Chapter 3
Wednesday, 8:59 a.m.
Moira crouched behind a dumpster, muscles tensed, senses alert. Her eyes were fixed on the building across the street – the abandoned glue factory, their target – but her ears focused on her radio, waiting for the team leader to give the order to move in. Andy crouched next to her, and she could feel the nervous energy flooding from his body.
Sure enough, a moment later, her headset exploded with chatter. “Team One, are you set?” came the leader’s voice.
“Ready,” came the reply.
“Team two, are you set?”
“We are.”
“Team three, are you set?”
“Ready,” Moira answered.
“Team four, set?”
“Yes.”
“Go!”
Moira sprang forward like a predatory animal, stalking toward the building and beckoning for Andy to follow. She reached one of the doors, old and wooden and even rotting in places. It was no trouble at all for Moira to kick it in. Gun out and pointed straight ahead, she stalked into the glue factory. At the other end of the room, one of the other teams kicked in another door, and several more agents came flooding through another.
The room they found themselves in was large and cavernous. It was devoid of people and furniture, but that did not mean it was empty. There were sleeping bags and mattresses strewn about the floor, along with plastic food wrappers and soda cups and cans. The corners of the immense room were a mess of spider webs. “Not just arsonists and murderers, but slobs, too,” the team leader intoned. “Fan out, search the adjoining rooms.”
Moira did so, breaking into one side room, then another. They told the same story – no people, lots of trash. In the second room, however, she spied a piece of paper amid the burrito wrappers and soda cups. Moira approached it slowly, raising a curious eyebrow, and picked it up. Scribbled on the page was a list of names. Names, addresses, and phone numbers. Most of the names were crossed out, but a few were not.
“Whoever was here, they’re not here now,” came Andy’s voice from behind her. She turned with a start, cursing herself for letting her guard down, even for a moment. She put a hand to her mouth and her cheeks flushed as she saw that it was only her partner, not a threat. “… Oh, I’m sorry,” he told her, looking mortified at having startled her.
“It’s all right,” she replied, with a calming smile. “What’ve we got?”
“Perps bugged out,” Andy repeated. “Looks like recently, too. Team Leader thinks they knew we were coming.”
Moira raised a startled eyebrow. “How could they have known?”
“Dunno,” Andy shrugged. “Good question. What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the piece of paper she held.
“A list, apparently,” she replied, handing the paper to him. “Of people. What they have in common, I’m not sure.”
Andy squinted as he scrutinized the page. “I recognize some of these names. They’re previous victims.”
“Yeah? So maybe the ones that aren’t crossed out –“
“People they’re planning to attack,” Andy caught on instantly. “We can warn them.”
“Slow down, partner,” Moira held up a hand to forestall his optimism, though she had the same thoughts. “Let’s get this back to the FBI building and cross-check the names against past arson victims with this group’s MO to make sure this really is a list of targets.”
Andy gave her a wry smile. “I’m pretty sure your picture is next to the word ‘anhedonia’ in the dictionary.”
It was a joke, and she knew he meant it that way, but it still stung. Moira didn’t let that show, of course. “Obsessive compulsive and anal retentive, that’s my middle name.”
“Long middle name.”
“My parents didn’t like me.”
Andy gave a brief laugh. “Good job on finding this,” he told her, then turned and walked from the room.
--
3:45 p.m.
“Alex!” came Lucian’s voice from behind her as she headed out of the school. Somehow, even when raised, his voice came across calm and non-threatening. He made his way through the throng of students heading toward the exit, and she found him at her side, the brown eyes fixed on her. She had seen little of him in the last two days, and so had not had any chance to cancel their date, which she realized belatedly was supposed to be this afternoon. She opened her mouth to do so, but before she could, he spoke.
“How’s it going?” he asked, smiling warmly at her.
“Oh, you know,” she shrugged, feeling the warmth in her stomach and wishing it would go away. That would make it very difficult to say what she wanted to say. “School is school. I’m just glad the homework hasn’t really started yet.”
“Sooo…” he began coyly. “That means you have some time to hang out with me, then, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” Alex began, gathering her courage to tell him she’d changed her mind. Why was it so hard to do? “About that…” She fidgeted with her hands as she prepared to deliver her message.
But Lucian took advantage of her hesitation. “Don’t tell me you’ve found someone better?” he asked, facial expression fearful, as if he was dreading her answer.
