by AE Jones
“Yeah. She lives in Wheeling, West Virginia. But this is something we can table until after we finish the case.”
Misha pushed me to arm’s length so he could look me in the eye. “That’s a thirty-minute flight from here. Father will let us borrow his jet. We can be back here tonight.”
“Mish—”
“Ma petite, listen to him. You and Misha should go to Wheeling. The rest of the team will stay here in case Sylvia calls. You will return tonight in any event.”
Dalton nodded. “He’s right. You need to know the truth.”
Says the man I was lying to. That irony was not lost on me either.
* * *
The taxi pulled up in front of a small, modular home with tan siding, burgundy shutters, and an old Chevy Malibu sitting in the driveway. I took a deep breath and slowly let it out through my nose.
Misha squeezed my hand and smiled at me. “I can go in with you if you want.”
“We talked about this on the plane. It’ll be better if I do this alone.”
“Well, I’ll be right here waiting. I can be inside with you in a heartbeat.”
“Got it.” I mustered what I hoped was a convincing smile, even though I felt like running in the opposite direction. I got out of the cab and walked up to the small porch. Two steps up, and I was in front of the door. I lifted my hand to ring the doorbell, and my fingers shook. But I pressed the bell and stepped back.
I held my breath, the chicken in me hoping she wasn’t home so we could jump back on the plane and scurry home to Cleveland. But the door opened, and my mother stood there, staring at me through the screen door. I hadn’t seen her in more than ten years. She looked the same, except her dark hair was in a short bob. No gray hair or wrinkles yet, but she was still in her late forties.
“Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying.”
I cleared my suddenly clogged throat before answering her. “I’m not selling anything. It’s Kyle.”
She opened the screen door and narrowed her gray eyes at me. At least I had gotten one thing from her. “I didn’t recognize you with blond hair. What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you. Can I come in?”
She hesitated for a second and then stepped back, letting me into the house. I studied the small living room. It was relatively clean, with a couch and recliner sitting in front of a flatscreen TV. Very few knickknacks cluttered the space, except for a collection of wooden and glass turtles sitting on a shelf behind the couch. There were no pictures anywhere.
She gestured to the couch, and I sat there while she chose the recliner. Or rather, perched at the front edge of the recliner, as if to say she wouldn’t be getting too comfortable and I shouldn’t either.
I decided to jump in with both feet. “I need you to tell me about my father.”
Her eyes widened. “You won’t find him.”
“Is he dead?”
She grimaced. “I hope so. Why do you even care?”
“Because I need to know who he is.”
“Your father was a liar. He told me he loved me. That he would never leave me. But he got me pregnant and left me. I was on my own at seventeen. At first I thought he left because he couldn’t handle fatherhood. Then I found out he left after his job was done.”
“What job?”
“He was supposed to get me pregnant.”
“What do you mean?”
She stared at me, as if sizing me up before she answered. “You’re old enough to know the truth. Your father wasn’t human. He was the devil, and he left his offspring for me to raise.”
My heart clattered in my chest like a pinball machine. “Why do you say he was the devil?”
“Because his eyes glowed.”
“What color did they glow?”
“What color did they glow? That’s the first question you ask me after I tell you your father wasn’t human?” She sat up straighter. “You already found out, didn’t you?”
“What happened to him?”
“He left me when I was eight months pregnant. But first he told me to keep the baby safe. Which—duh—is what mothers do, right? Except he neglected to tell me that others like him would try to kill me.”
“What?”
“Another devil came after me and tried to kill me. Or tried to kill you, and since you were still inside me, I was just collateral damage. And this one was crazy, spouting some shit about needing to stop you from being born and changing the balance of power.”
“How did you get away?”
“He attacked me at the gym where I worked. A couple showed up and saved me. They acted like cops. I think they were some kind of demon slayers or something, but they never said, and I never saw them again.”
I blinked at her, wondering if I was imagining this conversation, but I wasn’t, and my gut twisted, because apparently this, whatever-it-was, was far from over.
“I had been tricked into being an incubator. And you never did anything normal, Kyle. You did things your own way. Even your birth was on your own terms.”
“That’s why you weren’t surprised when I told you about my power.”
Her eyes narrowed on me. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“After you were born, a man came to the hospital and told me I was in danger. That I couldn’t stay there. I had to go into hiding to save you.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“No, but I remember what he looked like. They had given me some pain medicine in the hospital, and I thought for a moment I was hallucinating when he walked into the room. He reminded me of Cary Grant but with blond hair.”
Son of a bitch. I clenched my fist and dug my fingernails into my palm, imagining the wind up before I clocked Nicholas right in the face the next time I saw him. I could literally feel my pulse pounding in my temples.
I choked out, “What did you do?”
“I changed my name to Dee Baxter before taking you far away from Indiana and starting over. I even met a man who told me he loved me. Everything was going to be okay.
“Until I heard him one night on the phone talking to someone, telling them the toddler was fine and he was happy his job was almost finished so he didn’t have to keep pretending to be in love with me. Couldn’t stomach sleeping with a human. Or so he said. I ran again and changed my name to Anne McKinley.”
