Page 16

Chapter Sixteen

As predicted, hauling myself out of bed a few hours after getting home was no fun at all. But I had one last client report to complete and today was the deadline.

I padded down the hallway and eased Gwen’s door open. The room was dark, and she was a lump under the covers, dead to the world. Good. She needed the rest. I needed caffeine. All the caffeine.

After coffee, breakfast and a shower, I felt human enough to tackle the report and managed to finish it in an hour. I moved straight on to the Archives metadata I was working on for Damon, rather than giving in to the urge to take a nap.

I finished the first batch of entries, processed the changes, and got ready for batch two. We’d been refining the taxonomy as we increased the number of volumes scanned and updating entries was complicated. Ralph had shared some information about how the UK Cestis cataloged their collection and it was even more complicated than Cassandra’s method, so Cassandra wanted some additional data added.

It wasn’t the most exciting task in the world, but if I logged in to do any testing prep for Damon, I’d have to talk to the rest of the team and, knowing Righteous, word would have spread about the accident last night. I didn’t want to answer a thousand questions.

I tagged entries for forty minutes before my caffeine-fueled determination to be productive flagged. When my inbox notification chimed, I gave in to the lure of distraction. The first one was from the National Genetics Registry.

What the heck? Was Meredith sending me Gwen’s results?

Sure, my DNA was in the database. When my grandparents had taken me home after Sara died, they’d asked me if I wanted to try to find my father. At the time, thirteen-year-old Maggie had wanted nothing more. I tried one more time when I was eighteen. Still nothing. After that I’d locked my profile down and forgotten about it. I’d never had any requests for medical information.

Frowning, I opened the email.

“Dear Margaret Diana Lachlan,” it read. “This is a mandatory notification that your medical history has been utilized.” Followed by a lot of boring legalese about the relevant laws and a plain English explanation of what had been released, which boiled down to gender, genetic traits for any diseases, and any other known conditions where the genetics hadn’t fully been nailed down yet but were suspected to have hereditary factors. As far as I knew, I didn’t have anything to report.

“Should you wish to know more about this match, please access your file via the Annex site. Authentication by palm or retina scan is required to access the match.” Annex site? Oh, right. The database for witches. I should ask Cassandra about that. As far as I knew, my grandparents had used the regular site. After all, they thought I had no magic. Had the Cestis moved my record?

I sat back in the chair, stomach churning. Who the hell had I matched with? I knew all my immediate relatives on my mother’s side. There weren’t many of them. My grandparents had both come from small families—one sibling each—and neither my great-aunt nor great-uncle had had children. They’d died before my grandparents. And, of course, my mother was an only child.

Obviously there were more distant cousins I’d never heard about. Maybe one of them doing a search?

I read the email again and something moved uneasily in my stomach, my intuition pinging. Weird timing. Gwen does a search and I get a match? Surely it was a coincidence? It had to be.

I couldn’t have matched with Gwen. She was English. I had some Irish and Scottish blood, but my family had been in the US for more than a century.

Vaguely queasy, I opened a connection to the Annex database, logged in, provided the palm scan and checked my notifications.

Which didn’t tell me much more than the email. My medical history had been provided following a duly authorized request. As my account was locked down in relation to other information, no other information had been provided. I could request the nature of the relationship via the relevant form. As this was the Annex database this process could take up to five business days due to privacy and blah blah blah. It also gave me the process to initiate a search for relatives.

I shut down the site, wondering why I was so uneasy. It had to be a coincidence, right?

But my nerves didn’t settle so, acting on instinct, I vidcalled Meredith, expecting to leave a message. But instead I got her, looking neat and tidy as always in a misty green T-shirt that matched her eyes under her white coat. She leaned closer to the screen, looking worried.

“Maggie, hi. Is something wrong with Gwen?”

“No, sorry. Didn’t mean to alarm you. Can I run something by you, if you have time.”

“I have about ten minutes, then I have another patient. Is that okay?”

I had no idea if it was enough time, but I wasn’t going to waste the chance. “I got a notification from the genetics database this morning.”

“Oh?” Her brows drew down.

“Yeah, it says my medical history was accessed. That’s never happened before.”

“Never?” Her frown deepened.

“Small family on my mom’s side and all the ones I know about are dead.”

“And you don’t know who your father is?”

