‘Oh, that is quite alright,’ he said. ‘Please, sit.’
Martha took an empty chair next to her sister, whose hand she can gently gave a squeeze, silently asking her if she was alright. Amanda nodded and smiled, mouthing a quiet thank-you in response that made Martha feel like she had just saved the whole wide world. Parker sat between her and Olivia, who had taken her father’s right hand side. Walsh occupied the seat between his boss and his girlfriend, the only person in the entire restaurant to be wearing jeans and a cartoon t-shirt. This one had a group picture of Mickey Mouse and his male Disney compatriots with ‘The IN Crowd’ written in an arch over their heads. Quite fitting.
A waiter came by almost instantly to take their order, having apparently waited so long for the remainder of the party to arrive that he was chomping at the bit to do his job and earn some tips. Swayed by Olivia’s not so subtle encouragement, Martha ordered the Chicken Scarpariello. Parker seemed to be a little bit disturbed by how well the two of them had been getting along since Martha killed the demon. But then he went ahead and ordered a dish called Filetto Alla Senape, which was essentially fillet steak, at an Italian restaurant so she did not feel like she was the one who had committed some sort of mortal sin.
Once they were left alone, with drinks and everything they could possibly desire, Peter Maxwell opened up conversation by formally offering Amanda the best wishes of the MPIA team and welcoming Martha back to Marytown, eventually admitting, ‘I have to confess, Miss Valentine, that I had a bit of an ulterior motive for bringing you together with everybody tonight.’
Martha had expected as much. Instead of saying so however, she asked, ‘Really?’
‘As I’m sure you are painfully aware, Marytown is not like other places,’ he said. ‘It has a history that predates the construction of the town that deals with heavy occult leanings but it is more than that. The problem runs deeper than mere ancient history and we, at MPIA, endeavour to maintain the balance that hangs on a daily knife edge. We do our best to control and prevent paranormal threats from affecting the lives of normal civilians who live here.’
‘You seem to be doing a very good job,’ she honestly complemented. ‘I’m impressed.’
‘Thank-you,’ he cordially replied. ‘But it is not easy. I set MPIA up thirty years ago when I discovered the reason why the town is as troubled as it is. I think you know what I refer to.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, keeping a very straight face. ‘I’m not sure that I do.’
‘Miss Valentine… Martha,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to play coy with me. The reason that I possess the knowledge that I do, is because I am acquainted with your father.’
‘Were,’ she corrected. ‘My father is dead. That’s why we’re all here.’
‘I refer to your real father,’ he smiled at her response. ‘To Gadriel.’
Of all the bombshells that had fallen since she returned to Marytown that was the one she had expected the least. Martha looked down, partly because she did not know how to handle the surprise in the eyes of her sister and oldest friend and partly wondering if it Peter Maxwell was trying to bluff her into letting something slip but she knew with a clarity that she could not deny that her real father’s name was not one that the average person would come across easily.
‘Okay,’ she hedged. ‘Say that I believe that you are somehow acquainted with Gadriel as you claim. What does that have to do with me, Marytown or with MPIA?’
Maxwell smiled as if he had not expected her to simply hold up her hands and surrender anything that she might have known or not be telling. One thing that she was beginning to learn was that Peter Maxwell was a very shrewd man. Dinner with him was apparently like taking part in a game of chess with a master that had been born with a multitude of strategies in his mind.
He asked, ‘Have you ever heard of a place called Blackthorn Rose?’
‘It’s a private school, just outside of Blackthorn.’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘It’s also the estate in which Edward Blackthorn resided with his family. I attended Blackthorn Rose myself. The story of the Blackthorns utterly fascinated me. I never understood how such a prosperous family with an inspiring legacy vanished so suddenly. I spent many years devoting myself to the mystery, studied everything that I could find on them but some things didn’t add up for me at all. I could almost see the lies, hiding between the truths but I could not quite put my finger on what they were.’
‘That sounds really frustrating.’
‘Fortunately, for me, I eventually found something. A journal that was written by a maid that served the family from the days of Arthur Blackthorn right up until the creation of this town and beyond. She spent her entire life, serving the family. She was loyal and very observant.’
‘What did the diary say?’ Martha asked, genuinely fascinated.
‘Too much to go into for one evening,’ he told her. ‘But it did lead me down some fresh avenues of enquiry. I thought that I was about to stumble across the truth when a strange man approached me, asking me about my interest in the Blackthorns and offering me a chance to learn what really happened to them. I was dubious but I could not pass the opportunity up.’
Martha offered the assumption, ‘And that man was Gadriel.’
‘No,’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘It was not. The man that accosted me was a servante, a human that has been enslaved to a demon and only cares about doing their master’s bidding.’
‘You fell into a trap,’ she said.
‘I did,’ he admitted, humbly. ‘And the servante hurt me very badly for it. I believe that it would have even killed me had I not managed to eventually escape.’
Olivia reached over and held her father’s hand even though he did not seem to need comforting. The lack of shock in her and most of the other dinner guest’s eyes told Martha that they had heard this tale before. Only her sister had not and the sadness in Amanda’s copper eyes was palpable, her own recent life being so deeply affected by demon kind.
