Almost to Die For (5 page)

My mouth watered at the tangy scent of curry.

“I even put the apples in last. That way they’ll be crispy just the way you like them.”

Well, Mom was trying, at least. It was sort of sweet. Impulsively, I gave her a huge hug. “I love you,” I whispered intensely, though what I really wanted to say was “I’m sorry for tonight.”

“I love you too, sweetie,” she said, sounding a bit baffled at my sudden burst of affection. I could only hope Mom would feel the same way about me after the Initiation disaster. “Will I get a kiss if I tell you I made chocolate birthday cake for dessert?”

“Surprise?!”

“Yes,” she said with a smirk. “Surprise.”

Mom had changed into a T-shirt that proclaimed WITCHES DO IT SKYCLAD, which was the lamest in-joke I’d ever heard. It was like saying witches do it naked, which was what “skyclad” meant. And didn’t everyone “do it” in the nude? Not that I had any real experience with that either, because, well, being a strange, geeky witch girl didn’t make a person terribly popular in a high school full of cheerleaders and jocks.

I sat in my customary spot at the dining room table. I always felt a little silly sitting in the huge, cavernous room. There was a gigantic mirrored, carved buffet along the far wall. We rarely turned on the overhead light. It was a huge chandelier with a zillion bulbs, great for those parties we never hosted, but way too bright for an intimate dinner. So we ate by the illumination of a floor lamp that cast a circle of light on the corner of the table.

I spooned out a large helping of rice and smothered it with the chicken curry. “So . . . uh, about tonight,” I started, but petered out, uncertain. Did I opt for the truth?

The doorbell rang.

Saved by the bell? I looked to Mom, but she had an equally confused expression on her face. “That can’t be Bea,” she said, checking the clock on the wall. “She knows when we’re going, doesn’t she? That mother of hers is always so anxious. Will you go tell her we’re eating dinner?”

“Sure,” I said, curious who it could be.

The bell rang again when I was halfway there. It wasn’t like Bea to be quite so insistent. “I’m coming!” I shouted.

When I got there, I whipped the door open, ready to give Bea a piece of my mind. But it wasn’t Bea after all. In her place stood—or, more accurately, swayed—a man I’d never seen before in my life.

He had pale-as-a-ghost skin, and haunting eyes that flicked across my face as though searching for something. He was handsome in a broody, gaunt sort of way, but he looked sick. One of his hands clutched at his side, and the other gripped the doorframe with a white-knuckle grip, like it took all his effort to remain upright.

“Anastasija? ” he asked, pronouncing my full name smoothly and gracefully, almost like music. Not like when anyone else tried.

“Yes,” I answered. “Do I know you?”

“Will you let me in? I’m Alexander Ramses. I believe I’m your father.”

M
y father?

Ramses was my middle name, but . . .

I blinked unbelievingly at the pale form wobbling at the threshold. His hair was so dark it could have passed for a shadow. Much, I thought, like my own. His eyes that stared questioningly at me were the same ice-cold blue of my left iris.

But . . .

It just couldn’t be my father.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have a father,” I explained. My voice sounded hollowly polite even to my own ears, like I was patiently putting off an encyclopedia salesman.

“I’m sure that’s what you’ve been led to believe.” His mouth quirked into a smile, but it quickly collapsed into a grimace as he clutched his side tighter. His voice sounded strained, urgent. “Tell me you haven’t gone to the Initiation yet. Tell me I’m not too late.”

“Too late for what?”

His intensely blue eyes gripped me in his gaze. “You have no idea, do you? She never told you.” He shook his head, as though arguing with himself over some point. Then his jaw flexed. “Well, there’s no time now. I’ll have to explain it to you on the way.”

He took my arm as though he was going to lead me out the door. I pulled back. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I don’t even know who you are.” Over my shoulder, I shouted for help. “Mom!”

“Your mother? Amelia? No!” the man said, clutching my arm so tightly it caused me to gasp.

