“Ainfean had a picture of both brothers together,” she mumbled into her hands as I sat down next to her.
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, and she lifted her head. “I look like him. Lorcan. My father. Only a little, but I could see it in small things—the arch of our eyebrows. The shape of our earlobes.”
I didn’t know what to say. Evie seemed content to just get it all out, and she leaned back on the sofa, her eyes distant.
“Ainfean said Eachann blamed himself. Apparently it took him a while to realize Lorcan wasn’t off with his hand up some woman’s skirt. He said he should’ve known his brother was missing. Should’ve felt that he was in trouble. He left Ainfean and went looking for Lorcan.”
I ran it over in my mind. “Somehow, Lorcan ended up on the radar of whoever was running that fucking lab.”
Evie nodded. “They took him. And likely tortured him. Eachann disappeared as well, hunting for his brother. Ainfean said, at one point, Eachann thought Lorcan was in the Middleground. But she also met Mom.”
My mouth dropped open. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I’m getting this all mixed up.” Evie jolted to her feet and began to pace back and forth across the living room.
“After Mom realized Lucifer would be hunting you, she decided to find the Black Books. I guess she was desperate, Dani, and she’d probably heard that they were the only way to take down Lucifer.
“From what Ainfean said, Mom found one of the books. And she hid it here in Durham. Then she left you with someone she trusted and went looking for another one. But it was a trap.”
I closed my eyes for a long moment. Of course it was. I tried to put myself in Mom’s shoes. I’d been born when she was only nineteen, which meant she’d been in her early twenties when she’d been alone with a toddler to protect—a toddler the Underking wanted. So she’d decided she’d hunt for the books.
Of course, Samael had been collecting them for years. Mom hadn’t stood a chance of beating him to them.
I took a deep breath and slowly blew it out, watching Evie as she paced. “So,” I said slowly, “someone lured Mom into thinking she could get her hands on another book, and she ended up in the lab.”
Evie nodded. “And in the lab, she must have met Lorcan. My… father. She told Ainfean that he was tortured so badly he was barely sane by the end of it, but he held onto enough of himself to help her plan an escape.” Her eyes gleamed with tears, and I jumped to my feet, wrapping my arms around her.
“Oh, Evie.”
She sniffed, her shoulders trembled, and she pulled away, refusing to break down. “According to Ainfean, Lorcan got Mom out. He tried to get in touch with Eachann, but he was in another realm, so he sent mom to Ainfean. And he stayed behind to try to break some of the others out. That’s the last she ever heard of him.”
Evie’s face was so pale, she looked like she was about to pass out. I pulled her toward the sofa and pulled her down with me.
We both sat in silence for a long moment.
She turned and looked at me. “Do you remember anything from right before you turned three?”
I shrugged, wishing I did. Who had Mom left me with?
“Not really. My earliest memory is of mom telling me I had to share my toys with you.” I gave her a pissy look and was rewarded with a hiccup that might have been distantly related to a laugh.
I’d take it.
“There’s no record of you being anywhere near the lab. Mom gave you to someone to look after. Someone she must have trusted implicitly.”
I frowned. “Harriette?”
“I don’t think so. But I think Harriette knew who it was, and that’s why they killed her.”
My stomach swam at the memory of Harriette’s body. It hadn’t been an easy death. No matter what I’d thought of the light fae woman, no one deserved to go out that way.
Unless…
“What are you thinking?” Evie asked.
“I’m thinking Mom trusted Harriette—maybe not with me, but with the original black book she found.”
Evie’s eyes widened and I shrugged. “Think about it. Every time I saw Harriette, she practically stunk of guilt. Especially the first few times I met her. She was powerful enough that she could probably have protected the book. Plus, she would’ve known exactly how valuable it was.”
