“So Duff is Jacinta’s son?”
“No, dear, Duff fathered Jacinta’s only son—Eli.”
This sent my head spinning. “Hold on a second. All the information I’ve received about Jacinta claims that Eli was her grandson, not son.”
“That’s because she made sure everyone thought that’s who he was.”
“This is so confusing…”
She smiled sympathetically. “Jacinta has a way of making everything confusing. Anyway, we’re getting sidetracked. You have some questions. Are they about the order she’s placed on you?”
“Yes.”
Lavie squeezed my knee and I turned to look at her. “No one in the Alliance is going to carry that out. I’ve already told you, we’ll make sure of it.”
I nodded, leaned forward to dump two teaspoons of sugar into my cup and then swamped the tea with milk, before settling back onto the couch and taking a sip.
“Tell me about this woman,” I said.
“Jacinta’s been the Head of the Alliance for over three decades. She spends a lot of time in Rome, but lives in a castle in France. She always thought she deserved better than what Australia had to offer.” Sally paused and her eyes took on a faraway shine. “She’s a necromancer who often disguised her talent as psychic—even to the magical community. Being a necromancer is a huge thing, to be able to raise the spirits of the dead gives a woman a lot of power and I don’t think she could handle it most of the time. She also loved to flaunt it, especially in front of little Eli.”
“So it’s true? He became obsessed with it because of her?” Eli Moss—my deceased mother’s second husband and Willow’s father—was gone. His body torn apart by a Lamia and spirit lost in the ether.
Sally nodded, taking her cup of tea from the tray. “Pepita and I often told her she was making a lot of mistakes, but she never did listen. Even now, she’s the queen of denial. She’s careless and loves to take risks. When she retired from the public eye, she set her mind to scaling the ladder of the Alliance and it didn’t take long. Treachery isn’t a lengthy road to take, especially when the organization was in shambles.”
“She sounds awful,” I said, taking another sip.
“She is.” Lavie was busy munching on a chocolate-chip cookie. “She’s also power hungry.”
“Lavie!”
“What? We all know it’s true.”
“That’s where she’s been ever since, overseeing everything to make sure supernatural creatures don’t reveal themselves to humans. She also monitors those with gifts.” Sally looked at me, holding my gaze. “She’s been especially interested in you for years. Ever since she found out Pepita asked Oren to watch over you on her deathbed.”
“What’s that got to do with her?”
She shrugged. “She suspected your granny of doing something to strengthen her spook catcher bloodline. She didn’t have any evidence and Pepita denied it until the day she died, but Jacinta was obsessed with finding out what.”
Professor Claude Spooker told me my grandmother had performed some sort of ritual—involving the demonic—which strengthened my talent when I was an infant. So Jacinta’s suspicions were correct, but it didn’t give her an excuse to meddle.
“Doesn’t sound like it was any of her business,” I said.
“Did I mention she’s nuts?” Lavie added, twirling her fingers around her temple. “Some of the stuff she comes up with is crazy! I’m just glad I’ve only met her twice, and that was two times too many.”
Sally gave her niece a pointed look before saying, “You’re right, it wasn’t her business, but she was fixated with Pepita and Oren’s relationship. She even suspected that he’d fathered Cian.”
“Oh boy,” Lavie said, rolling her eyes. “How were you ever friends with this creepy lady?”
“In spite of her being nosy and creepy, she was right.” The words tasted like acid on my tongue. What did this Jacinta woman really want?
Lavie snorted. “It was a lucky guess.”
“You both know the truth,” I said.
“Only because Oren told us recently,” Sally said. “Jacinta wasn’t always so callous, but her preoccupation with your grandparents fuelled a lot of her worst decisions.”
I sighed. “Do you know if my grandma kept spook catching after leaving the Alliance?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if she did. Being born with the hunter gene isn’t something one can switch off. Well, unless age does it. It’s what happened to me.”
“Aunty, that’s a lie and you know it!” Lavie said, spitting cookie crumbs all over her shirt. “You can still kick demonic butt, you just
choose
not to.”
Sally laughed. “You love to exaggerate, don’t you?”
“Do you know why she left the Alliance?” I asked. Sure, I’d heard from both my grandfather and Oren that Grandma had been ready to lead a normal life and start having a family. Yet, if that were true she wouldn’t have kept a secret room inside her house. Or had Oren’s baby.
“Pepita always said she left because she was sick of it, and encouraged Oren to go with her, but that wasn’t the real reason. Jacinta and Pepita just didn’t agree on anything towards the end, and Jacinta resented your granny for winning the affection of Oren. She wanted him all to herself.” She paused to smile. “If I’m honest with you, back in the day, we all wanted the charismatic Oren McKee but he only ever had eyes for Pepita Garcia. Even after she left, he never loved anyone else. Sure, he had flings but never anything real.”
“Um, did you have a fling with him, Aunty?” Lavie teased.
She shook her head, but the color in her cheeks told us otherwise.
I cleared my throat, not wanting to linger on Oren’s romantic entanglements. “But you don’t think my grandmother left because she’d had enough of the hunting life?”
Sally shook her head, looking thoughtful. “It’s funny, I haven’t thought about this in years. No, I’m pretty sure she didn’t leave because she was over the spook catching or the meetings and obligations. I always thought she left because of the fight she had with Jacinta. I don’t know what it was about, but things got so heated between them that Pepita left less than a month after it. As far as I know, they never spoke to each other again.”
So Grandma didn’t trust Jacinta Mills. Maybe I could find out why via her journal.
I wish I could spend a nice evening reading, instead of trying to help a possessed friend.
I polished off my tea just as Lavie refilled hers.