“Hey. Let go of me,” I insisted. Then, looking down at the hand wrapped around my forearm, I noticed the smear of black between each of his fingers. Blood? “Oh my God, are you bleeding?”

He looked down at the bloody imprint he left on my arm and quickly retracted his hand. “Yes,” he said, looking behind him again into the darkness outside the still-open door. “Our enemies are gathering. You’ve been discovered. You cannot go to the Wiccaning. I’ve held them off as long as I could. But we’re wasting precious time. We must go, Princess.”

Princess? What was that? An awkward attempt at a term of endearment? “Go? Where? Anyway, I can’t go. I’ve got school tomorrow.”

From the other room, Mom shouted, “Who is it? Who’s at the door?” I could hear her coming down the hall.

The man—Ramses, was it?—seemed to shrink back at the sound of Mom’s voice, but he stood his ground. “Ana, today is your birthday, yes?”

I nodded mutely, wondering how this stranger knew. Could he really be my father?

“Sixteen on the sixteenth,” he continued, his voice straining a bit. “You must forget school, forget this life. Come with me.”

Luke, I am your father.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Mom’s voice was closer now. “Ana? Who is that?”

Ignoring Mom for the moment, I continued to stare at the stranger in wonderment. “Go with you? Dude, I don’t even know you,” I said.

“A great tragedy,” Ramses agreed. He put his hand to his heart and bowed his head slightly. “And, believe me, not of my choosing. But I have been with you from the beginning, my child. I am your kin.”

Mom came into the hallway, saw the man, and shrieked, “Back to hell with you, demon!”

Ramses straightened himself up as best he could, given that he was dripping blood onto the hall carpeting, and said, “Amelia, you have denied our child her birthright. This violates the treaty. Anastasija should know the truth.”

Yeah, this whole encounter was deeply confusing. A little explanation would go a long way. I was about to tell Mom so when I felt the atmosphere shift. Magic was afoot. “Wait, Mom,” I started, but Mom interrupted.

“North, south, east, west, spiderweb shall bind him best—,” Mom began intoning. I could feel power begin to swirl. The magazines and mail piled on the front-hall table began to flutter expectantly. The porch light flashed on a fluff of dust—a spider’s web?—spinning through the air.

Now, why couldn’t I do stuff like that?

Ramses took a step into the house, but raised his hands as though in surrender. His eyes nervously followed the speck of fluff as it began to encircle him, a thin, white thread unraveling and growing impossibly long with each turn.

“Now, no need for any of this,” he said. “Let me take the girl with me.”

“Take her? Never! You have no right to lay any claim now, not after all this time.” Mom broke from the spell to glare at him. The spiderweb net wobbled momentarily, as though the wind might abandon it.

“But I do, and you know it.” Ramses’ tone was strong, clear, and just a little fierce. “The time has come. The princess must return to her kingdom.”

He didn’t really just say that, did he? Was the guy insane? I felt a little faint.

Mom, however, seemed to be taking it seriously. She raised her hands, palms out. “East, west, north, south,” she continued. “Hold his limbs and shut his mouth.”

Wait, was Mom really casting a rhyming spell? Did those really work? I always thought that was another one of those in-jokes among witches to fool the uninitiated. Maybe I really had hexed Thompson with the rhyme about sex.

A sudden burst of wind rushed through the hall. The mail rushed out into the street, and my hair flapped wildly. The spiderweb whirled furiously, spitting out thread as it circled him faster and faster. Ramses batted at it as it tightened around his arms and legs. The more he swatted, the more entangled he became. His eyes searched me out with an imploring look, asking for my aid. But what could I do? I didn’t even know if I wanted to help him, and if I did, I couldn’t fight Mom’s magic. I had none of my own. Anyway . . . he was just a demented stranger . . . right?

Returning his attention to Mom, he said, “You disrespect both our clans with this action, Amelia. If I must, I will send my army.”

