But a seven-hundred-year-old vampire did not fall for a twenty-six-year-old mostly human waitress just because her succubus-tainted blood acted like Viagra for the undead. There was more to this story, and until I learned it, I needed to keep my head on straight. Faeries might be real, but fairytale endings sure as hell weren’t. I’d learned that lesson at the tender age of six.
Rans regarded me for a long moment. “There are reasons why the Fae are so fixated on you, and I don’t know yet what all of those reasons are.”
I scowled. “I thought it was because Grandpa Demon shit all over the Big Important Peace Treaty by knocking up a human woman on the sly. And because my mom somehow managed to get pregnant with me, in turn.”
“Then why not just kill you?” Rans asked. “It wouldn’t have been difficult, and it isn’t as though they lack practice at it.”
My head whipped around so fast that the car swerved in its lane before I corrected it. “Wait. Are you saying you think the Fae were responsible for killing my mother?”
Snippets of conversation and memory slotted into place in my mind like puzzle pieces. Fae found it easier to control the mentally ill. My mother’s assassin had been mentally ill. He’d scrawled ‘Kill the demons’ on his cell wall in blood, the night he’d hung himself.
“Oh, yes—almost certainly,” Rans said, breaking through my moment of revelation.
I swallowed hard. “The forensics report said that the hollow-point rifle round the gunman used had been filled with salt. Do you know why that was?”
“Full-blooded demons are functionally immortal,” Rans told me, “but their bodies are vulnerable to salt. It burns them, and enough of it can incapacitate them completely, at least for a time. From what I know of cambions like your mother, the salt was probably an unnecessary embellishment. The bullet alone would have sufficed. It’s inclusion does, however, imply more knowledge and preparation than your average demon-fearing religious lunatic might be expected to employ.”
My hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly that the knuckles turned white. “So I’ve been right, all this time. There was more to my mother’s death than a random lunatic’s delusions.”
“Far more, yes,” Rans confirmed.
Vindication should have felt better than this.
“Doesn’t really help, does it?” Rans asked, eerily perceptive.
“Ask me again after I’ve got Dad back, and when no one is trying to kidnap or kill me,” I said at length.
Rans did not reply.
I refused to acknowledge the little voice in my head that whispered, And when will that be?
* * *
Ninety minutes later, I pulled into Tom and Glynda’s garage. There was no indication that anyone had attempted to follow us, though Rans had even gone so far as to direct me out of the city to a heavily wooded area that would confuse any potential aerial surveillance.
I might not have been hungry when I’d picked up food for Rans’ blood donors earlier, but my stomach was rumbling audibly by the time we entered the deserted house.
“Pizza,” I declared without preamble. “I am totally ordering a pizza right now.”
If I was going to end up being hunted for the rest of my tragically short life, I was damn well taking advantage of my apparent physical recovery while I could. Pizza was an autoimmune dieter’s nightmare—dairy and nightshade sauce served on a gluten-y crust. And I was going to eat an entire Hawaiian one just as soon as a delivery driver could get it here.
“If it involves pineapple, I don’t want to hear about it,” Rans said with clear distaste. “But yes, you might as well. You’ll need the calories for later.”
I eyed him warily. “Why? What happens later?”
His quick grin was the slightly unhinged one I’d seen on a few occasions before. “Training, of course. Had you forgotten?”
Between the day’s revelations and the small matter of a random old woman attempting to plunge a knife through my eye, I certainly had forgotten about his musings this morning regarding self-defense training.
“Oh,” I said. “That. Okay.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t have misgivings. I did. But I also had a body that—for the first time in years—felt strong and vital. Part of me was intrigued to find out what I could do with it.
“Order your disgusting fruit-on-a-pizza while I talk to Albigard,” Rans said. “Or while I leave a message for Albigard, at least. The useless sod is probably nowhere near his phone right now.”
I frowned as I hunted for a phonebook, since the cheap flip-phones I’d bought were no good for internet searches. “What do you mean? Doesn’t he have a cell?”
“He’s Fae,” Rans said, as though that explained anything. “Their magic is hard on tech. The irritating twat has an analog landline with a remote voicemail service that mostly works... when he can be bothered to answer it or check messages.”
I raised my eyebrows, remembering the fried clock display in his Mercedes. It hadn’t just been flashing twelve; it had been completely scrambled. The car looked like an older model, too—perfectly restored and maintained, certainly, but I wondered now if that was because newer models relied so heavily on computerized components.
“Mind you,” Rans continued, “the upside is that Fae are rubbish at electronic surveillance. Not that they can’t get humans to do it for them, but in general it means that you won’t find them tapping phone lines or using technological tracking devices on cars. It’s just not the way their minds work. They’re more likely to use spells.”
“And yet you got us fake ID and credit cards,” I pointed out. “And you wouldn’t let me call Dad for fear they’d find out.”
“That’s different,” he said. “They’ve got human law enforcement involved in their attempts to track you down. But while Albigard may be out of favor with the Unseelie Court, they’re hardly going to
