Something Wanton (Mystics & Mayhem) (41 page)

“Zander is one of three young men turned by a vampire named Blaire Dubois five centuries ago because she was bored with her current lover and couldn’t decide between them.  He is the only one who survived his time with her.  She killed the other two in a rage one night after she lost at cards.”

Oh, wow.  It was only as I was hearing Zan’s story from my father that I realized he’d skipped over being turned when he was telling me about his long, fun-filled life.  He had ‘
survived his time
’ with his maker.  I felt a chill go down my spine as I tried to picture the monster who’d turned him.  You had to be one cold bitch to murder people just because you lost a card game.  I suddenly had a lot more respect for my smart-mouthed friend.

“Your new friend, Ainsley, is the daughter of Jeremiah
Hamilton,” Dad continued, dragging my mind from Zan and the skank who’d turned him.  Honestly, that was a good thing.  I’d grown fond of Zan and I tended to be overprotective of the people I cared about.  “When her brother, Trey Hamilton, discovered after his father’s death that she and her twin were witches—Class B, like Kim, as far as we can tell—he burned Kinsley at the stake.  Ainsley managed to escape, though the reports are a bit confused as to how she accomplished such a feat right under the nose of Hamilton and all his men.”

I knew how she had done it, but I wasn’t about to reveal those details to my father.  Those were Ainsley’s memories and she had shared them with me in confidence.  I wouldn’t betray that confidence so my father could feed the information to some secret organization.  In fact, I wasn’t ever going to share
anything
with him again.  Nothing.  Nada.  Not ever.

“And leave it to you to find yourself an angel,” he sighed.  I winced.  He really did have info on everyone I cared about if he knew about Tyler.  “There are so few reports of fallen angels.  They hide themselves very well, never letting on that they’re anything but human.  Tyler is, quite frankly, amazing.”

“You have no idea,” I whispered to my hands, trying not to see the happy look on Tyler’s face as he laid in my lap holding my hand over his heart.  My father had no idea how amazing my friend was.  He didn’t know the gentle, caring man that I knew.  He didn’t know how much I owed my own personal angel. 

“And you, my sweet baby girl,” Dad said, smiling at me sadly.  “Do you know they don’t even have a classification for you?  Even before you were infected you were unclassifiable.  Now, with Bastian and Tyler messing around with your DNA the way they have, your power could be limitless. You could literally move mountains with the kind of power they’ve given you.”

“I understand you foresaw your own death back in November,” he said, taking his seat and leaning toward me again eagerly.

“How do you know that?” I demanded, cringing away from him like he might jump across the desk and attack me.  “What were you doing? 
Spying
on me?”

He looked past me, toward the door, and I turned around to find Nathan standing there.  He was leaned lazily against the door frame, like he hadn’t just walked in and overheard that my father was the biggest narc
ever
.  I couldn’t tell if the nonchalance was an act or not.  His eyes were shuttered and his expression completely blank.  He looked at my father for a long minute and then turned to me.

“I told him, baby,” he said softly, shocking me.  “He called me in November, asked me to meet him to discuss your future.  I knew he could answer some questions for me, so I agreed.  I told him because I thought he might be able to shed some light on our situation at the time.  Your father has his own secrets.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I muttered, shooting a dark look at my father.  “Apparently he’s some kind of supernatural CIA agent.”

“Oh, he’s more than that, aren’t you, Andrew?” Nathan said, arching an eyebrow at my father when he started to look nervous.  “You didn’t think you were going to get out of telling her, did you?”

“Out of telling me what?” I demanded, my eyes narrowing, as my father’s cheeks paled.

“Your dear old dad here is
gifted
,” Nathan said, moving closer to me.  “He can see the future, Em.  Just like his little girl.”

“You’re a witch?” I shrieked, glaring at my father as a surge of fury turned my blood to molten lava in my veins.  “You’re a witch and you didn’t think to
tell
me that?”

