Something Witchy (Mystics & Mayhem) (31 page)

I should have been sad, right?  Weren’t you
supposed
to be sad when you finally left home?  But I wasn’t.  There were no happy memories to leave behind, no tearful farewell waiting as I walked out.  All I felt as I looked at the room around me was relief. 

That room belonged to the ghost of a sad little girl with too much hair and eyes that were too big for her face.  A little girl who had tried to be perfect and failed over and over.  A child who kept her fears and hurt close to her heart and put on a happy face for everyone else to see.

And it was time for her to move on.

Without even a backward glance, I pushed the dresser aside, shoved my phone in my back pocket, and picked up my bags and my purse before unlocking the door.  And there, sitting against the wall across from me, was my father.

I felt tears building behind my lids but blinked them away.  My father had never been any more attentive than my mother, but I had always thought that maybe he loved me.  He was just one of those people who became absorbed in something to the point that nothing else existed. 

“You wouldn’t let me in,” he said, shrugging.  “My only option was to wait for you to come out.”

My father still looked so young.  The only indication that he was pushing fifty was the dashes of gray in his dark, unruly hair.  He was still trim and fit and had only the bare minimum of laugh lines.  He was handsome and kind and gentle, even if he did have the parental capacity of a teaspoon.  What on earth had he ever seen in my mother, the Ice Queen?

“Where are you going to go, baby girl?” he asked, his deep voice soft and calm.  “What about school, your friends?   There’s only a few months left of your senior year.  Surely you can wait until then.”

“No, Dad, I can’t.”  I closed my eyes against the stricken look on his face.  “I’m not going to spend another night under her roof.  Don’t worry about me.  I’ll be fine.  I’ll stay with Kim or something.”

“I can’t just let you go, Em,” he said, sighing and getting to his feet.

“I wasn’t giving you a choice.”  I hitched the strap of my suitcase higher on my shoulder and prepared for battle.  “I’m an adult and you can’t make me stay here.”

He gazed at me for a long moment, then held out his hand.  “Give me your car keys and your credit card.”

“You gave me that car as a gift,” I reminded him, sure he couldn’t be serious.

“A gift I’m still paying for,” he countered, looking tired and sad.

I stared at him for a second, my stomach tying in knots, still unable to make myself believe my own father was going to screw me like that.  When he just continued to hold his hand out, though, I dug around in my purse until I found my wallet and slapped the plastic into his outstretched palm, then did the same with my keys.  If he thought being penniless and without a car would keep me there, he was insane.  I would walk all the way back to Grams’ if I had to, and I still had the trust fund Grandpa Albert had left me when he died which had come under my control when I turned eighteen.  I would be fine.

“And your phone.”

Now,
that
was low.  The look I gave him was positively glacial.  Reaching into my back pocket with difficulty, I extracted my phone and flung it at him.

 “Happy now?”

“Not even remotely,” he muttered. 

His face fell when I picked up the bags I had dropped during the purge of all my worldly goods.  He really
had
thought that would make me stay.  Maybe he wasn’t as smart as I had always thought he was, after all.

I turned without another word and made my way carefully down the stairs.  I was off balance with the heavy bags dragging me forward, but I made it to the bottom without falling and breaking my neck and gave myself a mental pat on the back.  My mother was standing right where I had left her.  I gave her a cold look before heading for the front door. 

“Camille!  Say something, for God’s sake!” I glanced over my shoulder with my hand on the doorknob to see my father glaring at my mother from the bottom of the stairs. 

“No, Andrew,” she said, a sneer making her way less beautiful than she normally appeared.  “She wants to go and I’m frankly happy to be rid of her.”

With that, she turned and walked back into the living room and I walked out the door, entering the unknown with a sick, heavy feeling in my stomach that made me want to puke.

I made it three blocks before the enormity of what I had done hit me and my legs gave out.  I was eighteen, still in school, with no job, no car, and nowhere to go.  I briefly considered finding a payphone and calling Kim to come get me, but the mental picture I had of her face when I told her I had left home and wasn’t going back was just too much for me to take.  And calling Grams was definitely out.  I didn’t even want to imagine what her reaction would be if I told her what had happened.  Somehow, I didn’t think it would be pretty.

I could call Nathan…  No, that wouldn’t get me anywhere.  Well, I take that back.  It would get me somewhere, all right—like a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific with no life boat and no form of communication, maybe—but not anywhere I wanted to be.  .

That left me all alone, with no one to turn to for help and no idea what to do next.

Making a Deal with the Devil

I wandered for another hour or so and finally ended up in an all-night coffee shop—that thankfully had a few ancient computers set up for public use.  The tables were warped and stained by countless spills, the red vinyl booth seats were all in varying states of shabby, and the entire place smelled of a mixture of coffee and grease.  Still, it was warm and well-lit, which was more than I could say for the street beyond. 

I slid into a seat at one of the computers and a tired-looking waitress came over to take my order, her glazed-over expression making me think she’d been working nights about ten years too long.  I ordered a cup of coffee and paid for an hour of computer time. 

As soon as she disappeared, I logged into my online bank account and then stared in resignation at the ‘Down for Maintenance’ message that appeared on the screen before me.  I should have been expecting that.  If anything in my life ever went
right
, I’d probably die from the shock alone.

Logging out with tears in my eyes, I got up and stumbled to a booth in the corner and sank onto the cracked leather seat.  Dropping my face into my hands, I tried to figure out how my life had become a never-ending series of tragedies. 

