by S. E. Akers
His lips drank up my eagerness, forming a smile so gratified he looked like the daggone cat that swallowed the canary. “Malachi thinks I’m still in Veracruz. I have to get back down there.”
“Is that the only reason? You’re not going back to search for Ferrol…or Damiec?”
With Tanner keeping suspiciously quiet, Beatrix interjected, “I’m sure they’re long gone by now.” She furthered her point with a dismissive wave and then went back to adjusting the flames in the fireplace.
Tanner’s eyes creased intentionally. “And, I need to check on Olaf.”
“Federo told me about the hallucination,” I remarked.
“I need to make sure he’s still under the spell.” Tanner sighed, “Things turned fuzzy after that.”
“He said you worked him over pretty good too. Do you remember that?”
Tanner’s teeth sank into his grin. “Oh, I remember that,” he admitted proudly and then looked deep into my eyes. “And why.”
His candor forced even more color back into my cheeks, which I desperately wanted to play off. I didn’t want him to see all my cards. “I guess I should check on my traveling companions,” I diverted, “to see if they made it home all right.”
“Tyler called last night,” Beatrix announced. “He and Mike flew home together.”
I nodded. That just left Kara. I wonder how our “newfound friendship” will play out now that we’re back in the real world?
“I still think you should reassess your verdict,” Tanner advised. “Do you trust them completely?”
“No, not completely,” I answered honestly. “But I did save their lives. I don’t think I need their constant reassurance. They have faith in me.”
“We’ll see,” Tanner hummed. “I’ll just warn you up front, I hate saying ‘I told you so’.”
I nodded to him, catching Beatrix out of the corner of my eye, shaking her head, pointing, and mouthing vehemently, “Oooh, NOOO he doesn’t!”
I moved closer to Tanner. “You know…whatever it was that kept you distracted since the holidays…” I stopped and lowered my head, searching for the right words and some much-needed courage. “I just hope I hear from you more often, like we used to talk,” I whispered.
“Yes, Tanner,” Beatrix intruded. “Have you put that matter to bed?” she posed, equally intrigued.
“For now.” Tanner raised his brow, confidently. “But rest assured, I’m working on Plan ‘B’,” he announced, his tone unwavering throughout Beatrix’s mocking glare. Tanner turned back to me. “And no. It won’t cause any regretful distractions…not this time,” he added with notable air of apology.
“How long will it take for you to get back down there?” I asked, practically cringing at the thought of him having to endure another exhausting, twelve-hour trip with delays.
Tanner gave my hand a stirring squeeze. “Not as long as you think.” He pulled a ruby out of his pocket and pitched it into the flames. “Kamya gave me a little help with that.” He dove into the roaring fire and disappeared instantly.
“Humph…I guess Helio had no qualms about Kamya giving him a ruby?” I suggested, aloud.
“Guess not,” Beatrix replied with a curt nod and a jolting smack on my rear before she flitted off down the hall.
With our group now down to two, Beatrix and I headed into the kitchen for a late dinner. She wanted me to stay the night, but I needed some time to digest everything — not just the heavy batch of Ziti she had whipped up, but my recently revealed role that destiny chose to serve on my platter. Part of me felt like a supernatural “dog catcher”, but I seriously doubted there would be any cute & fuzzy strays lurking in the alleyways. Nope. Damiec and Lorelei were testaments to that.
Just as I’d stepped out the front door, a nagging thought whirled me back around. “Bea, what happened to Mr. Webber?” I asked. Her eyes expanded like a head-lighted deer — a very guilty one at that.
“He’s still caged,” Beatrix admitted with only a hint of shame.
“In the cupola of that dome?” I questioned, hoping I wasn’t right.
“No,” she swiftly protested. “He’s umm…a lot closer than you think.”
Now I looked like a head-lighted deer as I turned my attention to her recently acquired stray fowl. “You didn’t!” I gasped.
“I’ll change him back and let him go…when it’s safe,” Beatrix assured with a grin and a speedy “slam” of her front door.
