warning wave

”Finals are in a week,” Theo reminded his microbiology class as they stood to file out. ”The lab will be open all weekend for you to finish up the practical component. I don’t wanna hear that any of you were in here at midnight though. Rest is important as putting in the work. Go on.” He nodded towards the door as the first murmurs sounded among them. They seemed to forget he’d been in their shoes once upon a time. Come Friday night they’d probably be cramming into the lab, desperately hoping that the experiments they were supposed to be running for weeks would somehow reach maturation fast enough to cover up the fact that they’d been slacking all semester. Five years ago he might’ve been there with them, nudging them along to get the grades they’d always been capable of, but times had definitely changed for him.

After his last class this afternoon he’d get straight into his car and would head home. Hazel might or might not do the same – there was always the lure of her dorm room and nights spent with friends rather than her parents now – but he had Freyja and his two littlest babies waiting for him. Walking in the door he’d been enveloped in love, Bo and the dogs storming towards him, his wife and Eloise following in their wake. The best welcome home he could imagine. He’d shove work aside for the weekend to let himself sink deep into it – come Sunday he knew Frank would be doing the same. Summer was hovering right on the other side of those exams and if he could get away with it, summer school classes would be few and far between this year.

Theo scooped his bag out from under his desk, throwing it over his shoulder to head out of his classroom. If they were lucky Hazel would be home for most of the summer. He didn’t expect her to spend much time at the house, now that she was old enough to head out into town with her friends. It didn’t matter that her parents might still wring their hands occasionally over what might be waiting out there for her, she needed to enjoy what was left of what he still thought of as her childhood. God, before he knew it his little girl would be looking for a job, maybe an apartment of her own. It was all going way too fast, she’d already had her heart broken once and for him that was one time too many. If he thought about it too much he’d reach the picnic tables in tears, turning into the sort of embarrassment Hazel had pictured when she’d decided to go to the college where both her dad and her uncle taught.

Luckily he got there first and by the time Hazel came rushing up, both the tears and the desire to wring Lex’s scrawny neck had passed (temporarily). Theo opened up the bag he’d dumped on the bench beside him, grinning at his daughter. ”The professor didn’t wanna let you go, or someone was in panic mode about finals?” he asked, knowing it could probably go either way at this time of year. Some professors weren’t as easy going as him, but he’d always tried to let Hazel find her own way with them instead of playing the dad card and trying to talk them around himself.

He unwrapped the turkey and swiss sandwiches he’d made that morning, while Bo had been fingerpainting with his porridge all over the table of his high chair, setting the waxed paper they sat on closer to the middle of the table. Hazel, thankfully, hadn’t inherited her mom’s ability to cause mayhem in the kitchen, although he still worried about her living on ramen while she was in the dorms. Added extras had started making their way into his bag when he knew she was meeting him for lunch – the bag of grapes he added to the table, the tub he set down that held two wedges of the chocolate cake that’d been a combined effort between him and Freyja last night. If it wasn’t for the dogs eating whatever dropped from the table, he might have found the remnants of the baby-friendly version of it they’d made for Bo all over the kitchen too.

”Of course it’s OK,” Theo said on a chuckle. ”You never have to ask about coming home. You want us to keep some dinner…” Harmony. Even after all this time, the name could turn his throat dry in an instant, fear flooding through his brain. The siren and the man who thought he’d been doing something right by killing who he’d thought had torn a boy apart just a few hundred metres away from here. His nightmares and they were never gonna leave him alone. ”I didn’t think you guys were hanging out anymore,” Theo said hoarsely, forcing himself to pick up one of the sandwiches. ”I hadn’t heard you mention her since the last time she was at the house.” When he’d begged her to leave and instead of doing what he’d asked, she’d threatened Bo. He’d have pressed harder for Hazel not to hang out with her, but the friendship had seemed to die anyway and he’d been relieved. ”Is she studying here?” Please God, don’t let her have ended up at Whitmore too.

Tagged: HAZEL DAMASCA * Word Count: 901

The first couple of days without Hazel at home had been hard. He’d expect to hear music floating down from her room, or the thud of footsteps heading down the stairs in the morning. When he woke up at night to go to Bo or Eloise, he’d strained to feel some sort of motion from her bedroom on the floor above theirs. It wasn’t the first time Hazel had spent the night away from them, but it was the first time it was long term and Theo had felt the loss of his daughter like someone had taken a melon baller to his heart.

Days had become weeks, those brief trips home at weekends or on random nights speeding by so fast. Theo knew he’d better get used to it. They were gonna go through this at least a half dozen times more before they were empty nesters. The thought alone (like a thousand other things) could bring tears to his eyes and an ache to his chest. They still got to have this at least, their lunches together, his opportunities to see for himself that she was doing alright, that she was eating something with at least some nutritional value. Maybe next week he could arrange a day where Freyja could bring the babies to campus with her. Make it a real family thing if Frank was around too.

