by Ann Atkins
His face lit up like the sun at my surrender. “I don’t know. The guy I got her from said she feeds mostly on negative energy and bad dreams, but I fed her a Cheeto on the way home, and she seemed to like it,” he said with a shrug.
“Is she potty trained? Because I definitely do not want any little surprises on my floor!”
“She uses a litter box,” he responded.
“How do you know all of this, and where on earth did you get her?”
“I know a guy to breeds them. He has a pet shop full of magical creatures downtown.”
“Are you serious? How is it that no one knows about this? Because I would think that if someone goes in to buy a puppy, and gets one of these things, they’re gonna be able to tell the difference!”
“Non-magical people don’t go in there. It’s protected by about a zillion different spells to keep humans away,” he said, smiling broadly.
“My head hurts again,” I said as I groaned and flopped back on the couch. The sudden movement jarred little Baku from her nap, and she crawled onto my chest and laid her head in the crook of my neck. I sighed and started petting her and she quickly went back to sleep.
“Motherhood suits you,” he said with a grin.
“Oh, shut up!” I said, but then I ruined the effect by laughing with him. “So … am I going to be a single mother?”
“Of course not! She’s been sleeping with a t-shirt of mine as well. I wanted her to be bonded to and comfortable with both of us,” he answered as he leaned over and kissed us both on the head.
“But she has to stay with me at night, right?” He nodded. “She’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss her, too,” he said intently.
“Maybe you can spend a night once in a while,” I replied, my voice sounding a little breathless.
“Count on it,” he said as he took her from me and laid her gently on the couch. Then, he grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet as his lips came down upon mine. His eyes burned like green fire when he looked at me, and without a word, he led me upstairs to his room. And for the rest of the afternoon, I didn’t worry about tonight; I was living life in the moment, and this moment was definitely worth living.
* * *
I was home a couple of hours before the party. I knew my father would accept nothing less than perfection in my appearance and behavior. The second part would require a lot of effort, but the first could be accomplished quite easily with my secret weapon. Her name was, Cassie, and she loved makeovers; I was nothing but a giant doll to her.
After I showered and washed my hair, she styled it and put make-up on me. She also insisted on giving me a manicure and pedicure, stating that my nails ‘looked a fright!’ I, grudgingly, had to admit that the lilac shimmer nail polish really did look good.
My father had left a garment bag on the bed with the required attire for the evening. It was a gray pantsuit with a lavender shirt. It actually wasn’t too bad, except for one thing, the pants were a couple of sizes too small.
I searched through my entire closet and finally found a pair of pants that were very similar; I hoped he wouldn’t notice.
“This is just plain nuts!” Cassie said from the floor.
After she had finished with me, she had set her sights on Baku, who was now cowering under the bed. Cassie had been on her hands and knees for the past five minutes trying to coax her to come out.
“Everything about my life, lately, is nuts,” I replied as she sighed in frustration and gave up her efforts to lure Baku out of hiding. As she stood up, disappointment was written all over her face, so I decided to have pity on her. “Bring me a piece of clothing that you’ve worn, and I’ll let her sleep with it. She’ll get used to your scent and eventually let you pet her.”
She said she had something in her car and was back in a couple of minutes with a pair of shorts. I warned her that she might not get them back, but she didn’t really seem to care.
Before she left, she had insisted on taking a picture of me with her phone so she could send it to Mason. He probably wouldn’t even recognize me with all of this gunk on my face.
I stayed in my room until the last possible second; I’d rather be anywhere else but here right now, but I knew if I hadn’t showed up, he would’ve found some way to make me pay for it. The doorbell rung announcing our first guest of the evening, and I took a deep breath before reluctantly opening the door and walking down the stairs.
As I neared the bottom of the staircase, I saw that my father was waiting with an impatient look on his face. He grabbed my wrist when I got closer to the bottom and nearly dragged me down the last few steps and into the den.
“Allison, I am aware that punctuality is not one of your strong suits, but I would have liked to have had a word with you before the guests started arriving!” he said in a quiet, angry voice.
“Well, I’m here now, so talk!” I replied as I jerked my wrist free of his iron grasp.
“You will be on your best behavior tonight! You will pretend to be the well-mannered child I have always hoped you would grow into! You will be quiet unless you are spoken to, and if someone does address you, you will respond in a friendly and intelligent manner! You—”
“Okay, I get it! I won’t mess anything up for you; I promise! I will be the perfect daughter,” I said, for once, not wanting to argue with him; maybe I was getting sick.
“I highly doubt that,” he sneered as he evaluated my appearance, and his face turned blood red. “Why aren’t you wearing the pants that go with that outfit?” he hissed.
“They were too small, but these are almost identical, so what is your problem?” I asked irritably.
“The problem is all yours, my dear! Maybe if you’d cut out a chocolate chip cookie every once in a while you wouldn’t be wearing plus sizes and mismatched clothes and embarrassing me!”
