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“I’m not certain about that part yet,” he admitted. “Their denial of your request might be for a different reason.”
“We will find that out soon enough,” Nico said. “They cannot prevent their king from visiting. Can you show us the rocks you’ve found out here?”
I nodded and turned, heading upstream again. “They’re just along the riverbanks and in the river above the waterfall. If they wanted to blow me up, or blow something up, why let them just wash downstream? That doesn’t make any sense. They couldn’t have known that I’d take a bunch to my house, right?”
“Unless they have some way to watch you here,” Riddick said and started swiveling his head as we walked, looking for something.
“Wonderful,” I said and sighed, my shoulders slumping forward. My house was destroyed. The world probably thought I was some crazy, creepy, evil woman who fed her blood to creatures. My parents were likely freaking out and trying to ensure that I was completely severed from them so no one would connect us. It was possible that they had some surveillance up in my property and some organization was trying to use me to cause public panic about the hybrids.
Notthehybrids, but us. I was a hybrid.
It seemed so unlikely and crazy to believe, but I’d always felt a connection to the hybrids I treated. I had assumed it was just because of my desire to keep them safe knowing how the worldviewed them. Now, I wondered if it had to do with us being similar.
“It’ll be okay,” Triston said and smiled at me. “Now, we can help you rebuild your house bigger and exactly how you want it instead of just adding on a dining room.”
I laughed softly. “I appreciate you all staying and helping me.” I definitely wouldn’t have been able to handle this on my own.
“It’s definitely better than waiting tables,” Triston said with a laugh.
“Or calculating how much money someone has,” Percival said.
“We need to figure out who’s running things in the city,” Caleb whispered to Riddick. “Root out the source of the turmoil happening there.”
“You should talk to the Mage Council for sure then,” I said. “They’ve got their hands in everything, which is why Mr. Mayongan is so involved there. Over three quarters of the population are mages.”
“Really?” Riddick asked with a scowl. “I saw a lot of shifters there.”
Right, he’d been knocked out by some of them.
“There are a couple gangs, motorcycle gangs or what have you, that are shifters, but they’re a minority. If you look at them all, you’ll see three quarters are mages, one eighth are shifters, and the rest are human. We don’t have a single elf in the city, despite being surrounded by woods and mountains.”
“That is extremely odd,” Nico said. “We should reach out to Fox to see if he can find out why there aren’t elves here.”
Caleb nodded. “I bet Papa Katar knows.”
Papa Katar must be King Katar of the Elves.
“How do you know so much about the city?” Riddick asked. “You said you don’t go there often.”
I smiled and said, “When you’ve been outcast from a place, you do a lot of research. Plus, a lot of my patients come from there and update me on the status of things. And, I watch the news pretty often to keep tabs and ensure I’m not blindsided if there’s a war or something that might bleed over into my territory.”
“How did you manage to get so much land?” Nico asked. “Especially land bordering the Council?”
“My parents bought it for me. I told them I wanted a large amount of land and a cabin so I could be on my own without worrying about people. They bought it and signed it over to me.” Though, it was very curious about the location. “My parents hate mages, so I always thought it was one way to get something over on them, to buy all this land so they couldn’t have it.” I groaned and shook my head. “I am not looking forward to talking to my parents about all of this.” They were likely going to lie anyway, since they’d been lying to me this entire time. I was going to demand answers, even if it meant dealing with their hatred in person.
“We could go with you, for moral support, if you’d like it,” Triston offered.
“I appreciate the offer, but I don’t want to subject anyone to the presence of the Hanigans.” No, I would face them alone.
“The Hanigans?” Nico and Caleb asked simultaneously.
“You don’t mean Maximus and Melissa Hanigan, do you?” Nico asked and stopped walking, staring at me with narrowed eyes.
I turned and frowned at him. “Why are you glaring at me? Yes, those are my parents’ names. How do you know them?”
“When’s the last time you spoke to them?” Caleb asked.
“Um,” it had been quite some time. “Like eight or ten years ago. Why? Did something happen to them?”
