Due to my random intellect, the silence didn’t last long. “Did you know kangaroos have three vaginas?” All three pairs of eyes landed on me. I shrugged. “What? It’s true. I can draw you a photo.”
“I have an incredibly weird daughter,” my mom muttered.
“Hey…I am not the one who dresses up dead people,” I said.
Daemon’s spoon paused at his lips. “You dress up dead people?”
The horror on his face was almost comical. It was as if he was afraid my mom would bust out the eye shadow and make him into a pretty little princess. Although, come to think of it, Daemon’s pale complexion could use a dash of rouge.
My mom nodded. “Basically. I am a beauty mortician.”
“She doesn’t give herself enough credit.” Laura jumped in. “She can cover scars, make bullet wounds disappear, and bring life back into the dead.”
My mom wasn’t a fan of self-promotion, which was obvious by the blush heating her cheeks. “Thank you for those nice words, Laura.” She cleared her throat and re-focused her gaze on Daemon. “So, did you grow up in Castor?
“No, I moved here about two weeks ago.”
“So did we, from California. What brought your family here?”
My mom had the skills of an investigative reporter. Under normal circumstances, it was be embarrassing but my desperation to know more about Daemon caused me to let it continue.
“It just seemed like a cool town.” The lie was evident on his face.
“What side do you live on?”
“The north side near downtown.”
“That’s a nice area. You can walk everywhere but I like the quietness of a neighborhood,” my mom mused out loud. “And what do your parents do?”
Daemon’s parents were a sore point in his past and a tinge of guilt stabbed me in the stomach. This line of questioning needs to stop. “Mom,” I said in warning.
She looked at me innocently. “What?”
Daemon cleared his throat. “No worries. My mom was a philanthropist and my dad was into the oil business.”
My mom picked up on the use of past tense. “Was?”
Daemon turned a paler shade of white when he realized his mistake. His fingers nervously tapped against the table. “They’re taking a break from things.” He looked over at me. “Where’s the restroom?”
“It’s down the hallway and to the left.”
“Thank you.”
My mom’s eyes narrowed with suspicion as he bolted out of the room. Poor Daemon was being put through the ringer but that wasn’t anything. Usually by the end, my mom knew everything about my friends, down to their social security number.
“That boy sure is handsome but there is something off about him,” she remarked.
I waved away her worries with a flick of my hand. “You’re so paranoid.”
“You have to be careful of the good looking ones. They’re usually the murderers and rapists. I saw a report on Dateline about it,” Laura said.
Daemon was a zombie but he wasn’t evil. “Those are two things he is not.”
At that moment, Daemon re-entered the room but didn’t take a seat. His mouth was set into a thin line. “I have to leave. Something came up.”
He had killed two blood hungry zombies last night, but couldn’t face my mom a minute longer. She had ruffled his cool demeanor.
“Is everything ok?” my mom asked.
“Fine. It’s just a small family matter.”
I pushed back my seat and walked over to him. “I’ll show you out.”
“Thank you for dinner. It was delicious,” Daemon said as I ushered him out of the dining room.
When we got outside into the cool night air, his polite exterior cracked and anger showed. “What just happened in there? Your mom is like a bloodhound.”
It was slightly hilarious to me that Daemon had fallen apart under my mom’s relentless questioning. Nonetheless, he clearly didn’t see the humor in it.
I touched his arm. “I’m sorry. I really am, but it wasn’t that bad.”
“Not that bad?! Your mom treated me like I was a suspect in a murder case.”
My mom was intense, there was no denying that, but Daemon was being over-dramatic. “She asked you normal questions most people don’t have a problem answering.”
“But I’m not normal. Don’t you remember? I am a fucking zombie without a soul.”
“Hey, you have more soul than anybody I’ve ever met.”
His features softened. “You don’t know me. You don’t know the things I’ve done to get where I am or what I’ve done in the past.”
“And whose fault is that? How can I put my life in your hands when I have no idea who you truly are? Or why you conveniently ended up in Castor the same time as me? Or how you got out from under the voodoo priest’s thumb? There are a thousand other whys with no answers because you don’t trust me.”
