Page 90 of Dragon’s Rebel

“Is who serious?”

“Someone called Cassandra Ravenwolf. There’s an article on her website called ‘The Witches’ Romeo and Juliet: the Tragic Love Story of Evelyn Wilder and Daniel Stone.’”

Rebel stared. “Excuse me? What the hell is that, a witches’ tabloid site?”

“Kind of, yeah.” He skimmed the article. “Holy shit. If this is true, it’s the mother lode.”

“So are you going to just sit over there and marvel at it, or are you going to tell me what it says?”

“Okay. I’m skipping the maudlin, badly written excesses. The gist of it is, the Coven of the Waves and the Coven of the Firebird had been enemies for years. Something about one of them stealing the other’s territory when they came here from Ireland.”

That perked up Rebel’s ears. “Ireland. Like in the legend—the place where Arkyld took the Seals.”

“Exactly. It turned into an all-out war, with each coven scheming to eliminate the other. Apparently, the son of the leader of the Firebird Coven managed to join the Coven of the Waves to spy on them. Instead, as you might expect, he fell in love with the granddaughter of the coven leader. Evelyn Wilder.”

Rebel’s heart thudded in her chest. Suddenly, it wasn’t just a badly-written web article. It was real. “My mother.”

Thorne nodded, scrolling down. “The problem was, there was supposedly this legendary curse, that said that the bloodlines of the two covens were naturally opposite. Joining them would be a disaster and produce—you guessed it.”

“Abominations,” Rebel whispered.

“Which you are not. Because this writer is an idiot. But apparently other people believe it too.”

Enough to kill her parents.

“So the two young lovers eloped and went into hiding. They supposedly had two children, or three, or maybe only one who had the powers of both bloodlines and ate babies for breakfast.”

“Awesome.”

“I told you she was an idiot. Anyway, they were—” His tone grew serious. “They were hunted down and killed, cleansed by fire. Again, some say the children died with them. Others say they’re still alive, doomed by their tragic ancestry.”

“That’s me. Doomed.”

Thorne leaned over and kissed her shoulder. “Not if I have anything to say about it.” He consulted the screen again. “What’s weird is, after your parents were killed, both covens seem to have disappeared. Poof. No one left.”

That was weird. “So that’s why my great-grandmother’s estate is abandoned.” She shivered. “I wonder what happened to them.”

“I’ll keep looking. Or maybe Farnham & Peabody will know.”

“Can you hack into their files and get the address of the estate?” Rebel said. She was getting a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach, like they were running out of time. “If there were hellhounds at the trailer, and the appointment with Jean-Claude was a trap, what are the odds that Farnham & Peabody are going to be a bunch of friendly old vampires?”

“About the same as a fake Nigerian prince sending you a wire transfer for ten million dollars.”

“My thoughts exactly.”