The Old House (Haunted Series Book 16) (28 page)

Ted laughed.

“She did well,” Orion said.  “She has a long way to go, but I think she’s got the principles down.  Well, children, I’m going to see if I can get in on the D & D game in there,” he said, motioning towards the RV.  “Or at least into that whiskey before Mike drinks it all.”

Mia climbed the steps to the deck and into the waiting arms of her husband.

“So, am I the freak of the week?” Mia asked, concerned over Burt and Mike’s reaction.

“Not any more than you normally are,” Ted said.  “Come here, freak, let’s see what this geek can do to make you forget that
thing
that Burt does so well.”

Mia giggled nervously.  “What exactly do you have in mind?”

“I’ve worked out the physics on it, but it will all depend on the practical application.”

Mia walked over, grabbed his hand and followed him into the cottage.

~

Mike sat on the dock smoking in the dark.  He didn’t indulge too often, but the booze had faded his resolve.  He had just extinguished his cigarette when he heard movement from the cottage.  He watched as Mia walked quickly down the steps, dropped her robe, and ran to the water.  He was about to make himself known when she launched herself and dove into the water.  She broke the surface of the water twenty feet from shore.  She took a moment to look around.  She saw Mike and swam towards him.

“Come on in,” she said. “The water’s fine.”

Mike took off his shirt and slid off the dock.  He followed Mia as she glided out into the lake.  He kept his distance, not trusting himself to be a gentleman.  The whiskey had pretty much dissolved that resolve too.

Mia flipped over onto her back.  Mike was glad to see that she was clothed in a one piece bathing suit.

“What brings you out into the lake at this time at night?” he asked her.

“I was very hot, and I needed to cool off,” she said.  “I take it, you couldn’t sleep.”

“Too much booze.  Too many thoughts.”

“That would do it.  My brain won’t stop thinking long enough for me to dream.”

“What’s on your mind?” he asked, swimming closer.

Mia moved her hands to stabilize her position.  “I’m not sure I can reconcile all that has happened in the last few weeks.  I feel beat up inside, bruised and bloody, and there’s a part of me that is not letting it all heal.”

“That’s unlike the Mia I know,” Mike confessed.  “The Mia that forgives so easily.”

“I’ve forgiven him,” she said sadly.  “But it hurt.  How can I come back from that?  I thought that the one constant in my life was Ted’s fidelity.”

“He told us what brought around your complete transformation.  I gave him hell, and I’m not sure that helped.  He didn’t break his vows, Mia,” Mike reminded her.

“Not physically.  How could he simply chuck his ring on the dresser and walk out on me?”

“In his mind, he was being brave,” Mike explained.  “He knew that Murphy and we would pick up the pieces, Mia.  He knows how we feel about you.”

“You don’t simply disappear like that.  I’m so angry.”

“And so, instead of beating him up with words and your fists, you came out here to cool off?”

“Yes,” Mia said and swam away.

Mike let her leave.  He swam to shore, picked up his shirt, and took out a cigarette and lit it.  He smoked it, watching Mia swim lap after lap, trying to work the anger out of her system.  He thought about the old Mike, the man who would have dragged her up on the opposite shore and used that angry body until there was no going back.  But he wasn’t that man anymore.  He smiled.  He had passed another test.

Mia glided in and dragged her tired body out of the water.  She lifted a hand in farewell as she walked back up to the cottage.  Mike felt sorry for her.  The woman, who had Heaven and Hell panting after her, had had her ego crushed.  He knew that to be humbled in this way was hard, and he hoped that she could let it go before it colored her in a very negative light.

Mia took time in the bathroom to rinse the lake water out of her hair.  She braided it back, securing the long braid with the very same leather bracelet Mike had given her at the hotel.  She wondered why she didn’t give it back. Was this her way of holding on to him?  Was this a passive aggressive way of letting Ted know she was sought after?  Just like not giving away Angelo’s dress and shoes.  She never thought much about the deep-seated reasons for her actions.  Mia was used to simply reacting and existing.  She wasn’t a planner.

Tonight, she didn’t know how she had worked herself up into such a state of mind.  They had made love, and Ted had fallen asleep.  Instead of falling asleep in bliss, she was pissed.  Mike had made sense out there.  Ted knew that Murphy and the others would be there for her, but she ashamedly didn’t want them.  She wanted Ted.  He had become part of her.  Did she really want to be in this position?  She had severed her tie with Murphy, and instead of being free, she opened the door and let Ted walk back in.

She walked into the bedroom and stood over him.  She wanted to scream at him, shake him awake, and what?  She sat down on the floor, curled in a ball and cried.

