She continues, “There’s so much… I’m not sure where to start in all of this.”
“Start at the beginning,” Wade offers in his soothing way.
Her gaze rises, landing on him momentarily. A question lingers there, but she nods. “The beginning… That’s a place I haven’t cared to visit for quite some time.” Her eyes dart back and forth with her thoughts as she works to pull the pieces together. “Autumn, all this time, you must be wondering why I despised the supernatural world so much. Especially knowing what you know now about your gifts…and your father’s.”
My lips press into a thin line, and I nod. She already knows these questions have lingered in my mind. I’ve even voiced them to her.
“I have lived in the world of the supernatural far longer than you realize. Far longer than you can perhaps comprehend,” she says, dropping her gaze again to the floor.
Alarm bells go off inside my head and I can’t help but push the stool back and stand up. “What do you mean?”
Her sorrowful hazel eyes meet mine and her eyebrows upturn in the middle. She holds her breath and releases it, as if the breath itself was a heavy burden to carry. “Autumn, in times past, before supernatural beings were accepted the way they are, we were often considered to be gods. Particularly those of us who defy the traditional roles of death.”
My brain seizes up and it’s my turn to be flustered. I take another step back from the bar. “Us?”
Wade scoots his own stool back, standing up and preparing to get between us, if need be. His silver eyes dart between us, as if trying to decide who will make the first move.
“Yes, us,” she says, swallowing hard. “I’m sorry, sweet girl. In another life, I was so excited to show you the beauty in our powers. But…”
“Us?” I repeat, my hands flying to my hair as I pull at the red strands. This can’t be happening. There’s no way my mom is a supernatural being. No possible way. I drop my hands, twisting back to her and demand, “If you have powers, what are they? What are you? Prove it.”
“I have many powers. They’ve developed through the ages,” she whispers.
I close my eyes, trying to process her words. Ages?
“Are you saying you’re one of the old gods?” Wade asks, somehow managing to break the chaos clouding my mind and asking a question buried in my thoughts.
My head snaps up just in time to see her flinch.
“No…” I say, raising my hands and backing away. “No. Just, no. You can’t be. I’ve lived with you my whole life. You like your sleep. You hate to argue. You eat eggs, drink protein shakes, and work out. You do Pilates, for crying out loud. You can’t—”
Looking up from beneath her eyebrows, she says, “I’ve gone by many names in my lifetime. But the one that stuck in the pages of history is Hecate. I can’t say it’s my favorite.”
My mouth drops open and my mind goes completely blank. It’s like the entire world I live in, everything about it, has been nothing but one big, fat lie.
For the first time, Mom walks around the counter that was separating us. Wade takes a protective step forward, but the look on my mother’s face makes him step back.
“Autumn, you have to know, there are so many times I wanted to tell you. To explain why you had certain gifts for things, like accidentally resurrecting the neighbor’s cat when you were nine and bringing birds who hit the window back to life. Instead, I had to pretend to ignore them—write them off as completely normal occurrences. It’s gone against every instinct I have to keep silent, but I had to protect you. That’s been my priority since—”
“Gifts? Ignore them? I don’t remember any of that. Until I went to live at Dad’s, I didn’t even know I had supernatural gifts,” I sputter.
Mom shakes her head, placing her hands on my shoulders. “That’s not true.”
“Then why don’t I remember?” I fire back.
“Because I made sure you didn’t,” she whispers, locking eyes with me. “Your memories around those events needed to be a blank slate or the Moirai would sense your growing power; your connection to the forces of life and death. They’d know you were still alive and they’d look for a way to take you from me.”
“But they’re Fate,” Wade sputters. “They create the fabric of reality for every single life. Wouldn’t her thread tell them she’s still alive? Hell, the fact that she is alive—wouldn’t that technically be their doing?”
“I don’t know,” Mom whispers, shooting a sideways glance toward Wade.
An absurd laugh bursts from my chest. “You don’t know? You’re a friggin’ goddess and you don’t know?”
Mom makes a face as she turns to me. “First of all, I’m no different from you or any other supernatural being. I just live longer. That’s all. Secondly, what I do know is that the signs—the red threads—they stopped appearing when you vanished. They didn’t start back up when you reappeared, either. What you did, resurrecting yourself, it should have been impossible. So we figured perhaps the Moirai didn’t know you’d returned. We took that chance and it worked well for us while we searched for answers.”
Wade’s eyes are wide as he looks between the two of us.
“If you’ve been wiping my memory anyway, why did we have to leave? Why did you take us from Dad? Ugh, none of this makes sense,” I say, slamming my hand on the table in frustration.
“The manor is at the center of a vortex. Its energy
