Page 17 of Mistletoe (Monsters of the Nexus #3)
Chapter Sixteen
Hal
Mistletoe Farm
“Don’t shoot!” Emma stepped in front of Hal, blocking him from the man’s pistol.
Cold awareness washed over Hal. The pistol was barely worth mentioning. He had been hurt by worse tools. His immediate peril was not a concern.
He had frightened Emma.
He frightened himself.
The animal—a wolver, she called it—would have torn her to pieces. It had to suffer.
Now, Emma saw him for what he truly was: a monster. Hal might speak and do some tricks that give the appearance of being tame, but a feral beast lurked within him.
This man with the pistol, though, wasn’t fooled. “Emma, you’re covered in blood,” he said.
“It’s not mine. There was a wolver. Hal protected me,” she replied.
“It has a name?—”
“Felix, please,” Emma pleaded.
So, this was the brother, Felix.
The man stared at the monster. The monster stared right back.
Hal heard two sets of footsteps on the porch—Agatha and Oscar. Now, the entire family was present to witness his shame. “Felix, you’re home!”
Everyone spoke at once, talking over one another, making demands and threats.
“Felix, put the pistol away! Are you trying to shoot your sister?” Agatha scolded.
“What’s the monster planning with that goat?” Felix demanded, waving the pistol.
Hal set Buttercup down. The goat trotted away, unscathed and unbothered.
“A monster? Who’s a monster?” Oscar asked.
“The orc!” Felix answered.
“Hal isn’t entirely human,” Emma said, her tone calm and even.
Hal wanted to turn around to see Oscar’s reaction. He thought the older man was his friend, but the silence was damning.
“This whole time?” Oscar finally asked.
The betrayal in his voice made Hal turn around.
The man clutched his wife’s arm. His sightless eyes swung from left to right in search of the offending orc.
“Yes,” Hal said.
Oscar’s head snapped in Hal’s direction. “How dare you come to my home!”
With a raised hand, he marched in Hal’s direction. Agatha clutched his arm, hauling him back.
“Let’s discuss this inside,” Emma said, her hands held out like she was trying to calm a nervous animal.
“That thing will not set foot in my house,” Oscar snapped.
“I will leave. I will not stay where I am not welcomed,” Hal said.
Emma’s shoulders slumped in exhaustion and she sighed. “Everyone?—”
The De Lacey family spoke at once, each attempting to drown the other out.
“Everyone, will you hush?!” she shouted.
No one paid her the least bit of attention.
Hal clapped his hands and shouted. Only then did the De Laceys cease their chattering.
“Inside the house—now,” Emma ordered. She turned to Hal and said in the same commanding tone, “Wait for me in the bunkhouse. You need to have your arm looked at.”
“It’s fine. I’ve had worse.”
Her expression softened. “I’ll be out as soon as I can. I don’t imagine Pa’s in the mood for conversation.”
Oscar and Felix filed into the house. Agatha hung back until the door closed. “Actually,” she said, “go around back to the kitchen. That arm needs seeing to sooner rather than later.”
“I am forbidden from the house,” Hal said.
“As mistress of the house, please accept my hospitality and get your behind in the kitchen. It’s too cold for me out here.”
Emma touched his hand. “I’ll be as quick as possible.”
He watched her enter the house and said, “She won’t be quick.”
“No. She and Oscar are both too stubborn for that. Go on in. There’s hot water in the tank. Wash up, and I’ll be there in a minute.”
Hal went around the side to the kitchen’s entrance. His hand hesitated on the doorknob. He should move on, leave before the pistol-toting brother decided that the only good monster was a dead monster. He could leave right that minute, walk out into the night, and avoid the tears and farewells.
Impossible. The thing inside him that tied him to Emma pulled tighter, refusing to allow him to walk away. He was compelled to stay. More importantly, he wanted to stay.
He waited for Emma for decades. Centuries. He could wait a few minutes more.