My hair lifted around me in a breeze that wasn’t really there and the temperature in the room went up noticeably.  Nathan rushed forward and put his hands on my shoulders, applying pressure to push me back into my seat.  When I started gulping in deep breaths, he leaned down and murmured in my ear.  I couldn’t really hear what
he was saying over the anger pounding in my head, but the compulsion in his voice, the soft, velvety sound of it, acted as an auditory tranquilizer.  I closed my eyes and let Nathan work his magic on me, refusing to look at my father anymore until I could do so without wondering if I could hit him with a bolt of Witch Fire before he could duck,.

“I’m not a witch, Em,” my father said quietly when it looked like I was feeling a little less murderous.  “I’m a telepath with the added bonus of psychic abilities.  That’s why the Guild thought I’d be an asset to the organization.  Compared to the remarkable people you’ve surrounded yourself with, however, my abilities are
nothing
.”

My father was a psychic telepath.  So…what?  He knew what you were thinking and what you were
going
to think?  If I hadn’t been a darkling, I would have blushed when I realized how many lies I had been caught in without knowing it.  Did he know about my fake ID?  Or that Kim and I had been sneaking into Icon since we were sixteen?  Did he know that I dreamed of becoming a writer or that my first kiss had been Toby Kincaid in the sixth grade?

I shook my head.  None of that mattered.  That was all a part of my past, my human life.  But, he did know something that I found very important.  He had a single piece of information that I needed.  After that, I didn’t care if he disappeared.  I didn’t think I would ever be able to forgive him for letting me suffer my entire childhood in silence when he could have helped me.  The question was whether or not he would give it to me.

“Do you know who’s helping Hamilton?” I asked him, keeping my voice level with effort.

“Yes, I believe I do,” he said, his gaze flickering between me and Nathan.  “As far as we have been able to determine, it is a Class A witch.  As I said before, there are only five witches that qualify in the area.  I think we can rule Shea out.  Nothing in this world means more to her than her Ember.  The same goes for Valene, who
practically raised you like a daughter.  Another one we can rule out is a recluse that never leaves her home.  She hasn’t so much as stuck her nose out her front door in sixteen years.  If I didn’t deliver groceries to her once a week, she would probably starve to death.  That only leaves two.  Can you guess who they might be?”

“Constance Cantrell and Amelia Winters,” Nathan said, shrugging.  “Though I believe they’ve been given a lot more credit than they’re due.  Amelia is a B, at best, and Constance is a B with an itch.  What standards are your people using to classify these days?”

Nathan hadn’t caught on yet, but I had.  He hadn’t come right out and said it, but my father had just told us who had betrayed us.  I couldn’t see sweet old Mrs. Amelia doing something so horrible.  I could believe it of Dragon Lady Cantrell, but not Mrs. Amelia.

“There are a lot of people,
human and supernatural alike, who will fear you, sweetheart,” my father whispered, his eyes tearing up when he saw how devastated I looked.  “There will be those who envy your power and believe you don’t deserve it.  There will be people who hate you for what you are, even if you had no choice in the matter.  Constance Cantrell is one of those people.  And she fits every single one of those categories.”

Nathan’s hands tightened on my shoulders and I knew he had finally caught on.  I reached up and laid my hands over his, trying to come to terms with the fact that a witch, someone I knew, hated me so much that she had condemned who knew how many to die.  It made sense, though, and all because of a single uninterested expression as she stared down at a dead girl.

Had she killed Sierra to make it look like I had done it?  Why?  And how would she have known that I was even planning on going back to school that day?  With every answer I found, I also found a hundred more questions.

“Nathan, find Grams,” I said woodenly, trying to hold back the tide of anger that was just waiting for me to slip up so that it could overflow my walls and explode in a blast of fury that would have put a nuclear weapon to shame.  “We have to tell her about this.  She tells Mrs. Amelia everything, and we don’t know how much of that she’s passing on to Ms. Cantrell.  We can’t have any more of our plans leaking to the enemy.”

