Chapter 12 #2
“Mom, we’re going to go to the beach, okay?”
“Who is we?”
“Me and Jared and Mindy and, hopefully, Eliza?”
Eliza looked between Allie and me. “Sorry, Al. I’m popping down to San Diego to deal with packing and my mom’s funeral and stuff.”
“Oh. Right. I’m sorry.”
Eliza shrugged. “Yeah, well, the good news is I’m moving here permanently.”
“Yeah? That’s awesome.” She turned her attention back to me. “So just me and Jared and Mindy. I texted her and she’s totally into it, so you can’t say no. We’d disappoint her.”
“Allie…” I gave her the Mom Stare coupled with the Mom Tone.
“I know, I know. I should have asked first, but we were planning and it’s a gorgeous day, and—”
“Don’t you think there’s something you’ve forgotten?” I asked.
She stared at me blankly, and I cast my eyes sideways in the direction of Jared.
“Oh! Right. Duh.” She cleared her throat. “Mom, this is Jared. Jared, this is my mom.”
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Connor,” he said, sounding like a perfectly polite teen. So far, so good.
“You, too. How did you—”
I was about to ask how he came to be around Allie and Mindy and Eliza yesterday, but Allie barreled on.
“Jared goes to Coronado High, too. He’s the guy I told you about. The one we met on the boardwalk last night,” she added, glancing toward Eliza.
Considering Jared knows exactly what he did on the boardwalk last night, I would have expected her to be less cryptic, but I appreciated that she realized we might be overheard. So kudos to my kid for thinking responsibly.
“Jared, I appreciate what you did for the girls. Do you drive?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m seventeen, but I’ve had my license for two years. I had a special permit when I was fifteen because my parents don’t drive and I had to get around. I’m happy to drive us all to the beach and then home again.”
“I appreciate the offer,” I told him. “But why don’t you meet us at the house in fifteen minutes? I’d like the chance to get to know you better.”
My daughter dropped her head, looking absolutely mortified.
“Mom, is that really—”
“Yes.” I understood her frustration. Other high school friends had been driving her around for the last year without me running a background check.
But those friends weren’t living with one foot in the demon world.
Jared might have helped the girls out, but before I trusted him to drive them, I needed a lot more information.
I dug in my purse for a piece of paper and a pen, then scribbled our address on the back of a grocery receipt. “Meet us there?”
“Sure thing Mrs. Connor,” he said.
“For crying out loud, Mom!” she said, after he waved and headed off towards his car. “Do you have any idea how embarrassing that was?”
“Allie, sweetheart, this isn’t a boy thing. It’s a demon thing,” I added, lowering my voice to an almost inaudible whisper.
“But that doesn’t mean he can’t like me.”
“I’m sure he does like you, but I need to—”
“Mom.” She winced a little, as if she didn’t mean to get so loud. “Mom, I just want—Oh, never mind. It’s fine.”
She shot a frustrated glance toward Stuart and Eliza, then turned and headed back to the playscape where she plunked herself down beside her brother.
I exhaled, guilt welling inside me. Because in that moment I realized why she was so frustrated.
It wasn’t a demon thing.
It wasn’t a boy thing.
It was a teen thing, and right then, all my daughter wanted was to feel like an average teen, even if for just one last, lingering moment.
Since I once again got waylaid by Delores on the way to the parking lot, Stuart and Eliza easily beat us home.
I found a note from Stuart on the kitchen table telling me he would text with an ETA tomorrow.
I texted back that I would fill him in on all things demonic when he arrived back in San Diablo, and though he returned a smiley face, I was quite certain that he was mostly smiling about being away.
The truth is that I’d never wanted to get Stuart involved in this part of my life.
Of course, I’d never anticipated that this part of my life would come knocking on my suburban doorstep.
But now that I was back in the demon hunting game, I couldn’t help but want him to be all-in.
I wanted him fighting the good fight, telling me that we were going to figure this out.
Telling me that we were going to be able to protect Allie and help her get through whatever was coming.
I didn’t want him running scared from her, but I couldn’t help but fear that was exactly what he was doing.
I shoved the thoughts aside as Allie called my name, the shrill sound of her voice sending terror shooting through me.
“Allie?” I turned, grabbing a knife leftover from breakfast off the kitchen table as I practically leaped into the living area, only to find that there was no demonic crisis.
This crisis had little brother written all over it.
