Broken (Book 1, The Watcher Chronicles, Paranormal Romance) (8 page)

Mason s
hrugs, a hint of a smile on his lips.  “There isn’t much that can’t be moved.”

“How come I didn’t hear that popping noise you guys usually make when you phase?” I ask
. It was something I had noticed last night as well.

“We only do it when we phase somewhere public or we want to make our presence known,” Mason tells me.  “It’s a courtesy, not something
which naturally happens when we phase.  If we didn’t do it, people who weren’t looking for our arrival wouldn’t be aware we just phased in next to them.”

“I’m learning all kinds of secrets about you guys,” I say.

Mason shrugs.  “We’re not as mysterious as most people make us out to be.”

He rests
a hand on my shoulder and we’re instantly in the basement of his house again.

I see Joshua still sitting where he was last night
, tapping the touch screen panel in front of him with incredible speed and coordination.  There’s a small garbage can beside his chair filled with empty Red Bull cans and Snicker wrappers.  Nick is no where to be seen for which I’m silently thankful.  Allan and Angela see us phase in and walk out of the glass room together to greet us.

“What is th
at Heavenly scent?” Angela asks as she walks towards me.

“Cinnamon rolls,” I say holding out the box to her.  “Would you like one?”

Angela takes the box and opens the lid letting the aroma of Beau’s cinnamon sugar perfections surround her completely. 

“Man,” Joshua says standing up from his chair, “can I have one too?  Those smell too good to pass up.”

“Sure,” I say, secretly hoping Mason and Allan don’t want one.  There are only three rolls and five people, two of us will end up being very unhappy.

“Why don’t we wait just a minute,” Angela suggests, closing the lid before Joshua can put his hand in the box.  “I’m sure Jess would like to know what we found out about her.”

I feel my heart sink into my stomach again but force myself to not let it show.

“What did you find
out about me?” I ask.

“You’re human,” Allan says.

I wait for him to say more, some grand elaboration, but he doesn’t.  Allan seems to be a man of very few words which I can appreciate but not when it has to do with what makes me different.

“Is there nothing more
you can add, Allan?” Mason gently prods, obviously used to Allan’s succinct way of speaking.

“No,” Allan says.  “She’s a
normal human.  No type of angel DNA is present.  I couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary.”

“And trust me,” Angela sa
ys with a yawn, “we examined every last detail.  Jess is just a human.”

I hear Mason sigh beside me
.  “Disappointing but also interesting.”

“Why interesting?” I ask
, relief flooding through my system at Allan’s discovery, or lack there of.

“Because
whatever makes you unique is still a mystery.  We need to figure out how you were able to kill that demon last night.  If you had a hint of something different in your genetic code, we could try to follow up on it.  But since you don’t, I’m not sure where that leaves us now.”  Mason looks to Allan.  “Is there anything else you can do?  Any other tests you can run?”

“No,” Angela answers before her father gets a chance to.  “Trust me.  We ran every test
imaginable.  Nothing came up abnormal.  And you’re perfectly healthy by the way,” Angela says to me.  “We checked for disease markers and mutations while we were at it and everything was normal.”

“Ok
, so now that we know Jess is just a human, can I please have a cinnamon roll?” Joshua whines.

Angela open
s the lid and lets him pluck one of the oversized rolls dripping with white icing out of the box.  For such a skinny kid, I stand in awe of how fast Joshua is able to wolf down the sugary confection.  Angela takes her roll out and hands me back the box.

“You might want to hide the last one,” she
suggests, shaking her head at Joshua.

The elevator doors, which seem to be the only way in or out of the basement for
regular mortals, opens up and Nick walks into the room with a manila folder in his hands.

“So, did I miss the unveiling?” He ask
s, coming to stand by us.  “Did you find out anything interesting about our newest member?”

“No,” Mason answer
s.  “Did you?” He asks, looking pointedly at the folder in Nick’s hands.

“No,
” Nick says, clearly disappointed, “there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about her.  But, I did find out some things that were interesting about her parents.”

Even though I d
on’t like Nick that much, I am instantly intrigued by what his paranoia may have uncovered about my parents’ past.  I know virtually nothing about them.  I didn’t even have family photos of them because we never took pictures.

“What did you find out?” I ask, desperate for any
information about where I came from and who exactly my parents are.

“Your mother, Sally Jane Riley was orphaned when she was five years old.  She was shuffled from one foster home to another through the years until she turned eighteen.  After that she disappear
ed from public records until she was admitted into the hospital to give birth to you.  Your father was a ghost.”

I have to assume Nick isn’t
speaking literally so I ask, “What do you mean by a ghost?”

“There’s absolutely no record of a
Peter Riley until your birth.  I couldn’t even find a marriage certificate for your parents.  The only time his name appears on anything official is your birth certificate.  Even after that, everything your parents owned was placed in your mother’s name.  Nothing legally belonged to your father.  That’s all I was able to uncover.  I wasn’t able to find photos of them: no driver’s license, no passports, no school pictures, nothing.  It’s like their existence has been completely wiped.  I called a few of the people your mother stayed with while she was in the foster care program to see if they could give me any information.  For whatever reason, none of them seem to have any recollection of even having your mother in their care.  It’s like someone went in and deliberately erased your mother’s history, even from the minds of the people who knew her.”

