by Apryl Baker
I can hear the soft murmur of voices coming from Zeke’s office. I stop a few feet from the closed door. What if they don’t like me? What if they don’t approve of me? I mean, I don’t have their manners, their upbringing. I grew up poor, and they were rolling in dough. Every stereotype known to man about the rich and the poor plays out in my head. All the what-ifs are enough to drive me nuts. I don’t want to embarrass Zeke. He’s been so good to me, and he loves me. Really loves me. If it were just the two of us, it’d be all good, but I have to deal with everyone in his world.
And that’s the problem. I don’t know how to fit in that world. I’m not a part of it. I’m just me. Mattie Louise Hathaway, foster kid.
“They don’t bite, you know.”
I jump at the sound of Jamison’s voice. Zeke’s butler is sneakier than I am. No one can usually get the jump on me, but I never heard him creeping up.
“I know.” I try to squash the irritation in my voice. He’s only trying to help.
“They’re going to love you, Miss Mattie. Stop fretting about it and go meet your family.”
“Are you always this bossy?” I scuff my tennis shoe, buying more time.
He laughs. “Only when I have to be. Come on, I’ll announce you.”
See, there’s another difference. In Zeke’s world, you’re announced when you enter a room. In my world, you just go in and say hi. It’s all these little differences that are going to be the death of me and my confidence.
Jamison doesn’t give me time to procrastinate any more. He walks to the door, knocks, and opens it. I hear him mumble something that includes my name. Then he stands aside and looks back at me expectantly, a twinkle in his eyes. I’m so going to get even, and the dirty look I give him sings that promise in spades. His response? A wink.
When I duck into the room, the first person I see is Zeke. He’s standing by his desk directly in front of me. His eyes are reassuring, but I can’t stop the nerves in my stomach from making me all queasy.
A woman comes around the desk, stopping beside him, her smile plastered from ear to ear. She doesn’t look much older than forty, but that can’t be right, can it? I mean, his mom would need to be in her sixties or something. This woman is tall, her dark brown hair cut fashionably short and styled to perfection. She’s wearing a dark blue dress and heels, pearls adorning her neck and earlobes. She looks very sophisticated. Not at all grandmotherly.
The man who’s standing by the fireplace is more along the lines of what I think a grandfather should look like. He’s tall, like Zeke, his salt and pepper hair only adding to his distinguished profile. Unlike his wife, he’s dressed more casually in slacks and a button down shirt. More approachable. The wife looks like she’d claw your eyes out if you so much as smudged her very expensive shoes.
“Mama, Papa, this is Mattie.” Zeke’s voice shines with pride, and it helps bolster up my sudden plunge of self-confidence. I’m slightly terrified of the woman who’s staring me down. Usually, I’d be all up in her face, but I don’t want to embarrass my father who has been nothing but be accepting of me. “These are your grandparents. Lila and Josiah Crane.”
Josiah approaches me first, a hesitant smile on his face. “You don’t know how long we’ve waited to meet you. We wanted to come down last week, but Zeke refused to let us. We were ready to come anyway.” Josiah winks conspiratorially at me. “We’re his parents, and he can’t boss us.”
I have a feeling Zeke bosses pretty much who he pleases.
“Look at you, so grown up. And as beautiful as your mother.” He doesn’t ask me, he just hugs me. So un-Zeke-like. I go stiff in his arms, unsure what to do. Do I hug him back? I look helplessly to Zeke, whose only response is to grin.
“Stop hogging my granddaughter, Josiah Crane.” Lila’s voice is soft, cultured, and has a definite southern drawl. Not at all uppity, though. She sounds happy to see me.
The old man hugs me tighter for a moment and leans down. “We are so glad to have you home.” When he releases me, I can see the tears in his eyes. He’s doing his best to hold them at bay.
“Come here, young lady.” Lila’s voice is a command that’s expected to be followed. I don’t do so well with commands, though. Instead of rolling over to her, I turn so I can face her.
Zeke laughs. “I forgot to tell you she has my stubborn streak, Mama. She’s as good at following orders as me too.”
