Blessed (Book 2, The Watchers Trilogy; Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (2 page)

Tara was sitting in a chair at the kitchen table with her hands clasped tightly together in front of her, watching us all file in one by one. I felt like an errant schoolgirl about to be disciplined by her teacher. I sat across from her while everyone else found a place to stand or sit in the small living room.

“Start explaining,” was all she said to me.

“What do you want to know first?”

“Where were you? And why did Malcolm lie to the police?”

“I was being held captive by someone. Malcolm lied because there wasn’t any reason to tell the police where I’d been or who had me. There isn’t anything they can do to him and, more than likely, they would have just thought I’d gone insane if I’d tried to tell them the truth.”

“Who had you? Why wouldn’t the police believe the truth?”

I took in a deep breath and explained what I knew to Tara: everything about Brand, Will, and Malcolm being fallen angels; everything about the strange accidents that had happened in my life, including the loss of the real Will that night at the lake and the fact the Will we knew had been sent by Lucifer to protect me from them, and almost everything that happened to me while I was being held captive by Justin. I tried to be as concise as I could be.

“That’s all I know,” I finished. “If you need to know anything else, you’ll have to ask one of the guys.”

Tara sat through my explanation without saying a word, hardly moving, just staring at me.

She looked to the roomful of angels behind me and then looked back at me.

“Lilly, have you lost your mind? Did somebody brainwash you while you were gone?”

“No, Tara. You wanted the truth. I just told you the truth. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the way things are.”

“What did y’all do to her?” Tara stood up and walked closer to the guys. “Lilly ain’t never lied to me before now, and I want to know what’s going on!”

“It’s not a lie, Tara,” Will said. “Everything she just told you is the truth.”

“Oh yeah? Prove it.” She crossed her arms over her chest and dared them to do something to show her that what I had said was true.

One by one, they all disappeared and then reappeared.

Tara became a blur of motion as she dashed into her bedroom and slammed the door shut behind her.

I glared at the guys as I stood and went to her door. “You could have given her some warning.”

Malcolm grinned and shrugged. Brand looked worried and came to stand with me at her door and Will responded with, “She said she wanted proof, Lilly. It was the simplest way.”

“Oh, Lord Jesus,” I could Tara praying fervently behind her door. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Tara, are you all right? I know it wasn’t the most subtle way to show you I wasn’t lying, but you can’t deny what you just saw either.”

“Oh, yes, I can!”

I looked to Brand, at a complete loss as to what we should do.

“Tara?” Brand said through the door. “You have nothing to fear from us. Come back out so we can all talk.”

“Y’all just need to stay away from me!”

“Tarajinka Shovanda Jenkins,” Will said as he came to join Brand and me by the door. “If you don’t open this door, I’m coming in there!”

“You just stay where you are, Will Allen! Or whatever the hell you are!”

“This is absurd,” Will said, and vanished.

I heard Tara scream as if she’d just been stabbed.

“Stop that, Tara,” I heard Will admonish her on the other side of the door. “You’re being ridiculous. You’ve known me all your life. Have I ever tried to harm you in any way in all that time?”

I could tell Tara was thinking about what he said, because she was quiet.

“Well, there was that time you put that spider in my bed,” she said. “I never forgave you for that, Will Allen.”

“We were nine years old, for goodness’ sake, Tara. It was a prank.”

“Well, it sure enough seemed
evil
to me. How do I know the devil didn’t put you up to it?”

“Tara, you’re being silly,” he told her. “We’re best friends. Lilly is standing outside that door right now, and you’re sitting in here, cowering. I know how much you missed her when she was gone. She needs you to be strong for her now. We all need to help her figure out what’s going on.”

Tara whispered something, but I couldn’t make it out from where I stood.

“It’ll be ok,” Will said to her kindly, as if he was speaking to a frightened child. “You just need to trust us, Tara.”

After another minute, the lock on Tara’s door was finally unlatched, and she came out with Will standing close behind her.

“You know I love you more than anything, girl,” she said, standing there with her shoulders hunched over. “And I don’t intend to let the devil himself take you away from me again.”

She wrapped her arms around me, and I knew then that everything would be all right.

Once Tara was calm enough to talk rationally, we all sat in the living room to discuss what needed to be done next. Brand and I sat on the futon. Malcolm sat in the rocking chair, and Will and Tara brought in two kitchen chairs.

“So,” Tara said sitting down in her chair, “none of you angels knows what the devil wants with Lilly?”

“He won’t tell me,” Will answered, sitting down in his chair. “I ask him every time I see him, but he just tells me it’s better if I don’t know.”

“Well, you know it can’t be good. I don’t remember hearing about anything good coming from something he did, right?”

“Not that any of us have ever seen,” Brand acknowledged.

“While Lilly was missing, Will and I talked about doing something,” Malcolm said. “We’d like to test Lilly’s blood.”

“Test it?” I asked. “What for?”

“Well, we know you’re different in some way. Especially now that we know you can phase,” Will said.

“Yeah,” I hesitated to tell them what I found out that morning. “I know I can do it, but I’m not sure how to trigger it. I tried to phase back to the apartment to pick up some fresh clothes this morning, but it didn’t work.”

“You probably just need to practice,” Will said. “I know when I take over a new body, it takes me a while to get it accustomed to phasing.”

“I honestly don’t know how I did it last night to escape,” I confessed.

“Fight or flight instinct,” Malcolm said. “You knew you were going to die if you didn’t do something, dearest. Your mind and body worked together to get you where you would be the safest.”