‘After my ordeal, I was clearly very wary,’ Maxwell continued. ‘I did not know if I should persist with my studies or not but if I can be honest, I feared the repercussions if I did.’
‘That’s understandable,’ Martha said, her own terrible ordeal had made her feel the same.
‘I was all but ready to give it up. But then… Then I met your father.’
‘You met Gadriel?’ she asked, surprised.
‘I did.’ Maxwell nodded. ‘He visited Marytown a fair bit during that period of time because there was a young woman who he had developed an interest in.’
The implication in the cadence of his voice was not lost upon Martha. She knew precisely who Gadriel had crept into Marytown to see during those years because that young woman had gone on to give her love and support and ice cream whenever she was hurting. Acknowledging this, she simply replied, ‘Yes, there was.’
‘He told me that he was not supposed to be there,’ Maxwell continued, ‘Explained the reasons why. He also told me that he knew what I had gone though and he respected what I was trying to achieve by uncovering the secrets of Marytown’s dark history. Then, with absolutely no attempts to make me trust him, he told me the truth that I had been seeking. He told me everything.’
‘So it seems,’ Martha said, though she was unsure why the male she knew by that name would do such a thing.
‘Gadriel knew that he would not be able stay in Marytown for any extended period of time, but he had a personal attachment that made him keep returning. It wasn’t until over a year after we’d first met that he confided in me what that was.’ The man paused, probably for effect. ‘There was a child. His child. He had intended for both the woman that he loved and his baby to leave with him when the time was right but something had happened that he could never have foreseen. Did it not, Miss Valentine?’
‘It did,’ she confirmed. Because he seemed to be waiting for her to elaborate, she added, ‘The child was a girl.’
It wa
s Amanda who asked, ‘Why would that matter?’
Martha gazed at her sister, seeing that she was enraptured by the story that was being told because she too understood all of the implications and own her personal connection to them. Martha reached out and took her hand once more and tried to explain, ‘If the child had been male, then Gadriel could have taken it and the woman that he loved to live with him and his kind at a place called The Mount. It would have been expected, part of their custom. There, the child would have been trained from birth to fight demons and their mother would be revered for her contribution to the race.’
The same look crossed Amanda’s face as she was certain had crossed her own when she discovered this. Confusion, unhappiness. Martha gave her hand a small squeeze and continued. ‘That the child was born a girl was unprecedented. There had never been a female nephilim before and the presence of one, born in a place where Gadriel was not supposed to have been, was living, breathing evidence that he had broken a treaty that had been put in place to prevent the war from spilling over into the area… I was a metaphorical smoking gun, Amanda. He denounced my birth because it would have caused the demons to attack the town if he had acknowledged me as his child. He simply left me, Gale and Marytown behind. For what should have been forever.’
After what seemed like a very long minute, her sister looked down at the table and simply said, ‘Oh.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Martha told her genuinely. ‘This is not how I wanted you to find out about that.’
‘Is that why you left?’ Amanda asked, astutely. ‘You left to go and… be with your real family?’
‘You are my real family,’ Martha assured her, looking her directly into her emotion-filled eyes. ‘You and Gale… and even your Dad. I didn’t have much of a choice to leave when I did and I did not intend to leave you all behind. But, as you may have gathered, my presence in Marytown was a problem. Even after Gadriel denounced me. Eventually it became known who I was, and some very bad people came after me to prove my heritage. I had to leave… And then I had to stay gone.’
‘But, you did come back,’ her little sister pointed out. ‘You came back…. Because of me.’
‘Of course I did,’ she said, softly. ‘And I would do it a million times over. Please don’t be upset about this, Amanda. It changes nothing. You’re my sister and I am yours. That’s it.’
After another long moment, she nodded and said, ‘Okay. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make this all about me. This is a lot to take in.’
It was Peter Maxwell who stepped back in to assure her, ‘You have no reason to apologise, Miss Ford.’
Martha turned her attention back to him, wanting to understand what the point of his story had been. She could not deny that she was feeling a little bit less sociable now that he had, however inadvertently, upset her sister. She wanted him to get to his point, so she could decide whether not she would actually be staying to eat her meal. Speaking very directly, she said, ‘I assume that you have a reason for bringing Gadriel up. Can we hurry up and get to it now, please?’
‘I apologise,’ he said, bowing his head enough to make Martha believe that he had not intended to cause any upset. ‘The reason that I wished to talk to you about my experience with your father was because of how our physical meetings ended. The last time that I saw him, he made me an offer. He told me that, should I wish to continue to investigate the demons and other monsters that were attracted to the town, then he would grant me his protection in exchange for information.’
‘You’re a spy,’ Martha realised, unable to mask her impressed surprise.
‘Of a sort,’ he admitted, a certain amount of pride settling into his broad shoulders. ‘As Gadriel and his kind were not supposed to enter Marytown, he enlisted my help to keep an eye on things for him. He was the main reason that I formed the Marytown Paranormal Investigation Agency and for thirty years, I have repaid his kindness with loyalty.’
‘I’m… I really don’t know what to say to all of that.’
