The idea of that made me feel good, but it also sent a renewed pang of loneliness through me. It took all I could do not to chuckle bitterly. I killed him, bashed his head in with a stone, and here I was—centuries on top of centuries later missing him. I didn’t have the right to do that.
“I promise you,” I said, biting my lip and moving closer to the detective. “If I tell Merry the truth about Amber, then she’ll fall apart. If she falls apart, then I’ll be forced to try and make it better for her.” I shook my head. “I can’t promise to do that right now.”
Andy glared at me, his face falling flat as the truth of what I meant dawned on him. “Are you telling me you’re going to kill that girl?” He took a deep breath. “You know I can’t let you do that.”
“Andy,” I started slowly, a flash of intensity darting quickly through my eyes. “I hate to pull rank on you right now, but you’re not in a position to be able to stop me.” I put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it in hopes of letting him know I was still on his side. “But no. I’m not saying I’m going to kill that little girl. I wouldn’t do that. There are a lot of little girls out there though, Andy. Billions and billions of little girls and they all deserve to live. If I saw that Amber was posing a threat to each and every one of them, I might find myself doing something drastic, but she’s not going to do that as a child. She’d have to be grown up for that and, luckily for us, I think we caught her in time to change her path. If we tell Merry though, if we lay everything out in front of her like that, she’s going to want to take her away. I don’t blame her for that. I’d do anything to save my family.” I squeezed his shoulder again. “I hope you know that, but if I’m going to be able to change this little girl’s future, I need to play an active role in her present. I want to make the worst case scenario unnecessary. I want to fix this problem before it grows out of control. I need you to help me do that though. I can’t have your conscience and that pesky heart of gold beating in your chest getting the better of you. If you don’t keep this secret too, it won’t matter if I do or not. Can you do that for me, Andy? Can you do it for the whole world?”
Just then, the door opened back up. Merry walked back through, holding Amber’s hand and blowing a tuft of hair out of her eyes. “I really appreciate you calling me,” she said. “Even if it does mean I’m going to miss out on a shift at the diner.” She cocked her head. “And let me tell you, that was a much-needed shift.”
“If you need money,” I started instinctively.
“Stop,” she said. “I’m not taking handouts from you or from anybody else. I can’t have my daughter thinking every time she gets in trouble there’s going to be some man there to fix things.”
I shrugged, a bit of a smile dancing across my lips. “What if there is? It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
“You’re fresh,” she answered, and my heart did that jumping thing it had started to do whenever Merry was around. “That’s not what I was talking about though. If you need some extra cash, I could definitely use another set of hands around here. I mean, look at this place. I’ve been here almost no time at all, and already the place has nearly burned down.”
“That is true,” she answered. “You seem to have a knack for attracting trouble.”
“Not just trouble,” I said. There goes my heart again.
“Alright,” she conceded. “But only if you need me.”
I smiled in response.
Merry’s eyes moved over to Andy and settled on him. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked. “You look like you’ve been holding up the world with one hand.”
I turned to Andy, still unsure of what he was going to say. Would he tell her what we had been talking about, or would he keep quiet and allow things to play out the way they needed to.
“Nothing,” he said, swallowing hard and looking over at me. “There’s nothing wrong at all.”
5
I pushed through the books in my case, sighing hard and scanning the spines for something that might catch my eye. A few hours had passed since everyone had cleared out of this albatross of an office and I was hard at work trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
Andy had gone back to his office as well, promising to let me know as soon as the girl who’d turned herself into a life-sized s’more at the edge of my desk was identified. That wasn’t the most pressing of my issues though. Sure, the girl had been sent here by someone, coerced into trying to kill the unkillable, but she was already dead, and the person who sent her obviously didn’t have the stones to take me on themselves. Still, on a different day, this might have taken top billing in the list of things that concerned me. This wasn’t a different day though. This was the day I’d found Amber routing around through my bookcase, looking for something specific while under the thrall of a disembodied voice.
So yeah, that came first.
None of the books seemed even remotely relevant. Age old copies of fiction I’d read or underground text books about some of the supernatural creatures I’d clashed with the last one hundred thousand years or so.
That wasn’t what she was after though. Amber said the guy whispering in her ear wanted me to remember something I’d forgotten. There was nothing in any of these books I didn’t know backwards and forwards.
None of this made any sense.
A light knock came on the door to the backroom and my body tensed. Spinning around, I reached for an enchanted switchblade I’d taken to keeping in my back pocket and pulled it out, flicking my wrist to eject the blade.
I’d gotten it about thirty years ago after I helped expel a demon from a sweet little girl in a Malaysian village. They didn’t have money or much of anything else, but what they did have a was a mystic woman who promised to imbue this thing with enough energy to cut through anything. I had lost it ages ago though and only took to searching after I saw what I was up against with my mother and the impending End of Days.
Turned out it was in a shipping box I’d left in the storage building when I moved down here. It was strange. I figured I’d have kept up with something as dangerous as this but, if my long life had taught me anything, it’s that magical artifacts are sort of like socks. You just can’t keep up with them.
