Page 18

Chapter Eighteen

“Please hold,” Cassandra snapped. Her image froze and we waited. My grip on Gwen’s arm slid down and I found her hand. She held on, fingers curling around mine, gripping me like I was her anchor in the world. Her hand was warm even though her face was still pale. Smaller than mine.

But very real. My sister’s hand. I suddenly knew I didn’t need the DNA to convince me. I’d do whatever was necessary to keep her out of Jack’s path.

Neither of us spoke. And Damon left us to our silence.

After the longest five minutes in history, Cassandra’s image began to move again. “Your records will be removed. As soon as possible. I’ve got the team checking the security logs, but we could be too late. Though, there are quite a few layers of encryption between the information in the database and anything that identifies you. And he’d have to go back to the UK database for Gwen’s original information. We’ll remove that, too. I’ve contacted Isolde.”

Well, it was something, at least.

“If you need any help working out if there was a breach, let me know,” Damon offered.

“Thank you,” Cassandra said. “Let’s hope that’s not necessary. But now that’s taken care of, Maggie, explain to me why you two think you’re related and Jack’s your father? Does this have anything to do with the accident at the club last night?”

“It does,” I said and gave her the rundown of the DNA testing and about my notification.

“So, so far this is a theory?” Cassandra asked, not sounding skeptical, but somewhat less tense. “You haven’t asked Meredith to confirm?”

“Not yet. If it is Jack, he will have gotten a notification like me. And we figured he might try to get in touch with Gwen. After all, he knows about her even if there’s been no contact. Even if he didn’t want to make contact officially, there’s always the possibility he’d try to find out where she was through less official channels. Try to hack the database and trace the match. Given he’s, well, Jack, we don’t want him tracking Gwen down. So we called you first.” I didn’t mention I’d been about to ask Damon if he could hack the database to trace the match in the other direction and find out if it was Jack. I wanted her to help me, not chew me out.

“Well, I can’t fault you for that, but before this goes any further, why don’t you make sure? Call Meredith.”

“You can’t get that info from the database?”

“Meredith already has the data she needs. St. Isidore’s will have Gwen’s information from last night, including the medical histories from the matches. I’m assuming, Maggie, that you downloaded yours. She can compare those. If you didn’t, I can arrange for it to be sent to her. Your records will be removed from the Annex and placed somewhere more secure, not deleted entirely. Call her, and by the time I get there, you’ll know for certain if you’re sisters, and we can proceed accordingly.”

“You’re coming here?” I asked, somewhat startled. “You don’t want to wait until we know for sure?”

“I was coming into the city today anyway. And it’s best to deal with this kind of thing in person. No chance of anyone listening in who shouldn’t be. And even if Meredith says you’re not sisters, that still leaves the question of whether or not Jack is your father. A question I’d rather have answered quickly, so we need to work out how.”

Right. Damon’s place was as secure as a house could be. “Good point. Okay, we’ll call Meredith.”

“Amy is supposed to be working this afternoon,” Damon said. “Do you want me to give her the day off?”

“Yes,” Cassandra said. “We want to be able to talk freely. I’ll see you all soon.” She ended the call.

Gwen and I stared at each other for a moment. We were still holding hands.

“Do you want to call Meredith, or should I?” I asked.

Gwen swallowed. Hard. Then lifted her chin. “Let’s do it together. You said she would need permission from both of us, right?”

“Yep.” I turned my attention back to the datapad. It only took a couple of minutes for Meredith to confirm we were half sisters.

“Congratulations,” Meredith said after she gave us the news. “Will you be contacting your father?”

“No,” I said. “In fact, we need you to make sure any files you have on me and Gwen are as secure as you can make them.”

Her congratulatory smile vanished. “Can I ask why?”

“Long story. Short version is there’s a possibility it’s Jack Miller. If it is, well, Gwen doesn’t want anything to do with him, and I don’t want him to discover he’s related to me.”

“You don’t think he knows?”

“If he did, I think he would have pulled some sort of ‘Maggie, I’m your dad’ crap the last time we crossed paths. And my mom went off-grid for a reason. Other than her being, you know, generally shady. That’s not enough to hide the way she did. The only reason I can think of is that she didn’t want anyone else with a claim on me showing up to ruin her plans.”

Meredith’s face turned grim. “Right. I’ll make sure your files are secure. Gwen, how are you? Did you use one of the patches?”

Dammit, we’d forgotten the patch. “She slept in. I told her to put one on after she ate.” And wow, that sounded totally like a bossy older sister.

