He sets his tea down on the tile counter. We’re all frozen, unsure where this is going. “Yes,” Cillian says, “you did.”
“No. I try not to lie to you. If you remember, all I ever said—all I have ever said—is that we lost your father. I meant that literally. We lost him.”
“I think we should sit down.” Rhys takes Cillian’s elbow and leads him to the worn pink sofa. I can’t tell whether Cillian looks like he’s more likely to pass out or murder someone. I sit on his other side, both to support him and to keep him in place in case he does decide to strangle his mother.
Esther sits on a chair across from us, balancing her mug on her knee and staring down into it as though the tea leaves might reveal an easier way to tell this story.
“I was a student of fairy tales. Grad school. I wanted to teach. I’ve always been interested in oral traditions, the stories we pass down generation to generation. Why we tell the stories we do. I traveled the Irish countryside, asking for regional variations of the tales of fair folk. I found the same general information in every single one, but some of the towns and villages had details—very specific details. A hill you should never visit at night. A path that should never be walked alone. A house that was abandoned two hundred years ago and still stands unclaimed to this day. I could sense the power behind their fear. It wasn’t terror—it was self-preservation. It had all the same rules and practical steps as my spells. And that got me interested. I went to one of the abandoned houses at night, made a protective circle, and I waited. At midnight, a portal opened.” She pauses, then looks up at Doug. “I’m sure none of you will be surprised to learn that our world contains—contained—gateways and portals to other worlds. These weren’t fairy paths and fairy doors. They were openings to other dimensions. Hell dimensions. All the stories about keeping your loved ones safe from ageless, unknowable beings who would take them and never return them, or return them so altered you wouldn’t recognize them, were true. They were just about demons, not fairies. Same concept, different name.”
“I like ‘fair folk’ better than ‘demon.’?” Doug shrugs. “Has a nicer ring to it.”
“It does, doesn’t it? But most of the folk were far from fair. I was lucky that first night. Nothing came out, and I ran as fast as I could. Then I picked my next move very carefully. I wanted to prove my theory was correct. That we were telling ourselves stories about demons, that the Irish had always known about these connections to other worlds and had been protecting themselves for generations. So I found a village with stories about one specific fairy. The Sleeping One, they called him, because he had no name. Once a year, every year, every single person in the village left. They abandoned their homes, their businesses, their lives. When I asked why, they couldn’t tell me, other than that it wasn’t safe. And sure enough, a cursory search of newspaper archives from that annual date showed missing persons going back decades. So that year, when they all fled, I set a trap.”
She sips her tea, frowning. “It was arrogant. But I was young and ambitious, and I wanted a demon. It turned out I was even more ambitious than I meant to be, though, because I didn’t catch a demon that day.” She sighs, looking out the window at a place and a day far from our own. “I caught a god.”
It’s Rhys’s turn to choke on his tea. “You caught a god?”
“A minor one. But yes.”
?
?Wait,” Cillian says. “There are gods—plural?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “It depends on your definition of a god, but there are countless hellgods, some midlevel benevolent ones. Powers-that-be that sometimes fiddle with our own earth. We’re not sure whether they still have access now that magic is dead.”
Cillian leans back into the couch, rubbing his forehead. “So all this time, when you said ‘oh my gods,’ you weren’t being cute. You were being accurate.”
“I like to cover my bases.” I gesture toward Esther. “But when you say you caught a god, what do you mean by that?”
Cillian’s mother has refocused on us. She’s watching Cillian with careful concern. “I was quite good at magic. I drew from a variety of sources. Irish, English, Nigerian. The traditions melded in surprising ways, and I drew a lot more power than I would have had I specialized in only one like my college coven wanted me to. There’s a lot to be said for knowing your heritage. When the god stepped into the village to look for a sacrifice, he stepped into my trap. My nets fell on him, binding him to this world and to me. But once he was there and I had him, I didn’t know what to do with him. I panicked.” She swirls her remaining tea around in her mug. “I defaulted to my British training, and I invited him to sit down for tea with me. We talked. He had been visiting earth for countless generations, siphoning power. Like we were an outlet and he was recharging himself. It takes a lot of energy to sustain godhood.”