“Well…” she began, feeling like maybe, just maybe, she could do it now.
Apparently seeing that he had only a split-second window, Lucian spoke again, giving her an ironic smile. “Come on,” he intoned. “It usually takes at least two dates before a girl decides they want nothing to do with me. Don’t set my new record.”
There was a quality about it all – his speech, his words, his manner – that was aloof while at the same time commanding her sympathy. The words were detached, but his inflections (as well as the gleam in his soft brown eyes) somehow told her that her answer actually mattered to him. The exchange made her feel special. It melted her heart a bit, and robbed her of the conviction to say “no,” as she had planned.
“Well … all right,” she replied shyly.
Lucian beamed at her – and was it just her imagination, or was there a predatory quality to the grin? The question was forgotten in the electric tingle as he took her hand, and the two of them headed out together into the clear, sunny afternoon.
--
4:00 p.m.
Moira McBain and Andy Hall pulled up in the driveway of the Cronlords’ two story house, the afternoon sun beaming down on their small golden car. “Y’know,” Moira remarked to Andy as the car slowed to a stop. “This is the part of the job I’ve never gotten used to.”
“What’s that?” Andy inquired, eyeing her curiously.
“How d’ya tell someone that some kids are gonna burn their house down?”
Andy gave her a bemused expression. “Just like that, I think. Can’t think of a lot of ways to sugarcoat that particular piece of news.”
Moira laughed softly. “All right then,” she told him, taking a breath as she pushed her car door open. “Let’s go get this over with.”
With Andy behind her, Moira walked to the doorway and rang the bell. “Just a minute!” came a thick, rich voice from the other side of the door, and a moment later, a woman stood in the doorway. Curvy and medium-height, the woman positively exuded authority, her green eyes piercing and dissecting both Moira and Andy within a second of seeing them. Even after several years as an FBI agent, Moira had only rarely met someone with whom she felt so ill at ease.
“May I help you two?” the woman asked, giving them a cheerful smile.
“Yes, I think so,” Moira answered, reaching into her jacket and pulling out her badge, displaying it for the woman. “I’m Moira McBain, this is Andy Hall, we’re with the FBI. You’re Ainsling Cronlord?”
“That would be me,” Ainsling answered in a clipped tone. It wasn’t rude, but it wasn’t particularly welcoming, either. “Have I done something wrong?”
“Oh, no,” Moira laughed briefly. “It’s nothing like that. Actually, we’re here because we’re concerned about what ot
her people might do to you.”
“Oh?” Cronlord asked, raising an eyebrow.
Moira nodded. “I’m afraid so. May we come in? It shouldn’t take long.”
There was a hesitation, ever-so-slight, before the woman smiled and answered, “Of course, yes.” She was no doubt hoping that the two agents would not notice it, but Moira did. The woman stood aside, allowing Moira and Andy to enter, then led them to her living room. She gestured them toward the couch, while she herself took a large, cushioned easy chair to one side, her posture almost regal.
Andy’s eyes immediately fell to a picture that sat on the coffee table in front of the couch, a picture of Ainsling standing next to a tall, lanky man with a young, blonde girl in front of them. “This your family?” Andy asked, looking up at her, pointing to the picture.
“They are indeed,” she answered with a grin. “My husband sells insurance, and our Alex just started tenth grade this week.”
“You must be very proud,” Andy commented.
“Of course,” Ainsling replied. “So, you said we were in some kind of danger?”
“Unfortunately, you might be,” Moira told her. “Are you familiar with the recent rash of home fires in this area?”
“Yes,” Ainsling answered immediately, and Moira noted that she seemed not the slightest bit surprised at the inquiry. “The newspapers say the police think it’s arson. Do you believe we might be a target?”
“We raided an abandoned glue factory this morning that we think was being used by the people responsible for the fires,” Andy told her. “They weren’t there, but they left a list of names behind. A significant number of people on the list correspond with victims of the house fires. We’re sending agents to the homes of the other people on the list to warn them to be alert, since we think they may be the next targets.”
Ainsling nodded. “Very courteous of you,” she told Andy, in her clipped tone, dissecting the man once again with her eyes. “So, anything in particular we should be on the lookout for?”
“Well, we think the perpetrators are young – some adolescents, some in their twenties – so, if you see any kids lurking around that you don’t know….”
“I’ll be on the lookout,” Ainsling replied briskly, giving a perfunctory nod and seeming almost disinterested.
