Chapter 14
“So what do you think, Mrs. Connor?” Jared asked. “Can Allie and I go to the beach?”
“Excuse me?” Allie’s voice rose with indignation. “You’re just going to ask for me?”
Jared’s brow furrowed as he looked from Allie to me and then back to Allie again. “I thought you wanted to.”
“Yeah,” she said in the sarcastic tone that I was well familiar with. “At least, I did before you turned out to be Dracula with an agenda.”
“Agenda?”
“It might not be so bad, girlie.” Eddie said. “I worked with a vamp once. Nice gal. Tiger between the shee—”
“Eddie!” I nailed him with a hard glare.
“Yeah, well, just saying that vamps can make good partners. All depends on how much they’re on the sauce, just like the kid said.”
“He’s not a kid,” I pointed out. “Not by a long shot.” To the extent Allie was interested in Jared as a boyfriend, I needed to nip that one in the bud.
“No, I’m not,” he said. “That’s why I can protect you,” he looked hard at Allie. “You don’t have to worry if I’m around.”
“I don’t need your protection.” I could hear the indignation shifting into fury.
“Okay...” He dragged the word out just like your typical teenager who was less than a century old. “You’re probably right. But you can ask me questions. I probably have a lot I could teach you.”
“There’s not a thing I want from you right now.” She pushed back from the table and stood. “I’ll see you in school in September. Mom, I’ve got some things I need to do in my room.” And with that, she stormed out of the kitchen in a huff.
Across the table from me, Jared looked with wide eyes from me to Eddie. “What? What did I do?”
I fought the urge to shake my head. This poor, clueless boy. How could he have walked this earth for over a century, and still not understood the female population?
“You’ve been seventeen for most of your life, and you really don’t know?” Eddie apparently had no qualms about calling the boy out.
“What? She needs more training. She needs to be in the field. I can work with her. I can help her. I can go out there with her and let her get some honest to goodness experience hunting demons.”
“There are so many things wrong with that statement,” I said.
“For one—no, actually let’s just forget the first one.
” I would never hear the end of it if I told this boy that Allie thought he was truly boyfriend material.
“The bottom line is that I don’t know you well enough to let you take her out on a demon-hunting excursion with just the two of you. ”
“But it’s the perfect scenario. It’ll look like she’s out with a guy from her school. Do you want to bring along her friend? What was her name? Eliza? The one at the Church?”
“She’s my cousin.”
“So, does she know the sitch?”
“She does. And she could take you out if necessary.”
He winced at that. “It wouldn’t be necessary. But bring her along.”
“She’s not available for the next few days.”
He sagged in defeat. “Look, I just want to make sure that Allie’s safe. If she is what rumor says she is, she’s going to be important.”
I stifled a shiver. “What exactly do you think she is?”
He offered a twisted smile, looking boyish again.
“Honestly? I don’t really know. Some new breed, I guess.
But she sure got the demon population buzzing.
They’re out for her, you know that right?
Because if you don’t, you should. She needs someone watching her back, all the time. And what better than a boyfriend?”
I exhaled. For better or for worse, I believed what he was saying. “Look, it wasn’t a stupid plan, at least assuming I trust you, which I’m still not sure about. But you may have shot yourself in the foot if the end game is taking Allie out to protect and train.”
“What do you mean?”
Men. Some things never change.
“Jared ... Don’t you get it? She likes you. That way. And she thought you liked her that way too.”
“Oh.” He sat there for a moment. “Oh. Yeah. Well. I guess that’s awkward.”
I exhaled. Beside me, Eddie looked like he was about to burst into laughter. I shot him a hard glare, and he immediately sobered. With a sigh I turned my attention back to Jared. “Look, just ... just give us some time, okay? Do you have a phone number?”
“Um, yeah, of course.”
Now, Eddie did snort. “He’s a vampire, not a Luddite.”
The sharp blare of a horn interrupted the conversation before I could tell Eddie that I wasn’t actually questioning whether or not the boy was attuned to technology.
“That’s my ride,” Eddie said. “You fill me in later. Normally, I wouldn’t want to miss a bit of this drama, except tonight I’ve got plans for some drama of my own.” He waggled his brows as he stood.
As he patted himself down, checking for his wallet and keys, I turned my attention back to Jared. “You should go too,” I said. “I’ll be in touch. I need to talk to Allie. And I need to talk to my husband. And then I need to talk to her father. You get that, right?”
