Binding the Shadows
Page 42

And I suppose, after pondering all this, it was only natural that I had nightmares that night.
At first I dreamed I was attending Merrimoth’s funeral, a rainy and gray graveside service in a crumbling cemetery. Most of the attendees had blue and green halos that glowed beneath the cover of their umbrellas. But when I looked around at the gravestones, I noticed sinister occult symbols chiseled into the rain-darkened granite instead of names.
I stepped to the front of the crowd and discovered that it wasn’t a preacher leading the service, but my father, dressed in black ritual robes.
The grave opened at my feet. They weren’t burying a body. They were hoisting up an old casket. And when they pried open the moldering lid, I stared down at my mother’s rotting skeleton.
Her arm moved. One bony finger traced an invisible sigil in the air. I shivered, feeling a current of strong, dark magick undulating in the air between us, and watched as her muscles and organs grew between her bones. Veins and arteries appeared, filling with blood. Her heart pumped. Her skin knit itself together, spreading pale and thin over her Phoenix-like body.
Blank eyes filled the dead sockets inside her skull. They stared up at me, looking like wobbly, slick eggs. And when her mouth opened to speak, I screamed and woke up in a cold sweat.
Most people would agree that funerals aren’t cheery occasions. But when we made it to David Merrimoth’s the next morning, it was the polar opposite of my dream: the atmosphere was more like an awards ceremony than a memorial service.
Cars packed the sunny parking lot of the largest church in La Sirena. Every important Earthbound in a hundred-mile vicinity had shown up, dressed to the nines. I smiled at them; they stared at my silver halo. Did any of these people realize I was the last person to see Merrimoth alive?
“You have nothing to feel guilty about, so cut that out,” Lon said in a low voice.
“I don’t feel guilty.”
“Could’ve fooled me. You didn’t kill Merrimoth. He did that himself.”
Dammit. Okay, maybe I did feel guilty, but it was so mixed up with a thousand other negative feelings—my creepy-ass dream about my mother, concern for Kar Yee, the stress of getting the bar fixed back up, the disappointment in losing Telly yesterday afternoon . . . the meeting I’d scheduled with Hajo later that night.
And Yvonne.
The Giovannis came back well after midnight from talking with Yvonne, and their pronouncement was that Yvonne was more lucid and humble than she’d been in years.
Good for her. Truly.
But you’ll have to excuse me if I wasn’t turning cartwheels and breaking out champagne.
Anyway, it just soured my already anxious mood. And how Lon’s empathic knack managed to hone in on “guilt over Merrimoth” inside my woebegone stew of emotional negativity was beyond me. I sighed dramatically.
Lon hit the button to set the alarm on the silver Audi. To be honest, I preferred his mud-spattered SUV with Jupe’s comics lining the floorboards. Or maybe it’s just that I hated the fact that every time I’d been a passenger inside the Audi, we were going to some event connected to the Hellfire Club.
“Chin up,” he said. “This won’t last long.”
One warm, strong hand wrapped around mine as he led me toward La Sirena All Souls, a sprawling Mission style stucco-and-cedar church surrounded by gently curving palm trees stretching above its terra cotta roof. My heels clicked against rough mosaic tiles that circled a star-shaped fountain in front of the entrance.
Lon wore a perfectly tailored black suit that revealed teasing outlines of hard muscle in his arms and thighs as he moved. I stole a glance up at him, all golden and chiseled, green eyes squinting into California sun, glinting honey hair that kissed the tops of his shoulders. He looked radiant and otherworldly, like a painting of some mythical demigod, crowned with his green and gold halo.
God, but he was a beautiful man. And he treated me like I was both a goddess and his equal. Every morning I woke up in his arms, like this morning—hallelujah!—I was grateful, because how lucky was I? He was a freaking catch.
And you know what? So was I. According to him, he saw something good in me the first time we’d met, but maybe I was just starting to realize it, too. It wasn’t that long ago I wrestled with insecurities about our age difference, but even though we liked to tease each other, our May-December scandal didn’t bother me.
Because now, as I glanced at a well-to-do woman in designer pumps and a haircut that probably cost more than my monthly car insurance payment, I thought, you know, why should I be intimidated? I mean, I looked pretty good. Owned a successful business. Had mad magical skills, as Jupe put it. And I was decent person. So why shouldn’t I have an awesome boyfriend with an awesome kid, not to mention a few friends who cared about me? And who the hell else did I know who’d been half as betrayed as I’d been by my own parents and managed to hold her head up and keep going? No one, that’s who.
And, dammit, even if I did bind David Merrimoth when he was jumping from his balcony, he was trying to kill us—for no good reason! Sure, I wish things hadn’t turned out like they did for him, but I did the best I could at the time.
Lon was right: I wasn’t a killer. Merrimoth’s death was not my fault. I was not turning into my crazy, bloodthirsty parents. I was just a girl trying to do the right thing in spite of very abnormal circumstances.
The hollows of Lon’s cheeks deepened when he smiled down at me. I tightened my hand around his and put all the bad stuff out of my mind.