The Outlaw Demon Wails

Twenty-three

The acidic scent of tomato soup was comforting, helping to mask the fading smell of hot metal and burnt amber. My stomach rumbled, and I thought it pathetic that I could be hungry when I was so strung out. Course, I hadn't eaten anything last night other than a handful of tiny wieners on sticks and six little squares of cream-topped pumpkin cheesecake.

The soft sound of a wooden spoon thumping the top of a saucepan brought my gaze up from the faded linoleum table, and I watched Takata awkwardly pour the steaming soup into a pair of thin-walled white bowls. He looked funny making dinner—or maybe it was an early breakfast, now—the rock star puttering around in my mother's kitchen, hunting for things in a start-stop motion that told me he had been here before but had never cooked.

My face twisted, and I forced the bitter emotion away. I was sure he had an explanation. The only reason I was sitting here was because I wanted to hear it. That, and because the I.S. was probably looking for Trent's car. And I was exhausted. And he was making food.

Takata's expression was weary as he set a bowl of soup before me, then slid a plate with two pieces of toast beside it. He looked at the amulet I wore to warn me about surprise demon attacks. I thought he was going to say something, but he didn't. Angry, I took a napkin from the holder on the table. "You know how I like my soup," I said. "With toast." My chin quivered. "You come over here a lot?"

He turned from the stove with his own bowl. "Once a year, maybe. More than that, and she starts leaning on the past too much. She likes to talk about you. She's very proud."

I watched him set his bowl down across from me and sink into the chair, shifting to find a comfortable position on the thin padding. I spared a thought that I could probably chart his visits by his tour dates and her doctor visits.

"Sorry," he said, hesitantly taking a napkin for himself. "I know this isn't much of a dinner, but I don't cook much, and even an idiot can warm up soup."

Ignoring the toast, I tried the soup, and my tension eased as the rich warmth slipped down. He'd mixed it with milk. Just the way I liked it. I glanced up when his pocket started to hum. The tall witch looked discomforted as he pulled a cell phone out and checked the number.

"You have to go?" I said bitingly. I should have just pinned him to the wall and made him talk.

"No. It's Ripley. My drummer." A wan smile curved up his thin lips, making his long face look longer. "She's calling to give me an excuse to leave if I need it."

I took another sip of soup, angry at myself that I was hungry when my life was falling apart. "Must be nice," I muttered.

Giving up on ignoring the toast as a matter of principle, I picked it up and dunked it. So he knew I liked toast with my tomato soup. That didn't mean I shouldn't eat it. Elbows on the table, I looked at him as I chewed. I felt drained, and this was just too weird.

Takata's gaze fell away. "I wanted to tell you," he said, and my heart gave a hard thump. "For a long time. But Robbie left when he found out, and it just about killed your mother. I couldn't dare risk it."

But you could risk having coffee with me ages ago? And you could risk hiring me to work your security last year? Burying my unreasonable feelings of jealousy, I said, "Robbie knows?"

He looked old all of a sudden, his blue eyes pinched. I wondered whether, if I had kids, they would have green eyes or blue.

"He recognized me at your dad's funeral." Takata grimaced with his attention on his soup. "Our hands are exactly the same. He noticed." Spoon shaking, he took another sip of soup. I silently dunked a corner of my toast.

I felt like such an idiot. God, Takata had asked my opinion of the lyrics of "Red Ribbons" last year, and I hadn't gotten it. He had been trying to tell me, and I had been too dense to see it. But how could I have even guessed? "Who else knows?" I asked somewhat fearfully.

He smiled without showing his teeth, looking almost shy. "I told Ripley. But she has her own past to deal with and she will keep her mouth shut."

"Trent?" I accused.

"Trent knows everything," he muttered. Seeing my unease, he added, "He knows only because his father needed a genetic blueprint to help base your treatment on. Mr. Kalamack could have used Robbie's, but the repair would have been slower and not as perfect. When your dad asked, I said yes. Not just for you, but so Robbie wouldn't have a summer of missing memories."

I made a face, remembering. Or remembering not remembering, maybe.

"So Trent knows I'm your birth father, but not why." Takata leaned into his chair with his tall glass of milk, his long leg hitting the table leg on my side before jerking it back. "It was none of his business," he said defensively.

