The Devil You Know (8 page)

I was left at something of a loss as to what to do with myself. Obviously, I couldn’t leave Andy alone and undefended, but I wasn’t going to learn much hanging around the apartment babysitting him. In the light of early morning—after getting a few hours of much-needed sleep—it was clear to me that ignoring my problems wasn’t going to make them go away. My mental vacation was well and truly over, and it was time to start getting some answers.

The only thing I could think of to do for Andy was to call Adam to come keep an eye on him. Andy really hated the idea, and who could blame him? But we both knew I couldn’t just sit around the apartment and hope everything went away.

I think my face was beet red the entire time I was in the apartment with Adam—which, considering my inability to block out the dream images Lugh had implanted in my mind, and my extreme discomfort with those images, was all of about five minutes. He gave me a curious look, but otherwise refrained from questioning me.

I had three major issues I could deal with—or
not
deal with, as the mood hit me. There was the question of my parentage. There was the question of my repressed memory. And, because I needed another nightmare in my life, there was Der Jäger.

What I wanted to do more than anything was hunt down and exorcize Der Jäger. Unfortunately, I hadn’t the faintest idea how to do it. I didn’t know what body he was in. And even if I did, the last thing I wanted was to draw his attention when he had no idea that I was hosting Lugh.

That left the unpalatable choices of digging into my mom’s past or digging into my own. Since I knew what the first step would be to learning about my mom, and since I hadn’t a clue how to find out what happened to me—if Lugh was right and it was something other than what I’d been told—I supposed I was stuck.

I showed up at my parents’ house just after lunchtime, having spent the entire morning procrastinating, finding one excuse after another to avoid doing what I knew I had to. My inner chickenshit prayed that she wouldn’t be home so I could put this off some more, but she came to the door before I had a chance to get my hopes up.

Her eyes widened in surprise to see me, her plucked-to-within-an-inch-of-their-life eyebrows arching hugely. I had to stifle a laugh, though admittedly I couldn’t remember the last time I’d come here when it wasn’t the mandatory Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner.

No doubt about it, there were parts of me that would have loved to disown my parents completely. Those holiday dinners were about as much fun as a yeast infection, and we’d probably all have a better time if I didn’t show up. But like it or not, this was the only family I had, and I did reluctantly love them—the man who wasn’t really my father, and my mother the Stepford wife.

“Are you going to invite me in, or are you going to keep catching flies?” I asked when my mom just stood there.

Her jaw snapped shut, and her lips pursed into her usual disapproving frown. “You could try giving me a hint of respect every once in a while.”

I refrained from reminding her that respect had to be earned. I again had to fight against my urge to flee, but now I was getting annoyed at myself, too. All the terrible things that had happened to me recently, and I was turning into a total wuss over a
conversation
? I mentally recited the “sticks and stones” adage and forced myself to soldier on.

“I need to talk to you about something,” I said. “I’ll try my best to be civil, and I hope you’ll do the same, but we both know we can’t talk to each other without a little sniping, so let’s just agree to ignore it.”

She sighed dramatically, but opened the door and let me in.

My mother is the last of a dying breed, the honest-to-God fifties housewife. She’d married my dad right out of college, and hadn’t worked a paying job her entire life. Her life revolved around cooking, cleaning, and being beautiful. Her children came in a distant fourth, though I knew she loved us in her own way. There wasn’t an aspect of her life I didn’t rebel against, which might explain why I was a single, work-obsessed, fiercely independent tomboy.

The house I grew up in is beautiful, always freshly cleaned, and decorated with impeccable taste. And it has the warm, homey atmosphere of a walk-in freezer. It was impossible to step inside and not become instantly conscious of my ungainliness as I joined my mother in the formal living room. The house has a den, too, but it’s not any more relaxed than the living room. I found myself demurely crossing my legs at the ankles when I sat. Of course, as soon as I noticed I practically slapped myself on the forehead and forced myself to relax.

“Shall I make us some tea?” my mother asked.

I was proud of myself for not rolling my eyes. “Thanks, but I’ll skip it.” I squirmed a bit as I tried to figure out how to get started. I mean, really, how do you ask your mom about a rape she’d never even hinted she’d suffered? Not that I’d have expected Mrs. Perfection to discuss such a distasteful topic with
anyone,
much less her daughter.

