Darkest Day (6 page)

“Just a guy at school.” She picked at her fingers, standing just to my side. “You going with Mac? Maybe we could … you know, go with you?”

I shook my head. The last party I’d gone to with Mac hadn’t worked out very well, and she’d planned the whole event.
No, wait … she, Caroline and Maddie had planned it.

“Winn?”

Snapped back by Zoe’s call of my name, I tapped my pen against my book. “What?”

“
Can
we go with you?”

“I don’t think we’re going, Zoe. Get Dad to drive you, or something.”

“Maybe I could ask that magician dude, you know …”

I turned back to her. “Magwa? What would you ask him to do? Make a pumpkin into a carriage? Give you a glass slipper? He’s a wizard, not a fairy godmother.”

Her eyes opened wide, and her hands gripped my arm. “Is there one—do you think? A fairy godmother?”

A laugh bubbled up. “I honestly don’t know.”

“Wouldn’t it be in that book thing of yours?”

“It wasn’t.” I’d read it cover to cover.

Zoe’s shoulders fell. “So, why not you and Mac? What’s up with you two? She hasn’t been around for, like … three days. I thought—you know—now that everything was all right again, we’d be—you know, hanging out.”

“You and Mac can do whatever you want to together. You are sisters.”

“Yeah, but you’re my brother.”

Not really.
I didn’t say it as much as I wanted to. Everything in my world had been flipped upside down just a few weeks before. Not only did I lose a sister, sort of, one of my very good friends also had a goblin for a mom. That revelation still bugged me, I just didn’t know why.

“Winn!” she snapped in front of me. “You keep zoning out. Pay attention.”

“Sorry. I have a lot on my mind.”

“Okay, but seriously. About the prom.”

“Not now, Zoe. Ask Dad first. For all I know, he’s gonna say no.”

“Fine, then. If he won’t let me go, maybe I’ll ask my mom and—”

“How’s she going to authorize it when she’s not even … around?”

Zoe shrugged. “Maybe I’ll find my real dad, then.”

That, too, had thrown me. Zoe and Mac had become full-blooded sisters, and I’d been left with my dad. I narrowed my eyes at my sister. “You know Maya’s not going to tell you anything about him until after Mac makes her decision, right?”

Another bump up of Zoe’s shoulder came with the biting of her nails.

So many new pieces of information played around in my head, though the identity of Zoe and Mac’s human dad didn’t plague me the way it seemed to Zoe. Or Mac.

I wanted to know more about Maddie.

My alarm clock buzzed, and with a slap to the off button, I packed up my work.

“Where you going?” Zoe asked.

“Library.”

“Tonight?”

I shook my head. “No, Zoe. Tomorrow. Yes, tonight.”

“You don’t have to get testy, you know.” She stormed out of my room.

I headed downstairs and found Dad hunched over work spread out on the table—his home away from home in the previous few days. According to him, he wanted to stay closer to Zoe and me until Mac had her big shining moment in the sun on July fourth.

“I’m going to the library.”

He lifted his chin. “Drive carefully.”

“Thanks.” With jacket in hand, I steered myself toward the garage doors, stopping with my hand on the handle. “Dad?”

His head tilted up again, glasses perched on his nose. “Yeah?”

“Do you think—is it wrong that—I mean …”

His lips curved.

“Um … about Mac … she hasn’t called in three days. Or come over. Or emailed. Or …”
Anything, not that she ever checks her email. Too human.

“I thought you had this discussion … that it was a mutual … arrangement.”

We had. Sorta. “Right.” I pressed down on the handle, but let go and walked back to the table. “You were right, you know.”

He slid the frames down his nose, pulling them off by the part that goes over his ear. “I am on so many levels, but why today?” A sly grin accompanied his comment.

“If Mom hadn’t chosen to … become human … would you have … done something different?”

“So this
is
about Mac?” His fingers played with the frame. “I’ve warned you that her destiny is already written, and that means part of yours is, too.”

“I know. I know. But I can’t get her out of my head.”

“Just because you won’t be together in a few months doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your time with her now. As much as it hurts me to miss your mom, I wouldn’t change what I had with her. For nothing.”