“God help us,” Lila mutters. “One of you is enough to give me gray hairs.” She walks over to me, her heels clicking on the hardwood floors. Her eyes are hazel, like mine. We even have the same shade of brown in our hair. At first I thought it came from my birth mother, but looking at Lila, I can see similarities between us. She still looks young enough to be my mother and not my grandmother. Good genes, maybe?
“Let me look at you.” Lila walks in a circle around me, and its sets my teeth to grinding. I am not livestock waiting to be inspected by the next bidder. “Well, you look a little worse for the wear, but being shot will do that to you.”
“It only nicked me.”
“Nicked or not, gunshot wounds are serious. I swear, when Ezekiel told me you’d been shot last night, I didn’t know if my heart would take it. Don’t do that to us, child. We lost you once, we can’t lose you again.”
The raw emotion in her voice makes me look up. Her hazel eyes are bright with unshed tears. “Can I hug you?”
Zeke nods encouragingly.
“Sure.” I try to sound upbeat, but it comes out more like a cross between dread and ‘I’d rather be shot than hug you.’
“I know we’re strangers to you, Mattie.” It comes out Mahyatee. So odd hearing my name drawn out like that.
“Yes, you are.” I nod. “I don’t mean to be mean or standoffish, and I’m sure you’re really nice people, but I don’t know you, and…” I shrug, unable to put what I’m feeling into words. It’s different than it was with Zeke. As soon as he hugged me, I felt this connection. I knew he loved me, and that was all I needed. But grandparents? A whole cat of a different color. I have trust issues. I can’t help it.
“Sugar, you take all the time you need to get to know us. We’re your family, and there’s no getting rid of us any time soon. Just ask your father. I make him call me every Sunday, and he’s a grown man with a teenager.” Her smile is infectious.
Lila Crane is probably one of the kindest souls I’ve ever encountered, despite her outward appearance. I can see this bright blue haze surround her when she talks about her family. I know she deals in demons, but that doesn’t diminish the love and affection she has for them. For me.
I understand in that second she loves me. She loves me as much as she does Zeke. I can’t say I love her back, but it does give me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Enough so that I hug her unexpectedly and she never hesitates. She wraps her arms around me and hugs me until all I can smell is her fruity perfume. Oranges. She smells like oranges, like me.
She leans back and regards me with the most serious expression I’ve seen on anyone’s face. “We wanted you when you were Emma Rose, and we want you now that you are Mattie Louise. Demon blood, ghost energy, and all. You are loved and you are wanted.” A tear rolls down her cheek. “You are a Crane, and we don’t care who you were or who’ll you’ll be. You are loved and you are wanted. Do you understand me, ma petite chou?”
I take a deep, steadying breath. Family. It’s all I’ve ever wanted, and it’s right here for the taking. They love me. They don’t care if I’m part demon or not. They love me despite that.
You are loved and you are wanted.
I grew up feeling unloved and unwanted. I didn’t even know what love was, not until Dan taught me. Here these people are offering me the most coveted thing a foster kid could ever hope for. Love and acceptance.
“Do you understand me, ma petite chou?”
I nod, unable to speak. I am wanted and loved, and it is the most precious thing in the world. I have a family who cares if I live or die. Strangers they might be, but I’m willing to
give them a shot.
“Good.” Lila’s voice turns brisk again. “We brought you gifts. Ezekiel says you love to draw. We brought you a small mountain of sketch books, canvas, paints, pencils, anything we could think of. Your mother was an exceptional artist as well. I think your father still has some of her work at the plantation in New Orleans.”
Her drawl is thick when she says New Orleans, only she pronounces it Naw’lins. I’ve seen people on TV get offended if you say it any other way.
“Yes, I do. It’s all in the attic, if I remember correctly.” Zeke moves over to the couch and sits. “Her work was very good, but it’s nothing like Mattie’s. Our girl’s is hauntingly beautiful. The images stay with you days later. She’s brilliant.”
