The Children and the Blood (5 page)

Cole met her gaze without expression, realizing the source of the couple’s earlier disagreement. Tonight was going to be fun. The only question was whether she chose to get Vaughn involved in the argumentative festivities.

“Oh, you needn’t trouble yourself, Mrs. Smith,” the counselor said blithely. “Though the offer really is too kind.”

He motioned for her to join them, and then turned to Cole, waiting patiently till he lowered himself onto the couch as well. A cloyingly understanding look taking up residence on his face, Vaughn thumbed open his pocket notebook and then drew out a pen from his brown sports coat. “So… it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, hasn’t it?”

Cole didn’t answer. It’d only been two months, and not remotely long enough.

Undeterred, Vaughn continued. “How’s school going?”

Silence greeted the question.

“Sweetheart,” Melissa admonished lovingly. “We didn’t bring Dr. Vaughn all this way for you to ignore him. Come on. He wants to help you.”

Paternally, Robert nodded, playing his part with a dedication born of knowing the consequences for any other behavior. “Go ahead, son. We’re all here for you.”

A scoff evaluated the benefits of emerging, and then reconsidered.

“School’s fine.”

Vaughn beamed. “Oh, good. And friends? I know your mom mentioned you’d had some trouble staying connected to a good crowd. How’s that been going?”

“Fine,” Cole replied, barely keeping the dry note from his voice.

Pleased, the counselor nodded. “I’m very glad to hear that.” Thumbing to a new page in his notebook, he took a deep breath. “So, Cole. Can you tell me about what happened today?”

A list of potential responses ran through his head, ranging from the sarcastic to the downright rude. Melissa would make him pay for any of them, and after a moment’s further reflection, he dropped them all as pointless.

“Wrecked my truck,” he said, settling for facts.

“I can see that,” Vaughn chuckled.

Fondly, Melissa cocked her head and raised an eyebrow in encouragement.

“Tried to impress a girl,” Cole elaborated flatly. “Didn’t work.”

“Pretty dangerous way to get her attention, wouldn’t you say?” Vaughn replied, mildly chastising.

Cole didn’t bother responding.

“And you’re feeling alright? Not too shaken up, I hope?”

“I’m fine.”

Vaughn paused, jotting down a few notes. “And what did your friends think of what you did?”

Cole hesitated. “What did my friends think?”

“Well, the school reported you left with friends,” Vaughn explained. “We’re just trying to assess if they put you up to anything. If they’re a bad element, you see. Were they the ones you were hanging out with this evening?”

His skin crawling, Cole glanced to Melissa before he could stop himself.
That’s
what this was about? Learning the identities of his friends, as much as any concern his actions might’ve stemmed from some inherent flaw?

Struggling to keep his anger from showing, he tried to decide what to say. Any answer could cause trouble, but the truth would be worst. The perfect crowd was as much a priority to the woman as anything, but her quest for elitism left her isolated, and so she targeted his friends’ families as a way of ingratiating herself with the ‘right people’. Over the years, he’d lost more friends than he cared to count to her overeager interest, and he knew it would happen again. Though Travis practically made laziness an art form, his family had been rich and successful for generations. He’d known since he met the guy that the Brauns would be prime targets for his adoptive mother’s crusade.

“Yeah,” he said, aware an answer was expected. “But they didn’t put me up to anything.”

“Do they have names?” Vaughn teased lightly.

He hesitated. “Tom and Owen. They’re new to school.”

The friendly expression on Vaughn’s face flickered. “Ah,” he said, placid smile snapping back into place. Swiftly, he scribbled down the names. “Well, we should probably make certain Tom and Owen know you need to be home before dark from now on. If you’re going to keep doing well in school, you have to get to bed at a decent hour. Speaking of which…”

He glanced to the couple stationed on the loveseat.

Melissa rose quickly. “Dr. Vaughn is
so
right,” she agreed happily. “Off to bed, dear. School day tomorrow.” She bustled into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a steaming mug of cocoa. “And here you go, sweetheart,” she said, handing it to Cole. “Just the way you like it.”

Cole rose, his gaze meeting hers as he took the mug. Melissa’s smile took on an acidic cast, and it required every ounce of willpower he possessed to keep from tossing the liquid onto her flawless carpet.

