“Practically planning ahead for adultery and divorce.”
“When you put it that way.” Freaking psychos. “In my own defense, Mrs. Foster kept her maiden name as well.” I snorted until the inevitable slap put a stop to that nonsense. “Fine. Oh, my God. What?”
“Shawn’s fate was sealed the moment he sought your counsel,” he said.
Mrs. Foster walked back to us as I tried to get a better look at Shawn. Was he still alive? I couldn’t tell. I closed my eyes again and tried to summon Reyes. Angel. Osh. Anyone. The drugs were blocking me. It had happened before.
“He must be returned to the earth,” she said. “He must learn from his mistakes and be allowed to grow again.”
“You’re going to replant him?”
“And you as well.”
“Can I come back as an azalea?”
“But out of the darkness, brothers and sisters,” Mr. Foster said, his voice booming now, “comes the light.”
They shouted and clapped. A couple even fell to their knees with hands raised.
Don’t get me wrong. I was all for religion. Whatever helped you get up in the morning. And a higher power, like the one Christians referred to as the God Jehovah, was definitely real. It was religion being turned into an excuse to torture and maim and kill that I had a problem with.
Mrs. Foster raised her hands as well. “And the answer we’ve prayed for night and day has finally arrived.” She smiled down at me. “When Shawn went to you, a weak, corrupted slut—”
“Slut?”
“—we knew what we had to do.”
“I think slut is a tad strong.”
“See, you aren’t just any corrupted. You are his corrupted. His concubine. The Dark One’s. The demon from hell.”
“Promiscuous, maybe.”
She kneeled again. “We were never after you.”
“Wanton.”
“We were after the abomination,” Mr. Foster said, quite proud of himself. “We’ve been tracking him since he got out of prison. We just had no way of getting to him until now.”
When their meaning finally sank in, I focused on the crazy kids in front of me. If they thought to lure Reyes here the same way they lured me, they’d have another thing coming. Oh, they’d get him here, but he would not be in such a cooperative mood.
Whereas, I was all about cooperation. I also shared well in school.
“It’s true,” Mrs. Foster said. “If you hadn’t come to our offices, we probably never would have known about the connection between you and The Dark One.”
I fell forward in my attempt to see Shawn again. The ground kept toppling over. Thank God my hands weren’t tied. I’d be eating dirt about now.
“We figured you were onto us,” Mr. Foster continued. “That was why you showed up. But apparently we were wrong. Shawn, in his weakened state, sought you out.”
“That’s not why I went to your offices.”
“Oh?”
“Not at all. I was thinking about becoming the leader of a fanatical cult and wanted some pointers.”
Another crack echoed off the walls and, as my head whipped around, I noted the expressions of excitement on all those present. If anyone were there against his or her will, as was known to happen in cultish situations, I certainly wasn’t picking up on it.
Mrs. Foster grabbed a handful of hair. Unfortunately, it was mine. “How do we send him back?”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you abducted Reyes when he was a baby and gave him to a monster.” People never think ahead.
Mrs. Foster bent so we’d be face-to-face, her smile so congenial, it creeped me out. “Of course we gave him to a monster. He’s evil. He deserved to be raised by a man just as evil.”
It was at that moment precisely that I knew I was staring into the cold eyes of true evil. Evil hiding under the guise of righteousness. It wasn’t the first time and certainly wouldn’t be the last, but it still astonished me. How someone could do that to an infant.
Then I thought about the baby girl they murdered and pinned on the mother, albeit twenty-five years later, and could hardly believe what I was about to say. But my curiosity got the better of me. “But why give him to Earl Walker? Why didn’t you just do what you did to Baby Liana? Why didn’t you just kill him?”
Mrs. Foster was surprised I’d pieced it together. No idea why. Veronica Isom, Baby Liana’s mother, was telling anyone who would listen about the adoption agency, about what they did, but as a former prostitute and drug addict, her credibility was shot. No one believed her. Clearly, the Fosters knew that.
The smile she placed on me that time was full of sadness, as though she felt sorry for me. For my ignorance. “Oh, sweetheart, we did try to kill him. Several times. He just wouldn’t die.”