I flinched at his cruel words and took a step backwards, away from his fury. I had gone from a size four to a size six, but I was hardly overweight. I wanted to scream or cry or throw something, but I would not give him the satisfaction.
He was always distant, and when he was near—unkind—but I had never seen him this close to losing control. If this evening didn’t go as planned, what would he do? For the first time, I was actually afraid of the answer. This couldn’t be just about the pants, and I was starting to think this dinner had just been a ruse to get me here. If he was so worried about me screwing it up, why did he insist I come? Why hadn’t he just told everyone I was sick or something?
I was just about to respond to his intentional cruelty when the maid ushered in several guests. His arm immediately came around me, and I pulled away, but his fingers dug, painfully, into my arm, making it impossible to get loose.
His fake smile was plastered on his face as the first guest rounded the corner. So I decided to wear mine as well. I was introduced to people whose names I forgot as soon as they’d walked away; I was too busy trying not to cry.
They kept arriving for about the next thirty minutes, and when all was said and done, there were eighteen of them. I spoke to several of them, but only after they had spoken to me. There was almost an hour of drinks and appetizers before the caterers Dad had hired announced that dinner was served.
Twelve board members (six of which had brought their spouses), an angry daughter, and a tyrannical father sat down at a large table underneath a crystal chandelier.
The conversation flowed smoothly between the adults, and I looked at whoever was talking. I smiled and nodded and laughed when appropriate. I was doing everything he’d said to do, but he was still disappointed in me; I could see it in his eyes. It didn’t matter what I did; he would find some reason to be angry with me.
I sat up straight with my hands in my lap and stared at the table trying to remember which fork was the salad fork. An elderly woman next to me smiled and patted my arm. “I can never figure it out, either, dear,” she said kindly and picked up the correct fork, so I would know which one to use. I smile
d back at her gratefully, and my father laughed—having overheard—but the humor did not reach his eyes.
After the salad came the soup, but I didn’t eat any more of it than I had the salad. My stomach was tied in knots, making it nearly impossible to eat. I mostly just stirred it and took an occasional bite. I hadn’t been back in this house since the attack, but it wasn’t just that; something was off; I just couldn’t figure out what it was.
When the steak and lobster were served, I almost gagged, but I swallowed the bile rising in my throat, because I was certain that throwing up on the table would be a death sentence. I cut the steak into a gazillion tiny pieces, taking an occasional bite, but I didn’t even touch the lobster.
When the dessert was served, I noticed that I was the only one without cherries jubilee, and I was hoping no one noticed the oversight.
“Aren’t you having any dessert, Allison?” the man beside me asked, but before I could open my mouth, my father had answered for me.
“She doesn’t want any,” my father said, laughing. “Keeps complaining that she’s fat; you know how teenage girls are.”
He knew how much I loved sweets, and he was only doing this to punish me; little did he know he’d done me a huge favor. If he’d known how sick I was, he probably would have insisted I have two.
The business talk continued around me, and I tried to pay attention, but there was only so much I could take in without my brain running out of my ears.
My father listed several companies that he was sure he could get to make hefty donations to the hospital. He had also talked to several contractors about reducing the cost of the expansion on the new wing of the hospital. He talked about ensuring that the hospital was in compliance with state and federal laws. He rambled on about finance committee meetings and changes in compensation for hospital staff and licenses and accreditation and blah, blah, blah.
My eyes had started to glaze over, and all I wanted was to go to my room and check on Baku and call Mason or Cassie or Eric or even Matt, but I did not want to listen to any more of this!
“Allie!” my father said, jarring me back to the boring reality of the present. “Miss Henderson has asked you a question.”
“Oh, it’s all right. I’m sure we’re probably boring the poor thing to tears with all of this hospital talk,” she said with a big smile.
“No, Ma’am,” I assured her, “I’m not bored at all.”
“Well, of course you are. What young girl wouldn’t be? I’d be worried about you if you weren’t,” she laughed, and everyone else laughed, too, everyone but my father.
The dinner party continued on for another hour and a half, but I was careful not to let my mind wander again. I paid attention and answered everyone’s questions, and Sir or Ma’am followed every answer.
When the evening was finally over, I helped my father show everyone out and bade them goodnight. Any other parent would have been proud of me, but Dr. David Chamberlain wasn’t any other parent.
After the last guest had departed, he turned his cold, blue eyes upon me and shook his head. “First, you chose to defy me by not wearing the clothing I provided for you! Then, you feign ignorance about which utensils to eat with! And you sit in your own little world, ignoring my guests, and not speaking when you are spoken to!” he spat at me, pacing furiously around the room.
I was too shocked to be hurt by his words. He has never treated me well, but his words have never been this acidic and sharp. His fists clenched and unclenched, convulsively, and he appeared to be hanging on to sanity by a thread. I had no idea what to say to him. My usual snarky comments would only cause him to snap. Everything about him screamed violence and rage, and I was his only target, so I remained silent.