“No.”

“You never searched for him?”

“My grandparents put in a request when I was thirteen. There were no matches. I put one in again when I was eighteen. Still no matches. I haven’t tried since. My profile is locked down.”

“And, most likely Cassandra had you flagged as a witch once she found you, so you’d be in the Annex. That’s an added complication. More hoops to jump through to put in contact requests. That’s the easiest thing to do, if you want to know.”

“Yeah. But something’s bugging me about it. Gwen put her request in last night and suddenly out of the blue I get a notification.”

Meredith’s eyebrows shot up, surprise replacing concern. “You think it could be Gwen?”

I knew it sounded ridiculous but I couldn’t shake the feeling. “You have to admit, it’s a weird coincidence. She got two matches, and now this is the first time I’ve ever matched with anyone.”

“Have you told Gwen yet?”

“No, she’s still sleeping. I figured she needs the rest.”

“Good call. In that case, you could both put in requests. Or I could compare the history she got with yours if you both give permission.”

“I don’t have much of a medical history,” I said. “I mean I had that weird reaction to the chip. But that was because of the demon. Otherwise, I’ve been healthy. Will there be enough to compare?” I’d been in hospital only once as a kid. When I turned thirteen. At the time it had been chalked up to a severe bout of fever due to an unknown virus, but I knew now it was either from being bound to a demon or a reaction to whatever Sara did to me to make me forget the ritual. Any other childhood bugs, Sara had handled herself with her healing skills.

“Yes, in cases, where there’s not much to report, there’s still a genetic marker comparison to establish the relationship. I’ll be able to tell if the one she got matches yours.”

“Right.” So I had to wake Gwen up and tell her we might be half sisters? That was…crazy. I had no idea how she was going to feel about it. I had no idea how I felt about it.

“Maggie,” Meredith said gently. “Gwen aside, if it’s her, you’ve found your father as well. Gwen got a parental match, too.”

Crap. I’d been focused on the half-sister part. But half sister in this scenario meant same father. My father. After all these years. I had no idea how to feel about the possibility. “There’s no chance it’s a match with her mom?”

“No, it was a paternal match. Besides which, I’m willing to bet quite a lot of money that no Fae has ever allowed their DNA to be sampled. Even most of the tanai tend to steer clear of it. Cassandra could probably tell you what percentage of the Annex records are tanai.”

“Cassandra?”

Meredith looked at me as though I was being dim. “She’s the head of the Cestis. So she’s the boss of everything that falls under their jurisdiction.”

Right. “I know that.” Logically, yes. But I’d never considered how broad that role was. I had only seen the tip of the iceberg when it came to the Cestis.

“But regardless of Fae DNA, Gwen’s first match was her father. So if you matched with her and you’re half sisters, then he’s your dad, too.”

I swore half under my breath. I’d made my peace with not knowing who my father was more than a decade ago. I still didn’t want to know, and seeing the photo of Sara and Jack hadn’t changed my mind. But a sister…even if a half sister. That was different. I swore again. Then made an apologetic face. “Sorry.”

Meredith grinned. “It’s not an uncommon reaction. But if you’re right about Gwen, even if you have no interest in finding out who this man is, I recommend you get the medical history. It’s useful to know.”

Maybe. But Gwen had that information. Maybe she would share. And Meredith had said last night there was nothing to be concerned about, anyway.

I nodded. “Let me think about it a bit. When Gwen wakes up, I’ll talk to her. That’s going to be a fun conversation.”

Meredith’s expression turned sympathetic. “You could leave it a few days.”

Yeah, and how would I explain putting it off to Gwen when I finally decided to tell her? Hey, Gwen, I’ve known for a few days we might be related but I didn’t want to mention it? I didn’t need magic to know that was a bad idea.

But if she was my sister and we shared a dad, well, suddenly I couldn’t get that picture of my mother and Jack on the island out of my brain again.

“I think this is more a ‘better to rip off the Band-Aid’ situation,” I said. At least as far as Gwen was concerned. Jack…well, I’d have to think about that part.

“Well,” Meredith said, “let me know if you two want me to compare the records. You can download a copy of your history and the match from the database. Send it through to me, if you want. I’ll send you a secure upload link. Then if you decide to go ahead, just let me know. Deal with the sister part first, then worry about the other one.”

