A Darker Past (The Darker Agency #2)(6)
Mom’s long blond hair appeared overhead a moment later, followed by her arm. Extending a hand, she asked, “You okay?”
I let her help me up, wincing as my shoulder gave a spasm. “Dad’s timing sucks.”
As one of his minions, Lukas could be summoned to Dad whenever he wanted. Didn’t matter what he was doing or where he was. Dad snapped his fingers and poof, Lukas disappeared. Valefar could do the same to me. Of course, he preferred to pop in and scare the demon crap out of me.
Mom winked. “On the contrary, I think his timing is damn near perfect. I notice every time you two start making puppy eyes at each other, your father whisks Lukas away.”
I rubbed my head. She had a point. A really annoying one. It made me wonder if dear old Dad had found some way to spy on me. Lukas had just moved off the office couch and into his own apartment. If this was what I had to look forward to, I was going to scream.
“That could have been serious. What if I’d been dangling over the side of a cliff and Lukas’s arms were the only things keeping me from plunging to my death? Or, what if he was just about to push me from the path of a speeding truck?” I shot her a look of mock horror and clapped my hands together. A plume of white dust rose from my skin with an echoing snap. “Splat. No more adoring daughter.”
Mom rolled her eyes and waved a hand back and forth to clear away the flour. “Then I suppose you’d have to haunt your father for all eternity. Rattle chains and slam doors. That would show him.” She pointed to the door leading up to our apartment. The Darker family had lived above the office for generations. “Go get changed. We have somewhere to be in thirty minutes.”
“It’s almost four already. I thought you were having dinner with Dad?” Another good thing that had come from Lukas’s liberation from the box was Dad’s new situation. As a Shadow demon under Valefar, he was mainly confined to the Shadow Realm unless given permission to leave. With the addition of Lukas to Dad’s minion army, he was granted his freedom, and therefore allowed to spend more time on earth with us.
She pulled on her jacket. “I asked him to stop by later. Right now, we have to head into town.”
“What’s in town?”
There was a moment of hesitation, and I could swear she cringed. Just a little. “Father Saunders called. He’s running one of the booths at the Founders’ Week celebration and asked to speak with us. He said it was important.”
Hell in a hailstorm. My heart kicked into overdrive, and I swallowed back a sudden lump of worry. Father Saunders was the caretaker at Saint Vincent’s, the secret resting place for the box containing the Seven Deadly Sins. If he wanted a powwow, I would bet all the chocolate in our kitchen that he didn’t want to chat about our church attendance…
…
A blast of arctic wind kicked up, and I pulled my jacket tighter, following Mom and Lukas to the building. The Penance Town Hall was a large, old colonial building with massive pillars and an engraved brick walkway. Three years ago, they’d taken donations, stamping the names of the benefactors into the stones. Everything from lost loved ones’ memorials to declarations of love and friendship. There was even one toward the middle devoted to Mrs. Pinker’s Labradoodle, Marvin. Oddly ironic, considering it used to come out here and crap on the steps all the time.
The main lobby was crowded, and when we stepped inside, we were greeted by waves and nods. There were a surprising number of people grouped along the wall to peek at the tables full of junk from days past lining the hallway. I hadn’t realized there were so many history buffs in Penance. Then I caught sight of Ben Watkins in the corner. He was behind a table, selling his famous homemade spiked cider. Huh. That explained the crowd.
“This should be right up your alley,” I said to Lukas, who’d come back just as I’d gotten out of the shower, and insisted on coming with us. As per Dad’s orders, Lukas was my official guard dog. He took the job seriously, hardly leaving my side. Not that I minded. No girl in her right mind would whine about being shadowed by tall, dark, and dangerous.
He snorted. “I’d rather not relive my early years, thank you. I’m more than content to live solely in the present.”
“This must be terribly disorienting,” Mom said over her shoulder, giving Lukas a sympathetic frown. She stopped and pulled us off to the side to let a larger group of people pass. “This is history to us, but to you, it must seem like it was only months ago. There’s really no need for you to be here. We’re just going to talk to the Father.”
Lukas hadn’t had the best life back in the eighteen hundreds. With an abusive father and homicidal fiancée, his days were filled with mostly unhappy memories. All this junk reminding him of that misery had to suck. Still, he shook his head and stayed by my side. “I’m fine, Klaire.”
She nodded and started walking again, continuing down the row. Father Saunders’s table was at the end of the hall, just past the spiked cider. Thankfully, the crowd was much thinner down there.
“Klaire.” The priest greeted us with a genuinely warm smile. “Thank you for coming so quickly.” He turned to Lukas and me and with a friendly nod, said, “Very nice to see you both. I trust all is well?”
“Depends,” I mumbled with a quick scan of the general area to make sure we were alone. Or, as alone as you could get in a building full of people. “If you called to tell us someone let the Sins out to play, I think the answer is gonna be considerably different from yes.”