Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(57)

“Melanie,” Emma snapped. “Do you have any idea what time it is, young lady?”

“I, uh, lost track of time,” she said, running her fingers through her rumpled mop of blue hair.

Ben shook his head. “Your curfew is eleven o’clock, hon. You know this. How many times are we going to have this conversation?”

“Like I said. Lost track of time. It’s not a big deal.”

“It certainly is a—wait a second.” Emma’s nose twitched. She jumped from her chair and stormed across the room. “What do I smell on your breath? Have you been drinking?”

“It was a party,” Melanie said, her voice laden with the kind of exasperation only teenagers can summon. “It’s not a big deal. Nothing bad happened.”

“This time,” Ben said. “Nothing thing bad happened this time. You know you have to keep control of yourself. If you don’t—”

“There weren’t even any humans there. It was just me and Annie and a couple of the new folks. Jesus.”

“Watch your mouth,” Emma said. “I can’t…I can’t even deal with you right now. Go to your room. We’ll discuss this in the morning.”

“Mom, c’mon—”

I could see Emma’s eyes flash copper from across the room, glowing like orbs of pitch and fire as her voice went guttural, dropping too deep for any human throat.

“To. Your. Room.”

Melanie didn’t need to be told twice. She vanished up the hallway. Emma straightened her blouse, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. When she turned back to face us, she was perfectly tranquil.

“Sorry about that,” she said.

“Kids,” I said, shrugging. I wasn’t sure what else to say.

“It’s not like we can complain,” Ben told me. “Her grades are great, she does volunteer work. She’s a good kid. She just sometimes forgets that she has some…special challenges to face that her friends don’t. Things she needs to remember to do, and things not to do.”

“Like not downing a couple of beers and flashing her real teeth at a panhandler,” Emma said, in a tone that suggested it wasn’t a hypothetical situation. “Or necking with her boyfriend, getting excited, and clawing his back so badly he needs stitches. Hushing that up was the highlight of my week, let me tell you.”

“She’ll be fine once she gets a little older,” Ben said. “That’s what they tell us, anyway. But…she’s seventeen. That’s rough no matter how old you are. I mean, I was no prize at that age.”

“You and me both,” I said.

“Of course, if she had more human friends and stopped hanging out with those cambion kids,” Ben started to say, cut short by Emma’s glare.

“She needs exposure to both of her cultures,” Emma said. “We’ve discussed this. I won’t have her pretending to be human.”

“What, you want her walking around in public looking like—like she really looks? We’ve done nothing but teach her how to pretend since she was a toddler. It’s for her own safety.”

Emma frowned. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. It isn’t about passing for human, it’s about who she is inside. Melanie needs to understand where she came from. She needs to appreciate her heritage.”

“And yet,” Ben said, “every time it comes up, ‘appreciating her heritage’ only applies to your side of the family.”

I held up a hand. “I should probably get going.”

“No,” Emma snapped. “Stay. I mean…it’s late. And we’re being rude. I’m sorry.”

Ben nodded. “Really, take our couch. You could probably use a few hours of peace and quiet.”

I got the feeling that both of them wanted me there as an excuse not to get into a shouting match. I was okay with that. They were friends, after all, and after three glasses of wine I had to admit my eyelids were getting heavy. I nodded my assent, and Ben found an extra pillow and a fluffy blanket in the linen closet.

I helped clean up, and Emma and Ben disappeared into their bedroom up the hall. Hushed voices carried through the still house, but nothing I could make out over the hum of the air conditioning. One click of the lights bathed the living room in darkness. I slipped under the blanket and got as comfortable as I could. Couch-surfing was my default mode since the apartment burned down, and I wanted a real bed again. My bed. Under my roof.

“It’ll work out, you know.”

My eyelids flickered open. Emma stood at the foot of the couch, a vague smudge in the darkness.

“You sound confident.”

“I have faith,” Emma said, and then she was gone.

? ? ?

I woke up with the dawn, restless, eager to get this meeting with Agent Black over with. Stashing the soul bottle with her was my best option out of a whole bunch of bad choices, and that wasn’t saying much. I stumbled up the hall and took a hot shower, turning my back to the spray and letting the heat pulse against my aching muscles. The welts from Sullivan’s cane were starting to heal. They’d faded down to a spray of angry bruised lines across my body, like a broken and confused spiderweb.

My pride would take a little longer.

When I finished cleaning up, the reflection in the mirror looked like a presentable, if rumpled, human being. I stole a splash of Ben’s aftershave and patted the pale bristle on my cheeks.