Chloe's Guardian (The Nephilim Redemption Series Book 1) (12 page)

CHAPTER
15

Chloe sagged on her stool with her cello propped between her knees. Her bow hung limp in her hand with the tip resting on the floor. No music would come. Now that the Brazil tour was out, there was no reason to even practice.

Her mom lay on the couch with Michelle’s
People
magazine open against her stomach. She was in the same gray sweatpants she’d worn since Chloe had come home, and a dirty tee shirt—one her dad had left behind. Nana sat in her recliner crocheting a new bright yellow hexagon. So far, it was the size of a quarter.

“Mom, you should get up. You just got out of bed,” Chloe said. “You should take a shower. You’re starting to smell bad.”

“Cleanliness is next to godliness,” Nana said without looking up from her hook twirling in the yarn.

“Please don’t just hang out with me. I’m okay,” Chloe said.

You’re not okay.

Her mom rolled to her side and the magazine slipped to the floor. She bent her elbow under her head and looked up at Chloe with the frown that never left her face now. “I’m not hanging out with you. I’m just tired.” Her smudged makeup blended in with the deep gray shadows beneath her eyes.

“You’re almost stalking me.”

“I wanted to be on the couch. You were by the couch. Anyway, if you were okay, you’d talk to your friends.”

“I talked to Kaitlyn a few days ago. I’m fine.”

You’re not fine.

“You’re wearing me out,” her mom said. “I don’t have the energy to worry about you. You keep doing things.”

“What’s wrong, dear?” Nana said. “Why won’t you talk to your friends?”

“I just don’t want to. I don’t want to tell the whole story again. It’s over. I’m fine. Nothing happened.”
What’s the point of anything?
She lifted her bow and played the first note to nothing.

“Nothing happened?” her mom moaned. “You got your dad mad all over again. Things were just starting to get better.”

“What are you talking about, Susan?” Nana asked.

“I can’t even go into it. But suffice it to say, she nearly died. And I’m not even talking about last night.” She rolled the other way and hid her face against the back cushions.

Chloe stopped mid-note and dropped her bow arm again. “No. I didn’t. No wounds, no dead. I’m fine.”

No, you’re not.

“You were lost in a foreign country. You could have been kidnapped and beheaded!”

“It was
Scotland
, Mom.”

Shame on you
.

“Mom! Get up.
Please
.” She didn’t plan to shout, but she wanted the voice in her head to
shut up.
“Benji needs to be picked up soon. He needs you.”

“Oh, Susan. Are you not feeling well today?”

“No, Mama.” Her voice was muffled into the pillows.

“You should take a powder, dear. It will help you feel better.”

“No, she shouldn’t take anything. She’s taken plenty.”

Her mom sprang up. The frown was angry now. “Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t take. Especially if you keep doing things like last night.” She was shaking. “And you should at least call Todd. He deserves to hear from you. What if you lose him forever? What will you do if you don’t have a boyfriend?”

“Last night wasn’t my fault.”

“Which one is Todd?” She looked around the living room. “Is he that little boy around here?”

“For goodness sake! That’s Benjamin. Don’t you know your own grandson?” Her mom’s exasperation spilled even onto Nana.

Nana looked confused.

“Mom,” Chloe warned.

Her mom turned back to face the cushions again.

Nana returned to her crocheting.

Chloe loosened her bow and used a cotton yarn hexagon to rub off her cello, which didn’t have any rosin on it because she hadn’t played it. She didn’t
want
to play, didn’t want to make music. Life was ugly. It was bad enough she had to deal with getting robbed, but somehow her mom found a way to make it her fault that it happened.

“I hoped you two would marry,” her mom mumbled into the pillow.

“Oh, I just love weddings.”

Chloe closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Mom, stop. I said we’re on hold. Just go with it. I can’t do this right now.”

Her mom left the couch, went to her room, and shut the door.

“She needs some time to herself right now,” Nana said, then concentrated back on her hexagon.

Chloe set her cello down on its side along the wall and went into the kitchen where Michelle was making a bologna and pickle sandwich.

“Wan’ some?” Michelle said through her stuffed nose.

“Yuck. You shouldn’t eat that garbage while you’re fighting a cold. I don’t know how you eat it.”

“Like this.” She picked it up and tore off a huge, sloppy bite, then chewed it with her mouth open.

“Ugh. I’m going to scramble an egg.”

While Chloe bent inside the fridge to rummage for the carton of eggs, the phone rang. Michelle picked it up and answered with her mouth full of sandwich and her nose full of cold.

“Hullo?”

Michelle paused and Chloe dug around for green peppers.

“I do have a code.”

Chloe ran cold water over a red pepper.

“Still wanna go where?”

Chloe focused one ear in Michelle’s direction, a little curious where she was going, and with whom.

“What’re you talking about?”

Chloe turned to watch Michelle.

“The Renaissance Festival?” It sounded like
Red-a-sauce
. “Why would I go there with you?”

Now she had Chloe’s complete attention. Michelle loved the Renaissance Festival. Chloe and Todd always took her along with them. It was her annual birthday gift.

“Guess.”

Chloe mouthed
Who is it?

Michelle waved her off.

“Yeah, I know who this is. But you don’t know who I—” She paused to listen. “It’s me. Michelle, dope. Who’d you think?”

Chloe asked her again, this time out loud. “Who is it?”

“Okay. Be more careful next time. That’s a pretty dumb mistake.” She hung up.

“Who was that?”

“Nobody.”

“Tell me.”

“A former friend of mine.”

“You don’t have many friends, let alone former ones.”

Michelle glared at her. “I’m trying to be nice.”

“Is someone trying to get information about my ‘incident’ again?” Chloe went back to cut her pepper. The knife crashed against the cutting board with each hack, punctuating her words. “I wish everyone would leave me alone already. You’re such a bad liar.”