“So help me, Allison, if I am not appointed to that board, there will be hell to pay for you! Your instructions were simple and easy to follow; yet you still managed to muck it up! I really can’t figure out if you behaved that way on purpose, or if you are just monumentally stupid!” he yelled. “Well, do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Anger and fear combined, causing my body to shake and my heart to pump faster. I was shocked to realize that I was hurt and disappointed as well. Some small part of me had clung to the hope that he would be pleased with me. I should have known better by now; he had never cared about me and he never would. I decided right then and there that I was done. I would not stay here and subject myself to this anymore. I would be eighteen next month, and he would have no legal claim on me. And the few threads of love I had left for him and the hope that he would someday return that love, were broken.
As I stood there shaking, he took several strides toward me, until he was standing right in front of me. “Well?” he asked.
I took a deep calming breath and drew on the deep well of courage that I knew was inside me somewhere. I didn’t know what he would do when I said what I was about to say, but I had to say it.
“I think you are a coward! And if you don’t get that job, it will be because of your own incompetence; it has nothing to do with me! But you would rather blame it on me instead of taking responsibility for your own shortcomings. You are a sad, pathetic excuse for a father, and if you treat your patients like you treat your own child, I hope you don’t get the job!”
I had barely finished speaking before he backhanded me, and I stumbled backwards and fell over the coffee table. My jaw exploded with pain, and the metallic taste of my own blood filled my mouth.
I crawled away from him and stood up, wiping the blood that ran from my mouth with the back of my hand. “What would my mother think about the monster you have become?” I asked him.
“Why should I care?” he laughed.
“Because she was your wife and the mother of your child!” I said incredulously.
He smiled at me, then, but it wasn’t the kind of smile that makes you feel warm and fuzzy; it was the kind that sends chills down your spine.
“That woman was not my wife! And you … are not my daughter!”
Chapter Nineteen
Unraveled
The look of pure, unadulterated shock on my face must have been quite amusing to him, because he was bent over double laughing at me. And for the first time in my life, I realized that he was completely insane. I had always known that he was cruel and cold, but I hadn’t known he was crazy until just now. He had never struck me before today, and seeing the way he was unraveling before my very eyes, I wondered how he had restrained himself for so long.
“I have been waiting almost eighteen years to say those words to you, you little brat,” he said, still laughing.
“What took you so long?” I asked.
“I was waiting for the right time to break it to you,” he said, seeming to regain some semblance of sanity. His voice had returned to normal and he had almost stopped laughing.
“Oh, were you concerned about how I would take the news?” I asked sarcastically.
“Absolutely not! You would have left years ago if you had known the truth, and I could not risk it.”
“If you despise me so much, why would you care if I left or not?”
“I went to a lot of trouble to acquire you all those years ago; I wasn’t about to just let you walk out the door.”
“But why? Why did you want me in the first place?” I asked in frustration.
“You really have no idea?” he asked with an evil smile.
I was about to tell him that I didn’t, but then I remembered Mason’s words. He had said, ‘“There are humans who are aware of your existence, that would like nothing better than to stick you in a lab somewhere and study you.’” My stomach sank to the floor. All along, I had expected the danger to come at me from outside my home. I had imagined the monsters lurking outside the windows and clawing at the doors, trying to get in, but this monster was already inside, and I had been living with him my entire life.
“You know, don’t you?” I said, automatically taking a step backwards.
“Allison
, I know more about you than you do. I have waited so long for that damnable spell to break. It was supposed to hold until your eighteenth birthday, but I’ve suspected for a while that it broke early. And when I followed you and your little friends into the Rockies a couple of days ago, my suspicions were confirmed,” he said, taking a step forward as I took another step back.
He had probably never even left town at all; he had only used that as a ruse to spy on me. I felt sick knowing that he had been there lurking in the shadows, but I wouldn’t let that knowledge ruin a day that had turned out to be so spectacular.
“You’ve just been biding your time haven’t you? I’ve been nothing but a lab rat in a pretty cage for my whole life; I just didn’t know it. But you were counting on my vulnerability. You knew I wouldn’t know how to use my powers to defend myself; I didn’t even know that I had any! Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Daddy, but things have changed, and if you think using me as a human science experiment is going to be easy, you are sadly mistaken!”
“Human? You honestly still believe you’re human?” he asked as he started to laugh again. “Honey, there is not one drop of human blood in your body, and whoever told you that was lying to you.”
My stomach did a slow roll, and I felt light-headed. He was lying; he had to be, because Mason would never lie to me about something that important. “That’s rich coming from you; you’ve made my life nothing but one giant fabrication, so why should I believe you now?” I spat at him.
“Because it’s true, you little idiot! It’s a shame that that spell took so long to break, or I would’ve knocked some sense into you a long time ago.”
Of course! That’s why he’d never laid a hand on me before today. Mason had been right; my mother had tried to protect me, but I hadn’t known she was protecting me from him. She had loved me, and I wondered if my real father had loved me, too. My heart yearned and ached for both of them. And I could hear it beating in my ears as I asked my next question.