Unbroken Vows

by Christine Pope

  “Maybe,” Michael said, although he didn’t sound all that convinced. “Anyway, with everything that’s going on, I think it’s better if I’m out there in California with you.”

  “I thought you said the demons were stopping you from leaving Tucson,” Will replied.

  “Yes, but that was when I was trying to leave on my own. I’m bringing Audrey with me.”

  “You are?” He couldn’t help but be startled at that announcement. After all, Audrey was hip deep in her post-grad work. It wasn’t as if she could simply drop everything and go running off to California for an indeterminate period.

  “We’re heading into the weekend. She only has one class to teach tomorrow, and she has someone who can cover for her. If it looks like we won’t be back by Monday morning, then she’ll make further arrangements. It’ll be okay.”

  Will hoped that was truly the case, but he didn’t offer any more arguments. If Audrey said she had it handled, then that was her affair. He had to admit that he’d feel better to have her along; she and Michael made a formidable team.

  “And we’re going to stop on our way in and collect Fred,” Michael continued. “He lives in Redlands, so it’s on the way.”

  For some reason, that piece of information surprised Will. Although of course he didn’t know the man, he’d gotten the impression that the hacker lived in a big city, not an Inland Empire town known mostly for the university located there. “Fred’s a psychic, too?”

  “No,” Michael replied, sounding amused. “But the guy’s a genius at digging up information and hacking computer systems, and since we really don’t know what we’re up against here, I figured it was probably better to have all the bases covered.”

  “Sounds good. When do you think you’ll get here?”

  “We’re going to leave as soon as we can tomorrow morning, so I hope we’ll make it to Pasadena by late afternoon.” A pause before he added, “I assume it’s okay if we all end up at my place, since Rosemary isn’t there at the moment.”

  “Of course,” Will responded. Should he say anything else? It wasn’t as if he and Rosemary had made things official, but they’d both been working under the unspoken assumption that she would be staying with him for the foreseeable future. “It would have been fine even if Rosemary was here.”

  A short pause before Michael said, “Ah, got it. I’m happy for you guys.”

  Feeling a bit awkward, Will said, “Thanks. Anything you need me to do over here while you’re en route?”

  “Not that I can think of, except keep your eyes open.”

  “I will,” he said.

  Honestly, if he slept at all that night, he’d surprise himself.

  A small, clear bing sounded in the room, rousing Rosemary from her sleep. She blinked in confusion for a moment, not recognizing her surroundings. Then she remembered that she was in the Lockwood house, locked in the guest room. A quick glance at the digital clock on the nightstand informed her that it was a little past eleven-thirty. She hadn’t been asleep for much more than an hour.

  Her purse sat on the dresser across the room. After pushing back the covers, she went over to her bag and extricated her phone, then glanced down at the phone and saw a message from Will on the home screen. On the surface, it seemed innocuous enough — as she’d suspected, he’d gotten caught at the church and had to stay later than expected, and his phone battery had died.

  Only…Will was a very careful person. She hadn’t been around him for very long, but she’d never heard him use the excuse of a dead phone for being out of contact. In fact, she’d seen one of those USB adapters for cell phone charging stuck into the cigarette lighter of his vintage car, so she knew he paid close attention to that sort of thing.

  The nighttime air felt chilly against her exposed skin, and so she hurried back to the bed, phone still in hand, and wriggled back under the covers. Once she was more comfortable, she stared at the message again, wondering if she was missing something. It didn’t seem so terribly strange that the battery in Will’s phone had died if he’d been kept at work longer than he’d expected and the thing had simply run out.

  Unless….

  Had he figured out that the excuse for her absence was a complete fabrication? Maybe he’d called Celeste — he had her number, after all — and Celeste had told him everyone was fine at her household. Or maybe he’d checked in with her mother, although Rosemary honestly didn’t know whether Will would feel comfortable doing such a thing. They’d only been seeing each other for a very short while, after all, and even though he’d met Glynis and it seemed as though they’d gotten along well, he still might have thought calling her to check up on her daughter would seem strange and controlling.

  However, if he had, then again, he would have learned quickly enough that everyone in the McGuire family was doing just fine.

  Well, except for Rosemary herself. All right, she hadn’t come to any physical harm, was sleeping in a very comfortable bed after having a tasty dinner, but still….

  She still wasn’t quite sure what to make of Caleb’s nocturnal visit. He’d seemed friendly enough, and yet there were undercurrents to their conversation that made her distinctly uncomfortable. At the time, it had seemed the best course of action was go to sleep and try to forget the things he’d said to her, but now all she could do was lie there with her phone clutched in one hand as she stared at the ceiling, thoughts roiling.

  He hadn’t said as much, but he’d hinted that he wanted to repair their relationship. What, did he think that if her demonic heritage was actually proven, she’d abandon Will and go running back into his arms?

  Possibly. No way that was going to happen, however. She hadn’t quite figured out what to say to Will if it turned out that Gerald Gates really was her father, but she’d come up with something. After all, he was the one who’d reassured her that he didn’t care about her supposed father’s angelic heritage. If that didn’t bother him, why would learning she was a quarter-demon change anything?

