Broken (Book 1, The Watcher Chronicles, Paranormal Romance) (9 page)

“How was he able to learn not to hate us anymore?”

“He fell in love with a human and made close bonds with others.”

“Where is he?” I ask.  “Do you think he can help us?”

“No, Will was allowed back into Heaven after he sacrificed himself in the last battle with Lucifer.  He gave up his life to give Lilly a chance to live.”

“This Lilly
must be someone special to have someone willingly die for her.”

Mason’s eye
s light up with joy, telling me Lilly is someone important to him too.  “She’s special to all of the Watchers.  We watch over her and would lay down our lives to protect her and her family if it came to that.  I doubt Lucifer will try to harm them since he knows Lilly is in direct contact with God, but sometimes Lucifer doesn’t think very clearly and lets his pride and jealousy rule his actions.”

“So what do you guys do?  Take turns being with her?”

“Not exactly.  There is only one of us who stays with her constantly.   His name is Malcolm.  Malcolm’s family life allows him to be more naturally integrated with Lilly’s.  He’s part of her family so his presence is expected by her and Brand’s children.  He’s almost like a second father to them.”

“Will I ever be able to meet her?”

“I don’t know yet.  We don’t allow many people to bother her.”  The protective tone in Mason’s voice tells me it might be easier to get into Heaven than be granted an audience with Lilly.

“You
almost make her sound like someone you worship.”

“No, we don’t worship her,” Mason says.  “But she is precious to us.  She helped bring all of the Watchers back together and allowed us to earn forgiveness from our father for not only us but our children.  She keeps our hopes up when we feel like we’ll never find a way to
seal the Tear.  I guess you could say she’s like our little sister, mother, and councilor all wrapped up into one person.”

I look around at the empty field, not seeing much of anything
significant.

“How exactly were you following Lucifer?  You said something about a trail?”

“Each time an angel phases, they leave a connecting trail to the spot they travelled to.  It can only be seen by another angel.”

“What does it look like?”

“It’s like looking at a hole in space.  I can see the place they travel to through it.”

“So you said Lucifer had some help
in hiding his phase trail.  How many trails do you see in this one spot?”

Mason looks around like he’s doing a mental count.  “Forty
-four,” he finally answers.  “There are too many.  We’ll never be able to pick the right one.  Let’s go back to headquarters.  Maybe they’ve been able to find out something useful since we’ve been gone.”

When we phase back to headquarters, I’m faced with watching Nick lick off the last bit of icing
from the cinnamon roll off his fingers.  It instantly reminds me I still haven’t eaten breakfast yet, causing my stomach to grumble its discontent.

“We couldn’t find him,” Mason tells the other
s.  “Have you been able to discover anything else which might be helpful, Joshua?”

“Maybe,” Joshua says, scratching his head like he’s confused.  “I noticed it last night when I was scanning the area where Jess lives but didn’t think too much of it until I started looking through the file Nick brought in this morning about Jess’s parents.”

Joshua turns back around to his touch screen control panel and brings up a satellite image of my parents
’ house.  After a few more waves of his hand on the control panel, the picture takes on a blue hue with a red pulsating dot directly over the house.

“What is that?” I ask.

“It’s gamma radiation, but you see that sometimes just from underground mineral deposits.  That’s why I didn’t pay it much mind last night,” Joshua tells me.  “But when I went back and took a closer look at it this morning,” he says zooming in on the circle of red, “I noticed it doing this.”

As we watch, the dot blinks on and off in a pattern.

“Is that an SOS signal?” Nick asks, sounding completely sure he has to be wrong.

“
Yeah, weird uh?” Joshua says.

“We
should go there to see if we can find the source,” Mason tells me.

“Take me back to my house
,” I say.  “I’ll drive us there.”

In no time at all, Mason and I are in my car heading to my parents
’ home.  I make a quick stop back at Beau’s store on the way out and find one cinnamon roll left like destiny took pity on me.  When I get back into the car, I open the box and turn to Mason.

“This is a one time offer
to share the best cinnamon roll you’ll ever eat in your life,” I say to him.  “I’m willing to split it with you if you would like to try it.”

Mason smiles and I feel my heart make an involuntary lurch in my chest
at how it transforms his usually austere expression, strangely finding myself wanting to make him smile more often.

“No
, I couldn’t deprive you of something you’ve obviously been wanting for a while now.  But, I do appreciate the offer.”

I pick the roll up.  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” I say as I take my first bite of the soft yeasty goodness in my hands.  The silky texture of the melted sugar coats my tongue making me feel like I’ve take
n a bite out of Heaven itself.  In a time which probably rivals Joshua’s, I have the roll eaten and the growling monster living in the pit of my belly finally seems satisfied.

“Do you feel better now?” Mason asks me, a hint of amusement in his voice
as he watches me devour my breakfast.

I lick the last sweet traces of frosting from
the tips of my fingers and nod, “You have no idea.  I’ll probably be on a sugar high for the rest of the day.”

I hop out of the car and place the now empty box in the trash.

As we’re driving down Hwy 1, I turn the radio on to a station which only plays Christmas music this time of year.  One of my favorite songs comes on: Mannheim Steamroller’s
The Holly and The Ivy
.

“Do you have any plans for Christmas?” Mason asks me.

“Faison and I usually stay over at Mama Lynn’s Christmas Eve night.  Then we do what we’ve always done and wake up early Christmas morning to open gifts and eat Mama Lynn’s sausage-egg-cheese casserole.  This will probably be the last Christmas we get to do that though.”

“Why is that?”

“Faison is getting married next April.  I’m sure she and John Austin will want to start their own family traditions.”

