The Reluctant Goddess (The Montgomery Chronicles Book 2) (27 page)

What about Dan’s sister, Nancy? Was she a witch, too?
 

“Why don’t I get a headache around you?”
 

She frowned at me. “We are linked by blood.”
 

Was that the answer?
 

“Do I have witch powers?”
 

She sat back and stared at me, just as she had Dan. I met her look with the same insouciance he’d demonstrated.
 

“I have never tested you,” she said.
 

“There’s a test?”
 

She nodded. “It involves my sisters of the faith. Under different conditions, I would summon them.”
 

“Better not,” I said.
 

They’d set up a protective perimeter around Nonnie’s house against me. Heaven knows what they’d do face to face.
 

She nodded, but she looked troubled. I hadn’t meant to bring problems to my grandmother. Yet we would have been better off being honest with each other.
 

Talk about being honest, why hadn’t Dan told me about his mother? I looked toward the parlor. I didn’t want to go back in there and see Dan. Not now. Not until my temper had cooled.
 

My grandmother owned an old Ford Escort that she kept in the neighbor’s garage. I never understood the working dynamics of that relationship, only that Mr. Guijardo was twice as old as the car and had muffler problems just like the Escort.
 

He called me Señora, despite the fact I’ve never been married. He called Nonnie corazon, Spanish for heart. When she was in his presence, her fingertips fluttered, her eyelashes batted; she was as mobile as a hummingbird.
 

I couldn’t help but wonder if the two had become sweethearts after Mrs. Guijardo had left him. She hadn’t died; she’d moved back to Mexico to take care of her ancient mother. Evidently, caring for the woman took precedence over being a wife. Mr. Guijardo hadn’t seemed to mind all that much and now I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because of Nonnie.
 

Was my grandmother the
other woman
?
 

“Is your car still at Mr. Guijardo’s?”
 

She nodded.
 

“Can I borrow it?”
 

She nodded again and added a smile.
 

I opened the junk drawer where she’d always kept her keys. Did everyone have a kitchen junk drawer? Nonnie’s held a package of birthday candles, two screwdrivers, old house keys, dried out pens, pamphlets for the new dryer, stove, the old refrigerator replaced years ago, recipes she’d cut out of magazines a decade earlier, and at least five dollars in nickels and pennies.
 

I grabbed the keys and stuffed them into my pocket.
 

I wasn’t intending to escape for good. After all, I didn’t have anywhere to live but at the castle, but I needed to get away for a little while. It was morning, not night. Besides, after last night, I had some confidence I could protect myself, at least better than I’d been able to before.
 

Freedom - a few hours, that’s all I wanted.
 

When I said as much to Nonnie, she smiled.
 

“I don’t know if he has any powers, child,” she said, a comment that troubled me, “but I’ll try to delay him for a few minutes. In the meantime, use the mint salve at least once a day.”
 

I nodded, bent and kissed her papery cheek, then bolted for the door.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-S
EVEN

I’m just a goddess in a gilded cage

I wasn’t surprised when the Escort started up the first time. Nor was I startled when Mr. Guijardo waved at me from the kitchen window. Just how much did he know about my life?

The mental image of my grandmother and Mr. Guijardo exchanging pillow talk was not one I wanted to have, but I had it, nonetheless. I visualized a huge, bright red stop sign and tried to purge my brain as I drove down the alley, heading for Austin Highway and Madame X, or Mary Dougherty, the Librarian.
 

I had too many questions and she was the only one with answers.
 

I rolled down the driver’s window, putting my arm on the edge of the door. Both my grandmother’s poultice and the warmth of the sun felt good.
 

Back in BF, I tanned well. One thing about being a vampire, however, regardless of how long I was out in the sun, I didn't tan. The only time I got red was when I practiced the zapping thing.
 

I hesitated at the corner, looked to my right and saw Dan’s car. He was not going to be a happy camper when he realized I was gone.
 

Raising my hand, I thought about melting metal. My eyes crossed with the pain. Okay, wait, not that. Maybe just a jolt of energy to burn through rubber, as in a flat tire or four. I closed my eyes, visualized the car sagging to the rims.
 

When I opened them, I honestly couldn’t tell if I’d done anything. The best way would be to drive by, but I didn’t want to be seen from the house.

Glancing to my left, I aimed my power at the branch of an old tree. In seconds, I heard a crack as it fell onto a privacy fence, then to the ground. Okay, maybe the zapping thing only worked in close quarters.
 

I really had to practice someplace where I wouldn’t do property damage. It was the adjuster in me.
 

At least, by making off with the Escort, I’d bought myself a little free time. Ten minutes later, I was sitting opposite the Librarian in her office.
 

"You have come to recognize yourself," she said, smiling. “You know your destiny.”
 

"I don't know what that means," I said. “I’ve got questions.”
 

I knew that I could do things other people couldn't. When I was growing up I wanted to be unique. I wanted to be something special, more than I was, just plain Marcie Montgomery who was so damn earnest and trying to please everyone. I studied hard. I ironed my own school blouses and skirts so I was always neat and clean. I put myself to bed most nights. Sometimes I stared up at the ceiling and indulged in a fantasyland of my own, a life in which people admired and looked up to me. I’d be a famous singer or a dancer or an actress and the world would be at my feet.
 

Never once did I imagine I’d be on a pedestal because I was a goddess.