‘There is no need for you to comment on the past,’ he said, waving it all away with a waft of his hand as if it were all that simple. ‘The reason that I wanted to meet with you tonight is to make you an offer. I have no idea whether or not you were planning on remaining in Marytown now that your family is safe but I have heard rumblings that some of your friends have moved into the area and are planning to stay nearby..?’
Maxwell was hedging and Martha fought the urge to glare at Parker because in her mind, he was one of the only people that they had in common that could have shared the information about Stefan and his brothers retaking the border. If it had come from higher powers, then she would forgive him but right then, she was not prepared to make that judgement call.
To Maxwell, she said, ‘I don’t feel comfortable discussing that.’
‘Of course,’ he nodded. ‘Regardless, my offer remains the same. You have shown my best investigators that you are a forced to be reckoned with, Martha Valentine. Each one of them has come to me, of their own accords, over the past few days and told me that they think you would be an undeniable asset to the MPIA team and I’m inclined to agree.’
‘I’m flattered,’ she said, gazing around the table at all of the faces there. It was so very overwhelming to think that they believed her to be worthy of working alongside them when they were all so incredibly talented in their own ways. ‘Really, truly, I am.’
It was Parker that asked. ‘But?’
‘I don’t know what I’m going to be doing yet.’ She reached over and took hold of her sister’s hand, assuring her. ‘I know that I want to be here. I want to spend time with Amanda and get to know her again. Everybody keeps telling me what a wonderful woman she’s become.’
Her sister blushed, looked down at their hands. ‘I’d like that very much.’
‘I’m not going to deny that a big part of me really enjoyed working with you all. But I’m going to need some time to adjust and get used to being back here before I commit to anything.’
‘We understand,’ Maxwell said. ‘The offer will remain open. Indefinitely.’
She nodded and was thankfully spared from having to make any more comments as the food began to arrive and the conversation quickly devolved into how good everything tasted and less serious topics. Everybody got along so well and for the first time, Martha didn’t feel like she was excluded from that group. She had the potential to have something really wonderful here, something that she had been denied all those years ago. She gazed around all of the people that worked at MPIA and knew that she had meant what she told them, she enjoyed working and fighting alongside them and while she’d never contemplated doing anything that even remotely resembled the vocation of a paranormal investigator, she knew that she would be good at it. And more than that, she cared about these people. She had made some new friends, reconnected with a very old one and she had a sister who she wanted to love with all of her being.
There was a new life, waiting for Martha Valentine in Marytown and opportunities that she would be a fool for not trying to take. But for some reason it felt as much like an ending as it did a fresh start. Her heart was still being torn in two, despite having everything she could have possibly ever longed for.
Taking the offer would be a wonderful thing, so why did it feel so much like goodbye?
Chapter 35
Two days later, Martha was alone, walking along a road that she had walked before. Her heart did not feel any less conflicted but in her head, she knew that she had made the right choice. If only it did not feel like a betrayal to everything she had come to know.
A little before noon, The Blackthorn Arms was open for business. Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside, crinkling up her nose at the smell of old ale and polished wood. The male that she had come to see was over in a booth to her right hand side, against the back wall. It made her smile to see that he had strategically positioned himself to have a clear view of all the entrances and areas where members of the public
may lurk. Always on the clock. Always wary.
He did not stand to meet her arrival, of which she were glad. At almost seven feet tall, Stefan was not exactly a person who could go about unnoticed and she was not here to cause a scene. Well, not intentionally anyway. She took a seat opposite, putting her back to everything that he watched because she knew that she could. He was alert enough for them both.
‘You took longer than I thought,’ he commented, and she knew he was not referring to her punctuality for their meeting but the time that had passed since she slew the demon.
‘I’ve been spending time with my sister,’ she told him. ‘She’s much better now, thanks for asking. A little bit emotional but that’s to be expected after everything she’s been through.’
‘I am glad that she suffers no longer.’
‘She misses Gale,’ Martha said. ‘We both do.’
‘There will be opportunity to see your mother again soon,’ he assured her.
‘I know,’ she said, trying not to sound too disheartened. ‘I can’t believe that she’s chosen to say on The Mount. I would never have thought that could happen.’
‘She has been reunited with the male that she loves,’ he stated, matter-of-factly. ‘Surely you of all females must not begrudge her that decision. From what I hear, they are very happy.’
Martha hoped so. Truly. It just felt very strange to her to think of the woman that she remembered, together with the male that she knew. And mildly resented.
‘I suppose that you have new orders for me?’ Martha stated, wanting to stop talking about her personal affairs so they could get down to the business of why she had called the meeting.
‘I have,’ he nodded sternly. ‘You are staying in Marytown.’
‘That much I already know.’
‘Yes,’ he stated and she couldn’t tell if he was happy about it or not. ‘Our fathers have granted you free leave to live and conduct your own evaluation of the state of affairs in the area known as Marytown. You are to focus upon finding evidence of demonic activity but they do not mind if, during the course of your evaluations, you assist your human friends at MPIA in their various investigations. You are being entrusted with a great honour, Martha Valentine.’
Sins of the Father (Bloody Marytown Book 1) Page 23
