House of the Rising Sun (6 page)

I
f there was anything last night had taught Harlow, it was that straying from her comfort zone rarely produced positive results. And yet here she was anyway. At her mother’s house. With the early morning sun beating down on her like a punishment. If Olivia had only relented and given her the information about her father she’d begged for, they’d have a very different relationship. But no, Mother knew best. And now Harlow was finally going to have to capitulate and agree to let the issue of her paternity rest if she wanted Olivia’s help. Somehow, she would have to find a way to ignore the empty place in her heart that she’d lived with her entire life. Resigned to the reality of what lay ahead, she pushed her sunglasses back on her nose, stopped leaning against her car and walked to the front door.

At least this part of New Orleans was blissfully quiet. A few blocks down, a woman walked her dog. Other than that, the streets were empty.

The house was impossibly beautiful, but Harlow hadn’t expected anything less. Olivia Goodwin lived her life in a very certain way, with a very certain style. One Harlow had long ago forsaken. What would her life have been like if she’d let the issue of her father drop when she was a teenager? Would she be someone different now? Would she have embraced her fae side?

What would her life have been like if she’d known her father? Had a parent who understood her need to be
human
? Because she was sure her father was strictly human for no other reason
than that she’d believed it for so long it had become part of his canon. Part of why she denied her fae side as much as she did. Part of why she clung to being human. His human blood in her veins was the only thing of him she had. Her only connection.

And she was about to give up any chance of solidifying that connection to save her own skin. That was if her mother wouldn’t hold the years of estrangement against her, but that hope was as thin as the whole in her heart was large.

Feeling like a traitor to the father she’d never known, she stood in front of the big, leaded-glass doors and lifted her hand to knock. She was trembling a little. Not because she was afraid to see her mother, but because real-life confrontation on this scale scared the breath out of her. Online she was a warrior. In person… not so much. As she rapped her knuckles on the glass, she wished she could do this wearing her mask from last night. There was such comfort in anonymity.

An older African-American woman came to the door. The housekeeper and her mother’s companion. Eulalie, if Harlow remembered correctly. She opened the door. “Can I help you, miss?” Then her mouth went slack and she blinked hard. Her hand went to her throat. “Miss Harlow?”

Harlow nodded. “Hello, Eulalie. Is my mother home?”

“Lands, child. I cannot believe—” Eulalie smoothed the skirt of her flowered dress and straightened. “She sure is. We’re just fixin’ to have breakfast. You come on in now.” She opened the door wider.

“I’d rather wait here.” Something about entering her mother’s house without her mother knowing about it didn’t feel right. She’d wait until Olivia invited her in. If that happened.

Eulalie didn’t close the door. “All right then. I’ll go fetch her.”

“Thanks.” She sat in one of the rockers to wait, the smoky scent of bacon and strong coffee wafting out from the house
and making her stomach grumble with upset. It was probably a combination of last night’s alcohol and this morning’s nerves, coupled with the sense that she was about to lose her father.

But she’d be lying if she said there wasn’t another man on her mind as well. The man who’d kissed her. Man, fae, whatever he was. She rolled her eyes. If she wanted a memory to take to prison, she’d certainly gotten herself one.

Why on earth had she decided to pick a guy who was fae? Silly female hormones. Sure, what she’d been able to see of him—and feel of him—had been undeniably amazing, but fae? His kiss had poured emotions into her she’d never expected to feel. The way his desire to possess her had just poured into her veins… she shivered at the memory, trying unsuccessfully to shut it out. To make matters worse, she’d dreamed of him, her bare hands gripping those horns of his while he—she blew out a hard breath in an attempt to alleviate the rising flush of warmth.

At least she’d never have to see him again. Whether her mother said yes or no about the money, she was going home today. If the CCU found out she’d left the state, she’d be in worse trouble than she already was.

A soft inhale brought her head up. Olivia stood on the porch, eyes liquid in a way Harlow hoped meant good things. “Harlow?”

She stood, her heart bumping against her rib cage in an attempt to break free. Her gut said run. Instead, she pushed her sunglasses up onto her head. “Hi. Mom.” The word tasted so strange. “It’s nice to see you.” It was. She hadn’t seen Olivia in a long time.

Olivia’s hair was silver-white now, making her look older than Harlow remembered, but she still looked healthy and full of life. Something Harlow had always envied.

Olivia’s knuckles tightened around the head of the cane she was using. “What brings you here after all these years?”

Harlow exhaled a soft, whooshing breath and began. There was no good place, really, so she just jumped in and prayed it made sense. “The work I do, with computers, I had a client who hired me to do some backdoor stuff, except I didn’t know it was backdoor stuff until I got in there and then I got out too late and the CCU tracked me—or someone did—and—”

“CCU?” Olivia’s brow wrinkled.

“Cyber Crimes Unit.” That put a label on things, didn’t it? “They… prosecuted me and so now I have this fine I can’t pay and I didn’t know where else to turn and…” Harlow took a breath, her mouth dry with anxiety. “I’m sorry that this is what’s brought me here. I know how that makes me look.”

“Do you?” Olivia planted her cane in front of her and put both hands on the crystal capping the end. “You don’t answer the phone when I call. You barely answer the emails I send.”

“I know and I’ll try to be better, I really will—”

“It’s been years since I last saw you and then you granted me a grand total of forty-five minutes for lunch with the excuse that you had
things
to do and now you show up on my door asking for money? This is why you’ve finally come to see me?”

Harlow swallowed down her embarrassment. “I know, Mom, I know. But you know why things are like this between us. Why I don’t answer your calls or your emails. All I’ve ever asked is to know who my father—”

“How much is this fine?”

