Mercy for the Fallen (2 page)

“I like these,” she shrugged and Nelo agreed.

“They look very fetching.”

“Plus, she’s all set in case it snows,” Parker said, in a completely reasonable tone.

“It’s not going to snow, it’s already sixty degrees out there.”  We had at least a couple more weeks of mild September weather before the rain set in.   

“It always pays to be prepared, isn’t that your motto?” he teased.

“Funny,” I said without a trace of a smile.  “Fine, you can wear the boots, but if your feet get hot later it’s your own fault.  We have to get moving, go and pick which baby you want to take to school today.”  As she scampered off to the living room with Nelo, I started running through my mental list aloud.  “Parker, I’ve got your dinner on the top shelf of the fridge.  There are cold cuts in there for lunch.”

“Mercy… get going.  I’ve got it covered.”

“There’s enough for one more cup of coffee and then can you please remember to rinse it out?  Because if you don’t rinse it…”

“I know.”

“Okay, but you forget to rinse it and it smells all bitter.”  I stopped for a breath and Parker pulled me into his arms for a good, long kiss.  When I came up for air, I couldn’t remember what we’d been talking about.  “What was I saying?” I blinked.

“You were saying how much you love me, and how awesome it’ll be when I get home tonight.”

“Right.  That,” I nodded, more than a little heated already. 

“I’ma get in the car!” Eve called out, even as Nelo hung back, uncomfortable with stepping out into the morning sky.

“Wait…”  Parker caught her by the back of her sundress.  “Where’s my hug?”

The little girl went willingly into his arms.  “I lush you, Daddy.”

“Love you too, sweetheart.  Be good today.”

“I’m good every day,” she replied glibly, face scrunching when Parker gave her a sidelong look.  “Mostly.” 

Parker turned to me.  “I wonder where she gets that from?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said loftily, gathering up a light sweater as I herded our daughter to the front door.  “I’ll see you later.”

I was going to finish up my round of classes, maybe even stop off at the fabric store and pick up a few things for Evie’s costume idea – maybe I’d look for something to make Nelo!  I’d finish school and shift my schedule to spend more time with Parker. I could be the kind of mom who had other kids over to play with plastic ponies, and build forts out of chairs and blankets, and have squirt gun battles in the house.  

Yeah, none of that happened.

Chapter Two

Parker called just as I was about to scoot into my afternoon class.  I considered letting it go to voicemail, but I had a couple of minutes.  “Hey, what’s up?” I asked, taking a seat toward the back of the room. 

“You’d better get down here.”

Something about his tone made my heart clench painfully.  “What is it?  Is something wrong with Bunny?”

“No, she’s safe, but we’ve definitely got a problem.” 

I closed my eyes, remembering to breathe again as I inwardly cursed him for scaring me to death.  “What kind of a problem?”

“I’m at the school and… it’s better if you come and take a look for yourself.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in a flash.”  Blowing off class, I put my wings where my mouth was, taking to the sky in a rush of snowy white feathers.  I arrived at the school after a series of heartbeats instead of fighting with busy Seattle traffic.  Ordinarily, I didn’t cheat like that, but hey, what was the point of having angelic gifts if you couldn’t use them?  

With Eve, “we’ve definitely got a problem” could mean anything.  Just because we’d avoided any major catastrophes over the past few years of the demonic or angelic variety, didn’t mean we didn’t have our own brand of oddness in our household.  For the most part, Eve was like any other girl.  A tad precocious maybe, but every once in a while something strange would surface. 

Like the time I caught her trying to rouse the dead fishies at Pike’s Place Market with her Grace. 

I’d never shown her how to do such a thing before.  She instinctively knew how to focus her energy, bathing the sock-eyed sucker in golden light while she crooned over it to wake up.  Christ, it might have even worked if I’d let her keep trying, but zombie fish wasn’t something I wanted to deal with in a busy marketplace. 

And then there was always the fact that we counted a member of the demon community as part of our family.  Overall, it was more
Adventure Time
than
Brady Bunch
at our place. So when Parker told me to get on down there, I didn’t waste a second, making myself imperceptible to human eyes while I approached. 