I st
and there, not really knowing what to say.  All my life I wanted to know more about my parents.  Now, I had to face the truth that there wasn’t anything beyond what I already knew myself from just living with them the first seven years of my life.  If there had been anything else to discover about their past, I felt sure Nick would have dug it up.  He didn’t seem like someone who would be incompetent at his job.

“So
, now what?” I ask, not knowing where to go from here since we seem to have hit dead ends on all fronts where I am concerned.

“Well
, I’ve found something interesting,” Joshua says, licking the last of the white icing from the tips of his fingers.

Joshua returns to his
chair in front of the touch screen panel and pulls up a video of Lucifer standing outside my house the night before.

“After Mason came back and told us about your visitor last night, Jess
, I ran his new face through the facial recognition software to see where he went after he left you.  He did his usual scouting of new tearers but one thing he did out of the ordinary was meet with one of them twice.”

“Twice?” Mason says, obviously hearing this new bit of information for the first time.  “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

“Because I didn’t realize it until after you went to get Jess this morning,” Joshua says.  “He met the tearer at the Watcher station in Rochester, NY last night and then again this morning at the temporary housing apartment complex there.”

Joshua pull
s up a video on the holographic display showing Lucifer walking out of the apartment complex where the newly deposited tearers are sent on their first night on our planet.  The man walking beside Lucifer is handsome in a gritty sort of way.  He looks like a man who would play the villain in a movie with his sharp bone structure and slicked back brown hair.  He’s wearing a brown wool tweed coat with a burnt orange scarf tied around his neck.  I watch as Lucifer takes hold of the man’s arm and phases them both out of the picture.

“How long ago did that happen?” Mason asks urgently, like someone watching the last grains of sand drop from
the top of an hourglass.

“Maybe
fifteen minutes ago,” Joshua answers.

Mason turns to me.  “We need to go before the trail fades completely.”

I look down at the box in my hands and mourn the loss of my breakfast before shoving it into Nick’s hands.

“Merry Christmas,” I
say to Nick, just before Mason puts his hand on my shoulder and phases us away.

    I suddenly find myself standing across the street from where Lucifer was last seen on Joshua’s video replay.  The apartment building which houses the tearers stands five stories tall and is made out of blue brick with the Watcher logo, a melding of a W on top of an A, on the side forever marking it as belonging to the Watcher Agency.

Mason quickly walks across the deserted street towards the spot
where Lucifer and the tearer he came to get phased from.  I watch as Mason frowns at something only he can see at eye level.

“Give me your hand,” he tells me holding out one of his.  “Let’s see how far we can follow them.”

I place my hand in Mason’s and suddenly find myself standing in the middle of what looks like a Turkish market place.  The warm aroma of mingled spices and sweet meats reminds me just how hungry I am.  Colorful shopping stalls surround us offering a kaleidoscope of edible foods.  The late afternoon sun beckons to the shoppers around us that supper time is approaching.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“Istanbul spice market,” Mason answers absently, his eyes searching for the trail from Lucifer’s phasing.

Not letting go of my hand, Mason phases us and I
instantly find myself on a nondescript street with strange symbols which look oriental in origin on the side of buildings and street signs.  In quick succession, Mason phases us from one point to another forcing me to close my eyes in order to stop my empty stomach from churning uncontrollably.

After a few minutes, I hear Mason say,
“Jess?”

Cautiously,
I open my eyes only to find three Mason’s swimming in front of me.  My legs feel like jelly, and I know I can’t prevent my knees from buckling underneath me.

Mason
pulls my body in close to his before I am able to fall, acting as my center since my body has completely decided to betray me.

“Sorry,” I say, grabbing the lapels of his wool coat with my hands and resting my forehead against his chest, trying to make my body stop quivering.

“No,” Mason says, “I’m the one who’s sorry.  I shouldn’t have phased you so many times in a row.  The human body isn’t made to withstand travelling like that.  I should have known better.”

I close my eyes to keep the world from spinning
out of control and take deep breaths to calm my nerves.  Mason’s scent, woody with a hint of cinnamon, fills my senses and I feel more at ease.  One of Mason’s hands begins to rub my back in a soothing circular pattern which coaxes my body to relax against him.  The heat emanating from Mason’s body surrounds me like a warm blanket against my skin, making me feel something I’ve never felt in the arms of a man before: comfortable.

I pull away, slowly releasing my
death grip on his coat and raising my head off his chest.  When I look up at his face, I see confusion in Mason’s eyes and worry creasing his brow giving him a brooding look.  I slowly push away from him finding my legs are once again able to support me on their own.

“Thanks,” I say, feeling
embarrassed for needing his help in the first place.  Needing or asking for help from other people is something I don’t do very often.  After the disappearance of my parents, I quickly developed the philosophy that if you couldn’t do something yourself, perhaps it was something you shouldn’t be doing.  You couldn’t always count on other people to be there when you needed them.  The more you let yourself rely on others the more dependant you became on their help.  It was just a fact of life.

I look around me and notice we
are standing in an open field with nothing but grass and trees surrounding us.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“In the middle of nowhere, basically,” Mason says, clearly disappointed.  “Lucifer had his people help him cover his phase trail.  There were too many trails to follow so I chose some at random on the off chance we would hit the right one.”

“What do you mean by his people?”

“The angels who rebelled with him.  They were all sent here with Lucifer after the war in Heaven.  I believe my father hoped forcing them to live among humans would teach them why you’re so important to Him.  Unfortunately, I only know of one rebellion angel who actually learned that lesson.”