“What else did you want to know about Jacinta?” Sally asked, looking at me.
“Did she ever meet Willow?”
“I don’t think so. As far as I know, she never returned to Australia when she got to the top of the Alliance.” She sighed, and took another sip. “Though, I don’t know for sure. She’s a very resourceful woman.”
“Why does she want me dead?”
I could’ve sworn she paled at the question. “I don’t believe the reason stated on the Order. She claims that if the
Obscurus
get their hands on you, your power will become our downfall.”
“Yet she wants Willow dead as well.” So she had to know something about my half sister.
“Jacinta is convinced the risk of you coming into your full power is threat enough. She’s probably just applying the same theory to your sister.”
“And you don’t agree with her?”
“No one agrees with her,” Lavie said.
“Like Lavie said, none of us will execute the order under such flimsy terms,” Sally added. “No one would be stupid enough to kill two innocent girls without cold hard facts.”
I was far from innocent, but it was true I didn’t deserve to be hunted down. “But it’s a formal order so one of you has to do it by Halloween, right?”
“Not if we overthrow her decision and make the other members realize that by killing you and Willow, we jeopardize a lot more. We need you both alive.” Sally placed her cup on the coffee table. “I will shield you with my life. We all will. There is no way she is going to convince any of us to kill you.”
“Thanks,” I said, but didn’t really feel it. With so much magic involved and the darkness I’d faced this year, I knew that if Jacinta wanted me dead, she’d find a way to do it. Nothing these kind people did or said would change the outcome. There was one thing I didn’t understand, though. “Why does she think I have so much power?”
“She doesn’t,” Sally answered. “It all stems back to her suspicion about strengthening the spook catcher line and Oren fathering Pepita’s youngest child.”
“Does she think I’ll wake up one day and magically inherit this power?” I didn’t want to sound snide towards either of these lovely women I considered my friends, but the only people who knew about the surge of power I would receive after my grandma moved onto the Afterlife were Professor Spooker, Oren, Papan and what was left of the delusional
Obscurus
.
“I don’t know the details. All I know is that she sees you as a threat.”
She saw me as a threat, therefore wanted to wipe me out. The more I heard, the more suspicious I was of her knowledge and intentions. It sounded to me like Jacinta had a hidden agenda, which might be as simple as wanting Willow and me dead because we were the descendants of the man who rejected her and the woman who’d stolen him away.
“She claims it’s for the greater good,” Lavie said, rolling her eyes.
“Isn’t it always?” I snickered.
“Is there anything else you’d like to know?” Sally asked.
“No, that’s all. Thanks for answering so much, Sally.”
“I’m always here for you.” She leaned over, took both of my hands in hers and bowed her head. “We will do whatever we can to keep you safe.”
The bell above the door chimed and a customer stepped into the store.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Sally said, standing up. “What can I help you with today?”
“Hi, I’m looking for something in particular,” the squat, bald man said.
“Sure, come this way and I’ll see if I can help.” She led him towards the registers.
“Well, what do you think of Jacinta now?” Lavie asked.
“I think it’s a shame that someone like her is in charge of good people trying to make the world a safer place.” But it also explained why I hadn’t been asked to become part of the Alliance.
Lavie nodded and a sly smile spread across her lips. “So, are you ready for the sewers?”
“Sure am.”
“Great. I can’t wait to hear about this demon you saw.”
I wasn’t as excited to share what I’d found out about Gareth but a plan was starting to hatch inside my brain. Lavie wielded a very strong resistance against the demonic, so I was hoping she would be willing to help me with the constable.
Chapter Ten
The sewers didn’t turn out to be what I’d expected.
“It’s not so much a sewer as it is a stormwater drain,” Lavie explained with a smile.
We were striding in several inches of water, so her admission made sense after the amount of rain we’d been having lately. I was grateful for my knee-high boots and the fact I’d tucked my ancient stretchy jeans into them. Everything I wore might eventually end up in the bin, but it didn’t matter.
“Are you sure you don’t want a light?”
I shook my head, glancing at the headlamp attached to Lavie’s forehead by a thick leather band. She looked like a mad scientist. “I can see just fine.”
“That’s pretty cool, you know? I’ve noticed you can see in the dark and I wish I’d inherited that advantage. It sure would come in handy.”
I could see what she meant. The light coming from her headlamp lit a circular patch directly in front of her, only reflecting a few paces ahead.
“So, what are we doing here again?”
“I need to find something for Saul.”
“Ah, the elusive Saul.” I’d heard a lot about this mysterious good demon both Lavie and Papan called a friend, but no one had offered to introduce him to me.
“He’s really not that elusive. If you want to meet him, I can—”
“Just tell me what we’re looking for so we can get out of here.” As curious as I was, I just wanted to get on with this.
“I thought you wanted to cross-train.”
“Yes, I did, but not in the sewers.”
“Storm-drain—”
“Whatever.”
“It’s not so bad. I do most of my work in these tunnels. I don’t know why so many demons like to hide here. It’s ridiculous when you think about it.” Lavie laughed and the sound echoed around the curved brick walls surrounding us. “Still, their going underground makes my life a whole lot easier.”
“Is this a job or a favor?”
“A well-paying job,” she answered. “We’re looking for imps.”
“What the hell is an imp?”
“Most see them as demonic pets enslaved to perform assigned tasks.” As she moved the circle of light lit the brick wall in front of us.
“So this guy wants slaves?”
She shook her head and red strands swished in front of her face and over the headlamp. “No, he’s not like that. He never binds or keeps them as prisoners. He actually offers them a better way of life—shelter, food, and the opportunity to do something useful instead of living with the rats.” She pushed her hair away from her face.