Whispers at Moonrise (34 page)

“You’re being quite rude, young lady.” John looked at Kylie’s mom.

“She’s not being rude!” a deep voice sounded behind Kylie.

The voice rang all kinds of familiar bells, but Kylie couldn’t think straight to know who it was, so she turned around to put a face to the voice.

Oh, shit! Could this get any worse?

“I happened to witness it as well. And frankly I agree with my daughter. It was inappropriate.” Her stepdad shot her mom a stern look.

Her mom’s face turned even redder, but Kylie recognized that red-faced expression, and it wasn’t embarrassment. She was pissed!

“How dare you tell me what’s appropriate!” her mom snapped.

Shame filled her stepdad’s expression. He looked at Kylie. “I didn’t know Kylie was there. I wouldn’t have done it if I had. I’ve apologized a hundred times. But two wrongs—”

“Let’s all take a walk,” Holiday said again. But no one took a step.

It took Kylie about a second to realize what her stepdad meant. She opened her mouth to say something, but what?
Don’t worry, Dad, Mom doesn’t know that I watched your young skank rub herself all over you and practically give you a handjob in the middle of downtown Fallen
?

Nope, that didn’t sound like the right thing to say. So she ceremoniously shut her mouth and started praying for a miracle, because it would take one right now to fix this mess.

“You wouldn’t have done what?” her mom asked, and when her stepdad didn’t answer, her mom’s fury focused on Kylie.

“What did you see?” she asked in her speak-or-be-grounded tone.

And grounded sounded like the best option.

Guilt fluttered in Kylie’s chest. But for what? she asked the unwelcome emotion. Not telling her mom had to be the right thing, didn’t it?

“Why don’t we walk outside,” Holiday piped up again, and put a hand on Kylie’s mom’s shoulder.

Her mom’s expression softened. Thank God for Holiday’s emotion-altering touch. The panic blossoming in Kylie’s gut lessened. Leave it to Holiday to save the day.

But then Kylie saw the way John stared at her stepdad. And when he opened his mouth, Kylie questioned if Holiday could pull off a miracle.

It didn’t help matters when Lucas came to a sudden stop beside Kylie, his eyes glowing a shade of pale protective orange. Not that she didn’t love that he cared enough to protect her, but the last thing she wanted to have to do was explain his eye color to her stepdad, her mom, and the man who was having sex with her mom. And thinking about that had Kylie’s eyes stinging. Shit! Were they glowing now?

“You have no right to judge her after what
you
did.” John took a defensive step toward Kylie’s stepdad and her own protective instincts sparked to life.

“No wonder your daughter lacks respect,” John quipped.

Lacks respect?
Kylie felt her fangs grow a little longer, and she was so mad, she’d missed Derek joining the crowd, but Lucas hadn’t missed it, because he growled.

Holiday moved in, and keeping one hand on Kylie’s mom, she rested her other palm on John’s shoulder. For a second, the tense energy sucking up oxygen diminished.

Kylie sent up a silent prayer of thanks. Then she noted the expression on her stepdad’s face. And she immediately recanted her gratitude.

“Who the hell do you think are? Don’t you dare insult my daughter,” her stepdad said. Holiday looked from her mom to John and back to her stepdad. Poor Holiday had only two hands. Before anyone could stop it, her stepdad’s fist made contact with John’s nose. Blood poured. All the vampires in the room, including herself, breathed in the sweet scent.

Lucas tried to move her back, but she wasn’t budging. Kylie’s mom screamed. John started swinging his fists at her stepdad, missed, but knocked Holiday over in the process.

Burnett flew across the room and tossed John to the floor. And everyone … everyone in the room, all the campers, all the campers’ parents, all the new teachers, especially Hayden Yates, stared at the foolhardy chaos that was her life.

Refocusing on the mess before her, she felt as if she were the star on some new reality show:
Parents Behaving Badly.
She watched in complete mortification as the scene continued.

John rose to his feet and apologized to Holiday.

Her mom seethed.

Her dad tried to talk to her seething mom.

Holiday tried to touch everyone.

Burnett continued to glare green daggers at John, proving how hard it was for a vampire to accept an apology. Not that she blamed him. Kill him. Kill him. She cheered the vampire on.