I held the blade in front of me, imagining what sort of horror might come through the door. A witch had just gone up in flames in front of me earlier in the day, so it only seemed right that a vampire or werewolf would be next. Maybe a mermaid would come sliding through the door, dragging slime and moisture behind her. Then again, why would any of those things knock instead of just bursting through to try and catch me off guard?
I pulled the door open quickly to face my opponent, blade at the ready and fire in my eyes. I wouldn’t be so merciful this time. If whoever this was came from the same person who sent that ill-fated girl to me earlier, I was going to find out who was pulling their strings. I was going to see if it was the same person whispering in Amber’s ear.
The door swung open and—as I pushed myself forward—I was met by a less than threatening face.
“Don’t stab me!” Merry said, throwing her hands up and backing away.
I pulled the knife down quickly, my heart racing not at the thought of a fight but at how close I had just come to stabbing a woman I cared about. If even the tip of this thing had touched her, it would have likely split her in two. The idea of that sent shivers down my spine.
“Why would you sneak up on me like that?” I asked, transferring my fear into agitation.
“I didn’t. I knocked,” she said, trying to remain calm.
Well, she did have a point there.
“How did—how did you even get in here?” I asked, stuffing the sheathed blade back into my pocket.
“I walked. The door wasn’t locked,” she answered.
“The door doesn’t need to be locked. I put the protective runes up,” I said, sighing and moving back toward my books. “Not that they seem to do any good. I knew I shouldn’t have hired a witch fro
m Craigslist.” Getting back into my books, I spoke again. “What are you doing here?”
“I didn’t know I needed a reason to see you,” she said, and I could feel here settle next to me. The scent of her wafted up toward me, moonlight and sugar. From the corner of my eye, I watched her straighten up my bookcase, putting back what I had so carelessly strewn around.
“You don’t,” I answered, putting a hand on the shelf, but still not turning to her. “But you have one all the same, don’t you? I know you, Merry. You spent a couple of hours today with no idea where your daughter was. You wouldn’t leave her again without a good reason.”
“You’re smarter than you look,” she mused.
“What do I look like?” I asked, turning toward her and looking her right in those dark eyes.
She smiled at me, a hard reaching out and rubbing the spot on my face where my mark sat. “Like if Edward Cullen decided face tattoos were in now.”
“You can still see it?” I asked, alluding to my otherwise mystically hidden mark and allowing her fingers to continue to rub calming circles on my cheek.
“It’s a remnant of the spell, I guess,” she shrugged, biting her bottom lip. “I thought it would go away after you did away with the lunar coven, but I’m kind of glad it didn’t. I like the mark. It makes you look distinguished.”
“It makes me look doomed,” I said, flinching and turning away, letting her hand fall to her side. I couldn’t allow this to happen. I had been in this situation countless times before. It always ended with the girl realizing I wasn’t worth the trouble and leaving with her heart broken, or with me watching her grow old and wither away in front of me. Either way, it wasn’t as happy an ending as I’d have wanted. “Why are you here?” I asked.
She shuffled back from me just a little as she responded. “You lied to me.”
Again, my heart sped up. Did Merry know the truth somehow? Had she come across the knowledge of who her daughter might one day become?
“Did I?” I asked, looking back at her a little more nervously than I’d have cared to admit.
“Amber told me about the voice. She told me something is speaking to her, and she told me that she told you about it,” Merry said, pursing her lips together. “Now, I understand that you don’t owe me anything, and Amber and I would both probably be dead if not for you, but when it comes to my daughter-”
“I should have told you,” I answered, cutting her off in midsentence.
She blinked hard, obviously surprised that I caved so easily. “You’re—you’re damn right you should have,” she stammered.
“And I was going to. I just wanted to know what we were up against first.” That was partially true. What I wasn’t telling Merry (what I would hopefully never have to tell her) was that I was afraid this might be some early indicator of who or what Amber might soon become.
“And?” she asked, slowly moving toward me again.
“And I’m still looking,” I responded. Running a hand through my red hair, I explained. “When I found Amber, she was looking through this bookshelf. She said the voice told her she needed to find something and give it to me, to remind me of something I’d forgotten.”
“I don’t understand,” Merry admitted, giving the bookshelf a brand new once over. “If you have the books—if they’re here, how could you have forgotten about them?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “That’s what makes it so strange.”
“Did she say anything else? Did she mention if the voice gave her a name?”
“She said it was a man,” I answered. “Which doesn’t narrow it down much. I have more than a few enemies of either gender.”
“And now they’re using my daughter to get to you,” she said, pulling out a book and going through the pages.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said, a pang of guilt shooting through me.
“I wasn’t blaming you,” she assured me, tearing her eyes from the pages to meet my glance.
“Maybe you should,” I said, sighing loudly. “This sort of thing tends to follow me.”
