by Julie Kenner
I made a face, not sure I wanted to get into that theological kerfuffle. So far, I’d hesitated asking Father Corletti’s opinion on the status of my marriage. I knew the answer as far as the State of California was concerned. As for the state of my soul, the question remained. Did I have one husband? Or did I have two?
“I’ll talk to him Wednesday night,” I said.
“Got a hole in your calendar and looking to plan a few fun-filled few hours?”
“Cute. No, tomorrow he has the morning show at one of the network’s affiliates, and then he’s flying to Sacramento and won’t be back until Tuesday morning. Then that night is the dinner party at our house. And I can’t see telling him before a TV appearance or a campaign party.”
“I see your point. ‘Hey, honey. I hunt demons in my spare time. Think I can help you round up the bad guys once you’re in office?’” She shook her head. "Definitely not the right approach.”
I rolled my eyes. “Wednesday,” I said. “Come hell or high water, I’m telling him Wednesday.”
Laura grimaced. “The way things are going, my money’s on hell.”
Twelve
"You’re sure this is a good idea?” I asked Laura as I shelled out twenty-five dollars to buy Allie a wristband that would allow her to go on all the rides without tickets.
“Trust me,” Laura said. She pointed to a spider-looking ride in which the passengers lay on their stomachs and were whirled around in midair. “As many times as they’re going to want to go into the fun house or ride that spinning, whirling death thing, we’ll be glad we coughed up the money for the all-included price.”
“I bow to your shopping savvy,” I said, having learned long ago not to argue with Laura where the value of a dollar is concerned.
“Where’s Daddy?” Allie asked as the ticket-booth man strapped the band to her wrist.
I cringed, but Mindy was one booth over, busily fidgeting with her own band.
“David, sweetie. You need to remember to call him David.”
“Right. Sorry. I know that. Really I do.”
“And the answer is, I don’t know. He’s got to be around here somewhere.”
We both craned our necks, trying unsuccessfully to find the man. The parking lot for the boardwalk and beach was crammed full of carnival rides, tents, ticket booths, and snack shacks. Among all these temporary structures, so many people moved in thick throngs that you would have thought no one in San Diablo had ever been to a carnival before.
“We’re never going to find him,” Allie said, sliding into a whininess I hadn’t heard from her for at least several glorious weeks.
“I promise we will,” I said. “Until we do, why don’t you and Mindy go enjoy the carnival? I paid for that wristband—I at least want you to get some use out of it.”
She aimed a sour expression my direction, but eventually nodded. “Okay, but if you find him, it totally qualifies as an emergency and you have to call my cell phone. Promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
“ ’Kay. I’m gonna see if Mindy wants to ride that thing,” she added, pointing to the spiderlike machine that Laura had tagged right away.
“Fine,” I said. “Go. I’ll be here with my feet safely on the ground.”
She gave a disgusted little shake of her head. “Jeez, Mom. You’re such a wimp.”
Laura laughed as she and Mindy hurried off. “And just like that, you’re reduced to the level of us plebeians.”
“I scream when I find a bug in the bathroom, too,” I said.
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”
“Hang on,” I said, twisting quickly to look behind me.
“What?”
I scoured the area around us, seeing no one out of the ordinary. “Paranoia, I think.” But I wasn’t entirely sure that was the case. I distinctly remembered that odd sensation of being watched in the alley on David’s first night back. Then again in my own backyard, and that on a night when a demon’s body had gone missing. (And as far as I could tell, had thankfully stayed missing, not turning up in Dumpsters or ditches or other places that might cause the police to ask all those irritating questions.)
Now the feeling was back, this time in broad daylight. My only suspect was Dukkar, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“I know that look, Kate,” Laura said.
“Goose bumps,” I said. “Like someone’s watching me.”
“Maybe it’s David,” she suggested. “Or our carnival flyer friend.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Come on. Let’s either find David or get something cold to drink.”