The guilty party howled on the floor, clearly upset by this sister’s reaction to the chocolate milk he’d spilled all over her favorite white T-shirt, not to mention my beige sofa.
“Mother! I just changed!”
“Not a crisis,” I said calmly, picking Timmy up and soothing him. “Go change again. I’ll wash your shirt, and I’ll see what I can do about the couch. And you, Mister,” I said, tapping Timmy, nose, “you get to go play quietly in the corner.”
“Play band?” Timmy asked as Allie huffed in frustration before pounding up the stairs.
“That, kiddo, is not quiet.” I plopped him on the floor. “Coloring books.”
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” He’d behaved so well earlier that this meltdown was probably inevitable.
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.” I got down on my haunches as I said the word over and over again, matching his loudness. This wasn’t a trick I tried often, and it must have been absurd enough to distract him into submission, because his eyes went wide and he burst out laughing.
“Coloring books?”
“Okay, Mommy.”
Score one for the adult team.
I gave him a kiss on the forehead, then dragged over the basket where we keep the coloring books and crayons, not to mention the blanket that goes under them in a somewhat futile effort to protect the carpet.
Meanwhile, I walked back into the kitchen to get the Shout and a rag, fervently hoping that the people who’d Scotchgarded the couch had done their job properly.
“You could’ve helped, you know,” I said to Eddie, who had watched the drama play out from his front row seat, better known as the recliner.
“I could have, but I didn’t.”
I rolled my eyes. There was really no point arguing.
I glanced toward the stairs to see if Allie was on her way back, but saw and heard nothing. “What do you think about the boy?”
Although Eddie had skipped Mass this morning—“What’s the point of going if Rita ain’t gonna be there?”—I’d brought him up to speed in the first few minutes of our return home.
Before we’d gone to Rome, Eddie and Rita had been pretty much inseparable. She’d even gone so far as to give Allie a taser for her fifteenth birthday, a gift I’d thought entirely inappropriate until it proved its worth in a demon-related crisis.
“I think I’m glad Rita stood me up today,” Eddie replied to my question about Jared. “I wanna meet this kid who helped Allie out the other night.”
On that, we were agreed. “So why did she stand you up?” I scowled at the stain on the cushion. From what I could tell it was expanding, not shrinking.
“Eh,” he said. “She’s got a cousin in town or some such. Niece, I think. Maybe a nephew. Don’t know, don’t care.”
“Really? You two are so tight. You don’t want to meet her family?”
I gave up and flipped the cushion over, relieved to see the other side was clean and I hadn’t used that trick on this particular cushion before.
Eddie grunted and shrugged his shoulders. I wisely decided not to press the point, because it occurred to me that maybe it was Rita who didn’t want her family to meet Eddie. And if that was the case, I could see why he was grumpy. Although to be honest, curmudgeonly defined Eddie’s usual state.
The doorbell chimed, and I headed that direction as Allie’s footsteps pounded on the stairs.
She managed to skid into the entryway ahead of me, now in a pink tee and shorts over her bathing suit.
“You’re still going to say okay to the beach, right?
” She looked at me with pleading eyes. “A boy hasn’t liked me in forever.
I asked Mindy to go with us, but she’s got rehearsal for the musical.
But I’m the one he asked out, so please let me go by myself. Please, Mommy, please.”
It was the Mommy that got me. It had been a long time since she’d called me that. “Sweetheart, the last time you went out, you were attacked by a demon.” Although to be fair, attacked wasn’t really the right word.
“Mom! Think about where we live and who we are. One, I go out all the time without getting attacked. Two, it’s not like there was an APB put out announcing that I’ve got some weird funky powers, was there?
And, three,” she added before I could answer that there might very well have been, “Jared’ll be with me, and he already proved that he knows how to handle himself where demons are concerned. So it would be the two of us together.”
“Allie...”
“Mom...” she said in exactly the same tone.
“Just let the boy in,” Eddie said. “We’re leaving the poor kid out there in the elements.”
Considering it was a gorgeous California day I wasn’t too concerned about his health and well-being, but Eddie had called it right with regard to politeness. I nodded to Allie, who hurried forward, gathered herself, then opened the door. “Hey,” she said. “Come on in.”
“Hi.” His smile was equally wide and equally shy, and I gave him points for that. Then he looked at me and extended a hand, which I took. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Mrs. Conner.”