“The patches are right here on the counter,” Gwen said. “I’ll put one on now, but so far the block is holding.”

“Good. But you want to start the patch before the block stops or you’ll be in a lot of pain. Better to stay on top of it. Right, I’m sure you both want time to talk. Call me if Gwen has any issues with her arm or if you need anything else.”

She leaned closer. “It’s a bit early for me to be prescribing a stiff drink and Gwen shouldn’t have alcohol while she’s using those patches. So, I’m going to say, eat some ice cream or something sugary and bad for you. Doctor’s order. If you want to go wild, drink some herbal tea. Something soothing.”

I managed a smile. “Cassandra’s coming over, I’m sure she’ll take care of that.”

After Meredith ended the call, and I’d messaged Cassandra the news, Damon offered ice cream. Gwen and I both refused. Did her stomach feel as queasy as mine?

I slipped my hand free and went to grab her pain patches, bringing them back to the table with two cans of soda. They at least had sugar and my stomach didn’t rebel at the thought of drinking one.

I cracked one open and pushed the other toward Gwen.

She studied the can. “Cranberry, pomegranate and yuzu?”

“You ordered a yuzu margarita last night. I thought you liked it.”

She half-smiled. “I’m not even sure what it is.”

“It’s a citrus. I think.” I swigged my soda. It was just sweet enough, the sharpness of the fruits offsetting the sugar rush and washing the sour taste of adrenaline out of my mouth. “Try it. It’s good.”

She looked dubious, but opened the can. Damon was watching both of us, one finger drumming on the table. No doubt he’d prefer it if he could swing into action. Be all ‘master of the universe’ and deal with all of this with a wave of his bank balance, but he had to wait like the rest of us mere mortals. He could work his own brand of magic once Cassandra told him how he could help.

Gwen downed her soda fast. Then burped and immediately clapped a hand over her mouth, turning scarlet.

I laughed. “Good to see my sister is classy.” Gwen turned an even deeper shade and for some reason, I lost it completely, doubling over with laughter. Damon joined in and after a few seconds Gwen did, too.

“It might not be him,” Gwen said when she finally stopped.

“It’s possible.” My gut told me otherwise, the brief tension relief from the laughter fading fast as it tightened all over again.

“We’ll figure it out soon enough,” Damon said.

“How do we do that without making contact with him?” Gwen asked.

Damon and I exchanged a long look. I waited to see what he proposed. I wouldn’t push him to do something not strictly legal if he didn’t want to.

“I’ll get Mitch to talk to the lawyers,” he said. “Jack is wanted in this country, so we may be able to get a court order to break the privacy on the database.”

“How long will that take?”

“Through the courts? Probably a while.” He sounded displeased at the prospect.

I suspected the instruction that Damon was going to give Mitch would be more along the lines of ‘by any means necessary’.

“We’ll have to wait and see,” Damon continued. “Don’t worry, my lawyers are the best.”

“What if he used a fake name on the database?” Gwen asked. “Like on my birth certificate.”

Crap. I’d forgotten that.

“There are other routes,” Damon said. “We know his real name and we can track down other relatives. From what I understand it’s difficult to submit a sample these days without having your identity thoroughly confirmed. So maybe we won’t have to. We can start with when your father’s sample was submitted to the database and take it from there. In fact, when Cassandra gets here, we should get her to start that process. He can remove his records just like you two can. And he might if he tries to find Gwen and her record vanishes. It could tip him off we’re on to him. Though he doesn’t have the advantage of having Cassandra on his side to expedite his request. Particularly if he went through the regular database. She might be able to freeze his record. Though that could tip him off, too.” He paused, looking into the distance, thinking hard. “Cassandra should just copy the record. So we have his analysis even if he manages to pull it.”

Gwen was starting to look overwhelmed again.

“We’ll take it one step at a time,” I said, trying to sound confident. “Cassandra will be here soon and we’ll figure this out.”

Cassandra arrived about forty minutes later. I took her back to the kitchen and introduced her to Gwen, who was sitting at the table, still looking pale and pushing the empty package from her pain patch back and forth with anxious flicks of her fingers. She’d asked to see the picture of Jack. I’d sent a copy to her email. She’d stared at it for a long time before she said, “Your mom was very beautiful.”

To which my reply was, “Only on the outside.”

Cassandra said hello to Damon, asked if we’d confirmed we were sisters and when I said yes, smiled approvingly and informed us she’d requested the name of the man who had matched with Gwen using her authority as Head of the Cestis.

