Page 18

Mother of Vengeance

“U h, nothing,” Helena tried to cover. She came over to Cindy holding the open canister to show her friend. “I just brought you some tea. I got the recipe from my grandmother’s old church cookbook. I thought it would be fu n to try.”

“She can’t drink something like this,” Ms. Hawthorn shouted. She crossed the space to place herself bet ween them.

“Mom?” Cindy protested as she was jostled backward.

“There might be a bad interaction with the medicine you’re now on!” she said, while staring Helena down, who also retreated before the other woman’s f ierceness.

The doctor rolled her eyes. “I’m not taking what Dr. Mellon prescribed.” Then to Helena over her mother’s shoulder, she added, “I t’s fine.”

“Why not?!” her mother demanded, whirling on her daughter, whose jaw stiffened in response. Helena took the opportunity to scurry back to her bag, stowing away the offending tea canister.

“Because the side effects are going to make me lethargic and foggy-brained,” Cindy countered. “I actually read the stu dy on it.”

“Dammit, Cindy!” Her mother slapped her hand hard on the cabinet by the door. “What are you doing with your life? Are you giving up? You need to fi ght this!”

“There’s nothing to fight, Mother ,” Cindy shot back.

“This is your fault!” Ms. Hawthorn said, whirling back to point at Helena with the accusatory muster of an I nquisitor.

“Don’t you dare bring Helena into this!” Cindy shot back.

Rafferty could feel it. The energy Helena was pumping out now was reaching a boiling point. Now, it was a defensive response as Helena panicked. She didn’t even seem to realize she was doing it, but the more she desired to fix things, the worse it wa s getting.

It egged on Ms. Hawthorn’s tirade. “You listened to her about taking the job in that city hospital instead of joining your father’s and aunt’s practice. You would have been successful there! They needed your help. We could have been here to support you and take car e of you—”

“I’m not a fucking child!” Cindy scre amed back.

“You’re acting like a fucking child, refusing to take your medicine, having a tantrum in your room, getting waited on hand and foot—”

Cindy interrupted her mom, throwing her hands up in the air and spinning around. “You know what? I don’t have to take this, do I? I keep forgetting that I am a grown-ass adult, and I can ju st LEAVE!”

The shouting continued into the hall, and her mother started to go after her, but at the last moment, she spun on Helena. “Get the hell out of my house, you monster!”

“Ms. Haw thorn, I—”

“And take this sinful stuff with you!” Ms. Hawthorn continued, picking up the second canister from the counter island to throw it at her.

Rafferty stepped between them as she did, blocking the too-light-to-do-any-harm object from hitting Helena in the face. Instead, it hit his shoulder, and the lid burst off, cascading the dried tea leaves e verywhere.

“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

More objects came flying, whatever Ms. Hawthorn could get her hands on, including her half-empty coffee cup. The innate desire to fight the thing that terrified her had possessed her; she was all animal brain and no higher thinking.

“Go, go!” Rafferty bodily pushed Helena toward the hallway, the way Cindy had gone. He knew the only thing they could d o was run.

“My backpack!” Helena tried to go back for it, but he shoved he r forward.

“I’ll get it! Let’s just get out of here.”

“Get out of here!” Ms. Hawthorn continued, a panting, red-faced mess. He ducked under a crock of flour, the white stuff going everywhere and covering half his back and shoulder as he scooped up the backpack by th e handles.

Helena hadn’t retreated far, waiting for him as he exited the kitchen, her hand outstretched to him. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” he laughed, as more things crashed behind them. Maybe he was going mad since he was starting to find t his funny.

“What’s wrong with her?” she asked as she patted at his flour-covered shoulders, trying to brush it off, even as he was still determined to get her to go out the front door to safety.

“I’ll explain later. We need to get out of here. Now,” he urged.

“Wait, what about Cindy?” Helena countered, moving toward the stairs, but Cindy was already coming down carrying a duffle bag and talking into a mob ile phone.

