Claimed by Angels & Demons: Book 1 (5 page)

"And your father?"

"I don't know, I never knew him."

"I will speak with your mother then, and she will solve this mystery for us."

"She's missing," I said, "gone, I don't know where."

Gabriel went back to pacing, "how convenient."

Convenient? That touched a nerve. I could feel my temper rising, and I tried to control it but it just came boiling right up all the same. Maybe he was going to kill me, but in the meantime I was getting really sick of the whole 'bow down before me puny humans' routine. If I could disperse this jerk once I could probably do it again, so he wasn't the all powerful being he obviously thought he was. "It's not convenient, it sucks."

He didn't say anything, just kept pacing.

"And if you think I'm lying," I continued, "you can go back to wherever the hell you came from and leave me alone."

Gabriel stopped pacing and gave me a look that could have boiled water. Behind me I heard Thomas chuckle. I shut my mouth, but I didn't go back to looking at the floor. If I was going to die, then I would do it standing up for myself. I wasn't going to be bullied.

"Is that a threat, human?"

"Try me," I said, looking him in the eyes. Deep, black, hypnotizing eyes that made my mind feel blurry, but I was getting used to that now.

There was just the tiniest crack of a smile, so quick I might have imagined it, and then he went back to pacing, "try me, she says," Gabriel murmured to himself.

Beside me I heard Henrietta exhale, and I exhaled a breath that I hadn't even realized I had been holding in.

"If you truly don't know
who
you are, or
what
you are, then that is a problem. I cannot allow a being that is more powerful than an angel to exist here on the earthly plane. I could simply kill you right now and be done with it...," he said, and my stomach lurched. I got ready to do something, I had no idea what, but I wasn't just going to let him kill me without a fight. "But I must admit to a certain curiosity," Gabriel continued. "So you will help me investigate the matter. Then, when we have discovered the truth of what you are, I will decide if you must die, or can continue to exist on this plane."

"What does that mean, exactly?" I said.

"It means you are to go home and find out who or what your mother and father really were, and I will see you tomorrow," Gabriel said. "Right now I have much to consider."

"Is that an invitation or a demand?" I knew I should try to be respectful and just count my lucky stars that I was going to live out the day, but I couldn't help getting one more insolent little jab in.

"A threat," Gabriel said with menace in his voice, and then winked out of existence.

"You dispersed an archangel!" Henrietta yelled the moment Gabriel was gone.

"I change my mind," Thomas said, pouring himself another drink at his desk, "I like her," then he cackled in delight.

Gabriel had hinted at a certain curiosity in me and my apparent abilities. He hadn't said it out loud, but I felt certain that his curiosity had almost everything to do with the mysterious Seffora, and my uncanny resemblance to her. Whatever the connection was between me and the mystery woman, I was almost certain it had just saved my life. But apparently the idea that him and I had shared some sort of moment back at the Barlow house was just in my head. Which stung, but whatever, he was a jackass anyway so I was better off. I turned to Henrietta. "What do I do now?"

"You leave," Henrietta said, grabbing my arm and dragging me towards the door. She was surprisingly strong for an older woman. That or she just really, really wanted to get rid of me right that minute. "We don't need any trouble around here, oh my no, and you my dear are trouble with a capital D."

"Henrietta come on," I said, trying and failing to wrench my arm free from her grasp, "I need help. Isn't there some sort of witch code," I was taking stabs in the dark here but it was better than nothing, "don't turn away a witch in need. Or something like that?"

"If it was anything else," Henrietta said, opening the door and pushing me through it, "I might be willing to help a young witch in trouble, but there's nothing to be done with Gabriel involved. You will simply have to hope that he is merciful on your soul."

Oh I really did not like the sound of that. "There was something else he said to me at the house," I said, throwing a hail mary, "he said I looked like Seffora. Does that mean anything?"

