Deirdre shook her head. “Your biological mother. My daughter-in-law.”
“Doesn’t she count as a deceased ancestor?”
“Oh, child. There is so much…” Deirdre’s face paled, her mouth pulling into a deep frown. The wind stilled. The hounds stopped chasing each other up ahead. Even the waves hushed, as if they, too, were waiting to hear her next confession.
“I’m afraid your mother isn’t dead, Gray. A fugitive from hell, but very much alive.”
Twenty-Four
Gray
Your mother isn’t dead…A fugitive from hell…Very much alive...
Deirdre’s words slammed into my chest, forcing all the air out of my lungs. She didn’t even give me a chance to catch my breath before she continued, her sentences blurring together, each one another blow from which I didn’t think I could recover.
“Trinity,” she was saying now. “That was her name.”
Trinity.I reached back in my mind, but found nothing. No connection. No recognition.
“When she became pregnant with you, she’d already had two of your three sisters—Serena, the oldest, and Adele, a year younger. But you, she insisted, were different. Special.”
“Wait. Did I… did I have another name? Before Rayanne?”
“Morgan Susanna,” Deirdre said with a soft smile. “Your name was changed before your adoption to protect you.”
“Morgan Susanna.” I said it out loud, trying it on for size. It didn’t fit. Not at all. Like Rayanne, it felt like someone else’s name now. “I think I’ll stick with Gray.”
“If you must.” Deirdre winked. “Anyway, around the twenty-fourth week of your pregnancy, Trinity began to have visions of a fourth daughter, and believed that you and your sisters would become great witches, one day uniting covens in war against supernaturals in a battle for magical dominion on earth.”
“Like the prophecy,” I said. But it wasn’t. Not really. The prophecy never said anything about a battle for magical dominion.
“Partially,” Deirdre said. “But your mother was convinced. You four were the foretold witches, which must also mean she herself was an heir of Silversbane.
“The following year, your sister Georgie—the foreseen fourth daughter—came into being. One month later, your father…” She paused, pressing her hand to her heart. When she spoke again, her voice was thick with emotion. “My son, Thomas Derrick Olivante, disappeared.”
Thomas Derrick Olivante.
The name echoed between us. My father.
“Disappeared?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“The police suspected an affair, possibly a deadbeat dad situation. But I knew better. Your father adored you. He devoted his life to his wife and daughters, and no matter how unhappy or nasty your mother became, he never gave up hope. Never once complained about taking on the burdens of housework or meals or bedtime routines.”
“So what do you think happened to him?”
Her eyes grew cold. “Your mother murdered him, Gray. I was never able to prove that, but my son was not missing. He was dead. A mother knows. I felt the departure of his soul from this realm.”
The wind whipped my hair into my face, stinging my eyes. I blinked back my own tears, snuggling deeper into my jacket. “What happened next?”
“Even without your father, you girls were thriving. It quickly became apparent that you wereextremelypowerful witches. Even as babies, you could heal each other’s injuries, make flowers grow on barren dirt, find lost objects, predict the future.”
Sunshine nipped at my hand, eager for another stick to throw, but I nudged her away, riveted by my grandmother’s story.
“Everyone loved the four magical babies of Blackmoon Bay,” she said, “but Trinity—”
“Wait. Blackmoon Bay?”
Deirdre nodded. “You four were born there, Gray.”
