“You do?”
“Don’t you?”
Saga’s face felt warm. “No, I do, I just… Well, I mean, I didn’t know if you… Yes, I do, I think we work very well together.”
“I couldn’t wait to tell you about the will and Carys once I heard this morning. What do you think that means?”
Saga’s smile pulled further on the right, giving it a lopsided, albeit playful quality. “Is that a personal or existential question?”
Avery matched her expression. “I don’t know.” She echoed Saga’s words from days before. “Probably both.” She shrugged, her own smile growing. “I wanted to plan our next move, go over what you might think—see if you had come up with anything of your own—”
“Oh!” Saga reached for the newspaper. “Hand me that.”
Avery did as she was asked, but it was with nervous apprehension.
Saga flipped back in the pages. “Lymphedema-distichiasis syndrome—the condition that supposedly caused Eira’s heart problems. It’s an extremely rare genetic mutation, is passed down from parent to child, and commonly presents itself with a second set of eyelashes.” She held the newspaper back out to Avery. “Eira and her father both had it.”
Avery peered at the picture to confirm for herself. “Does Elis?”
Saga shook her head. “I don’t believe so—he had none of the symptoms, and though Doctor Campbell wasn’t Elis’s physician, he even said Elis was lucky not to have it.”
Avery’s brow furrowed. “Do you happen to knowhowlucky he’d have to be to not inherit the condition?”
“It’s about a fifty-fifty chance a child will inherit or not.”
Avery tapped her fingers thoughtfully on the table. “I have not been able to get through all of Campbell’s notes yet, and he hasn’t dated any of them, but it seems like he has been researching resurrection for years. I don’t know if that means he was preparing for her condition to take a turn or if her death allowed him an opportunity to put his theories into practice.”
“Would her fey lineage affect how the condition manifested?” Saga sat up straight in excitement, remembering her earlier question. “Oh, oh! Can you get cancer?”
Avery took a moment, unable to follow the abrupt change of subject. “Are you asking me to?”
“No, I mean canfeycontract human disease?” Saga clarified. “And if not, how diluted does the blood have to be for them to be susceptible?”
Avery pondered this. “I admit I don’t know if much data has been collected on that particular study. However, if it’s directly tied to the parents’ genetics, I imagine that would bypass typical immunities our kind is privy to.”
“Good to know, but…” Saga pointed to the note about Mari Goff. “Eira’s mother died from an ongoing battle with cancer.”
Avery’s brows raised. “Which is a very human ailment. Given that magic is still present in Elis Goff’s blood two generations later, it would be more likely that the fey line came from Eira’s father.”
Saga smiled knowingly, admittedly a little proud of her contribution to the case. “Mamó did say Eira’s father never really recovered after his wife’s passing.”
Avery’s expression faltered, and her eyes moved back to the photograph. Her brow furrowed sympathetically. “Watching those around you wither leaves scars.”
Saga reached out, hesitated, then rested her hand on Avery’s wrist to give it a gentle squeeze. “Was there no way to help her, even through magic?”
“A skilled healer might have been able to at least slow the disease—an Archfey may be powerful enough to eliminate it…”
“Why didn’t they then?”
“What do you mean?”
Saga chewed her lower lip. “If the love of my life was dying, and there was even achancesomeone in fey society could help—I’d have been asking any fey-blooded person I could to track down a capable healer. Even if it meant approaching strangers at a place like Hygge.”
Avery’s gaze softened and she sat down on the low table so they could be face-to-face, yet she retracted from Saga’s touch and averted her eyes. “Much like human witches in our ranks, changelings are not fondly looked on by most. Human blood introduces human ailments. It’s seen as infecting the populace. In my time it was rather common to refer to people like me as hemlock.”
Saga was taken aback. “Your last name?”
Avery smiled half-heartedly. “An invasive and poisonous plant with no known antidote. I didn’t want to share a name with my father, and I was being called it anyway, so why not choose it? Take the power out of it.”