Prim and proper as a headmistress, she sat on the edge of a chair, her back arrow-straight. When she did the ladylike ankle-cross, she stayed that way. “What is it we need to talk about?” she asked. “Might I hope that you’ve persuaded Andrew to come home?”

You can hope all you want,
I thought but didn’t say. See, I am capable of editing myself for content every once in a while. “He’s going to stay with me for the time being. You and Dad didn’t exactly make him feel welcome when you were in such a rush to have him host again.”

My mother’s spine lost a little of its starch, and she looked away. Of course, the push to have Andy host again wasn’t the reason he was staying with me, but if I could shovel a heap of guilt onto her shoulders, I was more than happy to do so.

“We made a mistake,” she admitted. That might have been a first. “We were so excited to have him back—”

“So excited to have him back you tried to get rid of him immediately?” I interrupted, my voice going up an octave or two.

She sat up even straighter. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible. “We just wanted things to go back to normal. And I guess we didn’t want to know that he’d been unhappy to host a Higher Power. It was what he’d always wanted, and we’d always wanted for him. We thought he was living his dream…”

“
Your
dream, you mean.” My dad wasn’t attractive or well-built enough to meet the Society’s standards for a demon host, and when my mom had been young enough to volunteer, the Society had still been too sexist to consider women worthy hosts. Three cheers for progress!

Mom winced at the accusation, but didn’t contradict me.

It occurred to me that I knew where I’d inherited my talent for denial. The epiphany tasted sour in my mouth, and I made what I felt sure was an ugly face. “Remind me not to nominate you for Mother of the Year.”

Her cheeks reddened—whether from anger, or guilt, or a combination of the two, I couldn’t tell. “If the only reason you’ve come is to talk about my inadequacies as a mother, then I have nothing more to say to you.”

If I were there to talk about her inadequacies, she’d die of old age before I was finished, but I refrained from voicing that opinion. “I’m here to ask you about my real father.”

She jumped like she’d just stuck her finger in an outlet, and even through her perfect makeup, I could see the color drain from her face. “What are you talking about?” she gasped.

“You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. It’s written all over your face.”

Her face went from white to red, but, not surprisingly, she continued to stonewall. “Believe what you want, but you’ve known your real father from the day you were born.”

Usually, my mom isn’t much of a liar, which is why she’s so bad at it. She sounded more confident now, but I caught on to the lie she was telling herself. “All right, then. Tell me about my
biological
father.”

Realizing her tactics weren’t working, she went for slamming the metaphorical door in my face. “I think it’s time you leave.”

I sat back on the couch and crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t think so. I think you owe me an explanation.”

Her gaze frosted over. “I don’t owe you anything! Certainly I have no reason to feed this ridiculous fantasy of yours.”

Maybe if I shoved some more information in her face, she’d realize how pointless it was to deny the truth. “Twenty-eight years ago, you filed a rape report with the police. You never pursued it, and as far as I can tell the case died before it took its first breath, but you did a paternity test on me. And Dad is not my biological father.” He wasn’t much of a
real
father, either, but that was beside the point.

Her eyes glistened like she was on the verge of tears, and lines of strain were etched into her face. I almost felt sorry for her, though I carried too much anger to let the pity take charge.

“Why did you never tell me?” I asked, and was pleasantly surprised when my voice sounded gentle, rather than accusatory.

She sighed and shook her head. “What good would it have done? It was better for all of us if we just…pretended it never happened.”

Yes, pretending was one of my mom’s greatest skills. “Do you think it was better for the other women he might have raped after you?” I couldn’t keep the sharp edge out of my voice, though intellectually, I knew how hard a rape charge can be for the victim, especially that long ago.

My mom’s lips pressed together in a thin, hard line. “We…I did what was best for my own family. I don’t expect you to agree. It’s not like you understand the meaning of the word ‘caution.’”

“But you
did
file a charge, at least initially.”

“I didn’t have a choice at the time. The police found me after…” Her hands fisted in her lap, perfect nails digging into her palms.

I forced myself to gentle my voice. “Tell me what happened.”

I didn’t really expect her to answer, so I was startled when she started talking.

“I used to do volunteer work at The Healing Circle when Andrew was young. One evening when I was leaving, a man dressed in scrubs accosted me in the parking deck. He forced me at gunpoint to drive him out into the suburbs. Then he…” She swallowed hard and wrung her hands. “He left me tied up in the backseat when he was finished, and that was how the police eventually found me. The Healing Circle said they’d had a John Doe they’d been examining in the psych ward, and that was probably the man who attacked me. But they never found him, never figured out who he was.”