God. “No wonder you wanted nothing to do with me. Why didn’t you just give me away then?”
She looked away. “So someone else would die in my place? They had no idea what you were, and if I’d tried to tell anyone they would have called me crazy and locked me up.”
“Glad to see your motives were so altruistic.”
She shot up from her chair and walked to the front door. “Be happy I took care of you.”
I stood as well and followed her to where she held open the door.
“Do you have a name for my father? A picture?”
“He told me his name was Anthony Grayson, but I’m sure it was a lie. And I burned all the pictures of him when he left me.”
I stood on the porch for a moment, fully aware that this would be the last time I would ever see or speak to her. My mind frantically tried to think of any last question to ask her.
“Why did you name me Kyle?”
Her eyes softened for a moment. “I named you Kyle after the one man in my life who didn’t have an agenda. He helped deliver you…in an elevator, of all places. He told me I should name you after someone I admired. His name was Russian and it sounded like Me-Kyle. So I shortened it to Kyle.”
Oh. My. God.
She shut the door before I could say anything else, but it was fine, because I didn’t know what else to say. Goodbye? Take care? Have a good life?
I turned on wobbly legs and headed toward the cab and Misha’s expectant face. The face of the person who had helped bring me into this world.
“Are you okay, Kyle?” Misha asked as I climbed into the car.
I sh
ook my head, and he pulled me against his side and wrapped his arm around my shoulder. He smelled like the cherry hard candy he’d been eating on the plane. I blinked and breathed slowly, suppressing the tears. If I started now, I wouldn’t stop.
“We can talk on the plane,” I whispered.
It wasn’t like I could explain anything with the cab driver listening from the front seat anyway. Plus I needed to process and decide next steps. The first step was to tell Misha everything. Wow. He helped deliver me. Which brought more tears. I looked out the window so Misha would stop asking me what was wrong.
The next step of my plan, flashing continuously in my mind in glorious Technicolor, was KILL NICHOLAS. He had known about me from the beginning. Had told my mother to hide me! Then he found me in Vegas and offered me a job. Had he been watching me all along? Had everything in my life been planned and executed by him?
I was a first-class chump.
Hadn’t I just told Dalton I didn’t think the Fates were playing me? Hell, they would have had to get in line behind Nicholas, the Grand Manipulator.
I had always believed I was lucky to be able to use my gift for something good. But now? I’d been played.
And I was done with being played.
Chapter 35
Misha and I climbed onto the small jet and flopped into the plush leather seats while the pilot shut the hatch and then closed himself into the cockpit.
“Okay, Kyle. Please tell me what happened.”
“I’ll explain everything to you in a minute. I promise.” I buckled my seatbelt, buying a bit more time to decide how best to break it to him.
“I have a question about that story you’ve told me time and again. The one about delivering the baby.”
He frowned. “Kyle…”
“Just let me ask you, okay?”
He nodded. “What about it?”
“Was it in connection to a case?”
“Yes. It was the first case Talia worked with Jean Luc and me. We were tracking a demon who’d been killing people.”
“I take it you caught him?”
“Jean Luc and Talia did. The demon tried to kill the young mother, and they stopped him. I went with her to the hospital. She didn’t have any family, and the father wasn’t in the picture. You’ve heard the rest of the story.”
“Did Nicholas assign you to the case?”
“No. He’d just moved us to Indianapolis a couple of weeks before, and then the case came up.”
“You never said what happened to the mom and baby.”
Misha’s eyes tightened. “I don’t know for sure. I went to visit them at the hospital the next day, but they’d been discharged. I always wondered what happened to them.”
I took a deep breath. “What if I told you the baby grew up with a smart mouth and a sarcastic disdain for authority?”
It’s a damn good thing he’d been sitting down.
* * *
“I didn’t faint.” Misha huffed.
I smiled. “Fine. You didn’t faint. You simply decided to take an instantaneous nap.”
He growled at me.
“I’m sorry I broke it to you that way, but the whole thing is so surreal, I couldn’t figure out a better way to tell you.”
He blew out a hard breath. “I can’t believe it. I was so scared when your mom went into labor, and then you decided to come out before they could get us out of the elevator. Seems you had to have your way from the beginning.” He smiled. “Do you know I was the first person to hold you?”
I smiled back at him. “It sounds like I owe you, Talia, and Jean Luc my life.”
“Tell me what else your mother said.”
I relayed the entire conversation, with the exception of who I was named after. After his earlier reaction, I didn’t know how he would take the news. I decided to save that revelation for when Jean Luc was there to calm him down.
Misha’s smile was quickly replaced with a scowl. “I wish I could have helped you, Kyle. If only she hadn’t left the hospital, maybe I could have helped you both.”
“It’s the past, Misha. We can’t change it. But I sure in the hell am going to find out how Nicholas knew about the demons that were after me and my mother. And what else he’s manipulated in my life.”