Crap. What if Gwen freaked out about the possibility of me being her sister? Me with all my magical drama. She might hate the idea. Want nothing to do with me. But she’d said last night that she’d be interested in a sibling.

“Whatever you decide, the protocols are there to follow” Meredith continued.

I nodded, but my brain was whirling. If there was any possibility Jack was my father, I absolutely didn’t want him finding out I was his daughter. I was assuming he didn’t know, of course, because it was the only thing that made sense to me. He could have played things very differently at the Serenity Falls tournament if he wanted to waltz into my life as my long-lost father.

Instead he’d revealed his true colors. And I didn’t want anything to do with them.

So it might be in my best interest—and Gwen’s—to see if those protocols were truly as ironclad as Meredith thought.

After all, I knew a bunch of genius computer geeks. And I knew damned well some of them skirted the wrong side of the law at times. If I asked Damon to hack a database to find out if the guy who’d matched with Gwen was Jack, then he’d try his best to do it. And his best was damned good. Surely we could find a way for me to follow this thread without Jack finding out.

Meredith was still talking and I tried to pay attention, but nothing she said was sticking. Which she didn’t miss.

“Look, you both need some time to sit with this. Talk to Gwen. Call me when you two have a decision. I need to get to my patient.”

We said goodbye and I slumped back in my chair, feeling as though someone had turned the world upside down and shaken it around. Lianith wandered into the room and jumped up onto the desk, angling her ears for scratches. I obliged, still lost in a whirlwind of chaotic thoughts.

The person I really wanted to talk to was Damon, but he’d already left and I knew he had a morning of international calls.

I left him a message, made sure I had all my privacy settings set on the highest levels in the Annex database, downloaded my medical history, and double-checked my notifications. Still only one. I downloaded it, too. So whoever Gwen’s mystery man was, he hadn’t yet been connected to me. And if he did, I wanted to make sure he didn’t get anything more than I was legally obliged to give him.

When I logged off the database, my hands were trembling.

I had to work off some adrenaline. I could call Callum to come over and let me try to beat him up, but it would take him some time to get here and I didn’t want to wait.”

So I did the next best thing and logged myself into Damon’s training program.

Escaping into the virtual world and beating up some imps or something was just what the doctor had ordered.

We’d added a few of the creatures we’d encountered in the Fae realm, but I stuck to imps. No worrying about whether they were bad or not. And the handy part about VR was that it seemed to work the same way as real-life exercise when it came to stress reduction.

I didn’t really pay attention to the time as I squared off against a series of imps. So I almost lost my virtual footing, only narrowly avoiding falling on my ass, when Madge interrupted me with an in-game message.

“Maggie, Gwen would like to speak to you.”

Oh God, she was awake . No more hiding away in VR. I had to tell her the news.

Crap. My avatar was sweaty, my limbs felt heavy from exertion. I no longer felt shaky, but this was a conversation I wasn’t so sure I was ready to have.

But I couldn’t see another option. Not if we were sisters.

A half-Fae sister. Would my life ever stop getting weirder and weirder?

My grandmother, I knew, would have been delighted, even if the half-sister bit came from my unknown father. She’d always wanted more children, but it hadn’t worked out. She made a point of semi-adopting any friends I brought home.

I disengaged from the game and opened my eyes. Gwen was sitting in the chair next to mine and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Holy crap,” I wheezed. “Can we ease back on the jump scares?”

Gwen yawned. “Sorry, I didn’t think.” She wore pink-and-white-striped pajama pants and a tank top covered in some pink-and-white anime character I didn’t recognize. Her hair was half falling out of a short ponytail. But even in ‘just rolled out of bed’ mode, she was beautiful. She was staring at the monitor above the chairs, so I took the opportunity to study her. Short, blonde, and nothing like me. But, quite possibly, my sister.

Genetics were weird.

Her incision under the surgical shield looked normal. Nothing red or crusty or bleeding. She had a bit of color back in her face and she seemed alert enough. So, no medical reason to put off telling her the news.

“Is that your training game?” Gwen asked, pointing at the monitor.

Well double crap. How much had she seen? I hadn’t yet talked to Cassandra about letting Gwen see the program. “Yes. But how about you forget you saw it?”

“What was that thing you were fighting? A lesser Fae?”

