Authors: Apryl Baker
“I don’t think we should go into this with secrets,” I say softly. “All I’m asking you for is the truth.”
“I would love to tell you that we were a happy family and I loved your mother, but I can’t. The truth is, I enjoyed Melissa’s company and when I found out she was pregnant, I moved her into my home. We never married. I
would
have married her, but your mother refused. She never explained her reasons to me. Perhaps she didn’t want to be trapped in a loveless marriage and wanted no strings, should she decide to leave when you were older. When your mother’s mental health deteriorated, I stayed with her out of obligation to you, not out of love for her.”
My parents aren’t married? I so didn’t expect that. “You
never
loved her?”
“I cared for her,” Zeke says. “Your mother was always a bit of a mystery to me. She never spoke of her family, where she came from, or anything to do with her past. I thought perhaps if I could get her to trust me, she’d open up and we could finally build a real relationship
, if not for us, then for
you
. I wanted to at least try, but I don’t think
she
was willing. Your mother knew the type of man I was, the type of man I am. I often wonder if that is why she refused to try.”
“And what type of man would that be?” Dan asks, his voice like ice.
“The type of man who goes to any length to achieve his desires,” Zeke replies. “I won’t lie to you, Mattie. I’m not a very nice person. I have no shame in hurting others to get what I want. I am that
ruthless. I’m guessing you’ve already come to the realization I’m also very dangerous.” He sits back in the black leather chair, elbow on one arm and places long, elegant fingers against his chin.
“
Yes, I knew you were a bad man,” I whisper. “From the moment I met you every instinct I have tells me to run fast and far away from you, and to never look back. Something about you screams danger.”
Zeke exhales slowly. “You have very good instincts,
ma cherie
, but yet here you sit, suspecting I might hurt you?”
It’s my turn to sigh. “I wanted to get to know you a little before I make up my mind. I know it’s crazy and I usually listen to my instincts, but I…I
want
to believe you when you tell me you love me, that I belong.” There I said it. Since we’re being honest, might as well plunge right into it. “I don’t want to be the weird freak anymore. I want to belong to someone who is
like
me, who knows what it feels like to be weird, but I’m afraid. If it comes down to a choice between me or your ultimate goals, I don’t want to be the one you sacrifice.”
His eyes bore into mine. “You’ve been speaking with Silas, haven’t you?”
How in bloody tarnation does he know that?
“Well?” Zeke’s eyes now blaze. “Did he tell you not to trust me? I swear I’ll torture that bloody fool.”
“How do you know the demon?” Dan demands.
“Do you honestly want the details, Daniel?” Zeke asks. “How do you think my family has gained so much power through the centuries? We’ve never had qualms about dealing with demons when necessary.”
Dan’s body stiffens. “All the more reason Mattie should stay away from you,” he hisses, eyes bright with anger. “Especially since she hasn’t read your file.”
I wince. The outright fury in Dan’s tone means I’m in for a lecture later. He’ll rat me out to Eli too
, I bet.
“Calm down,” I try to soothe him while my mind reels from the implications. My family makes deals
with demons? Maybe I should have read that file. “I’ll read it tonight, okay?”
“I rather wish you wouldn’t,
ma petite
,” Zeke says softly. “I hope you’ll choose to get to know me before you become biased from what’s in that file.”
“If you don’t want me to read it, then answer my question.” I wipe my mouth and settle back, prepared to hear my father tell me something I really don’t want to hear. “Would you sacrifice me for your own ends?”
Zeke gets up and starts to pace. “When I found out Melissa was pregnant, I consulted a Seer in the swamp. She told me my child would be the culmination of everything my family has worked to achieve. You would provide the means to attaining my goals, but I would have to be prepared to sacrifice you.”
I gasp, not expecting my fears confirmed so quickly.
“You see why your question upset me,
ma petite
?” Zeke grinned ruefully. “It was the wording. How did you know to ask me exactly that? Did the demon put you up to it?”
“No, Silas only warned me to be cautious, that you were dangerous,” I whisper.
“Then why did you ask me
that
specific question?” Zeke demands.
I lift both hands, palms up. “I don’t know. It just popped into my head and seemed important.” The truth is, I’d been thinking about it from the first day I met him. It’s bothered me a lot.
“Perhaps you have a bit of Seer blood in you as well,” my father says thoughtfully and turns to stare out the window.
“You still haven’t answered my question
,” I remind him.
“It is not an easy question, Emma Rose,” he mutters, but faces us again. “I told myself throughout the entire pregnancy, I wouldn’t let myself care, that I would do what needed to be done when the time came. I could sacrifice my child to gain the power I craved. I fully believed it, and was committed to it. I even had your mother fooled. I spent a small fortune on your nursery and rooms. The least I could do was give you a
comfortable place to grow while I waited for your abilities to mature.”
I swallow hard. He sounds so cold, so calculated. He sounds like I do when I go to that dark place inside that allows me to survive anything. The place that scares me more than anything else.
“Then you were born,” Zeke announces.
I glance up at the small crack in his voice. He looks torn, anguished. The raw emotion in his eyes
breaks my heart.
“They put you in my arms
, and when I looked down into your tiny face, I was lost. I had always heard people say when you look into your child’s face for the first time, your heart will swell and burst with joy and love, but I never believed it, not until
that
moment. I loved you, cherished you more than anything else in the entire world. I’d never felt anything like it before and it terrified me. To love another human that much is a weakness, or so I was taught. I told myself I’d still be able to do it, that I
could
destroy you when the time came. I forced myself to say those words every day. I repeated them each time I held you, fed you, and rocked you to sleep.”
