Page of Swords (The Demon's Apprentice Book 2) (7 page)

“When your father took you from me, I was always afraid I’d never see you again, at first. Then, I started to think that you wouldn’t want to see me again, that he would teach you to hate your weird, controlling mother.” Her voice wavered as she spoke, verging on tears.

“Mom, no, I never . . .” my throat closed around the words before I could finish them.

“When you came back to me, I was so happy, because I finally had my baby boy back. I had my sweet Chance back, and I thought I’d get to see you grow up to be a man.”

Her words hit me like hammers, each one a punch in the gut.

“Please, Mom . . . I didn’t mean to! Please, don’t be mad?” I pleaded.

I hadn’t felt so desperate since I’d broken Mom’s best china. I had begged and pleaded with her not to send me away, not to be mad. Back then, it had just been a stupid plate, and everything had been okay. But now . . . no amount of begging was going to change things. Somehow, I was certain, things were NOT going to be okay. How could they?

“But . . . these aren’t the marks of a boy. You grew up while I wasn’t looking, while I wasn’t there. You didn’t have the childhood I wanted to give you, son, and I’m sorry that never happened,” she said unsteadily. “My little boy is gone . . .” her voice broke completely then, and she let out another strangled sob.

“I didn’t mean to come back broken, Mom. It just happened.” My own voice broke, and I lost the fight against my tears. They streamed down my face as I finally looked up at my mom.

Her hands came up to my damp cheeks, and I saw how sad her eyes were. I had done this to her, and I hated myself for it. Then her expression changed, and I saw something flash across her face that I would have hated in anyone else: pity.

“Oh, Chance! This isn’t your fault, sweetie. I’m not mad at you. Chance, I love you, and I’m never going to stop.”

“Promise?” was all I could manage.

“With all my heart.” Something inside me crumbled.

I wasn’t sure how long I bawled my freaking eyes out, and I wasn’t up to trying to guess. There was just a point where I was aware of being on my knees in the living room, with my mom’s arms tight around me, and the sound of her own fading sobs in my ears. I was holding on to her like a drowning man would a life preserver, and I loosened my arms when I realized how much smaller she seemed than I remembered.

One of her hands came up to stroke my hair, and her voice sounded in my ear.

“Chance, honey, I’m sorry I let this happen to you,” she whispered hoarsely.

“No, Mom. It’s not your fault either.”

“So, are we going to blame this all on your father?”

“Yeah. Pretty much.” We pulled back a little and I gave her a weak smile. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Mom. Please, I need you to forgive me for that.”

“Son, there’s nothing to . . . but you don’t see it that way, do you?”

I shook my head.

“Of course I forgive you. I never told you what I knew, either. Can you forgive me for that?”

“Yeah, no problem, Mom. But why didn’t you tell me? I mean, I was a warlock. It wouldn’t have been a big deal to me.”

“I didn’t know that sweetie. The world I had to step into and . . . learn to accept when I went to the Conclave was so different from what I knew, I was pretty sure I’d lost my mind. I tried once to tell a friend about it, someone I thought would understand it. She was a Wiccan high priestess, and she knew more about mysticism than anyone I knew. But when I told her about the Underground, and the Conclave, she thought that I was telling her about a past life. I tried to tell her this was all here and now, that it was very real, and do you know what she told me, honey? That past life visions can
seem
very real when they happen, but that we need to remember that nothing in them can hurt us, and to wrap ourselves in white light, and so on. Can you imagine what I thought my apparently normal teenage son was going to say?”

“If you ever have one, I'll ask him. But, how did you know, Mom? About tonight?”

“Your girlfriend came over to tell me. You never told me you were dating a cheerleader, sweetie.”

“I'm not, Mom. Did she tell you that?”

“She didn't have to. I could see it in her eyes.”

“We're not dating.”

“She obviously doesn't think that. She was practically in hysterics when she knocked on the door.”

“It's . . . complicated, Mom.” I stood up and offered Mom a hand.

“It always is when you're fifteen. Are you going to be all right for a little while? I need to go pick up your sister from Wanda's.” My nod seemed to reassure her a little. “There are leftovers in the refrigerator.”

Fifteen minutes later, Mom was pulling out of the driveway, and I had a plain black t-shirt on. The clock over the sink showed the fat little chef’s big hand on the eleven, and his short hand on the six. Outside the window, the neighbor’s white garage was turning grey in the predawn glow, and the birds were warming up for their morning performance. I was supposed to be getting up now, not rummaging around for a replacement for dinner.

