The Seal

by Elise Marion

  He’d landed in a cemetery. Rising up on his knees, he stared at the gray stone jutting up out of the ground in front of him. Another bellow of laughter escaped him as he read his own name on the rock—Jackson Bennett Jr. Son, Brother, Friend. 1990-2015. If he’d had Micah’s physical strength, he would have ground the headstone into dust. The words on it were only partially true. He was a son, a brother, a friend. But his life hadn’t ended … not yet. Rising to his feet, he stared down at the ground beneath him. The grass had just started to grow there, and somewhere beneath the hard-packed earth lay a casket containing nothing but air, because here he stood, flesh and bones. Solid. Alive.

  A flash of lightning lit up the night, and a few drops of rain plopped down on his head. He tilted his face up toward the sky and closed his eyes, reveling in the feel of warm raindrops sluicing down his face.

  “Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you for another chance.”

  Making his way between the monuments and graves, he glanced around to get his bearings. He’d been buried in New York, obviously, close to his family. Which meant he must be only a cab ride to his parents’ house. While he itched to get back to New Orleans and run straight to Addison, he had other matters to attend to first. Michael had instructed him to face the last person he needed to extend forgiveness to. Which meant he had to go home first. Besides, he had no way to get back until he could access some money for airfare or find an angel escort.

  “I’m coming Addie,” he murmured aloud as he picked up the pace. “Just a little longer.

  What she needed, as it turned out, was to get drunk. When he’d first suggested an airboat ride out into the swamp, she’d been wary. Riding through alligator-infested waters seemed like a bad idea. Mixing alcohol with the situation would be like pouring gasoline on a bonfire, but Micah had insisted. They’d been out here for most of the day, taking swigs of moonshine from mason jars and talking about nothing. She’d dozed off a few times, unsure of how long she slept before waking up with Micah still there—sometimes sleeping himself, other times staring pensively out over the water.

  Now that they had been out here all day, a serene sense of calm had come over her, and she realized he’d been right

  What she’d needed was to be away from it all. Here, in the open air of the bayou, with a mason jar of moonshine between her fingers, she felt freer than she had in a long time.

  He had brought the airboat to a stop, and they drifted languidly over the still water as the sun started setting in the distance. The yellow glow of the lamps he’d hung surrounded the boat, added to by flittering fireflies bobbing up and down over the water. Every now and then, something moved in the water, causing a splash and a ripple. She probably should have worried about what could be lurking in the depths around them, but had drunk just enough moonshine that she didn’t care.

  “Careful, cher,” Micah chided when she took another long pull from her jar. “Uncle Remy’s hooch is some of the strongest this side of the Mississippi.”

  “Too late,” she said as the liquor forged a fiery path down her throat and to her stomach. “I’m already pretty buzzed.”

  He took a gulp from his own jar, then licked his lips and grinned. “In that case, bottoms up. Laissez les bons temps rouler.”

  He extended his arm, offering his jar in a toast. She clinked her glass against his and together, they took another drink.

  With a sigh, he slouched against the side of the boat, propping one long leg up on one of the seats. Resting the jar between his legs, he let his head loll lazily to one side.

  “You should talk about your mama,” he said. “If it helps.”

  The sting of tears bit at her, and she chased it away with another long drink. “What’s to tell?” she murmured. “She was a drug addict who did a crappy job raising me. You met her—she was a mess.”

  He shrugged. “So are a lotta people. But everyone has a story. Nobody’s born screwed up.”

  She gave a little bark of sarcastic laughter. “He says to the half-demon Naphil.”

  To her surprise, he actually chuckled. “True that, cher. The cards have been stacked against you from day one. I gotta hand it to you, you’ve held up well considerin’ the circumstances. You’re a tough little thing.”

  “So was she,” she said. “I guess, after a while, life just got the best of her. Maybe it’s better that she’s gone. She’s at peace.”

  He nodded. “Why do we mourn the dead, anyway? I mean, they sure the hell don’t mourn us. They get to go on to something better, and we’re stuck here … alone.”

