“Mother—” Alain screamed, jumping back. “Goddamn it, woman! These are from Bloomingdale’s!”
He cuffed me on the side of the head, and I plunged to the ground, into the puddle of vomit. Well, I had almost vomited on his shoes.
Alain started laughing. “That’s justice right there. Clean that up and go take a shower. You’re disgusting. And you need to take care of these reporters fucking up our street. Like yesterday.” He walked toward the kitchen. “What’s for dinner?”
“I’m not hungry,” I mumbled, pulling myself up.
“I am, so make some fucking food.”
Okay. There were directives. Time to order them and figure out how to do this. First thing first was to get out of my clothes. I hustled to the bathroom and found my robe, that I almost never used, hanging there. I reached for it, and the door flew back, slamming my hand between it and the wall, painfully.
“Didn’t I tell you to clean that up?”
“Yes, Alain, you did. I was working on it. I couldn’t clean in the puked on clothes.”
“Your hands work just find in the filthy as they do in the clean. Get your ass back out there and clean that up!”
Grabbing my wrist, he tossed me into the hall and slammed the door closed between us.
“I want roast beef!”
“That’s a two hour meal,” I mumbled.
“You’ll have to speed that up, now won’t you?”
“Yes, Alain.”
I walked to the closet where I kept the bucket and mop. The smell was getting to me, and I stripped off the shirt, and dropped it over the mess. I could wash that, no problem. Grabbing some floor cleaner, Pine Sol maybe?, I put a bit in the bucket and headed for the laundry room to use the slop sink. It only took a few minutes to fill halfway.
Running a hand over my face, I desperately needed time to process everything that had happened that day with Wren and Lily. I just had shut everything up and pretended that I knew what the hell had happened that day. But I didn’t. It felt like I should, and that was the weird part. Like I should know why those words were just in my head. How Lily could survive a shotgun blast, and then conjure up fire with her hand.
Was it magic? Was it the devil? Was it all an illusion? A bit of all of that?
But I had been running since the instant Andre White smashed his way into my office.
Maybe before that. Long before that.
I had thought about it a bit the other night, and what my brain did to me while I was trying to sort it was scaring the fuck out of me. So, I shoveled all of that in the Lily and Wren Are Weird file, and zipped it. I could take some time tonight and start unpacking what had really happened in that office.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Alain roared the words in my ear, scaring the crap out of me and making me drop the bucket back in the sink.
“Cleaning!” I gasped.
“Naked?!”
“I had to take the shirt off. The smell was going to make me sick.”
“You couldn’t grab a shirt?”
I was about to remind him that he slammed the door on me as I was trying to grab my robe, but that was absolutely the wrong thing to say.
“I can get one right now,” I answered instead, and moved to the laundry shelf where I had folded some fresh shirts.
Alain grabbed my hair and yanked me back. “You know what happens now, right?” His teeth clamped down on my shoulder.
“Alain…please let me clean.”
“No. On your knees. I’ve told you what your naked body does to me. Take care of it.”
“Alain…”
“Now.”
The list of stuff I had to accomplish grew too much. There was no way I could get everything done by the time he went to bed. Which meant, it was better to just suck him off and get dinner cooking.
I sank down to my knees.
Fischer
“Doctor Skillman?”
I rubbed my eyes trying to wake up. Somehow, I’d managed to fall asleep on my desk downstairs. That sucked and I now had a terrible crick in my neck and five pages of the letter J and V in the document.
“Yes, this is Doctor Skillman.”
“We have a serious problem,” the person on the other end said.
“Who are you?”
“Fairuza Glencoe, Nurse Practitioner at St. Chris.”
I sat up straight. “What’s going on?”
“Ben Sheehan has disappeared.”
No words came out of my mouth at first. I finally managed to squeak. “What do you mean?”
“We’ve searched the whole facility for him, and there’s no sign of him. We’ve had the police come with search dogs. We’ve had them in the neighborhood—”
“Neighborhood…” I grumbled. “How long has he been missing?”
“Last checks were at nine,” she said.
Fear shot through me as I glanced up at the clock: 1:07 a.m.
“Four hours?” The words ripped out of me, loud and pissed off. “And you’re just fucking calling us now?”
“A mistake,” she said. “The last person on duty didn’t do ten p.m. checks. Doctor, it’s a mess. Can you come in with his mother? We need your help.”
“You’re going to need a fucking lawyer,” I growled.
“Yes, sir. We appreciate that we will.”
“Doctor Warner and I will be there as fast as we can,” I snapped. I flicked the phone to end the call and shoved it in my pocket as I flew up the stairs two at a time.
Wren was already sitting up in bed when I shoved through the door.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, scrubbing her eyes.
“Ben’s missing, and it’s been four hours since anyone has seen him.” I ran into the closet to find something more presentable to wear than sweatpants. “They just called now and want us to come down.”
Wren was in the closet with me a moment later, throwing on some clothes, and I heard someone scrambling out of the bed.
“Don’t leave without me,” Lincoln called. “I’m waking Bastian, too.”
“Bastian needs to stay here with the kids,” Wren yelled at him.
“Not this time,” Ellie said, standing in the door. “I’m coming with you.”
“Yes,” I said simply.
Wren and Ellie looked shocked.
“You’re his sister and you’re a versilange. We’ve already determined you’re a kickass fighter, and you definitely have a dog in this fight. And bring the twins. Fuck it. They’re in this too, whether we like it or not.”
I kissed Wren’s forehead, trying to alleviate the confusion. “Baby, this isn’t a standard issue kid. This is the sibling of a versilange, and a boy who has been deeply traumatized. If there’s even the smallest chance that he’s also part of this mess, we can’t let Tartarus have him.”
Who would have ever guessed that I’d be talking about Hell as a real thing, and trying to save my almost-adopted son from its influence.
“And if it’s a regular run away problem,” Ellie said, “more eyes are better.”
Wren finally nodded. “Okay, all right, fine. Ellie, you go with Bastian. Lincoln can take the twins, and they can drive the area. Make sure he has his sword. Fischer—”