Henrietta froze, and her eyes went big as saucers. She opened her mouth and started to say something, but then closed it and slammed the door in my face. I pounded my fist against the closed door, "what does it mean?" I yelled. I pounded at the door a few more times, "he's going to kill me, you have to help me. I wouldn't be involved in any of this if it wasn't for you. Help me!" I figured for sure a guilt trip would work, but there was no answer. I pounded on the door a few more times and tried yelling, but the door was locked and there was only silence from Henrietta and Thomas. Apparently I was on my own.

Chapter Four

When I got home, angry and dejected and lost in my own world, Kat was sitting at the kitchen table with her schoolbooks spread out in front of her. She looked up at me as I came in, "I can't believe it's the beginning of May and you're already done school. So not fair."

For the first time on this crazy day I thought about how everything that I had learned might affect Kat. If I was a witch then that must mean that she was a witch too. I wasn't entirely sure on the mechanics of it all but it seemed likely. But not yet, not until she was eighteen from what Henrietta had said, which was still two years away. She at least would have some time to prepare herself.

"What?" Kat said, looking at me quizzically. The look on my face must have been cause for concern.

I considered if I should tell her that Mom had been a witch, that I was a witch too, and that in a couple of years she would no doubt follow in the family tradition and start to develop her own powers. But it sounded crazy enough in my head, and it was going to sound even more crazy when I said it out loud. And Kat's first question, after I told her that I was in fact serious and not just messing with her, was going to be asking me to prove it. And unless a ghost happened to wander by that I could disperse, it wasn't like I knew any other spells, so proving my witch abilities would be a little difficult.

"What?" She said again, a little more worried now as I just stood there weighing the options in my head.

"It's nothing," I said, and tried to smile reassuringly.

"Where were you today anyway," Kat said, looking back down at her books.

"I... got a job actually."

"So which fast food place in town should I now avoid if I don't want to get food poisoning?"

I slipped into a chair beside Kat at the table, "actually I'm working in an office, out in some industrial area. Just making coffee, answering phones, stuff like that, but whatever it's better than making fries for minimum wage." It wasn't a total lie, some of what I had said was true, but I still felt bad lying to Kat.

Kat made an isn't-that-nice sound but didn't look up from her textbook. "So I guess you'll be getting an apartment next and getting as far away from us as you can huh?"

Right, that. In all the craziness of today I had completely forgotten that Kat had been pissed off at me before she left for school this morning. "Well since the job is way out in the middle of nowhere I'm going to need my car, and I probably won't be able to afford an apartment on top of the car, so..."

Kat looked up from her textbook, grinning from ear to ear, "you're staying? Really?"

"Sure am!" It broke my heart a little to see just how excited Kat was about having me stay. She had never been the most popular girl when I was still in high school with her. She was pretty, and smart too, but she had just never had the heart to play the popularity game. She was too open, too trusting, and she felt all the little comments and barbs too much for her own good. Still, maybe it was for the best, because I had a feeling that what was coming next in our lives might mean we had to give up all the things that really meant something to us. I realized for the first time that I might never make it back to college. I might be dead before the summer even ended. And whatever fate awaited me might also await Kat, since we had the same parents, and presumably the same powers that Gabriel was so worried about. So I wasn't just fighting for my own life, I was fighting for her life too.

"You're the best sister ever." Kat leaned back in her chair and got a look like the weight of the world had been lifted off of her shoulders.

I just smiled. At twenty-five dollars an hour I could more than afford to keep my car and get a half decent apartment too, but I had no idea if I could talk Henrietta in to letting me through the front door again. Maybe I
would
end up working at a fast food joint after all. Plus, if I was going to find any answers about who Mom really had been, or who my father was, I would find them in this house. Once again, Mom was reaching back from the grave, or wherever she was now, and ruining my life.

"But can you at least tell me why you wanted to leave in the first place?"

I sighed.

"Okay okay," Kat said, backpedaling, "if you don't want to tell me you don't have to, I'm just happy that you're going to be here for the summer."

She wouldn't believe a word I said about all the witch stuff, but maybe she was ready to hear the truth about this. "There's something I need to tell you," I said, getting serious. "It's about Mom, and about what happened before she disappeared four years ago." Kat got really quiet at the mention of our mother. For almost two years after she had disappeared, right up until it was time for me to start thinking about college, I had spent every spare moment talking about nothing
but
Mom and doing my absolute best to try to find her. But I had given up on ever finding her, and like switching off a light bulb, that was the last time I had ever started a conversation about Mom. Up until right now.