“It was Todd.”

She whipped around. “Todd?”

“He dialed wrong. Old habits, you know.”

Chloe tried to keep breathing. “He’s taking
her
to
our
festival?”

“Forget him. He’s a loser.” She formed an L on her forehead with her thumb and index finger. “Come on. Don’t start crying again. You’re better than he is.”

Chloe abandoned her pepper and ran upstairs to her room, where her heart that wasn’t there anymore broke into yet another shard.

***

The concrete corner made a miserable bed. When he’d fallen asleep—or maybe more like passed out—the alcohol had masked how awful a place it was to spend the night. But now, in spite of the insufferable accommodation, he yearned to get back to sleep, to check out.

Then Chloe, her problems, and the impossible tasks before him came screaming back to mind and kept him from reclaiming the bliss of unconsciousness.

After Chloe’s mother had picked her up and the police left the store, another six-pack of beer had gone a long way to satisfy his thirst. And numb the fatigue. The episode with the robbery left him so depleted, he staggered away from the store much worse than what his drinking merited. Because the Celestials had not let him transfigure to heal his nose, and it was disallowed now, he couldn’t replenish his energy. The interdict was catching up with him and becoming a problem. Every time he transmuted matter, power went out of him, and he was running low.

The patio on which he contemplated his misery belonged to a church on the corner of Federal and Thirty-seventh—partway between Chloe’s store and Chloe’s house. When he settled on it as a place to take his reprieve from guarding the girl, he’d done it with specific intentions—even as drunk as he was. In the morning, he would enter the sanctuary of the church, go into Communication Mode, and ask Mebahel if he could be released from his duty. He’d saved the girl yet another time. Surely the assignment could be considered complete.

He tried to push the whole debacle out of his thoughts. The morning sun warmed his face—Colorado sunshine had an edge not found at sea level. The Ray-Bans kept the painful light to a lower degree of torturous. A cool breeze carried the fragrance of a nearby rosebush. Occasional cars swooshed
by but with the infrequency of a Sunday morning. It would be a beautiful morning if he could just forget—

A shadow fell over his face, cutting off the source of heat and light. “Excuse me, sir.”

A man in short sleeves and a tie was bent over him. He straightened up abruptly with a crinkled nose not hidden fast enough for Horatius to miss.

“Would you like to come inside and have some coffee?” the man asked. “Or a bite to eat?”

Horatius got up, moving as steadily as he could manage. Bottles, dislodged by the shift, clinked and rolled across the concrete porch.

This is worse than humiliating.
“Ah, no. Thanks. I need to get going. I’m sorry. I just…thanks.” He clumsily chased after the elusive bottles, proving himself even more ungainly as they skittered out of his reach.

The man picked up a couple of bottles teetering on the edge of the porch and put them into the six-pack cardboard cartons. “No need to rush off. Really. I’d be happy to have a cup of coffee with you. We have some delicious Danishes this morning. Cream filling.” He smiled like all it took to make his day was the right donut.

The man’s sincerity soothed Horatius’ mortification. Maybe a cup of coffee would be good. That would be a way inside, too.

“Okay. All right. I’ll take a cup.” Horatius picked up the two six-packs but hesitated, not knowing what to do with them. He didn’t want to take them into the church. One of the church ladies might see them and disapprove.

“Here, I’ll take those. We recycle. I’ll put them in the bins. I’m Pastor Dave.”

Pastor Dave went in first, which allowed Horatius a quick moment to smooth his clothes, finger comb his hair and redo the band on his ponytail, and rub his eyes clear. His whiskered face felt rough and sloppy.

After putting the bottles in the bins, Pastor Dave led him to the basement fellowship hall. Horatius pulled a couple of dollars from his wallet and handed them to him.

“Oh, no need. We don’t charge for this. Besides, the coffee isn’t really that great anyway.” He chuckled but filled up a cup in spite of his poor review.

Horatius tucked away the cheap wallet while Pastor Dave loaded a Styrofoam plate with two donuts and a croissant for himself. With cream he diluted his coffee to a light tan and started tearing open pink packets and dumping in sweetener. Horatius pulled a Styrofoam cup off the top of the inverted stack. He pumped the pot. The coffee smelled thick and bitter, exactly what he needed.

Three elderly men sat at the one long folding table sipping from steaming cups. Pastor Dave sat down next to them. “How are those Danishes today, Bob? Remember to take your extra insulin this time?”

“Didn’t need to. Gus took the last cream-filled one.”

“Be careful, Gus. You’re going to split your pants, you’re not careful there.”

All one hundred and ten pounds of Gus laughed at that, like he hadn’t heard it every Sunday morning since Noah.

Bob and his companions found a lot of nothing to say about the donuts to Pastor Dave while Horatius sat at the end farthest away and took a bite. It had sweet pink icing with multicolored jimmies that hurt his teeth. The men at the other end of the table acted like coffee and pastries with a hung-over giant who reeked of booze was a common occurrence. Their grace was impressive.

Pastor Dave veered off the subject of donuts only once to comment about how well the outdoor roses were doing, how he needed to trim them, and how the usual caretaker had been laid up with gout. Then he said to Horatius, “If you’d like to stay a little longer, in a half hour we’ll be meeting upstairs for the service.”

“You have been extraordinarily courteous about it, but we all know I need a shower. I think I’ll just go sit in your sanctuary for a bit, if that is okay, but then I will be on my way before your regular group shows up.”

“Sure, sure. Go on up. Stay as long as you like. On Wednesday’s we have a food bank open, plus a meal, if you’re interested. It’s all printed on the flyer by the door upstairs. Help yourself. Thank you for having coffee with me.” Horatius liked Pastor Dave.