I shook my head. Well that’s just TWISTED…
I was hugging the edge of Shiloh Ridge before I knew it, and officially on the last leg of my journey home. The sight of it made me naively think back to a time when the child in me only believed “the Boogieman” was all that was out there, haunting its borders. Now I knew different. There wasn’t just one, there were more…and they were EVERYWHERE…waiting for “me” to come and get “them”. Fate just decided to introduce me to the king of contemptible chaos first.
What a freaking homecoming…
As soon as I’d rounded the last bend, my headlights bounced off our red weathered mailbox. I really need to paint that cruddy old thing. The lid was hanging wide-open, so I threw my Charger into park. After a little manipulation, I managed to pry the thick bundle of letters and magazines out without ripping too many pieces and tossed what looked like mostly junk mail into the passenger-seat. I went ahead and pulled into my usual spot, though the stack of crap sitting to my right was a clear sign that the terrible-twosome wasn’t back yet. Personally, I was pulling for Sunday.
With my bags and mail in tow, I tromped up the creaky porch steps. The house looked as lonely as I felt. Katie couldn’t talk me down from my ledge this time. I’d promised Bea my strictest confidence. I couldn’t betray her trust. But I didn’t feel guilty about it. It didn’t have anything to do with her situation, just mine — little ’ole destine me. I unlocked the knob with a turn of my wrist and pushed open the squeaky wood door. Crossing the threshold didn’t feel like much of a warm welcome. An empty house can be bittersweet. I dropped my bags with a “thud” and slapped the mail on the table.
Dark, dismal, and depressing… Maybe I should have stayed at Bea’s?
I dug Katie out of my purse, now that I was alone — finally. I hated keeping her in there for so long, but I’d thought I was going to have to put on a show at Bea’s. My mistake.
“Home sweet home?” Katie asked as soon as she landed against my chest. To my delight, she didn’t sound the least bit pissed.
“Yep,” I confirmed and began sorting out my mail. Katie’s requests for me to dig out the Mamma Mia! DVD went unanswered as the speed of my flipping increased. The mound wasn’t all junk, only the magazines. The rest were a slew of envelopes from some of the same banking institutions, all addressed to my mother. I ran my finger over the seal of the one I knew held our mortgage. My mind whirled with suspicion as I tapped the envelope in my hand. And this time, I was praying my intuition was wrong for a change.
“Are you even l-i-s-t-e-n-i-n-g to me?” Katie asked.
“Yeah,” I answered, unable to suppress my urge any longer. I snatched up every last one of them, twenty-five in all. “But umm…let me go make some tea,” I said as I raced back to the kitchen.
“You want TEA?” Katie scoffed.
Once the teakettle had reached its boil, I waved the one in question over the piping hot steam (the one stamped: URGERNT- Immediate Attention Required). It took several passes for the glue to ease its hold enough to where I wouldn’t get busted. I pulled out the letter and commenced with a thorough scan. The words and numbers may have been typed in black, but all I could see was red.
I fell into a chair and dropped the letter on the table. “This is HORRIBLE!”
“Then get something else out of the fridge,” Katie directed anxiously. “I’d have gone with popcorn and a Diet coke, personally.”
“It’s not the tea,” I replied. “I steamed open one of Charlotte’s bills.”
“Look at you,” Katie said, sounding
impressed. “Which one?”
“Our house,” I sighed.
“Is she late on a payment?”
“I wish it was just one,” I groaned. “Try three.”
“THREE?” Katie gasped. “Why didn’t she use your Dad’s life insurance to pay it off? Isn’t that what the money was supposed to be used for?”
“It was, but I guess that wouldn’t have left enough for all her shopping trips to the DAGGONE MALL!” I raged.
“How much does she owe?”
“That’s what I intend to find out,” I huffed and scooted out my chair. I marched down the hall to my mother’s bedroom. With a heated shove, I pushed up the tambour door of Daddy’s roll-top desk and grabbed the old trusty adding machine, which typically only saw the light of day once a year. I feared the foreseeable toll on my eyes from all the countless calculations if I stared at the tiny screen on my phone. With it now dusted off, plugged in, and stocked with tape, I started steaming the rest of the envelopes in-between hammering away on the keys so I could assess the extent of Hurricane Charlotte’s damage.