Daemon stepped into my personal bubble and stole the air from my lungs. Warmth flickered in his gaze. “You sound like your mother.”
I playfully smacked his chest while a grin tugged at my lips. “I’m serious.”
“I know you are but some of those questions can wait.”
“Why? You were more than ready to answer them in the janitor’s closet at school.”
“My eagerness to talk to somebody overrode my rational part of my brain. It would have been a mistake to answer those questions. Correction: A huge mistake because then you would have hated me and I really need you to not hate me right now.”
Daemon had a rhythm to the way he talked which was to dance around the truth until you grew exhausted and threw in the towel. “Can’t you just be straight with me?”
“I am being straight with you. Those answers you want me to tell you are not covered in glitter and slapped with a bow. They’re messy, complicated, and will cast me in an unflattering light to say the least.” Irritation knitted his brows together. “Can we just focus on stopping the voodoo priest?”
I huffed out a breath. “I would like nothing more but can you at least answer one question?”
Daemon knew it wasn’t a request. “I am guessing I don’t have a choice, so go ahead.”
“Why did you move to Castor? You could have easily gone somewhere else to get your good deeds in.”
He looked over his shoulder, then back at me. “Do you see another girl about five feet tall who has been cast as the chosen one? Because If I am not mistaken you’re it, baby.”
Rolling my eyes skyward, I crossed my arms over my chest. At least he gave me a tiny piece of the puzzle. “So you moved here for me?”
“You said one question.” He groaned at my steely resolve. “Fine, yes I moved here for you. Happy?”
My brain started to place the pieces together. “If you moved here for me then that means the Priest of Santeria has been following me for awhile. How else would you know where my mom and I moved? But then why is the voodoo priest just now starting to break out the big guns in order to steal my blood?” Deep in thought, I pressed my fingers over my lips and proceeded with the one-sided conversation. “I don’t remember seeing anybody in Los Angeles who was remotely zombie-ish. Then again how can you tell? At first glance, Parker and you both seemed like normal humans.”
“Parker?”
Daemon’s harsh tone snapped me back into reality. I blinked rapidly as the haze cleared. “Yes, Parker. He paid me a visit at the mall today to warn me of my fate. I’m guessing he is one of the voodoo priest’s zombies?” A muscle in Daemon’s jaw twitched. “How do you know him?”
“Know him?” He barked out a harsh laugh. “Parker was the one who tricked me into selling my soul.”
I gaped at Daemon. “Are you kidding me? Parker is the dude who’s responsible for….” I waved my hands around his body. “This?”
His mouth scrunched to the side. “I don’t know if I should be insulted or not.”
I couldn’t believe I had met the person who had fundamentally changed Daemon’
s life. When I’d laid eyes on Parker in the store, it was obvious he was a psychopath.
“So you’re telling me you had to live with him for the past sixty years?” Daemon nodded. “Holy shit. Didn’t you want to kill him?”
“Of course, but it’s not like I had anywhere to go. I was a dead man, literally, who had no family left. The voodoo priest gave me a roof over my head, fed me, and basically took care of me.”
“In exchange for his evil doings?”
Daemon’s mouth pulled into a grim line. “Yes.”
“That sounds like a shitty deal to me,” I muttered underneath my breath.
Shadows of the past haunted his face as he shook his head. “You don’t understand. You will never understand.”
He was right, I don’t and I never will. Daemon had lived in a nightmare the past sixty years. Ripped away from his family at sixteen and forced to do unimaginable things. The porch light cast a glow over his striking features and it all made sense. I had been drawn to Daemon from the first day because we were both survivors who somehow had found the light amongst the darkness.
I wove my fingers through his ice cold ones. Daemon’s eyes locked onto mine. “You’re right. I don’t understand what you went through but I know what it feels like to look in the mirror and not recognize who you are anymore. To want to turn back the clocks to that moment in time where everything was ok again. Normal. When your chest didn’t feel like it was being torn apart as soon as you opened your eyes in the morning.”
Daemon yanked me against him and wrapped his arms around my body. “You do things to me, Sky, that make me feel human again.”
