Carnival of Souls

CHAPTER 7

THAT EVENING, MALLORY SCANNED through the television channels, realizing as she did so that she’d spent more than half an hour watching a minute of this and a few seconds of that. Her ankle and wrist still ached, and the cuts on her biceps made it look like she’d been attacked by the shrub that had broken her fall when she was out running that morning. She knew from experience that taking a tumble in front of her father always meant that he’d get more overprotective; she couldn’t imagine how crazed he’d be if she ever had to face a daimon — not that she felt very confident in her ability to do so when she couldn’t avoid a silly little dog.

Her life was lame, truly and completely lame. Because of the way they moved, too many nights were like this. Unlike at the last four schools in the last four towns, she hadn’t even made casual friends here.

Maybe it’s just harder in high school.

She was used to moving, used to picking up midway through classes, and by now, she even relished those first few weeks. Then, people talked to her. They answered questions about homework, maybe even decided she was worth getting to know. That was the routine.

This year, though, she’d gone from new to sick to catching up to getting ready to move again. The bouts of sickness were unpredictable, and her father made her feel better every time it happened. Still, being sick meant big gaps from school sometimes, which added to her inability to make friends. Aside from a few parties she was halfheartedly invited to and her unpredictable encounters with Kaleb, she’d had exactly zero social life.

The time with Kaleb the past month was her greatest joy. Even though going against her father’s wishes was high on her list of “things to avoid if at all possible,” it was hard to follow good sense where Kaleb was concerned. He made her feel all of those things that she’d thought were missing in her. He was different, and he made her feel different — not that she was about to try to have that conversation with her father.

For several years now, Adam had been her only parent, and all things considered, he did a great job at even the things that were supposedly “mothers’ tasks”: he’d taken her to salons, spent hours shoe shopping, brought her chocolate when she needed it. Admittedly, she’d seen his stash of “being a single dad” books, and she’d had to literally bite her cheek a few times to keep from laughing when his books led to ludicrous parenting moments. His “birds and bees” talk, in particular, made her giggle just thinking about it, and his “chick flick” movie nights when she was due for her period were endearing but absurd. He’d actually gone so far as to try to discuss the comparative hotness of actors he’d apparently researched in entertainment magazines. He was committed to giving her the most normal upbringing he could. Aside from the hours of firearms training and the nonstop lectures on the threats all around them, she could almost believe things were just fine. Almost. The disparity between the illusion she wanted and the reality she lived was vast. Daimons want to kill my father. That detail was never far from her mind. Unfortunately, lately, neither were thoughts of Kaleb.

She flicked the television off and hobbled to her bedroom to work on packing. Every time she started to get settled, they seemed to be leaving again. She’d been the new girl in class every year. The school where she started the year and the school where she finished the year were rarely ever the same.

While she packed, she whispered a quiet prayer that she’d make friends in Franklin — or maybe even that Kaleb’s school was near her new town. That was all sorts of unlikely; she knew it, but she clung to the tendril of hope. She’d wanted some normalcy for years, but Kaleb was the first person she’d liked enough to want to try to find a way to really have in her life.

Sometimes she thought her father saw threats where there weren’t any. She’d never even seen a daimon, but the house was warded, and she was covered in protection spells. Life was a series of flights and thwarted attempts at a real life.

She walked to her father’s bedroom and considered searching for the item he’d taken from the daimons. If they gave it back, maybe they could stop running — and she could stay here and go on actual dates with Kaleb. Life would be so much easier… except finding it was only part of the problem. If she could find the missing item, she wasn’t sure what she’d do with it anyhow.

Where does one find daimons?

The daimons that kept them ever in flight hadn’t appeared in her daily life. No creature with shifting forms had approached her. No doorways to another world had opened in her path. Sometimes, she found it hard to believe that daimons were real, but she’d seen irrefutable proof of witches, and they all believed in daimons. More so, they talked about how, for over a century, daimons had massacred witches and their families at any opportunity. No, Adam wasn’t delusional. If anything, all evidence indicated that he was in very real danger — and her with him.

She opened the door and glanced inside his room. His bed, dresser, and footlocker were all utilitarian, battered and familiar. A heavy quilt covered his bed, and the footlocker had a bulky padlock on it. She assumed that whatever he had stolen would be in there. Unless keeping it in a locked box is too obvious. Her father was practical, and he’d been running from the daimons all her life. He wouldn’t hide it in an obvious place. Would he?

Despite the temptation to explore, Mallory didn’t go into his room, knowing it was as likely to be spelled as not. He wouldn’t put a restriction on the room, but he very well might have an alarm on the threshold — or the trunk or the dresser. She shook her head: it was impossible to keep secrets from Adam. If she went rifling through his things, he’d know and be upset.

She closed his door, returned to her room, and resumed packing.

An hour or so later, she heard the front door close.

“Mals?”

She tossed the jeans she’d been folding onto her bed and walked out to greet her father. As always, his attention swept her from head to toe. As a little girl, she’d thought he had special superhero radar vision. Now, she realized he was simply very, very attentive to details. She knew that he didn’t miss anything as he examined her: freshly painted bright-red toenails; blue-and-green gecko pajamas that were too loose lately; faded tee stolen from his wash-the-car clothes; earbuds dangling around her neck; and mousy brown hair caught up in a ponytail on top of her head.

