“Enough, both of you.” I stood and stepped between them. “Blake, I need you to walk away.”
He whirled, aiming the full force of his anger at me instead of Morgan. Which was what I’d expected. “You’re inmyhouse, talking tomyson—”
“And you’re not helping.” I put my hands on his shoulders, willing him to listen. “You’re furious, and you have every right to be, but our priority is to find Sage and Alex before—”
He slapped my hands away. “I never should have moved us here. This shit followed you around your whole life. Now it’s infected my son.”
Jenny touched the small of my back. Her hand rested there, no pressure, just a reminder of her presence. A reminder that I wasn’t alone. It was enough to keep me from saying something unforgiveable.
“Blake Andrew Davis,” I said quietly. “I get it. You feel scared and out of control. So do I. If we’re going to get through this, I need you to trust me. Let me talk to my grandson.”
He looked at Morgan, then back at me. The muscles in his neck and shoulder were visibly taut. If he clenched his jaw any harder, he’d shatter his teeth. “I’ll be upstairs.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He walked away like he hadn’t heard.
“Are you all right?” Jenny whispered.
No, I wasn’t fucking all right. If Blake and I had made any progress mending things in recent years, I’d blown it all to hell tonight. I needed to scream and cry and get drunk and get laid, not necessarily in that order.
Instead, I sat back down on the ottoman and tried to calm my breathing.
“Mr. Barclay told me you’d freak out if you knew,” said Morgan.
I clasped my hands together to keep the claws from coming out. “A strange man gave you drugs and told you to keep it a secret from your family. That didn’t raise any red flags?”
“How old was Aunt Jenny when a strange man started secretly training her to hunt and fight and kill?”
“You think what Felipe did to her was a good thing?”
“I think the world’s a better place because it had Jenny Winter to protect it.”
What had Alex said to turn my grandson into this cocky little shit? The more we argued, the more Morgan was going to dig in his heels. He was too much like his father. And his grandmother.
I needed a different way to break through that stubbornness. I opened my purse and pulled out the photo-booth pictures I’d taken from the school. “This is Noah Hovenkamp, right? He’s part of your group.”
Morgan didn’t answer.
I pointed to the burns on my face. “He and two of his friends did this to me.”
The blood drained from his cheeks. “What are you talking about? You told me that was a cooking accident.”
“I lied because I didn’t want you to worry. That was a mistake.” I tugged down my collar so he could see the burns on my neck. “Noah and two other kids attacked me with holy water. If I’d been a full-blooded demon like Great-Grandma Lily, they would have killed me.”
I’d shaken him. He chewed his lower lip, and when he spoke, the certainty was gone. “I knew those three had done something. I wasn’t there the day Mr. Barclay chewed them out, and nobody would tell me exactly what had gone down.”
“He probably told them not to,” I said. “He was afraid of how you’d react if you knew your buddies tried to kill me.”
Jenny’s knees cracked as she crouched next to me. “You said Alex—Mr. Barclay—was teaching you to protect the world. Do you think that’s what Noah and his friends were doing? Trying to protect the world from a demon?”
“Maybe. They didn’t know Grandma’s not like that...” Morgan slumped. “Mr. B told us not to engage. He said we weren’t ready yet.”
Thatyetchilled me. “Morgan, do you know what’s in those pills you’ve been taking?”
“Mr. Barclay calls it the sacred elixir.” He stared at his hands. “There’s a ritual we do to collect it. It’s like tapping an interdimensional keg.”
Temple looked up from the comics he was reading. “It’s not an elixir. It’s a living creature. Part of one, at least. You’ve basically been doing shots of eldritch mucus.”
