“Make sure she’s cared for,” I said evenly, and held out my hand for a pen.
The second stop of the day, the second reason I couldn’t return the animist mask to Xavier’s mansion, was prompted by my twisted paranormal attempt at being the good Samaritan. I’d decided I wasn’t the only one who needed to start taking responsibility for her actions. Regan was going to as well. It was a two-hour trip out to the Desert Valley Correctional Center, but on the way there I had plenty of time to rehearse my cover story-I was a reporter for a true crime magazine doing a feature on recovery programs for pedophiles-and I also had time to figure out what I was going to say to Regan DuPree’s mortal father. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. On the relatively rare occasion an agent of Light had turned to a mortal for companionship, they’d done so out of love. However, Shadows scoured humanity for a vessel where their own dark attributes could stew and spawn and therefore be given additional purchase in the world.
So I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if the guards had brought me a being with horns and a tail, but the thin, blinking, and bespeckled man who dropped into the plastic chair across from me had me blinking back. He picked up the wall phone with a hand that would have been elegant were it not for the scars scoring his wrists and palms. I might have felt some pity for him then, except the crosshatching of scars on his fingertips were especially thick. The former Father Michael had worked hard, and with some degree of success, to rid himself of his fingerprints. I had a feeling the wounds on his palms and arms had been due to slips in concentration rather than any deliberate attempt to harm himself.
There was also an odd angularity to the man’s face, and after a moment I realized it was because his features-jaw and cheekbones and brows-should’ve been placed on someone larger. The rest of his face was sunken, aged before its time, though unlined and pale from the lack of sun. His deep-set eyes sat passively on mine, though it felt like they looked everywhere at once. I saw another scar on the hollow of his neck, a perfect square raised so thickly and neatly, it had to have been traced by a blade over and over again. I realized it represented the collar on a priest’s frock and thought of the nerve it would take to cut so deeply and precisely right next to one’s own jugular. Father Michael, for all his humanity, had the grit of a Shadow.
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” he asked in a silky voice, when we’d finished looking each other over.
I neither agreed nor disagreed, in case this call was being recorded. “I know your daughter.”
Something akin to emotion passed over his face, and his lids flared a bit, nostrils widening as his tongue darted out to wet his lips. “Did she send you?”
“She’s why I’m here.”
He smiled now, and his cheekbones rose into sharp angles. It was like his face was made of putty; the grin changed him entirely. How many faces, I wondered, did this man have? “It’s amazing you found me. I know I’m not in the manuals, I’ll never be worthy of that, but it’s important that you know, that she knows, the human element weakens nothing. In fact, knowing my weaknesses has made me a master at pinpointing them in others. Like my daughter, I bet. She probably has incredible focus, right? An uncanny ability to wait out even the greatest threat to her survival?”
I thought of the first time I met Regan, how she’d betrayed a senior Shadow in an elaborate effort to get to me. How she’d risked even the Tulpa’s wrath. How she was stalking me through Ben. “Actually,” I said softly, “she’s a lot like her mother.”
He let out a wistful sigh as he remembered the woman who’d steered him directly into lifelong incarceration. “A great beauty, then, but with no patience for sentiment. I often think about her. Not Brynn, she always took care of herself, but my daughter. I always wondered how she fared growing up under the care of a woman devoid of sentiment.”
That little nugget snagged my attention. “What do you mean?”
Father Michael’s eyes blazed again as he realized he knew something I didn’t. I had a feeling it’d been a long time since he’d been able to talk about our world with someone. Good.
“Brynn DuPree only had passion for one thing. She was determined the Cancerian star sign stay in her direct bloodline. She wouldn’t even entertain the idea of it passing on to her younger siblings, much less anyone in the extended family. That’s why she didn’t mate with a man of the Zodiac, choosing instead to propagate with a mortal of the same sign. Thank God she settled on me.” He crossed himself in a sincere mockery of piety.
“Why would that cause Brynn to turn to you?”
“The men of the Zodiac actively court a woman who can improve their lineage, but because the line is matriarchal, the women can turn to a human for their needs…if they find one worthy of them, someone whose humanity provides them with an even greater strength of will and resolve than the male members of the Shadow Zodiac.”
Which was exactly what Regan had said about Ben. I fought off a wave of fear so strong it felt like nausea.
“Like you?” I asked, but Michael interpreted it as a statement of fact.
He inclined his head. “As we don’t possess the more obvious physical skills of our supernatural counterparts, the chosen must work to turn their weaknesses into strengths. From that, true greatness is born. Of all the chosen, I worked the hardest to curry her favor, and she repaid me by allowing me to share in her illustrious bloodline. I am humbled that I could serve. Honored I gave her a daughter of the Shadow.”
I glared at the top of his bowed, balding head, and saw my eyes darken in the glass between us. “You lured two girls and a boy from a elementary schoolyard. None of them were ever seen again.”
“There are casualties in every war.”
“They were seven,” I said sharply.
He looked at me like he couldn’t comprehend what that had to do with anything, and it was all I could do not to dive through glass and pummel him with the phone still clasped at his ear. Of all the things I’d seen in both my mortal and supernatural lives, this man was one of the scariest. His expression wasn’t bland; it just reflected a psyche void of culpability on the too-wide face of a mortal who cut down innocent lives without reason or care. I could attempt to make sense of the Shadows’ purposes, but I could make no sense of this: a man who’d been birthed, suckled, cared for, and raised in a world he decided to destroy for others.
And that was what Regan wanted with Ben. To infect him with this stoic indifference. To turn him into a monster.
I sat back, needing a moment to compose myself. His vacuous eyes followed me, making me feel like he could shake my hand, kiss my cheek, and kill me all in the same minute. It was all the same to him, and I realized despite the benign appearance, Brynn had chosen correctly. How she’d initially seen past the simpering veneer and the priest’s robes was beyond me, but right now-even through the pane of unbreakable glass-the stench of a man whose soul had shriveled like a dried acorn was strong enough to have bile rising in my gorge.
“Your lineage shows in her,” I finally managed, truthfully. “Regan has many of your attributes.”
She was also this vile.
“Regan,” he whispered reverently, and I realized he hadn’t known until now. He shot me a smile that was almost shy, almost kind. “Thank you. You’ve given me a gift.”
“It’s just a name,” I muttered, pissed I’d given him even a second of happiness.
His too-wide lips pursed. “Oh, but a name is everything. A name is all. You know that.”
I shuddered when he winked at me, and decided enough was enough. I felt dirty even sitting across from this man, and found myself wishing we were on some darkened street so I could take his scarred neck in my hands and squeeze. Instead I reached into my bag. “I have another gift for you as well.”
I let the package drop from the sleeve of my cuffed shirt where it’d been tucked in the crook of my elbow. Michael’s gaze lit on it greedily.
I put a finger to my lips, and let out a long, slow
He froze, eyes shining like marbles above the bulging cheekbones.
I erected a thin, mirrored wall, blocking the partition from the view of the guards and cameras, so they saw no movement between us. Then I put my hand to the glass with the package gripped in my palm, Michael mirrored me on the other side of the glass, and the barrier dissolved like steam. Our fingertips met, and I barely contained a shudder. It was like touching a cold slug, spineless movement the only thing giving it life. I’d never felt anything like it around a human before. I hoped never to again.
“What is it?” he asked, weighing it in his palm.
“You’ll know soon enough. Just don’t open it until you’ve received a clear sign.”
He nodded. A man who carved his own flesh would have the patience to wait.
