched wide, open plains. Off in the distance, a gray line dotted with the tiny shapes of cars marked the freeway.
That was the ‘good’ part of the view. The ‘bad’ part was the charcoal-and-sandstorm colored storm cloud just cresting the mountain’s peak behind the house. Based on my past experience, I wanted to be long gone before the powers behind that thing struck.
I put those thoughts out of mind as I brought the car around to face the street. A last glance back. Mom and Gabriel (sorry, it’s going to be a while before I can even wrap my head around the whole ‘my step-dad is Death’ thing) smiled as I gave them a last wave. They waved back.
I gunned the motor and zoomed down the road, before my eyes threatened once again to brim and spill over.
Hey, therapy buddy?
Stick with me for this last part, okay? Because I have a hunch that I’m really going to need someone to lean on.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I drove due south on Interstate Route 25 like I had the demons from hell after me. Well, not quite. Now that I’d met a few different beings from various kinds of ‘myths’, I didn’t know what Holy Texts to believe anymore.
So I didn’t know where the demons after me were from, exactly. It could have been Hell, it could have been Rome, ancient Egypt, Celtic Britain, or New Jersey. And in truth, I didn’t drive more than fifteen miles over the speed limit – and even then, I kept a sharp eye out for the highway patrol.
My new step-father was out there, holding off the first three Horsemen of the Apocalypse. So I doubted that he was going to be available to help me get out of being pulled over and given a ticket by a traffic cop. That could delay me at a critical moment, more likely than not resulting in my capture and the death of whoever was around me.
If I had any doubts as to the seriousness of the matter (and I didn’t), they were
erased by the time I reached the Denver city limits. Boulder had disappeared over the horizon by the time I heard it.
Several flashes of light in my rear-view mirror. Followed by a teeth-rattling set of booms. Shrieks of tires as shocked drivers pulled over, forcing me to swerve around them. I couldn’t blame anybody. If I hadn’t known what was going on, I might have thought a gas main exploded, or that some group of madmen were pulling off an act of terrorism.
Not five minutes later, I passed a set of fire trucks and ambulances racing along the other side of the freeway towards Boulder. Twenty minutes after that, a pair of fighter jets rocketed north, leaving cottony white contrails in the sky.
Two more hours passed. I stopped for gas and a run to the restroom at a little Mom n’ Pop station just outside of Pueblo. I got a ‘damn yuppie’ vibe off of the two owners when I didn’t stop to chat. I didn’t mean to be rude, but let’s be honest, I was sort of in a hurry.
Mother Nature hadn’t made up her mind about the day yet. Patchy sun, some drizzle, and at the moment, a patchwork quilt of clouds settled over the freeway. The pump had just kicked back, telling me the tank was full, when I watched a small flock of birds in the distance draw closer.
A cold chill skittered down my back as I realized that these ‘birds’ had abnormally large heads. And they were moving as fast as those jets I’d seen earlier. I hung up the pump nozzle and ducked behind my Porsche.
The station was an older-style one, with a 70’s style sun awning that draped over the pumps like a lean-to. So I was pretty sure that they hadn’t seen me, or my silver sports car.
The sheydu, who were flying high enough to remain mistaken for birds – at least to the casual observer – split into two groups, one circling to the east, the other to the west. I waited until they’d each vanished over their respective horizons.
When I got up, both Ma and Pa Kettle were watching me from the next island over. They were obviously wondering if they should call for the nice young men with the clean white coats for me.
I Married the Third Horseman (Paranormal Romance and Divorce) Page 11
