Mason must have read my doubts. He leaned forward. “You have been raised very differently from how you would have been had Adriane not taken you, but we are blood, and I’m not so old that I cannot learn new tricks.”
I cracked a smile for the first time. “Was that a joke?”
He gave a faint shrug. “My sense of humor is dusty, perhaps, but not entirely dead.”
“What do you really want from me?”
“You are a very direct young woman,” he said, not answering. “You have very little artifice about you. It is refreshing.”
“What you did there just now is called ‘deflecting.’ Or maybe you are an indirect man with a whole lot of artifice going on.”
He actually chuckled then glanced at my coffee cup. “Is that swill any good?”
“Best you can get this time of the night or morning, whatever you want to call it. Beggars can’t be choosers. Food’s not bad either if you like grease and salt, which I’ve been known to indulge in from time to time.”
“I think I’d like to fortify myself for the rest of this conversation,” he said and gestured to the waiter, who had inexplicably ignored us up to that point.
Mason ordered French toast and bacon at my suggestion. I ordered the same, plus a pot of coffee. As soon as the waiter went off to the kitchen to put in our order, my new uncle began, and not with anything I expected, though I had no idea what exactly I thought he’d say.
“Your bloodline is coveted. You are a mixing of Osterraven and Wyler Symms genetics, which makes you very desirable for breeding.”
“Say what? Breeding? What the fuck?”
“Our people are sorcerers. There are elite families with strong, pure powers, and then muddier lines whose powers have been diluted by mismanaged bloodlines. The Osterraven and Wyler Symms families both have strong magic genetics. They have chosen mates and created children to increase the strength of the line’s magic. Families will contract for a pair to mate. Often there are twins and occasionally triplets produced. The releasing of eggs and fertilizing success are controlled by magic.
“Your sire, Ethan Osterraven, contracted with your mother and my sister, Elena, to produce two children. He wished to claim both children for his family, and the contract was therefore complex and quite valuable to both of sides. However, it seemed he sought to cheat us. Ethan is quite powerful and wields his power with great subtlety. During their lovemaking and without Elena’s knowledge, he forced a third egg to be released and fertilized it. Because he held the pregnancy in such value, he lived with her through the entire ten months, which allowed him to successfully hide the extra child.
“But somehow Adriane realized something was amiss. She diverted Ethan away from the home and induced the birth early. Elena was unaware during this time. Carrying three babies is difficult for any woman, but she was somewhat frail and the magic Ethan deployed to hide your existence from her and soothe her fears made her mentally foggy. Add the magic Adriane used to induce labor, and Elena was out of her mind. She remembers very little of that day.
“Adriane was furious at Ethan’s perfidy and treachery. The contract was written in such a way that he could claim all three children. Adriane refused to let that happen. She took you and vanished, and we never saw or heard from her again while she lived. She left a note telling us what Ethan had done, but of course, there was no way to prosecute him.”
I took a few moments to digest that incredible story. I had a lot of questions, but one popped out ahead of the others. “Did anybody look for me and Aunty Mommy?”
Mason shook his head. “We were bitterly angry, and Elena was gravely ill for months and unable to have more children. If we retrieved you both, Ethan could claim you, and none of us were willing to reward his despicable, vile conniving and the harm he’d done to your mother.”
All of this was incredibly bizarre, yet made sense in a weird way. If what he said wasn’t a fairytale to fool me. “What did you think Adriane would do with me? Did you know she’d make me her personal voodoo doll? Torture me six ways from Sunday?”
Points to Mason for not looking away or soft-selling his reply. “We knew it was likely. You represented everything she’d had to give up as well as Ethan’s trickery. Adriane was never one to forgive. She could hold a grudge into eternity, and she could be cruel.”
“And that didn’t bother you? To know your sister was going to be putting your niece through a living hell?”
“As I said, we were angry and in her action, we found justice.” His thin lips pulled back in a grimace. “I am not proud of my behavior. I should have found you and protected you. I have often regretted that I didn’t.”
“Not so much that you came looking, though.”
“A few years ago, I began a search and quickly aborted it.”
“Why?”
“The circumstances were less than auspicious.”
I rolled my eyes. “And here we go back to vague answers that tell me nothing. I thought you were going to actually give me some information.”
“You aren’t very patient, are you?”
“Not one of my virtues, no,” I said.
A smile flickered across his mouth. “I began my search in a time of turmoil between some of the ruling families. I quickly realized that finding you could put you in grave danger. As I said, your heritage—your blood—makes you very desirable and also makes you dangerous. There are those who seek to claim you and, if they cannot, to kill you. The fact that you are unprotected makes you easy prey, as you discovered tonight.”
“Who did it? Who came after me? Who destroyed my home?” Anger overrode my growing fear. Not for me so much as for Lorraine, Jen, and Stacey, for my employees, all of whom wouldn’t stand a chance against a magic attack. What if the same magic that had ripped apart the furniture and walls had been turned on human bodies?
The very thought of it made me sick and turned my fury up to high.
“I don’t yet know. I have called in my people to help investigate and protect you.”
“Why does Damon think my own family did this?”
