by Hettie Ivers
“You’re not making any sense. You need to pull yourself together. You’re acting hysterical. Your father was never any help when it came to seer business. You know that. It’s what ended our marriage, for crying out loud.”
There was no humor in the laughing fit that came over me. “Yes. I know. Believe me, I know. I was with him when he filed for divorce—while you were all but comatose in the hospital from all the antipsychotic meds they’d given you.”
She turned away from me to face the windshield. “Baby, we don’t talk about that time.”
“I know.” Boy, did I know it.
She sighed. It was gruff. Aggravated. “I lost my mother, Lauren. In an instant. With no warning.”
“I know, Ma.”
“Yes, the seers saw the decade of no light coming. Yes, your grandma and I talked about it for years like it was a foregone conclusion.” She was still speaking to the windshield. “But we never knew when or how. So we carried on as every human being does who knows that eventually, one day, they’re going to die. And wouldn’t you know it, during all those years of talking about it and contemplating it, we never once covered the important stuff. We never said our goodbyes.” Her voice broke with emotion, and she covered her mouth with her hand. “And one day out of the blue, Ma was just gone. In a matter of moments.”
Granny Nina’s official cause of death had been a ruptured brain aneurysm. No one had been with her when she’d died. None of us had gotten to say goodbye.
Babs cleared her throat and swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. Her next words came out stronger, steadier, and more than a little defensive. “I hit a low point. I’m not proud of it. But it happens to people. It’s not fair for you to hold it against me for the rest of my life.”
“I’m not. I’ve never held it against you. I just want us to talk about it.” This was literally the most we’d ever spoken about it, and we’d barely scratched the surface. “Why can’t we just talk about what happened?”
“I got you the best therapist I could afford when I got out of the hospital.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“What do you want me to say?” she snapped, turning her attention from the windshield to me at last. “That I’m sorry? Of course I’m sorry! I told you when I got out of the hospital that I was sorry. I told you when your father and I divorced that I was sorry. I took the blame for everything!”
“This isn’t about blame or me wanting an apology.”
“Well, I don’t know what you want from me then, or what you expect to gain out of rehashing this again and again.”
“Rehashing? Again and again?” My fist hit the glove box. “We have never talked about this. From the time I was born until the time Granny died, you taught me to believe in seers—in the gift that had been passed down in our family through generations. Then you had your breakdown and you were hospitalized, and when you came out, nothing was ever the same. Dad left us. And you said I had to forget everything I’d ever been taught by Granny Nina and her seer friends. You told me I had to deny my gift.”
“Because everything changed, Lauren. Overnight, all the things your grandma and I talked about for years suddenly became real. Every single seer across the globe was killed within twenty-four hours—all the seers I’d grown up knowing, all of my mom’s closest friends. I was heartbroken. And I was terrified, because I knew that I couldn’t bear to ever lose you like that.”
“Don’t you think I understand—that I have some sense of what it must’ve been like for you then? You’ve never allowed me to grieve about it with you … to even talk about it. And you have never once asked what it was like for me—what happened between Dad and me while you were hospitalized. If you had, you might know that I’ve spent the last decade blaming myself for the end of your marriage. He didn’t just divorce you, Ma. He divorced me, too. He left us both, but mostly he left you because he couldn’t handle what might become of me.”
“That is not true.” She slashed her hand through the air. “You had nothing to do with the failure of my marriage. You just think it was your fault because every kid thinks their parents’ divorce is their fault.”
“But in this case, it was my fault, Ma. It was. He can’t stand to see me. He never even calls me. He has his assistant phone me on my birthday.”
“So I married a real S.O.B. Let’s add that to the long list of things I have to be sorry for that have ruined your life.”
“Will you quit it with your martyr shtick? I’m trying to talk to you … to tell you how things—”
“And I’m trying to tell you, I don’t want to know!” She beat her hands against the steering wheel with each shouted word, her face turning blotchy red and her eyes swimming with tears. “You want to know what happened in the hospital? I found out where my limits are, Lauren. Just because I wasn’t cursed with second sight like you or Ma doesn’t mean I haven’t borne the burden of the seers for my entire goddamn life. I am not perfect, and I can only handle so much.”
“I’m sorry.”
Silence fell upon the cab as she wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. I handed her a tissue from my bag before grabbing one for myself. I didn’t really need one anymore, though. Already, I felt the numbness encroaching as I listened to the sounds of cars going by.
Babs cleared her throat. “I don’t want to rehash the past, all right? What’s done is done. I need to focus on saving your life right now.”
I didn’t bother contradicting her.
“Want me to find you a therapist to talk to?” she offered.
I shook my head. “No, thanks. I’m fine.”
“Sure?”
“Yep.”
She released a sigh. “Just don’t turn into a cutter, okay? I can handle anything but you being a cutter.”
“What?”
“It’s a person who cuts themselves on purpose to—”
“Yeah, I know what it is. Why would you even suggest—”
“I would never!” she balked. “Dr. Fink—that therapist I sent you to—she’s the one who pegged you for a cutter.”
