Arean the Demon (special preview)

I was very young when my mother passed away. I remember standing at her bedside and watching her small, pale hand fall onto the bed, never to rise again. My father never fully recuperated from the loss. While he was a good parent, it was as if he was a ghost of his former self. Everything he did felt like the memory of a memory, a movement made out of habit turned into the repetition of the ballerina in a music box.

It surprised me when my father remarried, as it was off his routine. When he met her, I was never sure. How this proposal came to be, I had vague ideas in my head. The woman he brought home was attractive and educated. Lady Lila Barbarossa was her name, but I’d never heard of her before amongst the other families we usually dealt with. She brought with her books and beautiful clothing along with a maid and two daughters, Violet and Lucy, both slightly younger than me.

Right away there were changes to the home. Lila began remodeling, decorating, and easily taking money from my father’s purse. The house began to appear garish and opulent, it was almost hard to look at sometimes.

Violet and Lucy were also digging into my father’s pocket. They approached him like dolls, sweet and innocent, being a bit too coquettish for their age. But that all faded away once they got their money. The new women in the house spent lavishly, as if the reservoir of money my father had was endless.

“You, boy,” Lila called to me one day.

I walked into the room where she was standing. Her eyes were focused on the painting of my mother above the fireplace.

“Yes, Lila?” I asked, irritated I might be hindered more than I wanted to.

Lila put on a smile, one I had seen one my cat when it had captured a bird from the garden. “Please, sweetheart, call me mother. A boy does need a mother.”

Even if I was too young to remember much about my mother, I had one, and Lila wasn’t going to be it. I nodded gently, neither answering her no indulging her.

She turned her face back towards the painting. “I think your father would much prefer a new painting there. One of me and my girls.”

I glanced to my mother and frowned. “I think he’d prefer she stay where she is.”

There was a crack in her smile. Lila approached me, extending her hand trying to touch one of mine. “I know it must be hard being without her. I still miss my mother dearly,” Lila crooned. She was still trying to take my hand, and when she couldn’t, she placed her hand upon my face. My whole body stiffened, she knew I didn’t like to be touched.

“But you have a new family now. It will be good for you to have this new feminine presence in your home.” Lila’s pal smoothed down my cheek and then her fingers slipped under my chin, tilting my head up.

“You’re a very handsome young man, Cove. I bet you have all sorts of admirers.”

I shook my ead and stepped away from her grasp. “I’m sure my father would like a painting of you and your daughters. But there are many, many rooms in this house you could put it.”

Lila’s smile was forced. “If you say so.”

A few days later, I heard a great commotion coming from that room. As I rushed towards it, I saw the cat come running out like a bat out of hell. Lila’s maid came after it, looking at me then back into the room.

“What happened?” I pushed past her and inside where I saw my mother’s painting on the ground, frame smashed, and part of the canvas ripped.

Lila’s maid came up behind me. “The cat lost its mind, sir.”

I picked the painting up as delicately as I could. My mother’s face had been slashed, and it was not the work of a cat.

“Oh, how horrible.”

I looked back at Lila standing there, her face completely blank despite the sound of concern in her voice.

After that, my cat vanished.

I started hiding money. The way Lila and her daughters spent, I was worried we would be broke in a few short years. Since I worked for my father, and did most of the work, I hid what I took in the books. I had a special hiding place in my room, something my mother had shown me long ago. It was one of the few memories I had of her. There was a part of trim that would come undone, and behind it was a hole just big enough to hold a small box and a few other things. It was behind my bed, so I would crawl under my bed to get to it. I felt secure with where it was.