  All right, except for that little bit about him being an Episcopalian priest, and not the kind of guy who would generally be consorting with demons and devils. There was a very good chance that he wouldn’t want anything to do with her.

  Worry started to bubble up through Rosemary, even though she tried to tell herself that she was borrowing trouble. Right now, all she had to go on was Daniel Lockwood’s word — well, and Gerald’s — and she doubted that was worth very much. A couple of demons, beings who probably lied as easily as they breathed. And okay, they were technically only half-demon, but they were still not to be trusted. For all she knew, they’d cooked up this whole thing to get her and Caleb back together. Why, she didn’t know, although she supposed if she really was part angel, maybe they were curious as to what would happen if angel and demon blood were to mix. Maybe they wanted her and Caleb to have some kind of super-supernatural baby together.

  Not going to happen, she thought, even as fear began to knot up her stomach and she felt cold all over despite the warm blankets that covered her. Problem was, they’d as much as admitted that Gerald had slept with her mother because they wanted to see what the offspring of a half-demon and a psychically gifted human would be like.

  If it had even happened.

  She hated this. As someone who’d had to deal with psychic abilities for most of her life, Rosemary was used to being in a position where sometimes the boundaries of reality shifted, where it wasn’t always possible to tell what was real and what wasn’t, and yet this was somehow different. In all those instances, she’d still known who she was. Now, though, it was as if the bedrock beneath her feet had tilted suddenly, and she was doing her best to hang on and not fall off the edge of her world.

  It’s all right, she told herself, even though she was pretty sure it really wasn’t all right. She needed the reassurance, false though it might be. If Caleb was going to try anything, he would have done it while he was here earlier. You’re safe — they’re trying to be nice to you.
All you have to do is get through that test tomorrow, and then you can figure out what to do next.

  Because if it turned out that she really was half demon — if Gerald Gates really was her father, and she was far more connected to the Greencastle demons than she’d ever thought or wanted to be — then there was a very good chance she wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  Chapter 6

  Rosemary stared at herself in the mirror, wondering if she should go for another coating of concealer under her eyes, or whether she should advertise to the whole world just how crappy her sleep had been the night before. The concealer — along with the rest of the cosmetics she’d used that morning — had magically appeared in the bathroom drawer overnight. Everything was still in its packaging, and just the right combination of colors to suit her fair skin. That might have seemed a little creepy, except that Mrs. Lockwood’s coloring wasn’t so different from her own, and Rosemary had a feeling that either Caleb or his father had pilfered it from her stash. Since she was used to wearing drugstore makeup and not the Lancôme and Chanel that had been provided for her, she wasn’t going to argue too much over where it had come from. If it had been obviously used, that would have been one thing. But it wasn’t, and she realized she should use it. No point in letting Daniel Lockwood know he’d gotten under her skin.

  Actually, it wasn’t the father who was the real problem, but the son. She didn’t like the vibes she was getting off Caleb, not at all. He was being too friendly, and she didn’t trust him.

  She didn’t trust any of them. And she was starting to have her doubts about this outing to Indianapolis, but she’d already agreed to it and didn’t see any way to back out now. Not with the senior Lockwood making sure she didn’t have a chance of getting away. Also, she honestly did want to know what the blood test would reveal. Better to learn the worst and then figure out how to deal with it than spend the rest of her life wondering.

  Jaw set, she paid more attention to her makeup than she normally would, mostly because the clothes she’d been loaned seemed to require it than because she wanted to impress anyone. Blow-drying her hair straight and then using a flat iron to smooth it further would have taken way too much time, though, so she pulled it back with a fabric-covered elastic band and then tied a scarf around the elastic. A few curly tendrils fell around her face, but she still looked far more chic than usual, and wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that.

  She was just slipping her silver hoop earrings into her ears when someone knocked at the door. “Are you almost ready?”

  Caleb. “Yes,” Rosemary replied. She stepped away from the mirror and went to open the door, but he forestalled her by opening it himself, although he didn’t step into the room. However, she couldn’t allow herself to be too relieved by his apparent reticence, because he sent her an admiring smile.

  “You look great.”

  “Your mom has good taste,” she said, her tone deliberately casual. Better to deflect the compliment and make it all about the borrowed clothes she wore, rather than a comment on her actual appearance.

  He didn’t seem to buy it, though; his dark eyes assumed their familiar wicked glint, and his mouth lifted at one corner. “Sure.”

  “Speaking of which, how are you going to explain me to her?” Rosemary asked as she followed him down the hall and they began to descend the stairs.

  Caleb’s smile remained in place. “No need to. She stayed over in Indianapolis last night.”

  Rosemary paused, giving him a sideways glance. “I thought you said she was just going there for a spa day.”

  “Sometimes she stays overnight. She always packs a bag, just in case.” A slight quirk of his eyebrow, and he added, “I guess it depends on whether the procedures she’s getting turn out to have more recovery time than she first estimated.”

  Ah, okay. So, Mrs. Lockwood’s spa days were a little more intensive than just getting a mani/pedi and a seaweed wrap. Well, Rosemary had to admit that Caleb’s mother looked great, so whatever they were doing to her during her trips to Indianapolis, it seemed to be working. She didn’t have that stretched, “duck face” look of some women who went overboard with plastic surgery and injections, that was for sure.