Andy’s eyes glanced to the picture, then back to Ainsling. “How old is your daughter?”
“Alex? She’s fifteen.”
“Do you know all her friends?” Andy asked her.
“Who ever knows all of a fifteen year old child’s friends?” Ainsling laughed dismissively, standing from her chair. “Certainly not her parents. Would you two like some tea, or something?” she asked, starting to walk out of the room, presumably toward the kitchen.
“It’s an important question, Mrs. Cronlord,” Moira put in. “We don’t know exactly how these kids are getting close enough to the houses to burn them down. For all we know, they could be getting the owners to let them in voluntarily, claiming to be friends of their kids or something.”
Cronlord turned her head, her mouth opening to reply, but before she could actually speak, she tripped over a book that someone had left on the floor. She fell with a yelp, her eyes widening in surprise, and as she did, a necklace flew out from underneath her blouse, a necklace with an intricately-carved metal symbol hanging on it. It was a symbol which, to Moira, was all-too-familiar.
“Dammit, Alex,” Ainsling grunted, anger seething in her voice. “I told you to clean up after yourse—“
But before she could even finish her sentence, Moira was up from the couch, charging toward Ainsling, grabbing her by the collar as she tried to right herself, and slamming her against the back wall with a CRASH! Moira took vengeful satisfaction in Ainsling’s expression, which betrayed the first traces of fear that Moira had seen in the other woman’s face. “Wells Society, huh?” Moira snarled at her. “What the hell are you doing to that poor girl?”
“Excuse me?” Ainsling shot back, trying to feign surprise – but to Moira, it was an obvious ploy.
“I know who you people are,” Moira growled. “Your whole game is sacrificing your children to your insane religion. Give me one good reason not to call Child Welfare right the fuck now.”
Ainsling’s fear disappeared instantly, replaced by a smug, almost predatory smile, and she replied coolly, “Because if you do, Agent McBain, you know perfectly well that they won’t find anything. If you know us as well as you claim – which you don’t, by the way – then you know we’re very good at covering our tracks. And I can assure you that, if I do get any calls from those folks, I’ll be having a talk with your supervisor at the FBI about the little assault you’re committing right now. So let’s just keep this whole thing our little secret, eh?”
Slowly, Moira released Ainsling, her face smoldering. She turned toward the door, beckoning Andy to follow her. “You’re lucky it’s my job to stop these adolescent arsonists, Mrs. Cronlord,” she told Ainsling as she headed for the door, not even turning to look at the other woman as she spoke. “Otherwise, I might just let you burn.”
--
Andy Hall reached the car several seconds after Moira, and found his partner sitting in the front seat, a staggered expression on her face, as if she’d just been punched in the gut. That he’d rarely seen her so openly shaken was a sign that something had happened to her in the Cronlord house, something he didn’t fully understand. At the same time, the fact that he’d rarely seen her so openly shaken also meant that he had no context for how to deal with her now.
He’d seen anger from Moira before, many times. During an interrogation, when a witness (or, just as often, departmental bureaucracy) was stonewalling one of their investigations, even occasionally directed at him, often because she felt he wasn’t taking something seriously enough. But anger was different. This was … what? Shock? Or grief?
The afternoon sun provided no answers as it shone down on him, so he gingerly opened the door and took his place in the passenger’s seat beside Moira. “You know,” he opened, tentatively trying humor as he fastened his seatbelt, which locked into place with a soft click. “Putting people into walls is becoming a real thing with you, Moira. That’s, what, twice this week? If this FBI thing doesn’t work out for you, you could try professional wrestling.”
“She was one of them,” Moira spoke softly, her voice lacking its usual vigor. She sounded deflated in a way that was so unlike the woman he knew that Andy found it almost disturbing.
“Who?” he asked, raising a curious eyebrow. “Cronlord? She doesn’t seem like a very nice person, and I feel sorry for that girl, but I don’t think she’s dirty.”
“Not her,” Moira replied almost immediately, in the same tones. “My mother.”
“Your mother was one of whom? That ‘Wells Society’ that you grilled Cronlord about? How’d you make that connection, anyway?”
“The symbol around her neck – it’s their logo.”
“All right, who are they – they sound like a country club to me,” he laughed at his own joke, still hoping to jolly her out of whatever this mood was that she was in. But he could see even as he was speaking that it was no good.
