Aftermath (21 page)

“Ana…”

“Oh, that’s right.
I won’t get any answers from you about the supernatural. Gosh—“
I turned to look out the window. “Just don’t,” I cut him off as
he tried to make excuses.

“I don’t know
everything. If I did, I would tell you. I didn’t get much out of
your mother until we were called to the warehouse because of the
demon.”

“Wow.” I shook my
head, feeling dangerously close to a nervous breakdown. I looked at
the clock on Hayden’s car. It was just after four in the morning. I
was exhausted and had less than twelve hours to get ready for the
ball.
The masquerade ball,
I can’t believe I was thinking
about it at a time like this. “My classmate was possessed, my best
friend’s a voodoun, and I don’t know which is worse, that my
mother is actually my history teacher or that she is a Hunter.”

Hayden pulled over and
put the car in park. “Come here.” His voice was soothing,
welcoming and promised comfort. I turned into him, sobbing quietly
into his leather jacket.

“Hayden?”

“Yes?” He unstuck
hair glued to my face from tears.

“Why would a demon
want me dead? Do demons and ghosts,” I was thinking about the ghost
of Delphine Lalaurie who had tried to kill me earlier, “usually go
after Hunters?”

I looked up at him and
his expression turned stony. His beautiful emerald eyes had hardened.
“It’s always the other way around.”

Somewhere on the
drive home, I had fallen asleep. I stretched my arms out on either
side of me, fighting the fog from sleep. I tried to kick off the
tangle of covers that had entwined around my body when I noticed the
familiar dark bedspread. I was in Hayden’s room. I smiled at the
fact that he'd brought me to his own bed instead of mine. It was such
a protective move that I couldn’t stop it from pulling at my heart
strings.

I looked over at the
clock and shot out of bed at the time.
I had been sleeping most of
the day!
I gave Hayden’s room one last smile and then slipped
out into the hallway. I heard voices downstairs but I first ran into
my bathroom. I could only imagine what an all-nighter, demons, and
crying did to Nikki’s make-up job.

After I washed up and
thoroughly brushed my teeth, I headed back to Hayden’s room to get
a shirt from his closet. After donning one of Hayden’s oversized —
and very comfortable — shirts, I took a deep breath and headed
downstairs.

Even before I got to
the bottom, I knew what I’d find: Hayden, Luke, my mother, and
Hayden’s parents all sitting, waiting for me, in the living room.
My heart beat rapidly, and I hated how everyone knew it.

“Adriana,” Rachel
was the first one to greet me.

“It’s Ana…”

“That’s not what I
named you.”

I snorted and was about
to retort when I saw the faces of everyone else in the room. They had
fallen silent, which was unusual, especially for Luke. And they all
held the same grim expression. “What?” I asked Hayden. He just
looked behind me at Rachel.

“We need to talk. I
know you must have so much you want answered.”

My jaw slackened at her
words.
We need to talk.
That sounded like a command and I, for
one, didn’t like to bossed around.
I know you must have so much
you want answered.
It was so assumptive, so egotistical. She was
the one who had left me, so, yeah, I wanted answers. Hell, I deserved
answers. “Let’s just get this straight right now: my curiosity
for what I am is the only thing that’s keeping me here right now.
Otherwise, I wouldn't give you one minute of my time.”

“You’re angry.”

Obviously!

I didn’t reply but
must have rolled my eyes or scoffed my answer because she took a
pleading step towards me. “Adriana, please. I didn’t have a
choice. I did what I did to protect you.”

“
Protect
me?
You have
no
idea how tired I am of everyone trying to protect
me. In case you haven’t noticed, I have been just fine for the past
seventeen, almost eighteen, years!”

She looked down with a
swallow. “If I had stayed, I would have lost you again.”

“Again? What do you
mean again?”

She deflected my
question. “You are almost eighteen, now. And that’s when we would
have been reunited. Obviously, under present circumstances,” she
looked at the Boudreauxes “that time had to come earlier. I am
sorry you had to find out this way. It’s not how I thought it would
happen, believe me.”

I shook my head, too
confused to make sense of anything she said.

