by Apryl Baker
“Mattie, how many times now have you seen that thing?” Mr. Malone asks me.
“Three,” I say and tell him about the previous two, going into as much detail as I remember, Dan throwing things in I hadn’t been aware of, considering I almost died.
“Wait, wait, wait.” Eli raises a hand to interrupt me. “You’ve only seen this thing when he’s around?” He jerked his hand in Dan’s direction.
I frown. “It attacked me on the porch and Dan wasn’t here.”
“Yeah, he was,” Caleb tells me. “He had just pulled into the drive. I remember standing up to see who was here when I heard Eli shouting about demons.”
Dan crosses his arms over his chest and glares at us all. I can sympathize, he’s had a rough time of it lately dealing with the supernatural. This has to be so hard for him to even sit and talk about. He refused to believe in anything supernatural until he met me. Sometimes, I still wonder if he doesn’t try to logically explain my weirdness.
“Do you know what kind of demon it is?” I ask Mr. Malone to distract everyone. As mad as I am at Dan, I know what it feels like to be stared at and speculated about. It’s not pleasant.
“It sounds like a protection demon.”
Did he really just say protection demon? “Uh, Mr. Malone, isn’t that kind of the exact opposite of the whole evil demonic creature thing?”
He laughs. “I know it’s hard to wrap your head around, Mattie. There are many different types of demons, all encircling the seven circles of hell. What you’re describing is a third circle demon. It is called up by a summoner to protect someone from something or someone. The person it tries to kill is the thing or person it’s protecting someone else against.”
“So someone thinks Dan needs protecting from me?” I ask, both startled and outraged.
“You got a hell of right hook, Hilda,” Eli pipes in.
I’m up and twisting, but Caleb catches my fist before it connects with his brother’s face. “Leave off, Elijah. Do you want to get another beat down by a girl?”
“I didn’t get a beat down to begin with!” he denies hotly.
“So you don’t have a busted lip and black eye?” Dan scoffs.
Eli glares at him. “Nobody asked you.”
“Can we get back to the discussion at hand?” Mr. Malone asks wearily, his face pained. Same look I get from Nancy sometimes.
“Dan, is there anyone you know who doesn’t want Mattie in your life?” Doc asks.
Dan frowns and then his face goes cold and bored, his cop look, I call it. Ohhh, Officer Dan does know something and he’s not gonna share. Don’t think so.
“‘Fess up, Officer Dan,” I tell him. “What don’t you want to say?”
“I don’t know anyone who wants to hurt Mattie,” he tells us, the same bored tone in his voice he wears on his face.
“That’s not what he asked.” Eli leans back in his seat, getting comfortable. “He asked if there’s anyone who doesn’t want her around you? Like maybe your new girlfriend?”
Points to Dan for not breaking the cop face. If you didn’t know him, you wouldn’t have noticed the slight tightening around his eyes to signal he’s mad. Instead of giving Eli the reaction he’s hoping for, Dan mimics the relaxed pose Eli adopted and shakes his head. “Meg and Mattie are friends. She’d never do anything to hurt her.”
“You didn’t really just say that?” I ask. Not hurt me?
“Mattie, she didn’t intentionally…”
“Don’t,” I say softly. “If I never hear her name again, it will be too soon.”
Dan gives me the same look Mr. Malone had given us all earlier and I am so not in the mood for it. “Look, Officer Dan, if you can’t deal with it, then you can leave right now. I’d be safer without you around, anyway.”
He flinches, but doesn’t move. “Mattie, I told you once before, no matter how hard you push me away, I’m not going anywhere. I’m in it for the long haul.”
“Yeah, you got that down pat, don’t you?” Eli sneered. “Going out with her best friend is really in it for the long haul.”
Dan shoots me an unbelievable look. He knows I don’t go around telling complete strangers stuff. I can understand his disbelief.
“I was unconscious,” I say. “They said I talked in my sleep.”
“Yeah, you do,” Dan agrees.