“Do carnivals sell wine coolers?” she asked, heading into the thick of things.
“I don’t know. But I think it’s high time we find out.”
As it turns out, this carnival did, which made it a high-class operation in both my and Laura’s estimation.
We were on our second bottled cooler when Timmy decided he’d had enough of that napping thing and woke with a start and a definite opinion as to where we should go next.
“Nemo! Mommy, Mommy, look! Nemo!”
Sure enough, one of the game booths was strung with clown fish and other denizens of the sea. Not the Disney licensed version, but my little boy didn’t care.
“Want out!” he said, leaning forward and straining against the strap on his stroller. “I want a Nemo!”
I didn’t bother to explain to him that getting out of the stroller wasn’t actually going to get him much closer to holding a Nemo in his hot little hands, but I did release him. He raced pell-mell to the edge of the game, then reached up, as if by the sheer force of his desire he could will one of those fishies to drop down into his hands.
“Gotta play the game, little guy,” the carny said. I cocked my head, considering the carny and, more important, wondering if he knew who I was. If he was one of the ones who’d been watching me.
“Mommy, please? I want Nemo.” He rubbed his chest and pouted his lips and looked so dang cute I had to give in.
“How much?”
“Three for five,” the carny said, pointing to the darts that lined the railing. The idea was to toss them and pop the balloons. I hesitated to ask how many pops it took to earn a Nemo.
“Five tries,” I said to Timmy. “But there’s no guarantee you’ll win.”
“Ten.” He held up two hands, all five fingers splayed out.
“Yay, you! What a good counter. But, no. Five tries.”
“Seven!” One hand disappeared behind his back.
“Five.”
“Three, Mommy! Three, three, three!”
“Sweetie,” I said. “Five is more than three.”
I’m not entirely sure he believed me, but he finally let loose with an “Okay, Mommy,” which I swear had exactly the same tonal quality as his sister’s famous whatever.
“So here’s the way the game is played, little man,” the carny said, leaning over the counter to pick my son up and plunk him on the thick railing. “You take this dart—hold it carefully—and you toss it at that wall. Aim high, boy. You pop one, you get a prize. More you pop, bigger the prize. Got it?”
Timmy gave a thumbs-up and looked at me for assurance. “Have at it, kiddo.”
He picked up a dart, the carny stepped out of the line of fire, and away the thing flew.
Surprisingly, it actually made it to the wall. The point didn’t hit a balloon, but I was pretty darned impressed that my little boy managed to send a dart flying that far.
“Second time’s a charm, little man,” the carny said, handing him a bright yellow dart.
As it turns out, it was. The carny gave him a few pointers and he popped balloons with darts two and three. Four went wild, but he popped another with five. Not a bad average, all in all.
“Good job, boy. You get any of the prizes along the pole. Take your pick, little dude.”
The carny had a big wide grin, obviously assuming Timmy would be thrilled. I knew better. There was no Nemo on the pole. All the Nemo
s were strung across the top of the booth.
“Nemo!” Timmy said.
“Can’t do that, dude. But this fishy here’s real cute.” He pointed to a yellow fish with bulging blue eyes.
“Ne. Mo.” Timmy put his little fists on his hips and stomped his foot. “Want Nemo!”
“Calm down, sweetie,” I said, hauling him off the railing and plunking him on the ground beside me.
The second I did, the tears started, and I was forced to face that most delicate of mommy moments: Explain to my child that you don’t always get what you want, or win him the damned fish.
Call me a wimp, but I chose the fish.
“How many balloons to win Nemo?” I asked.
“Fifteen,” he said. “In a row.”
I looked at Laura, who shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I couldn’t do better than Timmy.”
“Here.” I passed him nine dollars. “Let’s go.”
“Little boy’s gonna be awfully disappointed if you don’t get him a Nemo,” the carny said. “I can sell one to you for thirty.”
“I think not.”
