Chapter 185
The trip home took most of the night. They parked in the weedy driveway and Katelina climbed out. The small white house sat dark and alone, its siding striped from old rain. The blizzard hadn't come there and the yard was a tangle of brown weeds and dead leaves. The bare tree branches made her think of skeletal limbs waiting for their flesh to be returned. The scene was as cheerful as a graveyard. She was delighted to see it.
Jorick kept Katelina behind him and made careful rounds of the property and the house. Though he didn't say, she knew who he was looking for. She'd half expected the cold eyed Alistair to be waiting for them. He wasn't. She wondered if maybe he was too busy hiding from The Guild to bother her. They were supposed to be chasing him down, after all.
With the coast clear, Jorick carried in the boxes and bags she'd rescued from her mother's house. He dropped them in a pile in the middle of the living room and looked towards the window. "There are a couple of hours until sunrise."
His tone was suggestive, but guilt nagged at her. "I should probably call my mom."
Though he didn't visibly cringe, she was sure he wanted to. "If you insist." He turned for the door. "I suppose this is going to become a regular occurrence?"
She hated her own answer. "Probably. We might as well get a phone."
Though Jorick's lip curled, he didn't comment.
They drove to Loren's house. Like last time, Jorick pulled the spare key out from under the air conditioner and unlocked the door and, just like last time, she stepped on the cat. The creature howled, snarled and then disappeared through the cat door in a streak of angry white.
"It won't have a tail left by the time you're through," Jorick joked.
She ignored him.
Though it was just after five in the morning, her mother answered. "Hello?"
"Hey, Mom. I just wanted to let you know we made it home."
There was a moment of silence, no doubt as she came to terms with her caller. Then she exploded. "Katelina? You just made it home? Where in the hell have you been?"
She tried to keep the annoyance from her tone. "We had a couple of other people to see. I'm not a teenager. You don't need to be hysterical if I don't call every day."
"That's what you think."
Before she could go on, another voice sounded in the background, "Who's that?"
"It's Katelina. She finally made it home!"
It took the space of a heartbeat for Katelina to recognize the voice as male. At her mother's house. At five in the morning. "Who's that?"
"What?" Her tone went from aggressive to feigned incomprehension. "I suppose it's late, honey. I'll let you go."
Katelina spoke slowly and punctuated each word, "Mom. Who. Is. That?"
Jorick cocked an eyebrow and looked on the point of inquiring, but she waved him to silence. "Hello? Mom?"
Her mother sighed. "It's Brad. We were working on the website and it got late."
"Brad?" There was more accusation in her voice than she meant. "Brad is staying overnight at your house? What in the hell?"
"Don't you take that tone with me! I'm an adult."
"So am I, but that's beside the point! And what were you adding to the website? My blood type and fingerprints? I looked it up. You've got my medical information on there!"
"No, not exactly," her mother hedged. "It was just the information about your injuries in case someone had seen you."
"You can take it down. In fact, you can take the whole damn site down! I'm not missing anymore."
"Sarah still is."
Katelina's stomach tightened. She had to say something or explode. "Mom, if she's still missing you're probably not going to find her. If she was okay she'd have gotten in touch with someone by now."
"Maybe."
Brad mumbled something in the background, and her mother answered him before she turned her attention back to Katelina. "All right, dear. It's late. Or early. I'm going to let you go."
"Fine. But tell Brad I want all my photos and information taken down. I mean it."
"I'll tell him, I'll tell him. I'll talk to you later, honey, and call sooner next time, okay?"
"Uh-huh. Good night."
"Night."
As the phone dropped to the cradle she could just catch Brad saying, "Did she ask-". The rest was cut off, though she could guess what it was.
"Damn straight I asked," she muttered to no one.
"Asked what?"
Her head snapped up and she met Jorick's curious gaze. "You won't believe who is at her house at five in the morning! Guess!" Before he could, she finished, "It's Brad! What in the hell is Brad doing there? They're not... I mean- Ewww! Brad and my mom! No way! He's like 27 and she's- well, she's old! The age difference is unreal!"
Jorick cleared his throat uncomfortably and he turned his gaze on the recliner as if it was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen. "Like a few hundred years, for example?"
