Chapter Five #2
“You’re really working hard not to answer me, which means you absolutely were responsible for yanking her away and don’t want to tell me how or why you did it. Fine. I won’t push.” I crossed my arms and scowled up at him. “But, uh, thanks.”
His head inclined the slightest bit in acknowledgement of my gratitude. I wanted so badly to know how he’d done it, but I held my tongue.
“Soooo, Bloody Mary,” I said. “What’s her deal with me?”
He drew in a deep, rattling breath and sighed, frosting the sweat on my temples. “Mary is drawn to you because of your power but also fears you due to its instability.”
“Instability?”
“Your elemental magic is colliding with your demon magic, creating an unpredictable situation. You could easily have destroyed her if you had been angry enough. Of course, your rage might have incinerated the entire structure and everyone within its walls, but that’s where the unpredictability comes into play.
” He sighed, again frosting the nervous sweat beading on my temples.
“Though a wretched, miserable beast, Mary is intelligent enough to be wary. There is a reason she is so long-lived.”
So many questions. So godsdamned many. I selected one from my frothing cauldron of rapidly building rage.
“Demon magic? I’ve heard of power derived from the demonic, but I’ve never heard it put that way. Are you sure about the magic part?”
Sexton appeared taken aback. “Why wouldn’t I be certain? Generations of my children have gone mad or perished due to this very thing. I am the foremost authority on the subject,” he said frostily.
Literally. My nose, earlobes, and lips had gone numb.
“S-Sexton,” I chattered. “T-Turn down the ice.”
He did as I asked but frowned down at me the entire time. “Why are you so fragile?”
“Forgive me for not being acclimated to the damned Arctic circle,” I snapped. “I’m a human being, for goddess’s sake.”
“No, you are not. You are an elemental witch and the granddaughter of a demon. Neither are human.”
Why did he have to say things like that?
“I’d like to run it back to the ‘gone mad or perished’ thing, if you don’t mind.” I gritted my teeth, forcing them to stop chattering. “Are you telling me I might lose my mind?”
“Or perish.”
The bland, throwaway way he said it made me want to scream. “You don’t seem very concerned about my impending death, Grandpa.”
“Because I do not believe you will perish or go mad. I believe you will find a way to manage them.”
Should I have been flattered that he thought so much of me, or worried that he seemed so damnably offhand about the whole thing?
Something he’d said to me recently came to mind:
”Don’t be too stubborn, Betty Lennox. I am afraid you might not have the time.”
A warning. Sexton had wanted me to get it together because he’d known, like my mother, what was coming.
Of course, he hadn’t just gone ahead and told me about it like a normal, healthy person would.
No one in my family did things like that.
“Functioning dysfunctional” was practically our family motto.
Speaking of family…
“I’m ready for you to tell me about my father now,” I lied. My blood pressure was probably in the stratosphere. I felt anything but ready. “Start with his name.”
“Christoph Chevalier. He was born of a German mother and a French father.”
“And where do you come into the picture?”
“A French stepfather,” he corrected.
“You weren’t around to help raise him?”
“I was. Watching. Waiting. His mother, Rose, was dear to my soul, as was Charles Chevalier, the man who raised my Christoph. He felt differently about me. It was to be expected, once he understood the risk I’d taken by fathering a human child—children—with Rose.”
“Children. Lucian’s father was also Rose’s child?”
The name stuck in my throat. Lucian Chevalier, aka Cousin Stalker McMurderface, had nearly killed me to retaliate against my mother and Sexton for reasons I still wasn’t clear on.
Between my experiences that night and once having my head thrust through a portal into Hell, it was no surprise I sometimes woke up screaming.
“Yes.” He peered down at the grass around his shoes, long arms crossed atop his bony knees. I wasn’t sure Sexton had ever been a kid—I had the impression that demons came into existence fully formed, like gods—but if he had, this was what he’d looked like. “Luther.”
“You stayed with her long enough to have two kids?”
“They were twins,” he said. “Luther was the eldest by fourteen minutes and three seconds.”
“Were you present at their birth?”
The way he looked at me before he nodded told me yes, but that no one had known it. Wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but this was Sexton. The usual social rules did not apply.
“I was given consent, if that’s why you are eying me in that reproachful way. Rose only asked that I remain hidden so her husband would not feel territorial and lash out at me, risking his life.”
“I have so many questions about your relationship with her, and yet, I’m not sure how much I actually want to know about my grandparents’ love life.”
“Rose saw me in a way I’d never experienced before or since. I did not soften my appearance with her as I sometimes do when among humans. I was as you see me now, and she…”
“She loved you for you,” I finished for him.
“Yes.”
In the distance, the picnickers were packing up their car.
Fennel was crouched beside a gravestone equidistant to the bench where Sexton and I were seated and the tombstone where Cecil was passed out.
A pair of roadrunners chased a lizard over one of the gravel paths, and doves roosting in a nearby tree cooed a summer song.
A mild breeze warmed my face. It felt surreal to be surrounded by this much peace during a time of such emotional turmoil.
“She knew I couldn’t remain at her side,” he continued. “Staying would have put Rose and our sons in terrible danger. I had seen smitings of entire generations for less serious offenses. When she asked me to leave, it was a mercy—for us all.”
“Smitings?” I asked. “You mean from other demons? Gods?”
His neck creaked as he nodded. “A risk I understood going in. It was selfish to love her, and yet I find myself unable to regret it.” His mouth lifted at the corners—it was for only a second, a mere muscle twitch, but I caught the smile.
“Was she human?” I asked.
“A witch. Not an elemental like you and your mother, but a strong learned one.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand why she’d marry another man if she loved you.”
