Chapter 16. Annette
Annette
Morgan looked calmer than he had any right to be, sitting there in the middle of the couch in his blue plaid pajama bottoms and a loose white T-shirt.
I, on the other hand, was barely holding it together. I wanted to hug him and I wanted to kick his ass, and I couldn’t do either one. “How much of our conversation did you overhear?”
“All of it,” he said.
To my left, Temple was inspecting the books on the small shelves by the entertainment center. He pulled out a Calvin and Hobbes treasury and asked, “Hey, can I borrow this?”
“Not now,” I snapped. To Morgan, I said, “Let’s start with Sage Parker. Do you have any idea where he is?”
Neither his expression nor his voice changed. “No.”
I pulled up the ottoman and sat in front of him. “Did you give him the black-magic pills?”
“I didn’t give them to him, no.” He rolled his eyes, the first sign of annoyance he’d shown. “Sage must have stolen them from my room.”
“How many did he steal?”
“Six.”
“And how many more do you have?”
Morgan didn’t answer. No matter. Between Jenny and Temple, we’d find every last pill in the house before we left. “Morgan, those pills put four of your classmates in the hospital.”
His calm cracked, and he turned away. “They weren’t strong enough. The things you see when you take them are . . . intense. For some people, it’s overwhelming.”
My chest felt like it was being crushed by a thousand stones. “Tell me what you saw.”
“Or else what?”
“Answer the question,” snapped Blake.
“He said you wouldn’t understand.” Morgan’s expression hardened, turning him into a stranger. “You’re ashamed of what we are, Dad. You’re scared of it. Well, I’m not. I want to be like Grandma and Aunt Jenny and Uncle Temple.”
If anything was going to make Blake blow a gasket, it was his son saying he wanted to be more like me.
“Why do you want to be like us?” I asked before Blake could respond.
“You used to save people. Especially Aunt Jenny. She never cared what anyone thought. She snuck out every night. She lied to her parents and her teachers and everyone else, but she was a hero. She saved the world again and again.”
“You’re no Hunter,” I said firmly.
“Maybe I could be,” he shot back. “Mr. Barclay is teaching us, just like the guy who used to teach Aunt Jenny. He’s helping us see and making us strong enough to protect the world.”
Jenny moved forward, silently asking to speak. I gave a slight nod.
“Morgan, there’s so much I haven’t told you about what it was like being a Hunter,” Jenny said. “Felipe wasn’t the good guy. Sometimes, neither was I. You don’t know the toll it takes.”
“Nothing worth doing is easy,” said Morgan. “Isn’t that what you’re always telling me, Dad? What about that Ben Jonson quote you love so much? ‘He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.’ I’m not afraid of adversity.”
Blake’s face reddened. “There’s strength and then there’s being a damn fool,” he shouted.
“Enough, both of you.” I stood and stepped between them. “Blake, I need you to walk away.”
He whirled, aiming the full force of his anger at me instead of Morgan. Which was what I’d expected. “You’re in my house, talking to my son—”
“And you’re not helping.” I put my hands on his shoulders, willing him to listen. “You’re furious, and you have every right to be, but our priority is to find Sage and Alex before—”
He slapped my hands away. “I never should have moved us here. This shit followed you around your whole life. Now it’s infected my son.”
Jenny touched the small of my back. Her hand rested there, no pressure, just a reminder of her presence. A reminder that I wasn’t alone. It was enough to keep me from saying something unforgiveable.
“Blake Andrew Davis,” I said quietly. “I get it. You feel scared and out of control. So do I. If we’re going to get through this, I need you to trust me. Let me talk to my grandson.”
He looked at Morgan, then back at me. The muscles in his neck and shoulder were visibly taut. If he clenched his jaw any harder, he’d shatter his teeth. “I’ll be upstairs.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He walked away like he hadn’t heard.
“Are you all right?” Jenny whispered.
No, I wasn’t fucking all right. If Blake and I had made any progress mending things in recent years, I’d blown it all to hell tonight. I needed to scream and cry and get drunk and get laid, not necessarily in that order.
Instead, I sat back down on the ottoman and tried to calm my breathing.
“Mr. Barclay told me you’d freak out if you knew,” said Morgan.
I clasped my hands together to keep the claws from coming out. “A strange man gave you drugs and told you to keep it a secret from your family. That didn’t raise any red flags?”
“How old was Aunt Jenny when a strange man started secretly training her to hunt and fight and kill?”
“You think what Felipe did to her was a good thing?”
“I think the world’s a better place because it had Jenny Winter to protect it.”
What had Alex said to turn my grandson into this cocky little shit? The more we argued, the more Morgan was going to dig in his heels. He was too much like his father. And his grandmother.