The first thing I noticed was the parking lot was jammed with vans.  News vans.  “That can’t be good,” I murmured, carefully threading my way to the building, which is no easy task when you’re invisible.  After a few minutes of eavesdropping, I had the skinny.  It turned out a kid fell off the slide and hurt her leg pretty badly.  For a second I thought they were talking about Evie, but that wasn’t the case.  Nope, what brought the news vans out in full force was the fact that my daughter had healed the kid in full view of the other children and the yard monitor, and the staff pretty much freaked out. 

I’d never been open with her about my own ability to heal, though I’d had occasion to use it for cuts and scrapes over the years.  I usually put a Band-aid on the cut before healing it so she got the normal treatment.  We were still learning about what abilities Eve might develop, given her parentage, but this was the first time it’d been noticed by someone outside the family.  And holy cow, had she attracted attention, gobs of it.

I slipped into Ms. Hinshaw’s office, still keeping myself dim so as not to derail the conversation already in progress between her and Parker.  The director of Helping Hands was one of those larger than life women who bounced from activity to activity, never sitting still for an instant.  She didn’t laugh, she guffawed.  She didn’t just say something, she proclaimed it.  She gave the appearance of hanging onto your every word, even if all you wanted to do was ask where the bathroom was.  Her aura was equal parts pink and yellow.

A robust woman, dressed in an ankle length denim skirt with a long sleeved black top despite the mild weather, Ms. Hinshaw sat with her hands clasped in her lap.  She nodded earnestly while Parker tore her a new one. 

“I want to know how you justify what your staff did,” Parker demanded, leaning forward, hands on his knees.  “My daughter is a minor, an extreme minor.  I thought this was a secure facility.  What happened to your duty to protect her privacy as well as her safety?”

Miss Hinshaw nodded some more, fidgeting with the ends of her sleeves as she took a few seconds to choose her words carefully.  “I can assure you, Mr. Davies, I am hearing your concern and you have every right to be frustrated.  Heaven knows we’ve all had an unusual day.”

I resisted the urge to snort from the corner of the room, but they wouldn’t have heard me anyway.  I’d gotten much better at controlling my ability to stay hidden, even when speaking.   

“I promise, your daughter has not been in any danger.  She’s been supervised at all times, and hasn’t been traumatized in the least.”

“No?” Parker interrupted.  “You don’t call that circus out there traumatizing?”

Ms. Hinshaw put up both hands, bending forward at the waist, her smile never dimming.  “The security here hasn’t been compromised.  The press has been kept away from her, and none of them have been admitted into the school.”  She beamed as if she thought she deserved a cookie for that.  “We haven’t shared your daughter’s name with anyone, and as you can see, Evie’s completely untouched by any of this.”  The large window overlooking the g-pop playroom revealed Eve playing happily by herself, tucking a monster truck into a doll’s bed. 

“And what’s to keep them from harassing her on the way out?  Or us once it leaks out?”

“The employee who spoke to the news has been disciplined, and I can assure you, your privacy will not be compromised.”  Her voice dripped with sympathy, but she rose, her face changing as she watched Eve through the window.  “As you can imagine though, this has been a bit… off-putting.” 

“And you think Evie’s to blame?  Why don’t you ask your staff what they’ve been smoking?”

“Eve has proven to be a highly imaginative child in the weeks since she’s been here,” Ms. Hinshaw said carefully.  “And there have been other… incidents, though not of such a fantastic nature.”

“What kind of incidents?”

“Nothing that we didn’t chalk up to a healthy fantasy life at the time, but now…”

Parker’s brows drew together.  “Now what, you think my daughter’s a freak?”

“We don’t like to use labels here at Helping Hands.  Though it has been noted that some of the other children are a smidge uncomfortable around her.”  Ms. Hinshaw pinched her fingers together, going back to her desk, her eyes wide and earnest.  “Mr. Davies, we value the special qualities your child brings to this school. She is truly an exceptional child.  But I’m not so sure we’re the right fit for her.”

I started to clue into what she was hinting at around the same time Parker asked, “Are you kicking her out?”

“I think we need to discuss what the best environment is for your daughter.” 

Parker stared at her, at a loss for words before he nodded slowly. 

I wasn’t as forgiving.  “You’re kicking her out for helping another kid?”  They both jumped as I appeared by the door, and it gave me a happy to see Miss Hinshaw’s mouth gape like a trout. 