My eyes go a little round. Dan had spent many, many nights camped out at the hospital with me. What did I say? Then another reality hit me, if I talked in my sleep, then he knew how conflicted I was about him and he still started dating Meg. I blinked, my eyes burning with that realization. I would not cry, not here, not in front of these people.
“Want me to toss him out?” Caleb asks me, seeing the hurt and confusion I’m trying so hard to hide.
I shake my head. “No, we need to figure this out.” The sooner we do, the sooner I can send Dan on his way.
“Squirt…”
“No,” I say. “I’m not talking about that right now. You need to ‘fess up and tell us what you’re trying to hide. You know something.”
“Can I talk to you alone?” he asks.
“No,” Eli and Caleb both say. I send them a glare. Something is going on with Dan and he’s not going to say anything around anyone. In some ways, he’s just as private as I am.
“Mattie, what if the demon comes back while you’re alone with him?” Mr. Malone says. “We need to keep you where we can see you.”
“It’ll be fine.” I stand up. “We’ll just go into the next room. If it comes back, one of us will scream our heads off.”
No one in the room, except for Dan, looks happy with my decision, but tough. It’s my life that’s on the line, so if it means talking to Dan alone, I will. If he knows who’s sending this thing after me, then I need to know.
We go down the hall into what I guess would be called a parlor, maybe. The walls are covered with wallpaper. The floral pattern looks a bit tacky to me, but I’ve never liked anything with tons of flowers on it. The furniture is all dark mahogany that contrasts beautifully with the lighter wainscoting. It looks like something right out of a romance novel during the civil war. Historical romances were a vice of mine, one I don’t share with anyone.
“Mattie, we need to talk about this,” Dan interrupts my silent musings. Leave it to the police officer to get right down to the heart of it. Problem is I’m not ready to talk about it yet.
“No, I don’t want to talk about that,” I say, going to stand by the window. It looks out over a beautiful garden full of roses in full bloom. It’s breathtaking. “What did you find out from your PI friend?”
He sighs. I can tell he’s aggravated just by the sound of it. “No, Squirt, we have to talk. I can’t take this distance. I need you to forgive me.”
I rub my arms, cold. Amazing how cold I am even in the humid New Orleans temperatures. Doc says it’s because of my soul being made up of ghost energy. Add that to the fact the little buggers flock to me like a kid to Disney World—I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get warm.
“Mattie!”
I turn to face him, leaning against the window frame. He doesn’t look aggravated. He looks haunted. “Trust me, Dan, you really don’t want to talk about this right now. You won’t like what you hear.”
“Please, I need you. Don’t shut me out.”
I laugh bitterly. “Then why would you do that to me, Dan? Why would you lie to me when you know how important honesty is to me?”
“I never lied to you.”
“Hiding the truth from me is lying by omission,” I say. “By doing that, you made a conscious choice to lie.”
“We didn’t think you could handle it…”
Another harsh laugh escapes. “You knew it was wrong or you wouldn’t have tried to rationalize lying to me. Why not just come clean and tell me you wanted to date my best friend?”
He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. It’s longer than he normally keeps it. “You had just gone through the worst
nightmare of your life and you were fragile. You might not want to admit that, but you were. Meg knew about your confused feelings when it came to me and we both tried so hard to fight it, but we couldn’t. It’s so easy with Meg. We talk for hours and never run out of stuff to say. It’s as natural as breathing with her.”
“It’s not easy with me?” I whisper, hurt flaring. I know I’m a mess, have trust issues like no one else, and I’m difficult on the best of days. No one has ever really cared enough to fight through those but Dan, or so I’d thought. I grew up knowing no one wanted me. That does terrible things to a person, things that most normal people would never understand.
To live with the knowledge that you’re just a throwaway is awful. That’s what I feel like, anyway. All my life I have moved from foster home to foster home, some good, most bad. Whenever I got too difficult to deal with, my foster parents would just ship me back to be ferreted out to another temporary home. No one ever tried to get past my baggage, to care enough to try to love me.
