Hardboiled: Not Your Average Detective Story (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 5) (22 page)

BOOK: Hardboiled: Not Your Average Detective Story (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 5)
2.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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“Kishi, pay attention!” Masataka said as he looked from the sunk ball to his partner and followed Kishi’s gaze to my face. “Oh, hey Lillim,” he said, elbowing Kishi in the ribs. “Focus.”

The world started to spin, whirling away in a haze as I stumbled back from the table. The burly guy I’d been trying to see over turned, and grabbed me by the arm before I could fall, steadying me.

“You okay, Lillim? You look like you just saw a ghost,” Caleb said as he glanced at the others, then toward the big observation window in the back. “Come on, let me help you sit down,” he added a little louder than he needed to. He bent his head toward me, as he half-dragged me across the slick white tile floor. “You need to keep it together, or they’ll send you back. Do you understand?”

I nodded dumbly as he sat me on in a blue recliner that faced out a window. The glass was filled with that mesh wire, and as far as I could tell, was over an inch thick. Beyond the window, a huge cathedral that reminded me of the great spires of Lot stood off in the distance, shrouded by cloud cover.

“I’m okay,” I replied, when he stood next to me, one huge paw on the chair next to my head. “How… how are you here?”

“Here? Um… cause I’m crazy?” Caleb replied, giving me a ‘duh’ look. “When you like to light things on fire, they tend to send you to places like this.” He gestured at the room. “But I haven’t burned anything in like three weeks.” He grinned at me. “They should give me a cake with some candles.”

“No one is giving you any candles, bud,” Joshua, my half-demon ex-boyfriend said as he sidled up on my other side. He glared at Caleb for a second before kneeling down next to me. “You need anything, babe?” he asked.

Before I could respond, Caleb stepped around the chair and looked down at Joshua. “She doesn’t need anything from you, Joshua.”

“That’s not what she said last night,” he replied with a smirk. Then he popped to his feet and sauntered, actually sauntered, away whistling with his hands in the pockets of his all blue scrubs. It was the same uniform I was wearing along with everyone else.

“Oh my god,” I mumbled, clutching my face in my hands. “I am crazy. I’m absolutely insane.”

“Um… yeah, but don’t take it personally,” Caleb said, shrugging. “We’re all crazy.”

“You… you don’t understand at all,” I mumbled, shaking my head as tears burst from my eyes and flooded out from between my fingers. “I thought I was a super hero, and you were my godly boyfriend and…” I trailed off as a blush burst across my face like a firecracker. Had I just said that aloud?

“Um…” Caleb said, fidgeting uncomfortably. “Okay,” he said after such a long pause that it might as well have been an hour later.

“We’re not actually dating, are we?” I asked, too scared to look at him through my splayed fingers.

“Not that I recall,” he said, and I could hear the nervousness in his voice as he backed up a couple steps. “We’re not allowed to date, anyway, not that…”

“Please stop talking before I die of embarrassment,” I said as a weird buzzing sound rang out from the door.

It swung open a minute later as Warthor Ein escorted in a kid who was looking down at his shoes. “Hello everyone,” Warthor said, his voice carrying across the room. “I’d like you to meet your new friend. He’ll be staying with for a while. He came in with his parents a few days ago, so some of you may recognize him.”

Kishi was standing next to me, though I hadn’t seen her approach. “Isn’t Walter dreamy,” she said in a low voice. Caleb glanced at her and smirked.

“Well, it’s true,” Kishi said, looking away embarrassed.

Walter, who looked just like Warthor Ein, glanced over at us and smiled. “Kishi would you show Connor around?”

Kishi nodded dumbly and started forward as the boy looked up. Connor McLain looked up and stared straight at me. His gaze seemed to bore into my very soul, his mouth twisting into a sly grin. “It’s okay, I recognize my friend Lillim over there,” he said, starting toward us, moving past Kishi as though she wasn’t even there.

I tried to get up, tried to do anything, but the world around me started to spin. I looked to Caleb for help, but he was already walking away, edging back toward his foosball table where Mitsoumi and Masataka waited, impatiently.

“Hi, Lillim,” Connor said, squatting in front of me so that we were eye to eye. “Remember me?”