Emma
Mistletoe Farm
The Parlor
“It pretended to read my books,” Oscar said, stomping across the parlor to his favorite chair.
“I’m certain Hal can read,” Agatha said, shutting the parlor door. She turned to Felix and said, as if this were a perfectly ordinary family reunion, “Are you home for good?”
“I have a day pass, I’m afraid. I have to report to the base tomorrow morning,” Felix answered.
This was a disaster of her own making. She didn’t want to leave Hal on his own. He was hurt, and now she had to placate her father because she had been too cowardly to tell him the truth.
Emma cleared her throat.
No one paid her any mind.
“Excuse me?—”
Nothing. Oscar muttered about monsters taking advantage of his good nature, Agatha peppered Felix with questions, and Felix glared at Emma.
This would not do.
Emma poured herself a glass of brandy from the decanter on the sideboard. No one in the family was much of a drinker. The brandy was mostly decorative, to be sipped at holidays or with guests. Today, though, she needed it.
She drained the glass. Her father continued his rant. Her mother retrieved her knitting project and settled herself into her customary chair by the fire. Felix peered out the window, pistol in hand, as if watching for an orc attack.
“Hey, listen,” Emma started. Oscar pointed an accusatory finger at her. Before he launched into a tirade about nature, nurture, and how it was impossible to fight one’s true nature, or whatever hogwash he spewed, she spoke over him. “Yes, Hal is an orc. He’s been one the entire time we’ve been acquainted.” For her brother’s benefit, she added, “I hired him on as a farmhand.”
“You hired a monster,” Oscar said.
“And I would have told you,” Emma continued, speaking over her father, “but I feared your reaction. Frankly, Pa, you’re a hypocrite.”
“I never!” he protested.
“You write about accepting the natural world as it is, not trying to shape it into a pale imitation of Earth, how we can only be our authentic selves, but you can’t accept Hal for who he is.”
“He’s dangerous,” Oscar said. “He’s the creature from the tavern fight, isn’t he? Did you think your poor blind Pa would never notice, Emma?”
“What bar fight?” Felix asked, tearing his eyes away from the window. “What have you done, Emma?”
Emma ignored her brother and focused on her father. “I thought you’d recognize a gentle soul. I thought the physical trappings diminish as the soul shines bright .”
“Don’t you dare use my poem against me,” he snapped.
“Someone tell me what is going on,” Felix demanded.
“He appeared the night after the solstice. He needed food and shelter,” Emma said.
“Where did he come from? What does he want?” Felix asked.
“That is not my story to tell. Hal should tell you himself.”
Oscar and Felix spoke at the same time, both forbidding the orc to enter the house and demanding that he explain himself at once.
Thankfully, her brother made the logical leap before her patience was tested. “He’s from the Aerie! He’s a servant of that vampire.”
“He escaped from the Aerie. He was the vampire’s prisoner,” Emma said.
“An orc was seen the day the vampire escaped. They are conspirators. That’s who you hired as a farmhand ?” Outrage seeped into Felix’s voice.
“Is this true?” Oscar asked. “I forbid you from speaking to this monster.”
Emma clenched her hands. They were both speaking rapidly, one over the other. It was confusing and overwhelming, and she needed to do something to make them quiet.
“Enough!” she shouted, flinging the empty tumbler toward the fireplace. The glass smashed against the stone.
Silence fell abruptly.
“I don’t care where Hal’s from or who he’s in cahoots with. I don’t care. I love him,” she blurted out. Then blushed, because she was thirty years old, a certified spinster, professing her love like she had a case of puppy love.
This was mortifying. More than sharing her most tender feelings with her family, she should share them with the person who inspired that tenderness, Hal.
“Is this about that boy?” her father asked.
Emma was stunned. “What boy?”
“The insubordinate one with the—” Oscar waved a hand over his face, as if that helped to illustrate his meaning. “That young fellow, Walton?—”
Emma knew who he meant. She hadn’t thought about him in years. “Robert Walton.”