I pushed away from the table. “Yeah. Right.” My head bobbed in a nod. “Right.”

“Sit, Winn.” He patted the surface of his papers.

“I’ll be late for work.”

“No, you won’t. You’re never late. You’ve got a ten-minute drive and a twenty-minute window. Sit.”

I did.

“There’s a lot about your mother that you don’t know.”

I wanted to say, ‘Understatement of the year, Dad’, even with the conversation we’d already had.

“Sometimes, I don’t even understand why she chose me. Why she put me in this position. Why she had to choose human for me.”

“Aside from the non-humans can’t be with humans permanently rule?”

Dad chuckled. “There is that. But for now, I want you to know that it doesn’t matter if you’re human or not. We love who we love, and those who are worthy of that affection, of that emotion, of that gift, will earn it. They will find a way to be grateful for your presence in their life, not the other way around. So, now, tell me. What is it about Mac that keeps you tied to her—” He held up a hand before I could speak. “And don’t say because she’s a Changeling, yadda, yadda, yadda. Give me something more. Something meaningful.”

“She’s … she’s intensely smart even though she doesn’t let on. She’s … funny. She’s beautiful. She’s … I don’t know.”

“What about intimacy?”

My eyes squished closed before I could stop them. I’d never feared talking about sex with my dad, but just didn’t want to do it right then. When he gave me ‘the look’, I held up both hands.

“Emotional intimacy is just as important, Winn. Do you serve each other, or do you serve yourself?”

My forehead thunked against the table. “I feel … connected to her, you know. Deep down.”

His hand scruffed my hair like he used to. “I’m sure, Winn, that there’s even more, otherwise, you’d never have gotten so close to her, nor be so torn about your current status.”

“But what do I do? I mean, we’re in the homestretch, as you like to say. It’s almost all over. Done. Gone. Me off to college. She … off to rule the underworld.” I waved a hand through the air as if that would signify ‘the world’ popped back up. “What about becoming a Guardian like you?”

He steepled his fingers. “Unfortunately, that’s not an option. There can only ever be one Guardian in a family. I’m it. And once you become a Guardian, there are no take-backs, as you and Zoe like to say.” His mimicking of me made me laugh. “If I could give it up for you, I would. But … I can’t.”

“What … if I wanted to … change … myself?”

Dad’s head moved side to side, slow and steady. I recognized the expression. It meant he had an answer, he didn’t like it, and needed a moment before he formulated his response. “I’m only going to say this one time. Son …” His gaze fixed right on mine. “Never change who you are forever for what you think you want today,
unless
you can say, with certainty, that the change is something you would do for yourself and
only yourself
for the rest of your life.”

My watched buzzed, reminding me to get going, since I’d begged for my job at the library for a third time and had been told I could report to work with a doctor’s clearance.

Dad took my hand and squeezed. “Now, go. Get back to work. Fall back into life. Help Mac, and go to college in August. That’s all I ask.”

“That’s a lot.” I laughed as I stood, the advice he’d provided running through my head. He’d basically said I could let a vampire bite me and turn me into one of them. Without those words.

Do I want that? Forever?

Mac

“Okay, Suze, spill. What have you learned?” I sat on his couch, in his crypt-basement of a house. He stood in front of me, dressed in a three-piece wool suit, a curved pipe between his lips and his Sherlock Holmes hat on his head.

“You sure you don’t want Winford to hear these details?”

“I’m sure.” I waved him forward. “Just me.”

“But just you is …” His shoulders slumped. “… just not fun. How about we get Zoe?”

“Dude, Suze. Get a grip. You knew Winn and I weren’t going to be a ‘something’ for that long, as it is. And Zoe calls me whenever Mom does her ghostly apparition thing.”

“Yeah, but you aren’t trying!”

I pounded a fist on the couch. It made next to no sound since Suze had redecorated his entire space in brown velour. “Please just tell me what you’ve found out.”

Suze eyed me over his pipe, which he hadn’t stuffed with anything or lit. With his free hand, he retrieved his notebook and pencil from his pocket in which he’d promised he’d keep notes on any new piece of information he found. “Okay, so no word on Ridge or his magic, and the Council ain’t talkin’—as you know. Maya says ‘yes’, she did help in the hospital. Did a time-warp reverso thingamabob.”