“You got a husband around here? Maybe he ought to give it a whirl.”
Not only was he now pissing me off, but I decided that he couldn’t possibly have been surreptitiously watching me if he was that clueless. I pointed to the railing. “The darts, please.”
He sighed, low and deep, as if it pained him to see an innocent female like me embarrass myself in front of my little boy.
And, to be honest, with so much riding on my performance— winning a fish for Timmy and impressing the chauvinist carny—I was probably more nervous tossing that first dart than I’d ever been in combat with a demon.
Pop!
“Score one for the little lady,” the carny said, causing Laura to slap her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing.
That broke the ice, though, and I fired off the remaining fourteen darts in quick succession. I aimed my most feminine smile at the carny, then pointed to Nemo. To his credit, he didn’t say a word, just passed it to me and watched as I passed it to my little boy.
“Thank you, Mommy.”
“Any time, kiddo,” I said, pushing the stroller back into the throng.
“Show-off,” Laura said from beside me.
“Maybe,” I said. “But at least I’ve still got it.”
“So does your daughter,” Laura said. “Look.”
I followed the direction of her outstretched finger and found Allie across the makeshift walkway. David was by her side, and they were huddled close together, her father showing her how to properly hold the pellet gun that would take out the metal duck targets.
“She nailed two in a row,” Laura said. “Not sure what he thinks he’s telling her. Seems to me the kid’s got it down.”
As I watched, Allie planted her feet, aimed, and pulled the trigger three times in quick succession. Three duckies fell back, the pellets having hit them dead center.
I smiled, a wave of mommy pride cresting inside me.
“I don’t see Mindy,” Laura said.
“With friends, probably. I bet Allie peeled away from the group when she saw David.”
“Lucky for Allie. I’m sure she wanted to spend time alone with David. It can’t be easy keeping secrets from your best friend.”
“It’s not,” I said, speaking from experience. I’d tried keeping my secrets from Laura, but I hadn’t been too successful. In truth, I’m glad she found out. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d want to do what I did without Laura having my back, keeping me sane and helping me when my demon-hunting life infiltrated on the mommy part of the equation.
As we watched, Allie tilted her head back and laughed, then bounced up and down like a little girl, clearly delighted with something her father had said to her. I pressed my lips together and blinked, determined not to cry. What was there to cry about right then, anyway? My kid was happy, and surely that was a good thing.
“You know what I don’t get,” I said. “Why she wasn’t more upset about Stuart grounding her. If it hadn’t been for seeing David at this carnival, I think she would have been perfectly content to spend all of spring break hanging out in the house.” And that, frankly, wasn’t my daughter. Or at least, it hadn’t been until she’d learned about my secret life. With that knowledge under her belt, she’d morphed into a study bug. And while I liked the academic bent in theory, in practice it made me a little nervous. Allie was either becoming less like the daughter I knew . . . or she was hiding something from me. And I can’t say I was comfortable with either option.
“Mindy’s going to be at her dad’s most of this week,” Laura said. “Maybe Allie figured it was a good time to hang out and download her music. Maybe even study.”
“The only thing that kid studies lately is demons. But as far as I know, there’s no demonology course offered at the high school. If there is, I think she’ll get an A.”
“It’s just the newness of it,” Laura said, catching on to my worried undertone. “She wants to impress David. And you, too,” she added in a rush.
“I know,” I said, hoping she was right. “But it’s spring break. I figured she’d want to go to the beach. Do all those car washes with the cheerleaders,” I continued, as Laura looked at me with the oddest expression. “Beg to go to parties for the football players.”
Laura’s brow furrowed, but she didn’t say anything.
“What?” I demanded.
“Kate, didn’t Allie tell you? She quit cheerleading.”
“What?”
“Mindy told me a day or so ago. I assumed you knew.”
I hadn’t known, and the fact that Allie would do something so major without either telling me or consulting me knocked me more than a little off balance.