I turned, hoping to buy a clue about what he was talking about from Mom, but her expression had darkened in a way I’d never seen before. It was more than a little frightening. The windows rattled, and the air tore at my hair. The roar of the wind was deafening, and though he was trying to continue to speak, I couldn’t hear a word. In fact, I had to hold on to the doorframe to keep from getting swept away myself. Miraculously, Ramses stood upright against the onslaught. He was looking more and more like a silk-wrapped mummy, however.

Mom turned her anger on me suddenly. She seemed frustrated that her magical blast hadn’t been more successful. “You invited him in, didn’t you?”

Had I? I didn’t think I had, but I couldn’t remember. Either way, I got the distinct impression that had been the wrong thing to do. “Uh, I don’t know. But it’s not like he’s a vampire or anything.”

Mom grimaced, leaving me confused. I looked at Ramses again with his jet-black hair and pale skin, pushing against the massive windstorm.

“He’s not, right?”

Mom either didn’t hear or chose not to answer.

A vampire?

That was fiction, wasn’t it?

And if it wasn’t, was I supposed to take his other claim seriously too? So I was some kind of vampire princess?

“I can’t believe you invited him inside. Now I’m going to have to pull out all the stops,” Mom said.

It could get worse? I’d never seen a spell this powerful, much less used as a kind of assault on another human being.

Who just might be my long-lost dad. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. I mean, shouldn’t I at least get to know the guy before we kicked his ass?

Mom’s power welled up, searing hot like lava, seething through the air. The air crackled with it.

“No, wait.” My protest died in the noise of the maelstrom. Something inside me flickered. I felt it flutter and then die, like a candle guttered in the wind.

Mom shook out her wild curls and raised her hands again to continue the spell. “Seal his eyes and choke his breath, wrap him in the ropes of death.”

And—pow!—just like that, Ramses flew off the doorstep and into the night. Mom, quite literally, kicked the guy to the curb. My mouth hung open. I’d never seen Mom quite so ninjawitchy.

In fact, I always figured this kind of violent spell was, you know, black magic, the stuff good witches stayed away from.

Meanwhile, Ramses lay crumpled there on the neighbor’s boulevard, not moving, completely cocooned in webbing. He looked like a giant cotton ball. Was he okay? I mean, I probably shouldn’t care, but . . .

As if possessed by a mind of its own, my foot started out the door. Mom grabbed my shoulder, stopping me cold.

“But he’s hurt,” I protested, my eyes flicking to the mummy-white blob nervously. What if he really was my dad? I tried to shake Mom’s grip, but it tightened like a vise. “He could die!”

“I should hope so.” Mom’s tone was icy cold. She adjusted her glasses, as though to better inspect her handiwork.

“What?” I ripped myself out from Mom’s restraining hand. No way did Mom mean that! Screw her, I thought. He didn’t seem all that threatening. Okay, so he wanted to take me away, but did he really deserve to be all gummed up like one of Spider-Man’s villains? I was going to help him.

Mom reached around me and slammed the door shut with an ominous bang.

“You have done enough damage, young lady.”

“But I didn’t invite him in, I swear,” I said, fairly sure it was the truth.

“You must have.”

I frowned because Mom seemed so sure I had, and I was more and more convinced I hadn’t. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was that Ramses was okay out there.

I tried the door, but I knew it was useless. I’d already felt Mom use her magic to turn the lock. “Why won’t you let me help him?”

“Because it’s not safe,” Mom said simply, firmly. I opened my mouth to protest, but Mom cut me off. “He’s . . . really hard to damage. You’re going to have to trust me on this one.”

Trust her? Ms. Never-says-a-word? Oh, there was so much that I could say about that, but I hardly knew where to start, and given Mom’s mood, I was a little bit afraid of ending up cocooned myself. Yet, despite my better judgment, everything just bubbled over. “What just happened? He said he was my father and all sorts of crazy stuff, like I’m some kind of princess. Was he for real?”