  She studied him in silence for a moment, watching the flickering flames of the kerosene lamps play over his hard features. She remembered what Jack had told her about him. Micah was complicated, he’d said. She already knew his sister, Tracy, had been murdered, and that his father had abandoned their family. His mother had remarried Tracy’s father, making him her half-sister. Apparently, his mamère had played a vital role in raising him. This amounted to the extent of her knowledge concerning Micah’s past.

  “What about your mama?” she asked softly. “You don’t talk about her much.”

  His gaze lifted to meet hers and he sat up a little straighter. “That’s because very few words could describe the kinda person she was.”

  What must that be like, to have a parent to idolize and look up to? Something both Micah and Jack had that she didn’t.

  “Your grandmother speaks highly of her. And she stuck around to help raise you even after your dad left.”

  Micah frowned. “That woman is a saint. Who knows how her sons turned out to be such jackasses?”

  She smirked at him. “Everyone has a story. No one is born messed up.”

  He laughed. “Touché, cher. The truth is, both my pa and Uncle Remy wasted their gifts. You already know Mamère is an Oracle. Well, my Papère was a Guardian. I once heard Elian’s mama, Carmen, say that this world we inhabit—this plane of spiritual differentness—draws us to each other. Oracles, Naphils, Guardians … we find our way to each other, somehow. It’s almost like we were made to come in pairs. Partners, friends, lovers, families. I shouldn’t have been surprised you and Jack fell for each other. It was bound to happen, and I’ve seen it a lot.”

  She stretched her leg and nudged him with her foot. “Like you and Alice?”

  He scowled and took another hit from his jar. “Hell, no. Only thing that ever passed between me and that gal was a box of condoms and way too much beer.”

  Addison wrinkled her nose. “Thanks for clearing that up. Seriously, though, I kind of figured already. I sensed the vibes.”

  “Not one of my better decisions. Anyway, back to Pa and Remy. Even though the Guardian gene is passed down to kids of the same sex, sometimes, when an Oracle gets in the mix, things get shook up. Remy came out an Oracle, but Pa came out a Guardian. Now Remy … he’s always been messed up. Mamère says he took to drinkin’ at an early age to cope with some of his visions. An Oracle has to be strong, because sometimes, they see things that would make a grown man piss himself. Visions of the future involving demons and Hell … it’s heavy stuff. Now, my Pa, he did well, at first. Took his mark at twenty-one, and not long after met Mama. I was five when he left us. Just up and packed his stuff one day, threw it in the back of his truck, and took off. Oh, but he did bother to tell me why he was leavin’. It got too heavy for him, bein’ a Guardian. He regretted taking the mark and wanted out. He wanted me and Mama to come with him, but she wouldn’t abandon her duty. Bein’ a Guardian meant more to her than he did … or so he said. So he left us behind.”

  Pity filled her for Micah and the poor woman who’d had to choose between her calling and her husband.

  “Did you ever see him again?” she asked.

  “The next time I saw him, he was in a casket,” he replied, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. “His body was found dumped in some river in Michigan. He’d been gone about a year by then. They never figured who did it, but Mama just knew some demon
or Naphil had done him in.”

  She lowered her eyes and stared into her jar. “No wonder you hated me at first.”

  “Hey,” he said gruffly.

  She glanced up, meeting his gaze.

  “You are not a demon,” he said. “You hear? You’re a Guardian, with the mark to prove it. You hold your head up.”

  Giving him a grateful smile, she nodded. “Thank you.”

  He shrugged like what he’d said was no big deal. “Yeah, well, Mama had already met Rex, my stepdad. He was a Guardian, too, and they fell in love. Now, there was a good man, Rex. Nine months after they got married, here comes Tracy.”

  He reached into his pocket and produced his phone. After pressing the screen a few times, he turned it toward her. A pretty, petite girl with dark brown hair and piercing blue eyes stared back at her. Her smile gave evidence to an impulsive and almost childlike nature. She could picture her just as Jack had described, full of life and laughter—a prankster.

