Page 14 of The Zagorath
“They only asked about Liv’s totaled car abandoned at the campsite,” Jessie cut in with exasperation. “I told you that there were no bodies.” She gave Liv an apologetic look. “I went back out there with my car and—Liv you wouldn’t believe it—but where all the bodies and bones had been, they were gone. There wasn’t even a trace of blood as if it all got absorbed into the forest.”
“That actually makes sense,” Liv replied. “At least based on what I have come to know. I know everything that happened was terrible but Mom—” She was promptly cut off when the phone picked up and she heard her dad’s voice through the phone.
“Lorraine, is everything okay? I wasn’t expecting a call,” he said. “Are you already done packing up Liv’s place?”
Between her two parents, her dad was the only one who called her by her preferred name. Liv drew a shaky breath, tears springing to her eyes. She knew that her decision was going to hurt them.
“You’re not going to believe this, Steven, but she’s here. Our baby is here!”
“What? Lorraine, have you ingested something you shouldn’t have?” Liv’s eyes widened and she stared at the phone in shock as her mother quickly shushed her dad up.
“No, no, nothing like. Please, Steven, give me some credit. It’s been months since I’ve experimented with any strains of holy herbs,” she hissed. “Liv is really here. She just appeared in the middle of apartment. Liv—say something!”
Liv shook her head and smiled weakly. “Hi dad,” she called out, waving as her mother crowded to her side, holding the phone in front of them so that she could see that her mother not only put her on speaker but had a video-call going.
Her dad’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Liv! What… Where have you been?”
“Not… here,” she finished lamely. “Not in this world but elsewhere.”
“I told you what happened,” her mother broke in impatiently. “She was carried off by a monster.”
“He’s not a monster,” Liv immediately objected and then winced with an internal groan. That wasn’t going to be convincing at all.
Sure enough, both Jessie and her mother stared at her in horror while her dad chuckled wryly on the other end of the line. “I see.”
Her mother hushed her father before addressing her. With her fist propped on her hip, she arched an eyebrow. “Really?That’s funny. Because an eight-foot sadistic murderous creature with claws, horns, and a tail that emerges from the forest sounds so very human, right?”
“Actually, he has two tails,” she corrected, her dad chuckled as her mother turned red.
“Don’t sass me. How can you even?—”
“Because he’s not really like that. You know how the spirit world is, mother. It is not all black and white. It’s not that he does these things because he wants to—he just has to. And when I’m with him, he’s different.”
Her mother stared at her for a long moment; her eyes rounded with horror.
“Lorraine, weren’t you just lecturing the coven the other day about not being able to hold spirits to human accountability?” her dad tried to interject, but her mother merely scowled down at the phone.
“That doesn’t mean it can have my baby girl. It can do whatever the hell it likes so long as it is far away from her,” she shot back. Her eyes lifted to Liv once again and she smiled. “Olivia, be reasonable. You can’t tell me that you really mean to go back to that… thing?”
“Actually, yes,” Liv said slowly as she exchanged a look with Jessie.
Her best friend looked more than a little shell-shocked, and quite a bit horrified, but she was quickly coming out of it and a look of consternation was growing on her face as the smile fell from her mother’s face and she began one of her characteristic rants.
“I absolutely forbid it, Olivia. You aren’t going to do this to me. I’ve been left to worry for months without a word and now that you have returned home, you’re planning to leave again? And go back to it?”
“Lorraine—” her dad protested, but her mother shook her head, adamant.
“No Steven. I won’t have it.” Her mother looked desperately at Liv, her expression pleading. “Please, Olivia, just think clearly for a moment. You are supposed to settle down with someone respectable from our coven. There are so many good potentials and you are going to throw it all away—for what? You can’t possibly be in love with it!”
Liv shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what I feel but it feels… right. More than that I want to see where it goes, and I want to see where all of this—and experiencing that world—will take me. And if that means that I’m able to drown out the forest so that he is sent out to kill it less frequently, then isn’t that a good thing?”
Her mother’s bottom lip trembled for a moment as if she were on the verge of tears once more. Liv braced herself for more theatrics, but her mother’s face suddenly hardened with resolution.
“No, Olivia. I will not allow this. It’s not going to happen. It’s a good thing I’ve already sold your apartment. You’re going to come home with me, now.” She wiped away her tears with one and she studied the phone once more as she walked at a fast clip toward the door. “Stephen, listen, I need you to call Winter and Thomas Fairwell and explain the situation. They must come immediately, and?—”
She shrieked in surprise as Jessie suddenly line-drove her into an open closet standing ajar that appeared to have just recently been cleaned out.
“Jessica! What are you doing?” her mother wailed, and Jessie winced apologetically at the closed door as she braced a chair under the knob.”
