Page 25 of The Wolfing Hour

“Your elemental magic is colliding with your demon magic, creating an unpredictable situation. You could easily have destroyed her if you had been angry enough. Of course, your rage might have incinerated the entire structure and everyone within its walls, but that’s where the unpredictability comes into play.” He sighed, again frosting the nervous sweat beading on my temples. “Though a wretched, miserable beast, Mary isintelligent enough to be wary. There is a reason she is so long-lived.”

So many questions. So godsdamned many. I selected one from my frothing cauldron of rapidly building rage.

“Demonmagic? I’ve heard of power derived from the demonic, but I’ve never heard it put that way. Are you sure about the magic part?”

Sexton appeared taken aback. “Why wouldn’t I be certain? Generations of my children have gone mad or perished due to this very thing. I am the foremost authority on the subject,” he said frostily.

Literally. My nose, earlobes, and lips had gone numb.

“S-Sexton,” I chattered. “T-Turn down the ice.”

He did as I asked but frowned down at me the entire time. “Why are you so fragile?”

“Forgive me for not being acclimated to the damned Arctic circle,” I snapped. “I’m a human being, for goddess’s sake.”

“No, you are not. You are an elemental witch and the granddaughter of a demon. Neither are human.”

Why did he have to say things like that?

“I’d like to run it back to the ‘gone mad or perished’ thing,if you don’t mind.” I gritted my teeth, forcing them to stop chattering. “Are you telling me I might lose my mind?”

“Or perish.”

The bland, throwaway way he said it made me want to scream. “You don’t seem very concerned about my impending death,Grandpa.”

“Because I do not believe you will perish or go mad. I believe you will find a way to manage them.”

Should I have been flattered that he thought so much of me, or worried that he seemed so damnably offhand about the whole thing?

Something he’d said to me recently came to mind:

”Don’t be too stubborn, Betty Lennox. I am afraid you might not have the time.”

A warning. Sexton had wanted me to get it together because he’d known, like my mother, what was coming. Of course, he hadn’t just gone ahead and told me about it like a normal, healthy person would. No one in my family did things like that. “Functioning dysfunctional” was practically our family motto.

Speaking of family…

“I’m ready for you to tell me about my father now,” I lied. My blood pressure was probably in the stratosphere. I felt anything but ready. “Start with his name.”

“Christoph Chevalier. He was born of a German mother and a French father.”

“And where do you come into the picture?”

“A Frenchstepfather,” he corrected.

“You weren’t around to help raise him?”

“I was. Watching. Waiting. His mother, Rose, was dear to my soul, as was Charles Chevalier, the man who raised my Christoph. He felt differently about me. It was to be expected, once he understood the risk I’d taken by fathering a human child—children—with Rose.”

“Children. Lucian’s father was also Rose’s child?”

The name stuck in my throat. Lucian Chevalier, aka Cousin Stalker McMurderface, had nearly killed me to retaliate against my mother and Sexton for reasons I still wasn’t clear on. Between my experiences that night and once having my head thrust through a portal into Hell, it was no surprise I sometimes woke up screaming.

“Yes.” He peered down at the grass around his shoes, long arms crossed atop his bony knees. I wasn’t sure Sexton had ever been a kid—I had the impression that demons came into existence fully formed, like gods—but if he had, this was what he’d looked like. “Luther.”

“You stayed with her long enough to havetwokids?”

“They were twins,” he said. “Luther was the eldest by fourteen minutes and three seconds.”