Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ELLISON
I park outside my mother’s mansion and sit in the car for an uncomfortably long time.
I’d rather go back into the mall and save five more rounds of hostages than get out and go inside.
I would love to send one of my illusions in to deal with her but if she found out, I know I’d never escape her wrath.
I beat my head against the steering wheel a few times and consider telling her that I’m still too wounded to go inside.
I do ache a bit after my mall experience but it’s nothing too severe.
Since I’m part of Superheroes United, I have access to a super who can promote healing at a faster rate.
I should be grateful for that, but at this moment, I kind of wish I could pretend to be too hurt and go home.
“Fuck.”
I smack my head against the steering wheel again before looking up and jumping as I realize my mother’s assistant is standing outside my car. She looks like she just got done sucking on two lemons, which has to be why my mother hired her.
Grudgingly, I exit the vehicle.
“Do you think Beatrice has all day to wait for you?” she scolds.
“She messaged me sixteen minutes ago. It takes ten minutes to drive here.”
Patty tsks and hurries off as I start after her. I have no interest in going inside. I trail behind and make it about halfway there before I hesitate.
I mean… there’s no way Asmodeus allowed me to come here alone, is there? He’s probably following me, which could be a good thing or a very horrible thing, depending on his ability to behave.
“Asmodeus, turn visible and just walk in with me,” I demand.
Patty turns and looks at me. “And now he’s speaking to invisible things. This is what happens when you don’t listen to Beatrice.”
I sigh and she leads me inside. Even though this is the house I grew up in, it feels like a stranger’s home.
If Asmodeus thought my house was pristine and stuffy, he’s going to be blown away by this place.
Everything is perfectly in its spot to the point that it looks more like a model home or something they’d use for magazines instead of a place people would live.
“You may have a seat right here,” she says, like I didn’t grow up here and am not welcome to walk around or sit in any spot of my choosing.
I rub my chest where I was wounded and feel uneasy, but I tamp it down. I hate this place. I hate it so much.
I sit down as Patty heads off to retrieve my mother.
I end up waiting and waiting while my comfort level drops significantly.
The longer I wait, the more ill at ease I feel.
I’d honestly assumed Asmodeus would have followed me, but is there any way he could have resisted doing something for this long?
I check my phone a couple of times before I watch as one of the perfectly styled pillows goes flying off the couch by an invisible force.
Who am I kidding? Of course Asmodeus would come here to cause chaos.
“What are you doing?”
“Woooo… I am the ghost of your mother’s asshole after she rammed a stick up it too far,” Asmodeus says in his best rendition of a ghost.
I raise an eyebrow, not pleased, but he obviously doesn’t care.
He hurries over to her bird trinkets, which are the only semblance of life in the house, and pushes one. She’s collected them my whole life, and they seem to be the only thing she cares about. I remember buying her one when I was younger, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it since.
“Don’t you dare touch those,” I warn him.
He slides one over until it looks like it’s copulating with another.
Jumping to my feet, I hurry over to stop him. “If my mother sees this obscene display, she will be pissed.”
“I believe your mother was born pissed,” he whispers in my ear before blowing on the other.
I wave my arms around, trying to grab him, but of course I can’t feel him. And then I see another bird trinket being flipped on its back all the way across the room.
“Asmodeus, dammit, get your ass over here right this second and sit down or wait in the car!” I snap. I rush over, prepared to stop him as I wave my arms, hoping to catch him because he’s now moving everything out of order.
Of course that’s when Patty steps into the room carrying a tray with a drink on it. She gives me a disgusted look, probably because it appears like I’m in this room alone flapping my arms as though I’m trying to be a bird myself.
“What in the world are you doing?” And then she sees the birds in various stages of copulation. “Are you a child? Not even a child would do this!”
Anger eats at me as I prepare myself to yell at Asmodeus for such a foolish display of childish behavior, but it’ll only make me look even more uncultured.
Patty sets the glass down and shakes her head at me. “These had better be fixed before your mother shows up.”
She turns on her heel and stalks out of the room.
“This isn’t fucking funny, Asmodeus. If you’re just going to create a mess then I want you to leave. Fix the fucking birds and sit down or leave.”