“But I do suppose
Hayden and Luke served their purposes; you got to be introduced to
Hunters and see what it’s like first-hand,” she added.

A knot twisted in my
gut at the way she talked about them in past tense. I cocked my head
at her. “So I’m half-Hunter.”

She laughed like what I
said was humorous. It wasn’t funny in the least! “No, you are
completely, 100% a full-blooded Hunter.”

“My father is a
Hunter, too?”
How did I not know that?
“And why didn’t
he say anything to me about you? Y’all have to have seen each other
on multiple occasions, and he never even batted an eye.”

“Your father didn’t
recognize me, because he’s not your father.”

I heard a gasp from
Elizabeth and sound from Hayden, even. It was becoming clear that
they were just finding out this information as it was being revealed
to me. I felt the air leave my lungs and then everything started to
become dizzy. My skin tingled, especially the tips of my fingers, and
I started seeing spots. That’s when I remembered to breathe. I felt
Hayden behind me, keeping me upright like he always did.

“I’m sorry,
Adriana,” Rachel was even more pleading and even more sincere.

“How?” I managed to
choke out.

“Your real father was
a great man, he loved you very much.”

There she went again,
deflecting and speaking in past tense. Why would she tell me my real
father loved me very much? Yes, my dad wasn’t perfect, but he did
love me. All my childhood memories flashed before my eyes and I let
out a whimper as the tears came. What made me cry harder, was when I
realized that it explained why he had alienated me for his new
family. Maybe he just realized what he had been missing when he had a
child from his own blood? It could explain why we were so distant
these days. I gripped my chest. It hurt
so
badly there, I
thought the pain would overcome me, that I would just burst into a
million pieces. That my heart would just stop beating from the pain.
But it didn’t. And I was still there, in a room, with the mother I
had wondered about my whole life, who just shattered my old life to
pieces.

I had basically been
living a lie. I was a lie. I was not my father’s daughter. I
touched my hair, as if a thought occurred to me. My father had a head
full of straight, dark hair. My new mother, a mousy brown which she
now wore down in a more stylish manner. She had also had ditched her
glasses, which, of course, being a Hunter, she never needed in the
first place. Hayden tightened his arms around me.

“All right, let’s
give her a break,” Hayden spoke resentfully from behind me. How was
I even able to continue standing upright? Why hadn’t I just had a
nervous breakdown and completely lost it yet?

Rachel straightened her
stance in defiance, and her chin titled up in an aristocratic manner.
She looked at me, “Adriana, just think, you can get on with your
real life this much sooner.”

I came out of my
reverie. “This is my life.”

She shook her head,
patronizing me. “No, it’s not. This is the life I created for
you. So you would be safe until your eighteenth birthday.”

“I meant my life now,
here with the Boudreauxes.” I looked at Elizabeth, Christopher,
even Luke. “They are my family now. Even my “fake” father is,
despite what you say. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready
for the dance.”

I numbly looked away
from her.

“Adriana, you can
come home now. You don’t need to worry about packing anything. I
have everything you need on our plantation.”

Plantation? Our
plantation? A plantation was a mansion. Was she serious? I looked at
her and her expectant eyes confirmed that she was merely waiting for
me to go with her.

“You can’t just
come into my life and expect me to change everything!”

“Adriana…” she
said in that familiar, scolding tone only a mother could use.

“I’m staying here,”
I warned her.

“You are just going
to throw me out of your life?”

I looked at her with a
narrow gaze, wanting to say something to hurt her they way she had
hurt me. But I couldn’t. “No, I really hope that we can have a
relationship, but right now I have a lot of things I just can’t
move past. And it’s not helping that you keep ignoring my
questions. You won’t tell me what you're protecting me from, why my
father took me in if he wasn’t really my father…”

“I will explain
everything, I promise. Right now I just want to take you home where
we can discuss this in private.” Her eyes darted briefly to Hayden,
as I was still in his arms.

“This is her home,
too. I love Ana.” I looked behind me at Hayden whose expression was
stormy.

