“I’m surprised the bastard explained it to you,” Meg snarled. “Then again, I’m sure he had a plan for it.”
“I overheard a girl on the grounds bragging about how she planned to seduce a man so she could drain a lake where merfolk hid their gold and gems.” I was the only child tutored by the director, but there were others on the property now and again, most of them the children of Black Hat agents come to check in. I think he requested their presence, to socialize me, but I was too shy to warm up to others after an hour. “I never saw her again. I wanted to believe then it meant she had succeeded, maybe bought a new life.”
“Sweet child,” she sighed. “The girl told someone. That was her first mistake. She let herself be overheard. That was her second mistake. There are no third mistakes for black witches. She was as good as dead the moment she opened her mouth, poor thing.”
“Letitia and Maria.” I would never forget those names. “Letitia came back, years later, and I asked about Maria. She was flattered I noticed her, I think, and happy to regale me with the details of how she talked Maria into having sex with her older brother. That made it easier for her to follow them to the lake.”
Once it was done, her brother called to tip her off when to drive his truck up there to collect the haul.
“After the couple had sex, the brother pretended to leave but actually joined Letitia. Maria drained the lake, stole the mermaids’ treasure before the water rushed back in, and the brother and sister were waiting for her. They killed her and shared her heart.”
The whole thing had an incestuous vibe that still bothered me, a twisted fairy tale in gossip form.
“That convinced me the best course of action was to pick a guy, rid myself of the potential, and hope I survived my punishment.”
The last part had been a near thing. The director was so furious, he beat me within an inch of my life with his cane. But I was older then, around eighteen before he’d decided how best to use me, and my years in Black Hat had hardened me to the pain.
And he wondered why I didn’t leap to answer the phone each time it lit with his private number.
“Have you tried again?” Meg broke into my grim thoughts. “Please tell me you didn’t quit after that.”
“I went through a man-eating phase,” I said and left it at that, not wanting to relive those days.
“Good.” That satisfied her. “Men are like shoes. You won’t know who fits until you try them on.”
Uncertain if she meant that literally, I let the topic drop. “So…daemon blood.”
“The only way to be certain is to ask your grandfather for your grandmother’s identity, and I will send a passel of my great-great-grandsons to whoop your tail if you try. That man would charge more than you can afford for the information, and he would keep the salient details to himself to sell to you later.”
“That’s pretty much what Clay said too.”
“He might have rocks for brains, but he’s not wrong.”
I wasn’t clear on the details, but Clay and Meg disliked one another so intensely they refused to speak to each other. All I knew for certain was they met while he was on a case, and she was alive, but the odds were good he put down someone she loved for Black Hat.
“My…friend…is half fae,” I found myself confessing. “His mother’s people do this thing where—”
Nose mashing against the barrier, she exhaled a wall of smoke. “Do go on.”
“Stop being a perv.” I twisted my mouth into a disapproving frown. “I’m being serious.”
“Oh, fine.” She settled back with a huff. “Go on.”
“They compel their potential mates to…”
A glint returned to her eyes. “Yes?”
“…talk. About themselves. A lot. I can’t shut up around him. I just word vomit all over the place.”
“Dear heart, I’m not prone to romantic sentiment, that was your mother’s forte, so I won’t offer you my relationship advice.” She crushed out the glowing tip of her cigarette. “This is all I will say on the matter. You’re not a picture book left on a coffee table for just anyone to flip through at their leisure. Far from it. You’re a grimoire, kept in a private library, wrapped in a girth of chains, and cinched with a padlock. If Fate decided to arm your beau with a pair of bolt cutters, perhaps she worries you might spend your life waiting on a perfect man with a perfect key to fit your lock when perfect…doesn’t exist.”
Shades of regret colored her tone, and I wondered if she wished she had taken a chance on a not-quite-Prince Charming of her own.
“Is it real?” That was what I wanted to know. “Or is it biology?”
“When you’re with him, does it feel real? Better yet, when you’re apart. Does it feel real then?”
“Yes,” I decided after considering my answer. “That’s what makes it mortifying.”