"In the months before she left," I said, "or disappeared, or whatever, her personality changed. A lot."

Kat frowned, "I don't remember that."

"Well," I said, trying to think of the most sensitive way to say it, "keep in mind that you were twelve at the time, you weren't exactly in on a lot of the more grown-up conversations that were going on. I also tried my best to try to shield you from the uglier bits."

"What uglier bits?" Kat asked.

There was just no good way to do this. Quick like a bandaid. "Okay, I know this is going to be hard to hear, and believe, but in the months before Mom left she started to get angry a lot. It wasn't so bad at first, just a bit of shouting now and then, but really fast, over the course of a month the anger turned into, just, full blown rage. She would get into these big huge fights with Tim over nothing, and if I was around she would scream and scream and scream until I was a crying mess, and then she would scream at me some more just for crying."

Kat was shaking her head, "no, there's no way, how could you have possibly shielded me from that? I would remember it."

"You remember when I suddenly decided that I didn't like music anymore?"

"Yea..."

"And I gave you my brand new MP3 player and headphones, that I had saved up for?" I could see Kat connecting the dots. "And I told you that all the cool kids listened to music at super high volume, and all you did for months afterwards was sit in your room listening to music at full volume, until eventually Tim had to take you to the doctor because your hearing was getting so bad?"

Kat sighed, "I remember telling him it was all your fault, that you had practically forced me to listen at such high volume for hours on end and he hadn't even gotten angry at you. I was so pissed at you for getting away with it."

"Well now you know why he didn't punish me for it."

"Okay...," Kat said, sorting through it all in her head, "but why was Mom so angry?"

I laughed, "God, you don't know how many nights I laid awake in bed asking myself that exact question, thinking it must have been something that I had done. And then when she left I felt responsible for that too, like it was somehow my fault. I thought up a million different things I might have done to make her so mad all the time, to make her leave. I felt so guilty for breaking up the family, and so I put all my energy in to trying to find her. I wanted her to come back so bad so that I could just apologize for whatever it was that I had done to make her so mad. How sick is that?

"But I finally realized that I hadn't done anything, that it wasn't my fault. And that's when I finally realized the truth, that she had just been a shitty, angry, bad excuse for a parent, at least for those last few months, and I should stop wasting my time trying to find her. So I did, I stopped." I felt a single tear running down my cheek and I wiped it away quickly with the back of my hand. I hated that after all these years I was still wasting my tears on her.

I could see Kat trying to reconcile this new information with her memory of the good and decent Mom that she remembered, from before everything went to hell. I hated to ruin that happy memory, but she deserved to know the truth, even if it hurt. "So what," Kat finally said, "you don't want to be here anymore because you have bad memories?"

"No it's not that. The night before Mom left, she and Tim were really going at each other, worse than ever, and I couldn't take it anymore and I went into their room and
I
started screaming, telling them that they should just get a divorce, or go to therapy, or something, because I couldn't stand one more second of them yelling at each other.

"But rather than at least being shamed into being quiet for a few minutes like I had hoped would happen, Mom hit me." I watched Kat react to this new bit of information. The look on her face was heartbreaking, and I hated myself for telling her all this, but I needed to finish it, to get it out. "She wasn't very strong so it didn't hurt too much, but it was enough to knock me down. But then she got down on top of me and she kept hitting me, again and again, until I managed to push her off. And the whole time this was happening Tim just stood there, watching her hit me and not doing a damned thing about it. I hated her for doing that to me, but I hated him even more for not doing anything to help me. So when I stopped looking for Mom, I guess I needed something else to focus on, or someone to blame, so I started to really hate Tim for what he did, or didn't do. Maybe that's not healthy but whatever, he should have protected us better from it, me and you too, but he didn't. As far as I'm concerned he's no better than she is. That's why I don't want to live here for one more minute, because I can't stand to be around him."