Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(4)

“Fine, is there a hotel that you’d recommend for us?”

“We’ve got some hotel rooms reserved for out-of-town guests; when you know your exact dates let me know and I’m sure we can arrange rooms since it’s this far ahead of the wedding. I’ll text you with the information.”

“Text Judith or Josh, I’m not a big one for texting.”

“Will do. Wait, is Josh coming, too? I need to know how many rooms we’ll need.”

“Four rooms, but I’ll pay for our rooms. I don’t want to take hospitality from . . . your fiancé.”

“Wait, four rooms? You and Judith get one, Josh is two, is Andria coming?”

“Yes.”

“You aren’t going to make her and Kevin sleep in separate rooms at the hotel while they’re here, are you? They’ve been living together for years, Dad.”

“No, I’m not going to make Andria and her fiancé sleep separately on the trip.”

“So, Andria and Kevin are the third room; who needs a fourth room, Dad?”

“We’ll see you next week.”

“If you hang up on me without telling me who the fourth room is for, then don’t bother coming.”

“You don’t mean that, Anita.”

“The fuck I don’t.”

“We did not raise you to use language like that.”

“Fuck it, Dad, I am not playing these passive-aggressive games with you anymore. You tell me who the fourth room is for right now.”

“I don’t take well to demands, Anita, especially from my children.”

“I’m thirty-two, Dad, I’m not a child, and as one adult to another and your hostess, I deserve to know who is coming to visit me.”

“Your grandmother wants to help convince you . . .”

“No, fuck no, hell no!”

“Anita, please don’t keep using language like that.”

“Language? Dad, that woman verbally and emotionally abused me as a child.”

“?‘Abuse’ is a strong word, Anita.”

“Motherfucking son of a bitch!” I realized I was yelling when Edward asked what was wrong through the door. I heard Milligan and Craven, tonight’s bodyguards, keeping people out of the changing rooms. Milligan poked his head in; I waved him away and Peter tried to explain to Edward.

“Anita Katerine Blake, we raised you to be a lady.”

“You raised me to be a lot of things, Dad.”

“Your grandmother is worried about your immortal soul, and so am I.”

“Dad, if you bring Grandma Blake then you aren’t coming with an open mind about me marrying Jean-Claude, because she will close your mind to anything but her hatred and prejudice against anything supernatural.”

“Momma is a good old-school Catholic, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“She burned me when I was fourteen, so I’d know what hell felt like, Dad. She thought it would encourage me to stop using my powers to raise the dead.”

“What? You told me that was an accident.”

“No, Dad, she told you it was an accident.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You hadn’t believed me about anything else, why bother?”

“That was a second-degree burn, Anita.”

“I know, Dad, trust me, I remember.”

“You should have told me.”

“Told you that your beloved saint of a mother pinned my arm and forced a candle flame against my skin?”

“She said you were playing with the candle, and it fell.”

“You don’t get second-degree burns from a falling candle if you can move out of the way, Dad.”

He was quiet on the other end of the phone. I just let the silence build because I didn’t know what else to say. It had taken me months of therapy to own the memory, and not try to find some explanation for what happened that would exonerate my father for not protecting me. Nothing would ever exonerate my grandmother. She could rot in the hell she was so fond of for all I cared.

I heard him talking to someone on his end. “She says you hit her.”

“She was burning my arm with an open flame.”

“She had a bruise on her face, said she fell when you burned yourself. Did you hit your grandmother?”

“You taught me to fight, Dad, what else was it for except to protect myself?”

“You punched your grandmother in the face?”

I yelled, “She was burning my arm, telling me that I’d burn like that all over my body forever if I didn’t give up my evil ways. I protected myself, used what you taught me and saved myself from a third-degree burn or worse.”

“I can’t believe this happened the way you’re telling it, Anita.”

“You always believed her.” I wasn’t yelling now, I wasn’t even angry, I was tired, so tired.

“You both had marks on you, I might have believed you.”

“Might, might?” The anger was back, the anger I’d always believed had been from my mother’s death, but therapy had helped me pull memories from childhood that explained my rage. It wasn’t like I’d forgotten what happened, more like my family repeated their version so often that I just accepted it. My family loved me, even my grandmother loved me, they wouldn’t hurt me like that on purpose, right? Right? Wrong, so fucking wrong.