I couldn't taste my toast anymore, and I set it down. I stared at my soup, took a breath to find my courage, then said softly, "Why?"

"Thank you," Takata whispered.

His eyes were heavy with moisture when I looked, but he was smiling. He set his glass down and stared out the window at the growing brightness. "Your dad and I met your mother at the university."

I'd heard this before, just not knowing that the other guy had been Takata. "She said she met my dad when she signed up for a ley line class she had no business being in. That she took it to meet the gorgeous hunk of witch in front of her, but ended up falling in love with his best friend."

His smile grew, showing his teeth. "I'd love to know which one of us she considered the hunk of witch."

Confused, I pulled my soup closer. "But my dad, Monty, I mean, was human."

Takata's head was bobbing. "There was a lot more prejudice back then. No, not more, just that no one was as afraid to show it. To avoid getting a lot of flack, he told everyone he was a witch. Until your mother, he would ransack my closet just to smell right."

I thought about that for a moment, then returned to eating.

"Your dad and me?" he continued, his pleasant voice seeming to fill the kitchen and sounding right. "I don't know how we got through those last years without killing each other. We both loved your mother, and she loved both of us." He hesitated, then added, "For different reasons. She thought it was hilarious when her scent charms worked so well that even the instructors couldn't tell he was a human. His ley line skills were more than good enough. It was crazy, the both of us vying for her, and her caught in the middle."

I glanced up and he dropped his eyes.

"But I got her pregnant with Robbie right as my music career started to take off. West Coast take off, not just local stuff. It changed everything." His gaze went unfocused. "It threatened to steal both her and my dreams—what we thought we wanted."

I felt him look at me, and I said nothing, tilting my bowl to get the last of my soup.

"Your dad always blamed me for getting her pregnant when she could have finished her studies to go on to be one of the premier spell-developers in the state."

"She's that good?" I asked, taking another bite of toast.

Takata smiled. "You won every Halloween contest you ever entered. She continually developed potions to pass the I.S.'s increasingly sensitive detection charms for your dad. She told me once that Jenks thought she was light on the magic, almost a warlock. It wasn't because she was not spelling, but because she was."

My head went up and down, and I wiped the butter off my fingers. Crap, I had forgotten to pick Jenks up at the gate. I hadn't even slowed down long enough for them to get it open. Maybe Ivy would go get him. I wasn't going back there.

"Okay, I got the picture," I said. "I get my earth magic from her. And Trent says you're good at ley lines?"

He shrugged, tossing his head to make his dreadlocks swing. "I used to be. I don't use them much. Least not consciously."

I remembered sitting next to him on the winter solstice and seeing him jump when the circle at Fountain Square closed. Yeah, I probably got my ley line skill from him. "So you got my mom pregnant and decided your dreams were more important than hers and left," I accused.

A deep flush colored his pale complexion. "I asked her to come with me to California," he said, pained. "I promised her we could raise a family and build both our careers at the same time, but she was smarter than me." Takata crossed his arms over his thin chest and shrugged. "She knew something would suffer, and she didn't want me to look back and blame her and the baby for taking my one shot at greatness away."

He sounded bitter, and I picked at what was left of my toast.

"Monty loved her as much as I did. As much as I do," he reiterated. "He wanted to marry her, but he never asked because he knew she wanted children and couldn't give them to her. It made him feel inadequate, especially when I kept reminding him of it," he admitted, tired eyes dropping in old guilt. "So when she wouldn't follow me to California, he asked her to marry him, seeing as she was going to get the child she always wanted."

I watched his face twitch as he relived the memory. "And she said yes," he said softly. "It hurt more than I like to admit—that she stayed with him and that peon I.S. job he took on a dare instead of coming with me and the chance for a big house with a pool and a hot tub. Looking back, I know I had been stupid, but I left thinking I was doing the right thing."

When desire's sold for freedom/and need exchanged for fame/those choices made in ignorance/turn to bloodstained dreams of shame. Son of a bitch.

His gaze flicked to mine and held. "Monty and your mother would be happy. I was going to California with the band. My child would be raised in a loving home. I thought I had cut all the ties. Maybe if I'd never come back it would have been okay, but I did."

I dabbed my finger on the crumbs and ate them. This all felt like a bad dream that had nothing to do with me.