“Oh, is that your special cocoa recipe I’ve heard so much about, Mrs. Smith?” Vaughn asked, oblivious to the exchange. At her happy nod, he continued. “The other counselors simply
rave
about it. I’d love to try some one of these days, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

Cole left them fawning at each other and headed back upstairs, the ridiculous mug of cocoa clutched in one hand. As he reached his bedroom, he could still hear them, cheerfully discussing his sanity from the dubious comfort of the couch.

He set the cocoa on the dresser and shut the door. Stripping off the garish polo and stiff khakis, he tossed the costume into a corner and then retrieved his jeans, t-shirt, and hooded sweatshirt from the pile of clothes on the floor.

Slowly, he exhaled, his muscles trembling. Sinking down onto the bed, he closed his eyes and then gradually crushed handfuls of the bedspread inside his fists.

Nights like these were when he missed his parents most of all.

In the eight years since he’d been selected by Robert and Melissa Smith, he’d tried not to think too much about the circumstances leading to his life in this upper-class hell. The conclusion always overshadowed any pleasant memory, but when the Smiths’ act became too much to take, sometimes the remembered horrors faded away.

Victor and Clara Jamison had been good parents, for all that Melissa disparaged them constantly for having been poor. In truth, as inheritance babies, the Jamisons could have had money beyond the woman’s wildest dreams. But when their parents disapproved of their marriage, Clara and Victor had renounced their legacies and chosen to make their own way in the world – a fact that, in this place, always made Cole proud.

As a family they’d done the best they could, and by the time Cole was ten, they’d moved to a nice apartment on the edge of a seedy neighborhood and were working hard to create a good future for their only son. Clara was a school nurse, healing the scrapes and wiping the tears of toddlers at a local nursery school. Victor was a banker, educated at the finest institutions by his wealthy father but struggling in the recession economy to find work. But in spite of their hardships, Clara and Victor forged a happy life with what they had, buying quality if not quantity and teaching their son about being content.

But due to greed or envy, others had taken notice, and one Christmas Eve night, they’d done something about the little family living quietly on the apartment building’s third floor.

Of the actual break in, he remembered only pieces. His mother had sent him to his room early, joking that Santa couldn’t arrive till he was asleep. He’d hurried to bed, only to wake to their apartment door bursting open and his mother screaming. To his bleary mind, fireworks seemed to be going off, though later he’d learned they were guns. Hooded men stormed his room, knocking over his toys and stuffing into bags anything of value they could grab. Through the open doorway, he saw his mother lying on the floor, and as he’d run for her, something heavy hit his head from behind.

When next he woke, he was curled in the back of a social worker’s car with a bandage on his head. Dizzy and confused, he’d asked for his mother, only to receive a sympathetic glance from the man in the driver’s seat. His mother and father couldn’t come right now, the man explained. Cole was going to stay with some friends for a while.

In the following days, Cole learned they’d shot his father in the hallway, taking him from behind and using his key to get into the apartment. His mother had been next, and if not for the cops arriving swiftly to a neighbor’s frantic 9-1-1 call, Cole would have been third.

And for all that the police had rushed to the scene, they’d never captured the ones responsible. Fingerprints led nowhere. The thieves used the fire escape to slip away unseen, and no tips gave clues to the criminals’ identities. For most of the world, it became just one more cold case in a long list of violent tragedies, regrettably forgotten.

No relatives came to take him from the office of Child and Family Services, though he knew he was the only grandchild on either family’s side. Not a single one even bothered to call. And to his ten-year-old self, the message had been clear: in their eyes, Cole may as well have also died.

Eight years drifted by, and in the midst of this zealously maintained world, everything from his life before took on the quality of a pleasant dream. Deep inside, some part of him clung to the memory of his father’s voice and the smell of his mother’s hair, because except for his memories, nothing of Clara or Victor Jamison remained. Due to being collected as evidence, every item from his past life had been taken from him. Years later, they still sat rotting in a police archive, inaccessible in case they were needed someday for a trial.