“Naturally,” Jade mutters. “Can’t be all-powerful without a lot of power.”
“So you had a bound hellgod and you were drinking tea. Then what?” Cillian isn’t looking at her, or any of us. His eyes are fixed on the floor, and his hand is gripping the necklace so tightly it must be cutting into his palm.
“Well, we … we hit it off. He was really interesting, and quite charming and handsome.”
“Mum.” Cillian’s hand twitches. “You are not telling me my father is a hellgod.”
“A minor one. But yes. Technically. Though he resented it when I referred to his home dimension as ‘hell.’ He felt it was reductive.” She takes a prim sip. “He did quite like being called a god, though.”
Rhys lets out a long, controlled breath. “Then you brought him back here and played house with him.”
She shrugs. “I couldn’t let him go, knowing what he was. Eventually his power would drain. If he spent long enough here without sacrifices, he would become human. I debated the morality of it, of course. Of deciding this ageless creature should no longer be able to do what he was designed to do. But that had to be weighed against the countless generations of people who had been sacrificed to him. And, well, I liked him. It was lonely, being the only witch in Shancoom. Honestly, he was happy. He had been doing the same things for so long they had ceased to have meaning. Watching him discover the world, feel things as a human, was really wonderful. He never tried to break the binding, never asked to be free. I loved him, and I really do think he loved me, too. When I fell pregnant, he—well, when I say he glowed with happiness, I mean it literally. He was thrilled. He had been alone for so long too. We had that in common. And we both wanted you, Cillian.”
Cillian is silent. I can’t imagine what must be going through his head. Aside from the decidedly complicated question of whether a hellgod bound by magic can give consent, the sheer fact that his parentage is half not of this world would be enough to set anyone over the edge. I reach out and take his hand in mine, squeezing.
“So what went wrong?” Jade asks.
“Everything was normal. Happy. I had the magic shop. He volunteered with the local police force, helped out in the shop, took over the bulk of the parenting and housekeeping. But then a few years ago, I came home early with a headache and caught him in the shed with Cillian. They had that triangle receptacle. I didn’t know where he got it, or how, but I recognized the symbol from the town where he’d crossed over. A circular courtyard in the center where he’d appeared had an old stone pillar with the symbol carved on it. I had thought it was a Celtic relic, but it wasn’t. It was him. His symbol. He was teaching Cillian how to manipulate it, and then—then it started glowing. It terrified me.”
“Why?” Cillian asks. “You knew what he was.”
“I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know if he was using it to siphon energy from you like one of his sacrifices. Or if … or if he was trying to make you into whatever he had been.” She grips her mug, her posture rigid. “Either option scared me more than I’d known was possible. I had gotten complacent, so used to him and in love with our life together that I let myself forget who and what he was. And for the first time I wondered if maybe he had let me bind him. Maybe I had been the one without power all along. I was so distracted, that night I forgot to redo the binding.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know. Maybe I forgot on purpose. I was in over my head, and I was scared for my child. On that very first day with him, over tea, he told me he’d kill me when he got free. He said it with a smile, casual and cheerful.” She shivers. “But when I woke up in the morning, he was gone. He just left. I think—I really do think he loved us. In his own way.”
“Why did you lie to me?” Cillian’s voice breaks. “Why did you let me think he was dead?”
“He’s not the same as us. He’s an ancient creature, infinite. And when he was no longer tied to us, he had no choice. He had to go back to what he was. But he loved us. We’re still here. If he didn’t love us, if his time with us hadn’t changed him, he would have killed me. So I let you think he was dead. It felt kinder than knowing he couldn’t stay. That he went back to his own dimension.”