“I love her, too. And
to hell if I’m going to let someone else try to take her from me,
even if you are her mother, which I’m pretty damn suspicious of
right about now. Pretty convenient, you just show up after people
make two attempts on her life and try to whisk her away.”

Luke.
All of a
sudden, no one was quiet. Even Christopher stood up protectively.

Rachel clapped her
hands together with a laugh. “Oh, boys. Of course you love her, she
is your queen. But unfortunately for you, this queen already has a
king.”

I rolled my eyes. Why
was everyone bringing that up? Why was everyone making a big deal
about the school dance and being queen?

I looked at Hayden
questionably. His head was hung, his expression pained. “Hayden?”

Then I knew Rachel
wasn’t referring to the school dance.

“Christopher?
Elizabeth?” I looked at Hayden’s parents. They knew, too. And it
became obvious by their faces that this wasn’t a good piece of
information.

“What the hell is
that supposed to mean?” Luke was the only one who seemed to be as
clueless as I was.

Hayden backed away from
me now until we were no longer touching. “How did I not know this?”
He was talking to Rachel.

“You didn’t know
what she was because I did my job and made sure she remained
well-hidden until the time came when all of her traits would return
to her.”

“Her eighteenth
birthday.”

“Right, but for some
reason her relationship with other Hunters, i.e. the two of you,”
Rachel pointed to Luke and Hayden spitefully, “caused some of those
traits to surface sooner, like the dreams.”

“How do her psychic
dreams have anything to do with being a Hunter?” Luke questioned.

Rachel gave a look to
Christopher and Elizabeth. “Have you not taught your boys
anything?” I kind of resented her for saying that. Elizabeth was a
great mother. “While Hunters are only called during or after a
supernatural creature upsets the balance, only members of the royal
family are able to predict such a thing
before
the crime is
actually committed. Thus preventing travesties before they’re too
late.”

Luke was still
skeptical. Hayden suddenly seemed distant and Christopher and
Elizabeth wouldn’t even look at me. I just stood there while
everyone was talking about me, not to me.

“We are very sorry,
your majesty. We didn’t know,” Christopher spoke solemnly.

Rachel brushed him off
coolly. “No harm done. She was almost killed a few times in your
care but I’m willing to look past it now that I’ve had to step
up.”

I blanched.
What?

“I can’t give her
up,” Hayden whispered harshly to his father.

“Hayden…”
Christopher warned.

“To hell if I’m
going to let Little Miss Teacher come in here and change everything,”
Luke announced loudly.

“I’m sorry,”
Elizabeth was talking to Rachel, with fear in her kind eyes, “he’s
only been returned to us since his parents were destroyed. He doesn’t
know.”

“Well, let me put it
to you straight.” Rachel took a seething step toward Luke. “First
of all,
I
am her mother. And to give you a quick history
lesson, you are here because of me. The royal family created you and
we also have the power to destroy you. That means I am your superior,
and you will obey me one way or another.”

Luke scoffed, clearly
not caring about the second part of her argument and I just loved him
all the more for that. “Yeah, where were you the past eighteen
years? Where were you during our so called ‘failed attempts’ at
protecting her?”

Rachel was in front of
Luke in a flash.

“Wait!” Seeing
someone’s life in danger finally gave me the courage to speak.
“Hello? I am right here and I am tired of you speaking for me.
Rachel, you’re right, we do need to talk privately. I have even
more questions than I had before.” I shook my head in wonderment as
I thought about this new world Rachel just painted for me. She really
wasn’t referring to Mardi Gras Queen. I couldn’t possibly be
Queen of the Underworld?
‘This queen already has a king.’
She
had to be kidding, right? Even more, she wanted to take me away from
everything I’d known. For some reason, in all my fantasies of
finding my mother, I'd always pictured her fitting perfectly into my
life, not me having to fit into hers. Although I wanted to run away,
or to tell her to ‘leave me alone‘ like the sullen teenager I
should have been, I was hesitant. The power she seemed to have over
everyone, sans Luke, surprised me. And scared me. “Apparently, you
want me to just start this new life with you and, I’m sorry, it
isn’t that easy.” I swallowed. “It’s not like you are going
to force me to come with you. Are you?” I added suspiciously.