Binding the Shadows (Arcadia Bell) (18 page)

His nose wrinkled up. “Why would you be jealous?”

God, was I really allowing myself to be dragged into this? “Because she’s beautiful and—” And what? What was I going to say? That, hey, your father probably fucked her brains out God knows how many times over the years? He’d been in crazy in love with her, and—unlike Lon and I with our you’re-my-favorite-person code—the two of them probably professed their undying supermodel-photographer love, before everything went bad. They’d slept in the same bed, and maybe he even cooked dinner for her, like he did for me.

And, then, the big one: she gave birth to you. Because of that, Lon and Yvonne shared a bond that Lon and
I
didn’t have. How does a person compete with a couple’s history that would never be left in the past?

But I didn’t say any of that. I just said, “I’m jealous because you both loved her.”

“You don’t understand,” Jupe said. “She’s messed up, bad.” He tapped his temple. “Wrong in the head.”

“I know,” I said. “And I’m sorry.”

He shook his head and sighed. I looked across his skinny frame and caught Lon staring at me, concern tightening his brow.

I picked up Jupe’s hand and slid my palm against his, spreading out his fingers to line up with mine. “I just want you to be happy. I think your dad does, too. That’s all.”

“I am. It’s just . . . hard to explain,” he finally finished.

I nodded.

He threaded slender fingers through mine. “You’re staying home tonight, right?”

“Yes.” Oh, yes. I was. If I’d had any doubts about that before Yvonne walked in the restaurant, they were long gone. I might never let Lon out of my sight again.

Lon ran his palm over Jupe’s forehead, pushing back curls. “What do you say we go watch TV in the living room? That crack in your screen is driving me nuts.”

Jupe glanced at the old television set, where Jack the Pumpkin King was announcing his plans to usurp Sandy Claws. “You said that crack added character.”

“I lied.” Lon slapped his son’s leg and stood up. “Come on. If we hurry, we can watch something R-rated before Gramma comes back and stops us.”

“What about
Black Christmas
?” Jupe said with a big cheesy smile.

“Only if Cady says yes.”

Jupe turned his eager smile on me. Like I was going to say no to anything at this point. “Is this a horror movie?”

“It’s made by the same guy who made
A Christmas Story
. It’s great!”

Lon crossed his arms over his chest. “And . . .” he prodded.

“And it’s a slasher flick from 1974. Sorority house murders.” He waggled his brows.

“Go find it and meet us in the living room.”

“Woo-hoo!” Jupe sailed off the couch and exited the garage with Foxglove running alongside. For the moment, everything was temporarily patched up in his teenage mind. And I was okay with that. I wished like hell a movie could do the same for me.

“I hate to bring it up, but I still need to call Hajo,” I said to Lon as he helped me off the couch.

“Hajo,” he repeated, as if it were a dirty word. But I could tell by the look on his face that he was a little relieved to change the subject. Maybe he wasn’t in the mood to rehash Yvonne anymore; I damn sure wasn’t. “Go on and get it over with,” he said. “Maybe the boy can actually help us out.”

“He’s my age, you know. Not a boy.”

“Don’t remind me.” He slung his arm around my shoulders. “And if he won’t talk about it on the phone, try to arrange a meeting with him in the afternoon.”

A drug dealer and user, Hajo hated talking about anything remotely illegal on the phone. “Why afternoon?”

“Because Merrimoth’s funeral is tomorrow morning, and I should probably go.”

A cool, dark anger prickled my thoughts. “Why? Have you been talking to Dare?”

“Nope. Not a word,” he said. “I’m only going because it’s the right thing to do. You don’t have to come with me.”

Maybe not
right
, exactly, but paying respect to someone you knew is normal. But me? Paying respect to someone I had a hand in killing? Not so much. I thought about it as I left a message for Hajo and headed back into the house. Normal or not, I damn sure wasn’t going to let Lon go to the funeral alone. Just because I’d quit working for Dare didn’t mean I had to avoid every demon in the Hellfire Club. Nearly impossible in La Sirena, anyway. And it was part of Lon’s past, whether I liked it or not. Part of mine, too.