It took her a second to switch topics. "What? No, that's totally different."
He met her eyes. Something flickered in their dark depths. "How?"
"Because she looks old. I mean you look what? Thirty? Thirty-five at the most. She looks fifty."
"You say I look thirty, so what happens when you look fifty? Will that make it wrong?"
The conversation had wandered away from what she'd intended, and she waved her hands to make it stop. "That's not what I'm saying. It's just- He was dating my best friend and now he's staying overnight at my Mom's house? It's just weird." He still didn't seem to understand so she surrendered. "Oh never mind. Let's go home."
Safe in the cocoon of the leaky old house, Alistair and The Guild seemed a distant, farfetched dream, and there were more practical things to worry about. The following evening, she sat down in the middle of the living room floor and sorted her rescued belongings into piles depending on what room they went to. A stack of books toppled over and she groaned. If Jorick had to have books everywhere, then the least he could do was consolidate them!
As if summoned, he appeared with a roll of duct tape in one hand. She glanced at him and asked, "Did you get the window covered?"
"Obviously." He held the tape up as though it was evidence. His eyes skipped to her piles of stuff. "Where are you planning to put all of this?"
"Various places." She pointed to her make up. "That goes in the bathroom." Then, to a heap of random silverwear. "And that goes in the kitchen." Her finger moved to the nearest stack of books. "And I was thinking, it looks bad having books piled up all over. Your ex-shrine would make a perfect library. It just needs some paint and some book shelves."
"It wasn't a shrine." Old regrets flashed in his eyes and she suddenly wished she'd chosen her words more carefully. "The books are fine where they are, they're more convenient this way. It's a surprise when I just grab the nearest one."
"You mean you have it this way on purpose? I thought it was just because you were lazy!"
He hesitated. "I didn't consciously decide to decorate the house with books, but it seems to be working fine."
"No, not really, and that empty room gives me the creeps. I think a library is perfect. It will make the place look better, and think of all the space it could clear up? Oh! And we could move the desk out of the dining room. And add a window seat! I saw a show on how to build one. It looked really easy!" Her eyes settled on a hole in the living room wall. "That needs patched too. You know, we could repaint the front room. Maybe a nice taupe."
"No!" Jorick cried with full blown alarm. "It's fine the way it is! I know I said we'd get some dishes, but-"
"Yeah, we need to do that soon. What about a microwave? I wish Claudius' goons hadn't killed mine. And my blender. That was a helluva blender. It crushed ice beautifully. I got it at a garage sale." She broke off when she noticed that Jorick's eyes were glazed over. "Maybe we should think about redoing the kitchen." Her brow puckered as she imagined the work it would take to bring the kitchen up to snuff. "On second thought, not right now. Though, when we get the dishes, we can go ahead and get some bookcases."
"Katelina, this is not a do it yourself project. I'm really quite happy with it the way it is!"
"I'm sure. The bookcases are really easy to put together. I used to have one; you remember the one in my bedroom that had stuffed animals in it? They look pretty nice, and I think that four or five should do it. That would leave room for the desk, and then we could get some lumber, and make a window seat. Though I'd have to make some kind of a cushion." She frowned. "Or maybe we could buy one."
"No. We'll get some dishes, but we don't need a library. The room is fine as it is. I was actually thinking of moving some of the stuff from the basement into it."
Her nose wrinkled in disgust. "And make it into a jumbled mess? A library is much more practical, especially with your book fetish." He didn't look convinced and she quickly changed tactics. "Wouldn't it be nice to curl up on a fluffy window seat and read a book? The sun shining in and a nice cup of coffee?" His snort of contempt answered the question and she hurriedly retailored her scenario. "Okay, maybe not for you, but what about sitting there in the moonlight, rain running down the window, a nice pint of B negative?" She offered him an overly hopeful smile.
"I am not a house decorator. I don't build furniture, or window seats, and I don't drink blood while I'm reading!"
"Maybe you should try it," she suggested absently, her mind back to its calculations.
It was several minutes before Jorick spoke. "Fine. When you put all of this-"- he stopped from using a word like "junk"- "-away we'll discuss it. Until then, it's a moot point!"
Despite his gruff attitude, she knew she'd already won.
