He’s clearly way better at this whole interrogation thing, but I just can’t stop staring at her or making it weird.
“Oh, well, over a hundred years.”
“How long have you worked here?” he asks.
Her brows furrow. “Wow, I think I’m coming up on thirty years here soon.”
I stiffen and I can’t help myself as I grab her wrist. I don’t feel her magic, not like I do when I’m around the coven. She feels like any human would.
“I’m sorry, do I know you?” she asks me.
I blink at her, trying to hold it together, but I can’t. “No, my mistake.”
“Why don’t you get some fresh air while I finish everything here?” Silas says, his eyes almost as soft as the boy’s I once loved.
I stare at him a moment before I leave. Walking till the Mississippi River stops me. Sitting on a bench created to deter the homeless, I curse as I pull out my wand and melt the iron bars that were splintering the bench into sections.
I sit and stare at the water and for the first time in a long time I cry.
She didn’t recognize me. She doesn’t seem to have magic. It’s not only a dead end to this stupid fucking spell I have with Silas, but a dead end to everything I had hoped she would be.
Is she this way because she left the coven? Witches are not nomadic. Is that the price she had to pay for leaving? Is her husband my father? Or is there so much more going on that I don’t understand?
Why did the spirit bring us here? Why now?
I watch as the ferry transfers people across the river and wonder why everything seems to be going to absolute shit right now.
My life was perfect. All the love, affection, and understanding I needed was based in my coven. Of course, I wanted to know about my mother, but it didn’t haunt me like it has as of late. Maybe the moment I moved into her old home was when the need to understand what happened started consuming me.
I look down at my hand, actually loving the ring. My mother picked out this ring, even if she doesn’t know I’m her daughter or that my marriage is complete bullshit.
When I go to take the ring off, the magic won’t let me and I curse.
“Well, this is just fucking awesome,” I murmur to myself.
Silas’ large frame plops down next to me and he doesn’t say anything right away. It’s no surprise he was able to find me, maybe he can scent me, or it’s just the power of the magic between us.
“Can’t take your ring off, either?” he questions and I nod.
I could bitch about it. Tell him that this is all his fault for coming up with that stupid story. But I freeze. Without him, we wouldn’t have gotten what little information we did.
“I was able to gather some more information and something else,” Silas says.
I wipe the bottom of my eyes with my thumbs, not wanting him to see me cry as he hands me a necklace wrapped in silk.
“As soon as you left, it was like she remembered something,” Silas says. “Her brows furrowed, and she remembered the matching necklace for that ring. It was in the back. It wasn’t even for sale.”
I look at it. The stone and design is similar to my ring.
“You think it’s the necklace from her letter?”
“Could be. I have Jonas doing a background search on her now that I have her name. She said she didn’t have any children.”
I hold the necklace in my fist. An angry, irrational part of me wants to throw it in the river. But the curious, needing a connection to my mother, part of me shoves it in my pocket.
“Jonas can be trusted?” I ask, glaring at Silas.
“Yes.”