Mom’s fridge yielded a decent substitute for dinner and breakfast in the form of cold
moussaka,
a blend of potatoes, onions, and beef mixed into a casserole. It was better hot from the oven, but it reheated well enough in the microwave that I called it good.

I was halfway through my first bowl when I heard Shade’s bike pull up in the back. I looked out the window in time to see her stop on the narrow grass strip between the edge of Mom’s chain link fence and the asphalt alleyway. She flipped her visor up with one hand, but she didn’t straighten from the handlebars. Even from across the yard, I could see the doubt on her face, even though all I could see was her eyes and her slightly upturned nose. It didn’t hurt that she looked incredible in black leather. But seeing the uncertainty in her eyes kicked a switch on in my head, and I was out the back door before I knew it.

“Am I welcome in the home of my Pack's advisor,
gothi
?” she asked, her tone formal. The brittle edge to her voice felt like a knife in my stomach. I answered by opening the gate for her and stepping back.

She got off the bike and pulled her helmet off and unzipped her jacket. I never got tired of watching all of that red hair come tumbling free. For a moment, I stumbled for some way to say just how welcome the sight of her was, but there wasn’t enough poetry in the world to do it right.

“More than welcome,” was the best I could come up with. She stepped into the yard and gave me a long look.

“I thought I was going to lose you tonight,” she told me as her hand came up to touch my face. “And the only thing I could think of was that I’d been dancing with someone else tonight and hoping you'd be jealous and stop ignoring me. I didn’t want that to be the last thing between us.”

“I know I’ve been a prick lately, too . . . I’m sorry.” We stood there for a moment. Neither of us knew what to say, or what to do. Things weren’t quite right between us, but we didn’t know how to fix that, either. All I knew was that I wanted to.

“I can't stay long, Chance. I have to get home before my parents wake up. I just needed to see you again. Make sure you were okay. There's something I need to tell you, too. It's complicated. The Branson pack sent a beta to court me. He wants to claim me as his mate, Chance, and I don't want to let him.”

“Then tell him no!” I said a little too loudly.

She smiled and touched my cheek. “It's not that easy. He needs a rival, or he has undisputed claim on me. Even if . . . I've already chosen my mate.”

“Shade, you're not some piece of meat; he can’t just pee on your leg and say you belong to him,” I argued. “Can't one of the Pack say they're dating you or something?”

“I don’t like any of the rest of the Pack enough to date them. And none of them are willing to back talk me. I need a guy who doesn’t always agree with me. Someone I can lean on sometimes. So, you can see why I need my gothi.” Her eyes closed as she finished. She tilted her head a little and opened her eyes slowly to give me one of her enigmatic looks.

If I had a thought running through my head before that, my hormones chased it down and killed it. When she leaned in and kissed me, I was completely useless for anything but kissing her back.

“Uh, yeah,” I managed as she pulled back and left the memory of her warm lips against mine.

She'd asked me to do something, I was sure, but I couldn't remember anything before she kissed me. All I could think about was how the lines of her breasts pressed against her grey t-shirt while she put her helmet on, and the way her pants stretched across her bottom when she got on her bike. Then I was staring into her big gray eyes as she pulled her riding gloves on.

She gave me a slow wink before she flipped her visor down and started the bike.

At some point, I must have wandered into the house, because the next thing I was aware of was Mom's voice.

“Honey, your feet are damp,” Mom said to me, and I left memories of kissing Shade to come back to the real world.

Now that she mentioned it, my feet were a little chilly. Darker cloth showed where my jeans were wet, and my socks were criss-crossed with tan and green blades of grass from where I'd walked across the back yard. My eyes went to the window, and I could see the silvery sheen of dew marred by my path to the gate and back. I didn't really remember walking back in or sitting down at the table, but there I was.

“Yeah,” I said again, my entire vocabulary suddenly reduced to one word. “Shade came by to make sure everything was okay.”

“That explains the stupid grin,” Dee quipped. I shot her a look, but she'd developed an immunity to my glares months ago.

“Honey, you should get some sleep,” Mom said as she took my plate to the sink. “You've been up all night.”

“He was out past curfew, Mom!” Dee protested. “Why isn't he in trouble?”

“Oh, honey, your brother . . .” she stopped, and her eyes went to me. She wanted to spare Dee the worst of it, but lying to her wasn't going to cut it.

“I used to do some bad things, Dee,” I told her.