“Are you feeling any better?” He studied her. “The ankle? The scratches?”

“All fine.” She offered him a reassuring smile. “Mostly just embarrassed.”

“Everyone has accidents.” He gave her a one-armed hug.

“Sure,” she said.

She wanted to reassure him, to promise she could handle any real threats they encountered, but she knew that if he had his way, she’d never encounter any dangers.

“Maybe at the next school you can meet someone to watch shows with or do whatever girl things with.” Adam stepped past her and dropped his briefcase on the kitchen table. “There are more witches there, and you’ll be safer.”

“It’s fine.” She walked over to the stove, checked that the teakettle still had water, and then turned on the burner.

“It’s not fine. I should be home more. We should do more together.”

“I’m almost seventeen, not seven.” She measured tea into the teapot and resolutely didn’t look at him. “Plus, we train. It’s not like I don’t see you.”

Behind her, she heard him rummaging in the fridge. “Once we get settled, maybe we ought to take another father-daughter class.”

She turned to face him. Once he had pulled a container of leftover Chinese out of the fridge, she told him, “Maybe what we ought to do is both of us find some people our own age to socialize with. I was thinking that this move might be a good time to start a few new things… like dating.”

“Like dating?” he repeated. Her usually unflappable father stared at her with a look of horror on his face.

“I’ll be seventeen tomorrow,” she reminded him as she pulled out dishes.

He opened the top of the container and spooned some sesame chicken onto a plate she handed him. “How about this: you can date if you meet someone we both think is worthy of you. You don’t want me to be stuck at home all by myself, do you?”

Mallory turned as the teakettle whistled. She’d been his whole life since her mother had left, and she did feel guilty at the thought of abandoning him. “Mom’s not coming back, is she?”

Her father sighed, but instead of ignoring the question like he typically had when she’d tried to ask about her mother, he said, “She loves you, Mallory, and we both want what’s best for you.” He paused. “But she doesn’t love me, and we agreed that it was best for her to leave.”

“Best for whom?” Mallory asked.

“You.”

Mallory felt tears trickle down her cheeks. It wasn’t that her father was saying anything she hadn’t suspected, but it hurt to hear him finally admit aloud that her mother was truly gone and that he didn’t think she’d come home.

“She could visit me,” Mallory suggested softly. “I could visit her. If you knew where she was—”

“No.” Adam turned his back. “No more talk of Selah. She’s gone, and she has no business in your life.”

“She’s my mother,” Mallory said.

“Which is why she was in your life as long as she was.” Adam kept his back to her, so she couldn’t see his face. It didn’t sound like hurt in his voice. There was a lack of emotion that sounded far too like his sister, Evelyn, like the callousness of most of the witches Mallory had met. Hearing it in her father’s voice, especially about her mother, unsettled Mallory.

The silence that filled the kitchen was weighty with things that she didn’t quite understand. Had her mother done something awful? He didn’t date, so Mallory had thought for years that he must still love her mother, but now, she wasn’t sure.

He could date. Maybe that would help — and make him more likely to let her date. He was attractive in that old-guy way. He had hair that was dark enough still that she teased him that he secretly got it dyed, no wrinkles that she could see, blue eyes with the sort of thick lashes only seen on cartoon characters and baby dolls, and, despite only minimal exercise and an atrocious diet, a physique that would shame most guys her age. If not for the way he dressed, she suspected that he could pass for an older brother rather than her father. It was the benefit of being a witch: he was almost creepily attractive to human women despite being hundreds of years old.

She, unfortunately, had none of his genes. Her hair was a nonremarkable brown; her eyes were a normal brown; and her calories added up. She wasn’t unattractive; she was simply closer to average than to inhumanly striking, smart, and healthy like Adam. If she were more like Adam, she’d have had no trouble getting boys to actually ask her out. If she were a witch, she’d be able to learn spells to protect herself. If she were a witch, so much would be easier. Regrettably, she was just a human.

She sighed as she poured the tea.

“Mals? Is something else wrong?”

“I was just thinking that it’s not really fair that I want to date, but I look like me when you look like”—she motioned at him—“that and don’t date. I wish I had your genes… well, for a lot of reasons, but sometimes, for utterly shallow reasons too.”

He ignored the reference to dating and said only, “I wish you had my genes too.” Then he glanced at the clock. “I have an hour free. Cards? Television? Chess?”

Mallory picked up both cups of tea, feeling guilty for hoping that the rest of her life wasn’t like this. She loved her father, and she understood that there were dangers in the world, but sometimes she felt like she was smothering under his protections — and every time she tried to argue with him, the will to do so vanished before she could speak more than a word. It sounded ludicrous, but she’d wondered if his being a witch made it impossible to argue with him. Humans found witches attractive. Maybe it made it hard to argue with them too.

Adam walked over to the door, took a handful of the powder he kept there, and spilled it in a line over the doorway as he did every night. Then, he grabbed his plate. “Come on, Mals. I think we have a few episodes of that police show recorded.”