I stare wide-eyed into my father’s face. “Would you have done it?” I ask softly. “Will you still try to destroy me?”
He leans against his desk and stares at me. Those tortured eyes were open and honest. “No, Emma Rose, there isn’t a driving force on this Earth or any plane of existence that could make me harm you. When you were taken…” His eyes close and the tortured look increases in intensity. “To have you ripped from me, I almost died myself. The pain was unbearable. In that moment, when I realized you were gone, I knew I’d lied to myself. I could
never
kill my own child, the little girl who smiled up at me every morning. The child who slept on my chest when you napped. You were my baby girl, you
are
my baby girl. You mean more to me than my need for power. I swear to you,
ma petite
, I will annihilate
anyone
who tries to harm you, including myself.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Okay?” both Dan and Zeke ask, each with a different emotion. Zeke’s voice is full of hope while Dan sounded incredulous.
I look at Dan. “You love your mom, right?”
“What does that have to do with this?” he asks, frowning.
“You mom murdered your birth mother and took you from your family. She’s not the person you
grew up with, Dan. She’s a pretty bad person herself, but you love her. She’s still your mom. I want the chance to know him. Can’t you understand that?”
He sighs heavily. “I don’t like it, Squirt, not one bit.”
“I need help, Dan, but it’s the type of help you, your brothers, or Doc can’t give me. Zeke can. Will you at least admit that?”
“If it means keeping you safe, then yeah, kid, I’ll admit we need help.”
Dan looks like he just swallowed the biggest mouthful of the nastiest cough syrup ever made, but he’s not going to fight me on this. I want to get to know my dad. It’s as simple as that. He might be lying to me, he’s probably lying to me, but for a little while, I want to lie to myself. I want to believe Zeke’s being honest and that he loves me.
“Thank you,” Zeke says, his eyes relieved. “Now, what did Daniel mean by keeping you safe?”
Dan quickly catches him up on the dead girls as well as his suspicions on the killer’s motivations. Zeke asks several questions throughout, and when they’re done, neither man looks happy.
“Maybe I should attach a security detail to you,” Zeke muses.
“Uh, no.” I balk at the mere thought. “I’m aware of the danger. I don’t need a bunch of idiots trying to tell me what I can and can’t do.”
“Don’t even bother trying to argue,” Dan tells him. “Mattie will cause them all kinds of trouble if you do that.”
“Maybe you should stay with me then,” Zeke says. “It’s much safer here than…”
I’m shaking my head even before he can finish the sentence. “No. I’m not staying here. I don’t trust you enough for that yet.”
“Then what can I do to keep you safe?” he all but growls.
“Welcome to the club,” Dan snorts at the disgusted look on Zeke’s face.
“The home you’re in needs to be demon-proofed, ghost-proofed…”
“Taken care of already,” I tell him. “Dan’s brother did that. There is a small problem with the ghost-proofing
, though.”
“Problem?”
“She can’t cross the doorway if it’s salted,” Dan says. “She’s made up of more ghost than human energy.”
“How is that possible?” Zeke frowns.
“I died again,” I tell him. “Eli fished me out of the bathtub when the ghost tried to drown me and had to give me CPR to get me back. I was technically dead for a few minutes so my soul became a little more ghostly. Doc says I’m becoming more Reaper than human each time I die.”
“This
doc of yours is correct,” Zeke confirms. “Who is he?”
“Doctor Olivet,” Dan say
s. “Have you heard of him?”
“Ah, yes, the Spook Doctor, as he’s called amongst the college campuses. I know of him. It sounds as if
he knows his facts.”
“He’s been our go-to guy.” Dan drains his Coke. I’ve gotten him addicted to them, much to his disgust, and my delight.
“Doc’s been great, but he only knows so much. Can you answer questions about my…abilities?” I hate talking about my gift.
“Of course.” Zeke nods and takes his place across from us again, signaling to Montgomery for fresh drinks. How did I not see him hovering near the door? Butlers, man, they’re sneakier than a cookie thief.
“You know about our lake trip already, but what the reports
don’t
say is that I fell asleep, and when I woke up, everyone was gone. I went into the woods looking for them. Dan says that I was there and when he blinked, I was simply gone. How is that possible?”
“That’s simple, Mattie
.” Zeke grins mischievously. “It’s an old trick of ours, one we use when we don’t want to get caught. You were traveling between planes.”
I gape at him. “I was on the Ghost Plain again?”
“No—well, maybe,” he concedes. “There are different planes of existence that run parallel to our own and are almost identical to this one in geography. You could have been on any of them. I’ll have to teach you how to navigate them, however. They can be very dangerous if you don’t know which one you entered.”
“
There was something there with me,” I say, shivering at the memory. “I almost didn’t get away from it.”
Now Zeke frowns, making a line between those fine, dark brows. “It might not have been something in the plane itself. You can travel from one place to another in a matter of seconds or hours. I’m betting on the former in your case,
ma petite
. I was at Lake Norman a few days ago looking at a piece of property, and felt something myself. Within a matter of minutes I was in the foulest mood I’ve been in for weeks.”
Holy crap! “That happened to
me
!” I’d gone from happy to foul-tempered in only a few minutes. Poor Ava took the brunt of it. “I didn’t understand it.”
“That’s something I’ll definitely need to deal with if I buy the house I’m looking at
.” Zeke sighs and then gives me a small smile. “You’re beginning to look overwhelmed,
ma petite
. Why not go home and write down all your questions? We can sit down at your next visit and talk about them. Would that be easier for you?”