“Like the bad things I used to dream about?” Dee asked.

“What bad things, sweetie?” Mom asked.

“My bad dreams, Mom,” Dee said, like that explained everything.

“What bad dreams?” I asked, taking up the mantle of cluelessness from Mom.

“Your sister used to have nightmares about you being hurt. I thought . . . hoped . . . they were just night terrors, or bad dreams. But now—”

“They were real?” Dee asked, looking scared.

“Not any more,” Mom crouched beside her and put her hands on her shoulders.

“But the man in the dreams . . . he used to say he'd hurt you if Chance didn't do what he said,” Dee cried. “Chance always did, but he still—”

“I kicked his butt, Dee,” I said. Me, cocky? Nah!

The look she turned on me, though, took me aback. “Really?” she said. That one word sounded so fragile, so trusting that I felt my chest go tight.

“Really. Big time.” I'd never been proud of my violent streak before. But Dee's smile made me more proud of kicking Dulka's demon ass. I'd beaten him months ago, but I hadn't felt . . .
victorious
until just now. There was nothing in the world I wouldn't do to earn that look from my little sister again. I was my sister's hero right then, and I never wanted that to stop being true.

“Chance, get some sleep, we'll deal with the rest of this tonight.”

I really wanted to lie down and close my eyes, but I didn't have the time to waste. The Council wanted me to find that stupid sword, but all that was on my mind suddenly was Dani's missing girlfriend. Julian had seen her with me, and if he'd really done something with Crystal, he might go looking to tie up the loose end.

“I'm fine, Mom. I have to—” I started to say. The rest of it was swallowed up in a jaw-cracking yawn.

Mom favored me with a raised eyebrow. “You need your rest, son.”

“Just don't let me sleep too long, okay?” I said as I stumbled toward the stairs.

I heard her promise to get me up before too long. Then I was in my room, and the spot on the floor beside my bed looked pretty damn inviting. I pulled my sheets and pillow off the bed and curled up on the floor. A couple of hours of sleep would be nice. I'd just close my eyes for a little bit and . . .

Chapter 7 Saturday Afternoon (Five days left)

~ Magick serves life. It is not to be used to kill. ~

Third Law of Magick

My fist connected with someone as I came awake. My attacker stumbled back as I came up swinging. My next blow, a blind backhand, missed completely. I took a second to look around wildly. Their back was to me as they caught their balance against the wall. Someone was yelling. It only took a couple of steps for me to cross the room and grab their shoulder. I drew back to hit them and spun them to face me.

“Chance!” Lucas cried out.

My fist froze in place behind my ear as I stared at him wide-eyed and panting. The yelling had stopped, and I realized that it had been my voice I was hearing. By reflex, I looked around to make sure no one was behind me.

Wanda stood framed in my doorway, round-eyed and panicked-looking in a full purple skirt and matching bodice and blouse with billowing sleeves. No one else was in the room, but I heard the pounding of feet on the stairs, and Mom calling my name.

“I'm fine, Mom!” I answered. “I'm fine.”

Lucas was going to have a beauty of a shiner, though. Already, his left eye was swollen and red. Blood trickled from his nose and threatened to drip down onto his Miskatonic U t-shirt.

“Dude, I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't think about—”

I cut him off with a shake of my head. “I'm working on that. Sorry about the eye, man.”

He gave me a crooked grin and dismissed the apology with a wave of his hand. Wanda was beside us then, tissue in hand, and Mom was a split second behind her.

“Chance, what happened?”

“I, uh, woke him up,” Lucas said sheepishly.

Mom looked at me, then at the floor beside the bed. Her eyebrows came together in a curious frown.

“No, Mom, I didn't fall out of bed. I . . . I can't sleep on one. And . . . I have . . . I'm jumpy when I wake up sometimes.”

“Bad dreams?” Wanda asked.

“There's another kind?” My watch beeped, and I glanced at it to see that it was almost seven o'clock at night. “Mom, you said you wouldn't let me sleep too long!”

“Your idea of too long and mine are a little different, young man.” She was even more resistant to my dirty looks than Dee was, but that didn't stop me from giving her one.

“Dude, you gotta fill us in on last night! Shade already told us what she knows, but she wasn't there.” Lucas was fairly bouncing, and even Wanda was getting her smile back at the prospect of good gossip.

“In a minute, man. I smell like a dead yak. Get out so I can take a shower!”

Mom shooed them out for me, but she gave me a look as she closed the door that told me we were going to be having a long talk later.

