He made a gagging face. “My dad is such a scumbag. He’s not even good to her, but for whatever reason, she thinks he’s some kind of prize.” He shook his head. “Anyway, after my aunt disappeared out of my life, I tried to be careful. It wasn’t just that I tried not to show my emotions, I suppressed them. I did my best to feel nothing. Anything to make sure that none of the…bad…things happened.
“When I was around fifteen, my stepmom got pregnant. She’d never wanted kids, so the fact she had to deal with me already annoyed her, but I’d hoped with the baby—since it was her flesh and blood—that she’d be better.” He sat for a few minutes staring at the table.
“But it wasn’t,” Gran said.
He shook his head and cleared his throat. “No. But my baby sister, Tahlia, she brought me so much joy. I couldn’t stuff my emotions anymore. She was the cutest, chubbiest, happiest, little baby you ever saw. I took care of her most of the time, which was fine with me. My stepmom was too rough with her. Like she’d been with me, but Tahl was more fragile than I’d been.”
“What about your father?” King asked.
Booker snorted. “According to dad, his job is to make the money. Then he goes home and sits in his recliner and waits to be served. Or he goes out with the guys for hours after work and comes home so drunk he can barely make it to his bed before he passes out. So yeah, it was me and Tahlia against the world.” He bit the inside of his cheek. “But Vivian, that’s my stepmom, she began to notice things.”
“Like what?” I asked.
He sighed. “Like when Tahl was a baby and she’d fall and end up with some kind of booboo on her face, be it a cut or a bruise. I’d pick her up while she was crying and take care of her and walk her around, and then we’d get up the next morning, and her face would be owie-free.”
His gaze darted around the room. “I knew it was me, that I was healing her. But I didn’t know how, so I couldn’t make it stop. And I didn’t want to. Why should my little sister be in pain if she didn’t have to be?”
“How did you end up on the streets, Booker?” Gran asked, but I could hear in her voice that she’d already figured out the end of this story.
“My sister got paint on her best dress. Vivian had laid it out for her to wear for pictures at school the next day. I didn’t even notice until she was all dressed, and she didn’t know how it got there, but Vivian lost her mind. It was kindergarten pictures, and she said that it was all Tahl’s fault that her stupid picture frame would be ruined. You know those ones that have a spot for a wallet-size picture for every year you’re in school.
“Who even knows when she got paint on it, but she didn’t do it on purpose. For all we know, it’s because Vivian laid the dress out on Tahl’s craft desk where she paints and colors. Like common sense would say…” He blew out a breath. “Anyway, Vivian freaked out and was screaming at her before we left for me to drive her to school.
“When we got home later that day, Vivian was in even more of a temper. She’d had a flat tire on her way to work. Then she spilled her coffee on herself. At the end of the day, she got a pink slip. They were replacing her position with AI.
“She was so mad. Kept saying it was all my fault because she’d yelled at my precious Tahlia. Even my father told her that was far-fetched, but I wasn’t sure it was. I’d been so pissed at the way she’d yelled at my sister that morning.
“Anyway, now that she was home all day with nothing to do, and she’d always hated me anyway, she started listing all these transgressions.”
“Like what?” Gran asked.
“That’s what was so weird. Like everything. Good or bad, she tracked it all back to me. It was like she’d been keeping a record since the first time she came into our house. By then, I wanted to move out. I was so sick of the way they’d always treated me like trash, and I actually made enough money, but I didn’t want to leave my baby sister.”
“Tell us,” Elyse said. “What happened?”
With more fire than I’d seen from him yet, his head came up and his shoulders went back. “Vivian yanked Tahlia up by her wrist, and I heard it pop. My sister screamed, and I just snapped. But I didn’t mean to.” He shook his head. “The house rumbled. I thought it was an earthquake. Stuff fell off the bookshelves, and a picture flew off the wall, and the corner of the frame hit Vivian. I really thought it was an earthquake and all a coincidence, but…”
“But no one else on your block experienced it,” Gran said.
He shook his head no. Large tears welled up in the corners of his eyes. “Vivian convinced my dad that was proof of everything she’d been saying. I would’ve been fine with them just kicking me out, but they wouldn’t let me see Tahlia anymore.
“They called my job and said I hit my stepmom and got me fired. I didn’t have friends after all those years of suppressing my emotions. I was the weird kid, you know? I couldn’t get another job because of the crap my old boss was saying about me. I ended up in my car, which they reported stolen. I’d paid for it. Every penny. But my dad’s name was on the title.
“It finally got so bad that the police were harassing me on the streets because Vivian kept calling in with my description and saying that I’d been spotted near the house, or at the school. Whatever. We were in a small town, so…she killed my reputation and any chance at survival.”
“And then the mimic started terrorizing you,” King said, lips pursed, and Booker nodded.
“Don’t worry, Booker. You have people in your corner now, and we’re gonna blow that fucker sky high,” Gran said, causing everyone at the table to jump and gape at her. “What?” she asked with a frown. “I’m old, not dead. Now we’ve got work to do.”
Chapter 21
Chance
“Don’t worry,Booker. We’ll watch over you,” I said as Ego and I led him into the room that we’d designated for him. My mom and Sky were downstairs with Rosie as she pored through the pages of the Nightwell Grimoire looking for what Sky would need to combat the mimic tonight, but for now, our guest needed rest.
“I don’t know about this,” he said as he settled on the bed.
Ego passed over the potion that Rosie had brought with her, prepared to give the young man some solid sleep without any interruptions. “All you can do is try. Rosie said it’ll only last four hours at most, so we’ll wake you up in three to be on the safe side.”