”Have they just come out of a coma?” Theo asked, snorting at Hazel’s explanation before he shook his head. Teaching always needed patience, but you could’ve had a bottomless well of it and still found yourself struggling to find some when you realized you’d basically spent the whole semester screaming into the void. ”If they’re panicking like that at this point the only thing that’s gonna happen is they’re gonna spend their summer right here.” Which meant that the professor who’d just resisted tearing their hair out was gonna spend their summer right here too, the same way he had last year.

This summer was gonna be all about his kids if he had any choice in the matter. He had the chance to see Eloise reach all those tiny little milestones that he’d missed out on with Bo and Hazel – videos and photos were the best substitute, but not the same as the real thing. After everything they’d learned had happened with Lex, he could be there for Hazel too. Heartbreak at that age felt like your world was ending (in comparison to that really happening it was a papercut, but he wasn’t gonna tell his daughter that). When it happened, you wanted the comfort of your family, people who would dry your tears and promise everything would get better with time. Hazel would have that – and a half dozen people fully prepared to kick down Lex’s door to teach him how to treat the most incredible woman he was ever gonna meet.

Theo watched Hazel as he set the food out, making sure the added extras were in view. Her gasp over the cake had him grinning, chocolate cake had a way of making a lot of things better. ”Yep, with your mom’s help.” The second he said it, his hand was rising to stop Hazel recoiling. ”I did the actual cooking part. It’s good, really good, so don’t go stealing both pieces.” There’d be another made for the family dinner that Sunday, an extra set aside with a bag of groceries for Hazel to take back to school. The nights she ate at home with them were always a relief. They got to see her, make sure their kid was doing alright and they knew that Hazel’d had at least one solid meal that week. They got to see for themselves that she was safe from the nightmares that seemed like they were never going to leave them alone.

Harmony’s name alone had a cold sweat breaking out. The flashes of what she’d done to the boy in that alleyway came less frequently these days, but all it took was a reminder – like the guidance counsellor or the sudden knowledge that his daughter was besties with a murderer – to bring them rushing back. He couldn’t look at the sandwich, couldn’t think of the way Harmony had … Nope. Theo swallowed hard, the mouthful going down like cement. ”That’s … good of her,” Theo managed woodenly. Nice wasn’t a word he ever would’ve associated with her. Cruel, evil, manipulative. Not super nice. This was a girl who hadn’t blinked at the news that he’d died because she was a monster. ”What does she do then? Has she got a job in town? Does she come here to hang out?” Access to campus was limited, but that hadn’t stopped Harmony the last time. Or the hunter. Things like them crept through the cracks, slipped into your lives like shadows before they tore everything apart.

Tagged: HAZEL DAMASCA * Word Count: 815

After all that had happened, it wouldn’t have been surprising if he and Freyja had ended up helicopter parents. He’d died, killed for being dragged unwillingly to the scene of a boy’s death. His girlfriend and unborn daughter had almost been killed, all because of her. Just when the echoes of it should have finally been fading and it felt like his family had been happy and safe it had all come back. For weeks after they’d walked into the office at the high school and had seen his murderer sitting there, he’d wake up gasping at night. Sweat pasting his t-shirt to him, tears burning in his eyes, ears straining like he would be able to hear Hazel up in her bedroom. It had taken everything in him not to lock every damn door and forbid Hazel from ever leaving the house again.

Dropping her off at Whitmore than first time had left his chest tight, but Theo knew they’d made the best decision in letting Hazel stay in the dorms. She needed the freedom he’d had here to know that her life wasn’t always going to be marred by what she was. He knew he needed to remind himself of the same thing. In a few weeks Hazel would be back home and those worries about what she was getting up to on campus after he went home at night. The dogs would be watching over again and a newborn was just as good an alarm. If the breeze blew the wrong way Eloise would be awake and shrieking, waking up even her deaf dad.

”Money,” Theo stage whispered before he chuckled at Hazel. ”Old family money will get you absolutely everywhere around here.” It also meant that the bad grades they hadn’t been able to bribe their way out of wouldn’t mean a damn thing when they used their parents’ connections to snatch up a job they were nowhere near qualified for after graduation. Theo glanced down at the food he unpacked, letting out a long breath. If they kept up the rate they were now having kids at, they were probably gonna chew through the staff discount on tuition. Maybe he could convince Frank to claim some of the kids as his, on paper at least.

Theo smirked as he dropped his hand back to the table. No matter how many years Freyja had been trying to help with the cooking for, things had never gotten any better. Honestly, he liked it that way. His wife was incredible in so many other ways, not being able to boil an egg made her human, and gave him another way to care for her and the kids. ”With some super close supervision she could maybe pull it off.” With some charred edges, but parents learned early on that you just cut those bits off and the kids never knew any different. Theo’s hands went back up, that secret little smile shared between them. ”Promise,” he swore. He’d probably get charred around the edges too if he admitted they’d been talking about Freyja’s kitchen faux pas.

