Destiny Calling (25 page)

The blackness ebbed away from the spot where my hand touched her, bouncing off my arm but unable to pass through. I gritted my teeth as her pain replaced my pleasure. The woman didn’t answer at first, her head lolling forward to stare at the sidewalk.

“It’s okay.” I ran my hand down her arm to interlace my fingers with hers. “Melinda, it’s going to get better now.”

She regarded me. Her eyes brimmed with tears ready to fall. Touching her cheek with my other hand, she pressed her hand against mine, crushing it against her skin. I smiled even as I feared what Drake might do to me as my strength rushed from me into her body.

Drake cursed. “Another day. Hecate’s patience wears thin. Next time there won’t be an option.” When I turned, he was gone. Black residue lingered in the air, circling around the woman, as if a living entity on its own, even without Drake.

I pulled Melinda into a hug. She slumped to rest her head on my shoulder. We sat on the sidewalk in an awkward embrace. People walked by, making an effort to appear oblivious to where we huddled on the ground. My heart slowed to resume a normal pace.

No one stopped.

Had I been that way before I came here—living unaware, uncaring of anyone’s distress but my own?

Melinda released me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me.” She scanned the street, seeming surprised to see we were sitting on the sidewalk.

Bracing her hand on the wall, she stood, brushing off her skirt. “I’m so embarrassed.” The last of the blackness dissipated and scattered through the street, freeing her from its grip.

“It’s no problem.” I smiled and placed my hand on her arm again to infuse a little more hope into her, despite how drained I already was. “Everyone can use a hug now and then. My name’s Hope.”

The woman’s smile lit up her face and eyes. “Hope? What an appropriate name.”

****

The bell tinkled as I entered the liquor store. A few people pushed tiny carts, selecting their booze. I scanned the store but didn’t see Griffith. A man stood alert behind the counter, poised near the register, as if expecting an onslaught of customers at any moment.

He rushed out to grab one of the carts for me. “Here, miss.” He returned behind the counter and peered around, as if he’d be chastised for abandoning his post. “We have several chairman selections out front for you to peruse.”

He beamed, and indicated the wine displays greeting anyone entering the store. His smile displayed broken teeth cast with a reddish tint of the wine he must prefer. Seemingly innocent enough, but the shadow of darkness lingering around his body betrayed his true origins.

“Is there anything I can help you find?” He puffed out his scrawny chest so his nametag hung askew, spreading his arms wide to take in the store. “I’m here to serve you.” He put his arm across his chest, as if facing royalty, and bowed.

“Um, I think I can manage, thank you.” I squinted at his nametag. “Andy.” I moved toward the sign marked, tequila, reluctant to tell him I was only there to see Griffith. The skin between my shoulder blades tightened as Andy’s gaze bore into me.

As I placed a bottle in the cart, a door creaked opened in the back of the store, and Griffith stepped out. I headed toward him at the quickest speed I could manage despite one wheel on the cart spinning crazily and the bottle rattling around on the metal bars.

My noisy approach rendered me unable to utilize any element of surprise as he heard me coming from across the store. He looked as comfortable in the dress shirt and tie as he had in leather on the motorcycle. I sucked in my stomach. For once grateful I’d endured the discomfort for choosing a pair of jeans that made my butt look good.

“Why did you tell me your mother was dead?”

His welcoming smile faded. “I didn’t.” Griffith said through clenched teeth.

“Yes, you did. You lied to me.”

I followed his gaze. Andy’s attention focused on me, making my skin crawl. “What’s up with him?”

“He knows what, or rather, who you are.” Griffith glared and Andy visibly shrank and turned away, busying himself with pamphlets on the counter.

“What are you talking about?” I pressed closer toward Griffith. He put his hand on my arm and I pulled away, but not before tingling danced along my skin from his touch.

“Come into my office.” He turned to open the door he’d recently exited.

I let him stand there a few seconds soaking in my glare.

He gestured to the doorway and raised his eyebrows at me in question.

