Mum was looking at me like I should have an answer. All I could think to say was, “I’m sorry.”
“Amelia is gone! Don’t you get that? Amelia is gone, and Laurelie, and Nathaniel, and none of us will be left if you don’t leave,” she screamed, taking a step toward me, but she found her path blocked.
Kessian put himself between us. I hadn’t noticed him move.
His voice had more gravel in it than when he’d spoken to Warwick. “You’re blaming him? You gave up on him when he wassixteen, and you’ve had nine years to sort all this trouble out in the meantime rather than leave the burden to your kids once they’d grown. If you want a scapegoat, look in the mirror.”
Stricken silent, my mother did naught but gape at him. When she recovered, she said, “This is a family matter. You don’t know the first thing about it.”
“I know Tal’s sacrificed nine years of his life protecting all the people in this room. I know he’s only stuck around this time because the wraith had a lock on me, and if he left I’d probably have been taken next. While you gave up on him, he’s been scouring Shearwater for a solution. He may even have found one!”
“Really?” Fae raised their head from their hands. “Are you serious? You found a way to stop it? Can we get Amelia back?”
“Oh, please say you can,” Lettie whispered.
“No.” I didn’t want to get their hopes up. “I mean, I don’t know. It’s— I haven’t had time to read through Grandpa’s research yet.”
“Research? What research?” Marlowe asked.
I held up the folder. It had a crease in it from where my thumb had gripped too hard.
Mum looked stung. “He never told us about any research. Where did you find that?”
“It’s a long story.” One I didn’t know how to start because it meant revealing Grandpa had been murdered, that I’d spoken to his ghost and raided Warwick’s house, bargained with him in hopes of exorcising Shearwater of the wraith before anyone else had to die, and we’d lost Amelia anyway.
Kessian stepped in. “Unfortunately the story comes with more bad news.” He gave me a solemn nod of support, and it struck me I’d never had an advocate like this. Someone who helped me find the words and fought in my corner.
It had been a trying day, and it wasn’t likely to get easier. I didn’t anticipate my family receiving what I had to say well, but I found a silver lining in the unexpected solidarity of Kessian telling the story with me.
We covered everything from the point of my escape to Coill Darragh. They took the news of Grandpa’s murder as well as Amelia’s “abduction.” I wasn’t ready to think of her as dead yet. They reacted to Warwick’s bargain with equal parts anger and a lack of surprise. Nobody liked him, and after Kessian’s chastisement earlier, Mum was only too pleased to latch on to another scapegoat.
It took two rounds of tea and the better part of an hour to cover everything. Marlowe, who’d looked more morose than I’d ever seen him, seemed to take solace in the discovery of Grandpa’s research. I laid it outon the desk, and he flipped through it delicately while I read over it with him.
“Warwick told us he’d devised a trap for the wraith. Something to summon and confine it.”
“I wonder why he never shared any of this with us,” Marlowe said.
“Because he never shared anything with us. We had to find out from Warwick that he’d bought the spa, remember?” my mum said.
“He didn’t?” I asked.
Marlowe nodded sadly. “I’m sure you’ve reached the age now where you realize your parents are not nearly as wise and perfect as you think they are as children.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Mum.
“Your grandpa was a good grandpa, but … he wasn’t always the best father,” Marlowe finished.
In that moment, time felt folded in two, the past overlaid with the present, drawn in parallel. Yes, I could relate to that, though I wouldn’t say so in front of my mother.
Marlowe traced a drawing of a sigil in the notes. There were several versions, altered each time, with a list of tithes that received modifications along the way. “It’s incomplete,” he said.
“Even this last one?” Kessian asked.
“It’s missing a—” I didn’t quite know the word for it, the rune and tithe that defined the nature of the creature to be bound.
“A focus,” Marlowe said. “It wasn’t possible to specify a tithe for the subject to be summoned because we don’t really know what the wraith is, nor is it substantial enough to take teeth or hair from. Without a focus, the sigil’s just a fancy drawing. It won’t work.”
“How do you find out what the wraith is without trapping and studying it, though?” Fae asked.