“Because you are not technically a member of the Wyler Symms family. You are Osterraven and it’s quite possible some of them perceive you as a threat.”
“Me? A threat to them? I suppose your side feels the same way. I guess I won the criminally insane relatives lottery.” I shook my head. “Whatever. I don’t care. Family isn’t about blood, anyhow. My family is made up of the people I love and would die for. They’d die for me. The woman who was actually blood tried to kill me, and now it looks like more of my blood relatives are trying to do the same. Far as I’m concerned, you’re all just an accident of genetics and I don’t want anything to do with you.”
The last bit wasn’t true. Not really. But right now, I wanted to drive them all off with a pitchfork until I could figure out who wasn’t out to get me. If any of them fell into that category.
He frowned and bent forward. “We aren’t monsters—not many of us, at any rate. I can help you repair what’s been broken. You won’t lose a thing. I promise.”
He meant using magic. I shook my head. “Not a chance. The police are involved, and there’s been news coverage. People will wonder if it’s all turned back right like that.” I snapped my fingers. “I’ll fix things the good old-fashioned way. Insurance will cover the losses.”
“The perpetrators will be back,” he warned reluctantly. “You’ll want to establish magical security. And once the news is out, others will come. Many will want to meet you. Not just family.”
I liked that he didn’t try to talk me out of it. I might be a pawn in this game, but he at least pretended he was going to respect my decisions.
“The news is out,” I said. “How do they even know who or what I am or where to find me?” I asked. “Until you got that note from Aunty Mommy, you didn’t even know.”
“That is a question I’m going to get to the bottom of as well,” he said, and the sharp edge of his voice said tha
t he would make whoever had betrayed him pay and pay well.
Right about then is when our food was delivered. I dug in. If my mouth was full, I could think, and right now, I was so overloaded that I wasn’t sure which way was up.
Mason ate slowly, cutting everything up in small squares with precise strokes. Even the bacon.
“I would like to see what the key unlocks,” he said. “Will you take me to your mother’s estate?”
“Get in line.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m taking the cops on a tour in a couple hours. You could come, I suppose. They wanted to know who her heir was and that’s you.”
Mason gave me an inscrutable look. He was good at those. “I have no intention of taking any portion of my sister’s belongings. I plan to turn all of it over to you.”
“No thanks.”
His brows rose. “She left behind a large fortune. You are entitled to it all.”
“I don’t want anything. Light it all on fire if you want.”
His lips curved into a faint smile. “It is owed to you, at the very least, for the hurt she caused you. Understand that you will need that money to establish yourself in our society. Wealth, after all, is power in its way.”
“Who said I’m interested in your society? Speaking of that, exactly where are you from? Because you said ‘ruling families.’ Do you have your own country somewhere?”
“Our country—our world—overlays the ordinary world. The ruling families have domain over the magic world, maintaining laws and justice and keeping renegades from unleashing magic on mundanes. I have homes in various countries. I spend much of my time in Milan, London, and New York. Have you ever been?”
“Never been out of California.”
“No, I suppose Adriane wouldn’t want to risk anybody accidentally discovering you.”
“She couldn’t kill me without trouble for Elena. Why is that?”
“Birth contracts are usually made with magical guarantees. To ensure the safety of the children and the parents, harm to one will result in equal harm to the other. The length of time that those constraints hold are agreed upon in the contract. In this case, the terms were a bit unusual. That death of any of the children would result in the agonizing death of both parents. Ethan dictated those terms, no doubt planning his deception and wishing to protect the third child, which made sense, given the tensions between factions of the families and the hard feelings that would rise when his treachery was discovered. The particular contract clause was set to expire on your twenty-seventh birthday.”
That was only seven months away.
“I wasn’t going to survive to my twenty-eighth, was I? Not if my—” I caught myself before I called that sadistic bitch my mother again. “Not if Aunty Mommy had anything to do with it.”
“Given what you’ve told me about your treatment, it’s unlikely,” Mason agreed.
“You have captured Damon’s undivided attention,” he noted suddenly. “He hasn’t glanced away from you since I arrived.”
Mr. Prettypants sat across the diner with a cup of coffee in front of him, watching me with undiluted intensity.
“He’s a prick.”
Mason’s brows lifted as he studied me. “I’ve always found him to be a gentleman.”
“Obviously he’s got you fooled.” Just like me. Or rather, I had closed my eyes to the signs. Such as trying to kidnap me.
“Surely he hasn’t hurt you.” Mason’s eyes hardened and all of a sudden, a prickle of unease ran down my neck. In that moment, he bore too strong a resemblance to Aunty Mommy for comfort.
“He lied to me.” His kisses were lies. Which had hurt me, but I wasn’t going to admit that to anybody. “Anyway, he’s staring because—” I broke off, a revolting thought occurring to me.
“You don’t think he’s got some bizarre idea about contracting a kid with me, do you? Because a) that contract business of yours is beyond disgusting, and b) if I ever have kids, which I highly doubt I will, I’m going to have them with someone who gets me all hot and bothered and isn’t in it for the genetics.” How’s that for under the heading things I never thought I’d hear myself say?
Mason smiled. “I realize I’m not the proper demographic, but I always thought Damon attractive. You don’t find him so?”