I tried to set the cart out of the aisle, struggling with the wonky wheel squawking and protesting the entire time at my attempts to turn the cart. He took it from me and pushed it to the side. I preceded him into the room so he couldn’t see my irritation, although the slight smile playing at the corner of his lips told me he already had.

His office walls were bare and white, his desk lined with essential items. The décor appeared sterile and contemporary compared to his house and the artifacts filling it. “This doesn’t look like you.”

“How would you know? You don’t know me.” He walked behind the desk and lowered himself into the leather chair, resting his linked hands across his middle.

“Obviously, I don’t.” I paced in front of the desk, ignoring his gesture to sit in the plush, maroon colored chair facing him. I didn’t want him having the position of power. “What do you mean by saying that guy knows
who
I am?” I deliberately omitted the word, what.

“See for yourself.” He moved a stack of papers, which concealed the book I’d returned to the corner of the desk, then he inclined his head at me.

“You know I can’t open the book.”
Nor did I want to touch the human flesh covered monstrosity.
I clenched my teeth in frustration. After being taunted by Drake, I refused to tolerate it from Griffith as well.

“Try again.” Griffith’s gaze went to the glittery fog churning from my fingertips as my irritation grew. I looked at the betraying mist, then to him.

He could see it.

“Am I like you?” I didn’t want the answer, but I had to know.

“Not quite.” He gestured to the book.

I tentatively touched the cover. It was warm, but not hot. When I curled my fingers over the edge, the cover swung open. My eyes sought him for an explanation, but found none. The page illustrated a drawing of a beautiful woman and depictions of how she became a monster, Hecate.

“You can’t make a choice without all the details. Well, the ones we’re privy to. Hecate always did like the small print.” He studied me for my reaction but I had none, frozen by the image and the words in a language I couldn’t decipher.

“Hecate made the Oppressors?” I recalled the image on the other side of her hand when I’d been able to look at another page of the book. “What about…what about the Enchantlings?”

The chair squeaked as Griffith stood, walking around to rest against the desk beside me. “It’s a game to her. One that’s been played for as long as there’s been good and evil in the world. She just keeps raising the stakes, although this time, something went awry.”

He looked away. “She’s courting you.”

“What
is
Hecate?”

“Can you see an emotion?” He shook his head, answering for me. “No, but you can feel that emotion. That. That is Hecate.”

I drew my eyes from the book to him. “What about you?”

“I’m the prize. Meant to lure you to the Oppressors.” He pushed off the desk to walk around to sit in the chair, propping his legs on the desk.

“But maybe I’m not anyone’s to give,” he said. The muscles in his jaw tensed and released. “She can’t control me if I don’t desire things…need things. I never had. Until you.”

His gaze sought mine and held it. “I’m to tempt you, but it is you that has tempted me.”

My breath caught. Something about him made me feel as if I was about to fall, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to let go. “Did you bring me here?”

He shook his head. “No. Whatever…whoever brought you here, brought you here to die.”

I stepped away from the book, and the cover snapped shut, breaking the spell. “You mean, who? As in your brother, Drake?” Turning away from him so I could focus and remember my purpose for coming here.

Griffith sighed. “No, he’s not capable of that, besides he wasn’t always like that. He had my back. Kept me together when my mother checked out on me.”

“How could you make up something like that about your mother? You let me believe she was dead.” Gripping the edge of the desk, I leaned toward him. “I saw your mother today.”

I nodded as his eyebrows pinched together. “How could you do that to her?”

Griffith held up his hand. “I said she was gone. I never said she was dead. You assumed that.” He stood and walked toward the window overlooking the sidewalk and stared out at the people passing on the street.

“For the record, I didn’t do anything to her,” he said. “She did it to herself, and it started long before I was born. She chose insanity rather than face the reality given to her. Some might call it the easy way out.”

I opened my mouth to continue protesting, and then closed it. Pausing as I tried to recall exactly what he’d said. Was I that desperate to relate to Griffith that I’d let myself believe his parents were dead like mine?

“You went to see her?” He turned and any remaining pleasure left his face, twisted with anger.

“Did she send me her best? Tell you to say how much she missed her beloved son?” His voice rose, and I took a step back as he approached.

