Page 2 of Monster's Obsession
Now that Dad had upped the ante, now that he’d basically announced that he wasn’t toying with me anymore, the very last thing I could do was relax.
Unless I could figure out a place to hide where he’d never, ever find me.
As I headed north on MD2, I passed a sign for the BWI or, as the tourists called it, the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
My mom’s voice rang in my head as if she were sitting next to me, giving me advice.
I sharply glanced over at the passenger seat. Nope. No dead mermaid there.
Whew.
Still…
I should have told you about this a long time ago, Daruka. Considering a demon knocked me up and then left me to raise his offspring, I’d say I’m not very good at doing what I’m supposed to…
Shit. I hated the memories of Mom. Because that’s all they were. She was gone, and now I’d never get to make fresh, new memories with her. And that hurts like hell.
If he becomes too unbearable, if you don’t want to do what we both know he’s going to want you to do one of these days, there’s a place you can go where he can’t get to you.
I mashed the heel of my hand into my eye in an attempt to stem the flow of tears and took the exit for I-195. Another handful of turns and I was pulling the stolen vehicle into a space in a giant parking lot. I dropped the keys into the center console, climbed out of the car, and whispered an incantation that wiped away any and all prints I may have put on the steering wheel, the radio knob, whatever. It was all gone. Even if there had been cameras on that lot—because holy shit, there were cameras everywhere these days—my hoodie hid my telltale blue hair and was bulky enough (andIwas bulky enough, let’s be real) that whoever viewed that footage might not even realize I was a girl.
Plus, if the gun-toting demons ended up on camera, they’d be way more interesting to the human authorities; not that they’d ever be found, since they very likely did not even live in this world.
A bright yellow shuttle van pulled up behind my stolen vehicle. “No luggage?” the driver asked as he opened the accordion door to let me climb aboard.
“Nope,” I replied. “Quick trip.” If I was about to do what I suspected, it definitely wasn’t a quick trip, but humans didn’t ask so many questions when you told them what they wanted to hear. And I wasn’t in the mood to talk right now.
Shuffling to the back of the shuttle bus, I dropped into a seat underneath the heat vent. Lucky me, being half demon meant the hotter the better.
As I was a mermaid, too, it should come as no surprise that hot tubs were my happy place.
“Which airline?” the shuttle driver called out.
I glanced up, caught his eye in the giant mirror above his head.
“Delta.”
I had no idea which airline I was about to take. All I knew was I was about to book a flight across the Atlantic. I was going to take Mom’s advice.
I was about to enroll in Blackthorn Academy for Supernaturals.
CHAPTER2
Longest.Trip. Ever.
It started with the flight from Maryland to London. Mermaids aren’t fans of dry heat. We need water to survive. (If Dad wanted to invoke the most miserable, painful torture ever, dropping me in the middle of a desert would definitely do the trick.)
News flash: the interior of an airplane isdry. At one point, the attendant got sick of my constant requests and dumped a pile of those 33-ounce water bottles into my lap. I’d been tempted to pour one over my head, except that would have forced me into my mermaid form. Humans weren’t supposed to know we existed.
Plus, the transformation would have ruined my clothes, and then what would I have done?
Instead, I drank them. Every single one. The lady next to me was impressed by my bladder capacity.
Finally, we landed at Heathrow. I used my handy demon magic to get myself through customs at breakneck speed—not that I had anything to declare, but neither did I actually have any ID on me, either—and soon enough, I was on a bus, heading toward Liverpool.
Blackthorn Academy, according to my mother on her deathbed, was located on an island in the middle of the Irish Sea. “So I can just swim there?” I’d asked.
She’d laughed, and then a coughing fit took over before she was finally able to answer my question. “It’s a magical place, protected by wards so no one can find it. This is why it’s the safest place you can be. And all first-year students have to ride the ferry. It’s a rite of passage. Oh, and it’s a two-mile walk from the dock to the school—be forewarned.”