* * *
I didn’t so much walk into the office as storm into it. Dolly had just shut down her computer for the evening when I stopped in front of her, picked up her phone receiver, and held it out to her.
“Call Nicholas.”
“You have his number.”
“I have his main cell number, which I called several times, and he’s not answering. You also have another number to reach him, right?”
She blanched at my question.
“I always wondered how Nicholas knew what was going on here before we told him. From your reaction, I think you’ve been reporting in to him.”
“He’s our boss. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Call him, Dolly, and tell him to come to the office as soon as possible.”
“He’s out of town. You know he travels to the other BSR offices.”
“Tell him to get back here by tomorrow or I’m going to CNN and telling the world that supernaturals exist.”
She opened her mouth…and then closed it again after she studied my face. “Got it.”
Misha and I walked into the back office. Talia, Jean Luc, Jason, and Dalton sat at the table with a pizza box sitting in front of them.
Jason moaned. “I knew we should have ordered more food.”
Misha shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”
Silence descended. The four of them looked at him with varying expressions—skepticism, concern, horror, and bemusement.
Jason dropped his pizza back into the box. “Your news must be bad, Kyle, if Misha doesn’t want to eat.”
I told the story again, and now they wore similar expressions of shock—wide eyes, slack jaws. It would have been amusing if it wasn’t a reaction to my pathetic life.
I smiled at Talia and Jean Luc. “I need to thank you both for saving my mom.”
Talia wiped a tear from her eye. “You’re more than welcome. It’s so hard to take in.”
Jean Luc nodded. “Oui. At the time, we did not know why the demon had targeted your mother. He talked about your mother glowing. And muttered on about stopping destiny.
“I thought it the rambling of a lunatic. He must have been able to sense your demon side somehow. Mon Dieu!”
“What?”
“When I confronted him, he said he had to kill her. I thought he meant your mother, but his claws were aimed at her stomach.”
“He meant me. Maybe the demon wasn’t a crackpot. Maybe he wanted to stop a demon realm half-breed from being born.”
Jason grabbed my hand. “I’m sorry, Kyle.”
“The irony’s not lost on me, Jason.”
“Even when I was mad at you for not telling me about my shifter side, I wouldn’t have wished this on you.”
I looked at Dalton to gauge his reaction, since he was being so quiet. He nodded at me, his eyes filled with compassion. His gaze was like flashing back in time to last year.
“It’s a lot to take in. You have to give yourself some time,” Dalton said, softly.
“I know, I need time to process it all. Oh, there’s one other thing. I asked my mother why she named me Kyle. She said she named me after the man who helped deliver me. Said his name sounded like Me-Kyle so she shortened it to Kyle.”
Talia gasped, and Jason let out a low whistle.
Misha froze for a second and stared at my lips as if replaying what I said.
I took a step toward him. “Mish, are you okay?”
He yanked me into a bear hug and spun me around with a shout of glee.
Even with his shout, I heard Jean Luc utter. “Mon Dieu, she has just created a monster.”
Misha spun me around a few more times before I could make myself heard over his shouts and tell him to put me dow
n.
Dolly looked tentatively into the back office, interrupting us. “He’s not answering,” she announced.
I glared at her.
“I swear.” She held up her cell phone. “I’ve left him three messages and just texted him.”
I blew out a hard breath. There wasn’t much else I could do. Nicholas was an enigma. Even if he was in town, none of us knew where he stayed. Not even Misha’s computer skills had ever been able to uncover his secret lair.
“Kyle, I think this will give you an opportunity to calm down,” Jean Luc said. “We do not want you to kill Nicholas before you get your answers.”
“We don’t even know if Nicholas can die,” Talia reasoned.
“I bet you if I lopped off his head, he’d die.”
“I don’t know for sure,” Misha said.
“What’s the saying? If he bleeds, he can die? I could take him. I’m highly motivated.”
Dalton listened to our repartee with wide eyes. “Please tell me you’re joking right now.”
Dolly’s phone beeped, which spared me the necessity of answering Dalton. She read the message and blanched again. “Nicholas responded. Says he can’t make it back in town tonight. He’ll come here first thing tomorrow morning. Uh…” She looked up at me.
“What else does he say?”
“He respectfully asks you to refrain from contacting Anderson Cooper until after you two have spoken.”
I bit my lip. Overnight was not going to be enough time for me to calm down.
Chapter 36
“Kyle, stop pacing!” Misha snapped from his perch at the office table.
“I can’t.” I stared at the case notes scattered around the table.
Dalton, Jason, and Talia sat reviewing them. Jean Luc had the Key box in his hand, attempting to decipher some of the symbols.
“Where the hell is Nicholas?” I grumbled.
Jean Luc sighed. “Take a walk around the block, Kyle. You will feel better.”
I frowned and then acquiesced. I was driving myself and everyone around me mad. “Fine, but if he shows up, you text me ASAP, and I’ll be right back.”
Talia smiled at me. “We will.” Which really meant go away, crazy woman.
