Page 70 of Tyr

Her mother chewed her lip.

“Now!” Tyr demanded.

Her mother jumped and pointed to the front of the house.

Celeste didn’t wait. She ran straight for the front door and threw it open. “Dad?” She ran into the front room and scanned it.

Nothing had changed from earlier.

“Dad?” She ran down the hall to her mother’s room, opened the door, and flipped on the light.

No dad.

She ran to her mother’s closet and looked under the bed. Then, dropping her shields, she explored every inch of the house.

Still nothing.

She opened her old bedroom door.

A pit in her gut grew bigger.

She rushed to the bathroom and the kitchen. Celeste yelled in frustration and stormed back out the front door.

She slammed her mom with a blast, knocking her off her feet.

“He’s not in there.”

Her mother dry heaved on the ground. “I… never said… he was.”

Celeste’s patients shattered. She slapped her mother’s face before pushing her mental energy into her mother’s mind. She’d get answers one way or another.

Her mother screamed and clutched her head.

“Celeste,” Tyr called from somewhere far away.

Celeste dug deeper. She found the scattered and fragmented memories from earlier and focused on them.

A week ago, her dad had stormed up to the front of the house, shouting for her mother to come out. When she wouldn’t, he ran to the front door but was met by an invisible hand and flew back across the grass. He lay for several seconds before hopping to his feet and running at the house again, shouting her mother’s name.

The front door opened, and her mother peered out at him. He yelled about how horrible her mother was. He said he never should have left Celeste with her. And then, he said he would kill her for what she’d done to Celeste. He brandished a gun and shot through the door, hitting her mother three times.

Her mother stumbled and rushed out the door. Grabbing her father by the lapels of his coat, she threw him into the invisible barrier.

Her father’s body convulsed, and then, out of nowhere, her mother produced a golden javelin. She flung it at her father, pinning him to the barrier. He screamed and writhed for a long minute before his form blackened and stopped moving.

Her mother trudged forward and pulled the javelin from her father’s chest. His body dropped, and the javelin disappeared.

Her mother stared at her father’s body for a minute, and then she picked him up and dragged him into the bushes.

Celeste fell backward with a thump. Tears streamed from her eyes, and she convulsed as the emotional toll tore at her insides.

Dead.He was dead. Her father was dead.

“Celeste?” Tyr’s hand pushed the hair from her face.

Her gaze drifted past him to the bushes by the front door. Celeste crawled toward them, begging, pleading with any deity that would listen that she wouldn’t find him. That, by some miracle, he’d been spared and was somewhere in the Underworld recuperating.

She reached the half-dead shrubs, her hand hovering above the foliage.

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