The problem was, once you mistrusted a certain person’s motives, it was all too easy to believe that everything they did and said was a lie. And if she was going to take that stance regarding the Greencastle demons, then she shouldn’t have come here at all. All right, they hadn’t given her any reason to trust them, but she also realized that if she didn’t take the blood test, if she demanded to be returned to Pasadena immediately, then she’d spend the rest of her life wondering if this might have been the one time Daniel Lockwood had been telling the truth.
She glanced at the clock that hung on the wall across the room. Ten minutes until eight — or rather, ten minutes ’til six back in Pasadena, since they were on Central time here in Indiana. Will would definitely be home by now, and it would be growing dark in California. There was only so long he would wait for her to return from her supposed “walk” before he became alarmed by her absence.
“How long does a test take?” she asked.
“A few days,” Daniel said. “At least, that’s what I’ve read.” His gaze strayed to his son; even though their coloring was quite different, their features were similar enough that Caleb’s parentage would never have been in doubt. “Obviously, I’ve never had any reason to have one performed.”
It seemed the logical thing to do. Provide a sample — Rosemary vaguely remembered reading about cheek swabs in a book or an article somewhere — then go home and wait for the results.
And hope they hadn’t been tampered with.
And also figure out how in the world to explain all of this to Will. She didn’t even want to try imagining that scene. When he’d thought her father was an angel, he’d said it didn’t matter that she wasn’t completely human, but would he feel the same way if he discovered she was part demon?
“It would put your mind at ease,” Gerald Gates said, and anger flared within her.
“Oh, I kind of doubt that,” she snapped. “Why did you tell me all those lies at the hotel? Why not tell me the truth then?”
Gerald didn’t seem perturbed by the flash of anger, but merely looked at her with a level gaze and said, “Because that wouldn’t have suited our purposes.”
“Which was to get me to come here and meet Daniel,” she returned. “Although, if you’d already met me, then you would have known how powerful I supposedly was. Couldn’t you have just told him?”
“No,” Daniel broke in, looking similarly unaffected by her show of emotion. “I had to meet you for myself. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have needed to involve Gerald at all, and could simply have relied on Caleb’s report. I needed to make sure our powers had bred true in you.”
“And have they?” Rosemary asked, even though she wasn’t entirely sure whether she wanted to hear the answer.
“Oh, yes,” he replied. “You are very strong…which is why you should be here with us.”
Here with…. She let the thought trail off, mostly because allowing it to take hold in her mind seemed truly horrifying. “I am not ‘here with you,’” she retorted. “I came here because I wanted to meet my father — if that’s even what you are,” she added with narrowed eyes as she glanced over at Gerald.
“That’s easy enough to prove, isn’t it?” he said. “Just a cheek swab. You wouldn’t even have to go anywhere.”
“Exactly,” Daniel put in. He held up a hand, palm facing toward the ceiling, and on it appeared an honest-to-God home paternity test in its box, with a happy-looking man and young boy on the packaging. “We can do it right now and mail it to the lab tomorrow morning.”
“And I’m just supposed to trust the results?” Rosemary asked. Her voice shook a little, and she hated herself for that outer betrayal of the turmoil she felt inside.
The cambion leader shrugged. “To be fair, this sort of test isn’t legally admissible…but it is very reliable. However, you’re also welcome to go to a lab in Indianapolis and have it administered there. That sort of thing is very difficult to tamper with.”
“I can’t go to Indianapolis,” she protested. “I need to go home. I’m sure Will is already starting to freak out about where I am.”
The mention of Will’s name made Daniel and Gerald exchange an unreadable look. However, even though Rosemary couldn’t tell anything from their expressions, she doubted that weighted glance had meant anything good.
“Maybe you should put him off for a while,” Caleb suggested, and she stared down at him in consternation.
“I don’t want to ‘put him off.’”