And I suppose, after pondering all this, it was only natural that I had nightmares that night.

At first I dreamed I was attending Merrimoth’s funeral, a rainy and gray graveside service in a crumbling cemetery. Most of the attendees had blue and green halos that glowed beneath the cover of their umbrellas. But when I looked around at the gravestones, I noticed sinister occult symbols chiseled into the rain-darkened granite instead of names.

I stepped to the front of the crowd and discovered that it wasn’t a preacher leading the service, but my father, dressed in black ritual robes.

The grave opened at my feet. They weren’t burying a body. They were hoisting up an old casket. And when they pried open the moldering lid, I stared down at my mother’s rotting skeleton.

Her arm moved. One bony finger traced an invisible sigil in the air. I shivered, feeling a current of strong, dark magick undulating in the air between us, and watched as her muscles and organs grew between her bones. Veins and arteries appeared, filling with blood. Her heart pumped. Her skin knit itself together, spreading pale and thin over her Phoenix-like body.

Blank eyes filled the dead sockets inside her skull. They stared up at me, looking like wobbly, slick eggs. And when her mouth opened to speak, I screamed and woke up in a cold sweat.

Most people would agree that funerals aren’t cheery occasions. But when we made it to David Merrimoth’s the next morning, it was the polar opposite of my dream: the atmosphere was more like an awards ceremony than a memorial service.

Cars packed the sunny parking lot of the largest church in La Sirena. Every important Earthbound in a hundred-mile vicinity had shown up, dressed to the nines. I smiled at them; they stared at my silver halo. Did any of these people realize I was the last person to see Merrimoth alive?

“You have nothing to feel guilty about, so cut that out,” Lon said in a low voice.

“I don’t feel guilty.”

“Could’ve fooled me. You didn’t kill Merrimoth. He did that himself.”

Dammit. Okay, maybe I did feel guilty, but it was so mixed up with a thousand other negative feelings—my creepy-ass dream about my mother, concern for Kar Yee, the stress of getting the bar fixed back up, the disappointment in losing Telly yesterday afternoon . . . the meeting I’d scheduled with Hajo later that night.

And Yvonne.

The Giovannis came back well after midnight from talking with Yvonne, and their pronouncement was that Yvonne was more lucid and humble than she’d been in years.

Good for her. Truly.

But you’ll have to excuse me if I wasn’t turning cartwheels and breaking out champagne.

Anyway, it just soured my already anxious mood. And how Lon’s empathic knack managed to hone in on “guilt over Merrimoth” inside my woebegone stew of emotional negativity was beyond me. I sighed dramatically.

Lon hit the button to set the alarm on the silver Audi. To be honest, I preferred his mud-spattered SUV with Jupe’s comics lining the floorboards. Or maybe it’s just that I hated the fact that every time I’d been a passenger inside the Audi, we were going to some event connected to the Hellfire Club.

“Chin up,” he said. “This won’t last long.”

One warm, strong hand wrapped around mine as he led me toward La Sirena All Souls, a sprawling Mission style stucco-and-cedar church surrounded by gently curving palm trees stretching above its terra cotta roof. My heels clicked against rough mosaic tiles that circled a star-shaped fountain in front of the entrance.

Lon wore a perfectly tailored black suit that revealed teasing outlines of hard muscle in his arms and thighs as he moved. I stole a glance up at him, all golden and chiseled, green eyes squinting into California sun, glinting honey hair that kissed the tops of his shoulders. He looked radiant and otherworldly, like a painting of some mythical demigod, crowned with his green and gold halo.

God, but he was a beautiful man. And he treated me like I was both a goddess and his equal. Every morning I woke up in his arms, like this morning—hallelujah!—I was grateful, because how lucky was I? He was a freaking
catch
.

And you know what? So was I. According to him, he saw something good in me the first time we’d met, but maybe I was just starting to realize it, too. It wasn’t that long ago I wrestled with insecurities about our age difference, but even though we liked to tease each other, our May-December scandal didn’t bother me.