Twenty minutes and a hot shower later, I was downstairs in clean black jeans and my black wolf t-shirt. Everyone was in the living room, waiting for me. Lucas stood up when I came in and held my backpack out. The metal plates along the back were scratched up pretty bad, but it looked like they had protected the rest of the pack.

“So, what's the plan?” Wanda asked.

“We have to find Dani. Julian saw her with me, so I have to make sure he hasn't gotten to her.”

“You think he'd try something?” Wanda's voice was tight with concern.

“I don't want to take the chance that he won't. Especially if he thinks we can connect Crystal's disappearance with him.”

“Someone’s missing?” Mom demanded. “What does this have to do with the sword?”

“Yeah,” I said. Lucas helped with the details as I laid out what had happened before we went to Dr. C's place.

“If you’re trying to find her, how are you going to find the sword, honey?” My mom, always the practical one. I took a breath to explain, and saw a flash of white. Like an afterimage from looking into a bright light, I saw the image from the alley again, the bright line of white with Steve's outline behind it, and the sound of Dani's voice in my ears again. I shook my head to clear it and staggered against the wall.

“Dude, are you okay?” Lucas asked.

Mom was out of her chair and holding me up before I knew what was happening.

“Great, now I'm hallucinating. I'm okay, but I think I picked up something from Dani. I keep seeing something from the alley. I think it might have to do with the wyrd.”

“You said she's an empath. D'you think you picked up some of that?” Wanda asked me.

“Only one way to find out,” I said. “But first, I have to find her.”

“I think I can help with that,” Lucas offered with a sly smile.

Half an hour later, we were pulling up behind Mitternacht's Books, in the older section of downtown, on Walnut Street. Mom hadn't been too keen on me even leaving the house, but she
really
didn't like the idea of leaving Dani out in the cold with a warlock knowing she was on to him. She'd settled for feeding us before she let us out the door, and reminding me that I had other obligations to meet.

We slipped into the storeroom through the loading door off the alley. I'd always loved the way Lucas' grandfather's shop smelled, especially the storeroom. The scent of old paper and leather was the first thing that hit my nose, then the subtle scents of incense and herbs. The old man sold a lot more than just books. Lucas led us between the book-laden wood shelves to the small office near the store room entrance. He slipped into the little mesh cage and behind the tiny wooden desk.

“I thought your grandfather's office was that big open section up on the second floor, with the desk and filing cabinets,” I said.

“It is,” Lucas explained. He pulled a battered spiral notebook out of a drawer and started leafing through it. “He does all the books up there, takes care of the money and stuff, and orders books. This is the shipping and receiving office. I take care of all the inventory when it actually gets here, and I ship out all the mail orders and newsletters from here. And . . . here she is. I thought I recognized her. She ordered the new book in the Vampire Sisterhood series last month. Danielle Scott, address on Park Lane. That's almost rich territory.” He scribbled it down in his notepad before he slid the notebook back into its drawer.

“So, this is your office,” I observed. He got up and pulled the door closed behind him.

“Yeah. One smart remark, and you're walking.” I help up my hands in mock surrender. He gave me a benign smile and headed back toward the door.

“Smart move,” Wanda whispered as she went past me.

“Yeah, I'm just made of brilliant,” I shot back.

I slipped out into the store itself to pick up a few things, then I followed across the bare concrete floor, back out into the alley behind the shop.

“So, I get the part about the trial, and the ordeal thing you told us about,” Wanda picked up the thread of our conversation from the ride over as we pulled out into the street. She twisted in the seat so she could face me. “What I don't get is how you're supposed to find the sword. I mean, is that the wyrd thing you have on you? Or is that just what the Council wants you to do?”

“I'm not sure about any of it, really. If it is the wyrd, I was already supposed to find it anyway. If it's just what the Council wants me to do, I may be seriously screwed. But I can't leave this alone. Julian is a warlock, I can feel it. But he doesn't have a Mark on him like I used to. I don't get that.”

“Maybe Dr. C can help,” Lucas offered.

I gave him a growl in response.

Even thinking about Dr. C just then got my blood up. I'd told him I didn't want my mom involved, and I had things under control. Why had he insisted on sending Shade to tell Mom? What really got me confused was that I didn't want Mom to be mad at him for not telling her, no matter how mad I was at him for actually making sure she knew.