Yeah, and apparently Mom never made a peep after that initial report. I had a strong suspicion she knew more about this John Doe than she was telling. But there was another question I burned to ask first.

“Why on earth did you and Dad keep me under the circumstances? It’s not like you ever loved me.”

Damn it, I hadn’t meant to say that. The last thing I wanted was to admit to my parents that they had the power to hurt me. But perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing after all, because my mom’s face softened, and some of the angry tension faded from her posture.

“Of course we love you.
I
love you. You’re my daughter, and no amount of fighting will change that.” She offered me a smile, but I didn’t smile back.

“Tell me why you kept me,” I insisted, glomming on to the question that troubled me the most. “Even if you do love me in your own way, you have to sort of hate me, too. I’m a constant reminder of what happened to you. How could you look at me every day after that?”

I could see the denial on her lips. But she must have seen how pointless it was, because she gave up the fight. “It wasn’t always easy,” she admitted. “But I’m your mother, and that’s what mothers do. They love their children unconditionally.”

“You could have put me up for adoption. It seems like the sensible thing to do. Why did you keep me?” I hoped that the third time I asked would be the charm, but I should have known better.

“I’m just not the kind of mother who can give up her child. What my attacker did to me isn’t your fault, and neither I nor your father—your
real
father, the one who raised you—has ever held it against you.”

That was bullshit, but I’d never get her to admit it, so I let it drop. “Tell me the truth this time. Who
was
my father? Because I don’t believe for a second that you don’t know.”

And with that, it seemed that our special mother/daughter chat had come to an end. “I’ve said as much as I’m going to say. Your father and I kept you for your own good, and that’s all you need to know.”

“Like hell it is!”

The softness that I’d seen was completely gone now. “Well it’s all I’m going to tell you.”

I looked daggers at her. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what else you know about my biological father.”

She raised one shoulder in a dainty shrug. “Fine, then. Make yourself comfortable.”

And then she got up and left the room as if I weren’t even there.

I almost gave up. Then I realized that there was more than one way to get information out of her. If she was going to ignore me, then I had free range of the house—including my dad’s study, where I swear he keeps every piece of paper that has ever crossed his path filed, indexed, and cross-referenced.

When my mom went to the kitchen to start dinner—which, seeing as she was Suzie Homemaker, was three o’clock in the afternoon—I didn’t follow her.

Being anal as hell, my dad had always kept his study door locked. When Andy and I were kids, we’d briefly made a game of trying to breach the fortress of the Forbidden Zone. That had ended when I was six and Andy was nine. We’d finally found a way to get in, Andy having appropriated a copy of Dad’s key. While Dad was at work, we let ourselves in. There wasn’t a thing in there that was of any interest to children our age, but it was such an exciting, forbidden thrill to be inside that we’d stayed far too long. Long enough for Dad to come home and catch us.

Now I don’t want you to get the impression that my dad is abusive. Really, he’s not. But he definitely believes in the old “spare the rod, spoil the child” philosophy. At age nine, Andy had thought himself far too old for a spanking. He found out the hard way he was wrong. It was an impressive thrashing that discouraged him from sitting down for a couple of days, but it wasn’t the pain that had made the strongest impression on him—it was the humiliation of it all, being spanked at that age, and in front of me.

Even at six years old, I was something of a stoic. I watched Andy struggle not to cry, and eventually lose that struggle. My own eyes welled with sympathy as I waited my turn, but when Dad took me over his knee, I was determined to be brave.

In the end, I’d broken just as my brother had, but I’m sure my dad was surprised at how hard he had to work for it. Andy was cowed by the whole experience, his spark of childish mischief extinguished. You can’t say the same about me.

Since there were no children in the house anymore, I was gambling my dad no longer locked the door. Even so, I held my breath as I tried the knob, letting out a sigh of relief when it turned in my hand. I slipped inside and closed the door behind me. Hopefully, if my mom started to wonder where I was and came to check on me, she’d assume I’d gone home like a sensible girl.

I smiled faintly as I looked around the room, realizing I still felt a thrill at doing the forbidden.

There’s hardly a bare patch of wall anywhere in my dad’s study. Two walls are taken up by floor-to-ceiling bookcases, the shelves crammed to bursting with books, grouped by subject matter, then alphabetized by author name, because this is Anal-Retentive Man we’re talking about. The other two walls are dominated by his massive mahogany desk, and more file cabinets than you’d see in a lawyer’s record room. These, too, were grouped by subject matter, with convenient labels on the outside so that prying eyes like mine could find the most likely candidates for interesting reading.

