Unbroken Vows

by Christine Pope

“Okay,” he agreed, wondering what on earth had happened to her in Greencastle. She didn’t seem to have been physically harmed in any way, but something about her seemed almost defeated, her usual ebullience dampened somehow.

  Worry stirred within him, but he made himself get busy with fetching mugs and bags of English Breakfast from the box in the cupboard, and soon enough the kettle was whistling. He waited a moment for it to stop boiling, then poured hot water into the two mugs he’d set out.

  “There you go,” he said, handing one of them to her. “Let’s go and sit down.”

  She gave him a tired-looking nod and followed him out to the living room, where they both took a seat on the couch. However, he noticed the way she positioned herself nearly a foot away from him, as if she wasn’t quite sure he would want her sitting any closer.

  Which was ridiculous. He wanted her as close as possible…wanted to pull her into his arms again and hold her and have her tell him what had gone so terribly wrong. But something in her expression told him such advances would be unwanted, despite the hug she’d allowed him when he first saw that she was safely back from her ordeal.

  For a moment, she didn’t say anything, only held on to her mug of tea with one hand and methodically dunked the teabag inside, as if focusing on that one small task was the most important thing in the world. Eventually, though, she appeared to judge the tea ready to drink, because she let go of the tag on the teabag and took a small sip of the hot liquid inside the mug.

  “What is it, Rosemary?” he asked, concern spurring him to ask the question even though he’d resolved to wait and let her speak first.

  “It’s….” That single syllable hung on the air for a moment, and she shook her head. “God, I don’t even know how to say this to you.”

  Concern morphed into outright fear. What had they done to her? If Caleb….

  No, he wouldn’t allow his mind to finish that sentence, to take the final step toward the horrible possibility his brain had begun to manufacture.

  But if he had, Will knew he would kill him. As God was his witness, he’d find a way to make sure that bastard stayed dead this time.

  “Just say it however is easiest for you,” he said gently. “It’s all right. I’m listening.”

  She sipped from her tea again and then set the mug down on a coaster, the movement very precise, as if it was vitally important to her that she make sure the mug was perfectly centered. “I — I went with Caleb to Greencastle.”

  “I know,” Will said, and she stared back at him, clearly startled by his casual acceptance of that statement. “Isabel had a vision of you,” he added by way of clarification, and Rosemary relaxed slightly. “So, we knew you were there and that you seemed to be safe, but none of us could figure out exactly what was going on.”

  “Okay.” She paused there and drew in a breath, fingers clenched on the knees of her jeans, which looked new and dark, as if they’d been purchased recently. “He had — he had something to tell me about my father.”

  “About John?” Will asked, a little surprised by that revelation. He’d gotten the impression that the demons couldn’t exactly tell what their angelic observer was up to, or even knew of his existence. “Is he all right?”

  “I don’t know.” Again, her fingers tightened on her knees, and she stared across the room, obviously doing her best not to meet his gaze. “About John, I mean. But the thing is…he’s not my father.”

  Will stared at her, at the delicate profile she presented to him, jaw clearly clenched. “He isn’t? But he said — that is, you told me he was your father.”

  “I know. But he wasn’t. He was…he was a demon pretending to be my father.” Rosemary stopped herself there and gave a small shake of her head, as if chiding herself for getting the story wrong. “I mean, he was a — a cambion, pretending to be the man I thought was my father. Except it turns out that cambion — Gerald Gates — is my real father.”

  This pronouncement was delivered in such a brittle tone that Will wouldn’t have been surprised if those words had somehow cracked and broken as they left her lips. For one agonizing moment, he could only gaze at her, searching the outline of her face for some hint that she was making a terrible joke. But of course, there was none. She seemed to be telling him the truth, or at least the truth as she saw it.

  “How is that possible?” he asked, and her shoulders lifted.

  “Cambions are shape-changers,” she said simply. “My mother had no idea it wasn’t my actual father.”

  The reality of what she’d said began to sink in, and a sort of numb horror began to take over. Will didn’t know Glynis McGuire well, but he knew enough to see what a lovely and gracious person she was, but tough and smart as well. To think that such a hideous trick had been played on her….

  Still, he forced his outrage aside as best he could. “How do you know the Lockwoods are even telling you the truth? They could have manufactured this whole story just as a…as a sort of psychological warfare.”

  Rosemary gave him a dreary little smile. “I wanted to think that, too. Except I met my father, and we went into Indianapolis to get a paternity test done at one of the big labs there. Priority rush, all that. The results came back as a more than ninety-nine-percent match.”

  “It could be a trick — ” Will began, and she shook her head.

  “I don’t think so. I mean, I know they’re capable of a lot, but I’m not sure even our Greencastle demons are powerful enough to meddle with lab results like that, especially since the courier handed me the letter directly. It’s not as if anyone except the lab personnel could have had access to it before I did. After all, we’re talking about a small group of part-demons, not some kind of vast underground network or something.”