“Hardly,” Moira scoffed. “They’re an underground religious cult. They believe some kind of demon invasion or apocalypse or something is on its way, and that it’s their duty to have children and … prepare … them to fight it when it comes.”
Now Andy’s expression turned serious. “Prepare them how?”
Moira shuddered. “I’m not entirely sure. I wasn’t the one my mother did it to – she was never sure I had the ‘potential,’ or something like that,” she scoffed derisively. “But I know it’s nasty. Seriously nasty. Like, probably-child-abuse nasty.”
“What do you mean you weren’t – you never told me you have a sibling,” Andy remarked, the surprise on his face very genuine.
“Had,” Moira answered. “Whatever my mother did to him, it was so bad that he ….”
Andy had a feeling that he knew what was coming. “Moira … no ….” was all he could think to say.
“Drug overdose,” she told him, her tone bland, her gray eyes staring straight ahead out the windshield, not looking at him. “At least, that’s what the doctors think. By the time any of us found him, he’d already been dead a couple of hours. Nothing we could do.”
“Moira …”
“He was my best friend,” Moira sniffled, turning to face him as moisture welled up in her eyes. “And he never even told me. He never even asked for help. I would’ve called Child Welfare myself if he’d just given me some idea of what was happening, but he didn’t, he never….” She stopped there as her composure broke, openly crying now.
“What was his name? Andy asked quietly.
“Ian,” she told him, continuing to sob softly. “His name was Ian.”
So that’s why you aggressively keep everyone at arm’s length, Andy thought. But he didn’t say that to Moira. Instead, he simply reached his arms out, and pulled her toward him warmly, into a hug that was made somewhat awkward by their positions and seatbelts. But he held her, nevertheless, running one hand gently through her brilliant red hair, until she calmed herself.
--
4:20 p.m.
“Nah, my mother’s all right,” Alex told Lucian, looking over at him fondly as they strolled hand-in-hand across a grassy field. “She just… she’s very practical. And she has high standards – I think she’s upset that she never had a career of her own. She feels like… like she let herself down, you know? And she doesn’t want that for me.”
“I guess my folks took the opposite tack,” Lucian answered, eyes not wavering from her face. “They always made it very obvious they were proud of me.”
“Oh, my Dad’s proud of me,” Alex snorted. “A little too proud, sometimes, I think.”
Lucian laughed as though he found the notion silly, and raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“Well, I mean, it rocks being Daddy’s Little Girl, and all that, but I’m fifteen years old. He doesn’t have to gush over me every time I cross a street without getting hit by a car, you know?”
“Well, would you rather see his reaction if you had gotten hit?” Lucian teased.
“No!” she teased back, laughing and pushing him playfully with her free hand.
“Good,” he replied, catching her hand in his own and pulling her close. “That would make it harder.”
“What?” she asked softly, feeling a rising flush in her cheeks as she looked up at him. Somewhere inside of her, a warning siren was screaming, but she could barely hear it over the rush of blood in her ears.
“This,” he whispered, and then leaned down and kissed her, warmly.
It went on for a long moment. Pleasantly, at first, but then, she felt a wrenching pain in her head, as if someone had stabbed her in the throat. Slowly, the pain began to spread, down to her collarbone, then her chest, then her gut. It was as if her entire body might explode or split in half at any moment. She convulsed, barely able to exercise the muscle control necessary for any conscious movement. She forced her lips apart, and rasped, “Why?”
He looked down at her, face full of ecstasy commingled with predatory glee. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. The words were compassionate, but his tone was devoid of even the slightest compassion. “It will be over soon.”
Her eyes and mind cast about for a solution, racing frantically. Why had she done this? Why had she been such a fool? She’d literally been given a message from God, and she’d ignored it, and now it looked like she’d pay for that stupidity with her life. She saw only one slim chance for salvation, and in her current state, she was not at all sure she could pull it off. As he kept his lips pressed to hers, she focused her concentration, telling her brain to make her right leg move.
It was tremendously painful, all the more so as the wrenching pain his kiss inflicted spread into her legs themselves, but she managed to make her right leg move. Just a twitching at first, then a jerking, and then it jolted upward.
And she kicked him in the crotch.
