Storm Born Page 0,61
times I saw him, he trailed me around as a fox. And, as much as I hated to admit it...he was right. He was pretty cute.
Life was busy now. Whereas before I'd had maybe only one or two jobs a week, I now had at least one every day. Apparently the gentry and other creatures hoping to get a piece of me realized they no longer had to seek me out; I would come to them if they bothered the right human. It was annoying, to say the least - and exhausting. Of course, since these fights occurred through clients and contracted jobs, I got paid for them. It became a very rich few weeks, though I felt a little bad since my clients never would have needed to pay in the first place if not for me.
I woke up a couple weeks before Beltane, aching and exhausted. I'd had two jobs and an "unscheduled" fight last night. Staring at my ceiling, at the way the late morning sun filtered into funny shapes through my blinds, I drowsily wondered if I was going to be able to keep this up. I'd lose to the Otherworld not through any one encounter, but simply via my own fatigue.
I trudged to the kitchen and found no morning offering from Tim. He must have stayed the night with one of his groupies. Forced to make my own breakfast, I put two chocolate Pop-Tarts in the toaster and fixed coffee while they cooked. Glancing at the table, I saw that my cell phone displayed four missed calls. I'd taken to turning it off, because the calls were always from Lara, and I didn't feel like hearing them anymore. She'd either want to offer me a new job or tell me that Wil Delaney had left yet another message.
I was halfway through my second Pop-Tart when my mom showed up. I hadn't seen her since the confrontation. For a moment, I considered not letting her in, but I promptly dismissed the thought.
She was my mom, after all. She loved me. No matter what had happened, I couldn't let go of that intrinsic truth. She was the one who'd doused my scratches with antiseptic when I was little - and not so little - and tried unsuccessfully to interest me in shopping and makeup as a teenager. She'd tried to protect me from the ugly truths that everyone has to discover growing up. She'd tried to protect me from the path Roland had set me on. And now it seemed she'd tried to protect me from my own past.
Looking back, I tried to piece together things she'd said on the rare occasions I could get her to acknowledge my biological father. You're better off without him. He wasn't the kind of man anyone could count on. We didn't have a healthy relationship when we were together. There was a lot of emotion, a lot of intensity...but it ending was for the best. He's gone - just accept he'll never be a part of your life.
She'd never exactly lied, I realized, but I'd interpreted the story in a completely different way. I'd read it as a whirlwind affair, one in which her emotions blinded her. With all the bad things she'd implied about his character, I'd just figured he'd up and left one day, unable to handle the responsibilities involved with taking care of me. Little did I know he'd desperately wanted me back.
I offered her a seat at the table, handing her a cup of coffee at the same time. She held it with both hands, lacing her fingers in a nervous gesture. Her hair was braided down her back today, and she wore a red blouse.
"You look tired," she said after a long stretch of silence.
I smiled. It was such a mom thing to say. "Yeah. It's been a busy week."
"Are you sleeping enough?"
"I'm sleeping. Sort of. I'm just too busy when I'm awake, that's the problem."
She looked up, nervously meeting my eyes as though afraid of what she might find. "Busy...because of...?"
"Yeah," I said, knowing what she meant.
She looked back down. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about all of this."
I dunked a piece of Pop-Tart into my coffee. "It's not your fault. You didn't decide to go to the Otherworld."
"No...but you were right the other day. I was wrong to keep it from you."
"I was too harsh then."
"No." Her eyes met mine, wide and sad. "I think I thought...that if I kept it from you, maybe