I never had anyone to back me up, to side with me, even when I was being a little irrational.
Even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to like it, I was really pleased that there was someone in the world—even if it was a demon—who was on my side.
With that completely asinine revelation, I rushed out to the van, finding Marsh already behind the wheel.
I chose to bite my lip on that one.
If I was going to spend the whole morning with Marsh, I was going to need to pick my battles.
It wasn’t going to be good for the kids to hear us constantly bickering. I didn’t want any of them to think that was how it was supposed to be. I wanted their generation to be better than ours.
I didn’t even say anything when we got to the park, and Marsh decided to send the brothers all out together, while holding Maggie back with us.
The park was about what you might expect from a small, neighborhood one.
One side was a baseball field with a small set of bleachers.
That side was separated from the other side with a line of trees and a small bridge.
The other side had an ancient basketball court and a playground for kids. And one picnic table.
That was it.
Granted, it was all surrounded on three sides by woods, but it certainly didn’t feel like the kind of place where a demon lived.
“You sure about this, slick?” Marsh asked as he looked around.
“No, I said I had a feeling, not concrete evidence. That’s why we’re here.
“Can I check out the area by the stream?” Maggie asked, clearly frustrated that she was being held back like a child. And I couldn’t blame her. I was proud of her for speaking up, not just standing there silently.
“Go ahead,” Marsh invited, waving her off.
“Why did you keep her back?” I asked.
“Dale…”
“I’m asking a question. It wasn’t an accusation.”
“Slick, when it comes from you and it is spoken to me, it’s always a fucking accusation.”
“Like it’s my fault you’re an asshole who deserves it,” I grumbled.
To that, I got another of those sighs.
“You’re right that she is the kind to take initiative. But those three aren’t. If we sent them all off together, Maggie would be bossing them all around.”
“Bossing is a sexist term,” I told him. “Taking charge is what you would say if it was one of the boys.”
“What-the-fuck-ever,” he said. “Fine, if she went with them, she would have been taking charge.”
“And heaven-forbid we allow a girl to be in charge.”
Marsh’s face tensed at that.
“I don’t want her to always take charge, and for them to all fall in line. That’s not what it is going to be like in the field. You know as well as I do that most of the time, we are working alone. They won’t have someone else to tell them when or how to do something. They need to figure out how to do that for themselves. She would put them at a disadvantage.”
If I wasn’t hallucinating from too little sleep and too much caffeine, I was pretty sure he was saying Maggie was the better student.
But this was Marsh.
Marsh, who made my life a living hell all through training because he thought girls weren’t capable of doing what boys could.
Marsh, who still made snide comments to me even all these years later.
Our gazes slid to Maggie who had started to lose her footing on the slippery embankment, but managed to grab a hold of a small tree to keep herself from ending up in the water. Getting up, she brushed off the seat of her pants, then must have felt the trickle of blood where the back of her forearm had caught a rock or a stick.
It was no small amount of blood, but she just looked at it, shook her head, and got back to her task.
“She reminds me of you at her age,” Marsh said, and his tone lacked all inflection, so I had no idea if he meant it as an insult or not.
“She’s a good candidate,” I insisted in case it was the former. “Every time I walk through the common room, she is sitting there reading.”
“She’s reckless in a fight,” he said, and, again, it was impossible to tell what he thought about that.
“Says someone who continued charging when he had a bone sticking out of his arm,” I said, remembering that day vividly. It’s hard to forget the first time you see someones insides sticking out.
“Seems stupid to forfeit a fight over something that will heal itself in a couple of days,” he said, shrugging. “Why do you look like shit?” he asked.
“Hey—“
“Can you really consider it an insult if it is fact?” he cut me off.
To that, I was the one to sigh.
“I guess not,” I agreed. “I’ve been on this case night and day.”