“Just for tonight,” Gerald said, as if that was a perfectly acceptable scenario. “You can go back to the DePauw Inn and stay the night there. In the morning, we’ll go to Indianapolis for the test.”
“Or maybe I can just go home to California and meet you in Indianapolis in the morning,” she countered, not liking the sound of that plan at all. “Since I have this super-duper demonic power of teleportation and everything, it’s not as though I’d be holding up the process.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Daniel replied. Now his blue eyes looked colder than ever, and another shiver worked its way down Rosemary’s spine. “Your boyfriend” — he uttered those two syllables in a voice dripping with contempt — “would be sure to ask too many questions about where you were going and what you were doing.”
Although Rosemary could feel herself bristling at Daniel’s tone, she took a mental breath and told herself she needed to choose her battles. Really, it shouldn’t matter at all to her what a couple of half-demons thought of Will Gordon. She knew his worth, and that was enough. “Not necessarily,” she said evenly. “It’s not as though he camps out at the house all day to see what I’m up to. He has a job and his own responsibilities, ones that keep him busy.”
Once again, Daniel and Gerald looked at each other. During all of this, Caleb had remained where he was on the couch, eyes flickering slightly as he watched the back and forth. From what Rosemary could tell, he seemed to be secretly amused by the way she’d tried to stand up to his father.
“No,” Daniel said at last. “I really think it’s better if you stay here.”
So that was how he wanted to play it. Fine. Had he forgotten that she had powers of her own, ones she could command to send her back to Will’s house in California or anywhere else she wanted to go?
“Think what you want,” she replied. “But I’m going.”
She visualized the living room at Will’s place, the mismatched antiques and the gleaming wood floor, the faint scent of vanilla from the candle they liked to burn while they were watching TV after dinner. Just that image, coupled with her desire to return there, should have been enough to send her traveling in that strangely magical way demons used to move themselves from place to place.
Except that nothing happened.
Rosemary blinked and concentrated again, wondering if she’d somehow messed up because she wasn’t focusing enough. However, her efforts were interrupted by a chuckle from Daniel.
“No point in wasting your energy,” he told her. “You’re gifted, Rosemary, but your powers aren’t strong enough to overcome mine and Gerald’s when we work together.”
Was it possible they were able to stop her from leaving? Since she was still standing in the family room at Daniel’s house, she had to assume he was telling her the truth.
Her fingers clenched in the fabric of the long sequined-adorned skirt she wore. “So, you’re going to make me your prisoner?”
On the couch, Caleb shifted, looking almost uncomfortable. “You never said anything about forcing her to stay here, Dad.”
“Because you didn’t ask,” Daniel replied, his expression almost bland. Clearly, he wasn’t too worried about what Caleb might or might not think about the current situation.
“I’m sorry, Rosemary,” Gerald said. He actually did look somewhat contrite, although that might have been only an act. “But it’s better that you stay here until you have the proof you need regarding your identity.”
Better for the cam
bions, maybe, but not for her. Panic began to awaken inside Rosemary, sending flutters of unease through her stomach, but she told herself she needed to hold it together. The last thing she wanted was for either of the half-demons confronting her to know how frightened she was.
Instead, she raised her chin and glared at the two men. “Will is going to know right away that something is wrong,” she said.
“And?” Daniel countered, still looking supremely unconcerned. “What exactly do you think he can do? He’s only a mortal man. Even if he suspects that you might have somehow ended up back in Greencastle, he’d have to drop everything to take a flight here. And even if he did such a thing, so what? Without you, he can’t accomplish very much, can he?”
As much as she wanted to vigorously defend Will’s abilities, inwardly, she had to admit that Daniel Lockwood had a point. Will was only a man. A strong man, a man of integrity and great personal courage, but he didn’t possess the sort of supernatural abilities that would allow him to mount an assault against a group of part-demons. Daniel Lockwood and Gerald Gates were strong enough on their own; she really didn’t want to think what would happen if they called in the rest of their cambion brethren to mount a defense.