I flushed. “Oh, please. He’s sex on a stick. He’s also a snake in the grass, and now that I have a little better idea what’s going on, I trust him less than before. For all I know, he’s thinking about how sexy my DNA is and how he’d like to contract the hell out of me.”
“I think you may be judging him unfairly. For what it’s worth, I chose him to represent me with you because he’s loyal, honest, and trustworthy.”
“I got a different impression when he tried to kidnap me. Why send him anyway? Why not just contact me yourself?”
“To protect you. I didn’t want to lead trouble to your door, though it appears that it came anyhow.”
“Not your fault. The cops think whoever destroyed my place might have murdered Mommy Dearest, and if that’s the case, they were here before you found out I was here too.”
Mason considered that a moment. “I suppose it’s possible, though unlikely. Adriane has been a ghost since she left. Her killer likely has nothing to do with whoever is coming after you. Rest assured, however, that I will find the culprit ... and whoever killed my sister.” His smile gave me a cold shiver. “I would like to punish their temerity myself.”
I had a feeling the perps would enjoy Mason’s punishment a whole lot less than what they’d get from the good ol’ American justice system. Given what they’d done to my place, I was in no mood to sympathize.
“I wouldn’t mind getting a shot at them myself.”
“Now then, the question is where will you stay while your home and shop are repaired?”
“I’ll get a hotel that takes pets for a couple nights or so until my loft can be made livable, and then I’ll go home.”
My new uncle frowned. “Do you think that’s wise? Besides, I understand the damage is extensive.”
“I’ll beef up security.” I’d slap up a dozen magic walls, plus whatever else I could think of. “As for the damage, I just need a working bathroom, a coffee maker, a fridge, and a stove, and even the last two aren’t all that necessary. I’ll throw a mattress on the floor, and I’ll be fine.”
His eyes widened. “Certainly not. It sounds dreadful.”
I had to laugh at his horror. “Maybe, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. A little discomfort won’t kill me.”
He shook his head. “No. You will be too vulnerable. You can’t be allowed to live that way.”
That brought me up short. Anger crackled through me. “Excuse me? I can’t be allowed?”
“It is much too dangerous. You have no idea who you’re up against or what they are capable of. If I know my sister, you aren’t even trained.”
He spoke like the decision was made and I would cave to his orders. I had news for him.
My lip curled. “I know enough. Anyhow, it’s my choice, not yours.”
He scowled. “Please be reasonable, Rebecca—”
“My name’s Beck,” I snapped. I stood up and dug in my purse, tossing a twenty-dollar bill on the table. Without another word, I wheeled and marched away, ignoring his attempts to summon me back. I thrust through the door and stopped. Ajax sat in the driver’s seat of Damon’s truck, his nose poked out the three-inch crack we’d left at the top.
I was tired and pissed and beyond out of patience. I strode to the locked truck and thrust a strand of magic in the door. It popped open and Ajax nosed my ear.
“Let’s go,” I said, patting my leg. He jumped down.
“Where are you going?”
Damon stood behind me. He looked tense and worried. I don’t know what the hell he had to be worried about. Fucked-up assholes hadn’t torn apart his home and business. Fucked-up relatives hadn’t crawled out of the woodwork th
inking they could run his life for him.
The glass door of the diner pushed open, and Mason stepped out.
“That’s none of your damned business. Either one of you.”
Damon took a step toward me, the tendons in his neck tightening, his arms knotting with tension. “You’re wrong.”
“Then I’m wrong but that’s my problem, isn’t it? I don’t need anybody telling me how or where to live. I’ve had enough of that bullshit to last me twelve lifetimes, and I’m not putting up with that kind of crap again. Understand?”
I whirled and strode off out of the parking lot, Ajax trotting at my knee. I turned and headed toward downtown. It was stupid. I had nowhere to go. No clothing stores were open at this hour, and I needed to get home anyway to meet with the detectives in a few hours. It was at least a five-mile walk. Actually, that was good. I needed the exercise to work off my anger.
I swung into a ground-eating pace, my brain tumbling with all that had happened. I wasn’t particularly surprised when Damon’s truck pulled up beside me a few minutes later.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Luckily his tone was casual and not combative. Lucky for him, anyway. “I think I’m walking. I think I’m breathing. I think I’m using my lips and tongue to form words to answer a really dumbass question.”
I have to admit his laugh went a long way toward filing the sharpest edge off my anger.
“You’ve had a long day and night. You sure you want to walk all the way home? I can take you to my hotel. You can shower and I’ll taxi you back to your place.”
The fact that he didn’t try to bully me into anything made me waver. That and the shower. That sounded like heaven. Nevertheless, I wasn’t going to be bribed.
“No point in showering. I don’t have clean clothes to change into and it’s disgusting to put dirty underwear back on after getting clean.”
“I’ll find clothes.”
I snorted. “Where? And don’t say Walmart. I’d rather wait until the shops open.”
“Trust me.” He grinned, eyes gleaming, fully aware I had a problem trusting him and daring me to do it anyway.
I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at him. Barely.
Putting the Fun in Funeral Page 17