He nodded and immediately left the room.  For a long time, my father and I just sat there, me staring out the window and him staring at me.  At long last, he took a deep breath and got to his feet.  When he walked around the desk and knelt down next to my chair, his eyes were so sad that I felt a little tug at my heart despite how angry I was with him.

“I love you, Ember Leigh,” he whispered, laying his hands over mine.  “I didn’t say that enough when you were growing up.  I never told you how proud I was of your strength, your ability to take any situation and make it work for you.  I couldn’t help you when you started to realize your abilities.  I couldn’t help with your mother.  But, I can help you now.  Please, baby girl, let me help you.”

“Did you know what I would be?” I asked in a small voice.  “When Mom was pregnant with me, did you know I would be…this?”

He nodded, pulling my hands up to his cheeks.  There was wonder in his eyes and pain and regret and, to my surprise, I felt my anger slipping away as I looked into them.

“Yes, I knew what you would be.  I saw it the first time your mother touched me, long before she was pregnant.  It was humbling, learning that I was going to be the father of a real-life goddess.  There aren’t words to tell you how proud you’ve made me. Not just now, but your entire life.”

A real life goddess? 

Oh, God!  If I’d had a million dollars, I would have bet it on the fact that I was looking at Nathan’s mysterious
acquaintance,
the guy who’d told him that I was some prophesied witch who was going to either save the world or damn it. 

“You told Nathan about the prophecy, didn’t you?” I asked my father, not letting him look away.  I saw it in his eyes long before he answered me.

“Yes, I told him,” Dad said, his voice catching.  “I’d hoped he could change things, but I guess there are some destinies that just can’t be altered.  Now it’s up to you to save
yourself
.  It really does come down to your choices now.  Good or evil.  The side you pick will win the war.  And you
will
have to pick, baby girl, more than once.  You will be tested and faced with the most terrible of choices.  And each time, you will move closer to the light or further into the darkness.”

He stood up and held his hand out to me.  I let him pull me from my chair and didn’t resist when he tugged me into his arms and held me close.  He was my father and I loved him, despite his spying and secrets.  It was nice to be held in my father’s arms again.  I felt safe, loved, the way you can only feel when you’re being hugged by your dad.  In those moments, it’s like there’s a force field protecting you from the ugliness of the world.

We stood like that, building a connection it had taken more than eighteen years to find, until Nathan came back with Mrs. Val, Grams, and Skippy in tow.  Grams looked like she was one step away from a total homicidal meltdown.  Mrs. Val looked really suspicious when she saw my dad standing there, but she didn’t seem surprised by it.

I decided then and there that when we’d taken care of the hunters and everything was back to semi-normal that I was going to brew up a truth potion—and force feed it to
everyone I knew.  Seriously, the secrets were starting to get old.

Skippy hung back in the hallway as everyone else filed in.  When my father released me and started quickly explaining the situation to Grams and Mrs. Val, with Nathan’s help, I slipped out to join him.

“A traitor,” Skippy said in greeting, his eyes full of anger.  “That puts us in a rather tenuous position.”

“You’re telling me,” I sighed, sagging against the wall next to him, more exhausted than I could ever remember
being. 

“Well, our course seems very clear,” he said, watching me like he wasn’t looking forward to my reaction.  “We will have to hide you.  It is you they want, my sweet.  I have become very fond of you, and I will not see them harm you.”

“I can take care of myself, Skippy,” I told him, grinning.  “I’m some kind of mutant hybrid now, remember?”

“Be that as it may, I must insist you take precautions,” he barked, his expression fierce. 

I rolled my eyes at him, but I had to admit that he had a point.  It was one thing to be confident, but it was something else to be blatantly stupid.  Powerful I might be, but I didn’t really know how to
use
that power.  All the power in the world wouldn’t help me if I couldn’t access it.  And with all the different forms of power I had, it wasn’t like someone with even mediocre supernatural tracking skills wouldn’t be able to find me even if I disappeared without telling
anyone
where I was going.  I mean, it would take a
massive
energy surge to cloak me.