He grins at me like a proud papa. How can I not love him? He doesn’t care about my upbringing. He just cares about me. Maybe after all this is over and done, I will go to New Orleans with him, if only to see where I come from.
I wander over and plop down beside him. It puts him between me and the grandparents since I’m next to the sofa arm. I might understand their feelings toward me, but I still need time to adjust. It’s weird and unsettling and exciting all at once.
“Your father told us about your mother’s name.” Josiah takes a seat in the sofa chair to my right, allowing his wife to sit beside Zeke. “I did some digging into Georgina and found out quite a bit. You were right in that you have a brother.”
“What?” Seriously?
My grandfather nods. “He’s in college, Yale. His name is Alaric Dubois Buchard. His father, Richard Buchard, died when the boy was just a little thing. His grandparents raised him. Georgina was always a little…unstable. They feared she might hurt the boy.”
“How do you know all this?”
“His grandfather and I are old friends. We went to Yale together. They live in Atlanta now, and I haven’t laid eyes on him in over twenty years. He got quite a start when I called him up asking about his daughter. They haven’t seen her in a long time. She remarried about a year after her husband’s death, and they up and disappeared together. He always assumed the worst.”
“Well, that could be why she refused to marry me,” Zeke mused. “Perhaps because she was still married.”
Plausible.
“Did you tell him about me?” Zeke said they dealt in bad juju, but if I have a brother, I want to meet him.
“No.” Josiah shook his head. “I said we’d run across Georgina and it reminded me to call him up and shoot the breeze. I don’t know what your father’s told you about the Dubois family, Mattie, but they are not good people. They deal in things even we don’t, and that’s saying something. I’d like to have our investigator do some digging before I let them near you, especially given your talents.”
“You think they might want to use me to gain more power?” Crazy people beget crazy people.
“Unfortunately, yes. We need to be able to protect you before they come within a thousand miles of you.”
“She has the added protection of a Guardian Angel.” Zeke yawns and his mother reaches over and slaps his knee. He gives her a “what” look. So like me. I want to laugh at his disgruntled expression.
“Manners.” Lila glares at her son, and I can’t help the giggle that escapes. I’ve never seen this before, this whole family interaction thing. It’s quite entertaining.
“As I was saying, she has a Guardian Angel, and a Keeper of the Sword of Truth is tethered to her. I think she’s safe from almost anything with those two watching over her.”
Yeah, probably not the best time to mention my Guardian Angel is cursed and might be forced to kill me.
“Either way, we’ll need contingency plans for her safety if we plan on introducing her.” Lila stands. “Ezekiel told us about another potential problem as well. Deleriel.”
The fallen angel who’s currently soul sucking little kids. Yeah, big problem, and the most pressing one at the moment. I can deal with homicidal family members tomorrow.
“We think he took the little girl who lives next door.” I sit straighter. “Dan saw something earlier that makes him think Deleriel might be possessing a human or maybe using a human to nab the kids.”
“He saw him?” Zeke looks alarmed. “Most who see a fallen angel don’t live to tell about it.”
“Maybe that’s the wrong wording.” I explain to them about Dan’s new ability and everything he’d seen. “So maybe he’s working with a human?”
“He wouldn’t need to.” Zeke rubs his chin thoughtfully. “He’d just appear and take them.”
“Not if he’s feeding.” Josiah shakes his head. “The demon has a small army of fiends he’s created using the fallen husks of the dead. He needs to feed them. Yes, Deleriel would do his own feeding, but when they all awake, they’re ravenous. He’d need someone to torture the little ones until their souls are raw and bleeding to appease his children.”
“Holy crap.” My eyes widen, remembering that thing I’d seen in the morgue.
Lila bites her tongue at my language, but I don’t even care.
“Zeke, I saw something this morning at the hospital morgue. I think I saw Deleriel and one of his creatures.”
“Explain.” The words are clipped, but it’s because he’s scared. I can see it in his expression.
I tell him all about my adventure in as much detail as I can.
