Chapter 15

Bed had never looked so good. I crawled into the lacy chintz goodness and nestled into the 1000 thread count sheets. I was reaching over to turn off the bedside lamp when there was a knock at the door.

“Come in?” I asked, hesitantly. I’d learned long ago that anyone knocking at your door at 11:00 at night was there for a booty call or emergency call. Sometimes both. Never neither.

Mindy came in softly and padded over to my bed, sitting at the foot of it like when we were kids.

“How’d it go today?”

I knew this was not the reason why she had come into my room. You don’t spend nine months in utero with a person without being able to read their tells.

“Melted my skip, which is gonna be helluva lot of paperwork, and staked a couple vampires. Blah blah blah. You?”

She shivered, “I hate what you do.”

Mindy had it rough. During school, she had gone the super brains/ballerina/cheerleader route, I think, just to get some normalcy. I hadn’t been really surprised when she had gone into finance.

“Me, too. I wish I could have done anything else in the world besides this, but…”

She shrugged, “But Dad’s genes.”

“Yah,” I humorlessly laughed, “his damned genes.”

“Do you ever feel like he’s still with you?”

I nodded, “Yah.”

She got really quiet, “No, like, he is in the room with you. You can smell him. And you hear his footsteps like he’s right behind you.”

“You feeling okay?”

“No. I… It’s just sometimes… it’s like I catch him out of the corner of my eye, but he’s not here. He’s dead.” She stopped and repeated, “He’s dead, right?”

I sat up, “Are you saying you have Mom’s gift?”

She waved her hands, “I don’t know. I don’t know at all. I mean, I must, because normal people don’t see… Well, they don’t see dead people, right?”

I shrugged, “Some swear they do.”

She looked so small and scared as she said, “With your gifts… You’ve always been able to do stuff that I could never do, but I have always been so glad it wasn’t me. I was so glad I wouldn’t have to deal with the Other Side my whole life. I have a job, a husband. I can’t go living in the Other Side. I can’t bring Austin over there…”

I skootched over and gave her a great big hug and didn’t let go, “No one says that you do. Mom lived her whole life on Earth. Dad was the only reason…” I corrected myself, “His crazy brother was the only reason we had to live on the Other Side. And last I checked, Austin didn’t have a crazy brother hunting him down.”

Mindy looked at me square in the eye, “But we have a crazy uncle.”

I suddenly felt very, very cold.

“You think you’re responsible for all this,” I stated, suddenly seeing the great big elephant she had hauled into the room.

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? I start seeing dead people and you show up saying our long lost uncle has come out of the woodwork.”

“No, Mindy, it doesn’t. It isn’t you.”

“Why not?”

“Because our uncle is a deranged psychopath who is running some sort of grift on the magical community and is now involved in something that is breaking down the barriers of our two worlds. It isn’t you.”

“How can you be so sure that my gift waking up isn’t what started all this?”

I held her hand tightly, “I promise that you are not the start of all this. And I also promise that I will keep you and Austin safe. I didn’t spend my whole life kicking asses to let yours get into trouble. As soon as this settles down, I’ll take you over to Mom, or I’ll bring her over, and once she finishes driving you crazy with all the pride she is about to bust out all over you, you can figure out what you’re supposed to do.”

“Maybe I’m going crazy.”

“Maybe Dad has something important to tell you.”

“Um… he’s dead.”

“I tell you what, next time you see him, you ask him what he wants. See what he has to say.”

“I’m not going to start talking to empty rooms.”

I gathered her up in my arms like we were eight years old again and some dumb boy had made her cry on the playground, “No one will think that you’re stupid. You don’t know if it’s real or not until you try. So, try. For me?”

She nodded and then hugged me tightly, “Be safe, sis.”

“You, too. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight. Don’t let the boogeyman bite.”

“Mindy, there is no boogeyman,” I said as I snuggled in to bed, “I hauled Carl in years ago.”