The Hatter is Mad: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 2) (6 page)

In that moment, I felt like the worst person in the world. I’d always sort of felt like my mother had held a grudge against me because of who I had been in my former life, but I hadn’t known I’d actually replaced her child. To think that was true and she had still raised me as her own…

It made a tear spill from my eye and drip down my cheek. I wiped it away. I knew vaguely that there was history between Dirge and my mother. I knew they came to blows just hours before the battle that claimed Dirge’s life. What I didn’t know was that not only had my mother been willing to try and get past it for me, but I had taken away her own child. How different would everyone’s lives had been if her real daughter had been born instead?

I wasn’t sure I could do the same thing in her situation. I liked me a good grudge, sure, but it hadn’t been about that really. Regardless of the circumstances, I had replaced her child. My mother was a stronger person than I was to even think about trying.

“Lillim,” my father said. Hearing him call my name startled me so much I almost answered him. Not that it would have mattered because I doubt he would have heard me anyway.

“Ay dios mio.” Diana’s teeth ground together for a moment and she swallowed. “You wish to name her after Dirge Meilan?”

“Yes. It is only fair.” He smirked then and the sight of it made me smile. “Besides, no one ever calls Dirge by her first name. They always just call her by the nickname Dirge.”

“It’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had,” my mother said, rolling the words over her tongue like a piece of sour candy. “Lillim Cortez Callina.”

Chapter 10

I shook my head as the vision faded. I didn’t know any of it. Then again, how could I have known unless someone told me? When it came to my miraculous upbringing, it wasn’t like my parents had told me what happened… and now I saw why.

“I can’t believe you showed me those scenes!” I growled at the engineer. He was standing so close to me, I could smell tuna fish on his breath. I pushed him backward and he stumbled, wide-eyed. “Those are not things I’m supposed to know! How am I supposed to feel about the fact I might have taken the place of my parents’ real child?”

“What is going on here?” The sound of my mother’s voice shook me to my core.

“N-nothing my lady,” stammered the wrench-wielding, dual-eye-colored engineer.

Apparently, I was not the only one scared of the vicious Diana Cortez. A tremor passed through me as I turned to face my mother who was glaring at the engineer so hard I thought he might actually burst into flames. That actually happened once before.

My mother’s hair was pinned into a tight bun, and she was wearing her favorite kimono. It was white with dark pink clouds on it. Around her waist was a red sash with a bone-handled whip coiled around her left side. Across her back was a long, bone-handled javelin. They were her weapons of power. The ones she used to bend the storms to her will.

Her presence, as unnerving as it was, was not what shocked me. Caleb Oznek was standing next to her with an impetuous smirk on his face. His eyes widened at the sight of me, and for a moment, it looked like he might bolt. Panic filled his eyes, and his mouth opened and closed several times, reminding me of a goldfish.

I had almost forgotten how lovely he was. He was so handsome that looking at him was like watching the sunrise. It wasn’t his high cheekbones or the scars that crisscrossed his cheeks just enough to bring some gruff manliness to his face. It was more how he carried himself, how his clothes clung to his body just so, and in that way, to show off his muscled physique, or how when he laughed, it made my heart flutter and songbirds sing in the trees.

It made me want to run my hands along his chest, made me want to feel his skin pressed against mine. No one in my entire seventeen year life ever made me feel this way before, made me want to leap onto them and never let go. It was a new sensation for me, and that alone made it scary.

“Why am I being told that I have restricted coverage on my daughter’s territory?” my mother said. Her voice was a raging tempest, her eyes an erupting volcano. It was weird because I’d been told she had ordered it herself. So why was she mad? That didn’t make any sense.

“Um… Because you did?” The engineer gulped and glanced around. I think he was hoping someone would save him.
I
sure as hell wasn’t going to, and I doubted Caleb would either. All things being equal, there were very few people willing to stand up to my mother. While I was one of them, it wasn’t like I was going to go out of my way to do it. She could bend storms to her will. Picture that. She can make a hurricane do her bidding. You don’t mess with someone like that without good reason.

