running from for 18 years,” she said.”
“Welcome to the family,” Daniel said as he opened his arms and gave her a hug.
“Thanks, Daniel. You’re like the big brother I never had.”
ELEVEN
The calm that enveloped the house following the victory over Lowery was replaced by confusion and gossip, as the inhabitants of the House of Hartwell were trying to get more steady footing on the topic of the day.
“So, Maggie was married before she met Hartwell?” Agent Blake asked the group as he held a ball of yarn for Belinda in the knitting room.
“She was not only married to this guy, she was also carrying his baby before she lost it,” Sharon stated.
“Is that why he died?” young Kayla asked.
Emily interjected, “The timing of the whole thing is suspect. You would think that if this man came back after all of these years being dead that there were other forces at work here.”
“What are we talking about here?” Aaron said as he unraveled some more yarn for Sharon.
Everyone looked back at Blake, who was the presumed expert of everything Hartwell after his years heading up the FBI Aquatic and Other Mammals Division. This basically gave Agent Blake license to spy on Hartwell and friends and do the thing he most coveted: keep an eye on his daughter Nicole.
Blake was at a loss at first, “This information obviously predates my tracking of Hartwell, but if I had to make an educated guess I would say…” and everyone moved to the edge of their floor seat, “Witches.”
There was a brief moment of silence while everyone digested the possibility of witches invading their world. There wasn’t a person in the room over 100, which had the impact of narrowing the information pool dramatically.
“Witches?” Valerie yelled.
“Yeah, that’s all we need is to add witches to this mess!” Carla exclaimed.
Nicole added, “I would sooner believe werewolf’s before I would believe witches.”
Blake was an accurate historian, “But we don’t have werewolves in this story.”
Emily backed him, “He’s got a point there. We have enough to deal with without letting those dogs in.” She then looked over at Blake, “Still not buying your witch theory, but it was a good try though.”
While everyone in the room was shooting down Agent Blake’s theory that witches were behind Gabriel Billingsley’s reemergence, it was his powers of deduction and a basic process of elimination that led him to this educated guess. The room had moved on and knitting was the goal, although Blake was still very much on the trail of the truth, as usual.
With phase one of Billingsley’s plan in the books, the rousing success of his reveal was only a small part of the multi-tiered attack he planned for the House of Hartwell. And while he gathered his troops and prepared for phase two of the plan, Thomas and Maggie Hartwell were trying to work out their differences over at the Beach Haven Blood Bank.
“You could have told me the whole story about him,” he said as he punctured a bag of blood with a specially-made straw that Daniel devised.
Usually, Hartwell would make sure his wife was taken care of before sipping some of New York’s finest fresh platelet’s himself.
She punctured the bag, took the first euphoric sip and then irrationally replied, “It’s not like you opened up and told me you knew Gabriel?”
The blood must have gotten to Maggie’s head because she left the conversation wide open for him, “Because I didn’t know him when I met you! He was dead and then you were dead, so it would have been a complete waste of air for me to tell you the story about my friend Gabriel – who just happened to be your husband before me – while you spirit floated around after they burned your remains to the ground as a precautionary measure to limit the spread of the plague.
She looked at him in astonishment, “You’re always yelling at me now, and that was perhaps one of the longest sentence I’ve ever heard in this or any life!”
“So now you’re critiquing my sentences?” Hartwell asked. “Maybe I’m just a little on edge after my sire blew through town and threatened to kill us all and now your dead ex-husband is back and Satan only knows what his intentions are? Was that sentence of an appropriate length?”
She nodded in approval, “Yes, it was better.”
Hartwell continued to drink when he felt Maggie’s heart rate accelerate.
“Besides, why would he come back in the first place? How is it possible that he came back? Do you think he was reborn like Daniel and me?”
Hartwell tried to answer the questions in order, “To reclaim you and get revenge on me. I’m not sure on either of those last two questions, although I highly doubt that he was reborn like you.”