“Rose had always been fond of Charles, and he’d long been in love with her. When he discovered her circumstances, he offered to marry her and raise the baby as his own. Babies,” he corrected.
Her circumstances? What a strange way to say he’d gotten her pregnant. “But she loved you.”
“Yes. And she also loved him.” He clicked his teeth chidingly. “You are an adult human, Betty. You know it is possible to love two beings at once in different ways.”
Not from experience—at least not in the way he was insinuating—but I supposed I could imagine the possibility.
“Charles was a strong mage. He was aware of our relationship, but he loved her. She was quite easy to love.” A trace of tenderness entered his voice.
“He swore to raise our children as his own as long as I never interfered in their lives, and he was as true to his word as I was to mine. Rose chose her life partner well.”
Clearly, he’d loved the woman, yet he understood—even approved of—her choice to be with Charles instead of him. I didn’t know if I’d be so generous with Ronan in the same situation.
Then again, Rose’s reasoning hadn’t been so much about choosing Charles as it had been about protecting her children. I suspected things would’ve gone differently had the circumstances been less volatile.
“Is she alive?” I asked, hopefully.
He slowly shook his head. “She and Charles were killed in an automobile accident twenty, no forty, years ago.” He made a fluttering motion with one hand. “The human world’s passage of time eludes me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“As am I.” He sat up on the bench, coming back to himself. “You require an explanation of what to expect now that you’re coming into your full power.”
“Death or lunacy, apparently,” I said.
“Neither,” he corrected. “I expect you will not only survive, but thrive, as your father did.”
“What happened to him?” I asked. “Why didn’t he ever visit?”
“It was out of his control. He had a job to do. A calling.”
“Exactly what does it mean to be a guardian of Hades?”
“My son’s magic kept the underworld in check. While he was in charge, it was next to impossible to summon a demon like that annoying insect you run into from time to time.” He peered down his nose at me. “I have no idea why you allow him to continue to exist.”
“Who? Gnath?”
He gave me a lip curl, chin lift, and slight nod telling me wordlessly that mentioning the highway demon by name was beneath me. Sexton was good at those kinds of looks.
“When Christoph was helming Charon’s ferry,” he said, the frost back in his tone, “the demon Belial would not have dared to show its face in the presence of one of our bloodline. Everyone feared your father. He had power that even the gods envied.”
So many questions. Again. “Helming Charon’s ferry?”
“I am speaking metaphorically.”
“You say that, but I worry you’re being literal. That my father was actually piloting the dark ferryman’s boat on the godsdamned river Styx.”
“Interpretation is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.” Sexton’s bones clacked as he drew to his feet.
I also stood and nodded at Fennel, who returned the gesture then stalked over to the gnome version of Sleeping Beauty and poked him awake.
“You didn’t tell me how my father died,” I said.
“Christoph died doing his job.”
I absently splayed my hand over my heart. “Keeping the underworld in check?”
“Protecting you.”
The ride home was a blur of angry Fennel tail thumps, Cecil snores, and Elton John songs on KLXX’s Double Thursday lunch hour. By the time “Rocketman” played, I was ready to launch a spaceship to Neptune with both my partners aboard.
“Stop with the thumps before you give me a headache,” I snapped.
Fennel scowled at me in the way only a ticked-off cat can.
“You know what’s eating at me? The way he described my father as “helming Charon’s ferry” as if he were some kind of hell pirate. Cool thrash metal band name, but what does it mean?” I switched off the radio. “Full disclosure, I’m low-key freaking out right now.”
“Meow,” Fennel drawled.
“Fine. I’m high-key freaking out. It’s not fair. I’ve finally got my magic working better than ever. The saguaros are back. I’m able to protect not only my park, but Ronan, too—or at least help him as much as he’ll allow. Why now?”
Cecil blinked sleepily up at me. He removed his hat, pulled a spike of lavender from within its bottomless depths, and extended it to me. It was a sweet gesture, and because Cecil rarely offered sweet anything, I accepted it with a smile.
“Thanks for the bud, bud,” I said.
Cecil rolled his eyes and put his hat back on.
“Yeah, I know the teeny parts are the buds, but I’ve always called lavender spikes buds.
No one except you cares about the difference between a spike and a bud, anyway—except actual spikers, I guess, and they’re more worried about the kind of spikes that go directly into your brain, not the kind we grow.
See what I mean? I’m babbling. More evidence of my weak grip on my sanity. ”
The boys relaxed in the cat car seat. This wasn’t my first freakout, and they were accustomed to hunkering down until the storm passed.
“Did you hear what he said when I tied his shoe?”
On our way back to his strange little house, I’d noticed Sexton’s running shoe was untied. I couldn’t imagine the series of creaking, origami folds his body would make to address it, so I’d stopped him, knelt, and tied it. When I was back on my feet, he gave me a stern, cold look.
“Never bend the knee to demons, Betty.”
“You’re not only a demon, Sexton. You’re my grandfather.”
His jaw worked as he studied my face. “I am demon, Betty. You can never fully trust my kind. Remember that.”
Then he’d thanked me for my assistance and dismissed me, striding away in his stark white and navy-blue trainers. Dad shoes.
Grandad shoes.
It hit me then: the shoes, the navy slacks, the short-sleeved white dress shirt. During our walk in the cemetery, a breeze had lifted his gray windbreaker to reveal a black leather eyeglasses case clipped to his chest pocket.
Sexton didn’t need glasses. He didn’t even need eyesight. The cemetery demon existed on a whole other plane and possessed senses I could only imagine.
There could only be one reason he was carrying them.
“Guys, I think Sexton’s gone full grandpa.”