I needed a different way to break through that stubbornness. I opened my purse and pulled out the photo-booth pictures I’d taken from the school. “This is Noah Hovenkamp, right? He’s part of your group.”
Morgan didn’t answer.
I pointed to the burns on my face. “He and two of his friends did this to me.”
The blood drained from his cheeks. “What are you talking about? You told me that was a cooking accident.”
“I lied because I didn’t want you to worry. That was a mistake.” I tugged down my collar so he could see the burns on my neck. “Noah and two other kids attacked me with holy water. If I’d been a full-blooded demon like Great-Grandma Lily, they would have killed me.”
I’d shaken him. He chewed his lower lip, and when he spoke, the certainty was gone. “I knew those three had done something. I wasn’t there the day Mr. Barclay chewed them out, and nobody would tell me exactly what had gone down.”
“He probably told them not to,” I said. “He was afraid of how you’d react if you knew your buddies tried to kill me.”
Jenny’s knees cracked as she crouched next to me. “You said Alex—Mr. Barclay—was teaching you to protect the world. Do you think that’s what Noah and his friends were doing? Trying to protect the world from a demon?”
“Maybe. They didn’t know Grandma’s not like that . . .” Morgan slumped. “Mr. B told us not to engage. He said we weren’t ready yet.”
That yet chilled me. “Morgan, do you know what’s in those pills you’ve been taking?”
“Mr. Barclay calls it the sacred elixir.” He stared at his hands. “There’s a ritual we do to collect it. It’s like tapping an interdimensional keg.”
Temple looked up from the comics he was reading. “It’s not an elixir. It’s a living creature. Part of one, at least. You’ve basically been doing shots of eldritch mucus.”
Morgan’s mouth puckered like he’d tasted something rancid, but he rallied with, “That doesn’t automatically make it bad. Lots of things sound gross when you know where they come from. Like vanilla. Did you know vanilla flavor comes from beaver butt glands?”
“Castor glands,” said Temple. “That was fifty years ago. They’ve got cheaper synthetic flavors these days.”
“Hold up.” Jenny made a time-out sign with her hands. “What do you mean, fifty years ago? Did I eat beaver-butt ice cream as a child?”
Temple shrugged. “If that upsets you, wait until you hear about civet coffee.”
“Focus, all of you,” I said. Morgan believed Alex was turning them into the next Slay Team, a group of hunters who would fight evil and save the world while cracking jokes and striking badass poses. “What kind of training has he given you?”
“Not much,” Morgan admitted. “Most of the time, we do the spells and then just hang out, playing games or working on homework. He says once we’ve done the final ritual, we won’t need training.”
“What’s the final ritual?” asked Temple.
“That’s when our powers become permanent.” Morgan stared past us, like he was seeing his future self, all buff and dressed in black and decked out with weapons like . . . well, like Ronnie. “We’ll be faster and stronger.”
“At what cost?” Temple closed Calvin and Hobbes and returned it to the shelf. “There’s always a price. Your vitality, your family, even your soul.”
Morgan turned away. “It’s not that kind of magic.”
“Tell us where to find Alex,” I said. “Let us talk to him. If you’re right about him, maybe we can—”
“I can’t.”
“Morgan . . .”
“No, seriously. There was an oath. I thought it was stupid, but it’s real. They smeared a drop of blood from my little finger onto a scrap of paper with the oath written on it, then burned the paper. If I tell you where to find him or betray any of the others, my finger will burn.”
“So?” asked Temple. “You’ve got nine more.”
“I remember those oaths,” said Jenny. “They’re called pinky swears. A warlock in LA invented the spell. He used it to make little kids steal for him. Three kids lost their fingers.”
“Temple, can you undo the . . .” I had to force myself to say the words. “The pinky swear?”
“Maybe.” He tilted his head toward Morgan. “But not if he doesn’t want me to.”
The stubborn set of Morgan’s jaw answered for him.
“Morgan, what’s under your shirt?” Jenny had switched to her healer tone, calm and reassuring. It made me nervous.
His eyes widened ever so slightly. He sat up and straightened the front of his T-shirt. “That’s inappropriate, Aunt Jenny.”
“He has something hidden in there,” Jenny said to me. “I saw it move.”
Morgan crossed both arms over his stomach. “You’re crazy. You can’t—”
“That’s enough.” I stood. My claws weren’t out and I hadn’t raised my voice, but Morgan scooted backward on the couch like I’d turned into Freddy Kreuger or whatever horror villain the kids were into. “Show us.”
He looked us up and down like he was seriously considering trying to take us on. Jenny just shook her head, a plea and a warning.