Daughter of Light (36 page)

“Yes,” I said firmly.

She lost her smug smile. “Haven’t you seen already that it’s quite impossible? Didn’t our little warnings ring bells in that thick, stupid skull of yours? Must we do more?”

“You do anything to hurt any of them and I’ll . . .”

“You’ll what, Lorelei? You fool. Once this family discovers who and what you are, you will come running back to us.” She paused and smiled again. “Only Daddy might not take you back. Then where will you be?”

I threw the comforter off myself and got out of the bed so I could face her. Every muscle in my body tightened and hardened. I stepped toward her.

“I’m warning you,” I said, keeping my eyes locked on hers. “You do anything to hurt me, and I will reveal everything about you.”

“And Daddy?” she asked with a cold, confident smirk.

“And Daddy,” I said, with a firmness that, like a wet washcloth, wiped the smirk off her face.

Her eyes widened, and she stepped back. It was the first time Ava had ever retreated from me.

“Do you think I would let you do that?” She raised her hands, her fingernails sharp and long like raccoon claws.

I didn’t move. My body tightened more. She looked as if she would lunge at me, but I stood my ground, and then, before either of us could do anything more, Daddy stepped out from the shadowed corner of the bedroom. Ava looked almost as surprised as I was. She stepped farther back as he came forward. All of the resistance I had mounted in my body seeped out. No matter how hard I fought it, the sight of him turned me back into a little girl. I lowered my eyes, afraid of the power of his. I didn’t look up until I felt his hand stroking my hair.

“Little Lorelei,” he said. “My little Lorelei. I’m so sorry we never spoke before you started your flight that day.”

He smiled down at me, that smile washing over me the way it always had, leaving me with a deep sense of calm and security. It was as if he could cut the whole world out, and there would be only the two of us.

“I could have reassured you. I don’t want you to believe I could ever do you harm,” he said, continuing to stroke my hair.

Ava looked even angrier, her jealousy overtaking her. I recalled how she was always envious of Daddy’s small ways of showing affection for me, whether it was with a smile or a gentle caress. Because of that, I did believe that he loved me more than he loved her or any of his other daughters. This sort of sibling rivalry for Daddy’s love didn’t exist for them. It was only Ava who felt it with me, and Daddy knew. He knew, but he didn’t chastise her in my presence, nor did he temper the way he favored me.

I felt the tears well up in my eyes. His words were
like the tentacles of an octopus wrapping around me and pulling me toward him. It was futile to resist. When he kissed me on the forehead, those tears broke free. All of those little-girl years were rushing back, our walks, my hand in his, his voice melodic, soothing as he wove together our history, the beautiful places he had been, and the things he had seen. How magical it had been and how special I had felt. He was everything, my daddy, my world.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I said, sounding like a little girl again. “I couldn’t stay and be what you wanted me to be.”

“I know,” he replied, surprising me. I saw that Ava was also surprised. “I knew there was something different about you. It happens once in a while over the course of a hundred years. I was hoping it wasn’t so. My fault. My love for you was so great that I ignored what I knew and felt.”

He shrugged. Ava came forward. She was shaking her head. She didn’t want to hear this. I knew what she wanted. She wanted him to rage at me, to threaten and maybe even destroy me. The disappointment only hardened and angered her more. I could see that Daddy felt her fury growing. He turned to her and with a glance stopped her and sent her stepping back. Then he turned back to me. His smile was gone.

“I know I shouldn’t have called upon others to help send you back to us. I knew you would resist. I can feel your resistance even now,” he added.

“I’m sorry, Daddy. I can’t help it,” I said.

“No, you can’t,” he said, nodding. “You can’t resist
what’s stronger in you, just as Ava here can’t resist what’s stronger in her. The two of you are on the opposite sides of the same powerful force.

“But I just can’t let you go and forget,” he added.

What was he telling me? That because I was how I was, an anomaly, a freak to our kind, no better than a Renegade, he was here to destroy me? Was this the end? I glanced at Ava. She looked happier, more satisfied.

“You can understand that, can’t you?” he asked.

I nodded.

“It’s not easy for you, either, crossing from our world to this one.”

“I’m not afraid of it,” I said.

“Of course you’re not,” he replied. “You’re my daughter, after all, are you not?”

I looked at him. How would it come? What would it be? A ravishing bite, a sweep of his powerful hand, or just the drawing out of all my breath and strength, leaving me folded in a heap at the foot of the bed? They’d find me like that in the morning, and some autopsy would conclude that I had suffered a heart attack.

Daddy saw the fear in my face. “I said I wouldn’t harm you,” he continued. Ava’s smile disappeared. He took my hand into his and, for a few moments, just played with my fingers. “You always had the most beautiful hands of all my daughters. There were many different things about you. Some I cherished, but some I should have known would bring us to this moment.”

If he wasn’t going to harm me and he knew I was different, too different to be like any of his other
daughters, what did he mean when he said he just couldn’t let me go?

“You know that I’ve spoken to your future father-in-law a few times. He sounds like a very nice man, one who would be more of a father to you than a father-in-law. Ava here thinks your fiancé is quite handsome. She’s drooling over the possibilities, aren’t you, Ava?” he asked her. She smiled. “Possibilities she won’t realize.”

She stopped smiling again. She was on the same roller-coaster ride I was on, I thought, one moment hopeful and then another moment not. Our reasons for hope were very different, of course.

“And you know I’ve paid for this quite elaborate wedding that’s being planned, and I’ve pleaded to give you away properly, as any other father would.”

I nodded.

“By the way, how did you explain your flight and arrival in Quincy to these people?” he asked. “I’m sure you had a good explanation.”

I told him what I had fabricated, and he looked at Ava and laughed.