“No, an imp.”

“An imp?” she said. “A demon ?” Her eyes went wide. Under the bright light of the monitor, they were almost silvery blue.

I hit the button on the arm of the game chair to turn the monitor off. “Not a demon. Demon kind but not a demon.”

She shuddered. “Whatever it was, it was creepy.”

True. Imps were disturbing. At least she couldn’t smell the damn thing. The smell of demonkind was unmistakable. And unmistakably vile. And Damon had done far too good a job of replicating that in the simulation. “I’m sure you saw some creepy things in the realm.”

“Well, yes,” she said, “but nothing quite like that. Lady Morgain’s territory is mostly peaceful and she doesn’t let Nichtkin come there. That thing would fit right in with the Nichtkin.”

Usuriel had Fae that resembled imps in his court? Great. Or was Gwen projecting and his subjects were just creatures—or people, I guessed—whose forms weren’t human. Frightening didn’t necessarily equal evil. And Gwen had never faced an imp in real life. I’d fought Nichtkin. None of them had that same terrifying feeling as demonkind.

“Lord Usuriel is firmly in the anti-demon camp,” I said. “I doubt there are any imps in his court. There are no demonkind in the realm.” If there were, well, there wouldn’t be a realm and humans would all be demon fodder. But if Gwen didn’t know that already, I wasn’t going to tell her. “Hopefully you’ll never have to meet an imp or anything out here.” And maybe if she was creeped out by one measly fake imp, she might not be ask to see any more of the training program.

“No,” she said. She pulled her gaze away from the monitor, yawning again.

“Coffee?” I said brightly. “I need more coffee. How about you? You should eat.”

“Sounds good.”

Right. Plan A. Feed her up and get her blood sugar stabilized before I hit her with ‘so, hey, we might be related’.

We headed to the kitchen and I grabbed a canister of Amy’s homemade granola along with yogurt and fruit from the fridge. “Cereal might be easier to eat. Unless you’re queasy from the meds? I can do toast? You only need one hand for cereal, so you can rest your arm. How’s it feel?”

“Still numb. I don’t think the nerve block has worn off yet. And I’m hungry. My stomach is fine. I’ll try the granola.”

“Meredith said to start on the painkillers by midday at the latest,” I reminded her, nodding at the packet of pain patches still sitting on the counter with the other bits and pieces the hospital had sent her home with. “Start those before the block wears off. It’s nearly eleven now, so you’ll need to put one on after you’ve eaten.”

She pulled a face. “Yeah, okay.”

I poured granola into a bowl for her and pushed the yogurt and a spoon across the table so she could help herself, before filling another bowl for me. Fighting virtual imps was hard work. I deserved second breakfast.

Lianith came bounding into the room, joining us on the table with an inquiring merping trill.

“No bacon this morning. I don’t think you’d like cereal.” I said to her.

I didn’t need her mental “bah” to understand her disappointment.

“She might like yogurt,” Gwen said.

“I’m not sure dairy is good for her.”

Lianith blinked at me slowly, her golden eyes gleaming. I sighed and got up to spoon yogurt into a bowl, putting it down on the floor near her fancy water bowl. “Don’t blame me if you get a stomachache.”

Gwen crunched through her bowl of granola at high speed. I went more slowly with mine, hungry but nervous about what was to come. Lianith wandered back to join us, and perched on the chair next to Gwen’s, cleaning her whiskers with a paw as delicately as any normal cat. She seemed fond of Gwen.

I tried to work up the nerve to tell Gwen the news, trying to figure out what to say as she ate. Finally I decided to just get it over with. “I need to ask you about something.”

She tensed, pushing her bowl away. “What?”

“You’re not in any trouble,” I said. “It’s...look, there’s no easy way to say this. I got a notification this morning from the database.”

“The database?” Her brows drew down and she tilted her head, making loose hair fall across her face. She pushed it back without taking her eyes off me.

“The National Genetics Registry.”

“Oh,” she said. “You have your DNA in it, too?”

“Yeah. I don’t know who my dad is either, so my grandparents did it a long time ago.”

“You never found him?”

“No, there weren’t any matches back then, and I stopped looking. I made up my mind a long time ago that I didn’t need to know.”

“Yeah, me too.” She grimaced and picked up her spoon, twirling it between her fingers. “I don’t know how I feel about knowing he’s out there somewhere.”

