Chapter 13: Mother
Did Napoleon ever have days like this? Did his generals or mistresses or whoever just take off without a word on mysterious errands that left him full of worry?
I ordered a room service supper for one and ate at the dining room table built for eight. Somehow, that made my $500 supper all the more depressing. I texted Colin, still without an answer. I texted Desiree, inviting her over to watch videos and work on my business plan, but she claimed to be busy. I groaned, but fair enough. She was, after all, not my friend, nor a business partner, simply my minder—my baby-sitter. And yes, I’d figured out Colin had chosen Paris because Desiree was here and he trusted her to keep an eye on me.
So much for romance.
I almost called my mom, but Colin had warned me not to call, email, or even chat to anyone online because it could give my location away. But now that sounded absurd. Who were we running from, after all? Two people. Burke lacked the brains to hack into a can of peaches with a can-opener, so that left Cherise. She struck me as cruel, grotesque, perhaps well-versed in black magic but hardly some tech-savvy wizard who could break into my email. This whole running-to-Paris thing started to sound ever-more absurd.
And my mom is my mom, right? I love my mom, we’re close and even if we don’t talk or text every day we talk once a week at least. I was overdue. And if ever there was a day I needed my mom, it was today.
Using the hotel brochures, I figured how to get an outside line on the Imperial Suite’s fancy, old-fashioned Princess Anne phone and dialed the United States. Luckily, I’ve been calling mom for years and knew her number by heart. To dial the US, the Country Code is simply +1 because the U.S.A is number one, right? Hooray.
The phone rang and rang. Come on mom, pick up.
“Hello?” It was Joyce, my mom’s partner. She sounded nervous, not quite herself.
Back in the early 2000s, mom decided men weren’t getting the job done emotionally and so she’d taken up with Joyce. They’d met on a spiritual retreat, bonding in a sweat lodge while creating sand paintings or tripping on ayahuasca or whatever you do on those things.
Anyway, my mom was never one for staying entangled with men, drifting from relationship to relationship without passion. I never knew my dad’s name—she claimed not to, either. Just some guy she met at a hippie rock festival thirty-odd years ago who got lucky and helped create the bundle of anxieties and ineptitude that was me. Needless to say, anonymous donor-dad didn’t even know I existed. Growing up, it was mom and me against the world.
But her thing with Joyce made her happy so that made me happy too. My mom deserved someone and I’m glad she found that even so late in life. Joyce could be sweet and funny even if she did believe in UFO nonsense. Then again, I believed in ‘vampire nonsense’ now which made us even. But she had lights in the sky and I had Colin’s strong, smooth body in the dark. No doubt who got the better end of that deal.
She did. The UFOs didn’t lie to her, run out on her, and abandon her in an empty palace.
“Hi, Joyce!” I said. “What time is it there? I hope I didn’t wake you up.”
“Rowan, hi! It’s noon, and I’m so glad you called. I’ve been frantic!”
“Frantic? What’s wrong?”
“Your mother, she went to see you and I…”
“Went to see me? She doesn’t even know where I am!”
“I thought so, but she said you were back in Port Selkie so she left me here with Pookie to go with that strange man…”
My stomach went cold. “Strange man? What strange man?”
“The one who looked like your ex-husband. Your mom has an album of the wedding pictures and I thought I recognized him—”
“Burke! Burke Sparks came to get my mother?”
“I don’t know his name, it happened so fast! Now I haven’t heard from her in a day and I’m just frantic with worry, Rowan, just frantic. Rowan, if she’s not with you, where is she?”
Oh god. A terrifying possibility settled in. Granted, I didn’t have the full story but I could see where the pieces fit together. If Burke went to Sedona, Arizona looking for my mom, either he was using her to look for me or to get at me. And Cherise might not be far behind, pulling Burke’s strings.
To say nothing of the sluagh they’d created: the shuffling horror with red clay eyes. I’d forgotten all about it. My five days in Paris had banished monsters from my mind. The Horror of Lotomaw House had faded from view.
Tell me Rowan, how do I feed my beast?
Burke knew how much my mom mattered to me. At least they’d left Joyce and Pookie alone. But they’d taken my mom!
You have no enemies you wish destroyed?
They’d use my mother to get at me. God damn it, I should have known.
In a flash, I knew what Colin had done. I just knew. He’d found out about this. Maybe Cherise was holding my mom hostage. Maybe Burke was terrorizing mom in that underground chamber just for kicks or to feed that creature. Somehow, Colin found out and right now he was flying back to Port Selkie to deal with the situation, on his own. He didn’t want to upset me—the poor, stupid, innocent, mortal girl whose big dream in life was another useless blog.
Damn him. Damn his beautiful eyes. He truly was born in another century. But this is my mom! He. Had. No. Right!
“Joyce,” I said, surprised at my calm. “My mom told you I’m in Australia, right?”
“She did.”
“So why would she go somewhere with Burke Sparks? Start from the beginning.”
Joyce broke down and took a long time to get the whole story out and even then I didn’t know if I understood everything.
A strange man—I made her describe him, and he sounded like Burke, right down to “hideous, bloody tattoos on his arms”—had shown up and asked for my mom. The two had talked on the porch in low voices.