My eyes traveled down to his crotch, causing a laugh to erupt from his throat. “Yes, that but also…” He took my hand and laid it against his chest where his heart should have been. “I swear when I look at you sometimes, I forget I don’t have a pulse.”
My insides melted into a pile of goo. “I never pegged you for a romantic.”
“I’m a lot of things. Stick around long enough and you’ll see.”
“If you keep your promise, I’ll be around longer than you.”
Daemon grinned as he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “You’re immortal too? I had no idea.”
Back in the storage closet when I had asked if he could die like a normal human, he had said yes. Unless he had only said that to ward off any more questions, which was probably the case. The guy hated questions unless they were on his terms.
My eyebrows cinched together in annoyance. “You said you weren’t immortal.”
“Of course I am. You can’t die if you are already dead.”
I untangled myself from his embrace and put some much needed space between us. “So that’s why you act like you do?”
He cocked his head to the side as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. As if busting into vans with guns drawn, ready to face death was normal. “I have always acted like this. The voodoo priest stole my soul, but he didn’t take away my personality.”
“So, you’ve always acted like a white knight?”
Daemon’s expression abruptly turned into a mask of stone. “Yes.”
Whatever I said triggered a painful past memory. What the memory was though was anybody’s guess. Unlike my own walls I had built around myself, his were unbreakable.
I sighed. “My mom is probably wondering what happened to me. I’m going to go back inside.”
As I turned around to head for the door, Daemon grabbed my hand. The plea in his eyes made me stop. I watched an inner war play out over his features until he finally gave up. Shoulders hunched, his eyelashes fanned over his cheeks as he stared at the ground. “You wanted to show me something.”
Of course, the book.
“Yes…can you come back in about two hours? My mom will be asleep then.”
“I can do that. I’ll see you then.”
He walked down the steps when a previous thought occurred to me. “Hey!” He turned around. “How did you know where I lived?”
Daemon’s face was shrouded in darkness but his intentions were pure. “Somebody has to protect you.”
The front door gently shut behind me. I heard Laura and my mom talking in the dining room, their voices a low whisper. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out they were discussing Daemon and me. Not wanting to deal with their barrage of questions, I tiptoed towards the stairs. Frank skittered into the room and started to prance around my legs, barking.
I pressed my finger against my lips. “Shush.” He spun around in a circle as if we were in on a game together. Tail wagging, his barks increased in volume. “Be quiet Frank, please.” Unfortunately, since he didn’t understand English, my request went unnoticed.
“Sky? Is that you?” my mom called out.
I glared at Frank who plopped onto his behind and stared up at me with his tongue lolled to the side. “Now you’re quiet. Thanks for nothing.”
“Sky?” my Mom called out again.
“Yes, mom, it’s me.”
“Are you going to finish your dinner?” It was posed as a question but it wasn’t a request.
“One second.”
I glanced at myself in the mirror. My eyeliner was slightly smudged underneath my lash line. Why didn’t anybody tell me I looked like a raccoon? Taking my thumb, I got rid of the offending makeup and squared my shoulders.
Here goes nothing.
“Hey, what’s up?” I asked as I strolled into the room. Laura and my mom paused mid-conversation and stared at me. They did that a lot. “Is there something you want to talk about?”
My mom gestured to the seat. “Sit. Your soup is getting cold.”
I gave her a weary look. “I have a lot of homework…”
“Sit, Sky.”
See, I knew it wasn’t a request.
My ass landed in the chair and I picked up the spoon next to the bowl. The soup had cooled to room temperature and wasn’t nearly as appetizing. Chunks of vegetable floated in a puddle of congealed broth. I blanched as I pushed the bowl away from me.
My mom cleared her throat. “You didn’t tell me you met any boys except for one and I know for sure I told you to stay away from him.”
It was hard to hide anything from my mom, which was incredibly annoying. Nonetheless, I figured if Daemon kept his mark covered, she wouldn’t be any wiser. Clearly, I was wrong.
As I was about to explain, my mom held up her hand. “I don’t want any excuses. You know what you did wrong.”
