wings off with a meat cleaver. That pretty much crippled any real power I might have had, so it’s not surprising what locating talent I did have faded away entirely. Trust me—you guys are the true Nephilim now, not me.”
But after Nate signed off and headed for his car, the thought of trying something different lingered. Thanks to his crazy-ass mother—who had repeatedly cut off her own spontaneously re-emerging wings during her manic phases—he knew squat about his bloodline’s gift. Or curse, as she’d called it. She’d point-blank refused to say anything good about the family’s supernatural legacy—how it worked, how many facets of it had been displayed throughout history, or what could be done with it. He probably wouldn’t have known anything at all, had it not been for her compulsive need to take the bows for his lack of discernible power compared to the rest of their supposedly accursed lineage.
That was another area where his mother had never held back—the misery running rampant in their family tree. Every horrific detail of what it was to be part of the “abominations” known as the Nephilim was indelibly branded into his brain. Most kids got bedtime stories. He got to hear how she’d found her father with his brains blown out and a note proclaiming he could no longer stand the hidden things crying out for his attention.
With a rough sigh Nate stretched his neck before the tension there could bloom into a killer headache. Some instinct had told him that his mother would either wind up the same way as her old man, or perhaps even kill him, her own son, to “save” him from the family’s curse if it had ever manifested itself in any noticeable way. But come to find out, there had been no need to worry; her butchery on him had been complete. From the beginning of life she’d dealt him a wound from which he could never heal, while her own powers flailed out of her, uncontrolled.
Time and again the apportation of things his mother was looking for would occur—car keys, her wedding ring, and that one memorable time, the family cat that had managed to get out of the house. Every time the physical apportation of objects happened, a black depression settled over her to the point where she’d stay in bed for weeks—not sleeping, not talking. Barely existing.
Back then he’d called those The Scary Times. Even now, years later, they still were.
He’d only been three when his father took off and was never heard from again. For years he’d half hoped, half dreaded his mother deliberately using her gift of apportation to make him come back. It never happened, and by the time Nate entered his teens he’d been taking care of himself and his mother for years, secretly determined not to view the family legacy as a burden, but as a gift. The irony of that decision didn’t escape him. As the only one in generations who’d appreciated the gift for what it was, he was the one who’d lost it.
Though, considering the death toll his gift had racked up, that loss was no less than he deserved.
* * *
“...and after walking the second batter in a row and loading the bases, the manager called down to the bullpen to get their relief pitcher up on the mound. It proved to be a fatal decision. The first pitch resulted in a grand slam homerun.”
Phoebe regarded Ella with hooded eyes. “Who was the relief pitcher?”
Frantically Ella racked her brain. “Hernandez.”
“Are you guessing?”
“No.” Well, maybe a little.
Her boss sat unmoving behind the reception desk, as inscrutable as Buddha, before nodding her blue head. “Well done. And better still, it seemed like you actually understood everything you just said this time around.”
“I learn from my mistakes.” And the last thing she wanted was to get another hour-long lecture on how it was necessary to change lifelong habits by embracing new concepts such as the infield fly rule. “Besides, baseball isn’t rocket science. There are some aspects to it that remind me of chess.”
“Which you don’t play. Right?”
“Right.” Ella’s sigh was interrupted by the cell phone buzzing away in her pocket. Holding up a hand to Phoebe, she fished it out and after a brief glance at the screen—Out Of Area—she hit the right button. “This is Ella.” At first she wasn’t sure she heard anything, before she caught the faint tinkling of elevator music. “Hello?”
“If it’s a heavy-breather, hang up,” Phoebe said, loud enough