His personal files were on the bottom, right next to the door. I wasn’t entirely surprised to discover there was one entire drawer devoted to each member of our immediate family.

For some reason, my palms went clammy when I imagined pulling my own file open, so I started with Andy’s. Inside, there were folders for every aspect of my brother’s life. His birth announcement. A yellowed piece of paper with tiny baby footprints on it. Even the ID bracelets he and my mother had worn in the hospital. Then there was a file of all his report cards starting with kindergarten. Art projects that in a normal home would have been tacked up on the refrigerator but in ours had gone straight from Andy’s hand to storage. The homemade Christmas cards he’d given our parents every year until he turned twenty-one and was lost beneath Raphael’s personality.

I stopped myself from looking any further, feeling like a voyeur. My throat felt strangely tight as I realized that for all of Dad’s deficiencies, for all his coldness, he must love Andy somewhere deep down. Otherwise, why would he keep all this stuff?

I slid Andy’s drawer closed, then wiped my sweaty palms on my pants legs before taking a deep breath and opening my own.

I wasn’t surprised to discover my drawer was very different from Andy’s. That didn’t stop the hurt that stabbed through me when I saw that whereas Andy’s file was so full of memorabilia you could barely pull anything out, mine was positively sparse. No birth records. No cutesy, childish art. No report cards, though I could hardly blame him for that. I don’t think there’s a report card in existence that didn’t mention how much of a pain in the ass I was, even though I was smart enough to get good grades without having to work too hard.

The first thing of interest I found was the record of the paternity test, which was conducted when I was about a month old. I saw in black and white that Dad and I were not related. I swallowed hard and shoved the folder back in the drawer.

My files, being much duller than Andy’s, were organized by year rather than subject matter. I skipped forward to the year of my possibly mysterious hospitalization. I laid the file open on my lap and started flip-ping through it, looking more carefully than I had at anything previously. My hand—and my heart—came to a stop when I found a letter with the Spirit Society’s logo emblazoned at the top. It was from Bradley Cooper, although he hadn’t risen to his exalted rank of Regional Director yet and was merely a Team Leader.

Dear Mr. Kingsley,

We are sorry to hear about the difficulties you and your wife are experiencing with the child. We understand your frustration, and thank you again for the heroic efforts you have made for the Cause.

Our suggestion is that you have the child speak with one of our psychiatrists. He will examine her and make a determination as to the likelihood that she can be turned at this late age. It is possible that the resistance you are experiencing is nothing more than the rebellion of a normal teenager. If so, we would ask that you continue on as you have at least for the next couple of years until we can make a determination as to whether she will join with us of her own free will.

If our doctor determines that she is, in fact, intractable, then other, more desperate measures may be needed. We will discuss those measures when and if they become necessary so that we may come to a mutually acceptable arrangement.

Once again, I thank you on the behalf of the entire Society for your loyalty to our Cause, and for service above and beyond the call of duty. If you are amenable to our suggestion, please give me a call and we will set up an appointment.

My stomach flopped like a fish out of water. I could only assume this “teenage rebellion” of which Cooper spoke was my insistence that I would never, ever host a demon.

My parents had begun the recruitment effort on my twelfth birthday—the same age that they’d started working on Andy. But while Andy had immediately succumbed to the allure of becoming an all-powerful hero, I had balked. And more than a year of dragging me to Society meetings and shoving Society propaganda in my face had only made me dig my heels in deeper.

I remembered that trip to the psychiatrist. It had been the first of many. With trembling fingers, I turned to the next page, and saw the psychiatrist’s report. I was still reading through it, simultaneously fascinated and appalled to read this stranger’s impressions of me, most of which seemed surprisingly accurate, when the study door opened and my dad walked in.

For a long, breathless moment, we were both too shocked to move or speak. Inwardly, I cursed myself for getting so absorbed in my reading that I hadn’t heard him coming. If I’d heard him, maybe I could have stuffed some of the more interesting pages into my pockets for later perusal.

Dad snapped out of it first, stepping fully into the room and slamming the door behind him. I winced at the sound, then reminded myself that I was an adult, not a six-year-old girl.