“Yes. This… this rebellion is because your mother and I would not let you marry a man with no fortune and no position in society.”
For a man who prided himself on bucking the expectations of society, he adhered to a hierarchical class structure with fervent rigidity.
“No, this is not about Robert Walton.” She had been twenty when she met the charming carpenter. Her parents had been against the association from the start, but Emma enjoyed his company. When he proposed, she accepted. However, a few days later, she ended the engagement. While she had been morose about her decision, her heart recovered. That was the end of that subject, as far as she was concerned.
“Thank heavens. You were young, so a lapse in judgment is understandable. Fortunately, your mother and I protected your reputation.”
Emma laughed. “My reputation? As a spinster? Oh, thank you, Pa. How fortunate I am.”
“I would ask you to not speak to me in that tone.”
“And I would beg you for the courtesy of acknowledging that I know my own mind. I love Hal.” The words remained true. She loved him.
Oscar’s face turned scarlet, as if on the verge of apoplexy. “I forbid you from carrying on with that…that man.”
“I am thirty years old. I’ll carry on with whomever I please.”
“This is my house. You’ll do as I say!”
The absolutely absurd declaration stunned Emma. For years, Oscar De Lacey had been happy to ignore his family and their circumstances. He was an artist and far too busy pursuing his elevated craft to bother with the mundane. Meals appeared with regularity, and he always had a steady supply of paper and ink. Why sully his hands with the terrestrial when he sought the divine?
Something broke inside Emma, the thing that kept her agreeable to polite society. She had never lost her temper with her parents, despite all their vexations.
Well, this was the West Lands, and there wasn’t much in the way of polite society. It was high time to bid adieu to her calm and controlled temperament.
“You believe this is your house?” she asked.
“I am the head of this family. Of course, it is my house.”
Her mother and Felix had fallen silent, observing the battle now playing out in the parlor.
“Your house? Your house!” Incensed, Emma took a step forward. She really wanted to throw another tumbler. Or the entire decanter of brandy. “This is my house!”
“My name is on the deed.”
“Oh yes, the deed .” That horribly legal piece of technically correct paperwork which in no way reflected the reality of the situation.
“I do not appreciate your tone.” Oscar sat up a bit straighter in his chair.
Her father, the nonconformist rebel poet, didn’t appreciate her tone.
“This land was leased to you with the understanding that improvements would be made to the property,” Emma said. That was the homesteader’s law. “Do you know how many of our neighbors had their leases revoked after a decade with no significant improvements?”
“I can’t say that I noticed.” He now clutched his notebook to his chest like a shield.
“Of course not. Why should the notorious Oscar De Lacey notice?” She didn’t pause for an answer. “Five. Five families failed to meet the minimum improvements required to keep what was otherwise free land. Did you even notice when the inspector toured the farm?”
“What inspector?”
“Pa.” Now Felix spoke. “The inspector sent by the territorial governor to ensure that we have made sufficient improvements. Surely you remember the inspection last autumn.”
Emma pinched the bridge of her nose. “Why am I even bothering to explain this? You had no idea what occurred in your house , like always. Do you know why Mistletoe Farm passes inspection?”
“No, but I am certain you’ll inform me.”
“Because I put in the work, Pa. This is my house. I made the improvements. I repaired the house. I tilled the ground and planted a garden. I built the fences and tended to the animals.”
“Not by yourself.”
“With Felix’s help. With farmhands that we’ve hired but I oversee. I manage this farm. I turned it from a wasteland into something that can provide for us.”
“I never asked you to.”
“No, you didn’t have to. Was I supposed to ignore the hunger in my belly? Or the leaking roof? The drafts in the winter? No. I saw the need, and I did the work.”
“So, I made you into a common laborer? Is this monster fixation an act of rebellion? You are too old for this behavior, Emma.”