I avoided looking at Damon. Friends in high places were good. Especially if that meant he wouldn’t have to crawl around in the low ones to help me out. “Thank you,” I said.

“Thank you,” Gwen echoed.

“You’re welcome.” Cassandra nodded, eyeing Gwen. Her head tilted and her eyes narrowed slightly. I recognized the look. Someone was about to get tea. I stifled a sigh.

“Maggie, why don’t you show me Amy’s herb garden?” Cassandra said. “I’ll make Gwen something to help with her healing. Gwen, you wait here, we won’t be long. Then we can all talk.”

I let her hustle me out of the house.

“What’s wrong?” I asked when we were admiring the neat rows of herbs that Amy grew in the small kitchen garden the gardeners had ceded to her. She’d explained the whole system to me once when I’d asked her for some mint to practice something Cassandra had been teaching me. There were strategic shade panels and UV blockers that protected the plants from getting fried, a recycled water irrigation system—Amy’s explanation of that had gone over my head—and solar lights along the paths, highlighting the neat labels for each group of plants.

Cassandra smiled approvingly as she moved along the paths between the beds. I didn’t have to look to know she was building extra layers of wards. I felt them as they wrapped around us, ensuring privacy. Lianith would tell me if there were any nixlings nearby and I doubted anyone short of a Fae Elder or a demon could get through Cassandra’s wards, even if they managed to get through all the other layers of protection around the garden without alerting us.

Her emerald-green shirt went well with the plants. The sunlight caught her silver hair as she tugged a leaf off a mint plant and crushed it between her fingers, before inhaling the scent. “You realize if Jack is your father, Gwen has the potential to have both witch magic and Fae magic.”

“Yes, I worked that out. Is it a bad thing?” I asked.

She pursed her lips. “It’s unusual, and if she’s untrained, she’s either potentially vulnerable or potentially dangerous…”

I didn’t need her to finish the sentence. I knew it was dangerous to not control your magic. I’d burned myself the first time I’d used mine. And Gwen was half-Fae, too. Who knew what she might be capable of?

“Is there a way of testing her to see if she has both kinds of magic? Are they so different?” Cerridwen had told me I could learn the Fae way of doing magic, because I hadn’t been taught to think like a witch since I was thirteen. But I could do witch things in the realm and some of the Fae things outside of it. It was just harder without the inherent magic in the realm.

“Witches can see the magic and we can change its energy, but we expend energy to do so. Fae, for lack of a better explanation, are connected to that energy. And they can make it do what they want. A witch can burn their power out. I doubt a Fae can.”

I still wasn’t sure I understood the difference and trying was making my head ache. “Doesn’t that mean the Fae side would dominate? So she should just be a more powerful witch?”

“Perhaps. Regardless of how she does magic, the issue is more whether she can control it. Within the realm, she may not have used her power much, so we have no idea how well she’s trained. Or how that would translate to her control out here. If she can’t control her magic, she’s vulnerable. And out here, she doesn’t have someone like Lady Morgain protecting her. The Cestis can’t be everywhere.”

Vulnerable. She meant to demons. Though, being in the realm hadn’t been entirely without risk. Gwen should have been safe in Morgain’s court, but Usuriel had still somehow managed to reach her. Not that he was as bad as a demon. Maybe.

Damn. Usuriel. I should tell Cassandra about him. Ugh. I rubbed my temples and Cassandra bent down and picked another sprig of mint.

“Sniff this if you have a headache.”

I doubted mint was going to fix things, but I took it anyway. The smell was calming, if nothing else. Though right now I would have preferred it in a mojito.

“If Jack is your father, I think it would be best to assume Gwen inherited his talents as well as her mother’s,” Cassandra said. “And if she has a leaning toward game design, she could have inherited his skills for technology as well.”

Ugh. “Do you think that’s why I can do what I do?” Jack had made his fortune in early holographic and VR tech. I’d read articles about him describing his talent for making connections and innovations in the early stages as ‘uncanny’. Much like my own skill for solving bugs no one else could.

“There’s no way of knowing, really. Don’t doubt yourself. You are not your parents, and you know that.”

I did, but it felt hard to remember when faced with a whole other level of who they were. Double ugh. I didn’t want anything from Jack. Let alone the talent I’d built my life around. “Let’s hope Gwen takes more after her mother,” I muttered.

“I would prefer that she took after the woman who raised her. Who seems to have been kind and dutiful at least.” Cassandra’s hand drifted over the tops of more plants, the green scent of them filling the air.

“Ignoring the part where she was doing it for money and working for a criminal.”

