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I had enough on my mind.
I mean, I’d maimed my boyfriend.
I really had no idea how it had even happened. I guess, in my mind, I’d kind of told myself that maybe Josh had some sort of brittle bones or something that made him so fragile. I’m not sure how I managed to make myself even halfway believe that, given that Josh was on the football team at school and had taken major hits from guys almost twice his size without so much as a single broken bone, let alone four. But that was the story I’d gone with.
Aside from that whole situation, there was the whole, you know, sex thing to think about too. I wanted to be modern enough and mature enough to say it meant nothing, but it had meant something to me. And I wanted a chance to work through my feelings on the matter.
But it would have to wait.
Because I’d never seen my mother look quite as serious and, I don’t know, determined, as she looked as she came in my room, closing the door, then leaning back against it.
She said nothing for a long moment, just taking a deep breath, holding it, then exhaling it hard.
“Well, kiddo, I never thought this day was going to come. I mean, how could I? I thought the line was dead. I mean, I didn’t have it. And my father didn’t either. It just seemed like there was no chance for more of them in our family…”
“What are you talking about?” I’d asked, brows pinching.
My mother had always been a calm and rational woman. But she was sounding a little, I don’t know, crazy right about then.
“Honey, there is something you need to know about our family…”
And then she’d said it.
“You come from a line of demonslayers.”
“What are you on?” I’d hissed, shocking back from her words.
I mean… demons?
Slayers?
No.
I mean, we didn’t even go to church. We all had a vague belief in a higher power and an afterlife, but we never spent any real time thinking about or talking about, let alone practicing, a religion.
So the idea of demons was laughable.
“I know it sounds crazy. And I guess that is my fault for not telling you when you were younger. My father told me. I think he was hoping I would be the next in the line, that he was just a fluke or something. But when two generations passed and no one got Called, I figured there was no reason to fill your head with all of it. I just wanted you to have a normal life.”
“Mom, seriously, do you need to like… go to the hospital or something? You’re talking crazy.”
“I bet I sound it. But I’m not. And the fact of the matter is, there is a lot more to this world than you know. Demons and slayers and, God, all that crap from all those paranormal movies and TV shows. It’s all real. I mean, half of their crap is made-up bullshit, but the creatures exist. As do the people who stop them.”
“I think I need to call Dad up here,” I’d said, starting to rise up off the bed.
“You can. But he’s only going to confirm what I’m saying to you,” she’d told me.
That was, well, troubling.
Because my father was the least superstitious person on the planet. He snorted at people who tossed salt over their shoulder after spilling it, or refused to walk under ladders, or freaked out about a black cat crossing their path.
If he was going to confirm what my mother was saying, then, yeah, I guess there had to be some sort of truth to it.
“Listen, honey,” she’d started again, sitting down beside me on my little twin-sized bed with its frilly pink comforter because, as much as I wanted to rebel and be seen as cool and edgy to my social circle, I’d always loved pink and girly stuff. “You’re not stupid. You know there is no way a normal girl of your size could break four ribs on a guy twice your size. It’s not possible. I mean, maybe if you had a bat, or you kicked him. But the way I hear it, you placed your hands on his sides…”
“I, ah, yeah,” I’d admitted, my cheeks going pink at the mental image, praying to whatever higher power there was in the world that my mother wasn’t letting her mind have a picture anything like the one in my head.
“You’ve never really been strong.”
“No.” I mean, I had to have someone else open jars of pasta sauce for me.
“But all of a sudden, you can crush things with your bare hands without even meaning to.”
“Okay, yeah, it’s weird.”
“You’re the right age,” she’d told me. “And the powers tend to appear in moments of intense emotions. Good or bad. My father said his father had his Call come in during a schoolyard fight. He’d nearly killed the guy with one punch. But, well, desire and intimacy, those are strong feelings too. It makes sense.”