"So I went on to make it big," Takata said with a sigh. "I didn't have a clue how much I had screwed my life up. Not even when your mom flew out to one of the shows one night. She said she wanted another child, and like a stupid ass, I went along with it."

His eyes watched his long hands, carefully arranging the spoon in the bowl. "That was my mistake," he said, more to himself than me. "Robbie had been an accident that your dad stole from me, but I gave him you. And seeing his eager smile when you were put in his arms made me realize how pathetically worthless my life was. Is."

"Your life isn't worthless," I said, not knowing why. "You touch thousands of people with your music."

He smiled bitterly. "What do I have to show for it? Selfishly now, what do I have?" His hands waved in frustration. "A big house? A fancy tour bus? Things. Look at what I could have been doing with my life—all wasted. Look at what your mother and Monty did."

His voice was getting louder, and I looked past him to the empty hall, worried he might wake her up.

"Look at what you are," he said, bringing my attention back. "You and Robbie. You are something real that they can point to and say, 'I helped make that person great. I held that person's hand until they could make it on their own. I did something real and irrefutable.'"

Clearly frustrated, he slumped with his long arms on the table and stared at nothing. "I had the chance to be a part of what life is about, and I gave it to someone else, pretending to know about life when all I have is what you can get by looking in other people's windows."

Left looking in the window, red ribbons hide my face. I pushed my plate away, not hungry anymore. "I'm sorry."

Takata met my eyes from under a lowered brow. "Your dad always said I was a selfish bastard. He's right."

I moved the spoon in a figure eight. Not clockwise, not counterclockwise. Balanced and empty of intent. "You give," I said softly. "Just to strangers, afraid that if you give to people you love, they might reject you." My attention came up, pulled by his silence. "It's not too late," I said. "You're only, what, fifty-something? You've got a hundred more years."

"I can't," he said, his expression asking for understanding. "Alice is finally thinking of going back into research and development, and I'm not going to ask her to leave that and start a second family." A sigh shifted his thin shoulders. "It would be too hard."

I looked at him, taking my coffee up but not drinking it. "Hard if she said no, or hard if she said yes?"

His lips parted. He seemed like he wanted to say something but was afraid. Lifting one shoulder and letting it fall, I took a sip and gazed out the window. Memories of struggling to live with Ivy and Jenks lifted through me. Jenks was going to be really ticked I'd forgotten him at Trent's. "Anything worth having is going to be hard," I whispered.

Takata took a long, slow breath. "I thought I was supposed to be the font of philosophical wise-old-man shit here, not you."

He was smiling wanly when I looked at him. I couldn't deal with this right now. Maybe after I had a chance to figure out what it meant. Pushing my chair back, I stood. "Thanks for dinner. I have to go home and get some stuff. Will you stay here until I get back?"

Takata's eyes went wide in question. "What are you doing?"

I set my bowl and plate in the sink before I wadded up my napkin and threw it away. "I have to make up some spells, and I don't want to leave my mom alone, so until she wakes up, I'm going to work here. I need to run back to the church for some stuff. Will you wait until I get back before you leave?" Can you do that much for me? I thought bitterly.

"Uh," he stammered, long face empty as he was caught off guard, "I was going to stay until she wakes up so you don't have to come back. But maybe I can help you. I can't cook, but I can chop herbs."

"No." It was a little brusque, and seeing his hurt, I added gently, "I'd rather spell alone, if you don't mind. I'm sorry, Takata."

I couldn't look at him, afraid that he would know why I wanted to spell alone. Damn it, I didn't know how to trade summoning names with a demon, but I knew it involved a curse. Takata, though, was wincing for an entirely different reason, apparently.

"Could you call me by my real name?" he asked, surprising me. "It's kind of stupid, but hearing you call me Takata is worse."

I paused at the door. "What is it?"

"Donald."

I almost forgot my misery. "Donald?" I echoed, and he flushed.

He stood, reminding me of how tall he was as he awkwardly tugged his T-shirt down over the top of his jeans. "Rachel, you aren't going to do anything stupid, are you?"

I stopped looking for my shoes when I remembered they were at Trent's. "From your point of view, probably." Al had tortured my mom because of me. There were no marks on her, but the wounds were there in her mind, and she'd taken them for me.