Hartwell had his own witch on staff and surmised that Gabriel Billingsley had one performing all of the mojo he needed to span his two worlds. He was initially convinced that Billingsley was a vampire when they ran together in his carefree years, but was becoming more interested by the minute to dig deeper and see what was really going on. In the keep your family close and your enemies’ closer world of supernatural beings, Billingsley wanted Hartwell’s pain to be extricating when he came back and made Margaret fall in love with him all over again.
“Do you think he came back for me?” Maggie asked with more than a hint of female pride and personal affirmation.
Hartwell knew this discussion would be heading directly down the drain, so he stood up and threw his empty blood bag in the trash before digesting the edible straw that was not made of man-made compounds and could cause a problem if discovered.
“I can’t believe that after all that we have been through, that you would even consider the possibility of opening your heart again to Billingsley.”
She finished the remainder of her blood, at the straw and then threw the bag in the garbage. Maggie was confused and acted as a wounded animal by striking back at Hartwell, “I was in love with him even before I met you – or should I say rescued you!”
Hartwell dropped his head in defeat and walked away without saying another word.
Maggie realized the error and harshness of her statement and tried to backtrack in vain, “That’s not what I meant! Thomas!”
Hartwell was gone as he zipped out of the hospital in what amounted to about one-quarter of his usual speed, which was still about five times as fast as the fastest human. He hovered over to the beach and sat on a bench throughout the afternoon and evening without so much as a blink of his eye. Maggie’s words and actions combined with Billingsley’s reemergence knocked him back to a place of severe internal hurt and vulnerability. While he wasn’t exactly at the point when he was standing in his San Francisco house with a loaded gun pointed at his head, the feelings of helplessness and despair were now fresh in his mind. A life without Maggie would still be a life not worth living, or so he thought.
“Has anyone seen my father?” Daniel asked later that night as almost everyone was gathered in the main room of the house.
Cal shot him a look and then playfully raised his hand. “No, the other one with the sharp teeth, big wings and mainstream fashion sense.”
“Haven’t seen him after this morning,” Cal replied.
The two people that could find him were his protector Garrison and hunter Thaddeus and they took a deep breath, then looked at each other and at Daniel and said, “Beach.”
So Daniel looked over at his wife Nicole and said, “I’ll be right back. If you don’t see me in 30 minutes, gather everyone and meet me at the beach.”
He kissed Nicole and then was out the door and on the boardwalk in less than three seconds, as he stopped first to put a few bikes and a skateboard back in the garage. Daniel arrived on the boardwalk about 100 yards from his father, who was the very definition of a dead man sitting. The thought of another man in Maggie’s life served to deconstruct the foundation of his perfect family life brick by brick.
Daniel de
cided to walk because he loved the feel of actually touching the ground unless he was in a hurry.
“Dad?” he said in a soft voice knowing that his father could hear him just about anywhere.
No response from Hartwell was forthcoming as he continued to start vacantly into the expanse of the ocean. Daniel picked up the pace and was now at the bench Hartwell was sitting at on the vacant boardwalk.
“Dad, are you all right?” Daniel said as he sat down and put his arm around Hartwell.
Daniel waited patiently for a response because he could see that his father was in the process of replying.
“She doesn’t love me anymore, Danny. She’s gone again,” Hartwell pouted as tears started rolling down his eyes and quickly changed into ice cubes once oxidized.
“Nobody is going anywhere, dad,” Daniel said as he zipped out and then zipped back with a 40-pound garbage can – the kind that can’t easily be transported off the beach – and held it gingerly with a few fingers with minimal effort. Of course, the fastidious nature of the vampire didn’t allow him to even touch the receptacle without first completing a thorough cleaning. Not that the cleanliness of anything would have mattered to Hartwell in his current pseudo-vegetative state.
Hartwell’s tears slowly melted into water in the moderate late spring air, so Daniel disposed of the waste basket and try to talk some sense into Hartwell.
She’s not gone, dad. And I’m still here to.”
“Danny, is