She desperately wanted to throw the decanter, but that would be a waste of a good decanter. Instead, she snatched his pen from the writing table.
He seemed to know what she grabbed and warned, “Do not. That is a very expensive pen.”
“Surely it’s of no concern for a poet as famous as yourself. Just spend another decade writing your next volume to be paid a pittance. Oh, that’s right, you’re an artist, and making an income from your work is horribly vulgar. Better to beg a patron for a new pen.” The wood snapped with a satisfying crack. She threw the pieces at her father, which bounced off his chest and fell to the floor. “Perhaps if you stooped so low as to truly work with your hands...actually, I’d be happy if you just acknowledged the common labor required to allow you the luxury of your profession.”
“This is about that boy!”
For crying out loud ? —
“If I had wanted to marry Robert Walton, I would have, whether you forbade it or not,” Emma said, enunciating each word carefully. As if she ever required his permission. “I have always picked this family above my own wishes. Not anymore, Pa. I won’t sacrifice Hal. I’m taking what I want.”
“And you want him?” Agatha asked, her voice pleasant and sweet. It was such a radical change from her father’s bluster and fury.
“More than anything,” Emma said.
She nodded, as if that settled the matter. “I know you three aren’t done fussing at each other. I’ll check on Hal. His arm looked ghastly.”
Her mother patted her on the shoulder as she passed and gave her a warm smile, letting Emma know she had at least one ally.
Oscar sat back in his chair, defeated. “But he’s a monster.”
“Hal is not,” Emma said. “Technically. He’s a person with an unusual… condition.”
“He’s green!”
“And he tore that wolver apart limb from limb,” Emma agreed. “To protect me. He’s been here for weeks and has he hurt any of us?”
“A handful of days is hardly enough time to judge,” her father said.
“You are covered in blood,” Felix added, apparently feeling that this observation was vital to the conversation.
“I told you, it’s the wolver’s blood.” She glanced down. Her coat caught most of the spray, and it was hardly anything at all compared to the gore that covered Hal.
Oscar’s expression softened. “Emma, petal…”
“Don’t,” she warned. “I won’t be cajoled with sweet names. The beast that attacked you years ago is not the same as Hal. Surely, you must understand.”
Oscar sighed. “Until today, I would agree that Hal was a decent man. Good enough for my daughter? No. But if he made her happy, I’d welcome the union. Now?—”
“Nothing has changed. Hal is still that decent man. He’s kind. He’s protective. He’s hardworking.”
“He’s… unconventional.”
Well, that was a start. It wasn’t acceptance but it was better than being a beast or creature.
“Yes, and that does not negate all his good qualities,” she said. “I thought you’d rather welcome the unconventional into the family. It’ll add to your poetic legend.”
“The wild poet of the west should have an equally wild son-in-law,” he mused.
She really had no idea how the conversation jumped so quickly from forbidding a relationship with Hal to their presumed marriage, but she wouldn’t fight it. Not when her father was on the verge of acceptance.
Felix, though, did not look convinced. That would require more work on her part.
Oscar waved a hand, dismissing her. “I do not know why I bother. You will do as you please. Go. You said Hal was hurt.”
“Thank you,” she said, not for granting permission but for using Hal’s name. It was a step toward acceptance. A small step.
Felix followed her out of the room into the hall. Concern furrowed his brows. In a quiet voice, he said, “He will hurt you.”
“I’m not in the mood to fight with you, Felix.”
“If not by his hand, then by a hunter’s. One day, a hunter will come to collect a bounty and take Hal from you.”
She wanted to argue that they were isolated on the farm and that no one would know, but several people already knew. The sheriff. Apparently, every soldier in the Sweetwater Point base. She’d just add the entire population of the town, too.
And now her brother, who would return to base in the morning.
“Swear to me,” Emma said. “Swear you won’t tell a soul about Hal.”
Felix gave her a withering look before pressing his lips together. At length, he said, “I’ll think on it.”