“All right,” she said, not bothering to answer Daniel’s question. “But I need to give him some sort of explanation for my absence, or he’s going to assume the worst…especially since I already left him a note that said I was going for a walk.”
Once again, Caleb shifted his position on the couch. “Well, actually, I kind of made that note disappear.”
“You what?” she demanded, her tone sharp. So much for keeping it together.
A shrug. “I figured it was probably safer that way. Better to leave things open-ended.”
Son of a…. Rosemary pulled in a breath and told herself to let it go. Getting in an argument with Caleb Lockwood wouldn’t salvage the situation…more like the exact opposite. “Fine. Then it’s even more important that I text him and give him some kind of plausible story.”
“That’s a good idea,” Gerald said. “What are you going to tell him?”
Because she had a two-year-old nephew, Rosemary didn’t have to think very hard to come up with a narrative that wouldn’t invite too many questions. “I’ll tell him that my sister Celeste and her son Tyler are both sick, and I volunteered to go over to her place and help out. That would explain why I need to be gone overnight, but it also would keep Will away — his job requires him to work with the public, and he wouldn’t want to go someplace where he was consciously exposing himself to some nasty germs.”
Daniel appeared almost impressed, as if he’d halfway expected her to come up with something half-assed, the kind of story it would be easy for Will to poke holes into. “Good. Then go ahead and send the text. But if you try to tell him what’s really going on, your message will get scrambled faster than you can say ‘AT&T.’”
She didn’t bother to point out that she was with Verizon. “No worries,” she said. “I don’t want to drag Will into any of this.”
As the others watched, she reached into her purse and got out her phone. Thank God for texts; she didn’t know for sure whether she would have been able to maintain her composure during an actual phone call. But it was easier than she’d thought to compose the brief message, to let Will know that Celeste’s husband Kevin was out of town and Celeste had her hands full with Tyler throwing up every hour on the hour, and so she, Rosemary, had gone over to help out.
I’m not sure when I’ll be back home, she concluded the message. I’ll try to let you know as soon as I know. Love you.
“Let me see it,” Daniel commanded, and although her first instinct was to tell him to go to hell — even if that threat didn’t have as much meaning for a demon as it did a regular human — she reminded herself she needed to choose her battles. Holding back a sigh, she handed the phone over to Daniel so he could see what she’d written. There might have been the slightest flicker in his expression as he read that casual “Love you,” but he didn’t comment, only gave the phone back to her and said, “Go ahead and send it.”
This could all be an enormous mistake, but Rosemary knew she didn’t have much of a choice. As long as she kept cooperating, Daniel would most likely think she was on his side. And while she loved Will and would never want him to be anything other than who he was, he simply wasn’t equipped for this sort of fight.
So she touched her finger to her phone’s screen to send the message, then dropped it back in her purse. “There,” she said. “I know he’ll reply, but at least now he has a good reason for why I’m not home.”
“Excellent,” Daniel said. He glanced over at his son. “Caleb, why don’t you take Rosemary upstairs and show her the guest room? After she’s settled, we can order some food in. Probably better not to go out,” he added, a twinkle of amusement in his pale blue eyes.
No, it most likely wouldn’t be all that smart to be seen in public with her, considering her probable origins. What she’d seen of Greencastle so far seemed to indicate that the people there were fairly tight-knit, and there might have been questions as to who she was and why she was being entertained by two of the town leaders.
Maybe that was why Daniel had ignored Gerald’s suggestion about having her stay at the hotel. Rosemary wondered about her supposed father’s family — she knew that all the cambions were married and had one son each, so presumably she had a half-brother out there somewhere. If the blood test came back as a match, would she get to meet that half-brother? And how in the world would Gerald begin to explain her to his wife?
“Sure,” Caleb said, and got up from the couch. Now his expression was almost neutral, as if he didn’t want his father to guess what his own feelings about Rosemary’s presence here in the house might be. “This way,” he added, gesturing for her to follow him.
