“Both Zeus and Jacob left you ’cause of your drug addiction, who says Reaper’ll be any different?”
God, I hoped he was. I hoped he kept her and ensnared her in his filthy web so that when he went down, she did too.
“Oh baby, old Reaper and me go way back,” she said with a childish giggle. “He’s been in love with me since I was with your daddy. He’d do anything for me…” she shot me a sloe-eyed look. “Even kill for me.”
Trepidation sliced through me. “Who would you want killed? You owe a dealer or something.”
“Come sit with your mama,” she ordered me softly, patting the bed beside her. “And I’ll tell you.”
Getting close to her was like willingly cuddling up next to a rattlesnake, but there was fear germinating in my gut and my intuition wouldn’t let me dig it up without identifying the source.
I crawled onto the bed then ground my teeth when she patted her lap so I would lay my head there.
I did.
Her hideous perfumed, braceleted hand started to stroke through my hair. “It’s really a shame you didn’t get the same uniform blond from me as your brother did.”
My entire body was clenched in an attempt to be boulder strong against her pike and chisel, but still, they wore away at me.
“Focus, Mum, who do you want dead?”
She hummed softly for a few long minutes, but I didn’t push her again because I’d inherited my wild from her and I knew what happened when you pushed a feral animal too hard into a corner.
“You knew your daddy took a new wife?” she asked sweetly.
I grew tighter, even the blood in my veins calcified.
“What?”
“Your daddy, he got himself a sweet, young new wife. Reaper said you’re not close with ’im. Did you know about her?”
Every instinct in my body screamed at me to lie and do it better than I’d ever done before. “No, mum. I haven’t seen him since I moved back away from Entrance to start a better life.”
“My girl,” she murmured, her voice like sugar, her hand gentle in my hair. “Her mama’s daughter.”
No.
I was my father’s daughter.
Only the spawn of Zeus would think to lie in the face of their mother, to be smart enough to see the poison in her sugar and the potential energy coiled in that gentle hand.
“You haven’t been with Dad in years though,” I ventured carefully.
“Did you know he went to prison for that little bitch? Your daddy’s sick, he’s loved her since she was a kid.”
Wrong, my mind bellowed. Dad had saved Loulou from death that day in the parking lot. He’d chosen to save a little girl’s life and go to jail to enact retribution instead of doing things like a coward. It wasn’t until later, until dozens of letters had been written until dozens of obstacles had been hurdled and ten years had elapsed that they found each other as lovers.
There was absolutely nothing sick about that.
“What are you going to get Reaper to do about it?” I asked softly, as if I was sorry for my mum, as if I didn’t care about dad’s “little bitch.”
“We made a deal, him and I. I’ll be his and give him Jacob’s brother’s information at the dockyard so he can do more business through the Vancouver Port, and he’ll keep me in comfort.” She paused because I’d learned how to be dramatic from her. “And he’ll have one of his brothers kill that slut and her babies. Maybe then Zeus will understand what it’s like to have your children taken away from you.”
2011.
Harleigh Rose is eleven. Danner is twenty.
I was eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch before school on a Tuesday, alone in the Danner’s big, farm-style kitchen when the music started. It was “Real Wild Child” by Iggy Pop, a song I’d only recently discovered while exploring records with Old Sam and Danner at Mega Music a few weeks ago. It was a great song, but I wasn’t sure why Danner was playing it as he got ready for a Tuesday morning.
I turned back to my cereal, slurping up the spicy, sugary milk at the bottom of the bowl, thinking that King better get his butt out of bed or we were going to be late for school.
The music got closer and in it, I heard the familiar twang of a blue guitar and the throaty drawl of my favourite singing voice in the world.
A moment later, Danner came down the stairs into the kitchen, his blue guitar strapped over his chest, thrumming under his fingers, his mouth smiling around the words as he sang. Behind him was Susan Danner holding a tall cake covered in pink frosted roses, the top popping with sparklers and her sweet face alive with happiness. They filtered into the room and stood by either side of the door so that when King came down the stairs, he could do it with flare, jumping into the kitchen and sliding across the linoleum on his knees until he was right beside my chair, his fingers playing air guitar, his lanky back bent in back like some kind of rock star.