Lucas hadn’t stopped scowling at Derek and Derek hadn’t stopped ignoring Lucas.

Everyone reacted in one manner or another. Everyone except Kylie. She didn’t move, not even to breathe. She stood frozen in the same spot, and concentrated … concentrated really hard on
not
wishing she could vanish—because down deep, that’s exactly what she wanted to do.

Chapter Thirty

Burnett ushered everyone involved in the dispute out of the dining hall. Kylie moved with him like a robot, one foot in front of the other, still not wanting to let her emotions rise to the surface for fear of what might happen. Meaning, she’d either start again with the wiseass comments—channeling Della’s attitude—or she’d vanish. Both could cause irreparable damage.

Right as she stepped out the door, followed by Lucas and Derek, she heard someone’s parent say, “Wouldn’t you know, it’s always humans causing shit.”

Inhaling the sunshine-filled air, trying not to be insulted for her mom and stepdad, and trying to control the mortification of it all, she watched Holiday guide her mom and John into the office building. Burnett waited a second, then in an unsympathetic voice, he ordered her stepdad to follow him inside—obviously into different rooms. Kylie sensed they were all going to get a stern talking-to. Not that they didn’t deserve it, but … she felt odd being the one watching her parents getting pulled into the “principal’s office” instead of the other way around.

Remembering some of the things she’d said to her mom and John, Kylie suspected her stern talking-to was probably just around the corner.

Once the office door closed behind Burnett and her stepdad, Kylie swung around with the intention of throwing herself into Lucas’s arms. She needed a little TLC—someone to lean on. But Lucas wasn’t there. She looked back at the dining hall and saw him moving inside, no doubt heading back to his pack. God forbid his pack believe his assistance in stopping the disruption was anything more than a good deed, or because he actually cared about her.

Right or wrong, her heart broke right then. Derek, however, suddenly appeared beside her. Her eyes stung, her throat knotted, and the next thing she knew she was in his arms. Warm, strong arms that were so good at holding her and offering comfort.

It was wrong. So wrong.
She needed to stop this. Stop relying on Derek.

“Quit feeling guilty,” Derek whispered in her ear, reading her emotion right on cue. “I’m just a friend, helping out another friend.”

No, she thought. He was a friend who used to be more, a friend who’d told her he loved her and wanted to be more again. He was someone that on odd occasions she still thought about having more with, too—someone she knew she could turn to for help. And yet, it wasn’t his arms she longed for, it wasn’t him she needed to hold her.

*   *   *

A while later, Holiday stepped out onto the office’s porch and motioned her over. Great, now it was Kylie’s time to get her punishment. Accepting she deserved it, she stiffened her spine and went to face the music.

But the look on Holiday’s face wasn’t one of reprimand. She immediately embraced Kylie. “Dear Lord, child. Please tell me you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” Kylie lied.

Holiday exhaled. “You scared the life out of me. What…? What happened?”

When Kylie met the camp leader’s green, caring gaze, the air in Kylie’s lungs shuddered. “I scared the life out me, too. I … just vanished. I could see and hear you, but you didn’t know I was there. I … I went poof.”
Just like my grandfather and aunt had.

Holiday touched Kylie’s forearm to offer calm. “Okay, we need to talk about it, figure it out, but first let’s deal with your parents and get them on their way.”

Kylie’s chest tightened with the realization that as much as Holiday tried, she wouldn’t be able to help Kylie figure this out. She needed her grandfather and aunt.
A chameleon alone will not survive. Come with us. You need to learn who and what you are.

Realizing Holiday was studying her, Kylie blurted out, “I said terrible things. I don’t like John.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, right now, neither do I.” Holiday pressed a palm to each of Kylie’s shoulders. “Just go talk to them. I think they’re all in agreement that they’re the ones in the wrong. Your dad’s in my office and your mom and John are in the conference room. Can you do this?”

Kylie nodded.

As she walked away, Holiday pulled her back for another hug. “It’s going to be fine, okay? There’s nothing we can’t figure out.”

If only that were true.

*   *   *

Kylie stepped into Holiday’s office. Her dad, sitting on the sofa, rose and met her face-to-face. And his face showed his emotions. Remorse. Sadness. A lot of sadness.

“I’m so sorry, baby. I behaved like an idiot. It won’t happen again, I promise you.”