Cassandra picked another sprig. Rosemary this time. “I doubt she knew who Jack was, even if it was dubious to agree to pretend to be Gwen’s aunt. Still, a mercenary-minded human is a known quantity. As is Jack, to a degree. We don’t know what kind of Fae her mother is. This would be easier if we did.”

“Perhaps. But the only people who know that are Jack and her mother, and her mother has so far stayed away.” I paused, considering. “Do you think Cerridwen would be more interested in helping Gwen find out who her mother is if she knows about the witch thing?”

Cassandra’s face hardened. “I think I would prefer not to tell any of the Fae about this yet.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, we already know some of their factions are suspicious of you, because you’ve encountered a demon. If we tell them Gwen’s a tanai with witch magic, that she’s likely very powerful, they’re going to primarily see her also as a tempting target for a demon.”

Was that how Cassandra saw her? “Why? She can learn to protect herself.”

“It takes time,” Cassandra said, “and it could be complicated by her heritage.”

“All that means you should tell Cerridwen,” I pointed out.

“I will. But I need to pick my moment. And we don’t want them trying to use this to claim she should return to the realm.”

“Could they do that? I thought because she’s human she has rights.”

“She has rights as a witch, yes. She has rights as tanai, but there are provisions in the contract about threats to the realm, and you already know they view demons as a threat.”

“But there is no demon.”

“There are afrit. And someone was in Ajax’s house,” Cassandra said. “Just because we haven’t found out who it was, or why they were there, doesn’t mean there isn’t any connection to whatever Ajax’s plan was. And then there’s Jack to consider. If he was keeping tabs on Gwen and lost track of her when she went into the realm, well, now he knows she’s back.”

“You think he’ll come after her?”

“I don’t know. He must have had his reasons for having a baby with a Fae in the first place, not to mention keeping the child. The Fae don’t have children easily, and it would have taken some convincing to get Gwen’s mother to agree to give up a child.”

“Not so hard when that child is tanai, perhaps,” I said, my mind still chewing on the fact that Cassandra was worried about demonkind. The threat of a headache was turning into a full-blown one at the thought. I’d been training to fight demonkind, but part of me had never thought I’d have to do it again. At least, not anything bigger than an afrit. I shivered despite the warmth of the sun beating down on us. Then forced my mind back to Gwen. “The Fae don’t view tanai the same way as they would a full Fae.” That much I knew from Pinky. The Fae, well, certain families, viewed tanai as slightly better than humans perhaps, but still in the category of possessions to be told what to do, rather than living, thinking beings with a right to control their own lives.

“Still, I’d like to know what Jack offered Gwen’s mother. And I don’t think we should let Cerridwen know about Gwen and Jack until we have to. Usuriel wasn’t happy about letting the two of you leave the realm. If he finds out Gwen’s half-witch, he might be difficult.”

“Usuriel was at the club last night,” I admitted in a rush.

For once I’d managed to genuinely shock Cassandra. Her jaw dropped. “And you’re just telling me this now ?”

I gestured back at the house. “There’s been a lot going on. And he only wanted to talk to me.”

She muttered something under her breath. It didn’t sound complimentary, but I wasn’t sure if it was aimed at me or Usuriel. “He shouldn’t be outside the realm. I’ll have to tell Cerridwen. What did he want?”

“I’m not sure. He admitted he sent the nixlings. Said he wanted to keep an eye on me. Somehow he found out Jack was the one we’re hunting and that Jack has dabbled with demonkind. I don’t know how much more he knows, but he said he wanted to watch for him.”

“And you believed him?”

“Not completely. But you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that. If he wants to help stop Jack, that’s fine with me.”

“You don’t think he was there because of Gwen?”

“He sent the nixlings before Gwen arrived in the US. And I don’t think he saw her. So, no.”

“Still, it will be safer if he doesn’t find out.”

“I’m not sure how we prevent that,” I pointed out. “If he’s moving outside the realm and watching us still, he’ll see her sooner or later. Or his spies will.” He had more than nixlings at his disposal. But that though made me think of something else. “Usuriel’s not the only one with a spy.”

Cassandra looked confused.

“Lianith,” I continued. “She belongs to Cerridwen. Or serves her or whatever you want to call it. I’m not sure how much of all this she understands but she’s overheard some of our conversations. She could tell Callum or Cerridwen.” For all I knew, she had already.

“Has Callum been here?”

“No, but she has the same mental speech he does. I don’t know if that works long distance.”

