Harper nodded. “So for you, it’s about having choices and making informed decisions.”
“Yes. In an ideal world, Harp, we’d have all the details in front of us and all the time we needed to make the big decisions—the ones that inevitably show up as forks in the road where we have to choose one way or the other, and rarely, rarely get to experience both.”
He nodded along as I spoke, then shook his head. “I’m not sure I can go to school here. And that makes me sad. Senior year is supposed to be…” He let his words trail off, but hunched shoulders finished his thought.
“Can the druids do something that would prevent your wings from being seen by humans?”
“Don’t know.” Harper rubbed the sides of his knees with his palms. “But if I want to keep my human friends and live in the human world, I have to hide an essential part of who—of what—I am.”
“Hiding your wings only hides the physical manifestation of the path you’ve chosen, Harper. If we can solve that problem, maybe there’s way for you to exist as both grandson and great-grandson of men who have wings, and as Harper Flechette du Sang, master of the blood-blade.”
That got a sharp laugh and some easing up. “I think I’m going to stick with Harper Jones for now, Mom, if that’s okay with you. I have some shit to work out around Dad.”
“I have some shit to work out around my dad, too,” I said.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked.
I turned one of Benôit’s thumb rings around and around while contemplating how much to share with my son. “Yeah, I do.”
I decided to share as much as I knew. “I have no memories of my father, Harp. None. And my clearest memories of my mother take place underwater, in the ocean off the coast of Maine where I was born and where we lived with her parents.
“In some of those memories, my mother swims away from me, but there’s no fear attached to watching her disappear. And I often see flippers beside her.” I took a deep breath. “Christoph told me my father had wings, but he rejected the life offered by those wings and chose the sea. Benôit—my father—had a lover who was a selkie and she let him borrow her skin.”
“Selkie?” Harper asked. “What’s a selkie?”
“Another one of the mythical beings I’m sure we’ll meet one of these days.” A dry laugh caught in my throat. “A selkie can shed its skin and assume a human form when they’re on land and become a seal when they’re in the water. Anyway, Christoph hasn’t seen my father, or heard from him, since the day he found these rings in a pile of clothes at the edge of the sea. He thought I would want them.” I held out my thumbs. Harper’s intense examination of the metal got me wondering if it would be better if he wore them. I was going to suggest we ask Christoph, when the final lines of the dedication scrolled across my vision.
Beware the…
…Water’s Edge
Could my mother have been pointing to the selkie or some other aquatic magical creature? Could Odilon be connected to me through Benôit or even through my mother? Were the last two lines of her dedication warnings? Because the White-Winged Man had to mean Christoph. His arrival brought along with it a sliver of my father’s story, and my father’s story was starting to feel like a cautionary tale.
“It’s a lot, isn’t it, Mom?” Harper’s voice brought me back to the moment.
“Sure is,” I said, leaning back on my hands. “How do you want to handle your father?”
Doug had started falling apart at the seams around the time Tanner removed the rune tattoo from my belly. Then, on a Monday in early August when Harper and Thatcher were on their way to the farm where they worked, Doug waylaid the boys at one of their favorite bakeries and forced the two into his truck. I didn’t have all the details about what happened in the hours after—I was waiting for Harper to share when he was ready.
What became clear was that Doug’s deteriorating mental state was linked to his mother. He thought if he could somehow present Harper’s wings as proof he had magic to pass on to his offspring, then Meribah would embrace Doug and invite him to rise to what he viewed as his rightful position within the Flechette Clan.
“I’m not even close to forgiving him, Mom. But I’m not as freaked out about what he did as I used to be.”
“I will follow your lead. And you can let me know if you want updates on where he is and how he’s doing.” Malvyn was my point person on most things related to the Flechettes. He was the one who let me know Doug was at Grand St. Kitt’s in Vancouver, for an as-yet-undetermined amount of time.
“Mal said the same thing, Mom. Thanks for wanting to protect me.” Harper leaned forward and stood. “And thanks for the talk.”
“Did it help?” I asked, unsure if we’d accomplished anything.
He grinned. “Yeah. I already know I’m not going to get everything figured out all at once, but maybe this weekend will help me decide on the school question. Gramps told me there are a few private schools for Magicals in Canada. He offered to take me around to visit them.”
That was news to me, although I knew from Sallie there were schools for Fae children on Vancouver Island. “I’m excited for all of you. Selfishly, I want you nearby and