“Dad, you need to come home,” Cindy said into it. She pulled on a coat from the rack at the bottom of the stairs and then sat on the lowest step to pull on shoes. “Because she’s lost her damn mind! And I’m leaving.”

In the kitchen, Ms. Hawthorn had stopped throwing things. From what little he could see, she had collapsed into screaming wails onto the floor, as if her heart had shattered into a milli on pieces.

Cindy stood up and gestured for Helena and Rafferty to follow her. “I didn’t do a da mn thing.”

She listened for another moment and then hung up her phone.

“I’m done listening to him, too,” she snapped, then seized her purse. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“Cindy, I’m so sorry. I don’t understand what I did wrong,” Helena said as she grabbed her suitcase handle while Rafferty seize d his own.

“Nothing. You’re ten years too late to have done anything wrong, just get me out of here,” Cindy growled, and they all went out the door into the cold, sharp air.

Cindy took a deep breath of it as the door shut hard behind them. “You’ve rescued me not a minute too soon.”

Then the door opened again. “You ungrateful child, where are you going?!” Cindy’s mother shouted. Her arms were wrapped around herself, and her face was the shattered ruin of the simple, well-off housewife she had been only an hour or so before. “Where the hell are yo u going?!”

“Out of this house!” Cindy yelled back, spinning on her heels to march down t he street.

“How dare you speak to me like—”

Then Cindy spun back. “I’ll be right there. Can you take this for me?” she asked, passing the duffle bag to Helena before charging back. She pushed her parent back inside and shut the m both in.

Standing on the cold sidewalk, they could hear the shouting continue albeit more muffled. Helena looked to Rafferty, her face drenched in guilt an d worried.

“What did I do?” she asked h opelessly.

He worked his lips. “This happens when mortals are confronted by too much of something otherworldly. It triggers their instincts. They will fight or they will flee. Som e freeze.”

“But I was just making tea?” Helena defended weakly. She understood what she had done but was struggling to accept it. “She went from zero to a hundred and sixty so fast?”

“You didn’t just make tea, and you know it.” He could feel his own hostility rising toward her. Helena took a half step back, cowering away from the sharpness in his voice.

“I was just… I was just trying to help,” she said, and a tear dripped down her cheek.

“Dammit,” he muttered under his breath. Then took a deep one in before blowing it out. Again, he had the urge to eat her bad memory of this incident. It was also occurring to him that maybe he did that a little too often in his previous existence, and he wasn’t as socially suave as he thought he was. Pushing that personal analysis away, all he could do was wrap his arms around her, all while being careful to keep his own instincts unde r control.

“Just take a deep breath and let go of the need to help right now, ” he said.

Helena’s aura flared a moment, even stronger, but then she nodded against his chest and took a breath in. When she exhaled the aura retreated, giving him some relie f at last.

“Do you feel what you did?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said thoughtfully. “Yeah, I do. Dammit. I did make it worse, didn’t I?”

“You’ve just got to be aware,” he agreed.

She’s just Helena, he repeated to himself, trying to quiet all the other doubts pla guing him.

“I’m so sorry. I was trying to help,” she said into his shoulder.

“I know. But you can’t force things,” he whispered into her hair. He had a stray thought that they should just leave, get away from the situation entirely, without Cindy. Cindy’s problems were not Helena’s. She had enough to deal with, and he, if he was honest, didn’t like sharing Helena’s attention. This was… unnecessary and superfluous to Helen a’s goals.

She doesn’t need her needy friend anymore, he thought. S he has me!

But before he could figure out why that didn’t sound quite right, the front door opened and closed so hard it echoed down t he street.

Cindy stood there, her face red, her eyes on fire for the first time since they arrived. “Alright, let’s go,” she declared. “Anywhere is better than here. We can get a taxi or something down the street. Otherwise, she might come out and keep this up.”

“And there are too many eyes,” Rafferty added. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel them coming from the neighbori ng houses.

“Too much of everything,” Cindy said, “I should never have c ome home.”

“Well, do you want to go to a cooking contest?” Hel ena asked.

Cindy raised an eyebrow, then simply sai d, “Sure.”