Because now, as I glanced at a well-to-do woman in designer pumps and a haircut that probably cost more than my monthly car insurance payment, I thought, you know, why should I be intimidated? I mean, I looked pretty good. Owned a successful business. Had mad magical skills, as Jupe put it. And I was decent person. So why shouldn’t I have an awesome boyfriend with an awesome kid, not to mention a few friends who cared about me? And who the hell else did I know who’d been
half
as betrayed as I’d been by my own parents and managed to hold her head up and keep going? No one, that’s who.

And, dammit, even if I did bind David Merrimoth when he was jumping from his balcony, he was trying to kill us—
for no good reason
! Sure, I wish things hadn’t turned out like they did for him, but I did the best I could at the time.

Lon was right: I wasn’t a killer. Merrimoth’s death was not my fault. I was not turning into my crazy, bloodthirsty parents. I was just a girl trying to do the right thing in spite of very abnormal circumstances.

The hollows of Lon’s cheeks deepened when he smiled down at me. I tightened my hand around his and put all the bad stuff out of my mind.

We slowed our pace in front of the church. People mingled outside heavy wooden double-doors, chatting and smoking valrivia cigarettes. Lon shook a few hands and grunted at several Hellfire Club members, tilting his chin up in answer to people who waved from afar. The few brief conversations we had with other attendees all started out with “Such a shame about David” and “I just can’t believe he’s gone,” but quickly progressed to “Where are they serving lunch after the burial?” And these were Merrimoth’s peers.

The inside of the sanctuary was packed. We decided to forgo the pews and stand along the back wall. We weren’t the only ones. When a couple squeezed in next to us, Lon shifted me in front of him, pulling my back against his solid chest. I relaxed, grateful for the comfort his warm body provided. He ran his thumb down the side of my arm from my elbow to my wrist and up again, a slow, soothing stroke.

“You look nice,” he murmured in my ear, so low and close it tickled. I turned my head sideways, trapping his cheek with mine. He smelled really good, like clean laundry and soap . . . and like Lon—that same identifiable scent I caught yesterday when Telly was tearing the bridge down over us. I breathed him in, a small pleasure, as he whispered, “Wish we were dressed up for a restaurant instead of a funeral.”

“Me too,” I whispered back.

A few seconds passed, then he said, “Better yet, I wish we were alone.”

“Mmm?”

“Completely alone. No Jupe. No Mr. and Mrs. Holiday. No in-laws. What do you think?”

“Right now?” Funerals were turning out to be
way
better than I imagined.

“A vacation.”

“Oh?”

Sometimes communicating with Lon was like pulling teeth. But I’d learned if I stayed quiet, he’d eventually spit out what he was trying to say. So I didn’t answer. I just waited, watching people file into the crowded sanctuary.

After a long pause, he continued murmuring in my ear. “I got an offer for a photo shoot in the Alps. Thought maybe you’d like to come along and we could make a vacation out of it.”

“As in Europe?”

“I could choose Switzerland or France. I thought maybe you’d like to go to France.”

Hmm. My parents’ families were both originally from France (my mother grew up in Paris, and my father’s parents were from Marseille) and they used to speak French when they were alone. My mother had a heavy French accent up to the last day I’d seen her alive. I’d always been curious about France. I still had family there—distant cousins and whatnot—and I often wondered what they were like. But I’d never been out of the states.

Lon raised a finger and shifted a lock of hair away from my ear, then continued to speak in a low, quiet voice. “A small village in the Alps. Just the two of us. I was thinking we could rent a villa. A nice one. Indoor pool. Big fireplace. Drink wine. Go skiing.”

“Skiing?” I said incredulously. I doubted I could roller skate, much less ski.

Then he admitted, “Mostly I was just thinking about getting naked.”

My throat made a strangled sound, something between a laugh and a gasp. A little thrill zinged through me. “A sex vacation?” I whispered.