Jenna Black: Shadowspell

With Dad, I knew I had to pick my battles, and I tried to pick only those I had a hope of winning.

“Maybe the Hunt will be gone by Friday night,” I said, trying to sound hopeful, though these days I never expected my life to be that easy. Notice how I failed to explicitly agree to his terms …

Dad relaxed, and I guessed he hadn’t caught my verbal side step. “We can hope so,” he said, in a tone that said there was no hope in hell.

I barely heard him, because I was already beginning to plot how I would get to Kimber’s party even without my dad’s permission.

As soon as Finn arrived to guard me, my dad took off, saying he needed to make additional security arrangements. I expected him to take my mom with him, but he didn’t.

“I’ll come back for you in a couple of hours,” he told her. “I thought you and Dana might want to spend a little time together without me looking over your shoulder.”

Mom cocked her head at him suspiciously. “Oh? You’re sure you’re not leaving me here to keep me out of your hair?”

Dad almost smiled, but the expression was so fleeting I’d have missed it if I’d blinked. “That too.” He nodded at each of us—his version of a good-bye—then conjured his little ball of light and headed out into the tunnels.

I stood in the middle of the guardroom, suddenly uncomfortable now that it was just me, my mom, and Finn. On the one hand, it would be nice to have some time alone with my mom. Dad was usually around when I got to visit with her, and even when we were alone, it rarely lasted more than a few minutes. But I never liked leaving Finn all by himself out here in the guardroom. Yeah, he was my bodyguard, and that was his job, but I couldn’t quite master my dad’s ability to treat him like a piece of furniture.

Finn was very much the strong, silent type, so we didn’t do a whole lot of chatting, but even so, after being around me for a few weeks, I think he was beginning to understand how I think. Without a word to me or my mom, he plopped himself in his favorite chair, turning on the TV. He flipped through the channels until he found a soccer game, then settled in, making it clear that he could keep himself entertained.

Flashing him a smile of gratitude, I gathered up the remains of our tea and led my mom through the short, fortified hallway and into my suite. The layers of protection between me and the outside world were almost ridiculous, if you asked me. If someone wanted to get to me, they’d have to find their way here through the darkness of the tunnel system, then defeat the protections on the front entrance, then fight their way through Finn. And if they managed to do all that, I could still run into my suite and hit a panic button that would lower three separate steel doors to block the hallway. I was safer than the gold at Fort Knox.

“I’m going to make some coffee,” I announced to my mom as I carried the tea tray over to my mini kitchen. “Want some?”

“No, but if you’ll put the kettle on to reheat, I’ll have another cup of tea.”

I sloshed the electric kettle around a bit to make sure there was enough water in there, then turned it on before putting on some French roast coffee to brew. Mom waited in my living room while I got the tea and coffee ready and then served it. The coffee smelled heavenly and tasted even better. Thank goodness for Starbucks! Tea was so common it practically fell from the sky around here, but good coffee was hard to come by.

I joined my mom in the living room. As usual, since Dad had forced her to quit drinking, she was fidgety. Her teeth worried at her lower lip so much it was chapped raw, and she plucked at the tiny pills that had formed on her wool sweater. I don’t even know if she realized she was doing it.

“So,” I said, looking at her over the top of my mug, “how are you doing? Without the booze, I mean. Are you … okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, not terribly convincingly. “I don’t know why you and your father are making such a big deal out of it.” She took a sip of her tea, not looking at me. “Maybe I was drinking a little too much, but it’s not like I’m an alcoholic. It’s just that I was under a lot of stress.”

My hand spasmed on my mug, and I gritted my teeth against the sharp retort that instantly sprang to my tongue. I’d thought she was past pretending she didn’t have a problem. Already knowing it was a lost cause, I tried to reason with her anyway.

“Mom, you went through the d.t.’s when you stopped drinking. If that doesn’t make you an alcoholic, then what does?”

She waved that away. “I told you I know I was drinking too much, especially after you ran away. But now that I’m here with you, everything is fine. I miss having a drink every now and again, and I don’t appreciate being treated like a child.”

My throat ached, and I had to swallow hard to try to dislodge the sudden lump that formed there. Dad had told me we couldn’t cure my mom’s alcoholism by force. He could keep her under lock and key and not let her have alcohol, and that would keep her sober. But it wouldn’t cure her.

I really wanted to believe he was wrong. But if she still wasn’t ready to admit she had a problem, then I had a strong suspicion Dad was right. If she considered drinking constantly from the moment she woke up until the moment she went to bed—or passed out—to be “having a drink every now and then,” then she was still in massive denial.

“Let’s talk about something else,” she said with a tight smile. “Are you looking forward to starting school in the fall?”

I was more than happy to change the subject, though I suspected we were still in denial-land. “I think Dad’s made it pretty clear I won’t be going to school.” My heart sank at the thought. I’d never been that crazy about school, since our constant moving meant I always got to be the new kid, and everyone knows how much fun that is. But after everything I’d already gone through this summer, hanging out with a bunch of other kids and pretending I had nothing more dire to worry about than a pop quiz sounded like paradise on earth.

“If you want to go to school, you’ll go to school,” she said, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that she did actually care what I wanted. “I can’t blame your father for wanting to protect you, but he’s going about it the wrong way, and eventually he’ll figure that out.”

I wished I had her confidence. I still couldn’t say I knew my father all that well, but I did know he was very stubborn. And sure of himself. If he’d already decided that school wasn’t safe, I honestly didn’t see how either my mother or I could talk him into it.

Of course, the fall semester didn’t start for another eight weeks or so. There was always a chance we were both being overly optimistic in thinking I’d be alive when it rolled around.

My back hit the mat with a sound between a squish and a thud. The impact forced the air out of my lungs, so all I could do was lie on my back like a dead bug and try to breathe. Keane came to tower over me, shaking his head and curling his lip in disdain.

“That was pathetic,” he told me. So nice to have him heap on the positive reinforcement.

I was struggling too hard to breathe to tell him what I thought of him, but I’m sure he could see it in my eyes. He’d told me once that if I didn’t want to bash his face in during our sparring sessions, then he wasn’t doing his job. He was doing his job just fine.

“If I were the bad guy, you’d be dead by now,” he continued.

Yeah, rub it in, I thought as I finally succeeded in drawing a little air into my lungs. I hated the nasty wheezing sound I was making, but I couldn’t seem to make it stop.