There was no way I could describe the two-story house we pulled up in front of as anything other than cute. Pale blue vinyl siding and white trim made the front look like someone had yanked a piece of summer sky down and laid it on the front of a house. The grass was neatly mowed, and somehow they had managed to keep the brown even, so that it avoided patches of dead grass. It had been raked to within an inch of its life, and it looked like leaves didn't dare fall on that lawn.

We crawled out of the
Falcon
and took a moment to stare at it and acclimate ourselves to the growing sense of middle class normality that the place just seemed to ooze.

“Is it just me, or are you guys hearing the theme to 'Leave It To Beaver,' too?” Lucas asked.

That got him a blank look from Wanda and me, especially me.

He shook his head and muttered, “Cretins.”

“Betcha anything her Mom's baking cookies,” Wanda offered.

“Hey, my mom bakes!” I protested.

“Chance, your mom bakes stuff like honey cakes for the Equinox, and
marikli
bread. We're talking brownies and chocolate chip cookies, here.” Even as she said it, Wanda smiled.

“Oh. Normal people,” I mused. “Heard of them.” I started up the walk, but Wanda got in front of me.

“It's a girl's house, so maybe I should do the talking? Besides, you um . . . you kinda scare normal people, Chance.”

I looked down at myself. The black t-shirt with a tribal wolf's head, black jeans and laced-up combat boots weren't too scary. Even my scuffed up brown bomber jacket seemed pretty average.

“It's your eyes,” she explained as I looked back up at her. She trotted up the walk as I looked back at Lucas.

“She's right, you have this look like you're half way to pissed-off all the time. And you have your mom's eyes, dude. Like you see stuff about people that they don't want you to know.” Which was pretty accurate, actually. The shoulder length black hair and my slightly olive skin probably didn't help, either.

Wanda gave us a wave from the door, and we headed up the walk.

Inside, the house was just as normal as the outside. Beige carpet and white walls with family photographs showing three smiling people waited for us. A tan, smiling blond woman sat next to an equally tan dark haired man in most of the pictures, with Dani looking increasingly less and less pleased to be in the pictures as her image got older. Off to my right, I saw a dining room that looked like it didn’t get regular use. The table gleamed with an almost mirror-bright finish, with a fake flower centerpiece, and four chairs that sat on carpet with no wear under them.

The woman from the photos was in front of us, talking on a cell phone and giving us the eye. Between the three of us, I could see her wondering if we were going to loot the house or something.

Wanda led us up a set of carpeted stairs to a door with a single decoration, a white wooden sign that said “Danielle's Room” in black block letters that hung dead center at eye level. She tapped softly on the door, and called Dani's name. A moment later, the door cracked open, and Dani peeked out at us for a second before she opened it further and gestured at us to come in.

A Green Day poster looked down at us from her ceiling, and the members of Fallout Boy stared out from over her headboard. A bag from Hot Topic dangled from the corner of her bed. Her bed sat in one corner of the room, a four-poster with white lattice work all around it except for a space in the middle, and rumpled black sheets. Lucas perched himself on the corner of her desk on the left side of her bed.

“How did you find me?” Dani demanded.

Lucas raised his hand. “You come into the shop all the time.”

“What do you want?” Her tone was cold and guarded.

“Look, you came to me for help, remember?” I said. “I'm just holding up my end of things.”

“Look, I made a mistake, coming to you. It was . . . it was just a misunderstanding, okay? She’ll come around in time.”

Wanda gave me a skeptical look and tilted her head at Dani. I shrugged and plowed ahead.

“Look, if you've found her, cool, but there's more going on here. Julian really is a warlock. He's probably going to come after you next, and I don't want to leave you out in the cold. Besides, there's another reason I needed to talk to you.”

As I explained, her eyes narrowed, and I could see her expression getting more and more guarded.

“Of course. The first one's free. How much is this going to cost me?”

“I can make a protection amulet that'll shield you from most spells he can cast from a distance with what I have on hand. You don't have to buy anything special. The other part, though, I need your help with. Ever since last night, I've been—”

As if on cue, the world was replaced with the image of a small wood building, surrounded by trees and brush. There was a bright flash, and I staggered back against the wall with the after image of a sword burned into the back of my eyes.

As the room swam back into view, I saw the bulky figure of the guy from last night framed against a door to a bathroom.

“Don't accept anything from him!” the guy was saying. “There's always a price with black magic.”

“Well, hey there, Slugger,” Lucas said with a vicious smile. “Back for round two?”

“Dani, don't listen to him,” he went on. “He's just trying to pull you in.”