I knew how I felt about it. If it was Jack, I wanted nothing to do with him. Less than nothing. But I’d deal with Jack after the first hurdle of this little chat.

“Well, it doesn’t really change anything, like Meredith said,” I said, trying to sound casual. “You don’t have to contact him.” In fact, I was going to do my best to make sure she didn’t.

“Yeah, that’s true,” Gwen said, still twirling her spoon. It danced through her fingers with the ease of long practice. Or innate Fae grace. “So you got a notification?”

“Yeah. And it’s weird timing because I never had one before. I don’t come from a big family on my mom’s side. And I guess my dad’s relatives aren’t team DNA testing.” I waited a moment to see if she might make the connection I had.

She didn’t. Just twirled the spoon and watched me, waiting for me to keep talking.

“I was wondering if it might be you,” I said in a rush.

Gwen’s mouth dropped open. The spoon dropped to the table with a sharp clang. “ Me ? Why?”

I understood the surprise. “For one thing, I’m not fond of coincidences. The timing is suspicious, don’t you think? I mean, sure, lots of people must be searching every day, but, you know, you put yours in last night, and suddenly I have a notification that my medical history was accessed.”

She looked as shocked as I had felt earlier. “You think you’re my sister?” She shoved a hand into her hair, pulling out her hair tie, as she shook her head. “We don’t look anything alike.” She tugged at her perfect blonde hair, then nodded at mine.

“I’m aware,” I said drily. “But genetics aren’t straightforward.”

She blinked slowly. “Still. Sisters? Us?”

I held my hands out, palms up. “I don’t know. But it’s possible. And I know it’s weird. But I wanted to tell you straight away.”

“How do we find out if you’re right?”

“Well, we can clear up the half-sister part,” I said. “We can both send a contact request.”

It sounded simple enough. But the knowing wasn’t the complicated part of all this.

“What if it’s not me?” Gwen objected. “Do you want to contact some stranger?”

Probably not. Not without some time to think. But Gwen wasn’t a random stranger. “Meredith said if we both give her permission she can compare the history you received to mine. That’s the other way.”

“You talked to Meredith about this?”

“You were asleep,” I said, suddenly defensive. “And I wanted to know if she thought I was being an idiot to think it might be you.”

“I take it she didn’t?” Gwen suddenly sounded very English.

“No. Which is why we’re having this conversation. And like I said, I know this is weird. But I think it’s better to know.”

She started to nod, then froze. “If we’re half sisters, my father is yours, too.”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t get a notification about him?”

“No. But I didn’t initiate a search, so that tracks.”

“You really don’t know anything about your dad?”

I shook my head but couldn’t stop myself from flinching slightly.

Gwen’s eyes narrowed. Short, blonde and gorgeous didn’t equal stupid. She’d seen my reaction. My cheeks went hot.

“What? Do you know who he might be?” Gwen demanded.

“Nothing concrete,” I said, voice a little too high.

“But you have an idea?”

I sighed. Rip off the Band-Aid time. “Yes. Do you remember why Damon and I were in the realm?” She’d been out of it when we’d reached Ljubljana. I had no idea what she remembered.

“You were chasing some guy. Jack something? He did something…er, bad?”

So Aubrey hadn’t provided her with any more details. Good. It was Damon’s business. Nothing to do with Gwen.

Except if he’s our father.

Still, I didn’t know how much was okay to tell her. So safer to stick to the basics for now. “Yeah, him. Ralph found a photo of him with my mom before I was born. Ten months before I was born.”

She blinked and I could see her doing the math. “So you think he might be your dad? Our dad?”

Her face fell, the color draining from it. “ Oh . He’s not a good guy.”

I sympathized with the horror in her voice. I mean, she couldn’t have thought her father was a saint. He’d abandoned her. But there’s a difference between deadbeat and straight-out criminal.

“No,” I said. “So I think it would be better, for now, at least, if you don’t put in a contact request to your paternal match.”

“No.” She swallowed hard. “No chance we’re related on the maternal side?”

“No. My mom was a witch, not Fae. I’m sure of that. And Meredith said there are no Fae in the database. We have to share a father.”

“Right,” she said. “So, what do we do?”

“What do you do about what?” Damon asked from the doorway.