Immediately, the pain ceased, as if someone had flipped an off-switch. His lips separated from hers, and he released her from his hold as he doubled over, hands going for his groin. She wasted no time, bolting past him, away from him, heading for the trees at the other end of the field. Though she ran as fast as she was able, it seemed several eternities before she reached the wooded area beyond. She glanced behind herself as she went, and saw Lucian already righting himself, turning to come after her.
You’ll know he’s caught you when you’re dead, she scolded herself sternly, in a tone very like her mother’s. Keep going.
Alex ran frantically over the uneven ground, her feet seeming almost to have a mind of their own as she raced desperately, not in any particular direction, but simply away. The first beads of sweat broke out on her forehead beneath the crown of golden-blonde hair, but Alex didn’t care, couldn’t care about that, nor about the burning feeling starting to blossom in the pits of her lungs. All she could think about was keeping as much distance between herself and Lucian as possible.
Snick! came the soft noise as one of her tennis shoes collided with a branch on the ground in front of her, snapping loose a twig from the branch as she fell forward, her face hitting the dirt. Alex cursed herself even as she fell – she’d been so focused on the simple act of moving ahead that she hadn’t thought to watch what was ahead. Always were a clumsy bitch. She rolled onto her back as fast as possible, scrambling to her feet as she saw the dark streak swoop ever closer to her.
He moved with almost inhuman speed, closing a full third of the gap between them just in the time it took her to get to her feet. Alex shrieked and leapt to one side. There were plenty of trees around her to hide behind, and she scrambled behind a trunk and hid. The black blur that was Lucian raced forward, stopping a mere few feet from the tree behind which she hid.
It’s exactly like the dream, she thought, as her heart raced, pounding in her ears. Exactly. I even tripped over the branch, and I should have known it would be there. Stupid stupid stupid. Apparently even the threat of impending death was not enough to interrupt her savage anger at herself for getting herself into this situation. So loud were the noises in her head that she felt certain that Lucian could hear them, and would be on her in a moment, ready to finish what he had started in the field.
In the outside world, the only noise was a slight breeze rustling the leaves above her head. A brown leaf fell down from one of the tree branches toward her. She saw it, recognized that this, too, was just like the dream, and thought about snapping it out of the air before it could reach her face, tickle her nose, tempt her to sneeze. The problem was that the sound of her fist crunching a leaf was sure to make noise. If the dream continued to be accurate – and so far, she had no reason to believe it wouldn’t – she could resist the tickling of her sinuses.
Of course, if things go like the dream said, I’m gonna die in about another minute.
The brown leaf fell across her nose and cheek, but, just as in the dream, she did not sneeze. Lucian’s shoes made soft squeak-squeak-squeaking noises as he walked slowly around the area near her hiding place, looking for her.
“I know you’re here, Alex,” came his baritone voice, at once lilting and lethal, as she risked a glance over her shoulder at him. There was something almost angelic about his features, even now, as he hunted her. Slowly, his head turned in her direction, and she jerked her own head back behind the trunk, holding her breath as her heart all-but-stopped with the fear that she’d been seen. “I can feel you. I can smell you.”
The silent eternity began. This is it, Alex remembered. This is the part where he finds me. I guess there’s no escaping it… She felt a sick rush of dread. Alex did not want to die. More silence, and then, sure enough –
“Gotcha!” Lucian roared triumphantly as he stalked toward her, poised to close the distance between them in a fracti
on of a second. She picked herself up to run away, knowing beyond doubt that it would do no good but not knowing what else to do. But mere feet from her, another noise rent the air.
“ALEX!” came a scream, in a voice that was not at all silken, but was very familiar. From behind a tree leapt Tyler, panting, sweat dripping from his dark brow, something clutched in his hand. He body-slammed Lucian from behind, tackling the young man (if he was a man) to the ground face-first. But Lucian rolled with remarkable adroitness, tossing Tyler off him and sending him flying into a tree trunk. There was a loud CRUNCH as Tyler’s body hit the trunk, and he dropped whatever was in his hand.
“TYLER!!” Alex shrieked, forgetting even Lucian and the danger to her own life for a moment as she ran toward her friend, who had fallen to the ground and lay there prone. Lucian picked himself up once more, and started for her. At his speed, it was clear that he would get to her before she got to Tyler.
She cast her eyes about for anything she could use to aid herself, to stall or harm or incapacitate him. Fear still pumped through her, but it was not completely dominant anymore. Things were no longer going according to the dream, and that gave her some hope. Not much, but some.