"Wait."

His hand was on my shoulder, and when I stared at him he let go.

"I'm not your dad," he said, gaze lighting on my neck with its bruises and bite marks. "I'm not going to try to be your dad. But I've watched you your entire life, and you do some of the damnedest things."

The feeling of betrayal was rising again. I owed him nothing, and I couldn't see him in my life anywhere. It had been hell growing up having to be strong for my mother because she couldn't handle things. "You don't know me at all," I said, letting a sliver of my anger show.

His brow furrowed, he tried to reach out, then let his hand drop. "I know you will do anything for your friends and those you love, ignoring that you're vulnerable and life is fragile. Don't," he pleaded. "You don't have to take this on all by yourself."

My anger flared, and I tried to rein it in. "I wasn't planning on it," I said bitingly. "I do have resources, friends." My arm came up and I pointed deeper into the unseen house. "But my mother has been tortured for almost thirteen hours because of me, and I'm going to do something about it!" My voice was rising, but I didn't care. "She suffered as that bastard pretended to be my dad. She endured it knowing that if she let him out of that circle or walked away, he might come after me. I can stop him, and I will!"

"Lower your voice," Takata said, and I just about lost it. Jaw clenched, I got in his face.

"My mother isn't going to live her life hiding on hallowed ground because of something I did," I said, more softly now but no less intently. "If I don't do something, next time he might physically hurt her. Or start taking it out on strangers. Or maybe you! Not that I give a flip."

I headed out into the hall. His footsteps were heavy behind me.

"Damn it, Rachel," he was saying. "What makes you think you can kill him when the entire demon society can't?"

I scooped up the keys by the front door where I'd left them, sparing a thought that the I.S. was probably looking for Trent's car by now. "I'm sure they can," I muttered. "I think they simply don't have the guts to do it. And I never said I was going to kill him." No, I was just going to take his name. God save me.

"Rachel."

He took my arm, and I halted, looking up his height to find his expression pinched in deep concern. "There's a reason no one hunts demons."

I searched his face, seeing me in it everywhere. "Get out of my way."

His grip tightened. Grabbing his arm, I did a quick ankle tuck and sent him down, resisting the urge to follow it with a fist in his gut—or somewhere a little lower, maybe.

"Ow," he said, his eyes wide as he stared at the ceiling, one hand on his chest as he tried to catch his breath and figure out how he got on the floor.

I looked down at him and his shock. "Are you okay?"

His fingers prodded his lower chest. "Yeah."

He was in my way, and I waited for him to move. "You want to know what it's like to have kids?" I said as he sat up. "Some of it's letting your daughter do stuff you think is stupid, trusting that just because you can't do something doesn't mean she can't. That maybe she's smart enough to get herself out of the trouble she gets herself into."

I felt my focus blur as I realized that's what my mom had done, and though it had been hard and left me knowing more than a thirteen-year-old should, I was better able to handle the bigger dangers my thrill-seeking tendencies got me into.

"I'm sorry," I said as Takata pulled himself backward to lean against the wall. "Will you watch my mom while I take care of this?"

He nodded, his dreadlocks swinging. "You bet."

I glanced past the high window in the door to guess at the time, but at least now I could spell at home. "Get her to my church a few hours before sunset," I said. "If I'm not there, Marshal will be if I can get ahold of him. He's a target now, and you, probably. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put your life in danger." No wonder he hadn't told me I was his daughter. It wasn't anything that would help extend his life.

"Don't worry about it," he said.

I hesitated, my stocking feet silent on the carpet as I fidgeted. "Can I take your car? The I.S. is probably looking for Trent's." A smile curved his thin lips up, and still sitting on the floor, he dug in his pocket and pulled out his keys to hold them up to me. They were foreign and heavy, keys to who knew what.

"I never thought I'd ever hear you asking for my keys," he said. "It's Ripley's—don't go running any red lights."

I fidgeted some more, then pulled my hand off the doorknob and crouched to see him face-to-face. "Thanks," I said, meaning for everything. "Don't take this like I'm forgiving you or anything," I added, then gave him a tentative hug. His shoulders were bony, and he smelled like metal. He was too startled to do anything back, so I stood and walked out, shutting the door carefully behind me.