“I can help you practice phasing, if you want,” Will offered. “You need to be able to do it whenever you need to. That way, no one can just grab you like they did last time.”

“So what do you think testing my blood will tell us?” I asked Will.

“We’re mostly interested in looking at your genetic profile to see if your DNA is different in some way from a normal human’s. We know you can phase, which indicates you must have some characteristics similar to angels, and we know your blood doesn’t interest the Watchers who are vampires. I’m just not sure who we can trust to do the tests.”

“I know of someone,” Brand said. “He’s a fellow Watcher. He has a private lab where we can run the necessary tests.”

“Good,” Will said. “If there’s something different about Lilly, genetically, it might give us the information we need to figure out what’s going on. We need to know why Lucifer wants her. Once we know that, maybe we can come up with a list of suspects who would want to stop him from using her.”

“Well,” Tara said, “I’ll let y’all handle all this business. We need to figure out what we’re gonna tell Utha Mae and Lilly’s mom about where she’s been.”

Malcolm looked confused. “Why not tell them the Las Vegas story I made up? The police seemed to accept it readily enough.”

“Obviously, you haven’t met my grandma,” Tara said, crossing her arms in front of her chest as she leaned back in her chair. “She can smell bullshit a mile away. She’s not going believe Lilly went anywhere without telling me first. And I ain’t about to tell her the truth. She’d have a heart attack on the spot. Y’all need to figure something out. I told her last night I would call her this morning to explain things. She’s going to want to know where Lilly’s been.”

“I’ll handle it,” I said, looking to Brand. “I should go see them today. Would you come with me?”

“Of course,” he said, squeezing my hand reassuringly.

“So what are you going tell her?” Tara asked, skeptic that I could come up with something that would satisfy Utha Mae. “It’s going to have to be good.”

“I’ll figure it out before I get there.”

“Give me a call when you get back,” Will said to me. “We need to practice your phasing. It has to take top priority. It’s your best self-defense.”

Tara called Utha Mae and told her Brand and I would be coming to her house to explain things.

On the drive over, I wracked my brain trying to think of something to tell Utha Mae that wouldn’t be a lie.

“Couldn’t we tell her the truth?” Brand asked. “Or do you think it would upset her as much as Tara seems to believe?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. Utha Mae’s always been religious, but I’m just not sure how she would respond to actually coming face to face with the reality of her beliefs.”

“I think she’s stronger than you or Tara gives her credit for.”

“Maybe, but I just can’t take that risk. If anything happened to her because of me…”

I couldn’t finish the sentence. I knew I would have to lose Utha Mae one day. Like all kids, you grow up knowing your parents will eventually die, but it’s so far in the future you just don’t worry about it until you see age write the history of their lives on their faces and notice they don’t move quite like they used to when you were younger. However, just the thought of losing Utha Mae brought me close to tears. She’d been my friend, my advisor, my source of comfort all my life. I couldn’t lose her. I needed her, especially now.

I felt Brand take my left hand and kiss it gently, forcing me out of my sad reverie.

“Don’t worry. Everything will work out,” he promised.

I looked at him, my heart breaking all over again at his perfection.

“How do you know that?” I whispered.

“Because I believe God brought us together for a reason, Lilly. I’m not sure what His plan is for us, but I don’t believe our meeting was merely by chance. We were meant for each other, and I’m not going to let anyone or anything take you away from me again.”

It made me think of what I’d realized that morning.

“But you
will
lose me,” I gently reminded him. “I’m human. I’ll grow old and die one day.”

“I know. It’s not like the thought hasn’t already crossed my mind a million times.”

He was silent for a while, obviously thinking about something. I could tell he wasn’t sure if he should say what was on his mind.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I urged, not wanting him to feel like he needed to keep his thoughts hidden from me.

“You don’t know how much I wish I could become human,” he finally admitted. “I’d give anything to have a normal life with you, but I just don’t know of any way to do that, barring some sort of miracle.”

“We’ll never be able to have children, will we?”

At least with a child, he would have some small reminder of me after I was gone.

“No,” he looked at me. “Do you remember the game we played when I asked if you wanted to have kids?”

“Yes,” I replied, remembering the game of questions and answers. I won the right to ask Brand to show me as many of his favorite things as we could fit into a 24-hour period.

“We would have to adopt if you wanted a child. I swore when Abby’s mother died the way she did I would never put another human through that. I didn’t think I would love anyone else again until I saw you. I never imagined I could love someone as deeply as I do you. If you were ever killed because of something I did, it would break me, Lilly. There’s no way I could recover, because I just wouldn’t have the will.”

His words broke my heart. How had I earned the right to have someone love me the way he did? It made me wish we could hide from the problems in our lives and simply concentrate on us. It was a romantic notion I knew would never have a chance of coming true unless we figured out why Lucifer needed me.

“So, will normal birth control be enough to prevent me from getting pregnant?”

“I think so. I need to consult with someone about that before we ever make love, but I’m pretty sure it’s all we need.”

“How long has it been since you… you know...did that with someone?”

The flush of color that covered Brand’s otherwise-porcelain white face told me what I needed to know even before he confirmed it verbally.

“Abby’s mother is the only one I’ve ever shared a physical relationship with.”

“Why?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Because I can’t do that with someone I don’t love, and I’m not one to fall in love easily.”

“Were you married to Abby’s mother?”

“Yes.”

“Do you see us getting married one day?”