“What’s your deal? Why are you helping me?” I crossed my arms over my chest, eyeing him with suspicion. We’d been here over two hours and he’d done nothing but answer all of my questions. He’d pulled out maps with hand-drawn hallways and riverways. He’d gone above and beyond. But if he was going to alert someone and turn me in, he’d have done it by now. Two hours was more than enough time for the vampires to come knocking.
His face turned dark, eyes narrowing. “The diamond obviously.” But his gaze ran over my long white hair and his face softened. There was something else there.
The girl, from the photo. Her hair was like mine, long and thick and silvery blond.
“Nothing else?” I pressed.
He sighed, looking over at the wall of pink roses. He was quiet for a long time, chest rising and falling with each breath. I don’t think he had many visitors and he might actually be enjoying our company. He hadn’t asked us to leave and had even offered us tea. We both declined on account of not trusting him, but now I wondered if he was just misunderstood.
“I had a daughter. You remind me of her,” was all he said, and my heart pinched. It was as I thought.
I noticed the past tense. Hehada daughter.
“I’m sorry,” I told him earnestly.
“What happened?” Sage asked.
I kicked her under the table and she winced.
He looked at Sage, seemingly considering her question and if he wanted to answer it.
“I’m never going to see you again after this so…” He shrugged. “Why not?”
Then he leaned in, letting the sun shine on his face, and peeling back his lips he showcased his razor sharp teeth.
We both reeled back a little, unsure what he was doing and he chuckled. “Are you not confused with my lineage? I have the teeth of a dark fey, hair and eyes of a light fey, and the tusks of a troll.”
Ohhh, as soon as he said it, it clicked. He was … a total mutt.
“Your mother or father was both?” I asked.
He nodded. “Mother was half light and half dark fey. Father was troll. I have the lineage of all three. Never quite belonged but I never bothered anyone, so they didn’t seem to mind. Then I met my wife…”
His voice broke as he looked again at the wall of flowers.
The roses. The garden so lovingly cared for … it was his wife’s?
“She was a vampire-fey Ithaki,” he stated and my mouth popped open. The fey were the only ones who could breed with the other races. They had some kind of gene that could morph either way and create life where none could be created naturally.
“So your daughter…” Sage put it all together in her mind before I did.
He inclined his head. “She was a true chimera. Dark fey, light fey, vampire, and troll. She had untold power when I started to train her…”
His voice trailed off and he looked at me. I knew then what had happened without him even having to say it. Power was something that the vampires, specifically Queen Drake, couldn’t allow.
I growled. “They took her?”
He nodded. “The vampires took her, experimented on her, killed her.”
The veins in his neck popped and the ring of the teacup snapped as he held it too tightly, then dropped to the floor and shattered, spilling its contents. “Sorry, I haven’t spoken about this in a long time.”
The fear I’d once held of him, the mistrust, it vanished in that moment. This was just a broken old man. I dropped by his feet and started to pick up the teacup shards. “It’s fine,” I told him. “So is that … why you went to prison? You retaliated?”
He nodded. “Sort of. Justice system was taking too long for my wife’s liking.”
That sounded familiar.
“When my wife and I got news from the local authorities that they’d found our sweet sixteen-year-old daughter’s body on vampire land in a shallow ditch with a bunch of holes in her arms and completely drained of blood…” The knuckles in his one hand popped as he made a fist. “We pressed charges, but they said it could take up to a year to find the killer. Magic City Police don’t care about Ithaki. Some lowly vampire, they said it probably was. I knew that wasn’t true. The queen had been poking around here once she got word of my daughter and her power. Even offered to pay us for her.”
