Mercy’s head was delivered to Callum in a box.
So I never got to meet her. I never got to ask her who my father was or why Ben and I had been left behind. Maybe she thought she was doing right by us. Maybe she knew she couldn’t be a proper mother. I didn’t regret the life I’d been given, but there were times I’d needed answers only she could provide.
Was my need so deep I was conjuring her ghost now?
Or was I totally insane? Like mother like daughter.
I didn’t love either of those options.
“Who’s following me?” I demanded.
“You’re so like your father.” Icy, verbal claws dug into me, dragging me along on this story whether I liked it or not. She had me hooked. “So alike, so alike. Killers, the both of you.” The croaking sound followed this proclamation.
“W-what?”
“Quite a family of killers I’ve managed to create. I expected it from your demon-seed sister. Not you though. You were my favorite.”
She had to stop saying that. It was hardly a compliment to know your homicidal-maniac mother was super keen on you.
“I’ve never killed anyone,” I insisted.
As far as I knew, it was true. I’d used some nasty magic against the Loups-Garous, a pack of renegade wolves who shared the Maurepas Swamp with La Sorcière and me, but I hadn’t killed any of them. No matter how much those sickos might have had it coming. Murder wasn’t in my wheelhouse, and I wanted to keep it that way.
“Ssssssure you have,” she hissed. “She’s following you for a reason.”
“She?” Now I didn’t care so much who my father was, though the revelation he was a killer wasn’t promising. I was much more focused on finding out who my mother thought I was responsible for killing. “Mercy, who are you talking about?”
“Go…go find her. She wants to say hello to you. Wants to say so many many many things.”
“She who?”
“You’ll seeee.” She grabbed my wrist suddenly, and this time her skin was bone dry and ice cold. I shrieked in surprise and tried to pull free, but she was strong and she held tight. “Your father will be so proud of you. You’ll be his favorite now.”
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She drew me in close, and for a second I saw her face.
Her eyes and cheeks were sunken, her skin waxy and white with black veins charting their way down her temples to her chin. Her lips looked thin, and when she smiled, her gums had vanished, leaving her teeth and skull exposed. She was a skeleton with skin. A shell.
It wasn’t until she was already gone I realized her head had been in her lap the entire time.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“I figured you for more of a morning person. Or are you secretly the kind of girl who’s like oh my God, don’t even talk to me until I’ve had my venti-caramel-Frappucino-bullshit thing?”
I stopped staring out the window of the small diner next to our favorite drive thru. We were sitting in a booth waiting for breakfast because the burger place wasn’t open yet, and I needed coffee.
I lowered my sunglasses so I could meet his eyes directly. “Caramel-Frappucino-bullshit thing? You can’t call it that if you use the word Frappucino. You also lose points for knowing what venti means. Act as cool as you want, Wilder Shaw, but you just outed yourself as a Starbucks drinker.”
“Busted.” We paused as the waitress delivered our coffee. He gave me one of those grins I was coming to know as his signature panty-melter. For a guy who grew up in rural Louisiana, his teeth were way too white. “But you are awfully quiet today.”
“How do you know that’s not normal for me?” I asked once the waitress was gone.
He snorted. “Because in the entire time I’ve known you, you’ve managed to shut up for a grand total of ten minutes. Yet suddenly you’re Little Miss Contemplative.”
“My life on the inside changed me. Hardened criminals like to play it cool.” I wasn’t in much of a mood to discuss what had happened to me the previous night. My whole encounter with Mercy had felt completely real, and yet I’d woken up this morning with Cash next to me in bed, no sign of blood on the sheets and every indication I’d dreamt the whole thing.
In spite of every logical fiber of my being telling me it was a nightmare, I couldn’t stop thinking it must be real. Someway, some how, my mother had come to me last night.