And then, her eyes fell on the object Tyler had dropped on the ground. A pocketknife, blade extended. She picked it up, and as Lucian rushed for it, she brought it upward and forward, thrusting the knife toward any part of his body she could hit.
The knife struck him dead center in the chest, slicing its way into his flesh until only the hilt was visible. Lucian went down, falling to the ground on his back with only a soft, gurgling groan.
--
5:03 p.m.
“Thanks for the help, Tyler,” Alex smiled warmly as she dropped her still-groggy friend off at his house.
“No sweat,” Tyler replied, then reached up and rubbed his head where it had collided with the tree trunk. “ … Maybe a few lumps, though,” he groaned, giving Alex a good-natured smile to let her know he didn’t blame her.
Which Alex appreciated, since she certainly blamed herself. She remembered her dream, as well as her initial reservations about Lucian when she’d first seen him, and felt sick. How could she have been so stupid – she’d eaten right out of the palm of his hand, even with such an impossible warning. An impossible warning … “Tyler?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“How’d you know to come for me?” she asked.
“Saw you walkin’ off with the Prince of Darkness, lookin’ all gaga eyed,” he told her. “Figured somethin’ must be wrong, since you told me you were gonna cancel the date with him. You’re a lotta things, Alex, but not flighty. Or stupid.”
Alex gave an embarrassed smile, her cheeks warming. “I feel like both right now.”
Tyler grinned his carefree grin. “Hey, don’t worry about it,” he told her, playfully punching her in the arm. “You did at least one thing right.”
“Oh?” Alex asked.
“You told me about him,” Tyler answered, still grinning. There was a moment’s silence, and then Tyler walked up to his front doorstep. He turned to Alex. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow?”
“Unless the police come for me in the night,” she answered, not entirely joking.
Tyler shook his head. “I got yer back if they do, the dude was serious sleaze.”
“You can say that again,” Alex answered with a scoff. “Hey, you gonna be okay, with your parents and all?”
“Yeah, I’ll tell ‘em it was tryouts or something, it’s cool.”
As always, he seemed perpetually unworried, radiating a calm that Alex envied more than ever at this moment.
“Thanks again.”
--
5:37 p.m.
Alex crept into her house as quietly as she could, pushing the door open slowly to avoid making any noise. Even with all her caution, it made a slight creaking sound as it swung open, and Alex winced silently, inwardly cringing and waiting for her mother or father to realize she was home and call out for her. Dad shouldn’t be home from work yet, and hopefully Mom’s upstairs, taking a nap or knitting or something…
Alex truly did not want to face her parents right now. She still had dirt on her face and clothes from falling down during the chase, and Lucian’s blood on her hands from having stabbed him, and she was not eager to explain to them what had happened. She could already picture her father overreacting, going into hysterics, threatening to call the principal and the police and go to Lucian’s house and finish the job himself if he wasn’t dead. Her mother, meanwhile, would be disapproving: “Your father and I have told you before about going off alone with other people,” she’d likely say. “That should teach you something about recklessness.”
It would be bad enough when Lucian either reported the incident to the police, if he’d survived, or his body was found, if he had not. The police would quickly link his injuries to her – she hadn’t worn gloves, and her fingerprints were surely all over Tyler’s pocketknife. Her only saving grace was that Tyler had been there, had seen Lucian hunting her, stalking her. He would surely corroborate her story. That would hopefully keep her out of serious trouble.
Still, her parents would both most surely be informed, and their respective reactions would be bad enough at that point. She did not need to deal with them for any longer than necessary. She pressed the door closed behind her as quietly as she could, her anxiety over being discovered increasing with every moment as she tip-toed toward the stairs, eager to throw her clothes in her laundry basket and herself in the shower, thus erasing all evidence of her scuffle with Lucian. Just a few more steps until she was on the stairs, and then she’d be in her room, out of sight…
“Alex,” came her mother’s crisp, harsh voice, from their kitchen. Alex winced inwardly, turned – and there sat her mother, in one of the chairs around the kitchen table, calmly sipping a mug of tea, looking right at her. Alex trod slowly and fearfully into the kitchen towards her mother.
“Hi, Mom,” Alex greeted her, smiling and hoping she didn’t sound as nervous as she felt. Which she was pretty sure she did.
Her mother didn’t have to ask the question, Ainsling’s green eyes looking Alex up and down did it for her.