“Tap”, “Tap”, “Tap”, “Tap”…“Tap”…“Tap, Tap”, followed by the printer’s gritty “squeak”, was all I heard for the next two hours. Talk about an introduction into finance management! I got one heck of a crash-course. When the sound of the dreaded last “tap” and “squeak” had finally rang out, I leaned up and looked at the total. I’m surprised steam didn’t shoot out of my ears.
“Son-of-a-squandering-Bitch!” I cursed.
“How much?” Katie asked.
“To take care of the house and all the penalties…the second mortgage, the line of credit she took out on it, and to cover her defaulted credit cards so she won’t get her butt sued off… We’re talking roughly one-hundred, twenty-three thousand dollars.”
“HOLY CRAP!” Katie blurted. “She spent THAT much?”
“Not exactly. I added in the forty-two thousand that would pay off the house,” I admitted.
“Because you can pull that just as easily out of your ass?” my BFF argued.
“Cute,” I replied, desperate to find any humor in this mess.
“Why is it up to you to pay off the house?” Katie scoffed.
“I can’t let the bank foreclose on Daddy’s house!” I insisted. “I won’t have to worry about this happening again if it’s paid off.”
“You don’t SERIOUSLY believe that, do you? She dug this hole once, she’ll do it again…with a brand new shovel and a freakin’ clean slate!”
“I’ll compel her,” I blurted. “And the all the loan officers at our bank.”
“Well, as long as you’re thinking like that, why don’t you just—”
I cut her off swiftly. “I’m not brainwashing the bank into forgiving her debt! You know I can’t do that!”
“AGAIN…You stole a boat.”
I crashed my head into my arms and slid them across the table. “What am I going to do?”
“Get a loan from Bea,” Katie claimed irrefutably.
I jerked my head up. “No way! I’m not asking Bea. This isn’t her problem.”
“What about Tan—”
“NOOO,” I stressed with a tumbling roll. “I think he’s saved my rear enough.”
“Then HOW do you plan on getting the money before the bank forecloses? A team of strippers couldn’t slide down a pole enough in a month for that amount of cash…Though if you told them your body glitter was actually diamonds and you could shoot lightning out of your—”
“That’s what I’ll do,” I mumbled.
“What? The lighting shooting out—”
“NO!” I barked. “Diamonds.” That announcement sure shut my wisecracking bosom friend up. Without warning, an ominous and murky feeling broke through the silence blanketing the room. Padimae warned me about a choice I had to make, a grave one. Could this be it? It wasn’t something to take lightly by any means. Crap! I wasn’t sure, but one thing was certain — it was the only thing I could do.
“I thought you promised Tanner you wouldn’t sell them… Ever?”
“I never promised,” I fudged. “He simply acknowledged why it would be a bad idea and I agreed with him.”
“Agreed until now?” Katie posed. “Tell me again, because I’ve forgotten. How bad did the one you carved out for Ty hurt when Lorelei was slicing and dicing your legs?”
“I’m not planning on advertising that I’m selling them. I’ll make sure no one is following me, just to be safe, and take them to your parents’ shop.”
“You can’t sell them THERE,” Katie laughed.
“Why not?”
“For starters, you don’t have any documentation.”
“Documentation?” I questioned.
Katie let out a long sigh. “A rough diamond needs to be certified by a gemologist and a reputable buyer will want to make sure that it’s not illegal. One or two, doesn’t look suspicious, but you’ll probably need at least thirty of those things the size of a nickel for that kind of money. Twenty if they’re clear. The less inclusions, the better.”
“Oh,” I muttered, rubbing my already aching arm. Crap…
“Unless you can whittle out a flawless royal blue one about the size of a grapefruit.”
“I can’t do THAT!” At least I didn’t think I could, but I certainly wasn’t game to find out.
Katie continued, “Second, your best chance of selling them is to a cutter, or better yet, get the cutter to recommend a buyer. There’s a ton in New York City… Some in D.C… A few in Atlanta… And, I think two in Nashville.”
The closest one is SEVEN hours away? Undoubtedly, this wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped. All this, on top of my impending destiny! And here all I thought I was coming home to was some ancient supernatural crawling under my skin and finding Katie’s body. Shit! Finals too!