Ted had felt her leave.  He saw her pull on her bathing suit, so he assumed she needed to release some energy.  She came back, and instead of sliding into bed beside him, she had stood there staring down at him like the woman in
Paranormal Activity
.  He felt the anger radiating off of her.  Instead of raging, she pulled it all within herself, turned around, sat on the floor, and cried.  He got out of bed and moved quickly to her side.  He gathered her into his arms and held her.

“Tell me,” he pleaded.  “Don’t hold it in.”

“I can’t.”

“Then take me in, Mia.  Take me inside you,” he begged.

Mia connected with his mind.  She opened her mind to him and drew him inside.  Ted found he was standing in a strange, stuffy, little sitting room by a large scorched mark on the carpet.  There was a little girl sitting across from him with her head bent.  Her hair was tangled, and her dress was too small. She had mismatched socks and shoes on.  Her knees were scabby and her nails broken.  He knew before she looked up that this was how Mia saw herself.

“I’m mad at you,” she said, sniffing.

Taken aback, Ted asked, “Why?”

“You have all this power over me.”

“Me?”

“I broke the curse, so I could give you my whole heart. You didn’t ask me to, but I set Murphy free.  I have no net below me now.  And then I took part of me and put it in your heart, but still you left?  What do I do to make all of you leave me?”

Ted looked around and realized he was in the house Mia grew up in.

She got up and walked out of the room.  He followed her up the stairs and into what could hardly be called a child’s room, but there were signs that Mia had made do with the gigantic old bed.  She had stacked the dusty tomes of Charles’s and Amanda’s professions to make a stair to the bed.  In the dusty canopy, she had suspended tissue paper ghosts with strands of her own hair.  It was all so horrible and sad.

“I’m sorry, Mia.  I always found comfort in thinking of myself as the hero in my comic books, but it’s always been you, hasn’t it?  You had nothing, yet you found something to give all of us.  You didn’t let all this damage you.”

“It did though,” Mia admitted.  “I’m so insecure.  I need to know that when I come home, you’re going to be there.  Each time I made a major stride towards becoming confident, you left me, either emotionally or physically.  I can understand it.  I’m not really worth staying for, am I?”

Mia pulled out a family album.  She pushed it at Ted.

He opened it and saw pictures of Charles and Amanda and that was it.  He tossed it at the wall in anger.  He grasped the ragged child to his chest.  “Mia, where’s Ralph and Bernard?  Your grandmother and, for cripes’ sake, Murphy?”  He ran out of the room, dragging her.  He found where the good memories were residing and forced her to see the man who taught her to ride a bike.  “It’s Ralph, honey, and Bernard.  You were not alone.”

“Wasn’t I?” she questioned.  “Come, let me show you my life.”

Ted watched the child who had a vicelike grip on his hand.  He walked with her through her memories, and as they did, she grew up: the young girl left out at school, the teen who tried time and time again to fit in, and then Ted found himself at Murphy’s farm.  The windows of the house were broken, and the barn was falling apart, although the foundations of the building showed the careful construction of the builder.  He saw the teens arrive.  Mia was a cute little thing.  She was sporting a Goth look, but there was no masking that the clothes she wore were from the secondhand store.  She followed Whitney, who Ted had to admit was a strikingly handsome youth. He witnessed the abandonment of Mia, and Murphy’s arrival at the campfire.

After that, there was a flashing of memories of Mia coming to the farm when her heart was broken, or she was just sad, to find Murphy waiting for her.  He didn’t do anything more than make her laugh.  Ted witnessed the love bloom between the two and the point when the curse locked Mia in a relationship that would forever be damned.

Ted turned Mia to him.  “You let that go for me?”

“Yes, and for me.  Murphy was tied to me too. I didn’t know it until I broke the curse.”

“What did you do to break it?”

“I opened up my soul to him, as I’m doing now with you.  I expect you’ll leave me now.”

“Oh no, Mia.”

“I’ve been given gifts that take me away from home to fight for the innocent and the lost.  I’m afraid to leave, because I’m going to come back and you’ll be gone.”

“No, Mia, I’ll be here.”

“My grandmother said that you are so very important to the beings that fight for good.  If you do leave me, don’t leave them, please.”

“Mia, you’re not listening to me,” Ted said sternly, putting his hands on her shoulders.  “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m not asking you to stay with me because of Brian,” Mia said.  “I don’t want that kind of marriage.”

“I thought perhaps that’s why you came home so quickly before, for Brian,” Ted admitted.

“I would have moved close by so we could share him.  I came home because I love you and wanted you to love me,” Mia said clearly.  “I knew it was going to be a struggle because of the Judas Hex, but when I found out you were leaving, even before Roumain’s scheming, it crushed me.”

Ted put his hand through his hair nervously.  “You didn’t seem to need me, Mia.”

“Walk these halls and find one moment when I didn’t need you,” she challenged.