Wow. “Awesome. Thanks for sharing that with me after all these years.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to share it with you back then and put the idea into your head.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“Like hell it isn’t. One kid starts cutting and gets some attention for it, and pretty soon one in three kids are cutters.”
“That’s not an accurate statistic, and cutting’s not a communicable disease, Ma.”
“Agree to disagree.”
“O-kay.”
“But enough of this nonsense. We need to talk about the SGLPs.”
28
Lauren
“SGLPs’ eyes turn a freaky amber-gold color when they go meshuggeneh. That’s when you know for sure they’re an SGLP. I’ve seen it before. It’s terrifying.”
Babs and I were sitting in a mostly empty truck-stop diner just outside of town, drinking coffee and pretending to eat our food.
“When did you see that?” I asked her.
“When I was thirteen.”
“How did—”
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head and threw her palm up. “I don’t wanna talk about that time.”
I stopped pushing the mac and cheese around my plate and let my fork clatter to the table. “Ma, I’m missing class right now because you said you wanted to talk to me about werelocks.”
“SGLPs,” she corrected me, shooting a glance over her shoulder to make sure we hadn’t been overheard by the old man reading the newspaper while his dentures soaked in a glass on the table next to him.
“I think it’s safe in here. Can you just use the term ‘werelock,’ please? And I thought Maribel’s eyes were purple.”
“Don’t say her name!” Babs whisper-reprimanded.
“Why not? Is she like the Candyman and Beetlejuice? Do I have to say it three times?”
“You’re not taking this ser
iously.”
“Oh, no. I definitely am.” Only at present, I was more concerned about my mom having another breakdown than I was about werelocks coming after me. “The guy who came to the house … did you see his eyes turn golden?”
“No.”
“But you’re convinced he was a werelock because he was good-looking?”
“Suspiciously good-looking. Pay attention.”
“Okay, okay. Why don’t you just tell me what happened?” I pulled my phone from my bag and began going through my contacts to see who I might be able to get notes from for the class that I was missing right now.
“Last Thursday evening after work, this tall, well-built male supermodel type shows up at my front door. At first, I thought Rach had gotten me a male stripper telegram for my birthday.”
Ew. I glanced up from my phone. “For your birthday that’s in two months?”
“Uh-huh. But then he smiles, and oh, my God, Lauren”—she clutched her chest in dramatic fashion and collapsed against the back of her banquette seat—“the set of teeth on this hunk you wouldn’t believe.”
“He had fangs?”
“No. He had the kind of genetic oral perfection that puts decent, hardworking orthodontists out of business. They weren’t porcelain veneers, and they were too perfect to be real,” she stressed with a raised brow.
Right. I went back to searching my contacts.
“He starts talking to me—being all polite and charming—when next thing I know, he’s asking me about Granny Nina’s journal and trying to mind-shank me into telling him where it is inside the house.”
“What?” My head snapped up. “Shank? Are you saying he tried to stab you in the head to get Grandma’s journal?”
“No, no, figuratively shank.” She flapped her hand at me. “It’s an SGLP thing. They can pierce human minds—read thoughts and compel people to do stuff. They can even erase and alter memories.” She raised her chin. “Pfft. Little did he know, my mind’s unshankable. Surprised the hell out of him when he realized it. You should’ve seen how fast the smug look faded from his pretty-boy face.”
I set my phone aside. I had an awful feeling I was going to be the one admitted to a psych ward this time. “You’re saying that he was surprised, but you weren’t? Because you somehow already knew that your mind was … un-shankable?”
“Uh-huh.”
Oh, to ask or not to ask … “How’d you know that?”
She darted a glance over her shoulder before leaning across the table and whispering, “Because a werelock put a block on it years ago.”
I nodded slowly. What was there to say? A random stranger showing up knowing about Grandma’s seer journal was disturbing—werelock or not. But whether it’d actually happened or my mom was just having some kind of PTSD breakdown and imagining things as a result of her paranoia was the question. This was likely my fault for bugging her about the journal in the first place and bringing up the fact that I’d been interacting with more ghosts lately.
“So he starts backpedaling fast, using every bit of his charm to try and laugh it off as a mistake—like he’d gone to the wrong house for a U-DUB fraternity prank or some bullshit. But it was too late.” She shook her pointer finger in the air. “I know an SGLP when I see one.”
“I’m sure.”
“Naturally, I played it off and acted like I thought it was a hilarious mix-up, too—so he wouldn’t kill me, of course.”
“Of course.”
“And I gave him a tupperware of brisket for the road and told him to stop in anytime.”
Oh, my. “Quick thinking, Ma.”
“I thought so. Gotta keep your enemies closer.”
“Right.” No better way than brisket.
“I knew he’d be back to search for the journal, so I packed a suitcase and left early the following morning like I was leaving town for a while. And then I staked out the house from Ruthanne’s for the next several days.”
“You staked out our house? From across the street?”
“That’s what I just said, Lauren. Pay attention.”
“I am. What did you say to Ruthanne about all this?”