“You don’t blame the sun for the shadows,’ she answered. “If you did, you’d end up spending all your time in the dark.” She shook her head, turning her attention back to the book in her hands. “besides, if no for you, then we’d both have—1918?”
“What?” I asked, arching my brows at her.
“This book, The Velveteen Rabbit,” she said, looking up at me. “This is an original copy, right?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “Margie gave it to me as an early Christmas present one year.”
“Margie as in Margery Williams? As in, the author of the book?” She grimaced. “Your life has been too full. Do you know that?”
“Focus,” I said, motioning back to the text in her hands.
“It’s just, this says the publication date was 1918,” she answered. “My friend’s mother loved this book. She had an original copy too, and she read it to us constantly as kids. She even read the title page, and I’m pretty sure the Velveteen Rabbit wasn’t published anywhere until 1922. This must be a misprint.”
“No,” I said, swallowing hard and realizing what was going on. “This isn’t my book. This is a forgery and a sloppy illusion job at that. This has to be what Amber was looking for. Someone wanted to hide the true contents of this book from me, and I’m going to find out why.”
6
“You know, you don’t have to be here for this,” I said, looking back at Merry as I crossed down into the alleyway. I could see nervousness had begun to turn down the edges of her mouth and I wanted to curtail that as quickly as possible. She had been through enough since meeting me and, if what I gleamed from her daughter was even close to accurate, she might have to go through a whole lot more before this dance ended. The least I could do was save her the unnecessary troubles.
As it turned out, she didn’t view her sensibilities with the same kind of delicate nature.
“The hell I don’t,” she said. Her voice was steady and louder than it had any reason being given how close we were to each other. Still, I couldn’t help but notice the fact that she was staying a few feet behind me. “Something is trying to communicate with my daughter. It’s trying to turn her into a thief, and who knows what else it’ll tell her to do if we don’t get to the bottom of it?” She took a deep breath and as if to quell the last of my suspicions, she bridged the gap between us. “I need to see this through.”
“I could just see it through for the both of us,” I suggested, shrugging and staring at her. Here, in the southern moonlight, Merry looked even more beautiful than usual. Her dark hair hung at her across her shoulders, and her skin was practically radiant. I could have gotten lost in it if only I’d allow myself to. I knew better though. There was work to do and, even if there wasn’t, Merry wanted a normal life for her daughter.
While the road to normal for a half-gypsy girl who might very well bring about the end of the world would probably be a long one, it would be a fruitless one if I was anywhere around.
I didn’t bring peace to people in the long run, and I sure as hell didn’t bring normality. She might need me to now, to keep her safe and help her make sense of the craziness that surrounded her, but one day she might not. When that day came, I didn’t want her to convince herself she had a reason to stick around, even if that reason was me.
“Not a chance. I’m not leaving my problems in someone else’s hand, at least not entirely. I did that when I was young, and I’m not about to teach my daughter it’s the right thing to do,” Merry answered, clearing her throat and looking past me toward the space where the alleyway spilled back out onto River Street. “Is this where the door is or something?”
I turned, looking out into the open space myself and feeling the pull of the War Room. The mystical bar which served as a hot spot for Savannah’s supernatural underworld moved around on the daily. You could only find it if you were a shade or two different than a run of the mill human. While I had been c
alled many things over the centuries—murderer, scourge of humanity, ‘you ginger waste of space’—run of the mill had never been among them.
As such, I could feel the War Room. It called to me in a way it never would for Merry and, as such, I knew the door to the place was right in front of us.
“I need you to take my hand,” I said, looking back at her. “You won’t be able to enter unless we’re touching.”
She grabbed my palm almost before I even extended it, wrapping her fingers around my hand and squeezing tightly.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said, taking the speed of the action to mean she wasn’t as confident as she might have wanted me to thinks he was.
She nodded. “So long as Amber is okay at the end of this, I don’t care what else happens.”
“Right,” I said, looking down at the pavement. “I just want to prepare you for what you’re going to see in there.”
She shook her head, cutting me off. “I get it, Cal. Vampires, witches, werewolves, flying nuns. I understand what I’m walking into. It’s a melting pot of all the things that used to give me nightmares.”
“One,” I said, smiling. “There was one flying nun throughout all of history, and she didn’t look anything like Sally Field.”
“I was kidnapped by witches, chased by werewolves, and almost murdered by a shadow monster hiding in the dressing room of a Baby Gap. I know the stakes are high and the world doesn’t look the way I thought it did.” She nodded firmly. I can handle it.”
She had a point. While she hadn’t grown up with this and she obviously didn’t have the same amount of experience as I did, she wasn’t exactly new. She had dealt with the Lunar coven before we’d met. Hell, she’d even managed to fool me long enough about her intentions to kidnap me. Though, to be fair, that may have had more to do with the neckline of the dress she’d worn that night than anything else.
Still, she had come with me this far, and I had no business treating her like she didn’t belong now. The folks inside would do that for me soon enough.
Curse of Cain (Immortal Mercenary Book 2) Page 3
