The heat stopped, "You're safe now Ari, no one can hurt you. Sleep tonight and we will start on solving your little problem tomorrow."
Ari gulped as Lydia walked from the room as eerily as she had entered, "Thank you Lydia."
"Your hair will start to come back in tomorrow, every morning when you wake it will grow more and more. A few weeks and it should look like hers again love."
Ari sat in the chair confused and exhausted, how did Lydia know what her mother looked like?
Chapter Three- Little Bald Boy Blue?
She woke feeling rested in a way she had never before, she had slept without dreaming as far as she could tell. The room in the daylight was more beautiful than she could have imagined. The walls were a pale blue, the furniture was dark walnut and the bedding and curtains were white eyelet lace. The dark hardwood floor glistened in the morning light.
A woman's voice broke the silence, "Good morning mister."
Ari looked around but no one was in the room.
"I have laid out a change of clothes for you for this morning. It's in the washroom."
Ari closed her eyes squeezing tight and then opened her eyes again to the beautiful room, still empty.
"Who are you?" She asked into the air.
"Why I be Annabelle, Mrs. Crane's head staff. Your washroom has fresh water for you to clean and ready yourself, do you need assistance? I can send up Frederick."
"I can't see you." Ari felt a cool breeze fill the room,
"Why I be right here mister."
Ari squinted seeing a young girl in a white dress, she was definitely a ghost. She was completely see through.
Ari screamed clutching her bedding to her naked body.
The girl screamed matching Ari in volume and length of her scream. Ari finished still watching the girl and screamed again. The girl again copied her.
The bedroom door opened as Aimee came flying into the room, "Annabelle stop screaming."
Annabelle stuttered, "Well-well-well he be screaming at me for no god reason and I be just tryin to help tis all."
Aimee laughed, "Ari this is Annabelle. She died during, well a witch hunt a while ago. She was Lydia's maid at the time. She still works here instead of moving on despite all of Lydia's attempts at helping her on."
Ari tried to get her breath under control as she nodded frowning, "Nice to meet you." She didn’t know what else to say, the house was growing more and more unbelievable.
"Annabelle this is Ari, she is a girl firstly, she is also our new family member."
Ari cocked her head at the word family, Aimee seemed to notice nothing in the word family but Ari hadn’t heard it except as a prayer on the lips of orphans.
"I be sorry Miss Ari, your head was all that was poking out and it seemed to be a boys head what with no hair being there. You gots all that stuff in ya face I couldn’t see ya as a girl." She curtsied, "I will change the clothes to a dress."
Ari put a hand out of the covers trying not to be completely offended, "No thanks, dude clothes are probably better at this point."
She gave a frightened look at Aimee who nodded and smiled, "Yeah she tried the whole ancient frilly dress crap on me too."
Annabelle vanished, not with a poof but just gone in an instant.
"Did you sleep well?"
Ari nodded, "Creepy well, it was weird I never dreamt. I always dream."
Aimee smiled, "No dreams at Lydia's is a good thing. She probably helped you out with that."
"What is she?"
Aimee shrugged, "A witch. What are you?"
Ari shook her head, "I don’t know." She tilted her head, "What are you?"
Aimee pressed her lips together, "Death."
Ari frowned, "Huh?"
"Death Ari, I am death. Grim reaper, death deity, black angel of doom, death."
"How?"
Aimee raised an eyebrow, "Never trust a demon Ari, no matter what." She walked out of the room leaving Ari confused.
"Lydia I know you don’t want to hear it but she's trouble, I know who she is."
Ari stopped on the stairs panicked by the voice she heard, it was a mans' voice talking about her. She had gone through it before, foster homes and attempts at jobs, she'd heard it many different ways. She sighed quietly knowing it was the end. At least she'd gotten a good meal and a night of sleep out of it. She turned to go back up the stairs to put on as many clothes as she could find. She would need the warmth with it being October.
"No Ronald you don’t know who she is, you know what she is. Who she is hasn’t even been decided yet by her. She needs time and space from the Roses until she decides it."
Lydia's' words rolled around in her stunned head for a second, she had defended her. She sat on the stairs listening.
"Ari just come down here and meet Mr. Halter before he leaves." She sat frozen but a smile crept along her face. Of course Lydia would have known she was there. She stood and walked down the stairs fighting the urge to attack the man before she even met him.