Five days before, I had been a normal high school student—well
almost
normal.  My biggest problems had been a few ghosts that popped up every once in a while to complicate my life, an ex-boyfriend who wouldn’t go away, and figuring out what I was going to wear to Oakhurst Academy’s joke of a Homecoming dance.  Now, I was a freaky, tree-exploding disaster, the ex-boyfriend was a demon, I was crushing on a vampire, and I was homeless. 

If things could get any worse, I couldn’t see how.  The next level of bad, in my opinion, was a natural disaster of mythical proportions…maybe a pole shift that turned Missouri into the new Antarctica.  Yeah, that would be right on the level of suck required to make things any worse.

I lifted my head when the waitress brought my coffee and attempted to give her a weak smile in thanks—which she ignored like the zombie I was starting to think she might be.  I looked down at the cup she had put before me and immediately wrinkled my nose at the awful, tarlike substance.  Instead of drinking the sludge, I pushed it away and reached up to wrap my fingers around the cross that had somehow become my anchor.  Sliding it back and forth along the leather cord, I tried to figure out what to do next. 

All I needed was a plan.  So, I was homeless?  It really didn’t change anything in the big scheme of things.  I still had a psychotic demon to take out.  What I needed was a place to hide while I plotted my next move in the never ending game of cat and mouse Jack and I were playing. 

I was just about ready to give in and call Kim when I suddenly felt a sick, lurching sensation in the pit of my stomach, that sense that someone was watching me making my skin crawl again.  My head snapped up as my whole body went tense, looking for the cause of the creepy feeling starting to make me wish I could crawl in a hole and hide.  Without being too obvious, I turned my head from side to side, scanning the nearly empty coffee shop. 

The couple holding hands in the opposite corner was too busy looking at each other to find me interesting enough to stare at.  The little old man propped up at the counter slipping whiskey into his coffee wasn’t paying me any mind, either.  The waitress who had brought me my sludgy coffee was busy texting next to the register, and I could just see the cook in the back wiping down a stainless steel prep table with his earbuds firmly planted in his ears and his head bobbing to the beat.

So, who the hell was watching me?

No sooner did that thought cross my mind than a loud, echoing boom rocked the coffee shop, followed by the sound of shattering glass as the windows blew inward, raining glass down on all of us.  With a terrified shriek, I threw myself sideways in the seat and covered my head to protect my face.  Convinced a bomb had just gone off somewhere, I stayed there, huddled down against any falling debris, for what seemed like forever—even though I’m pretty sure it was only a few minutes.  My ears strained to hear the sound of a whimper or a moan, but there was nothing but silence.  I gulped when the idea that I was the only survivor began to take root.  I tried to sit up, to find out if anyone else had made it, but I couldn’t do it. 

The silence that had been pressing in on me like a weight was suddenly broken by the sound of menacing laughter.  My eyes flew open and my terror level went through the roof.  I had heard that laugh before, in the nightmares I’d had while I was at Grams’.

I jerked upright in my seat and stared in shock at the coffee shop around me.  The windows were all in one piece, and there wasn’t so much as a napkin out of place.  The old man at the counter had his cup halfway to his lips and was staring at me like I’d just grown another head—and given how much whiskey he’d been pouring into it, it really might have looked like I had.  The couple in the corner were frowning at me and I clearly saw the ‘what’s
she
on?’ look they exchanged.  The waitress was giving me a stern frown, the phone in her hand momentarily forgotten.  Even the cook had come to the kitchen entrance to see what I was screaming about.

And sitting across from me in the booth was none other than my nemesis himself.

“Welcome home, Ember,” Jack said with a sinister smile when I threw myself back in my seat, every instinct telling me to get away from him. 

I stopped a whimper before it could slip through my lips, but it was close.  Cold sweat beaded on my forehead and the eyes of the people around me felt like they were boring into me.  Without thinking, I reached up and wrapped my hand around my cross, trying to call up the power I had used to banish so many demons before in case Jack decided to jump across the table.  I knew better than to open the portal and banish his scary ass in front of witnesses—trust me, Grams had been very sure to make a point to tell me, repeatedly, how much the mysterious Council of Elders liked public displays of power.  Still, if it came down to him or me…

“You could have just said ‘hi’, you know,” I told him sarcastically, trying my best not to let him see how much the sight of him sitting there terrified me. 

“What can I say?  I have a flair for the dramatic.”  I rolled my eyes and he smiled again.  “I’m pleased to see you returned alone.”

“That’s what you told me to do, isn’t it?”  I asked, thinking fast.  If I played it right, I might get my life back even sooner than I thought.  “What’s the use in running if you’re only going to hunt me down?”

“I always said you were as smart as you were beautiful,” he said, giving me a once-over that had me trying to cringe into the cracked vinyl behind me. 

“You’re right,” I told him softly, dropping my eyes like I was defeated.  “You win, Jack.  I give up.  But, first, I want to negotiate the terms of my surrender.”

“And what are your terms?” he asked, sounding amused.

“I want until tomorrow morning to say goodbye to my friends,” I told him, injecting a little quiver into my voice so he would think I was going to cry.  “After that, I’m all yours.”

For a long moment, he just sat there and studied me.  I kept my eyes down and my expression mournful, not wanting to give him a chance at figuring out what I was really up to.  After practically x-raying me with his eyes for what seemed like an eternity, he folded his arms on the table and leaned toward me, the first flicker of victory lighting his face up with a cold kind of glee.

“Why are you giving in so easily?” he asked.  “This is very unlike you, Ember.”

“Why delay the inevitable?” I asked in a miserable-sounding mutter.  “We both know I’m no match for you.  It’s better to just get it over with, don’t you think?”

“Indeed,” he murmured.