“Oh, yeah, that’s nothing, some idiot left a beer bottle in the middle of the road on the way home from the bus stop, and I fell on it.”
“Alex,” her mother chided her sternly, her brows lowering over her narrowing green eyes, face set in a no-nonsense expression. “What have I told you about lying to me?”
Any hope Alex had of coming out of this unscathed died then, but still, she tried once more. “I’m not lying, Mom!” she protested.
Her mother raised incredulous eyebrows. “Oh really?” she asked, her tone immediately making clear that she wasn’t buying it, not for a second. “Then how’d you get all that blood on your hand?” Her eyes shot to the blood-caked hand.
Alex sighed, inwardly deflating. “All right,” she confessd. “I didn’t fall over a beer bottle. I – someone attacked me.”
Ainsling took this in calmly, her expression barely shifting. “Who?” she asked, the sternness in her voice undiminished.
“A – one of the guys in my class,” Alex told her, fearful of the lecture to come.
“I see,” she replied, her voice unchanged. “He just jumped right out of nowhere and attacked you?” The sternness in her tone said that this was a rhetorical question, that she already knew it had not happened that way. Apparently her mother was drawing it out, feinting around Alex before going in for the metaphorical kill. Alex really hated it when she did that.
“No,” Alex answered, shame coloring her voice and her cheeks. “He – he asked me out on a date.”
Alex cringed inwardly, expecting to be scolded for not having brought the potential suitor home and introduced him to Ainsling before going out with him. Her mother might even use that as a way to blame her for what had happened: “I could have told you he was trouble, IF you’d asked me.�
� But Ainsling did not. Instead, she simply asked, in the same level voice: “Did you like him?”
“I – not really,” she admitted, shame deepening further. “To be honest, he … he kinda creeped me out.”
Her mother seemed not the least bit surprised. “Then why say ‘yes’?” she asked, her voice not deviating from the smooth, strict tone she’d been using throughout the conversation. No shock. No disbelief. And no disappointment.
“I – I dunno,” Alex admitted. She had been going over the same question in her own head for the last hour. Why had she gone with him, especially after the dream? “It … it was like I couldn’t say no to him. Like … not even like I had to give him whatever he wanted. More like I wanted to give him whatever he wanted.”
Here it came – the lecture on teenagers and hormones and how Alex needed to learn to step back and think before letting her heart do whatever it desired. As her mother opened her mouth, she braced herself – the feinting was done, now she was going to strike. Ainsling drew breath, spoke : “Well, you’d best go clean yourself off, hadn’t you? We’ll be having dinner as soon as your father gets home.”
Alex did a double-take. Yes, she had heard her mother correctly. But that made no sense – her mother had not punished her, had not even really lectured her, even though Alex herself felt that her actions were the height of stupidity. Often Alex felt that her mother was overly harsh, and Ainsling’s leniency in this case thus left Alex floored. Also, beneath her shock and continued self-disgust, Alex’s brain registered something else, too: she’d just told her mother she’d been attacked, there was blood all over her hand, and yet there was no great rush of relief at knowing that Alex was alive and safe and mostly unharmed.
Ainsling Cronlord had never been a particularly emotional person, and had always been quicker with criticism than praise. But Alex had never doubted that, however little her mother might respect her, however disappointing she might find her, if Alex’s life were truly in danger, Ainsling’s claws would come out. The two women might disagree on nearly everything, but Alex had always known that Ainsling’s protective instincts of her in particular were fierce. This blithe unconcern was confusing and more than a little chilling.
She’d sort it out later, Alex decided. For now, she was going to take advantage of her good fortune, hop in a long, hot shower, and try to forget the whole incident. She turned to go – but as she did, her mother called to her again.
“Alex,” came the soft, stern, clipped voice.
Alex spun, wondering if Ainsling had decided to punish her after all. “Yes?” she asked, with some trepidation.
“This boy who attacked you. This would be the one you had the dream about on Sunday night … wouldn’t it?” Ainsling asked, her green eyes locking on Alex’s.
Alex reacted with a start. Everything about this conversation had been a surprise to her – this was the greatest surprise of all. “How – how did you … ?”
“Was it?” Ainsling repeated, in a tone that told Alex that it was not her place to ask questions.
“Y – yes. Yeah, it was the same one,” she answered.
Ainsling nodded. “Better hurry and wash up, then. We’re having pot roast for dinner.”
Weaver Page 4
