Awake at Dawn (Shadow Falls #2)(4)

When his arm curled around her shoulders, the knot in her throat doubled. "Don't cry." He brushed a tear from her cheek. "My little girl should never cry." The icy touch shouldn't have been comforting, but it was.

"I drank blood and it was good." She spit out the words like a confession.

"And you see this as wrong?" he asked.

"I ... It scares me."

"I know," he said. "I remember feeling much the same the way."

"Did you drink blood? Are we ... vampires?" The word almost wouldn't come.

"I never tried blood." His expression filled with empathy. "But, Kylie, you didn't do anything wrong." His voice came out soft, his words soothing.

The cold, his cold, lessened her fear of the unknown and she felt ... loved.

Right then, she knew love had no boundaries, not even death. Love had no temperature. Maybe being cold wasn't altogether a bad thing. She leaned into him and drew comfort from his nearness.

Minutes passed. She blinked away her tears and sat up. He shifted from his kneeling position and sat beside her. Wiping her face, she stared at the father she'd never known in life. Yet, even separated by death, she felt the bond. "Tell me. Please tell me what I am."

The smile in his eyes faded. "I wish I could give you what you want, but I don't have the answers. I was older than you when I realized I was different from everyone else. But it wasn't until I was eighteen and away at college that things started happening."

"What kind of things?" she asked, and then somehow she knew. "You saw ghosts?"

He nodded and cupped his hands together. "I thought I had lost my mind. Then one day I met an old man fishing. He told me he was fairy."

"Did he tell you what you were?" she asked.

"No, just that I wasn't human and, of course, I thought he was crazy. It took me months before I believed him. When I went back to find him again, he was gone."

"But what about your parents?" Kylie asked. "Didn't they tell you?"

"No. And when my ability to recognize other supernaturals made sense to me, I realized they were both human. At that time, I didn't know that I couldn't have been their child. Since my death, I learned I was adopted. Not that it made them any less my parents. They loved me. And they would love you, too."

"They never told you that you were adopted? How could they lie to you like that?"

"Back then it was considered best to keep adoption a secret, even from the child. I have yet to find out who or what my real parents are. So you see, the answers you seek were the same answers I sought right before my death. Maybe you can discover them for us both."

"But..."

"But what?" he asked.

"I thought ghosts were all-seeing. They are in the movies, anyway. Isn't there someone on the other side who could tell you?"

He smiled. "You would think so. But no, even here, they want you to find your own answers."

"That freaking sucks," Kylie said. "Being dead should have some benefits."

He laughed. The sound echoed with familiarity. It was another thing she had gotten from him-the tenor of her laugh. Her thoughts went to her stepdad, the man whom she had loved so much and yet who had turned his back on her and her mom. She still didn't know if she could forgive him. If she wanted to forgive him. And then the strangest thought hit: she had loved the wrong father.

Her throat felt tight again. "I missed you all my life," Kylie said. "I didn't know I missed you, but I know it now. You were supposed to be there."

He placed a hand on her cheek. "I was there. I saw you take your first step. The day you fell off your bike and broke your arm I tried to catch you. You went right though my arms. And remember the day you flunked that algebra test and you got so upset that you ran off and smoked a cigarette?"

She frowned. "I hate algebra. But I hated the cigarette, too."

"Me, too," he chuckled. "I've been here, Kylie, but I can't stay here much longer."

His words bounced around her head and hit her heart with a thump. "That's not fair. I just got to know you."

"My time in this realm is limited. I've used much of it watching you grow to be the woman you are."

"Then ask for more time." Her throat tightened. She had lost one father already; she didn't want to lose another one. Not now. Not before she even got to know him.

"I'll try, but it may not happen. I don't regret spending my time with you then." The corners of his eyes crinkled into another smile. "I see in you the best of your mother and the best of me. And while I know you don't want to hear this right now, I see the best of Tom Galen. He is not all bad, Kylie."

She wanted to tell Daniel he was wrong, to insist she wasn't like Tom Galen, but her thoughts were interrupted by the whisk of wind. It came on so fast, as if something had shot past, something so fast that her human eye hadn't detected it. Something not human.

The dark silence that followed told Kylie she was right. "I'll bet that's Della." Kylie looked around. "Looking for me." But even as Kylie finished the sentence, she felt the cold of her father's presence fade. "No, please don't ... go." Her last word rang out in the warm yet eerie and lonely silence.