Joyce had stuck her head out, but my mom waved her off, going down the driveway with the stranger. Then my mom got into the car with this guy. A little later, she called Joyce on her cell phone, saying she was “going to Port Selkie to see my daughter” for a week or two.
Never mind that my mom didn’t take her purse, didn’t pack any bags, didn’t have a change of clothes, and didn’t even bring my own cat, Pookie.
All that happened yesterday. Since then, Joyce had been trying to get a hold of me. Which of course, failed—thanks to the rather thorough vanishing act that Colin had arranged for me.
So here I was, in the same position as Colin and Desiree, lying to Joyce, not telling her the whole story so as not to panic her. “I’m not sure what’s going on,” I told her, “but I’m sure there’s an innocent explanation. Mom’s been known to get happy-feet before, so just hang tight.”
“But-but you’re in Australia still, right?”
“Yeah…”
“Why would she go off with some man to Port Selkie? Why would she do that, Rowan? You’ve known her longer than me, but it’s not like her to take off. Not since I’ve known her.”
“She got some bad info. But don’t worry, Joyce. I’m coming home and I’ll sort this out. Okay? Just hang tight.”
Hang on lass. I’ll sort you out.
“Okay,” she said, sounding dubious. “Should I call the police?”
I mulled that one over. I knew what Colin would say: No, do not involve the police in our affairs in any way possible. But this was my mom.
“Yes,” I said, “Call both the Sedona and Port Selkie police departments. Report a missing person and a suspicious man.”
The voice on the far end grew quiet. “All right, Rowan. I’ll do that. Thank you.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
“Hello?”
“Dez, it’s Rowan and I need one of those magic black credit cards right now!”
“Whoa, whoa! Slow down, one word at a time.”
In fits and starts, I told her what I knew and that I needed to get back to the U.S. right away, tonight, no matter how much it cost and how long it took. “This is my mom we’re talking about.”
“Okay, okay, let me think.”
“Think—faster!” I said. I did not add that I don’t appreciate you and Colin keeping something like this from me. If this is in fact what they were hiding, but what else could it be? What else would make Colin go off without a word?
He wasn’t that kind of man, was he?
I’ve never met the right woman. Until now.
He’d meant that. I knew it, felt it, sensed it in my bones, in the deep and secret places of the heart. I believed every word of it. But I’d believed Burke Sparks once too.
“Desiree, are you there?”
“Hang on, I’m ordering you a plane ticket online. Once it’s confirmed, I’ll call you back. Then you go straight to the airport. Start packing and don’t forget your passport.”
“Got it. Thanks. Umm, Desiree?”
“Yeah?”
“Is there more you’re not telling me? Do you know what they’re doing to my mom?”
“I swear on Dagon’s Altar, Rowan, I don’t. Believe me, I’d tell you if I did. All I know is that Colin took off, said something like ‘Cherise is up to her old tricks’ and ‘I can’t worry Butterfly, need you to keep her busy.’ I think you figured it out, though. Sorry, that’s all I got.”
“Okay.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Dagon’s Altar?
Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean I turned off the McAppleBook and tried to sleep. That did not work, despite the darkened cabins, the drawn blinds, and the permanence of night beyond the double-panes. How dark the clouds looked beyond the rattling aluminum cylinder of the plane, like an ocean steeped in shadows.
My face pressed against the glass, cool to my nose, against my cheek. It reminded me of the cool-warm touch of my undead lover. How I longed for us to fix this problem, together. As a man and woman should, as a boyfriend-girlfriend might. Instead, he’d left me to stew in the City of Light under a cloud of darkness.
Impossible man.
I could not sleep, but I could think. I came to some hard realizations about my life. Unshakeable Resolution Number One: I did not belong in Paris. Running a blog about TV did not suit me. That turned out to be yet another terrible idea, like working for Jill Thorman or getting stuck in Concordance Therapy. And even if I did want a blog like that, I could run it from Port Selkie as well as anywhere else. Why live in Paris without knowing the language, without knowing anyone save for a vampire or two? Folly, all of it.
Unshakeable Resolution Two: I would not run again. If Burke and his dead-eyed mistress wanted to kill me, let them try. No more running, no more hiding, no more cowering behind Colin’s protective shoulder. I might not be one of them, but I would take care of myself.
I would march into Bear Flag Guns & Ammo and start the paperwork to buy a gun if that’s what it took. Self-defense classes. That big dog I’d imagined. A can of mace, an aluminum baseball bat.
I would not go back to Jill Thorman Real Estate. I would not go back to my old life at all. Maybe I wouldn’t even go back to northern California. Mom had bugged me about moving to Sedona, Arizona so we could be closer. Almost nothing tied me to Port Selkie anymore. My junk remained in storage. Joyce and I could sort this out, find my mom, and move on down the road.
Mom.
A memory: seven years old and it’s daddy-daughter day at school, my turn to bring mine in but I didn’t have one, never did, didn’t even know his name.
“What’s wrong?” she’d asked, kissing away my tears the way she always did. I told her. She went to class with me in a cowboy vest and a fake moustache. Everyone laughed and she got in front of the class and explained that sometimes kids don’t have dads or moms or both or none and everyone’s just the same, just as good anyway.
Mom, I’m coming home.