The Prophecy (23 page)

“You
look so much like her,” he said in a breathless whisper, almost too quiet for
me to hear. His tenor voice was lighter, more hesitant, than his brother’s.

He
cleared his throat then, seeming to regain himself once more, and invited me to
sit down. I slid into the booth, Sebastian taking the spot next to me. My
father sat opposite. He didn’t blink; just continued to look at me as though
afraid I might evaporate like a dream. I averted my eyes to give him the chance
to stare uninterrupted.

“It’s
like seeing a ghost from my past. And yet you are so very real. Here,” he said,
suddenly excited. “Look at this.”

He
rummaged inside his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. He placed it on
the table and pushed it in front of me. “Look inside.”

With
trembling fingers I opened the envelope and removed a stack of photographs of .
. .
me
, I realized with a start. I flipped through them slowly, seeing
the passage of years frozen for an instant in time.

There
were school pictures taken throughout the years, and pictures of me in various
Halloween costumes. There was a picture of me just after I’d lost my first
tooth, one of me the summer I took swimming lessons, and another of me posing
with my third-grade science fair project.

There
were pictures of my mom and me together, too. A strip from the photo booth at
the mall, us hugging and making silly faces at the camera. The two of us
feeding the goats at the zoo, hands outstretched and me with my mouth wide open
in silent laughter. Pictures of us swimming at the lake. Eating ice cream.
Planting flowers.

I
looked up at my father, tears in my eyes. “I don’t understand. How did you get
these?”

“Your
mother gave them to me. These are just a few,” he said. “I have many more at
home. I’ve also got letters from your mother documenting every one of your
milestones, and art projects that you made in school.”

“So you
saw her then, even after she left the reservation?”

He
nodded. “Of course. When we could, which wasn’t often enough.”

“Why
not me?” A tear fell from my eye and my father quickly handed me a paper napkin
from the dispenser. “We could have been a family,” I said, my voice shaking.

“I saw
you a few times, when you were a baby. But it was hard on your mother the older
you got. Her parents didn’t approve, and she didn’t want to disappoint them. It
was better to keep things at a distance.”

I looked
down and flipped through the pictures again, one thing becoming clear after a
moment. “You didn’t get any more of these after the fire, did you?”

He
shook his head slowly. “No. And you’ve changed a lot since then. You’ve grown
up.”

The
waitress stopped at our table and I requested a teapot of hot water. When she
brought it back, I poured my cup full, put in a tea bag to steep, and cupped my
hands around the steaming mug. I waited for either my uncle or my father to
speak, not trusting myself to know what to say next.

“I
imagine you have questions,” my father said at last.

I
snorted and swiped at another tear that had managed to escape. “Yeah.”

“Your
mother used to make that sound,” he said, the side of his mouth turning up. I
began to notice certain things about him, too, like how his chin was slightly
cleft and he had a tiny mole at the corner of his left eye.

I
looked down and watched the steam rising from my mug as I attempted to collect
my thoughts. I honestly didn’t know where to begin. Where did one start when
faced with seventeen years worth of questions for a father she’d known less
than fifteen minutes?

“I
suppose I’d like to know how you and my mother met,” I said, settling on an
easy one to get the conversational ball rolling.

My
father sat back in his seat and drew in a deep breath. “I first met your mother
through Charlene Moon.” He studied me for a moment, perhaps daring me to
mention Caleb’s name. But I thought that part would keep until later.

“Charlene
herself was very young when we met for the first time, no more than sixteen years
old. We were friends, before . . .” He let the end of his sentence hang.

“My
aunt Meg says she was a troublemaker.”

My
father laughed out loud, strong and clear. “Charlene liked to have fun, that is
true. Maybe a little too much fun.” His eyes grew sad then, and I realized
there was something he wasn’t telling me. I let it go. For now.

“What
about the stories,” I said, “the old legends about animosity among the tribes?”

My
father leveled his gaze at me. “Times and sentiments change. The Katori people
have long held on to this notion of good versus evil. Charlene thankfully saw
past that. And so did your mother. My tribe, the Manaquay, are a peace-loving
people. We have been for a very long time. And yet we are still being punished
for the things our ancestors did many ages ago.”

What he
said about Charley seeing past the prejudices of our tribe certainly didn’t
mesh with the Charley I knew now, which only deepened my suspicion that
something had happened to change her opinion of the man sitting before me.

“Your
mother was meant for Sebastian,” my father said, jolting me out of my thoughts.
“Charlene introduced them.”

Sebastian
laughed beside me. “It’s true,” he said. “But Lucas won her fair and square in
a coin toss.”

“A coin
toss?” I didn’t know whether to laugh or be horrified. “Isn’t that a little, I
don’t know, barbaric?”

“We
were just a couple of punk teenagers,” Sebastian said. “And it’s not like I
didn’t fight for her. Lucas has a powerful right hook, though. He’s tougher than
he looks.” He traced the bridge of his nose, which was slightly crooked from
apparently having been broken at one time.

“I told
him the only way we were going to get out of it alive,” my father said, “was if
we settled the matter with a coin toss. I was being facetious, but it worked.”

I
looked at Sebastian, who could have easily ended up my father had luck been
with him that day. But then again, I wouldn’t have ended up who I was now.

“He was
always the better man,” Sebastian said with a shrug of his shoulders.

A dark
cloud passed over my father’s face again. “And yet I’ve done things I am not
proud of.” He raised his eyes to mine then. “The woman I killed on your
reservation—”

I nodded.
“Aida. Her name was Aida.” I left out the part about her being my boyfriend’s
mother.