“They don’t even allow me to visit her.” He ran his hands over his face as the black fog thickened and grew around him. “They say I upset her too much. Like it’s not upsetting to have my own mother call me a monster. The devil. Satan’s child.”

His hostility left me with my mouth gaping, unable and uncertain how to respond.

“Do you have any idea what that feels like?” Griffith grabbed me by the shoulders. “I can’t help what I am. I had no choice in what I was born. I’ve seen the people the Oppressors have pushed to the brink or completely over the edge. I don’t want to be that.”

I stared into his face, hovering a few inches from mine, pain etched in every feature. His hands dug into my shoulders, but I stood firm and wouldn’t look away. Instead, I reached up to cup his cheek in my palm, to feel the roughness and to make a connection to him I couldn’t explain.

He pulled away as if burned. “I didn’t say she was dead. I told you, she was gone.” He moved away and turned his back to me.

I left my hand suspended for a few moments, still feeling the texture of his skin underneath my palm, and then lowered my hand to my side.

He braced himself on the windowsill, hanging his head in defeat. “Would you rather I have told you the truth? That my mother hates me? That she thinks I’m a monster and becomes hysterical if my name is even mentioned? That she didn’t know my father was an Oppressor? That he used her to try to gain a son that might please Hecate? A son who, being a Splice, doesn’t fit anywhere.”

He paused and then offered a definition of the unfamiliar term. “Half-human. Half-monster.”

Griffith stood facing the window, his shoulders tight with tension.

Straightening his back, he tilted his head as he took a few deep breaths. The black fog dissipated a little with each breath. “Everyone blames me for my mother. You know, sins of the father and all. She used to be a happy woman until he tricked her. Once they were married he tapped her dry until she went insane.”

Walking up behind him, I hesitated a moment before placing my hand on his shoulder. As I touched him, the feeling of heat rose from his body into my hand. The warmth tingled through my fingers and up my arm. “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t want to see the way you look at me change once you knew what I was.”

He looked at my hand and then closed his eyes. His long lashes fanned out against his skin. I knew he felt something, too. When I touched him, I didn’t think he felt what others did, because he felt different to me.

Because he was different.

“It hasn’t changed.” When the heat became uncomfortable, I slid my hand off, and he turned.

He stared at me. The tension and anger faded from his face.

“When you said you dreamt of me.” I hesitated and looked at my hands. “What…what did you dream about?”

“I dreamt you would save me,” he said.

I looked into his eyes. “From what?”

“From myself.”

Chapter Seventeen

“I don’t have all day, Tessa.” I’d been sitting on the kitchen table for about an hour, after seeing Griffith.

Seems the more answers I acquired, the more questions I had. I’d tried calling for Tessa, thinking about her—yelling at the mirror and doing anything I could think of to get her here, and all I’d gotten was a numb ass.

“Some help you are.” I spun around, swinging my legs off the edge of the table.

“Come on, what’s your rush? I had hoped to keep you there long enough to let Ruthie see you.” Tessa laughed. “If she spotted you sitting on the table, the look on her face would’ve been priceless. I can hear her now.”

Tessa puckered her lips in a very good imitation of Ruthie. “Tables are for glasses, not for—”

“You were making me wait on purpose?” I slid into the chair in front of the mirror.

“You didn’t wait but a second or two in my time.” Tessa waved me off and shrugged. “Besides, I have to have fun somehow. It really is the little things.”

The doorbell rang. “Who could that be?” I smoothed my pants as I stood. “I know it’s not Ruthie. She doesn’t believe in courtesies like ringing the doorbell.”

“It’s Chance,” Tessa said.

My wrinkled pants were forgotten as I studied her. “How do you know? Do you have the ability of knowing, like Ruthie? Or is that, umm…a capability you acquired once you were…” I still wasn’t comfortable talking about Tessa’s death and current unknown limbo-like location. “Err…in the afterlife?”

“No.” Tessa pointed. “I can see him through the crack in the curtains on the door.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed.” Tessa patted her hair. “Everything isn’t related to magic. Sometimes it’s plain old common sense. Hurry and let him in. I haven’t seen him in years.”