“I… I, she… well, I wouldn’t say that exactly,” she stammered. 

“You have no right tossing her out, we’re paid up through the end of the month.”

Parker recovered from my sudden entrance, able to guess that I’d heard most of the conversation.  “Mercy, I think we should…”

“What did she do that was so bad?” I demanded.

“It’s not bad… it’s just…”  I could see in her eyes she’d lumped me into the same freaky category as my daughter, given my sudden appearance.  It was tempting to make her eyes
really
bug out, but I bit back the urge to pull something dramatic.  “We’ll give you a pro-rated refund, of course.”

“Of course.”  My smile stretched as wide the Grand Canyon.  “Actually, I think you hit the nail right on the head, lady.  This is
not
the right environment for Evie.  I’d like to take my daughter home now.  Come on, Parker.”  My dramatic exit was somewhat ruined by the fact that I had to wait for her to enter a combination code into the door to the playroom, but I held my head up high as I strode in to pick Eve up.  “Time to go, Bunny.  Kiss your truck-baby goodnight.”

Parker helped her get her shoes on and that’s when I noticed they had all the other kids huddled into the infant play room, as if Eve had some kind of communicable disease they might catch if they got too close.  It was all I could do to keep a smile pasted on my face until we got out of there. 

More than anything, I wanted to grab Parker’s hand and make the three of us disappear, rather than run the gauntlet between the front door and his car, but there were too many pairs of eyes on us as we left the building.  Instead we hung our heads low, like we were common criminals as the media swarmed, all hoping to catch a sound byte for the evening news.  Parker did his best to shield Eve’s face and I pulled my ponytail free to let my hair fall forward.  Once it became clear we didn’t want to give a statement, they left us alone, pouncing on another unsuspecting parent, arriving to pick up their child. 

“Am I in trouble?” Eve asked as we buckled her into the back seat.  I gave her a quick hug before climbing in up front.

“No, sweetie, you’re not in trouble.  It sounds like you had a big day though.  Want to tell us about it?” 

Eve kept up a running commentary on her day in agonizingly boring detail for the entire trip home.  I kept hoping she’d get to the “incident”, but it took a backseat to her spirited recount of playing worm tag with the boys in the yard.  (Apparently worm tag consists of chasing after the girls while dangling a worm from your fingers.  Evie played the role of chaser rather than chasee.)

“What about the thing with the girl who fell off the slide?” Parker prompted as we pulled into the driveway of our restored craftsman home.

“April fell and got hurt.”

“And then what happened?”

“She cried a lot.”

“And then?”

“Her nose got all icky snot.”

His line of questioning wasn’t working, so I decided to take a stab at it.  “Ms. Hinshaw said you helped April.  How did you help her?”

“I fixed her with my light.”

Now we were getting somewhere.  “How did you know how to fix her with your light, honey?”

“Shiny man told me how.”

Chapter Three

“Adamiel!”

It’d been months since he’d last shown up, unannounced, helping himself to a cup of coffee and half my bagel.  For the most part he’d stayed away over the past three years, even though I’d invited him to be a part of Eve’s life.  I guess I could understand why he chose not to.  I probably wouldn’t want to watch someone else raise my daughter as their own either.  But we’d agreed when she was still a tiny baby that it was for the best to maintain consistency wherever possible in her life.  Adam was nothing if not unpredictable; it was his defining characteristic. 

So while Parker got out the Ritz Bits and turned on Sprout TV, I stepped onto the rear porch and yelled for Adam with all I was worth.  I wasn’t sure if it was a good sign or not that it took him less than fifteen minutes to show up, dark wings extended for dramatic effect as he floated down beside me.  His shoulders bunched and flexed as his wings tucked out of sight and my eyes were drawn to the way the snug, black t-shirt fit across his chest. 

Everything about him screamed sexy beast, from the azure flash of his bedroom eyes, to the dark hair artfully falling over one brow, and the hint of a smirk on his perfectly sculpted lips.  Even the stubble on his jaw was appealing, reminding me of the way he kissed.  I might be in a committed, loving relationship with Parker, but I could still appreciate a thing of beauty when I saw it.