Opening his eyes, Cole sighed. Ignoring the fact that propping his tennis shoes on the blankets would make Melissa scream, he lay back on his bed and tried to put the dark thoughts behind him. In a few more months, it would all be over. Graduation was drawing near, and if he could just hold out that long, he could start working on a life that would have made his parents proud. Whether or not the Smiths approved of college, they couldn’t stop him from applying. And with scholarships and grants, or loans or anything, he would find a way to pay for the educational ticket that meant he’d never have to come back here again.

A shout from the living room made him sit up in alarm. Accustomed to the racket of the Smiths’ fights, he could tell neither of them had made the sound. Brow furrowing, he hesitated and then crossed the room silently and cracked open the door.

Angry voices, speaking too low and fast to understand, rose from downstairs. Confusion growing, he slipped into the hallway and crept to the top of the stairwell.

“–and you are losing control of him,” Vaughn snarled, all semblance of toadying gone. “Drinking? Getting into car accidents? You have one job to do, just
one
, and you cannot even accomplish that.”

“We’re keeping him under control,” Melissa said, her pleading tone so strange it made Cole pause. “It’s fine, really. The truck thing was just an aberration. It won’t happen again.”

“He could have
died
, you stupid girl!” Vaughn snapped, his voice rising briefly before dropping low again. “That boy is the only insurance you’ve got, and you just blithely let him run off and nearly get himself killed! And you have the gall to tell me it’s fine. Are you tired of this life? Would you prefer we dropped you back on the streets? Because it could happen.”

“Now hold on, you’re not going to do that,” Robert interjected hurriedly. “We’ve taken care of this so far. You need us.”

Vaughn chuckled. “
Need
you?” he drawled, almost too softly for Cole to hear.

“I-I mean…” Robert began, real fear in his voice.

“You will keep him here,” Vaughn continued. “You will have him behaved, responsive, agreeable and happy or so help me, I will
personally
kill you both. Understand?”

Silence met his words, and a moment later, Cole heard the front door shut.

The couch squeaked as one of them sat down.

“Is he–” Melissa started.

“Getting in the car,” Robert said. “Talking on his cell. Not leaving.”

A muffled sob followed the statement. The noise jarred Cole from his shock. Face crumpling in confusion, he stood immobile for a heartbeat, and then carefully walked downstairs.

“What’s going on?”

The couple jumped as though he’d set off a bomb.

Robert recovered first. “What the hell is he doing awake?” he demanded of Melissa furiously.

“I–” she sputtered and then regrouped. “Cole, why are you not in bed?” she said, her tone lost somewhere between her usual acid and the saccharin of moments before. “I told you to drink your cocoa and go to bed like a good boy.”

He stared at her, wondering fleetingly how she’d ever been under the impression he’d actually do that. “What was Vaughn talking about?” he asked cautiously, stepping farther into the living room.

Melissa looked to Robert with a tinge of desperation. Dropping his hand from the blinds, Robert stalked across the room and then snagged Cole’s arm, propelling him toward the stairs.

“You heard your mother. Get back up there and get in bed now.”

Ripping his arm from Robert’s grasp, Cole scoffed. “And what? Forget this ever happened? What the hell is going on here?”

He stared at them both. “Who are you people?”

Robert glanced at Melissa, and she nodded. Carefully, she rose to her feet, her expression becoming conciliatory. “Cole, honey, we know you’re under a lot of pressure. The truck, graduation, the fact your parents can’t be there. But you’ve been saying things that don’t make sense for a while now, darling. Seeing things that aren’t there. We’re worried about you.”

She walked towards him, her hands making pacifying gestures. “I don’t know what you think is happening here, but everything’s fine, sweetheart. Just take it easy.”

Eyes wide, Cole backed away, while Robert made noises of agreement and moved to circle him. Trying to keep both her and Robert in view, Cole turned, and suddenly saw something swing toward him.

With a shout, he ducked and the bookend swept over his head. Off balance, Robert caught himself on the banister as Cole stumbled back. Melissa lunged, struggling to pin his arms, while Robert hefted the bookend once again.

Shoving Melissa off him, Cole backpedalled toward the door. His eyes raked the room, searching for a phone, a weapon, anything to alert someone and keep those two away at the same time. The couple glanced at each other, and then separated, trying to herd him toward the corner.