I sit down on the couch and glare in the general direction he should be in.
Suddenly, I feel his breath on my ear, and I have to fight back the shiver that tries to race through me. “What if I say no?”
I grab him in a headlock, very much aware that the only reason I got my hands on this man is because he allowed it. Even so, I jerk him down and pin him to me. “You are getting on my fucking nerves, you hear me? I’m not finding any of this shit funny.”
“It’s an awful thing when others hold so much control over you,” he says. “Trust me, I know. You feel crushed, like you can’t breathe. Like there’s no way out. There’s this suffocating feeling holding you down and forcing you to tuck away all the parts that make you who you are.”
I freeze. “No one has… control over me.”
“No?” he asks as he drops his invisibility from where he’s sprawled across my lap, looking up at me with his vibrant blue eyes.
It’s like I’m held prisoner by them. “Your mother demanded that you come. You were uncomfortable from the moment you showed up. You were ridiculed for being late even though you were right on time. And then as punishment, as a way to belittle you, you’ve been told where to sit and then left for nearly half an hour. ”
I stare at him, wanting to yell at him some more… but is it because I know he’s the only one here I can throw my frustrations at?
“You don’t have to put up with this,” he says.
“I’m not putting up with anything.”
“Then get up and find her or tell her you’re leaving or just leave. You want me to?”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Beatrice, we’re leaving!” he shouts. “We have plans!”
I clamp my hand over his mouth. “Shut it.”
Even though I can’t see his lips, the creases around his eyes show me how amused he is.
“Knock it off,” I demand before the door opens and my mother comes in to witness me with a man lying on my lap, my hand clamped firmly over his mouth, while her precious bird figurines are left in different states of intimacy.
“He fell,” I say as I hastily pull my hand off.
Asmodeus flips himself over my lap instead of getting up like a normal person. “Asmodeus Death at your service. But you already know me quite well. Your investigators… how have they been? That one who tripped into the toilet… is he still crying?”
My mother’s lips turn into a thin line. “Why is he here?”
“We are uncertain if someone is after my life, so Superheroes United hired him to be my bodyguard.”
“They should hire someone who can actually do their job,” she says.
Asmodeus just smiles at her before sliding onto the couch next to me. He’s so close that his thigh is pressed against mine. I want to tell him to remove it, since my mother has obviously taken note of its position, but I can’t find the words.
“Imagine if you hired all the people you hired to stalk me but paid them to find the man who nearly killed your son. That’d be funny,” Asmodeus comments.
I didn’t think her lips could get even thinner, but they sure do, and I sit here in this state of conflict. I want to yell at Asmodeus to stop this bullshit, to tell him to stop saying shit to my mother just to piss her off because I deserve anything she throws at me.
“Do you know what I found out about this man?” Mother asks. “He is not a good person.”
“Are any of us?” I whisper.
My head hurts. All of it hurts. I just want to leave. I hate this place. I hate it all.
“Ellison, after what you did to this family, you still think you should do this?” she asks. “You look at this man and choose to frolic with people like him? You are a disappointment to this family.”
I sit here, knowing I have no right to say anything, but Asmodeus isn’t cowed by her.
He stands up to face her and I find myself staring at the spot his leg had been pressed against, feeling it growing cold.
“I’m not going to claim that I’m a good person.
I’m not going to tell you that Ellison wouldn’t be better off with someone else.
But I am going to tell you that because of your son, there are countless people who get to go back to their lives.
Who get to go back to their families who love them and would miss them dearly if they were gone.
What he’s doing is greater than anything you could ever fathom him doing with your talons dug into him. ”
Then he boops her nose and turns invisible.
I’m sure he’s still in the room somewhere but I take it as his declaration that he’s no longer a part of this conversation.
“You know where you belong,” Mother says. “And it’s not with that group. How much more can you hurt this family?”
“At the rate I’m going… quite a bit more. Is that all?”
“Get out of here.”
“Sounds delightful,” I say dryly as I get up and leave. I know she wanted to say more but she chose to hold back, and I don’t know whether it’s because of Asmodeus’s speech or his presence.