“Terrific story. And you called my new wife Veronica, nicknamed Ronnie?”

“Stupid,” Ava said.

“No, quite the contrary. It’s so pedestrian that it’s more credible. Good thinking, Lorelei.”

Why was he giving me a compliment now?

He sighed. “Well, since you’ve done such a good job of it and I don’t like wasting my time or my money . . .” he said. Now I was confused.

“What are you saying, Daddy?”

“You can go ahead and marry this man you love, enter this world you want, and live this life.”

Ava looked more shocked than I had ever seen her, shocked and disappointed. “Daddy?” she said, stepping forward. He held up his hand, and she retreated again.

“I ask only one thing from you. Well, ‘ask’ isn’t quite the word, I guess,” he said. “I demand only one thing from you, and then you will be free of us, all of us. You will not be a threat to any other family, and there will never be a shadow for you ever to fear.”

“What is it?” I asked, my breath so thin that my question seemed more like something I had thought and not spoken.

“If your first child is a girl, she will go with me,” he said.

His words fell like thunder on my ears, like the pronouncements of some biblical prophet laying demands on the people who looked up to him, words so powerful and firm that they couldn’t be erased or forgotten. They were words etched into the very souls of those who heard them.

Ava’s smile returned.

My heart seemed to writhe in my chest as my blood froze. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

“But how could I . . .”

“I’m making a great sacrifice in giving you up, Lorelei. You have to make one, too.”

“But my daughter, a daughter created from my husband and me, surely couldn’t be someone who would please you.”

“She will in a different way,” he said. “For many years, it will be like having you with me.”

“But . . .”

“It’s what I want,” he said firmly. “Do you want the alternative?”

I shook my head.

He smiled. “Good. The daughter of my daughter will once again be close to me.”

The very idea was so painful to me, but I was afraid to speak.

“You know that once you are impregnated by one of them, you will be one of them, and I don’t mean figuratively or symbolically, Lorelei. You will lose all that you have as my daughter. You will suffer the same slings and arrows of misfortune that they suffer. You will, as Ava alluded to before, be full of silly, vain jealousies, grow old and sick in a second of time compared with us.” He laughed. “Why, you’ll need to go to a dentist.”

“I don’t care,” I said.

His eyes brightened rather than darkening. “No, you don’t. You’re resilient. Ironically, you wouldn’t be if you weren’t a Patio, Lorelei, but you’d come back to us out of weakness and not willingly. I don’t want that. Go forth, and cross over into their world,” he said, like a bishop giving me a blessing.

He leaned toward me and brought his lips to mine. It was a kiss unlike any other he had given me. It was a kiss that sealed my fate. It was more like a royal stamp. I felt no warmth or love. He stroked my hair once more and then stepped back.

“Ava?” he said. “Leave on the feet of a kitten.”

“Yes, Daddy,” she said.

“Daddy?” I called. He turned. “That man, the guest in my rooming house, Collin Nickels.”

“Yes, that was your sister’s choice. Not the most nutritious,” he said. “But she was trying to make a point. Perhaps a little too enthusiastically?”

Ava smirked. He nodded at the door.

They left like a whisper dying in the aftermath. I watched them go, the door barely closing behind them as they wove their way out through shadows into the darkness Daddy treasured.

And I stood there trapped between relief and great sadness, escaping the struggle between these two feelings only when I managed to fall asleep.

I didn’t wake up until Julia touched my face and sat beside me on my bed.

“Sorry to wake you, but Mrs. Wakefield is pacing in the dining room. She’ll wear a path in the rug if we’re all not in there soon,” she said.

I sat up, feeling a bit groggy. “What time is it?”

“Eleven thirty. We’re going to call it brunch, not breakfast. The boys are showering. Clifford is moaning about his hangover and swearing he’ll never do it again. He will,” she said, laughing. She nodded at some clothes she had laid out for me over a chair. “I’m sure they’ll all fit well enough,” she said. “I’m also sure they’ll look better on you. It’s going to be a beautiful day. If you’re up to it, we’ll do some of that shopping we left for the last minute.”

“Thanks. Yes, I’ll be up to it.” I scrubbed my face with my dry palms and ran my fingers through my hair. As I did so, I looked about the room as if I expected either Daddy or Ava still to be there.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m okay. I just had a night full of dreams. The sort
you can’t remember or don’t want to remember. You just have the heavy dark feeling.”

“I’ve had plenty of those.”

Not like these,
I thought.

She stood up. “Take a good shower to wake up fully. That usually works for me. Oh, I called my great-aunt Amelia and explained that you had slept here. I stressed, in a guest room,” she added. “She only would have asked. She’s a Sagittarius, you know. She’ll ask or say anything she wants.”

“I think I know that by now,” I muttered.

“I bet you do.

“Try to be down within a half hour. You don’t want to be hit with one of Mrs. Wakefield’s disapproving expressions this early. It could ruin your day. That woman could stop a charging bull with one of her glares.”

I smiled. If she had seen one of Mrs. Fennel’s disapproving expressions, she would think Mrs. Wakefield was a pushover. I rose quickly and did get downstairs in a little more than twenty minutes. The boys had just entered the dining room. Everyone was moaning and groaning, which seemed to please Mrs. Wakefield, who gave us a short lecture about how young people pay later on in life for how they abused their bodies.

“And you two in medicine should know that better than I do,” she told Clifford and Julia, both smiling weakly. When she left, they looked at each other and laughed.

“If she only knew how poorly some doctors live, smoking, drinking, and keeping late hours. It’s the old ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ thing,” Julia said.

“Why do I feel like I’m five years old whenever I’m in that woman’s presence?” Clifford asked.

“In her eyes, you probably are,” Julia teased.

Everyone turned to me.

“Your ankle seems a lot better,” Liam said.