“How? No, never mind.”

Suze shook his head so hard his hat spun to the left a quarter-turn. “I dunno. She’s the goddess.”

“You know this totally bites, right?” I’d finally met my own mother, and since I’d left the in-between, she could only talk to me through my protector of a demon, or my sister.

Suze’s big crooked smile emerged. “You like having a mom, don’t you?”

I gave him the stink eye. “Technically, I have two. Alina and my real one. So … carrying on … anything else?”

His pen moved up and down the notebook. “Still haven’t found out who sent Free at the movies, way back when. You know, I even went in and asked around … you know …
down there
?” His head cocked to the side, angling toward the floor until the hat tumbled off, which he caught and replaced.

I assumed he meant hell, where he could go back and forth from but, for a super-strong demon, scared him just the same. “Yeah, and?”

His big shoulders shrugged. “Nobody knows who called him up to try and steal you. Not even Free himself.”

Waves of frustration ebbed like the tide within me. I had none of the answers I needed before I said goodbye permanently to Winn. When in the in-between with my mom, I’d promised myself I’d get them—or have Suze get them for me, but I would ask the questions. “So nothing new, then? Did you look into Maddie and
her
Mommy dearest for me?”

Suze’s lips squished to the side.

“What does that mean?”

They moved completely to the other side.

“Suze?”

“Look, Mac. I know I’m playing the private dick, but—”

I jerked forward. “The what?”

“Private dick—”

A shake of my head couldn’t get the words out of my head that he’d put in there. “Please tell me that’s some old expression because the image that just popped into my head is not one I want to remember. Ever. Forever.” I pressed my fingertips to my eyelids.

Suze chuckled. “Got it from those old black and white television shows.”

The mental picture remained, but I waved at him to go on. “So … Maddie?”

“When you gonna get over this issue you got and go talk to Winn? You know the boy has info, and you need him.”

I rolled my eyes. “Maddie, Suze. Maddie. Focus.”

“Yeah, on that, Mac. She’s the daughter of a Council member. Prying into that is … well … like the kiss of death. I’d need to be the man of steel.”

“Who?”

“You really don’t watch much TV, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“The man of steel is Superman. I’d need to be Superman to get that information without risking every bit of my life.”

“All the more reason to get more details,” I said. “You do that while I—”
While I do nothing but wish Winn was with me.

“You
need
that boy.” Suze crossed his eyes and wiggled his eyebrows at me.

“Keep it up and that might stick.”

“What will?”

I mimicked his expression and stuck out my tongue.

“That’s what
human
moms tell their kids.” He waggled a finger at me. Before I could snatch it and make him stop, he grabbed me in a huge, non-Sherlock Holmes-like hug and spun me around the room. “Mac has a sense of humor! Mac has a sense of humor!”

My entire body jiggled as I hid a smile against his chest. “Down, Suze. Down!”

He slowed and set my feet back on the floor. Once he’d freed me, his finger extended toward the door. “Go. Now. While you’re in a good mood.”

“Go where?”

One of Suze’s eyes opened wide. It narrowed. The other did the same. “To get the boy back.”

7

Mac

I pressed the doorbell for a third time, holding it down and letting go at intermittent intervals. Only when feet shuffled across the inner foyer and a voice called out, ‘Coming!’ did I stop.

The door opened, and Caroline stood in the middle.

“What in house-fires are you doing here on a Friday night? Shouldn’t you be out with Winn?” She waved me in even as she asked.

“I need your help.” The door closed behind me, and I followed Caroline toward her room. We’d been friends, or what I considered friends for no more than six months—since the time I’d hooked up with Winn and Maddie. Before then, I’d have classified Caroline as nothing more than a being I sometimes saw at school, if I happened to glance up.

As we reached her room, she said, “What in the world do you need
my
help with?” She plopped on her chair, propping her feet on the edge of her bed in a way I’d seen her do a few times—when she and Maddie had dragged me along for what they called a girls night.

“I have a hypothetical question for you.”

Her eyebrow rose. “You’re asking
me
a hypothetical? You and Winn on the outs?”