They should’ve stuck to that discussion. Theo felt his chest go tight again as Harmony’s name came into things. She was the monster under the bed, the thing in the darkness. The reason he’d died and like she was called to the siren’s song, Hazel just kept going back to her, like she couldn’t see the evil lurking beneath the surface. ”I didn’t know,” Theo managed through clenched teeth. ”I would have thought you were leaning on Abi about all of this.” A friend who had already been there for Hazel through thick and thin. Not somebody capable of … nope, he couldn’t even think about what he’d found her doing or he’d throw up all over the table.

The fact that Hazel didn’t even know how this girl spent her days would’ve pinged his dad-dar anyway, but the thing was already lit up brighter than the sun. Theo had to fight not to go statue still in his seat, but his gaze still darted around the two of them like Harmony would appear out of nowhere. Sweat started to build at his temples, cold beads of it breaking out along his spine. ”I think it would be best if she stopped doing that for a while. It’s the end of the year, you’ve got papers and tests to prepare for,” he managed, trying to keep his tone firm. ”You have to take school seriously, Hazelnut and it doesn’t sound like Harmony’s helping with that. I don’t want you spending time with her. If you need someone to have lunch with, your old man’s right here, or even your uncle Frank. I’m sure he’d like to see more of you.” If Hazel brought it up with Harmony, then evil-Ariel would probably come back to threaten him, but he didn’t care, Hazel already had enough danger in her life.

Tagged: HAZEL DAMASCA * Word Count: 825

Every parent (every good one) wanted to keep their child safe. You held that tiny, warm bundle in your arms for the first time and knew in an instant that you would do everything in your power to keep them safe. Their first cold, their first tumble off of their bike, their first heartbreak, it ignited that protective instinct inside of you. Most didn’t have to literally put their lives on the line the way he had for Freyja and Hazel before she’d even been born, but they would. Any failure to do it cut deep, even if it had just been failing to snatch Hazel up before she’d taken her first really hard fall and had burst into tears. Theo felt that would opening a little now, lending that taste of copper to his mouth. If he’d been able to really standing up against Harmony when he’d found her in their home the first time, he wouldn’t have been sitting here shaking inside, desperately trying to think how to save his daughter now.

When was this gonna end? When would his family be safe? Harmony, that son of a bitch sitting there in the counsellor’s office, trying to act as though he could make up for killing him. There was always something bubbling in the background, ready to well up and swallow his family. Maybe they could’ve run from it, moved closer to Freyja’s parents (they’d probably have been throwing up a house somewhere on the farm for them in an instant), or across the world to be closer to his, but there would always be something. Death called to him, to Hazel, and while it did that neither one of them would ever be entirely free of this world. All he could do was stand between his daughter and that darkness whenever it came creeping closer.

Abi was tied to that first time Hazel had heard the voices bubbling in the back of her head. The tragedy they’d suffered through hadn’t seemed to dim their friendship, but maybe college had finally started the two of them drifting apart a little. There were so many new people, so many opportunities for people to take advantage of them, whether that be by some pushy frat boy or a woman who ate people. ”I’m sure Abi does too. Sometimes you just need those people who really know you around you.” Someone who wouldn’t suggest punishing a boy who’d broken your heart by tearing his arm off and gnawing on it. He’d always had Frank to lean on, even when that’d had to happen over a phone line. No matter where he was in the world, Frank had always been there.

If it wouldn’t have put them both in danger, he’d have asked Frank and Kit to go with him to talk to Harmony, to try and force her out of his little girl’s life. The last time they’d spoken it had just been him and the kids in the house, his feet rooted to the spot as he’d tried to threaten Harmony. He probably couldn’t have moved now if he wanted to either. There was something about her that terrified him even at a distance. Theo swallowed hard, trying to force away the lump that was going to choke him if he wasn’t careful. Hazel was already frowning, his reaction concerning her. Lifting a hand, he rubbed his knuckle over his upper lip like he could stop the sweat forming. ”Time with her is time you’re not spending studying,” he muttered, like he and Freyja had ever been the sort of parents that’d handcuffed Hazel to her homework.

We don’t kill and eat people. The argument stuck in his throat hard, words that he’d never he able to say aloud here. Telling Hazel that Mr Callaway had murdered him in cold blood had been bad enough. He didn’t want his daughter living in a world where she had to be terrified by the things that had happened to her parents. ”For starters we’re both here on campus, you can talk to us about school. We’re family.” And the pair of them would protect her from the things that were lurking out there.

Hazel was just like her mom, fixing on the small signs running through him. Theo stared back at her, knowing that tearing his gaze away would just make this worse. ”Yes,” he finally whispered hoarsely. ”She’s a bad influence. She was rude when she came over to the house. I don’t want you being around someone like that Haze. Please, just listen to me on this. Not everybody who wants to be around you is worth your friendship. Just tell her your parents want you to focus on school.” That would put the blame on him. Harmony could come and see him about it, he wouldn’t crawl away from her threats this time around.

Tagged: HAZEL DAMASCA * Word Count: 815