“What do you mean? What is it Ruthanne’s business? I didn’t say anything; I just told her I needed to use her house for a stakeout for a few days.”
“Right. What are neighbors for?”
“Sure enough, pretty boy comes back the next day in the middle of the night with a SWAT team of SGLPs. They covered their tracks and didn’t leave a thing out of place, but I know they combed the whole place top to bottom looking for that journal.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I know.” She huffed. “Why are you always doubting me?”
“I’m just trying to understand what’s going on here, Ma. It’s a little unnerving to hear that you’re staking out our home from across the street while a SWAT team of abnormally hot guys are ransacking the place.”
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
“I am. Believe me, I am. I just think it’s a little coincidental that last Wednesday night I bring up Granny Nina’s journal to you for the first time ever and the very next day, some guy comes by the house asking you about it.”
“Hello! Why do you think I got a burner phone?” She rummaged through her bag and pulled a phone out. “I got a burner for you, too.” She set it on the table in front of me. “I think we should switch the numbers out every five to six days. Or maybe four—you think we should do four instead?”
Fuck. I was going to have to get my dad involved. As soon as the realization hit me, I felt like throwing up.
“No, I think five is good,” I told her. “Let’s start with five.” I took the phone she’d gotten me and slipped it into my bag. “Did you happen to get footage of the … SGLP”—I forced myself to use her acronym—“on the home surveillance cameras?”
“No.” Her eyes flashed and she slapped her palm against the table. “That damned Don Juan did something sneaky to delete it all.”
Yeah—either that or it had only happened in her head.
I did believe that werelocks were real and that I was a seer, but I wasn’t about to let my mom get dragged into the world that had destroyed her once before. If the current state of crazy she was in was any indication of how bad it had gotten after Grandma had died, I couldn’t afford to indulge her.
So when she brought up her plan to move me off campus and into her version of a “safe house,” I stopped her. “Look, I think it’s great that you’re taking precautions with SGLPs, but I won’t be joining you in your safe house.”
“Lauren, this is serious! They’re onto you.”
“Ma, a week ago you told me I’d be inviting the devil into my heart and psyche if I went down the path of necromancy. You said you wouldn’t allow it. Now you want me to embrace everything you ordered me to forget and deny for the past decade. Well, it doesn’t work like that. You can’t just flip a switch and tell me to believe in werelocks again.” She was about to argue when I cut her off. “I’ve only seen a few more spirits than usual lately,” I lied. “Nothing big. No visions. If any SGLPs come looking for me, they’re bound to be disappointed.”
Babs drove me back to campus—protesting my “irrational” decision the whole way. After she dropped me off, I walked straight to where my car was parked on the street. Tomorrow was a street cleaning day, and it was better to move my car now than to have to do it at eight a.m. tomorrow to avoid a ticket.
Once inside my car, I pulled my phone out and scrolled through my contacts until I found my dad’s office number.
What should I say? How much should I tell him about what was going on? Who was I kidding? What were the chances he’d even take my call?
Fuck it. I wiped my clammy palms on my skirt and clicked on his number.
Claudine answered my father’s line on the second ring. “Oh, my gosh, Lauren, how are you?”
“Hey, Claudine. I’m good. How are you?”
“Gre
at. Just great. It’s so nice to hear your voice. You haven’t called me for so long. How’s school going? Your grades last semester were outstanding. Your father was so proud of you.”
“Thanks, Claudine.” I took a breath and tried to calm my racing heart. Why was I so nervous? Why was this so hard? “I need to speak with my dad, please.”
She was silent, completely thrown by my request. It’d been years since I’d asked to talk to him. It’d been four since he and I had last spoken. Claudine recovered quickly enough, though. “He’s not available right now, Lauren. Is there something I can help you with? I sent your tuition check and deposited more money into your student account last—”
“No. I need to speak to Mr. Mel Novak, please,” I stated firmly as tears burned my eyes. “My dad.” I hated the fact that my voice cracked. “There’s something I have to talk with him about that can’t be resolved with a check or a wire transfer.”
“Ah … okay.” She lowered her volume. “Do you want to talk to me about it? You sound upset. Did something happen? Are you in some kind of trouble, honey?”
“Claudine, you tell him to either find a spot on his calendar tomorrow for a phone call with me or I will come to Seattle to talk to him in person! And he does not want to deal with me in person right now.”
I didn’t wait for her reply, and I felt badly for directing my anger at Claudine and hanging up on her. My dad’s assistant was a nice person, and I knew that she was just doing her job. I turned the ignition and shifted my car into drive.
I ruined my eyeliner crying as I circled for blocks, looking for another parking spot that wouldn’t require me to move my car tomorrow. Finally, in my frustration, I drove off campus. Then I just kept driving, and before I knew it, I was on the freeway—headed toward Seattle.
An hour later, when I was feeling pleasantly numb and stable again, I called Abbie and told her that I was on my way for a surprise visit. She squealed with delight and announced that we were going out dancing tonight, and that we weren’t going to stop until I’d found some lucky guy to end my three-semester dry spell with.