“I have done no such thing. You will resume coverage immediately,” my mother said, her voice filling the room with her authority. I’ve seen her walk into council meetings with that voice and browbeat the councilors into submission.

“Yes, my lady,” the worried engineer said as he hurried off, no doubt, more to get away from us than to resume coverage.

My mother turned to me and very nearly smiled. It was right there below the surface, I was sure of it. “Are you safe, Lillim? I heard you were attacked.”

“I’m fine,” I said, glancing from her to Caleb.

“I heard Grollshanks was going to challenge you,” Caleb said a little too stiffly. I glared at him.

“And you didn’t tell me?” I snapped. “Why? If you had, I could have done something…” If I concentrated on being angry at him, I just might be able to ignore the curve of his lips and how good they had felt pressed against mine.

“I care about you, Lillim. I—” I slapped him before he could finish.

A wry grin appeared on my mother’s face as she watched us. “Perfect,” she cooed. “The two of you can figure out what is going on with all of the recent disturbances. Like why orcs have suddenly started showing up. Orcs are supposed to be dead. You should remind them of that.”

I snarled and turned toward her, intent on flinging my anger at her over pairing Caleb and I together, but she merely held up a hand. No, I knew that look. No… no… don’t say it…

“Together,” she added, and I deflated. It was final. I knew it was final because my mother, the vicious Diana Cortez, turned and walked off.

This wasn’t fair. I was mad at Caleb and here my mother was going and pairing us up together. All of the sympathy I’d had for her evaporated in an instant, which yes, was bratty, but come on. Caleb had left me… Surely, surely she couldn’t be siding with him over it. Could she?

Caleb and I stared at each other uncomfortably for what felt like forever, and I felt my cheeks start to heat up. I turned away from him and stared at my shoes because, hey, they were pretty interesting right then.

“So… What do you think is going on?” Caleb mumbled after a silence that was so long it could have an epic poem written about it.

“The Blue Prince is starting to wig out,” I replied with a shrug.

“I’m not really in the mood for your jokes,” Caleb said as he took a step forward, his eyes narrowed.

Great. Caleb thought I was screwing with him. I closed my eyes for a second and took a deep breath. I was not going to let him get the best of me. I relaxed my hands. I didn’t even realize I had balled them into fists.

I opened my eyes and glared at him. It was hard. No matter where I looked at him, he was beautiful. With his maroon tank top stretched across his well-muscled chest and windswept blond hair, he looked more like a swimsuit model than a sword-fighting demon hunter.

“I missed you, Lillim,” he said, reaching out then, running one of his hands along my cheek. Without thinking, I remembered the touch of his hands on my back, the feel of his mouth against mine.

“Lillim… are you blushing?” His words brought me back. Was he seriously touching me after leaving me alone in the middle of the night? And now he was making fun of me? Seriously?

I dug my nails into the palms of my hands, and this time, instead of resisting the anger, I allowed it to flow through me.

“I am not blushing!” I screamed, pushing his hand away from my face. “Nothing you could do would make me blush because you’re a coward!” He winced as I stomped past him. “Are you coming, Caleb? I don’t have all day.”

Chapter 11

It was raining… of course. I hate the goddamned rain. When it rains, the only thing I can picture are worms drying out on the pavement, their slimy trails silver in the warm sunlight.

Caleb stood next to me, still wearing dark sunglasses despite the gloom. He was shielding us from the rain with a large pink umbrella. Pink… because that color didn’t stick out like a sore thumb. I ran a hand through my wet hair and shivered as water trailed down the back of my neck.

“Are you going to keep standing there, or are we going inside?” Caleb asked. His voice had that angry edge to it, like the taste of too much char on an otherwise well-cooked steak.

I sighed and adjusted the collar on my overcoat. I was ignoring him. I knew it pissed him off, so that’s why I was doing it. Sure, I was being childish, but he was a jerk. A jerk my mother was forcing me to spend time with.

I glanced toward the entrance to the bar. I was hesitant to go inside. The last time I went with Caleb into a bar, I was nearly killed. Granted, it was a demon bar, and while I had gotten a magic eight ball that led me to the dragon I’d killed, I still didn’t like the idea. I had no idea what to expect inside this bar either. For all I knew, it could be filled with giant slime monsters hell bent on my destruction.