Fortunately, I didn’t have time to brood, as the subject of my angst soon appeared at my side, her face bright and happy and her father in tow.
“Did you see me? I got all the ducks. I totally kicked ducky butt!”
“Allie!” I said, but through laughter.
“Sorry, but I did. Didn’t I Da—David?”
“You were great,” he said, giving her shoulders a little squeeze.
“David,” I warned, aiming a glance at his arm around our daughter’s shoulder. It was one thing for him to hug Allie in private, but I’d already seen two of her teachers and at least fifteen kids from her class wander by. Let a rumor mill like high school get wind of inappropriate touching from a teacher, and we’d all be facing a lot of questions and accusations that we really didn’t want to deal with.
“Right,” David said, sliding his arm off and stepping a respectable distance away, both hands balanced on the head of his cane. “So where’s the zombie?”
“My car,” I said, lifting my eyebrow. “How’d you know?”
“You had the word half out before you remembered Mindy was in the room.”
I frowned. Hopefully Mindy wasn’t as clever at interpretation as David. “You ready?”
“I don’t have to come, do I?” Allie asked.
“You can do whatever you want,” I said. “Just don’t leave the carnival area.”
“Over there,” she said. “I saw Charlie over by the Tilt-A-Whirl.”
“Do you have money?”
“Ten bucks,” she said.
“Be good. Keep your phone on.”
She gave me a salute. “Yes ma’am. If anyone messes with me, I’ll get ’em in the gut with a round kick. ’Kay?”
I looked at David and rolled my eyes. “A bit overeager.”
“Just a bit,” he agreed, his voice tinged with laughter.
“You guys go on ahead,” Laura said. “I’ll watch Timmy.”
I aimed a grateful look in her direction, and from the answering incline of her head, I’m sure she understood the message. The toddler-free chance to talk with my first husband. I definitely owed her one.
“She’s thrilled to be spending time with you,” I said as we walked across the Pacifi
c Coast Highway.
“The feeling is mutual.” He turned to me. “Have you thought any more about a weekend?”
“Honestly, I haven’t.” I held up a hand before he could protest. “And I don’t want to even mention the possibility to Allie until I figure out what I’m going to say to Stuart.”
“Kate—”
“I’m not trying to be difficult. I promise. Your time with Allie is way up there on my priority list, but we agreed that I’m calling the shots here.”
“I think ‘agreed’ may be stretching it a bit.”
I glared at him.
He held up his hands. “At the very least, I thought you’d come up with a game plan or two.”
“I know,” I said, feeling guilty. “And I will. But it’s been kind of busy lately.”
He stopped on the sidewalk, his cane in one hand, and his free hand taking my elbow and pulling me to a halt beside him. “So what’s going on, Kate?”
I hesitated only a second, then told him the full story that, so far, he’d gotten only in cryptic bits and pieces. “Allie knows most of it, of course, since she was there. But she didn’t overhear the demon talking about the Sword of Caelum. And that’s not something I want her to know. Not yet, anyway. And I haven’t told her that we’re pretty sure Abaddon is behind the attacks on me.”
“You’re in danger, Kate. She has a right to know.”
“No.” I shook my head, adamant. “You weren’t there, night and day, when I told her the truth about me. She thought it was cool, but she was worried, too. Worried that hunting demons might kill me the same way it had killed her father.” I glanced up at him and saw him nod in understanding. “It’s one thing for her to know I’m out there, fighting the good fight. I can’t avoid that. But I don’t see any reason to announce to my fourteen-year-old that I’m a specific target for some bad-ass demon holding a twenty-year-old grudge.”
“Doesn’t sound like it’s a grudge. It sounds like Abaddon’s got another plan for invincibility and he thinks you and this sword could muck up the works.”
“I know,” I said. “Too bad I don’t have the sword. I’d put it to serious good use.” I looked him in the eye. “Right now, though, I don’t think Allie needs to know.”