“Not a bad choice, but what else?”
“Well, there is always vengeance.” My dad shrugged. “Your reasoning would be your own but I've watched enough kung Fu movies to know what happens when the hero loses a loved one.”
I laughed again, and felt a little better for it. I had almost forgotten that I didn't completely hate my dad. It was easy to forget, considering everything that had happened. I might hold a grudge, but he didn't win the worst father of the year award.
“So, is your vote for raising the army?”
He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “Honestly? I think you ought to go for vengeance.”
CHAPTER TWO
I'd read enough comic books to know exactly how vengeance stories went. A person got angry, they went on a kickboxing rampage, and at the end of it, they regretted everything that they had ever done to get to that last epic battle. Usually that hero had a witty buddy and a centerfold-worthy love interest to keep them going. Me? My buddy was off schmoozing her love interest and my guy? He was dead. No kickboxing rampages for me.
I tried to keep all of those thoughts at bay while I stepped beneath the spray of the first shower I'd had in a week. I had to admit that it felt good. My terrible eating habits and staying in bed had not done wonders for my skin. I used half a bottle of cheap shampoo on my hair in a trio of wash, rinse and repeat. Then I scrubbed myself with a loofah until my skin looked more lobster chic than European pale.
All the while I categorized what I knew, and what I thought.
I had woken up, six and a half days ago, from a near death experience in an evil wizard's coma-induced dreamscape. My father had been there to tell me that Wei was gone, and so was Zane, his vampire brother. There was a good chance that my half-sister, Connie had something to do with it. I don't remember the details, I was pretty much in shock when he told me, but I was piecing it together. Over the next few days I had just lost my energy until I crawled into bed, sure that I wasn't going to get out of it ever again.
The Order had hurt Wei. I was sure of it. The question was, what was I going to do about it?
Kickboxing rampage, that's what. Or, you know, whatever the magical equivalent was. I was going to gear up, and kick in some doors, take some names, and chew bubble gum...or whatever the cliché was. I was going to hurt whoever had taken Wei from me.
I wasn't even sure what it was about him that I liked so much. I certainly had more in common with Dmitri, but there were just some things that I couldn't forgive and being cornered and made to fear for my life in the sanctuary of a library was definitely one of them. But there was something about Wei. He was always so cool, so calm and composed and collected...until we got alone. Then I got to see this secret side of him, this person who could kiss with enough oomph to knock my proverbial socks off, and who could smile and laugh. That was my Wei. It made it somehow more special that only I knew that part of him. Greedy? Maybe. But if I was supposed to have someone's prophecy spawn I was allowed to be greedy about who I got to have it with.
The tears were in my eyes before I even knew it.
I wasn't going to have that little spawn, was I? I wasn't going to give birth to magic. I wasn't sure why that made me so sad. I'd never really been married to the idea in the first place. But now that it wasn't even an option. I was pretty torn up about it.
I slid to the floor and let myself cry while the water pounded down around me. It wasn't just crying. It was a full-on sob. The kind where I couldn't breathe, where I couldn't think, all I could do was feel the tears on my cheeks, hot even with the water on. My head felt dizzy and the food that I'd just barely managed to eat was threatening to come up. It was a hard few minutes before the water finally turned cold enough that I could think again. Then I felt better, more clear headed, and more sure of myself.
I could do this. I had to do this.
When I pulled on a fresh pair of jeans and a clean t-shirt I was feeling a little bit better. Well enough to step out of the bedroom that had been my own personal fortress of solitude and into the little living room that was half cluttered with my grandmother's things, and half cluttered with mine. On no less than three separate occasions I had tried to clear out her stuff, the most recent of which had been just moments after I had heard that Wei was dead, and for all of those she'd been interrupted by her own feelings or an emergency, sometimes both. One day this place would be hers, she'd fought hard enough for it, right? Right.
My dad was standing at the kitchen sink, rinsing out the skillet he had used for the bacon. He didn't use soap, not on real cast iron. Just plenty of hot water to the grease before plopping it down on a burner to warm the water.
“And so she emerges,” my father said, not bothering to look over his shoulder, “what's the plan?”
I paused, standing in the center of the living room. The house wasn't all that big. It was one long rectangle with a bedroom on either side. A kitchen and a living room that had nothing but a little table separating one space from the other. Even so I wasn't sure, from this distance, if my father was kidding or not.
In all of my entire life my dad had never asked me what my plan was. He hadn't even asked me about college aspirations or my career of choice. He'd just carted me around from one place to another and made the vast majority of my decisions for me.