  “She was pretty,” Addison said.

  “I can remember when she was born,” he said, shutting off the phone and shoving it back into his pocket. “At that point, I didn’t like Rex much. I didn’t understand yet how good he was for Mama, and all I knew was that some new guy was in the picture, and they had a new baby, and it was going to take my place in her heart.”

  Addison smiled, picturing a smaller version of Micah with a mop of golden curls and that surly expression, jealous of his mama’s love for a new baby.

  “Mama kept trying to make me hold her, but I wouldn’t. I hated her and she cried too much, and of course, every time she cried, someone picked her up. So, I avoided her like the plague. Well, you know how they say mothers know best? My mama figured out a way to make me love that little girl.” He paused, shoulders shaking as he chuckled. “She put her in the bassinet in the living room, then went into the kitchen to make dinner, knowin’ Tracy couldn’t stand to be left alone. She liked to know someone was there, to see another person in the room. She had to be about three or four months by then. Well, I was tryna play with my trucks on the floor when she started wailin’. I mean, the girl could scream. She put up such a racket, I got fed up and went stompin’ into the kitchen to give Mama what for. I asked her to shut Tracy up. She went on rolling out dough for her biscuits and told me I was gonna have to deal with it. Babies cry all the time, she said, and she was busy. Tracy had been fed and changed—weren’t nothing wrong with her. So, I went back into the living room and stood next to that bassinet and watched her cry. I told her to shut her mouth, but she just kept on cryin’. So I says, ‘you wanna be held? Fine, then’. Then, I grabbed her out of that bassinet, one hand under head just like Mama. Well, wouldn’t you know it, she shut her yap almost instantly.”

  She laughed. “That little con artist.”

  He chuckled, as well. “Tracy always knew how to get her way. I looked down at her and told her she was the ugliest baby I’d ever saw, and that I was only holding her so she’d be quiet. Well, bein’ a baby and all, she responded by throwing up all over the front of my shirt. Then she laughed and soiled her diaper.”

  Addison fell to her side, her sides aching from the laughter making her quiver and snort. “Serves you right, you little bully!”

  “I took her to Mama and asked her to tell me what to do. She told me to take care of my little sister. That was my job, bein’ a big brother—protect and take care of Tracy. By the time she finished dinner, Tracy had been changed and I had her lying on her belly on the rug, pushing cars across the floor. From that day on, we were inseparable. It didn’t matter what kinda trouble Tracy got herself into, I always had her back. I protected her from bullies, boys, and everything else I saw as a threat.” He trailed off and hung his head with a heavy sigh. “The one time I failed to be there, and she gets killed. Some brother.”

  Addison set her almost-empty jar aside and scooted across the boat toward him. He glanced up at her as she settled next to him, placing a hand on his knee.

  “Come on, that’s not fair. Jack told me what happened. You couldn’t have stopped it.”

  “Of course I coulda,” he retorted. “Just like Jack gave his life to protect you. That shoulda been me, instead of Tracy.”

  “Do you think so little of yourself that you don’t care if you live or die?” she asked.

  He gave her a sarcastic smirk. “I’ve been told I’m a pitiful excuse for a man, and a waste of a life.”

  She cringed as her own words came back to slap her in the face. “Damn it. I did say that, didn’t I? Micah, I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s all right, cher,” he murmured. “You were hurtin’ over Jack, and so was I. I was an ass and you reacted the same way anyone else would have.”

  “Still,” she insisted. “I shouldn’t have said those things. The truth is, I thought those things about you at first, but I came to see they weren’t true. Our circumstances make us who we are, and I think I know what kind of person life has made you.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “Is that so?”

  She nodded. “We’re not that different, you know. That’s why I get it. We erect walls to keep people out, because it’s easier that way. And when people start to get too close, we do everything we can to shove them away. Because losing the people we love, or being betrayed by them, or finding out they never really loved us at all … well, after a while, you get tired of that. You just want the pain to stop.”

