Sharon Ashwood - Unchained

There was Eden, dressed in a jean jacket and black camouflage pants. She was standing with an MP3 player in one hand, a backpack in the other. Alone. Drenched. Sulking. Yup, that was her kid. Ashe couldn’t hold back a grin at all that drama in one small package. Her very own baby Goth.

She had a momentary flash of memory: Roberto sleeping with Eden on his chest when she was still a baby. When he was still alive. Ashe swallowed hard, wondering what he would think of Eden now, what they might have done together, father and daughter. Eden was smart and growing up so fast, one moment a teen and the next back to child mode. “Handful” was an understatement.

She lowered the passenger window so she could call out, letting a gust of cold, wet air into the car. “In you get, sport.”

Eden crawled into the backseat of the car, dumping the damp backpack on the seat beside her. No eye contact. Ashe could hear the tinny voice of a rap-per trickling from Eden’s headphones, like there was a mosquito-sized gangsta hiding in the music player. When had Mr. Bad Bug Man found his way onto Eden’s playlist? She’d checked that thing two nights ago. Mr. Bug had better have a clean mouth, or he was so deleted.

Ashe raised the window again, shutting out the rain, and watched her daughter in the rearview mirror. Eden was fair-skinned with pale freckles, like Ashe, but her hair was brown and her eyes the hue of hot chocolate. That coloring came from Roberto.

“Headphones off in the car.”

Eden gave her a filthy look, but switched off her player and buckled up.

“Genghis Khan.”

“You bet,” Ashe said cheerily, putting the car in gear. “That’s me, Genghis Mom. Now I’ll take you home for your daily meal of bread and water; then I’ll lock you in the basement and let the rats gnaw your bones. It’ll be fun.”

Eden sighed and lolled against the car seat like the victim of a particularly bad vampire attack. The thought made Ashe go cold inside, but she kept her smile in place.

Eden lifted her head a little. “You’re dressed up.”

“Had to go see a lawyer. Boring grown-up stuff. How was school?”

“Dumb.” Standard response.

“What kind of dumb? Other- kid dumb? Teacher dumb?”

“This place is just totally stupid. I did all these classes already at Saint Florentina’s. I’m bored, bored, boredboredbored. I want to go back. I’ve only been gone a few months. I’ll catch up.”

Ashe understood. The school hosted students from all corners of the globe and had an excellent academic program. It taught its charges to stand out, not fit in. Adjustment to a regular school wouldn’t be easy. “If you went back, wouldn’t you miss Grandma and Aunt Holly?”

Eden shrugged, fiddling with her music player. “I guess.”

“But you miss your old friends, too,” Ashe said gently. “I get that.” She signaled and pulled into traffic slowly, cautious in case some young’un dashed out from behind a car. One of the mothers waved. Ashe waved back with a bright smile. See, this mom thing isn’t so hard.

“Yeah, I miss them. A lot.”

Poor kid. New school, new people. New country, even. A mom she’d half forgotten. It made Ashe feel like every conversation was open-heart surgery, and she was wearing boxing gloves. Eden had run away when she first arrived, making it as far as the bus station. Something Ashe hadn’t mentioned to Bannerman, because she prayed it would never happen again. “Have you met anyone here you like?”

“They know I’m not from around here.” Eden said it with the acid bite of someone far older.

Oh, crap. What has been going on that I don’t know about? “I guess that makes you exotic.”

“Yeah, right.” Eden sat up, ending the rag-doll act. “I’ll wear black lace and dance the flamenco.” She giggled at her own joke, raising her arms like someone holding castanets. “Viva España.”

Slowly, the tension in Ashe’s gut uncramped, as if that laugh were a powerful drug. “You should be showing off all that high-class international education.”

“Yeah, well, Marcy Blackwell and her friends laugh at me because I know all the answers in class but I don’t know the names of all the stupid baseball players.”

Then kick their heads in. No, wait, wrong answer. Bad mother. No cookie.

“You’ll learn about North American sports, and you don’t want to play stupid to please somebody else. Trust me on that one. It never pays to pull yourself down so that someone else feels better.”

“I want to go back to Saint Flo’s.” Eden turned her face to look out the window. “At least they don’t call football soccer.”

“Barbarians.” Ashe drove, forcing herself to pay attention to the mechanics of driving. Past the corner store with buckets of flowers on the sidewalk. Past the coffee shop and the place with Jamaican food. The neighborhood where they rented a suite was filled with narrow streets and too many suicidal cyclists to let her mind wander.

“Why can’t I go back?” Eden asked.

“You’re that eager to go?” Ashe said quietly. Why are demons easier than kids?

“I just make you feel weird. You don’t like being my mother. That’s why you sent me away, right?”

Ashe gripped the wheel hard, a hot, guilty flush making the back of her neck prickle with sweat. “Of course not.”

“Then why?”

“It was for work.”

“Slayer work?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh, well, hard to know. You used to say you were a giftware sales rep.”

Ashe bit her lip before she could swear. “You were too young for a lot of the details, Eden. I didn’t want to scare you. Slaying isn’t a pretty job.”

“And it’s hard to do with a kid tagging along.”

“It’s dangerous, Eden. The vamps didn’t like me coming after them.”

“Well, duh. Big pointy stick and all.”

“I was worried you’d be hurt if they came after me.”

“Well, why won’t I get hurt now?”

Ashe swallowed hard. “I quit doing that job. I’m hoping they’ll leave us alone.”

She turned onto their street. Huge chestnut trees made a nearly perfect canopy over a road designed for a single lane with a horse and carriage. The century-old houses here had been beautiful once, but these days the owners were opting for funky.

“Why can’t I go back to Saint Flo’s?”

Ashe was irritated. Funny how a kid could make you feel so small. “I thought maybe we could be a family for a while. Y’know, give it the old college try.”

She turned the steering wheel to navigate the sharp angle into their driveway. At the same time, she could almost hear the wheels turning in Eden’s head. Ashe parked, braked, and turned off the motor. There was a sudden bubble of silence.

She unbuckled and turned in her seat to look at Eden. “We’re going to get to know each other, okay?”

Eden looked suspicious. She had those scary-smart eyes kids get when they’ve had to grow up too fast. “I’m getting to know you, Mom. Whatever you’re telling yourself, you put me in boarding school when it suited you and took me out when it suited you. What suits me never crossed your mind.”

Ashe felt her jaw drop. The words were both true and not true in a thousand painful ways. How did this get so messed up? “There’s too much you don’t understand.”

Eden opened the door and grabbed her backpack, pausing only to lock gazes.

“I hate you.”

“Eden!”

This had to be one of those extra-early teenage moments that had started to crop up. Her daughter slouched out of the car, resentment following her like a black fog. Ashe squeezed her eyes shut, looking for the calm that helped her smack down werewolves, and not finding it.

Goddess, I don’t know how to be a mother.