“Okay pod person, who are you and what have you done with my father?”
He flicked the heat off the cast iron skillet and turned to look at me. “What?”
“My dad tells me what to do, he doesn't ask me what I want. That's pretty much been the theme of my entire existence up until very, very recently. Now you come in here, being all nice and stuff. You make me my favorite food, you share some of your childhood drama, and you ask me what my plan is? Either you aren't my dad or you are under some kind of spell.”
He gave me a long look that I didn't fully understand. I caught some of the emotions in his eyes, sadness, frustration, and something else I couldn't name. Rather than answer me he plucked up a dish towel and began to dry his hands. Then, with all the careful perfection that I knew my father to have, he placed it right back where it was when he had picked it up, right down to the folds.
“There is a chance I may have made a mistake in being the dictator of your life.”
Definitely a pod person. My dad wasn't one for apologies either.
“What alternate reality have I stumbled into?” I held my hands out in either direction.
His smile didn't quite reach his eyes, but he took a seat at the dining table and invited me to sit across from him. I hesitated. If my dad really was a pod person, or some evil twin, I didn't really want to know. I did not have the energy to deal with that crisis right this moment. I sat down anyway.
“Lorena, I did everything that I did in order to keep you away from your grandmother, your mother, and the prophecy. Despite all of that. the very first thing you do as an adult is walk headlong into all three. I'm a witch, I should have known better than to keep you from your destiny.”
“Yeah, about that. How did I never know you were a witch? What kind of witch are you? Have you been practicing all these years and I just never knew it? I mean, what's the deal here?” The questions spilled out of my mouth in a fast jumble. I hadn't really known how curious I was until they were right there in front of me.
This time the smile did reach his eyes. It was a great big proud smile too. “I am a mathemagician.”
Yeah, okay, never mind. This was definitely my dad. No one on the face of the earth could have had something as boring as 'mathemagician' as their title but my very own father.
“A what, now?”
His grin warmed a few degrees. “I use math to cast spells.”
“Are you serious?”
He shrugged, looking just the tiniest bit smug. “It's so weird to you? You wouldn't have any issue with me saying I was a cauldron witch, which is basically a chemist, or an ink witch, which is basically a literature witch. Math can't be magical?”
“For me, equations take place of my spell work. Every number has a meaning,” he explained, “from 0, which is the number of infinity or infinite choices, to the number nine, which is new paths or binding depending on what's around it. Seven is luck and change, five is...well you get the idea. Keep in mind these are gross oversimplifications to something that is very complex.”
“Yeah, okay, sure,” I said, pretty sure I was following along. “So, like...alright, you are going to have to explain this to me a little bit better.”
His eyes lit up with a true enthusiasm I had rarely ever seen from my dad outside of a sweater vest sale. He grabbed a piece of scratch paper. “It's all about equations. Some spells are very, very simple. Let's do a divination. Now, the number four is considered the number of psychic energy, so that's our goal.”
He wrote the number four towards the right side of the paper.
“Now, tell me what you want to know.”
Well, to be honest, there was only one thing that was weighing on my mind. “How did Wei die?”
My dad froze, mechanical pencil still in his hand. “Lorena, I-”
“Can you do it?” I asked.
His mouth formed a little line. Some of the enthusiasm had crept out of his eyes. I felt a little guilty about that, but not nearly guilty enough to take it back. Finally, he nodded his head. “Yes, I can.”
“Then that's what I want to know.”
He took a deep breath and turned his eyes back to the paper. “That's a little more difficult than what the weather might be like tomorrow. But okay. Let's see. I'll need Wei's number.”
“His what?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me. I swear I was part cat.
“Everyone has a number that is specific to them. The most rudimentary way of discovering a number is by adding the numbers of someone’s birthday together. Like, if someone was born on May 7th in the year two thousand you would add five, for the fifth month, the seventh, for the seventh day of that month, and two, because when you add the numbers in the year two thousand you just come up with two. And you keep adding your answers together until you come up with a single digit number. In our case here, we'd get fourteen from adding five, seven, and two. And when we had one and four together we get five, which would be that person's number.” My father jotted down each equation as he said it, and then circled the number five at the very end.
I gave him a dumb look. “Rudimentary, right.”
He shot me a smirk, his eyes lighting up with even more enthusiasm. “Well yes. To be honest, a birthday only means so much, especially where a vampire is concerned. Because they would also have a rebirthday. A better number would be to take the day they were born, the day they died and discover a number based off of those two. And rather than keeping that number to a single digit you would add things together until it was a number between one and twenty-two, since that is the number of numeric mastery.”
