Devil's Promise
Prologue
Erica Watson is dead.
Callie gets the phone call a late afternoon in July as she's fixing the broken-down pick up truck that belongs to the Hales, the family friends she's staying with while her mom is overseas. It's hot and dusty, just like it always is in Spade, Texas (although it's not hot in winter just bitingly cold and dusty), and Callie is sweating in her tank top and shorts and covered in grease and already irritated so she snaps a "Can I help you?" when Mrs. Hale hands her the land line, watery eyes even more watery than they usually are for some reason.
"Miss Calliope Watson?"
Callie doesn't bother to tell the apathetic voice what her preferred name is and instead says, "Speaking", and taps her favorite wrench against her thigh impatiently.
"We regret to inform you," the voice continues, "that your mother, Private Erica Watson, was killed in the line of duty yesterday during a transport mission with a convoy of her fellow soldiers-"
Callie drops the phone.
The voice doesn't realize that she's dropped the phone and keeps talking about how Private Erica Watson was a hero who died protecting her country and how there will be a memorial service in a week to honor her and the others who died during the attack. What the voice can't see is the way Callie's chest heaves up and down painfully and she curves in on herself like someone has stabbed her in the stomach. What the voice doesn't hear is her anguished scream and the gut-wrenching (but dry) sobs that take the place of the tears that refuse to fall. What the voice doesn't realize is that Callie is filled with hate and despair and shock and guilt- and Mrs. Hale reaches out to her, crying the tears that Callie can't seem muster up, and Callie pushes her away, chucks her wrench at the door of the broken pick-up truck (it leaves a dent. She isn't the one who fixes it later), and runs.
When Callie comes back, she and the Hales mourn together. The next morning they get a phone call informing them that Callie is now an orphan and will be moved to a foster home almost two hours away from Spade. A week later, Callie's bags are packed and she is driven to a crowded house run by a nice-enough couple who are already distracted by the seemingly hundreds of children they have taken in for the time being and don't have time to pay any mind to the silent seventeen-year-old prodigy who is shrinking in and in and in on herself.