He disappears up the stairs, and I turn back to Janessa. “I need to find my mother, ‘Nessa.” The urgency in my voice is enough to make the woman pause. “Figured you’d be the person who might know where I could start.”
Janessa frowns at me, perplexed. “Now why would you want to go digging her up like that?”
“Just got some questions is all,” I say. “I think she’s where my magic comes from.”
Janessa hums as she grabs a mug of water from behind the counter. Her eyes find my necklace again, and she leans forward, reaching out curiously. I hold myself still as she grabs a ring to examine it.
“So that’s all it is, huh?” she asks as she rolls the ring between her fingers. “Just some lights in a pretty stone?”
A bit of heat creeps onto my face as I laugh. “Afraid there’s a lot more to it than that.”
I pluck the ring out of her finger and let it fall back against my chest. It’s an evocation I made with Olbric, one where I used wax to get a pop of fire into the blast.
Janessa gives me an expectant look.
“It’s sex, ‘Nessa,” I say. “Sex with props, and with a lot of really wonderful people.”
For a second, the innkeeper seems too stunned to speak before she gives a high bark of a laugh. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“I promise, I’m not,” I say even though it’s so much more than that. It’s pleasure and pain and connection and passion, but trying to detail all that would take me weeks, and I don’t have the time.
“Well, hell, then no wonder you fit right in. You always were a bit of a rake,” she teases, and I flush all over again. “But if that’s the case, then I’d say the hunch about it coming from your ma is a good one.”
“Yeah?”
“Domenique had... a bit of a reputation,” ‘Nessa says, and I find it kind of funny that she feels the need to lower her voice. As if it ever mattered, let alone still matters two decades later.
“So, what, she slept around?” I ask blandly.
“Not thatIever heard of,” she says. “But she was like a flame around a group of moths. Beautiful, kind, and a flirt to boot. Of course there wererumors. Yet when you came out, looking the spitting image of your da, they died down a bit. As far as any of us could tell... everything was golden between the two of them.”
Rumor or fact, flirting could have been a sore spot between them if my da wasn’t on board for it. And if my mother’s anything like me, one partner, one relationship, may not have been enough for her. It’s hard to reconcile the naive memories of a kid with a reality I may not have seen.
“After she left, Da never talked about her,” I say.
“Yeah well, when you get your heart broken to pieces, I doubt it’s a topic you like to poke at,” Janessa murmurs. “Your dalovedDomenique.”
The note in my pocket haunts me. She said she loved us both, yet the words twist into a mess of an emotion in my chest, making my next questions hard to ask.
“Where’d she come from? Why’d she leave?”
Janessa sighs as she leans her elbows heavily against the bar. “No idea where she came from. It was like your da plucked her out of the woods on one of his hunting trips. No one had even seen her before he brought her into town to introduce her. I always assumed she was a runaway, though not sure from where. As for why she left...” She gives a helpless sort of shrug. “Severin never went into any detail on it with me. Only ever told me that it was Domenique’s time to leave.”
Her time to leave? With a husband that loved her and a young son? After years in Airedale, she just decided to up and go? Hearing that makes the ache in my chest settle deeper. I feel like I already know what the answer will be, but I still ask, “Do you haveanyidea where she went?”
Janessa’s already shaking her head. “Not a clue. Only said she was heading home. Never said where, just that it was out east.”
My hope gutters like a candle. I’d hoped Janessa would havesomethingfor me. Picking up a trail that’s nearly two decades old is hard to do with little more than a cardinal direction. But my mother’s note said she would show me where to go. I can only hope that she still means it.
“Thanks, ‘Nessa. I’ll head that direction.”
Janessa tsks. “Is there really such a rush? You sure you can’t stay the night? There’s always a bed for you here, you know.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t.” Reluctantly, I push myself to my feet. “But I’m glad I got to talk to you.”
She gives me a sad smile before her eyes flick just over my shoulder. A warning prickles at the back of my neck.
If the presence in my da’s cabin was a whisper, this is a shout, thunderous and urgent.