I had no clue what numeric mastery was, and I thought asking my dad might send him on another tangent from which there could be no escape.
“Okay, but we don't have either one of those dates.”
He smiled at me. “We don't need them. Like I said, those are only the basics. People are more than a single number, or a single life path, or whatever you feel like calling it. Those simple numbers are just the basics. We can create a number based off of what we know of him, to be a signifier for him in the mathematical spell.”
I nodded, understanding that at least a little bit. “Okay, how do we do that?”
“You tell me three things about him, three core pieces of his personality, and we use the number associated with each. Then, as stated before. We add the numbers together until they are between zero and 22. Now, keep in mind that this has to be something very personal. Not just a good smile or long hair. You have to tell me three things about Wei that are personal, that make up what drives him. In this way, we can create a soul number. Do you know him well enough for that?”
I had to think about that. Did I? I'd like to think I knew him well. I did fancy myself in love with the vampire, after all. But did I know him well enough to help my dad make a soul number? Here's hoping.
“He's big into self-perfection. He wants to be strong, inside and out.”
My dad nodded. “the number nine correlates with achievement of mind, body, and soul.” He jotted that down.
I lapsed into another silence. Wei was far more than a martial arts master looking for perfection of self. He was haunted by his own downfall. He had a lot of misgivings about me and him making a child since he felt like he kind of screwed up with his first wife and kid. To be fair, he kind of did, but he had been young and it wasn't really his fault that she had gone off the deep end...literally.
“Guilt,” I finally said. After all it was guilt that drove him into the arms of Vlad the Impaler, father and creator of all...what was it...eleven vampires that walked the earth? The knowledge of that made a knot in my stomach. There were only twelve vampires in the entire world, if you included Vlad. There should have been ten times that. But magic was disappearing, slowly evaporating.
All of the shapeshifters, wolf, bear, and otherwise, created a single clan somewhere in the British Isles, and witches, according to Marquessa, were being born weaker and weaker than the generations before. The only people who didn't seem to be suffering, or at least weren't showing that they were suffering, was the Order of the Loyal Hermit. The creepy cult that my mom and sister belonged to were perfectly okay with the magic getting smaller because they thought that it should only belong to a few anyway. I couldn't bring myself to agree.
My father wrote down the number one next to the number nine. “One more.”
I looked down at my lap and said the one word that had been playing over and over again in my head. “Passionate.”
My father gave me a look. “Lorena, are you sure? I've met Wei before and...”
I looked up at him now, fixing my eyes with his. I knew Wei. I knew him better than anyone. When he was just with me, when he could be himself without all of those carefully crafted walls, he was beyond passionate. “I'm positive.”
My father wrote down the number six. “Okay, we have nine, plus one, plus six. That creates the magical number of sixteen.”
I nodded. “So that's less than twenty-two. So now what?”
He placed the number twenty-two towards the left side of the paper, a few spaces away from the number four. I was pretty sure just writing down those two numbers couldn't be all of it. Shock and amazement, I was right.
“Here's where mathemagics gets tricky. We need to get from our soul number here.” He used the tip of the pencil to point to the number twenty-two. “And get to the number four, the number for divination. Now, the easiest way is to subtract the number eighteen. But that doesn't work.”
“Why?”
“Because the spell uses all the numbers, not just the soul number and the initiate number. The number eighteen, magically speaking, has to do with creative material gain. If we were trying to divine the best way for Wei to get money through his artistic endeavors we'd be set.”
God, I hated math. I palmed my chin in both of my hands and felt like I was back in middle school again, staring at Bret Polowski's hair, wondering if the curls were real or if he used a curling iron while Mrs. Haberdasher droned on and on about prime numbers.
“So, what do we do?” I asked.
“We have to get creative. We want to know about the means of his death, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“The number for death is seven.”
I frowned. “Wait, I thought seven was about luck?”
He nodded and gave me a smile I might have called proud if it had been on anyone's face but my father's. I had never known him to be proud of me for anything. “It is, but it's also the num
ber for change, and there is no greater change than that from life to death.”
He wrote down the number seven next to the sixteen. “Now, to make it more difficult, we have to add these two.” He jotted down an addition sign between the sixteen and the seven.
“Because...we are trying to...figure out how? Not...keep him from death?” I hoped.
He gave me that proud smile again. I tried to ignore the happy hum in my chest. I totally didn't need my father's approval for anything. I swear. “That's it exactly. You sure you are a necromancer?”
House Of Vampires 3 (The Lorena Quinn Trilogy) Page 2