“And lastly,” Katie huffed. “If an eighteen year-old, strange chick were to ever approach my parents with fistful of rough diamonds, they’d call the cops!”
“True,” I agreed.
“So, take your pick… Hot-lanta or Music City?”
“I can’t get away from Bea for a whole day! Especially not during the week… And if I need as many as you say, I’ll have to start whacking them out tonight, so I can heal up for our training after school Monday.” Hell, I hadn’t completely healed up from Lorelei’s attack — not even close!
“Awww… No road-trip?” Katie whined.
“No,” I replied adamantly. The knots in my stomach tightened in one swift, guilty tug. “I can’t let Bea or Tanner find out about this… EVER!”
“Then how are you going to get them there?”
“There’s only one person who can help me…only one person I can trust,” I said as I whipped off my shirt. I arched my fingers, still dreading the first slice. “I just hope he can come through.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I awoke early the next morning to a bright red pool of what I tried to convince myself was Hawaiian Punch. However, the stench wafting in the air couldn’t fool my brain. The evidence was clear, bloody rather — a shivering reminder of what I’d done. My neck ached from where I’d propped it on the rim of the claw foot tub. I wasn’t quite sure when I’d fallen asleep (or possibly bled out). Maybe around two? All I knew was that the upstairs bath Chloe and I shared looked like a murder/suicide scene.
I rose with a grimace and used my toes to tug on the chain attached to the rubber plug. Even that took some effort, but right now, I was in no shape to bend back down. While the tainted water slowly drained, I scanned my self-inflicted injuries with a nauseous glare. Thirty-one gashes in all, on top of the ones that were three-quarters of the way healed. I didn’t know if I should start showering immediately or grab the shaving cream for a round of Connect-the-Dots? My arms, my legs, my stomach, my hips… Almost my entire body was ravaged with quarter-size wounds. I literally had to dig the last one out of my right butt-cheek because I’d run out of room. Thirty, plus a magical “
one” — just for luck. I spotted Chloe’s favorite wood-handled hairbrush on the floor. I’d grabbed it when the pain got too rough. The handle was completely gnawed, end-to-end. Dogs took better care of their bones. Major “My bad”, I thought as I closed the shower curtain and flipped on the hot water. She’s gonna be PISSED!
I stood under the steamy and soothing stream, half-rinsing me and half-rinsing out the tub. I only had two objectives for today: Getting my butt over to Samuel’s early and then coming back here for an entire day of salt-soaking in the tub. I just prayed we had enough Band-Aids in the medicine cabinet to cover these things. But long sleeves and jeans were a must — definitely.
I wasn’t too concerned about Beatrix finding out, since we weren’t meeting up again until tomorrow. The root of my uneasiness stemmed from someone else — Helio — my ever so silent squatter. I wasn’t stupid enough to think he was oblivious to what I’d done. Bea’s story about Nerina punishing Lorelei and Arica swirled in my head like a tornado — followed by me, bursting into flames. Maybe my “do-it-in-the-tub” strategy was more subconscious, rather than thinking it would kick-start the whole saltwater healing process. After all, how could he roast me to a crisp if the water hindered his flames? But I wasn’t going against a revered Guardian’s wishes (I didn’t think). It wasn’t like I’d charged them with any powers, nor planned to. I hoped that had made a difference. My sweet-talking, rational-side (the red-suited one) tried to sponge my conscience clean with an encouraging, “I’m sure you’re not the first to profit from your stones.” Then my moral-side flapped its feathery white wings and kicked-in with a curt, “But they were meant to heal…and to help people other than yourself.” Then my heart entered the mix with a firm, “I am… I’m helping my mother and my sister. They’re the ones who’ll be homeless, and Daddy wouldn’t have wanted that.” And throughout the entire length of my moral dilemma, all the way up to my last defiant slice, Helio said nothing — not one single word.
Bandaged, dressed, and ready, I flew out the front door at seven on the dot. I zoomed down the road on my mission, cornering curves like my Charger was on rails. Undoubtedly, some of those cab drivers had rubbed off on me. Maybe my driving from the airport was kind of rough? Nawh…