Going into bars was a Caleb thing anyway. The first thing he always did was visit the local bars looking for information. According to him, there was no better place to get real, high quality supernatural bunk than from the town drunks.

They were the ones who told those stories about how they were walking down an alley and the couple in front of them just vanished. When you’re trying to find a monster, well, those stories tend to be true.

According to the strange engineer, the Blue Prince was last seen in this town. If we could find the Blue Prince’s trail, it would save us hours waiting for the fates to determine where he would go next. This was how Caleb liked to work anyway. A few days of fieldwork could save a couple hours of research after all.

“You know, what happened wasn’t your fault,” Caleb said.

I ground my teeth together. “I’m not talking to you.” I held up my hand before he could say anything. “We can go inside now. Lead the way.” I went back to ignoring him, and he glared at me.

Inside the bar was worse than outside. At least outside, things were real. In here everything was gaudy and pink. The place looked like a psychedelic ego trip from the sixties except without the drugs. A bunch of people sat huddled at a little pink booth in the corner under blue neon lights. Besides them and the bartender, the only other people in the dump were two waitresses.

The waitresses’ name tags said Grena and Dina. I smirked. Whoever came up with that was either really stupid or really funny. I wasn’t sure which, but for some reason I was leaning toward funny. I smiled at them, and they smiled back. I got the distinct impression few women ever ventured in here, despite the pink interior.

“So you made it,” the bartender said, looking at Caleb in that same dopey way he probably looked at his own face in the mirror. “And you brought a girl.” The bartender’s gaze traveled up and down my body so I crossed my arms over my chest uncomfortably.

“Yeah, Diana made me do it,” Caleb muttered, jutting his thumb at me as though I was unwanted. “Had to take her tyke out for a night on the town.” He slid into a seat at the bar. There was already a beer in front of him in a bottle. “Glass?” he asked.

“Sure,” the bartender responded with a smirk and pulled a frosted mug from a chest freezer beneath the bar. Steam wafted off the cool glass as he placed it on the dark polished wooden bar top. I watched as Caleb lifted the bottle and the glass at angles and poured the beer into the glass. When he was done, there was almost no foam. Apparently, he’d done this a few times.

“So, you’ve been here before?” I asked to no one in particular because I was still not talking to Caleb.

“Him?” The bartender pointed at Caleb. “He comes in from time to time. Seems he’s been looking for a fella that also comes in here from time to time. Odd they still haven’t run into one another.”

“Is that so? Who have you been looking for?” I asked as I took the empty seat at the bar next to Caleb.

Caleb turned to me, eyes ablaze as he set his mug down between us. “None of your goddamned business.”

I threw my hands up in supplication. “What crawled up your pant leg?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure he was annoyed at me ignoring him. “All I’m saying is you just dragged me into another bar that you ‘have goings on all up in’ and I’m supposed to… what?”

“Sit there, shut up, and wait. If you can manage that,” he replied with a glare that made my inner troll grin and dance a jig.

“For what am I waiting?” I asked, deciding this would be a good time to annoy the crap out of him. Besides, he deserved it, the jerk.

“You’ll know when it happens,” he said, turning away and looking across the room at the little pink booth.

“I really, really hate you,” I said as I folded my arms over my chest and glanced at the bartender. He was an older guy— maybe fifty?— with a balding head and a belly that would rival Santa Claus. An amused smile was plastered across his face. I was really hoping it wasn’t from staring at my chest. That would be creepy since he was old and I was seventeen. “Um… I don’t suppose I can have a drink as well?” I asked.

“She’s under age. You can’t serve her. She’s also too young for whatever else you’re thinking,” Caleb said nonchalantly.

Both I and the bartender turned to look at Caleb incredulously. Did he really just imply that I was too young to um… well… that wasn’t the point.

My cheeks turned bright red. My first thought was to grab Caleb by his stupid head and smash it down onto the nice polished bar. Surely there was a scuff mark or two I could buff out with his face.