Harlow blinked into the sunlight, on the verge of tears she’d sworn she wouldn’t shed. That’s always how it was when the subject of her father came around. A screeching dead end. “Eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

Olivia’s expression never faltered. “That is quite a sum of money. What happens if you don’t pay it?”

“It’s a huge sum of money.” Harlow’s sense of hope spiraled downward. “But without it, I go to prison.”

“For how long?”

Harlow’s answer was soft, her voice verging on a tremor that reflected what was going on inside her. “Two years.” Speaking things had such a way of making them real.

Olivia was quiet a long moment. Then her brows rose, the look on her face far less horrified than Harlow imagined it would be. “Just think, I’d know exactly where you were, and exactly when I could come visit you. I’d probably see you more in those two years than I have in the last twenty.”

“You’d let me… go to prison?” A chill dropped through Harlow, leaving her numb and desperate. “I’m willing to stop asking about my father.” As the words left her mouth, part of Harlow’s soul cried out.

“Are you willing to move here, too?”

Harlow swallowed. “Maybe. We could… talk about it. I guess.”

“Somehow I doubt that.” Olivia’s mouth bent in disbelief. “I haven’t decided anything yet. I need time to take this all in.” Olivia turned toward the door. “I’ll give you my answer at breakfast tomorrow. Eight a.m.”

“I kind of need to go home today—”

Olivia paused, her eyes sharp with something dark. “Then I can give you my answer right now, but you’re not going to like it.”

“But, as I was going to say, I would be happy to change my plans so I can make breakfast.” Happy wasn’t exactly what she’d be, but she didn’t see any other choice. Besides, it was the right thing to do. A little personal time in exchange for whatever Olivia was willing to give her… that was fair.

“Good.” Olivia nodded, her look of disapproval fading.

Unable to stop herself, Harlow reached out and grabbed her mother’s hand. Her voice came out a broken whisper. “Please,
Mom. Just give me a hint about my father? Anything, his initials, his place of birth—”

“He’s dead.” Olivia’s gaze softened as if she suddenly realized the impact of her words. “I’m sorry. But it’s time to let the past go, Harlow.” She squeezed Harlow’s hand, then released it.

Barely breathing from the shock of her mother’s confession, Harlow stood there openmouthed and numb. “Dead?”

“Yes, and don’t ask for details. Just let it go. Please.” Olivia sighed. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then she walked back into the house and shut the door, leaving Harlow alone.

Harlow wanted desperately to get back to her car, but for two or three minutes she stood there, frozen to the spot. Her emotions warred over what was worse—the death of a father she’d never known or her mother about to let her go to prison. The news about her father was such a shock she couldn’t process it. The possibility that her mother might actually let her go to jail was a reality she’d expected, but then again, maybe she hadn’t. Not really.

How could her father be dead when she’d never had a chance to know him? Her heart hurt so much she thought she might vomit right there on the porch. How could her mother just drop that kind of news on her? What was so awful about her father that Olivia didn’t want Harlow to even know his initials? The ache in her chest expanded throughout her body. She’d never had a father and she’d barely had a mother and now she was about to go to prison.

The hollowness inside her swelled to fill the space where her hope had once lived. Queasy with emotions she never wanted to feel again, she shuffled to her car and drove back to the hotel and her ghastly expensive room, where she sat, lights off, and stared out the window seeing very little but the bleakness of her future.

Olivia wept into her coffee, her appetite gone. Lally sat beside her, their plates untouched, the food cold. “After all these years, she comes to me for money.”

Lally squeezed her hand. “I know, Miss Olivia. That child has some nerve.”

Olivia blew her nose into a handkerchief. “Of course, I’m going to give it to her. I can’t let her go to prison, but she has to know how this hurts me. And does she care? Does she act like she cares? No.” She shook her head and sniffed. “I don’t know what to do, Lally. All my hard work to protect her and she still doesn’t understand. It’s like her father influenced her despite my best efforts.”

“Maybe you could explain to her what she needed protecting against?”

“And tell her what a monster her father really is? I told Harlow he was dead. I’m not sure what came over me. I should have done it years ago after—” Olivia stilled, realizing how much she’d just revealed. “Thank the dear sainted Elizabeth Taylor that Augie wasn’t awake to see that nonsense.”

Lally made a derisive noise. “That child sleep through a hurricane if you let him.”

Olivia smiled a tiny bit as the doorbell rang. Her smile faded. “If she’s come back to try to talk me into telling her who her father is again or to get out of coming to breakfast, I swear I will let her go to jail.”

“No, you won’t.” Lally got up. “I’ll take care of this. You get some of that breakfast into you.” A few minutes later, she returned. “You have a visitor, Miss Olivia. He says it’s real important, so I put him in the library.”

“He?”

“Says his name is Fenton Welch. Looks fae to me.”

“Elektos,” she muttered as she pushed up from the table. They were the only ones bold enough to call at this hour. She
went into the library and took the chair across from her visitor, glaring at the cypher fae who’d had the bad luck to call on her on this particular morning.

She should have had Lally toss him out. The woman took a strange joy in telling people to leave, but continuing to refuse the Elektos wouldn’t keep them from her door. They were a stubborn lot. At least they’d sent one of their less intimidating members. The slender, freckled fae in spectacles looked about as threatening as your average accountant. A suitable image considering his freckles were actually tiny numbers. Legend said if you could add up a cypher’s freckles and get their total, that cypher would be forever in your power. But she also knew not to touch him. She wasn’t about to give up her account and password information that easily. “What do you want at this uncivilized hour, Elektos?”

“I want to know the whereabouts of Augustine Robelais.”

She shrugged and sat back. “He’s a free man. Comes and goes as he pleases. Hasn’t been here in months.”

“He was seen in the Quarter last night celebrating
Nokturnos
.”