“Um… maybe,” I squeaked. “Sort of, I think… I don’t know.” I probably would have kept babbling that way, but he chose that moment to run his hand through his hair, and my voice caught in my throat like a screeching train.

“What?” he asked as two octopus eyes stared back at me from his forehead.

  

Thank you for reading 
Hardboiled.
 If you wouldn't mind, please leave a review. If you are wondering what happens to Lillim next, you may want to check out 
Mind Games
.
As a special bonus, the first chapter is included on the next page.

 

You may also want to check out my other series. The first book is 
May Contain Spies
.

 

Want to know when my next book is available? Sign up for my new release e-mail list 
here
. If you do, I'll send you my short story, 
Alone in the Dark
,
 for free.

 

Visit my website at 
JACipriano.com
 for all the latest updates. 

Chapter 1

The world outside the car windows whooshed by in an ever changing mishmash of color and scenery so by the time we left the parking lot of the mental hospital, the seasons had changed from summer to winter and back again. It was almost like watching my life pass before my eyes in the space of a moment. I shivered, hugging myself in the back of my parents’ old tan station wagon even though it was so warm inside the car, I was sweating.

My father turned around in the front passenger seat and smiled at me, lips stretching the acne scars on his face wide. His eyes darted from me to the back window where Mercer & Mercer slowly faded into the distance so quickly I almost didn’t catch it. Almost.

“Are you excited to finally be heading home, Lillim?” he asked, and the joy in his voice made my heart ache. Why? Because this couldn’t be real. Something was going on, only I didn’t know what. For the better part of six months, I’d been locked up in that mental hospital, and only after forcing myself to pretend everything I’d known was a lie, they’d let my parents take me away from their too bright walls and patronizing voices. Provided, of course, I kept taking my medication and stopped claiming my friends were werewolves.

Yup, that’s right. I said parents plural because even though my mother had been stabbed to death, she was somehow in perfect health and driving our car over the bumpy road. It was unnerving because I could still remember what her face looked like in death, all slack-jawed and empty. A shudder ran through my body as my father stared at me like it’d never happened, like she’d never died and everything was perfectly normal. I almost wanted to believe it wasn’t true. It would be easier if I did.

But I couldn’t.

“Yeah.” I forced myself to smile, not sure if it reached my eyes or not. I hadn’t ever learned to lie very well with my eyes, so I turned my head to avoid further scrutiny and stared at the trees flashing by outside as we drove along. Their leaves were an assortment of yellows and orange, and in the bright light of the morning, the dew on them glittered, beckoning for me to believe they too were real. God, how I wished that was true. Why couldn’t it be true?

“Cupcake, is everything okay?” my father, Sabastin Callina asked. His gaze bored into me, searing into my flesh like a high intensity laser. I was reasonably sure he couldn’t read my thoughts, but it didn’t stop him from trying to see into the inner workings of my brain and suss them out.

“Of course! I’m going home.” I turned back in my seat, my hands twisting my beige seatbelt. “I’m just a little tired.”

“Did you not sleep well?” my mother, Diana Cortez asked, not taking her eyes from the road as she drove our little car. Her hands were locked at ten and two on the wheel. I’d remembered hearing you weren’t supposed to drive with your hands in those positions anymore, but old habits die hard, I guess. Then again, I’d never actually driven a car before…

“Not really,” I said because that at least was true. My dreams had kept me up all night. Every single time I closed my eyes a horrible feeling would crawl over my skin like an icy spider, chilling me to the core. When my eyes were shut, the darkness would overwhelm me. I’d start to see and hear things I couldn’t explain. I didn’t know what the dreams meant, but they didn’t seem good. “Had some bad dreams.”

“I’m sorry, honey,” my mother said, and the concern in her voice was so foreign to my ears, it made me shiver again. In life, my mom had been hard as nails and twice as tough. Hell, I remembered, actually remembered, her teaching me to swim in a lake filled with sea monsters. Who throws their young daughter into a lake with a leviathan in it? Diana Cortez. If there was one thing she didn’t do, it was empathize. “We can get you a dreamcatcher if you like. You know, to catch all the bad dreams before they enter your head?”

“S’okay,” I replied, swallowing hard. “I’m sure once we get home, everything will be fine.”