Then I met Dan. No matter how hard I pushed, he stayed. I thought I’d finally found someone who cared, who wouldn’t just toss me back out onto the streets because it was too hard, but now he tells me how easy it is with Meg? I know I’m hard, I know this. I can’t help it, but to hear him say it…it hurts. I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone and he doesn’t want me because it’s too hard?
“Mattie…”
“No,” I cut him off, not wanting to hear anything else. “I can’t, not right now. This hurts too much.”
“This isn’t just about you, Mattie,” he says softly. “It’s about me too. You’re not the only one who gets to be hurt and act like an ass.”
My eyes narrow. I know I’m selfish, but I am not acting like that. I would never treat him the way he treated me. “Just go away, Dan.”
He walks over and tries to pull me to him, but I refuse, stubbornly standing in my spot. I can’t handle all that sympathy from the boy who has pulverized my heart.
“I never meant to hurt you, Mattie.”
“You did, though,” I say woodenly.
“I’m sorry.”
And I know he is, that’s why this is so hard. He’s truly sorry. I can see it shining out of those liquid brown eyes.
“Please, Mattie, I can’t lose you.”
I didn’t want to lose him either, but I didn’t see how we could go from here. He’d broken me just a little and I needed to heal. I couldn’t have him around if I had a shot of that.
“I want you to leave, Dan,” I force the words out. “Just leave me alone, please.”
“Squirt…”
“No, Dan, I mean it. I want you to leave.”
“No. I need you to forgive me, to talk to me.”
“I can’t forgive you, at least not yet. Maybe one day, but not right now. It hurts too much.”
“Shh, Squirt, don’t cry, please.” He yanks me to him and I bury my face in his shirt, soaking it. I missed him so much.
“I can’t help it,” I whisper. “You were the one person I thought would never throw me away. I believed you when you said you were in it for the long haul. You made me believe you, Dan. No one’s ever got past my defenses, but I let you in and you broke me.”
“God, Mattie, shh,” he soothes. “I’m not throwing you away, can’t you see that? I just fell in love with someone. I couldn’t help that. You and I, we’re all messed up…”
I push him away and go back to staring out the window. He’s right about us being messed up. We are, but hearing him say it makes the pain even worse. I’m just a screwed up mess that no one can ever love, not really. Why did I ever let myself hope I could find a little happiness? Pointless.
“What did you find out from your PI?” I ask, changing the subject. I won’t talk about this anymore. “Why did he want you to come down?”
Dan stands there for the longest time. I have no idea what’s going through his mind, but I can’t care about that right now. I have to have a little self-preservation. He’s caused me too much pain as it is.
“He wanted to show me something,” he says at last. “While he was looking through your mom’s past he found something out about my mom.”
“Your mom or your birth mom?” I ask. Dan had never really wanted to look for his real parents, content in the fact his adopted family loved him as much as any biological parents could.
“Both,” he whispers, almost too soft for me to hear. The agony in his voice has me turning to face him. That haunted look has come back into eyes. He looks like a little boy whose puppy had just died in front of him.
“Dan?”
“My mother didn’t give me up for adoption,” he tells me. “She died.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I ask. At least he wasn’t abandoned.
He shakes his head and he takes a step, but he stumbles just a little. I reach out and grab him, leading him over to the settee. It’s not often something knocks Officer Dan off his game.
“Mom told me when I was little that she’d gone through hell and back to find me. I always assumed she just meant that my biological mother had issues giving me away. I never thought…” he trailed off before taking a deep breath. “Phil knows some pretty seedy people and in trying to track your mother, my mother’s name came up. He…he found out a lot of stuff.”
I had a feeling this was so not gonna be good.
“We never knew Mom had a sister until she died. I was about nine years old so I remember the day she got a phone call and burst into tears. She cried for weeks. Dad knew she had a sister, but they’d never met. Mom said all the pictures of the two of them were destroyed in a fire and since they’d grown up, they didn’t really spend any time together. They’d had a falling out and she hadn’t spoken to her sister in years.”