Anger boiled in my stomach. My mom had told me Daemon wasn’t to be trusted without a reason why. I was sick of her stupid half assed rules. “No I don’t. If you hadn’t noticed, he was a perfect gentleman when he came over. Besides, by the way you were flirting with him, I would say you agree.”
Her eyes grew wide. “I was not flirting with him. I was being polite. And furthermore, the little lie about his name proves he is not to be trusted.”
“I told him to lie about his name because I wanted you to see who Daemon was but I should have figured you couldn’t look past your own prejudice.”
My mom sputtered as she threw her napkin onto the table in outrage.
Laura, the peacekeeper, spoke calmly. “Both of you need to take a deep breath.” She waited for us to do so. My mom and I inhaled and exhaled. “Good. Now look, Sky, your mom is just worried about you. She doesn’t want you to get hurt.” Laura turned her gaze over to my mom. “And Dee, you can’t blame Sky for hanging out with Daemon. That boy is hot with a capital H.”
My mom threw her hands in the air, exasperated with both Laura and me. “That is not an excuse.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Neither is telling me Daemon is dangerous without any further explanation.”
“If you read the book, I wouldn’t have to tell you anything.”
I was so sick of hearing about the book as if it would solve all my problems. It was freaking 500 hundred pages and would take me months to find the answers I needed. Why couldn’t everybody
just give me an answer?
I threw my napkin on the dining room table. “That doesn’t help me. I’m going to my room.”
“You are not going anywhere,” my mom yelled.
“Yes I am,” I said, scooting back my chair. “There is homework I have to do. Thanks for dinner, Laura.”
Laura gripped my mom’s hand to silence her. “No problem.”
My mom chewed her bottom lip as she watched me walked out of the room. Sadness filled her eyes. Taking the stairs two at a time, I reached my bedroom and closed the door. Leaning against the wooden frame, I slid down to the floor and pulled my knees against my chest. Pity party for one was in full effect. Most teenage girls had to worry about what shirt to wear, or if their hair looked ok. I had to worry about keeping myself alive while also juggling unwanted feelings toward a zombie.
“Ugh,” I groaned. “So not fair.”
I drowned in self-loathing for a full five minutes until I grew disgusted with myself. Getting to my feet, I looked around my bedroom in search of something useful to do. Daemon wouldn’t get here for another two hours but I could get a head start on the book. My mom had placed it on my bed as an obvious hint. I lugged The Darkness over to my desk and set it on the scratched wooden surface. Dust rose off the pages when I opened it. Now the question was where to start. The book didn’t have an index, so I narrowed the information I was looking for and began with why my mom thought Daemon was deceitful. I randomly turned the pages until a title caught my eye. “Voodoo Priest” was scrawled in black ink with a picture of a man in a headdress underneath. Most of the information was already known but two paragraphs down, a line stuck out at me.
The voodoo priest gives his warriors or “zombies” as they are commonly known, a special concoction to heighten their abilities, which in turn makes their eyes glow green.
Everything about the previous night finally clicked into place. The freaks’ un-human like strength and their florescent green eyes were due to a strange brew. Talk about an unfair advantage. Yawning, exhaustion tugged at my eyelids. Coffee was desperately needed, however, going downstairs where my mom and Laura were wasn’t an option. It would ruin my dramatic exit. Since history bored me to death, I flipped to the back and looked over the spells and rituals. Chicken feet, chicken bones, and a head of a chicken were required in a handful of spells. Along with a lock of pubic hair and a human eyeball. Where the hell would you find this stuff? Not at your local grocery store, that’s for sure. For the next two hours, I poured over the book but there wasn’t a single spell or ritual to get rid of the voodoo priest. It was starting to look like a trip to New Orleans was the only option Daemon and I had. Getting up, I padded over to my window and looked out. The street was vacant with Daemon nowhere in sight. He was supposed to be here five minutes ago. I waited for him but an hour later, he still hadn’t shown up. I leaned back against the headboard with the book resting in my lap. I closed my eyes, allowing sleep to take over where a million thoughts once roamed.
The Accidental Kiss Page 10