  All this was related in a flat little voice, as if Rosemary was recounting events that had happened to someone else. While he could understand that manufactured detachment — it was a way of coping with a truth so terrible, her rational mind didn’t want to accept it — he also didn’t want her to force herself into acceptance of something that very likely wasn’t true.

  “I still think they could have meddled with the results,” he began, and she only smiled again.

  “You weren’t there, Will. I told you, I met him. I saw some of myself in his face. I know I look mostly like my mother, but there was enough to make their story more than plausible.”

  On the surface…possibly…and yet Will found he had to do what he could to make her see that just because something was plausible didn’t make it true. He said, “If this man could alter his appearance to look like your father, then what’s to have stopped him from making subtle changes to convince you that you’re his daughter?”

  Rosemary shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. It’s just…their story makes a lot more sense than trying to convince me that I’m half angel. So, let’s take the results of the paternity test at face value for now. What I need to know is…how does this change things between us?”

  In her face was a terrible fear. No matter what else, no matter who was telling the truth — if anyone — Will knew he needed to make sure she understood that he didn’t care who her father was.

  Even if he was the Devil himself.

  “It doesn’t change anything,” Will said, the words quiet but with a firmness he hoped she could hear and accept. “That was the truth when I thought your father was an angel, and it’s the truth now. Our parents don’t have to define us — our actions, and who we are deep down, are far more important. You didn’t want to stay in Greencastle when you saw the test results, did you?”

  “God, no,” Rosemary answered at once, her tone emphatic.

  He reached over and took her hand in his. Her fingers felt cold, but he could understand why. Still holding her hand, he said, “You see? If you thought you had any kind of a connection to the Greencastle demons, you would have wanted to stay. Or at least, you would have entertained the notion before rejecting it.”

  “That was never an option,” sh
e said. Now she shifted on the couch, moving a little nearer to him. In response, he let go of her hand — but only so he could drop his arm around her shoulders and pull her close. She leaned into his chest, and he released a breath. Thank God. He’d been worried that she would reject his touch, wouldn’t allow him to reestablish a physical connection, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

  “Because you belong here with your family. And with me…I hope.”

  For a moment, she didn’t speak. However, Will could sense her silence came from an attempt to gather her thoughts rather than a rejection of him.

  Then she said, “I want to be with you. This is all new, I know, but still….” The words faded away, and he could feel her let out a sigh of her own. “I don’t think I’m what anyone expects from a minister’s girlfriend. And that’s ignoring the whole half-demon father issue.”

  He’d noticed how she’d carefully said “girlfriend” rather than wife. Yes, it was probably far too soon to be thinking about things like that, and yet he knew he’d already fantasized about sharing that kind of a future with her. And if she was starting to worry about how people would regard her if she became a more permanent fixture in his life, then he guessed she’d begun to consider such a thing as well.

  “I don’t expect you to be anyone except yourself,” he said, then bent and placed a gentle kiss on the top of her head. “And neither will anyone else. I know you probably don’t have a lot of experience with churches and their congregations, but the people at All Saints are very open, very accepting. They won’t care that you’re not some prim, conservative type in a cardigan and sensible pumps.”

  That description made her chuckle, and Will was glad she’d relaxed enough to be able to laugh about things. “No, I’m not generally a cardigan kind of girl, even if I had to borrow one from Caleb’s mother.”

  So, that was where the sweater she was wearing had come from. He could tell it was something she wouldn’t have chosen for herself, even though the color looked good on her. “And you don’t need to be. Don’t place expectations on yourself, since I know no one else — at least, no one from my church — will.”

  Rosemary’s face was partly obscured by the fall of her thick, curly hair, but he could still see her expression, somber again. “And you really don’t care that my father could be a cambion?”

  “No…although I hope you don’t mind if I say that I’d prefer to avoid inviting him over for Thanksgiving dinner.”

  She laughed again, a real laugh this time, not the muted chuckle she’d given a few minutes earlier. “I’m pretty sure we can avoid that. And Christmas, too.”

  “Deal.” He held her for a moment longer, wanting her to know she was all he cared about, not who her father might or might not be, not what kind of blood might be blended with the human blood in her veins. In a way, he was a little surprised by how much he didn’t care. Rosemary was Rosemary, the woman he loved. If she had a little demon mixed in, well, they’d manage. And since he thought they should try to get past the subject, he asked, “Hungry?”

  “I guess I am, a little,” she replied, looking somewhat surprised that such a mundane need might surface after the shocks she’d just suffered. “I was so nervous before I went over to the Lockwood house that I haven’t eaten anything today.”

  “Then let me take you out for breakfast,” he said.

  She sent him a dubious look. “Are you sure that’s safe?”

  While he could understand her concern, he wanted to assure her that everything would be fine. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder, even though he also wondered why the demons had simply let her leave. If they thought she was one of them, wouldn’t they have tried a little harder to keep her in Greencastle permanently?

  So many questions, and so few answers. He pushed aside his own misgivings and said, “Of course, it is. We’ve seen how these demons operate. They don’t do anything in public, or at least, they actively work to avoid attracting attention. If I were going to take you out to a late breakfast in Old Town Pasadena, that would be about the last place where they’d try something, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so,” she said, still looking a bit skeptical. But then she squared her shoulders and added, “No, you’re right. I need to get past this, and breakfast in Old Town sounds great. Just give me a couple of minutes — I want to get out of this damn sweater.”