He nodded.
“And after all that, I need to talk to the Vatican.” I flashed him the kind of smile that could either be an invitation or a threat. “I guess I’m just one of those overprotective moms.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But I think most moms don’t vet teenage boys through the Vatican...”
“I have not worked directly with this vampire,” Father Corletti told me.
“But I am aware of him. Over the years, Father Donnelly has cultivated a network of spies. This boy—this vampire—is among them. Apparently he even helped your Mr. Duvall—the demon version—smuggle the key from California to Rome.”
“Really?” We’d encountered the Thomas Duvall demon in Rome, only learning that he’d been aligned with the good side after he’d been impaled through the eye by one of the bad guys.
His mission, though, had been to hide the key that could open the gate to hell from the demonic minions who were trying to do exactly that.
“He really worked with Duvall and that contingent?”
“So Father Donnelly has told me.”
“Father Donnelly?” I repeated, feeling a hard rock form in my gut.
I didn’t trust Father Donnelly. Father Donnelly was the man who worked with Eric’s parents with the crazy goal of breeding the ultimate Demon Hunter.
Frankly, I would have thought a priest would know better than to play God, and the fact that he played that role with my husband and daughter just pissed me off all the more.
“I know you do not trust him, mia cara, but we must all be forgiven our missteps. His heart was in the right place, and his goal, as is all of ours, is to hold back the evil that wants to invade this world.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Honestly, where that man is concerned, sometimes I’m not so sure.”
“I am.”
I said nothing.
“Katherine?”
“I trust you, Father. You know that. But I think you’re wrong on this.”
“Then we will have to agree to disagree. But if you trust me, I hope that you will at least give him the benefit of the doubt.”
I closed my eyes, not liking the direction of this conversation. Because I did trust Father Corletti. The gentle priest was the closest thing in the world I had to a parent, and I loved him with all my heart.
If he said I could trust Father Donnelly, then I would do my very best to find a way to do that. But that didn’t mean it was going to be easy.
“But what about this vampire?” I pressed. “You don’t know him at all? He’s just one of Father Donnelly’s spies? How can I trust him? For all I know, he has Father Donnelly duped.”
Father Corletti’s low chuckle washed over me. “I know that you do not think highly of Father Donnelly. I wish that were different, mia cara. But again, I must tell you that you can trust the boy because Father Donnelly trusts him.”
I didn’t mean to, but I actually snorted in disbelief. “I don’t know, Father. I don’t think I can.”
“That is one of your best qualities, Katherine. You have faith, and yet you do not take the world on faith. But, my child, at some point, we must make the choice to not only believe that good exists, but to see it when we look at the world. Everyone has the capacity for good, no matter what is in them.”
“You really believe that?”
“If God created the universe, then He must have created the demons, too. Thus, the possibility exists. You should know that more than anyone.”
I closed my eyes, thinking about Eric and Allie. “I do. But this is my baby we’re talking about. What if he’s—what if we’re wrong. What if Jared is only trying to get her alone? Trying to capture her? Trying to hurt her?”
“She’s been training,” Father Corletti said. “I have seen her skill, and Marcus has told me many times how much she impressed him. Her skills, her strength. She surpassed his expectations. There’s more to learn, of course, but your daughter is not weak. In fact, I think—”
“What? What do you think?” I know what I was thinking, I was thinking about what he just said about exceeding Marcus’s expectations.
Allie had trained with Marcus in the weeks after she’d sealed shut the gate to hell and before we returned home. I’d told him what we’d been doing training-wise in San Diablo, which frankly wasn’t much.
If she had surpassed that—if she’d been as strong and agile as she’d been in that chamber deep beneath the streets of Rome— then I think it’s fair to say that something about that day had brought to the surface skills that had been dormant in my daughter.
But whether that was for good or for ill, I couldn’t know. Like Father Corletti said, I could only believe. I could only have faith.
And I chose to believe that her skills were for the good.
I realized that Father hadn’t answered my question. “Father? What do you think?”
“I think she’s more powerful than either of us realize.”
“Yeah. Me too.” I sighed. “So why doesn’t that make me feel better?
“You’re her mother, Katherine. You wish to protect her. That will never change. But you can’t always do that. In fact, you never really could. You could only do your best.”
I closed my eyes and whispered, “You’re saying that I’m all out of excuses.”
“Perhaps.”