Kylie nodded. “Everything just got out of hand.”

He nodded. “But it wasn’t all in vain. It forced me to face the truth. I needed that.”

Did his voice just shake, or was she imagining it? “What truth?”

“I’m giving your mom her divorce. She wants it; she’s got it.”

Defeat filled her stepdad’s eyes. Defeat, like she could never recall seeing before. One word came to her mind.
Broken
. He was a broken man. Seeing it hurt so damn much!

“Dad, I think Mom’s just—”

“No.” He held up his hands. “I didn’t mean … I’m not blaming your mom. I accept I messed up. I don’t even understand how I could do it, when I loved her so damn much from the first time I saw her in high school.” Tears filled his eyes as he pressed his palm to Kylie’s cheek. “Don’t ever fall in love, princess. It hurts too damn much.”

His words echoed in her head as she recalled the pain she’d felt when she turned for Lucas and he wasn’t there. She wondered if her stepdad wasn’t too late in offering that piece of advice. But she pushed her own emotions aside to deal with his. He needed her.

He took another deep breath. “Losing her kills me, but I deserve it, and I’ll learn to live with it, but what I can’t live with is … losing you. From the day the doctor dropped you into my arms, I loved you.”

Tears filled Kylie’s eyes. “You aren’t going to lose me.”

“Good, because I’m your father and I don’t want you to ever forget that.”

But he wasn’t her father.
The words “I won’t forget” rested on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t say them. She looked away. She hadn’t meant that cut of her eyes to mean anything.

Yet it had. She heard his sharp intake of air. She glanced back and saw it in his eyes. He knew. He knew that she knew.

“Your mom told you,” he said.

Hurt filled his eyes and the same feeling swelled in Kylie’s chest. “No.”
My real father came to see me from the grave.
She had to come up with a lie and quick. “I found your original marriage certificate and learned she was already pregnant, and everything else fell into place.”

“I couldn’t have loved you more if you were mine. I never wanted you to think I didn’t love you because of it.”

“I know,” she said. “And the fact that you loved me when I wasn’t yours meant something.” She spoke the words to soothe him, because his pain filled the room, but then she realized how true they were. He’d loved her when he didn’t have to.

He’d done all the daddy/daughter things with her: sold Girl Scout cookies, helped her build a matchbox car to enter the school race, and gone on all the father/daughter trips. Then there were the hugs, when her mom wasn’t good at giving them. She leaned into him, needing a hug now, and thinking he could use one, too.

She savored his embrace. He’d always been good at this. She heard his breath shake, and she cried into his shoulder like she had so many times as a child. That’s when she realized she’d forgiven him. He wasn’t a bad man; he’d just made some bad mistakes.

He was, after all, just human.

*   *   *

After her dad left, Kylie pulled herself together, and walked into the conference room to face her mom and John. Like it or not, she had some apologizing to do, so the sooner she got it over with, the better.

Kylie’s mom shot up from her chair. John followed. “I’m sorry,” Kylie said. “I—”

“We’re sorry, too. Aren’t we, John?” her mom blurted out.

“Yes, I spoke too freely.” The apology came from John’s lips but didn’t appear in his eyes. “It was a mistake that will not repeat itself.”

“You’re just human,” Kylie said, but she didn’t say it with all that much confidence. And she studied his face to see if he reacted to the remark. He didn’t. She still had to stop herself from checking his brain pattern again.

The scary thought was that if he wasn’t human, he was a chameleon. She recalled Red, who’d given his life to save her, telling her that he was the same thing that she was, only not born at midnight. So … Mario must be a chameleon, too. And if John was a chameleon, could he be in cahoots with Mario?

She was overreacting, she told herself. Her feelings probably stemmed from the fact that he was the reason her stepdad didn’t stand a chance of getting back with her mom. However, she decided to ask Burnett to do a background check on dear ol’ John.

Kylie’s mom moved closer. “John, can you give Kylie and me some time alone?”

Here comes the scolding
. Kylie bit her tongue and told herself she should be happy her mom decided to spare her the embarrassment of scolding her in front of her man toy.

However, the man toy looked unhappy when he turned for the door. Kylie bit her tongue harder. But damn, this guy brought out the worst in her.