  “Convenient,” Rosemary remarked.

  “Oh, I would’ve come up with an explanation for you if I had to…like telling her you were my girlfriend from California.”

  By that point, they’d reached the bottom step. Rosemary stopped there for a moment, arms crossed. “Don’t you think she would have wondered why your ‘girlfriend’ was at your father’s party with another man just the day before yesterday?”

  Caleb shrugged. “Maybe she would…if she could remember you being there at all. My father made sure she couldn’t recall anything about you and Will. It seemed safer.”

  Safer for whom? Rosemary wished she could make a superior remark about not meddling with other people’s minds, but since she’d done basically the same thing when Mrs. Lockwood caught her snooping in the master suite the night of the party, she realized she really couldn’t get too sanctimonious.

  Before she could reply, Daniel Lockwood called out from the other room. “Is that Rosemary?”

  “Yeah, Dad,” Caleb replied.

  “Come in and get some coffee and danish. Gerald will be over in a few minutes.”

  Rosemary had been wondering about breakfast, since it was nearly ten and she hadn’t eaten anything yet. Caffeine and sugar didn’t seem like a great combination to her — she drank coffee but preferred eggs in the morning — but she guessed it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to ask for something else to eat. She followed Caleb into the dining room, where a plate of luscious-looking pastries had been set on the massive mahogany table. A silver coffee service sat next to it, along with cups and saucers painted with an old-fashioned rose pattern. Clearly, Daniel Lockwood didn’t subscribe to the “grab and go” Starbucks model of coffee drinking.

  “You’re looking very well,” he said, giving Rosemary an approving glance. “Those clothes suit you.”

  She thought pretty much the opposite, and would have said she felt like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes, only Glynis McGuire didn’t exactly dress like a lady who lunched, either. However, there was no point in protesting, since that would only succeed in letting Mr. Lockwood know how uncomfortable she was in her borrowed wardrobe. “Thank you,” she said politely, then went over to the silver coffeepot and poured a measure into one of the fragile-looking porcelain cups. There was also cream and sugar, but she ignored the add-ons and lifted the cup to her lips so she could blow on the liquid inside.

  Caleb did the same, although he didn’t seem to have any scruples about adding a decent measure of cream and a bit of sugar to his drink. He also put a cheese danish on a plate and took a bite before asking, “Are we driving?”

  “Of course,” Daniel replied smoothly. “Gerald offered, but the Range Rover has more room than his Cherokee.”

  It figured that he would drive a Range Rover. She wondered what the good people of Greencastle thought about the president of their local bank driving a vehicle that wasn’t made in America. Most likely, they’d drunk the Lockwood Kool-Aid and thought he walked on water. The delusions of the locals weren’t her problem, though. She just wanted to get this over with.

  Since Caleb had already snagged the one cheese danish on the platter — it figured — she took a blueberry one and hoped the sugar content wouldn’t have her bouncing off the walls. A bite told her that it wasn’t quite as sugary as she’d feared, was actually rich and buttery and obviously very fresh. She must have made an approving sound, because Daniel said, “Those are from a local bakery. I think you’ll find that Greencastle has more to offer than you thought.”

  “Mm,” Rosemary said, noncommittal because her mouth was full, and also because she didn’t see the point in arguing with him. All right, she had to admit to herself that Greencastle was kind of cute, and if it wasn’t infested with part-demons, then
it might be a decent place to live. She didn’t want to give him any ideas, though. His compliment earlier had unnerved her, and she didn’t like the way his gaze now moved from her to Caleb and back again. This morning, his son was a little less casual than the day before, in khakis and a cream-colored button-down shirt. Father’s orders for him to look more presentable for their trip to Indianapolis, or was Caleb trying to impress her?

  If that was the case, then he really didn’t know her at all. Even putting aside her current relationship with Will, she knew she’d never be impressed by a man wearing khakis.

  She was saved from having to say anything by the doorbell ringing. Daniel excused himself to go answer it, and she continued to punctuate bites of danish with sips of coffee, figuring she should do her best to finish her makeshift breakfast before Gerald appeared. Caleb did the same, although even the act of consuming a breakfast pastry couldn’t quite hide the slight smirk he wore. Funny how she’d never really seen him wearing that expression back in California, whereas now it seemed to be almost permanently imprinted on his face.

  Gerald came in with Daniel a moment later, just as she was setting down her plate. “Morning, Rosemary, Caleb,” he said pleasantly.

  “Good morning,” she replied as Caleb mumbled a greeting around a mouthful of danish. Looking at Gerald, she thought that if circumstances had been different — if she hadn’t loved her own father very much…if Gerald wasn’t a half-demon…if she’d been the result of an extramarital fling rather than her mother’s unknowing coupling with an entity bent on deceiving her — she might not have been horribly upset to learn he was her biological father. He seemed to be a much more pleasant person than Daniel Lockwood, that was for sure, although she also had to admit that Gerald’s friendly demeanor could be nothing more than a false façade.