“It was
an accident,” he said. “Melody and I had had an argument that day, a bad one. I
wanted her to come away with me, to get married. She refused to leave her family.
I went to see her that night, and . . . I had been drinking.”

I
leaned across the table and lowered my voice. “You showed up as a wolf.”

“Like I
said, I’d been drinking. It’s not an excuse for what happened, but it’s the
only explanation I have. I hardly remember that night. I woke up in the woods
the next day, bloody and confused.”

I
looked at my father then;
really
looked at him. He was no monster. He
was simply a man who had made a mistake. A very bad one.

“I
vowed to keep away then, to not have anything to do with Melody and you. And it
wasn’t because I didn’t love you or your mother. I wanted to protect you from
me
,
from the things that I had done. But your mother, she was persistent,” he said
with a smile. “She said I had a responsibility to be a father . . . as much as
I could.”

The
waitress came by then and refilled Sebastian’s coffee mug. I pressed my lips
together and poured out a fresh helping of hot water, idly dunking the tea bag.

“My
aunt Meg knew who Sebastian was,” I said when the woman left. “She said he’s always
around.”

“I
wouldn’t say that I am
always
around,” Sebastian said, smirking into his
mug. “But someone has to keep an eye on you.”

“I’ve
been doing fine on my own, thank you very much,” I said.

“When
he says you,” my father said with a grin, “who he’s really talking about is your
aunt.”

“Meg?”
Was he serious? And then, more incredulously, “You have a crush on
Meg?
”

Sebastian
held up his hands in surrender, but his answering smile gave him away.
“Guilty.”

“So you
come around to spy on Meg,” I said, just to be clear. Their faces turned
serious once more and I knew that Meg wasn’t really the reason. Or at least not
the only one.

 “When
I got word that your mother had died,” my father said, “I nearly died, too. The
only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that you had escaped, that you were
still alive.”

“I was
there that night,” Sebastian said suddenly. “I watched you escape.”

I could
feel the flames of the fire now as though I was burning. I could hear the
wolf’s cry in the distance, echoing in my mind, and I looked up at Sebastian,
his eyes answering my unspoken question.

He had
been there that night.

And
then I realized my hands
were
burning. The contents of my mug had boiled
over the rim, splashing onto my fingers. I jerked in surprise, shaking droplets
of hot water from my hands.

“So
it’s true,” my father whispered, with an odd gleam in his eyes I couldn’t quite
understand.

“I told
you it was,” Sebastian said, excited. “They’re the ones. The ones who can save
us.”

“What
are you talking about?” I demanded, their bizarre exchange making no sense to
me.

“There
is a prophecy,” my father said, almost hesitantly, “that speaks of an end to
the curse we bear.”

I
looked around to make sure no one was watching us or listening to our
conversation. “The curse of becoming a wolf, you mean?”

My
father nodded. “It says the Sun and Moon born to man will marry and produce a
new lineage.”

I
blinked. “In plain English, please?”

Sebastian
grinned. “Isn’t it obvious? You and Caleb represent the Sun and Moon.”

I had
just taken a sip of my tea and choked as it went down the wrong way. I coughed
and sputtered, eventually getting myself under control with a few
not-very-helpful pats on the back from Sebastian.

“I
don’t care what your prophecy says,” I said. “I am
not
marrying my own
brother or doing . . .
that
with him. Ever. Ew!”

My
father gave Sebastian a hard look but spoke directly to me. “You cannot take
everything quite so literally, Sarah.”

Now
that I thought about it, there was something vaguely familiar about the
marrying and producing offspring part of the prophecy. And then it occurred to
me that it sounded a lot like the Conditional Blessing issued by Katori the day
Shyla saved me.

“We
need your help,” Sebastian said, interrupting my thoughts.

“My
help?”

“Not
just your help. Caleb’s, too.”

I took
a gulp of my tea, wincing as it burned my throat. “Good luck convincing Caleb
to help you. He only just found out that the man he thought is his father
really isn’t. And he probably thinks you don’t want him anyway,” I added.

“Why
would he think that?” my father said, genuinely confused.

I
splayed my hands. “Charley came to you once, before my mother died. Isn’t that
right?”

He
nodded. “Yes, that is correct,” he said slowly, as though trying to put the
pieces together himself.

“Why?”
I asked, even though Sebastian had told me this much already before. I wanted
to hear it from my father now.

“I
hadn’t seen Charlene in years. She came with the boy—with Caleb. He was maybe
eleven or twelve. It was the first time I’d ever seen him, but she refused to
let me go to him. I only saw him from a distance. I’ve never known what, if
anything, she told him about me. But it was clear she was using him as a pawn
to get to me, and I couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t love her.”

“Not
even for the sake of her son, as well as yours?”

“I
refused to betray my love for your mother. I will never love another woman the
way I loved her. And I refused to let her manipulate me or Caleb.”

Sebastian
rolled his eyes and jerked his thumb at my father. “He’s a martyr, this one.”

My
father turned a hard glare on him. “Giving up the child, or children,” he said,
turning his gaze to me, “that you love is the ultimate sacrifice. If I thought
accepting Charlene into my life was best for Caleb, I would have done so long
ago. But I killed a woman. I couldn’t let either of you be near me, no matter
how much I wanted you. I’m dangerous.”

So
that’s what it really boiled down to. My own people had been saying all along
that he was a monster. What’s sad was he believed it himself.

I
reached out and touched the back of his clasped hands. He looked down at my
hand on his and closed his eyes. “You’re not dangerous. It was an accident,” I
insisted.