Cassandra sighed. “If it does, then I expect I will be hearing from Cerridwen sooner rather than later. But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Just be careful. With her and with keeping Gwen safe.”

“We’re always careful. This is one of the most secure places in the city. Probably in the whole damned country. But I get it. I’ll watch out for Usuriel. Can we not tell Gwen, though? She is not a fan. And if we’re trying to reduce her stress level to avoid a magic flare, this won’t help.”

“She has to know eventually.”

“Let’s give her a few days to adjust. She’s been through a lot recently. Let’s see if we can find out if Jack is our father, before we hit her with the news Usuriel’s stalking me.”

“Very well.” Cassandra didn’t look entirely happy about it, but she didn’t argue.

“Can we ask Callum to figure out how well Gwen has been trained in Fae magic? We don’t have to tell him about Jack. He knows she’s tanai. I’d like to ask him to teach her that trick of his to break out of VR.” Callum had been able to get out of the re-creation of Jack’s locked VR. I could usually manage to exit a VR magically when I was sufficiently scared or angry, but I couldn’t do it reliably otherwise. “Maybe she’ll figure out a different way to Callum. Something easier for the rest of us to try to learn.”

“And safer for her if Jack decides to take an interest?” Cassandra said.

“Yeah, that too.” I rubbed the now nearly pulverized mint savagely between my fingers. Fuck Jack. Teaching anyone how to escape a locked VR should never be necessary. But thanks to him, and whoever his twisted cronies were, it was. Yet another reason to hate him. “Are you sure there’s no way of hexing Jack or something? If he died, that would solve a lot of problems.”

“As much as he’s broken enough of our laws to warrant it, sadly, no. That kind of thing is black magic or worse. We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way. Catch him, bring him in, and then deal with him.”

“He burned down my house. He summoned imps. Doesn’t that warrant ending him?” I asked, bitterness burning my tongue and sharpening the words.

“We want information from him first. Like who he’s working with. Don’t worry, he will get the fate he deserves.”

But how much harm could he do before he did?

Cassandra touched my arm. “You know, none of this is your fault,” she said. “You don’t know him, you didn’t know about Gwen and you weren’t any part of Jack’s plans.”

“Sara knew him,” I said bitterly. “She made a baby with him.”

“Well, I doubt he told her he was consorting with demonkind. In fact, I doubt he even was back then. Thirty-odd years is a long time for a witch who has anything to do with demons to survive. Perhaps Sara sensed something about him. After all, she hid you.”

“Because she didn’t want him to take her handy little demon sacrifice away.” My voice hitched, the bitter taste in my mouth matching the ache in my chest.

Cassandra touched my cheek gently. “Your mother was not a good person. She made bad choices. But you have not. You have Damon, who loves you. Your grandparents loved you, too. Lean into the love, not the regrets. And now you have a sister. Think of her, rather than Jack. We’ll find him in the end. And deal with him.”

“And then I’ll have a father who’s a known criminal.”

“We can keep your connection with him quiet,” Cassandra said. “We have a lot of leeway for that kind of thing. His crimes won’t require a high publicity trial. He falls under our jurisdiction, not the human one.”

I stole a sideways glance at her face. Which was grim. “What does that mean?”

“As far as the wider world is concerned, he’ll quietly disappear and be declared dead a few years later. So you don’t need to worry. He’s not going to be a problem you have to deal with long term.”

Hearing her say her plan was to execute my father should have made me feel bad, surely? But instead, I could only agree with her. The problem was catching him, so justice could be handed out.

She nodded back at the house. “Gwen should be thankful he left her alone and didn’t come back for her. He hasn’t pulled her into any of his crimes.”

“Logically, yes,” I said, “but that’s hard to explain to her. She doesn’t know the whole truth about him yet.”

“And you’re right, we should take it slowly with Gwen,” Cassandra said. “She’s had enough shocks in the last few days.”

So had I. But Cassandra was right. I should focus on Gwen.

“So how do we find out about her magic? I don’t like the idea of her doing something like I did and throwing fire accidentally.”

“We ask her what magic she learned in the realm and then go to Callum and the Lady. They can confirm her Fae magic. We’ll figure out the witch part. I don’t want her wasting too much energy trying to do magic while she’s healing,” Cassandra said. “And I need to search the Archives. See if we have records of half-Fae, half-witch children. Which means consulting with our British friends. I don’t remember any cases here, but they may have had some over the years.”

“Fun times,” I said.

“Yes,” Cassandra said. “So, let’s pick some of this mint and a few other things. Everyone here could probably use some nice soothing tea.”