Chapter 7
Grandma Sto knew something Ranko, and I didn’t. Did Uncle Lal know it? I’m sure the cloudy figure, aka biological father, did. Ugh! Why had Mom kept facts from me? Was it because her life ended too soon? Sure, she would have told me before this day arrived. Sure of it. But it was clear that Grandma Sto could have told me something, so why had she not?
“Can I have some time with my Grandma? Alone?”
The ghostly, cloudy figure shook his head. I nodded at the door. Grandma Sto moved into the hallway, going into the study Ranko kept here.
“Don’t have to ask your question, Nacal. I know you want to know what I know and how.”
“Explain.”
“All I can tell you is what your Mom, rest her Incubus Soul, told me in the letter.”
“Hold up.” I held my hand up. “Mom told you about my . . . Mixed status in a letter, and you kept it from me. Let me be shocked like this.” How could she do that? Why would she do that? She had to know how I would react? What it would do to me. What it would do to the family as a whole.
“I didn’t get it until after her will was read.” Right. There’d been a letter in there for Grandma Sto and Uncle Lal. Thought nothing of it at the time. “She told me her darkest secret and told me she feared what might come to life this day.” Why tell her, but not leave me a letter explaining it to me? I was her son. It was my life it would affect. It was about my biological father. It was my life that would be turned upside down. I should have been told first. Should I? “She did not want you to know if Maga had tricked her, or been mistaken about what he’d been told.” In other words, she wanted me kept in the dark about my true self for the rest of my life. Great. Just great. She wanted my other side hidden from me my entire life if my biological father never showed up. Way to go, Mom. Keep your son and your entire family in the dark about a bargain child you made with someone from the Underworld. Save face for yourself. “She didn’t want that there to happen.”
“Huh?”
“That sadness creeping to life in those beautiful baby blues of yours. She never wanted to see such in any of her children. Can you remember a day before she died that such existed in your life?”
Grandma Sto held a major point, but it didn’t detract from the fact that Mom kept a major fact about my life from me. And that she would have done so for my entire life if the prophecy had not come true. Didn’t matter how much it would have hurt me or made me sad. She should have warned me about what might occur during my Journey Announcement Day. It was only fair that I knew who I came from. Not like I didn’t know I had a different father than my brothers. Dad never treated me differently. Nor did my brothers. Yet, every one of them knew the truth.
“Nacal,” Grandma Sto came over and rested her hand on my shoulder, lifting my chin with her other one. “Your Mom never saw you as anything but her adorable little baby boy. She loved you like she did all her children, treated you like she did all her children. Can you not agree with that?”
True. Still, didn’t negate the fact she kept something so major from me. Even as mad as I was at her, my chest still ached for her to wrap her arms around me and tell me it was all going to be okay. There was no one else in the family who could provide such peace. Grandma Sto wasn’t that kind of person. Ranko was mancho and didn’t do hugs. Uncle Lal tended to be more like Grandma Sto, but played peacekeeper.
“I’m sorry she’s not here to explain this herself.” Grandma Sto stepped back. “But her letter was precise on how she wished you to handle this if it came up.”
“And how was that?” Would I like what Mom said for me to do? Would it be wise for me to do what she said? Would she ask me to go to the Graveyard? Or take the out I’d been handed by my biological father, Maga.
Grandma Sto stood there with one eyebrow raised, glaring so hard I wanted to wiggle. Guess she expected me to know. Sort of did. Much as I hated it. Mom wanted me to suck up the pain and anger at her disloyal act and go along with what had been thrown my way, because it was the reason she had created me in the first place. It was the bargain she made with the . . . Shit. There was no more denying what my biological father was. He was from the Underworld, which meant he was a demon of some kind. Damn it, that meant I was part demon of some kind. There was a cloudy demon hovering inside my living room, waiting for me to come and answer him about joining him in the Underworld and accepting my rightful spot. To fulfill the contract my Mom had created with him. Part of it had already been done by me being born. The rest came true when the Decision Mirror made me the prophesied man-bride to the son of Moloch, Ez.
Great. I’d been born to be a piece of meat for someone.
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