He walked to where she stood proudly on the stage at the beach.  “How can anyone so beautiful need anyone?”

“Watch,” she said.

“Miss, we are geeks from IIT, and right now you are on live at the Rosemont Convention Center.”

Mia smiled.  She was thinking of Ted being there, possibly watching her.

“Would you give your permission to be voted on by nerds and geeks?”

“Oh, I love nerds.  I find smart men so handsome,” she said, lowering her voice, looking into the camera.

“Who do you think that was for? Angelo?”

“No, but at that point I wasn’t in my right mind.”

“I was just coming out of the hex.  All I could think of was connecting with you.  I was running away from telling you how Roumain had violated us, but Mike made me stay.  Brutal truths.  Oh, how I hate them.”

“You seemed to be doing alright without me,” Ted said, turning her to look at her training with Ed on the island.

“He wouldn’t let me fall apart.  He let me use my anger.”

Ted walked on and stopped, awestruck.

Before him was Mia’s first flight, the entrance of Sariel, and her rejected promise.  He relived her stopping the car from her perspective.  If he hadn’t turned around, how it would have taken everything she had to move on.  He also saw the archangel and how he instructed Mia to keep her mind off of what was going on below.

“He’s a lot like Murphy, isn’t he?”

“Bossy, yes.  But I understand now why he needs me.  He’s damaged.”

“What about Angelo?”

“Oh, that I fear will always be a problem, Ted, I’m sorry.  I can’t seem to do anything to get rid of him.  I think it’s a crush.  Now I know how poor Whitney felt; I stalked the boy.”

Ted laughed in spite of himself.

Mia looked up at him.  “I have shared as much of myself as I dare, Ted.  Any more, I won’t survive.  Orion won’t be able to pull me through again.”

“Wait, I need to go to one more place,” Ted pleaded.

She nodded her head, and she let him pull her backwards through time and into the hollow, of all places.

“Hey, Mia, wait up,” Ted called, running up to her and Murphy.  “So, we have to leave tonight.  I wonder if I can get a hug, a phone number and maybe a picture of Murphy?” Ted asked, his face full of love.

Mia turned and looked at Ted.  “So how did I miss this?”

“It’s Ted Martin at his best.  I got your phone number, didn’t I?”

Mia laughed.  “You big bozo, you would have saved me so much heartache had you declared yourself then.”

“You were one foot in the sack with my boss.”

Mia laughed.  “And I wouldn’t have experienced that
thing.”

“Okay, I need to see that thing,” Ted said, pulling Mia on.

She dug in her heels.  “No.”

Ted looked down at her, and she was every bit the ice queen, if ice queens had black, tattooed feathers moving on their backs.

“You don’t want me to witness you in love with Burt, do you?”

“No, I don’t think you should see me making love to Burt.  That’s private.”

“Okay, I understand.  Mia, I am not perfect, but now I understand how you feel.  You have to open up and tell me.  Don’t shut down because you feel it will keep the peace and get us further down the road.”

“Tell me, what are you feeling right now?”

“Mia, I was there watching when you fell in love with Burt and when Whitney took you from me.  I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Angelo, Sariel or anyone else take you from me again.  I’m not going to let that happen.”

Mia put her hands on her hips.  “So you’re staying?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all night.  You’re a hard lady to convince.”

Mia pulled him gently out of her mind.  It took a moment for both of them to transition to being in separate minds.

Ted lifted her chin.  “I promise I won’t leave you, Mia, if you promise to come home to me.”

“I promise.”

“Are we good?  Is there anything else?”

“I told Angelo in person why I let Sariel train me.”

“How’d he take it?”

“I think he appreciated it.”

“You know he’s just more smitten now,” Ted said, irritated.  “I’m not going to wake up on the business end of a set of talons, am I?”

“No because I would kill him.  Ed taught me how,” Mia said proudly.

“You would kill Angelo?”

“If he came between you and me I would.”

“Whoa.”

“Forgive me for my moments of insecurity,” Mia pleaded.

“If you forgive mine,” Ted said.

Mia nodded.

“So we are of one mind,” Ted said.  “Kind of sinister.”

“I like sinister,” Mia said, standing up.

“One day, I’ll let you in my mind.  I have to clean out the porn first,” Ted said.

Mia laughed.  “I’d like that.  I want to get to know the young Ted.  I want to know the boy that grew into this amazing man.”

“I am amazing, aren’t I?”

“And modest,” Mia pointed out.

“Well, one has to be,” he said.  He lay down and waited for Mia to lay down before he spooned her.  “Thank you, Mia.  Please don’t hold it in.  No more misunderstandings.”

“Yes, Teddy Bear,” Mia said in a sleepy voice.

He drew her in close and let himself fall asleep.