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“From me.”
I teleported to my adoptive parents’ house, knowing two things: one, my boyfriends wouldn’t follow me because they knew that would only make things worse, and two, there was a good chance I might give Stepan Lazarov a heart attack if I appeared in the middle of his living room.
“Well, welcome home, since you’re here already,” he said boredly.
Shoot. The bastard’s tougher than I thought.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“You want us to do what?”
“Adopt her, like you adopted me.”
We were all sitting in the kitchen the next morning, around a table filled with Mom’s pancakes, fried eggs, bacon, and a pitcher of orange juice. She’d brought the juice and the pancake mix from the diner, as usual.
“No,” Stepan said simply.
“Why n
ot?” Lena tried in a meek voice. She was poking two pieces of bacon around her plate, looking at him fearfully, from behind her lashes.
“Woman, you wanted to give Mila a home, and look how that turned out. I’m done with this family.”
“Yolanda is not directly related to me,” I tried to reason with him. I knew what he was afraid of, and to my chagrin, his instincts were right. “Second cousin. And her parents aren’t supernatural. I checked.”
My adoptive dad pushed his plate aside and stuck a toothpick between his lips. Leaning back in his chair, he gave me an intense look, as if he was trying to read into my soul. I averted my eyes and cut myself a piece of pancake. I hadn’t told them the truth about why I hadn’t been home in such a long time.
“You seem different,” he said. “What happened?”
“What do you mean? Nothing happened.” I shrugged.
“You didn’t tell us about last year, about how you spent your summer…”
“I don’t have to tell you anything.” He crossed his arms over his chest, and I sighed. I had to give him something. “Last year was a mess because of Valentine. No vacations, no breaks, no nothing. I needed some time for myself after that.”
“Nah. You cut us off completely.”
“Aww… you’ve always wanted to get rid of me, and now you’re telling me you missed me?”
“You broke you mother’s heart, that’s all.”
I wasn’t getting anywhere. My best bet was to convince Ilena they had to take Yoli in, and there was a chance she could convince Stepan. So, I told her about the orphanage, about how Lorna and I visited the children every month and brought them things, and about how hard their life was. My mom was a kind soul. She didn’t need much convincing.
“Maybe if you told your dad the whole truth,” Corri told me one night, “That you need Yolanda to catch Morningstar… He’d be more inclined to help. He hates the guy.”
I shook my head. “I can’t tell them that. You know how bad it sounds… The girl is eleven, and I want to use her to find my real mom and my asshole of a father. If she can dream jump, that is.”
Corri blew out her little cheeks and dropped it. These days, not even she could make me change my mind when I’d already decided something.
I badgered them for a week. I went to help my mom at the diner, and not once did I let her forget there was a girl in an orphanage in Bulgaria who needed her help. The Lazarovs weren’t rich, but what they had was still more than what Yolanda had now. I caught my dad alone in the garage, and badgered him some more.
“You did a poor job with me,” I told him. “You almost got me killed, you hit me, terrorized me…” He tried to turn around. “No, listen to me. This is your chance to do better. This is your chance to make up for all of it.”
He faced me, thick brows furrowed. “Why is this so important to you? I know you, and you’re not the kind of person who cares about other people.”
“That’s so unfair.”
“You do what you want, never listen to advice, you get yourself in trouble, you hurt the ones who love you, and now… what? You want me to believe that you just want to give this kid a future? That there’s nothing in it for you?”
