Then he opened the door and zoomed out of sight. I heard Mom gasp behind me, and I let out a heavy sigh. Here went nothing. Or everything. Depending on how you looked at it. I turned in my seat. “We need to talk, but let’s get you inside and warmed up first.”
Her lips were still tinged blue. She didn’t argue or shrink from me when I opened her door and helped her from the car. Her large eyes reminded me of a deer caught in headlights. She hadn’t really said more than two words since she woke up.
I waited until she was situated on the couch, surrounded by a mountain of pillows and blankets. I felt like I was nursing my mother back from a traumatic experience, which I guess this probably qualified as.
“Am I sleepwalking?” she asked as I tucked my legs underneath me.
“I wish. Sadly everything that happened was very real.”
“Was he a…” She struggled to finish the sentence.
“A demon,” I supplied. “In the flesh.”
She couldn’t hide the shiver that assailed her. “And to think, I used to be worried about you doing drugs or hanging out with a bad crowd. Do demons count as a bad crowd?”
I let out a strangled laugh. I should have known that even in the grimmest circumstances, Mom still would be my crazy mom. “I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have been there for you, helped you,” she insisted.
Twiddling my fingers, I wondered if it would have made a difference if I hadn’t tried so hard to keep this world from touching her. “Would you have believed me if I had?”
She let a small laugh escape, shaking her head. “Probably not, but we’ll never know. What’s important is that you tell me now. No more secrets.”
“Are you sure you are up for this? If you want to rest, we can talk in the morning.”
She grabbed my hand. “Angel, I’m not going to fall to pieces.”
I could see that now. Taking a gulp of air, I braced myself. “I don’t know where to start really. Shortly after we moved here, I realized that there was something goofy about our neighbors. It seemed utterly insane, but I couldn’t shake the feeling. So I followed Chase one night and got the shock of my life. He told me that he was half demon.”
She sucked in a breath, which had been my reaction exactly.
“I know,” I continued. “It was hard to wrap my brain around it.”
The soft glow of a lonely lamp caught glints of dark blonde in her hair. “How is it possible?”
“Apparently demons have been walking Earth for centuries, impregnating females. Nine months later, presto; they are giving birth to a glowing-eyed bundle of joy. The kicker is that the mothers die during childbirth.”
“They grow up motherless and fatherless.” The horror and sadness in her voice was so like her. I just told her that demons knock up our race and then throw them away, and she felt compassion.
“Except in Lexi and Travis’s situation.”
She swallowed. “All three of them are—”
“Divisa. That is what they call themselves. It means divided.”
A range of emotions flickered across her face as she realized that Devin, her boyfriend, had dealings with a demon. “Oh wow. If you tell me that Devin gave birth to them, I am going to ask you what planet I’ve landed on.”
I snickered, getting a very ugly visual. “No quite. The demon actually gave birth to Travis and Lexi, I think, and then dropped them off for Devin to raise. He wanted to tell you, but I wasn’t ready.”
“I see. My boyfriend is into demons.”
My lips curled. All our mother-daughter conversations end up being flippant and usually inappropriate. It was why she was the best mom. “It is not like that. They use deception and seduction as weapons,” I explained in Devin’s defense.
She leaned an elbow on the couch, combing her fingers through her hair. The blanket was still wrapped around her shoulders. “Just like a slut.”
I figured I would let her work that out with Devin. “Umm.” I pulled a knee up to my chest and rested my chin on it.
Her amber eyes narrowed. “Let me guess. There’s more.”
“Just a few teeny tiny details.” Nothing gargantuan. I’m just linked to Chase in these unbreakable bonds. No biggie. Even in my head that didn’t sound very simple.
“Demons,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “I knew there was something fierce about that boy, but dear God. That’s intense. The lot of them.”
“Intense” barely covered Chase. I could think of a few other choice words to describe him. Intense was being nice.
“When I think how you could have been hurt, taken from me—” her voice trailed off.
She’d seen Hell, seen what they were capable of, up close and personal. A part of me wanted to ask her what she had seen, what she had been through, but I knew it was too soon. I didn’t want to be pushy. So I stuck to me. “I had Chase looking out for me.” And since I didn’t want there to be any more secrets between us, I went on. “Actually…” I swallowed unable to believe what I was about to say. “Chase, he, umm, brought me back…from death.”
Her hand clutched the back of the couch. “Excuse me. What did you say?”
It wasn’t any easier the second time. “I died. The night of homecoming.”