“About that…” my father said, still turned in his seat to look at me. His eyes traced over my face, taking in my every detail as though he was storing it for later. “Your mother and I thought,” he glanced at my mother who kept her eyes on the road like a good little driver, “well, we thought, maybe you’d want to go pick out some furniture for your room. Or some decorations.” I must have looked at him strangely because he got a sort of scared gleam in his eyes. “Or not, dear, whatever you want.”

He said those last words like he thought I was a china doll and would shatter at the slightest provocation. I wouldn’t, but they still thought I was crazy, still worried their little girl hadn’t actually woken up from the delusions that had held her captive for the last couple years. It wasn’t their fault really, since they were figments of my imagination, but the look on his face made me feel bad.

“That would be fun,” I said, dropping my hands into my lap so I wouldn’t keep fidgeting with the seatbelt. “I can barely even remember what my room looked like before anyway.”

“See, I told you she wouldn’t want those boy band posters anymore. We should have taken our chance to get rid of them,” my mother said with a laugh. “Now they’ll be up on the walls forever.”

My father frowned. “I just wanted everything to be like how it was when she left,” he muttered, turning back in his seat and huffed against the seat like a disgruntled toddler. “Is that so much to ask?”

“I know, sweetie,” she said, glancing up at the rearview mirror and winking at me. “I know.”

My heart clenched in my chest as I looked away from them before I could cry. Even though I knew they weren’t real, I still felt bad for what I’d put them through. It was crazy because I
knew
they were just hallucinations. I wasn’t just some normal girl after all. I was Lillim Callina, Hyas Tyee of the Dioscuri, scourge of the underworld, slayer of dragons, killer of gods. I was not some crazy girl trapped in a mental hospital. At least, I really hoped I wasn’t.

If I was, well, I didn’t think I’d be able to forgive myself for what I’d put them through. That said, it was getting harder to hang onto the truth by the moment. Every day stretched into an impossible infinity of time that made me wary and skeptical of everything in my past.

What if the doctors were right? What if I’d just had a mental breakdown when the company running the obscure online video game I’d been playing shut down their servers? I liked to think I was beyond losing my mind over something like that, but the facts just kept piling up. Like the picture my mother had shown me when my guild had claimed the world’s first kill of a dragon named Valen. It wasn’t that impressive really because apparently only five hundred or so people even played the damned game.

I closed my eyes, picturing the screenshot in my mind. My avatar stood in the center, next to the corpse of a giant lobster-esque dragon, with her name plate clearly displayed over her head.
Dirge Meilan.

I opened my eyes and stared at the back of my father’s head. What if I was wrong? What if that was why, despite having secretly stopped taking my medication, I still hadn’t regained my magic? What if I really was crazy? What if this was real?

I swallowed.

What if I wasn’t special?

At all.

“Who’s ready for lunch?” my mother said, snapping me out of my reverie as she pulled our car in front of a yellow liquor store with a line stretched out the front door. Black wrought-iron tables stood in the parking lot, some empty, others filled with people munching on chips and salsa.

“You’ve got to be kidding me…” I mumbled as my father opened his door and came around to let me out.

“Fish tacos are still your favorite, right?” he asked after pulling the door open and offering me his hand.

“Yes,” I replied as my mother stretched next to the driver’s side of the car before grinning at me.

“Good. I’m starved,” she said, glancing at my father as she moved towards an empty table. “Come sit with me while your father gets our food.” She patted the chair next to her. “I know the doctors told me not to say this, but I’m glad you’re back, Lillim. I missed you.”

Tears filled my eyes as my father led me toward her by the hand. “I missed you too, Mom.” And the sad thing was, even though she was a figment of my imagination and I was caught up in an imaginary dream world, I sort of hoped everyone was right, and I was insane. Otherwise… otherwise she was dead. I really didn’t want that to be true. If it came down to a choice between having my mother back and losing my magic, well, my magic could just stay gone.

She reached out, took my hands in hers, and squeezed as I sat down. Her warmth made my flesh tingle as she stared into my eyes, her own glistening with unshed tears. Then she wrapped me in a hug, pulling me against her body. “I love you, Lillim. Please don’t leave me ever again.”

BOOK: Hardboiled: Not Your Average Detective Story (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 5)
2.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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