  “Take as long as you need,” he told her, and watched as she got up from the sofa and left the room. Her chin was held high, and he thought she was probably telling herself that breakfast in a public place surrounded by regular people was the best way to get past her ordeal with the Greencastle demons.

  He hoped she was right.

  Rosemary was glad that she and Will had stolen an hour or so to go to breakfast, because once they were done, he said, “You really need to call your mother and let her know you’re back. She’s been worried sick over this whole thing — everyone has.”

  “I know,” she replied. “It’s just…I don’t even know how to begin to tell her what happened.”

  “Tell her the truth,” he said. “Or at least, the truth as you know it so far. Anything else wouldn’t be fair.”

  He was right, of course, and yet she dreaded having to drop yet another terrible revelation on her mother. And this one was so much worse than the news that her dead husband wasn’t quite as dead as she thought. “Will you — will you come with me?” Maybe it was cowardly to ask such a thing of him, but Rosemary knew she’d feel better with Will at her side. Besides, he was a minister; he must have been used to getting involved in sticky family situations.

  “Of course,” he answered without hesitation.

  Warmth filled her, a rush of love for this man who’d come into her life and let her know that she wasn’t destined to be alone, someone who didn’t seem to get rattled by anything, no matter how crazy. She wasn’t sure she deserved someone like him, but she was going to do her best to make sure he never regretted his decision to be with her.

  She reached across the table and took his hand. “Thanks, Will. And I know we need to talk to Michael, but….”

  “Your mother comes first,” he said firmly, fingers tightening on hers. “She deserves to know what’s going on.”

  “Also, I have a feeling that Michael is going to give me the third degree,” Rosemary went on, deliberately lightening her tone, “and God knows how long that’s going to take.”

  “A while, probably,” Will returned with a grin.

  The waiter came by with their check, and she tried to grab it, to no avail.

  “Did you really think I was going to let you pay for breakfast?” Will asked. “After everything you’ve been through?”

  “It’s really not that big a deal — ”

  “And it’s not that big a check, so there’s no need to worry about it. Why don’t you try texting your mother, make sure she’s at home?”

  Since it was Saturday, there was only a fifty-fifty chance of that being the case. Rosemary couldn’t really keep track of her mother’s schedule; she knew Glynis had a horticultural group she met with at the Arboretum in Arcadia once a month, but which Saturday that meeting actually fell on was a complete mystery. Plus, Halloween was less than a week away, and so there was a chance she might have been pressed into service to assist with the final touches on Tyler’s costume. But no, probably not — since Rosemary was unavailable, presumably both Isabel and Celeste were working at the bookstore.

  “Sure,” she responded, and retrieved her phone while Will fished his wallet out of his pocket and pulled out his credit card.

  Mom, I’m back, Rosemary typed. Can Will and I come over in a bit?

  The reply was almost immediate, signaling that her mother was home — and apparently camped on the phone, considering her fast response time. Guilt over the worry she’d caused assailed Rosemary, even though she tried to tell herself that it wasn’t really her fault. Yes, she’d agreed to go with Caleb, but s
he’d had no idea that the demons were going to make her stay in Greencastle for two nights.

  You’re home? her mother replied. You’re safe?

  I’m fine. But I need to talk to you. Are you available?

  Yes. I’m home. No plans today. Come over when you can.

  Be there in about 20. Loves.

  Rosemary closed the wallet case for her phone and put it back in her purse just as Will was handing his credit card to their waiter. “She’s home,” she said. “We can go over there as soon as we’re done here.”

  He looked pleased that they wouldn’t have to wait. “Good.”

  Honestly, Rosemary didn’t know for sure how “good” any of this was, but she tried to tell herself that it was important for her mother to know what was going on. After that, they’d have to figure out what to tell Celeste and Isabel, but that conversation could wait a little longer. It would have to, since they wouldn’t even be done with work until after six.

  Once the bill was settled, they left Green Street, the restaurant where they’d been eating, and went out to get into Will’s car. “What is with this thing, anyway?” Rosemary asked. “I would have pegged you for a Prius or a Subaru. Something practical.”

  He gave her a pained look as he started up the Challenger. The big engine growled from under the hood, sounding similarly offended. “It’s a classic,” he pointed out.

  “A classic that probably gets about ten miles to the gallon.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Still.”

  “I’ll admit, it’s not the most eco-friendly car on the road,” Will said, maneuvering out of the parking lot so they could head north on Lake and get to the 210 Freeway. “It was actually my father’s car. He drove it in college and didn’t want to part with it when he got married and started a family, so it sort of lived under a tarp in the carport until I started tinkering with it in high school. Had to rebuild the engine, do a lot of work on the suspension. When I started college, he said I’d put so much work into it that I could have it. And ever since…I guess I just never had the heart to part with it, even though the mileage stinks.”