“Aside from the yellow eyes, that sounds a lot like the ghost that was here last night. The one that attacked you. Do you remember it at all?”
The ghost from last night is a big old blank. I shake my head, trying my best to force the memory, but I get nada. “I wish I could, but no.”
“It’s not a wonder either,” Lila fusses. “You went through some serious trauma yesterday. The mind can only take so much before it protects itself. You’ll remember in time, but for now, don’t fret about it.”
Easier said than done. I hate not remembering things.
“I was thinking we could all go out to eat tonight.” Zeke moves the conversation away from the ghostly visitors and back to more normal things. “There’s a lovely Creole restaurant downtown you’ll love, Mama. The gumbo is almost as good as back home.”
“Dinner would be nice.” She smooths her hair down. “Why don’t we go at, say, seven? That gives Mattie a little while to rest up, and perhaps she can bring her young man down to meet us?”
“He’s not my…he’s…”
“Whatever he is, we’d love to meet him.” Lila smiles, her eyes sparkling with laughter. “Ezekiel says we owe him your life several times over.”
“Why don’t you go check on him?” Zeke nods toward the open door. “He looked a little unsteady when he came in. I’m still worried about that head wound of his.”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
I stand and flee the room, still thinking of Lila calling him my young man. Unexpected and unsettling after that soul wrenching kiss of his. I do need to check on him, though. Zeke’s right about the head wound. Add in a nose bleed that wouldn’t stop, and you get potentially disastrous problems.
I knock on the door and push it open, not waiting for a response. I find him sprawled out on the bed, passed out cold. He’s been up and plowing through the day, but he needed to rest. I tried to tell him that all day. I guess his body finally made the decision for him.
Closing the door behind me, I head for my chair, and sure enough, my backpack from last night is still there. Inside are my sketchpad and favorite pencils. Drawing calms me, and after the day I’ve had, I need some Zen time. Taking my stuff out, I open the pad to a blank page and start to draw.
I think about this morning, and the morgue monsters begin to come to life on my page. I pour everything I’m feeling into it—fear, joy, pain, grief, everything. It’s over an hour later when I finally stretch my fingers and look at my work. It’s so vivid, the images on the paper could be real. The details are exact, the impressions dark and forbidding. It’s good, even by my standards.
“Much more impressive than your mother.”
I nearly screech at the sound of Silas’s voice. The demon is standing right behind me, staring intently at the page. His eyes are almost blue today. If I look at them just right, they do look blue and not black.
“What are you doing here, Silas? How are you here?”
Zeke has the place demon-proofed. He told me so.
Silas’s grin is wicked, like that of a Cheshire cat. “I have my ways, Emma Rose.”
He also refuses to call me anything but Emma Rose.
“If Zeke finds you here…”
He waves the threat off. “I came to check on you.”
“Check on me?” Suspicion starts to build. I’ve never known Silas to care about anything but himself. “Why?”
“Can I not just care about your wellbeing, my darling girl?”
“No.”
He laughs. “Well, I do. Care about your wellbeing, that is. I need you to accomplish my goals, and if you are dead, you cannot help me.”
“Your goals?” He’s alluded to needing me to do something for him before, but he never quite tells me what that is.
“None of your concern for now.” He lays a hand up on my head, and a warm sensation floods me, causing me to shudder violently.
“What are you doing?” I hate the weird feeling running through me. It’s unnerving.
“Healing you, so be quiet.”
“I’m fine. If you want to heal someone, heal Dan.”
“What will you give me if I do?”
“My thanks.”
He chuckles, and it sets off alarm bells. It’s a humorless laugh full of darkness. It reminds me he’s a demon capable of unimaginable horrors. Silas scares the bejesus out of me.
“It doesn’t work like that, my darling girl. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you can start making your own deals.”
“I’m not making any deals, Silas, with you or anyone else.”
“I know your father told you about your maternal lineage. You’re a demon, Emma Rose. You need to start learning how to be a good little demon. Now that Deleriel is here and has his sights set on Mary, you really need to learn how to harness your demon side.”