The Mercenary and the Mortician (The Silent Hollow #1)

8. Ryan Fairview

I was pacing in the kitchen, tapping my phone against my leg in agitation.

When I finally finished up with Ms. Thomson, I went upstairs to find Caleb in the living room watching TV, just as I had expected.

What I hadn’t expected was the look of pure terror in his eyes when I called his name.

I could immediately tell something was wrong…well, more wrong than normal. When I asked him why he had come over today, he flinched like he thought I was going to hit him. I asked him if someone at home was hurting him, and that totally set him off.

For a second, I was worried he was going to run away, so I grabbed him, and that’s when I immediately knew my suspicions had been correct.

This boy’s parents were abusing him. No one reacted like that to someone grabbing their shoulders.

At first, I thought he was just having a trauma response, but it quickly became apparent he was falling apart because he was injured beneath his shirt.

I had lost my temper… not with him, of course, but that didn’t seem to matter. I yelled at him to tell me who was hurting him, and that, of course, just made things worse.

I was such a fucking idiot.

Who yells at a kid like that?

I, of course, regretted it immediately and apologized, explaining that I wasn’t angry with him. I was angry with the people who had hurt him.

After that, he had thrown his arms around me and sobbed into my shoulder, scrunching up my T-shirt in his tiny fists.

Violence had never been my go-to response to confrontation, but as I held this little boy while he sobbed, all I could think about was how good it would feel to beat the shit out of the assholes that had hurt him.

I told him he could stay over if he wanted and got him set up with a room upstairs.

He was currently curled up there sleeping, which was why I was freaking out a little bit. I was pretty sure having a minor sleeping over without parental consent legally counted as kidnapping… even though it was obviously safer for him here than at his own home.

I couldn’t let the kid go back. Not when I knew his parents were hurting him. I had given him a T-shirt to change into, and the bruises on the boy’s chest and back were so gruesome it made my stomach churn… and I cut open dead bodies for a living.

I could call Child Protective Services again, but they hadn’t done shit last time. What if the result was the same? What if his parents punished him for it?

I didn’t think his parents knew where he was, which gave me a little bit of time to figure out a plan. At least I knew he was safe here for tonight.

I was on what felt like my hundredth anxiety-ridden lap around the kitchen table when my mother billowed in.

Because that’s what my mother did, she billowed.

Iris Fairview was all deep red curls, silk robes, and vintage dresses. Today, she was wearing a green floral satin robe that looked like it came from a different time, with her burgundy hair piled up high on her pixie-like head.

She was willowy and delicate, and she always had a dreamy smile on her face. Nothing really ever seemed to anger my mother. She met life’s obstacles with a sort of detached optimism, as if she lived entirely in the now and never worried about the future or dwelled on the past.

She flowed through the kitchen towards the stove, turning the old-fashioned dial to put her nightly pot of tea on. At this late hour, she was likely brewing some homegrown chamomile from her garden.

“What has your aura so dark, dear?” she asked in her usual dreamy tone, and I slumped down into one of the white, chalk-painted kitchen chairs.

“Caleb is here. His parents are definitely abusing him. I told him to stay the night, but I don’t know what I’m going to do when they come looking for him.”

My mother turned away from the stove and leaned back against the counter, though leaned felt like too pedestrian of a word for what she did. She drifted. Like a feather settling quietly on a surface.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, honey. Your dark angel will take care of them.”

“Uh-huh,” I muttered, though I wasn’t really paying attention. I was now googling what legally counted as kidnapping in the state of Ohio.

“Not this ‘ dark angel’ shit again,” my sister grumbled as she strolled in, texting someone on her own phone. She beelined for the fridge and popped it open, critically examining the inside. “Ryan has a girlfriend, Mom, and I would hardly consider her to be dark.”

“Hey, leave Joanna alone. She’s nice,” I muttered half-heartedly.

“Yes, dear… she’s lovely,” my mother agreed in that singsong voice of hers. “She’s just not for you.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose in frustration. “Could you two focus? We have more important things to worry about right now than my love life. There’s a little boy upstairs who’s seriously hurt, and I don’t know how to help him.”

“Ugh, you’re out of salami?” Theo asked our mother critically, completely ignoring me. I snapped my head to look at her.

“If you want salami, stock your own fridge in the guest house; that’s why we rent it to you. Stop pilfering our shit, you freeloader.”

Theo slammed the fridge shut and leaned against it, glowering at me. “Sharing your deli meat is the least you can do after you have me protecting your damn charity case all day.”

I narrowed my eyes on her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

It was minute, but I knew my sister better than anyone. A small twinge of concern and protectiveness crossed her expression for a split second. Then she wiped it clean, giving me the angry asshole persona she liked to hide behind.

“Some scumbag came in earlier with a bullshit story about wanting to buy an urn, but he seemed more interested in the kid. I told him to kick rocks.”

“Really? What did he look like? Do you think he was Caleb’s father?” I asked. My blood went cold. If it was his dad, that meant they knew he was here. Maybe he wasn’t as safe as I had originally thought…

“I dunno. He was our age. Ripped but gave serious punk vibes. He was wearing all black and had a lip ring and a shit ton of tattoos.”

I frowned. I had been expecting some balding pot-bellied dude in a wife-beater, not someone our age… but I mean, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that Caleb’s dad was in his late twenties. Maybe it had been a child pregnancy…

Suddenly, there was a clatter, and the broom we kept by the back door fell to the ground.

We all turned to look at it, startled.

“What the fuck!” Theo exclaimed, looking pissed off. “I’m sick of all the freaky shit that happens in this house.”

My mother, on the other hand, was grinning like a fox.

“Broom fell. That means company is coming.” She sang, turning to tend to her now whistling teapot. Theo and I exchanged a look as she poured herself a mug. “He’s a little later than I thought he would be, but I suppose better late than never.”

“ What are you going on about now?” Theo asked our mother, who was now rummaging through one of the drawers that I knew she stocked full of random witchy shit. She pulled out a big bag of sage and billowed over to me, putting it in front of me on the table and patting my hand fondly.

“Ryan’s dark angel, of course. Here, sweetie, you’re going to need this. Your dark angel comes with a crowd of rather… unsavory guests. You’re going to want to cleanse the space around him if you want any privacy.”

With that cryptic piece of advice, she swept out of the kitchen as elegantly as she had swept in.

Theo and I stared after her for a beat before my sister finally shook her head and pushed up off the fridge.

“Well, on that note, I’m going to bed.”

“What? We still haven’t discussed what we’re going to do about Caleb!” I called, but Theo was already halfway out the door.

“Who is this ‘ we’ you speak of? I told you not to pick up strays. This is your problem,” she snapped, slamming the back door behind her.

I stared after her, fuming mad.

Ms. Thompson’s ghost was right. She was a fucking dick.

Whatever.

I snatched up the sage my mother had gifted me and made my way toward the basement. As whimsical and ‘out there’ as my mother may seem, I had enough experience with her strange advice to know that I would be a fool not to listen. Just because it didn’t make sense to me now didn’t mean I wouldn’t be wishing I had this sage later.

Tucking the baggie of herbs into my back pocket, I jogged down the stairs to the gym Theo built.

Maybe I couldn’t beat the shit out of Caleb’s parents for real, but I could imagine I was while pounding out some combos on the bag.

I just needed to blow off some steam and clear my head. Then the answers would come to me… That’s what I told myself, at least, as I snatched up my sister’s tape and started to wrap my knuckles.