This is hard for him. He’s practically forcing each word out of his mouth. I can feel his pain just as I felt the pain from the ghosts I do my best to ignore. He’s hurting right now and he’s hurting a lot. My first instinct is to hold him, to try and help him, but I resist. I let my own self-preservation instincts kick in. I can’t let him in any more than he already is.
“Phil discovered a check my mom had written to a Claire Hathaway.” Dan looks me straight in the eye as he drops his little bomb.
“What?” I whisper. His mom knew mine? Had given her money…my eyes widen. No, it can’t be…no.
“Claire Hathaway, born Amanda Sterling, was my mother’s sister.” Dan jumps up and walks over to the window. “She helped your mom take you, gave her the money to start over.”
That’s why his mom freaked that first day she met me and why she’s gone out of her way since then to avoid anything to do with me. She knew who I was. Did she blame me for her sister’s death?
“I don’t know what to say,” I say softly.
“It gets worse.” His voice is flat, dull. He turns away, staring at nothing.
Worse, how much worse can it get?
“Phil started to look into my mom’s past to try and figure out where they took you from. He found out my mom…she…she…”
“Dan?” What is so awful he can’t say it?
“She murdered my birth mother,” he whispers brokenly. “My mom, who has taken care of me since I was born, murdered my birth mother and stole me.”
Oh God, it did get worse. I don’t even have words. Instead I wrap my arms around him, nestling my face into the warmth of his back. It’s the only thing I know to do.
“She killed her, Mattie. Held her hostage until I was born, then killed her and put her in a car and forced it off the cliff. The car caught fire and the damage was so bad, the police only found shards of bone. They didn’t even blink when there wasn’t a baby. The fire burned so hot, they assumed any traces had just burned to ashes.”
“I’m so sorry,” I tell him. “I…what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know, Mattie…she’s my mom…” He shakes his head. “I know what I should do, but she’s my mom.�
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“Are you sure about this?” I ask. “Maybe he made a mistake…”
”No, Mattie, he didn’t make a mistake. Phil talked to people that helped her.”
“But why?” I ask. “Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know. What do I do, Mattie?”
I have no idea. “Did Phil tell you anything about your birth mother?” I need to distract him from thinking about his mom. It’s tearing him up inside. Later, I’ll let myself react to the fact his mom helped steal me from my real family, but right now, he needs me. Even if I can’t forgive him, he needs me and I won’t just turn away from that. Not now.
“Yeah, he told me her name. It was Amelia Malone.”
“The hell you say!”
We both turn to see Caleb and Eli staring at us, shocked, angry, and confused.
Oh, Lord, this is not going to be good.
Chapter Fourteen
Looking from Dan to Caleb, it is so obvious they’re brothers. I’d been comparing them all day, convincing myself I had been seeing Dan only because I missed him so much. There is no denying the truth, though. Dan has just found his family.
Not that everyone appears happy about that fact. Dan has his arms crossed, his cop face firmly in place. Eli looks like he wants to hit someone and Caleb just stares. I’m not sure what Caleb is thinking. He has a pretty decent cop face himself.
Mr. Malone had a completely different reaction when Caleb told him about Dan’s revelation. He can’t seem to stop staring at Dan. I can tell he wants to hug him, but he’s restraining himself. Dan isn’t exactly being very talkative, either. He’s refusing to answer questions and I know why. He doesn’t want anything to happen to his mom. Dan shut down once Eli said they needed to call the police and start an investigation.
It has to be very hard for Mr. Malone. He’s just been informed his wife was murdered, his son stolen. The need for justice, for revenge, has to be burning inside, but he, too, is restraining himself. They’re discussing the woman who raised his son, loved him like her own, but Ann Richards is also the woman who took everything from him, from Caleb. I’m not sure how he’s keeping it together, honestly.