With what I hoped was cool aplomb, I closed the folder and tucked it back into the drawer, then stood. I was a full head taller than my dad, and we looked nothing alike. When I’d been a kid, people had always commented to my mom that I was her spitting image in everything but height. No one had ever said I looked like my dad, but I’d always assumed that was merely a gender thing. Now I realized the true reason. Even so, as I stood there and watched him trying to absorb the indignity of my intrusion upon his
sanctum sanctorum
, he still
felt
like my father to me. The little girl in my core wanted to apologize, to finally see a hint of approval on his face, but it wasn’t going to happen.

“You have some nerve,” he said when he recovered enough to talk. His voice was highly controlled, but I could hear the fury in it anyway.

I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back against the cabinets behind me, pretending to be a hell of a lot more relaxed than I was. “Nice to see you, too, Pops,” I said.

I think I saw a wisp of steam rise from his ears. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, and the look on his face said he was seriously considering taking me over his knee again.

I managed to swallow the laugh the mental image conjured and just shook my head at him. “You know the meaning as well as I do, assuming you spoke to Mom before you came in here. And if you’re planning to go the denial route, don’t bother. You conveniently kept the results of the paternity test filed for me to find.”

His face turned red with anger, but it seemed he wasn’t in the mood for a good knock-down, drag-out. “Get out” was all he said.

“What else is in those files?” I asked, not about to budge. “I saw Cooper’s letter about the ‘desperate measures’ the Society would take if you decided the brainwashing wasn’t working. And I can’t help connecting those desperate measures to my stay at The Healing Circle that very same year.”

“I said get out!”

“I heard you. But like I told Mom, I’m not leaving until I get the answers I came for. So you’re either going to answer my questions, or I’ll help myself to the contents of my file.” Or both, actually. It wasn’t like I’d trust anything he told me under the circumstances. Still, I wouldn’t mind getting the
Cliffs Notes
before I got started on the heavy reading.

When he didn’t start talking, I began to bend down for the drawer. He grabbed my arm and yanked me back.

“You’re leaving now,” he informed me, and tried to pull me toward the door.

“The hell I am.” I spread my legs and flexed my knees to give myself more leverage, and he couldn’t budge me.

Anger still flashed in his eyes, but the expression on his face turned to stern paternal disapproval. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be. You have no right to paw through my personal records.”

“They’re
my
personal records, from what I could see. And yes, I definitely do have a right to see them. Now let go of my arm before I show you how difficult I’m capable of being.”

His grip tightened to painful proportions. “There’s nothing in there you need to see. Let the past stay in the past, where it belongs.”

Was that a hint of desperation I saw in his eyes? I didn’t much care. With a twist and a hard yank, I freed my arm from his grip and once more bent for the drawer.

“Morgan, stop it!” he said in his most commanding voice, but I ignored him.

My fingers had just closed on the folder when my dad grabbed my arm again. I whirled on him with a snarl.

And turned my head right into the fist that was coming for my face.

I doubt I was out very long, but apparently it was just long enough for my dad—possibly with my mom’s help—to drag my unconscious body out onto the front stoop. I was just struggling back up through the blackness when the door slammed loudly, followed by the sound of locks clicking shut.

A couple of passersby in the street gave me curious looks, but this being the city, they kept on walking. A sweet little old lady stopped to ask if I was all right and offered to dial 911, but I managed a smile and declined her offer. Behind the closed door, I could hear my parents’ voices raised in argument, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Just as well, no doubt.

Feeling disconnected with reality, I fingered the bruise that was forming on my jaw as I walked. Who knew my dad packed such a punch? Other than the occasional spanking when Andy and I were growing up, I’d never seen my dad hit anyone before. Never even seen any sign that he might be
capable
of hitting someone, even when he was madder than hell. My feelings might have been hurt if I hadn’t remembered the sound of desperation in his voice. He’d tried everything he could think of to keep me from delving into those files, until he’d realized he wasn’t getting me out of that room without resorting to violence.

And that told me that there was more in those files he wanted to hide.
Much
more, if he was that desperate to keep me from looking.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think I was getting in that front door again. Not unless I
broke
in.

I wasn’t opposed to bending the law here and there. But for all my wild, rebellious childhood and adolescence, I’d never broken into a house before. I hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about it.

Of course, I did have an officer of the law I could call on for help. And I had no doubt Adam could get in the house if he wanted to. Hell, I could file a charge of assault against my father, and Adam could “investigate” it.