“What does it mean, that a Dirugu will unite them? What am I supposed to do, wave my magic wand? Set up a government?”
 

“It’s nothing you have to worry about now. It will come about in due time. The Other will help you.”
 

“What’s the Other? Is that another word for Brethren? Or Kindred?”
 

She didn’t answer, only smiled at me in that irritating way some of the people in HR have.
Humor this one, she might cause problems. And for the love of God don’t put her with Robert in Claims Mediation. You know the problem we have with his monkey jokes.
 

“Do you get paid for being the Librarian?”
 

She blinked at me a few times. Sorry to bring the twenty-first century into fantasyland, but we all have to pay our rent and buy groceries.
 

“Do all the Brethren get together and contribute to your salary?”

“Why does this concern you?”
 

“Is everyone in Fantasyland wealthy?”
 

"Fantasyland?"

"Goddessland. Wonderland. Whatever you want to call it. This new kind of virtual reality I'm inhabiting nowadays."

I think I offended her. Her nose flared. Her eyebrows jumped over the vertical lines above her nose, attempting to form one long caterpillar. Her lips thinned.

“Did you grow up knowing you were going to be the Librarian?"

She looked startled by the question, enough not to answer.
 

“I grew up knowing I'd have to go to college and get a job. I never knew I was part vampire. I didn't have any warning that I was going to become a full-fledged vampire. I didn't know that, because of my bloodline, I would turn into something that half the world wants to kill and the other half wants to put in a cage. I didn't know any of that. I had what I considered a normal, if that word could be used at all, childhood. Maybe you grew up knowing all this weirdness was okay. I didn't."

"You are the source of all this weirdness," she said not unkindly. The soft note in her voice didn't take away the sting of her words.

While I was thinking of a comeback, she continued.
 

"It's like a California earthquake," she said. "California residents are urged to take precautions. They’re warned there might be a large earthquake, sufficient to cause massive destruction and a loss of life. They know the possibility is there, but nobody really believes that it's going to happen today or tomorrow."

"And I'm a California earthquake?"

She nodded. "We all knew there was a possibility, a perfect storm if you will, a perfect pairing of witch and vampire and human, resulting in someone like you."

“Please don’t tell me I'm the only one,” I said, the sour taste in my mouth growing.
 

"We have searched the world," she said. "You are the only offspring of a vampire that we have found."

Wasn't I special?

"So what happens now?” I asked. “Do I start wearing embroidered robes? Do I have a crown? What do I do?"

"You learn," she said. "There are many books you need to study."

I sat back in my chair. "What kind of books?"

"History. Sociology. Psychology."

"I've been to college."

"These are books not in the common domain. You do not know, for example, the history of vampires in the Civil War. Or how shape changers came to be."

She was right. I didn't know as much as I needed to know about vampires. And I knew almost nothing about the rest of the Brethren.

"What about fairies and elves, brownies? Are there such things as unicorns?"

She smiled, the expressing looking genuinely amused this time. "Only if a shape shifter wishes to appear like a unicorn. It's up to them."

“Are there shape shifters in San Antonio?"

"They're everywhere."

"Are you anything else other than a Librarian? For example, are you a shape shifter, too?"

Her smile broadened.

"I am only the Librarian.”

“How many Librarians in the world?”
 

“Not many,” she said.
 

I’d heard that answer before. It meant either: we don’t know or we don’t want to tell you.
 

“Can you see the future? Like the California earthquakes?"

She inclined her head a little. "Perhaps."

"Do you try to let people know?"

"If it's practical."

For the life of me I couldn't put an occupant of fantasyland and the word “practical” together.

“So, after I learn all this stuff, what do I do?”

She smiled. “You must learn, so that you can control your power.”
 

A non-answer if I’ve ever heard one.
 

“I don’t want any power,” I said.
 

The past was rife with stories of those who conquered, pillaged, and burned in order to achieve dominion over others. Alexander the Great. Julius Caesar. Philip of Macedonia. Hitler.
 

Where were the women? I didn’t want to be the first one.
 

“Being a Dirugu is your destiny.”
 

I glanced over at her. “So far that, plus a couple of dollars, will get me a vente latte. Otherwise, it’s a little like being a vampire. A lot of complications but not a lot of bang for my buck.”
 

Right now the only things I could do were to zap someone, compel humans, eat, walk in the sun, and possibly get pregnant. It was the last one that worried me more than any of the others.

"If I’m a goddess, can't I change my life?"

She sat back, her gaze never leaving me. "What would you be if not what you are?"

I tried to swallow, but it felt like I’d eaten a rock and it had lodged in my throat.
 

"I'd be mortal, human."

"And if that was not possible? How else would you change your life?"

I'd know what the hell I was doing, for one. I'd know my enemies. So far that consisted of Maddock, the master vampire, and my mother. Add a dozen witches, plus three, and Dan’s mother. But I was sure there were others, creatures lurking out there in the darkness, Brethren I had not yet met or didn't even know about.

I would know how to stay safe, all on my own, without help from anyone else, like Dan.
 

The magnitude of everything swamped me, no doubt the reason I had a headache. Or it might even be a witch nearby, close enough that my witchy radar was going off.

Why had I come here? I’d wanted her to tell me I could reverse all this. I wasn’t a Dirugu, savior and scourge all in one. I wasn’t a damn goddess.