“Holy shit,” he muttered. “You said Wendy never gave you any reason to think Balthazar was anything other than a self-made sorcerer?”
Hungry for information, I had to suppress a scream of frustration. “Correct,” I said through gritted teeth.
“And you never saw anything to give you that impression?”
“Nope.”
Declan stopped pacing. “What if he’s notboundto a god for power. What if it’s apatronagethat stems from an older pact. One he didn’t make but one a member of his family made?”
I blinked a few times, racking my brain for any scrap of information I might have heard or read that could make sense of what Declan was saying.
When that didn’t work, I said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Shit, sorry.” He sat down on the edge of the table again. “Sometimes, ancestors do things that can trickle down through the centuries.”
“Why do I get the feeling this has something to do with you?” I said, eyeing him warily.
“Thatgoddamnedfish,” Declan hissed, which didn’t help my opinion that he was losing his mind.
“A fish. What? Are you, like, allergic or something?”
“Hang on,” he said. “This is a long story. Let me give you the basics.”
“Oh, good, I was worried this was going to be too easy to understand,” I said wryly.
Ignoring me, he said, “So, you know I told you I can tell when anyone is lying to me right?”
I did recall that from our very first meeting. He’d made it sound like some skill he’d developed over all the years of investigations, but now, I worried there was something deeper to that than what he’d let on.
“Uh, yeah. I remember,” I mumbled.
“That gift has been passed down for over eight generations,” he explained. “A magical gift that allows me to know whenanyoneis lying aboutanything.”
“Everyone in your family could magically tell when people were lying?” I sat forward, suddenly intrigued. “Like…you couldn’t even lie to yourparents?Ever?”
He made a face like he’d just bitten into a lemon. “It’s not like that. Well, not really. Notexactly. Not everyone has the same gift. My six-times-great-grandmother lived in Ireland. One day, she was out and about foraging for food. This was right around the potato famine, and food was scarce. Unwittingly,she journeyed near a magical nexus. A place where the human world andyourworld”—he gestured toward me—“converge sometimes. A lot ofweirdshit happens there. A lot of human legends come from those nexus points. Bigfoot, will-o'-the-whisps, leprechauns, lake monsters, stuff like that.
“Anyway, by the river, she came across the mostbeautifulhazelnut tree she’s ever seen. As the story goes, the branches were shimmering in the sunlight, and it looked like something from a fairy tale. Beside the tree was an ancient well that looked like it may have been old when the Celts walked the island. The branches of the tree hung out over the river. What my dear old great-great-however-many-greats-grandma didn’t know, was that the hazelnut tree’s roots had wound their way into this old well. It was the Well of Knowledge. An ancient andpowerfulmagical source of knowledge, understanding, and vision.
“Instead of investigating the well, she went about trying to see if there were any nuts she could harvest. The remaining nuts were all hanging over the riverbank. Several of those nuts fell into the water. From deep down, a massive river salmon swam up and gobbled them down?—”
I pressed my palms to the sides of my head like it was about to explode. “What the absolutehelldoes this have to do withanything?”
“I’m getting there,” he said with a sad sigh. “So, this river wasalsomystical, and the salmon itself was not of this world. The creature had swum in from God knows where. Elysium? Asgard? The Field of Reeds? Anywhere. What my ancestor stumbled across was a once-in-a-lifetime intersection. The Well of Knowledge, having fed this tree and infused the nuts with knowledge, and a mystical salmon from some other magicrealm, and a nexus location that allowed her to be there at the exact moment it all happened.
“While the fish was busy munching on nuts, Granny, in her starved and desperate haste, broke off a branch and speared the salmon. She hauled the massive fifty-pound fish out of the water and dragged it home. She dressed it and smoked most of it to preserve it, but she cooked up a nice dinner for her family. The stories say her children tucked in with wild abandon, eating the fish with the fervor only starving kids have.” Declan snapped his fingers. “Just like that, the knowledge of the world was infused into my family. The moment they ate the fish, they were given insight and understanding andknewwhat had happened, seeing it all in a sort of vision. Those four children grew to be great and brilliant people. One ended up a powerful politician, another a scientist, the third practiced law, the fourth unfortunately died in an accident a few years after this feast, though before death he was apparently a talented musician, but as the decades went by, everyone was blessed with thisgift.
“I’ve got a great-great-uncle who won the Nobel Prize for Physics. There’s a second cousin who’s a world class cardiac surgeon. Even those of us withlesserversions of the blessing tend to end up as the best in whatever field they chose. Teacher, artist, construction worker, whatever. They’ve all been really successful.” His mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “Then there’s me. All I got was the ability to hear lies and see magic. I’d much rather have been great at fucking stock trading or something. I’d be on a beach somewhere sipping a margarita.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
“An old woman killed and ate a magic fish, that hadalsoeaten magical nuts, which had taken water from a magic well, and…that gave your whole family magical intelligence?”
He sighed. “Well, when you say it like that, it sounds dumb.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, unable to stop chuckling. “Was there another way it should sound?”
Grumbling, he waved my comment away. “Back to the subject. That was what I was talking about. Things in the past,especiallywhen it comes to magic creatures, can travel through time. My family only dealt with a blessing from a magic fish. What would happen if someone in the past made a deal with a god? Something more powerful than that dumbass salmon? I think that’s what’s happened with Balthazar. Hewasa sorcerer. His magical power came from his own research and skill. But if his entire family is under patronage to a god, then the offerings would need to continue. The gods are fucking assholes when it comes to that stuff. If he stopped, then his patron might kill him or strip him of his powers, or even kill people he cares about. Shit, they could send a tornado to tear apart the school he’d built. There are a hundred ways they could exact revenge for the slight.”