“Do you have someone special in your life?
  Any plans to get married?”

I shake my head.  “No, I don’t date.”

A pregnant silence hangs in the air before Mason says, “Mind if I ask why?”

I glance over at Mason and see that he’s seriously interested in my answer.

“I guess I’ve just been too focused on finding a way to get my parents back.  Most guys my age are only interested in having a good time and that’s not me.  Faison’s been trying to set me up with John Austin’s brother for forever but I keep finding ways to put her off.”

“Why?”

“I have a hard time letting people in,” I confess, not exactly knowing why I’m telling Mason something I haven’t actually verbalized to either Faison or Mama Lynn, though I have a feeling they already know what I’m about to tell Mason.  “I don’t think I could handle falling in love and having him sucked up through a wormhole like my parents.  I can’t afford to lose someone I care about like that again. It’s just not worth the risk to me.”

“But don’t you want to have a family of your own one day?”

“Not until the Tear is sealed,” I say with finality.  “The less people I care about the less risk there is of losing someone else I love.”

“We’ll find a way to seal it,” Mason says like a promise.  “I have a feeling
we’re getting closer to solving the problem.  I was meant to find you, Jess.  There’s no doubt in my mind you’re the clue I’ve been waiting for.”

“But why now?” I ask.  “Why fifteen years after the Tear appeared?  Why weren’t you allowed to find me back then when it could have helped so many people?”

“I don’t know,” Mason answers.  “It’s hard to know exactly what God’s plans are for us, but I trust Him to guide me in the right direction when it’s the right time.”

I almost envy Mason’s faith in his
God.  It’s something I’ve never been able to do so blindly.  But if Mason was actually an angel, his faith wasn’t based on blind trust.  He knew his God personally, something I was still having a problem wrapping my brain around.  Mason’s God had borne the brunt of my hate for creating the Tear and allowing it to destroy so many lives.  It was easier to just believe that type of God didn’t exist than believe He did and simply didn’t care enough to help us when we needed Him the most.  A God like that I could do without.

I turn off of Hwy 1 onto
Cloverdale Road.  The house my parents and I lived in is close to the levee.  The property is surrounded by a five foot high barbed wire fence and the entrance blocked by an electronic padlocked gate.  In no time at all, we are parked in front of the two story farm house my parents left me.

We get out of the car and walk up the
creaky wooden steps to the front porch and door.  The wood swing hanging on the porch squeaks as the winter wind pushes it back and forth.

“So how are we supposed to figure out where the radiation signal is coming from?” I ask, finding the key to the house on my
key ring.  I know it’s old school to use physical keys instead of a finger print lock but like I told Mason, I don’t trust computers.

Mason pulls out his cell phone which is one of the new clear models.

“There’s an app to detect radiation levels,” he tells me.

I smile.  “Are you serious?  Who thinks of some of these apps?”

“I don’t know but every once in a while you find one which fits the occasion perfectly.”

After I open the front door, I let Mason step in first holding his cell phone
in front of him, watching the read out on his screen to see if his app will lead him in the right direction.

The inside of my parents
’ home is what you would expect to find in such a house.  The furnishings are simple and rustic.  Nothing too modern exists in the space except for the new appliances I had installed in the kitchen last year.  The artificial Christmas tree we set up the year they were taken still stands in the corner of the living room with all of its lights and ornaments hanging from the limbs.  Every week Ms. Mona, the cleaning lady, comes over and tidies up the house for me which mostly just consist of dusting and vacuuming.  But, she keeps the house looking the same way it did when my parents were taken.  I just hope one day I will be able to give them back their home just the way they left it.

“Do you stay here sometimes?” Mason asks, scanning the living room area with his phone.

“Every once in a while,” I say, walking over to the Christmas tree to straighten a wayward ornament of Cinderella.

Mason comes to stand beside me looking at the tree.  “These decoration
s look more like you,” he comments.

When I look at the tree, I have to admit he
’s right.  An array of Disney characters, Santas, and homemade ornaments adorns the tree.  My parents always let me pick out new ornaments every Christmas slowly building up our collection to fit what was important to me each year.

“I still believed in Santa Clause the year they were taken,” I hear myself say.  “I asked the mall Santa to bring me a
n American Girl doll named Rebecca and I wanted a dress to match hers because that’s what the company used to do.  But Santa never came to the foster care center I spent that Christmas in.  I thought maybe that was why my parents had been taken, because he thought I was a bad girl that year.  If Santa didn’t think I was worthy enough to have my doll, maybe he took my parents as a way to punish me.”

“I’m sorry
you had to go through that,” Mason says and I hear the sincerity in his voice.  “That must have been a hard time for you.”

“It was a hard time for a lot of people,” I
reply, turning my back to the tree, no longer wishing to linger on my memories.  “What does your phone say?”

Mason looks down at the read out on his display.  “It doesn’t seem to be
down here.  I think we should look upstairs.”

I le
ad the way to the second floor by way of the staircase out in the foyer.

“There are three bedrooms
up here plus my father’s study,” I tell Mason.

He points his phone in each direction and finally gets a spike
on the display.

“That room,” he tells me, pointing to the door which leads to
the study.

Of all the rooms in the house, my father’s study is the one I haven’t been in since my parents disappeared.  It
’s haunted by too many fond memories from my childhood.  As a little girl, I would go in there and curl up on my daddy’s lap as we sat together in his leather recliner.  He would read all the classics to me like I was a grown up.  Huck Finn and Peter Pan were my heroes, whisking me off to strange new worlds with my father steadfast by my side to share the experiences with me.