While she didn’t much look forward to being alone with Caleb, she figured it would still be better than staying downstairs with Daniel and Gerald. Her father. If he really was her father. Whatever he was, she guessed that the two men would want to keep watch over her until she went to sleep, just to make sure she didn’t try to make a break for it once Daniel was the only cambion in the house.
Then again, she supposed Caleb could also help to stand guard…if he was strong enough. As with so many other aspects of the part-demon world, Rosemary really had no idea how all this worked.
She followed him up the stairs to the second story. Because she’d been up there before in order to steal the hard drive from the dresser in the master bedroom where it had been hidden, the surroundings weren’t entirely unfamiliar to her. This time, though, her destination appeared to be a room at the end of one hallway, meaning that it overlooked the quiet residential street where the house was located. It was quite large for a guest room, with a bay window and a window seat in addition to a queen bed and several dressers and side tables. Then again, she supposed that in a house this large, it wasn’t that big a deal to have a guest room that was bigger than her living room.
“Here you go,” Caleb said, rather unnecessarily.
She didn’t bother to thank him. For what, showing her to what effectively was a jail cell? A very nice one, sure, but still, it wasn’t as if she could come and go of her own free will. Finding her voice, she replied, “I don’t have any overnight stuff with me.”
“You won’t need it,” he told her. “There’s a bathroom through that door with everything you might need, including a new toothbrush.”
“Clothes?” she inquired, knowing she sounded annoyed at whoever had the forethought to make sure the guest bathroom here was fully stocked.
“I’ll steal a few things from my mother’s closet. She has so much stuff, she’ll never notice.”
Rosemary’s encounter with Caleb’s mother had been brief, but she thought the older woman was probably around her size, although several inches taller. Anyway, her clothes should fit, except….
“And what am I supposed to do
about clean underwear?” she asked, trying hard not to blush.
He grinned, the familiar glint back in his dark eyes. In the next instant, a package of cotton bikini panties appeared on the embroidered duvet that covered the bed. “I figured you were a size small.”
No point in asking how he’d managed that particular feat. Demons could make things appear and disappear at will, although she had to hope he’d left behind some sort of payment wherever he’d gotten the panties. She didn’t much like the thought of wearing stolen underwear, although she had a feeling she had far more pressing things to worry about.
“Thanks,” she said. The silence that followed that one brief word felt horribly awkward, and she found herself adding, “Did you know about Gerald?”
A nod. However, Caleb didn’t seem inclined to pursue that topic of conversation, because he said, “We should go back downstairs.”
Having to sit down to dinner with Daniel and Caleb and her alleged father seemed like the easiest way to kill her appetite, but Rosemary knew she had to eat sometime. Still, she lingered by the door, wondering if she could somehow delay the inevitable. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
He didn’t ask her about what. A pause as he glanced toward the open doorway, as if he expected his father to be standing outside and listening to their conversation. “It wasn’t my place to tell you,” Caleb said at last. “But….” Another obvious hesitation before he went on, “We can talk later. Okay?”
Rosemary reflected that she had come to a very odd place in her existence when the promise of a conversation with Caleb Lockwood felt strangely reassuring. “Okay,” she said.
A nod, and then he left the room, giving her no choice but to follow him. As she went, she wondered how Will was going to react to the text she’d sent…and if he’d start asking questions she couldn’t possibly answer.
Chapter 4
Glynis McGuire stood in Will’s living room, eyes closed as she appeared to reach out with her special senses to detect what might have happened there earlier that afternoon. He stood quietly, not wanting to interfere with what she was doing…whatever exactly that was. When she’d arrived a few minutes earlier, she’d told him that she needed to absorb some of the energy of the place, and that, with any luck, it would convey to her some information on where Rosemary was and what she was doing.
Unbroken Vows Page 4