Lydia sat in an oversized old burgundy chair. Across the room from her sat a man with steel grey hair and a weathered tanned face. He reminded her of a very old version of Cookie making her miss home for a second.
"Ronald this is Ari, Ari this is Mr. Halter, he's involved in our lives from time to time."
Ari frowned at the man who stood and looked at her hand. She smiled and offered it to him. He made no move. She laughed and sat on the chaise lounge next to Lydia's' chair.
"You're very young." He commented at her distastefully.
She knew what she looked like, she looked like a mess. Her arms had tattoos and her face had piercings. She had scars on her arms and one on her cheek. Her dark hair was still incredibly short even though just as Lydia had promised her hair had grown at least an inch over night making her look more like a hedgehog than a girl. She had a tattoo running up her neck, it really was the one she hated the most. A bull ring through her nose and bars through her lip and eyebrow seemed like the frosting on the freak cake. She wore the jeans Annabelle had put out for her and a t-shirt. She was slight from not having eaten often enough and wiry from fighting for everything she had, which was nearly nothing. She could have been the definition of angst if one was able to capture the word in a photo.
"I'm eighteen." She hated him, he was the same as all the rest of them. He was a suit, she hated suits. Suits made decisions for people based on numbers and budgets not what was best for people. They made their decisions and then went home to their comfy beds at night not worrying about where they sent other people to live.
Aimee came into the room in skinny jeans and over the knee brown leather boots with large buckles. She wore a sweater and her blond hair in a ponytail. She was so pretty. Everything about her screamed feminine and delicate except her eyes, which warned you not to trust everything else you saw about her.
She sat next to Ari, "Ron." She spoke softly.
He smiled at her, it was a genuine smile not the wolf staring at the bunny smile she was used to from a suit, "Aimee."
Lydia clasped her hands together, "Well Ronald now that we are all here why don’t you explain to Ari exactly what sort of a situation she is looking at."
His grey eyes hardened as he looked at her, "Ari, I know this has probably all been very confusing for you but I do actually know what you are. I knew someone like you once."
He looked lost in his thought for a moment.
Ari felt her body tense but Lydia smiled at her softly telling her she was safe, or at the very least trying.
His words stung as he spoke, the story hurt him to tell, "My sister had a best friend when she was a girl, they went to college together. They roomed together. One night her friend got sick, very high fever and complained her hands were burning. All I can do is really guess as when asked later her friend couldn’t really recall the details. I assumed though that she must have touched my sister in her fevered state. My sister was suddenly gone from the room and every person in my family's memories changed. No one in my family recalls my sister the way she was except me."
Ari felt her brow lower, "My uncle."
He nodded, "You sent him back, back to the fork in the road that changed his life and forced him to choose the other road."
She frowned, "What?"
Lydia put a hand out and rested it on Ari's leg, "Sweetie instead of adopting you he was forced to abandon you to the orphanage."
The words cut her soul, she wanted to block it out. She rolled her shoulders searching for her zone, "What happened to your sister?"
He stared her down, "She died. Instead of befriending the girl who was like you she chose to be a loner. She had a horrid existence and killed herself. Our lives all changed and had I not been born, well special I would remember it the way they did. My sister never met her friend, she never went to college, she died at eighteen. My parents' lives shifted but they couldn’t recall the shift they just knew the new way their life was as if it was normal. You are the daughter of a fallen angel or demon. Did you know your real father?"
Ari let his words roll off her back, it wasn’t her story, it wasn’t her fault. Her uncle chose what he chose, she didn’t force him into anything. Daughter of a demon, the whole thing was nuts. She knew what was going on, they were trying to make her feel crazy so they could lock her up once and for all.
She stood and ran from the room. She ran out the front door and ran. Her legs pushed in her combat boots, she couldn’t run far, her lungs were weak in her body. She saw the street where she'd come from but when she tried to cross it she bounced back as if she ran into a window. She lay on the cold hard concrete for a moment, "Not a prison my ass."
She seethed. She stood limping, ignoring the pain everywhere and walked to the street. She put a hand out, there in the middle of the air hung a wall. It was see through, it was invisible rather but it still stopped her hand like a cold barrier she couldn’t comprehend.