Marjory nodded at her furious son. “He claimed to be a nephew of Bogdan. Jareth was still here, but he had no idea what had been done.”
Booker stirred. “Jareth is a good guy. Why not tell him?”
“I can’t answer that. It’s possible those in charge back then didn’t trust vampires. Maybe they didn’t know Jareth well enough to trust him. Maybe they thought he would be loyal to someone with the same blood. All I know is that he was kept in the dark.”
Something told me Jareth wouldn’t be happy about the news when he was informed. That was tomorrow’s problem, however. “What happened?” I asked.
“We all knew the story of Bogdan,” she replied. “Each incoming board member was told so they would recognize potential trouble should Bogdan return. When Declan arrived, the initial assumption was that he was Bogdan pretending to be someone else.”
I nodded. “That would have been my assumption.”
“We were planning to move on him when one of our spies overheard him trying to get information from Jareth regarding hisfather,” she continued. “That’s when we realized he was not Bogdan but a different threat.”
“And someone you didn’t have reason to kill,” Galen guessed.
“We watched him,” Marjory replied. “We kept a close eye on him.”
“Not close enough if he was a serial killer,” I argued.
“He knew we were watching, but we didn’t find that out until later.” Marjory dragged her hand through her hair, a rare show of frustration. “He killed without us realizing. The deaths were disappearances first. We had suspicions but not necessarily about him. It could have been anyone.”
“You got your confirmation when Lilac went to his house,” Galen surmised. “She thought he was a demon and was desperate for connection.”
“He wanted to kill Lilac for access to her powers,” Marjory confirmed. “The siren who saved her that day sounded the alarm. She knew the story of Bogdan. We decided Declan was a threat, but we had a problem.”
“Jareth was already hunting him,” Booker guessed.
Marjory let loose a hollow laugh. “We were not worried about Jareth. Not this time. He would have helped us kill the boy. No, our problem was that we had a trap that didn’t work. But we didn’t have many options.”
She swallowed hard before continuing. “We found Jareth unconscious. Declan was going in for the kill. May knocked Declan out with her magic. Your mother controlled him once he was down, Booker. She kept him asleep for transport.”
“I cannot believe you willingly worked with my mother,” Booker complained.
Marjory shrugged. “Sometimes a new threat is more important than old arguments.”
Galen planted his hands on his hips. “What happened to Declan?”
“We used magic to reinforce the trap,” Marjory replied. “Weassumed whoever had let Bogdan loose was gone. We doubled up on everything and shoved him in.”
“He escaped,” I said.
Marjory’s eyes shifted to me. “Not for a long time. He was in there, furious and fatiguing, for years. In that time, other things started happening.” She held her palms out to me. “We had no reason to believe the zombie issue was connected to the trap. That happened six years ago. It didn’t make any sense. It still doesn’t.”
“But?” Galen prodded.
“We didn’t check on Declan as often as we should have. We just didn’t think about it. Six years later, the zombies made that impossible. Why would we think that something that happened fourteen years later had anything to do with the spell? We thought it was finished. When someone finally did check, they found he was gone, just like Bogdan.”
I had to look away from her. How stupid were these people?
“Has anyone ever seen Declan on this plane again?” Galen asked.
“No.” Marjory was filled with contrition but Galen didn’t seem to care. “We thought it was fine. He was on a different plane, no longer a threat here.”
“He is now,” Galen snapped. “Not only is he a threat to this plane, he’s a threat to Hadley specifically. He wants her.”
“I don’t think he does,” Marjory countered. “I think he wants May. She did the heavy lifting on the trap. She created a tiny plane to trap him. It only makes sense she could create a door to let him back.”
“May is there now,” Galen barked. “She visited Hadley in her dreams last night. She said she’s not coming back because Emma is there.”