  He raised his jar at her before chugging what remained and tossing it aside. “Sounds like you got me pegged to a T. I’ll probably always be that way, because I can’t help it. But Jack … well, he was that way for a while. Until he met you.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t take credit for that. I was the one who needed someone. I couldn’t stop wondering why he’d want someone like me when he was far more capable of functioning in a normal life. I didn’t think I could ever be normal.”

  Micah’s gaze changed, the heavy-lidded quality giving way to an intense scrutiny. Drawing himself up on one elbow, he turned toward her, his stare penetrating and probing. Addison felt trapped, and all too aware that his movement had shifted him closer to her. Much too close. She could smell him, feel the heat that seemed to radiate from him—separate from the humidity of the swamp surrounding them

  “Are you kiddin’?” he murmured, reaching up toward her.

  Frozen in his stare, she became helpless as he caught hold of one of her loose locks of hair. Running it between his fingers, he never allowed his gaze to waver from hers.

  “I can see what he saw. People who have lived a long time without love are so starved for it that when they do finally find it, they latch on and never let go. They love so fiercely, and so truly, that the person who captures their heart never has to worry if it’s real. You don’t trust easy, and you certainly don’t love freely. He was lucky, to have earned that from you. I’d kill to have someone love me like that.”

  She shivered despite the heat, her chest heaving with heavy, rapid breath. She hadn’t breathed in about thirty seconds, and her lungs had started burning. But she felt afraid to move, to breathe, to allow herself to think of what his words truly meant.

  “Micah,” she croaked, her voice sounding rough and foreign to her own ears.

  He sat up, threading his fingers into the hair at her nape, gripping lightly. He tilted her head back as if to kiss her, but paused bare inches away.

  “It’s all right, cher,” he whispered.

  She trembled like a leaf in the wind—not for fear of him, but fear of herself. Because the longer he touched her, holding her like she was a piece of fragile glass, his breath warm against her cheek, the more she wanted him to close the distance between them. His gaze traced her face, and his hand moved from the back of her neck, to just under her chin. Holding her in a light grip, he traced his thumb over her mouth, causing her to part her lips.

  “Ask me what I’m doin’, cher. Ask me so I can tell you that I have no damn idea. I can’t
want you, Addison. You’re Jack’s girl, and even though he’s dead, I … I can’t.”

  She nodded in agreement. “No. You can’t. I can’t, either.”

  “Just once,” he whispered, nuzzling her nose with his. “Last time was kind of a dream, wasn’t it? I just want to feel something real—something that isn’t pain, or anger, or loss. Can’t we, just for a minute, forget about all that?”

  She trembled, sinking into him as his other arm came around her. She brought her hands up to his chest—and forgot whether she’d meant to push him away or if she’d just wanted to feel his skin against hers.

  “Yes,” she replied. “I want to forget.”

  He nodded, his fingers flexing in her hair and at her waist, holding her even tighter. “Me, too, cher,” he sighed, just before his lips met hers.

  She closed her eyes and gave herself up to the moment, smoothing her hands over his chest and shoulders and up into his hair, threading her fingers through the strands. He moaned against her mouth, his timid exploration swiftly growing and swelling into something far different.

  This time, reality couldn’t be confused with dream. Micah kissed just the way she’d known he would—like a raging storm, like a conquering warrior, taking everything and leaving her breathless and dizzy. His lips were hard and demanding against hers, yet, supple and soft at the same time. His tongue demanded entrance to her mouth, and she found herself helpless to refuse. Letting him in, she let her senses be flooded by him—his feel, his taste, his scent—as wild and primal as the rest of him.

  Their lips separated and she whimpered, already mourning the loss of contact. It had only been a few months since Jack, but she’d already forgotten what connection with another person felt like. Closeness, intimacy, lust. That heady feeling of wanting and being wanted. And maybe … maybe another feeling, too. Something she didn’t dare name, because then, it would become too real, and this could be only temporary. One time, one moment of reprieve, over now.