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“You know, I have something for you,” he said, crossing to his bookshelf. “We started playing poker together about fifty years ago. And one night a few years back, your grandpa ran out of cash. He had a lot of confidence in his hand, so he threw this into the pot.” He took an old linen-bound edition from the shelf and handed it to me. “It was one of his prized possessions.”
I ran my fingers over the cover, stamped in gold: A Guide to Traversing the Supernatural Realm. Mr. Mayhew grinned sheepishly. “It’s a first edition. He read that book I don’t know how many times when we were kids. An uncle gave it to him when he was home sick once with a cold, and it sparked his interest in the paranormal. From that moment on, all he could talk about was traveling the world to look for werewolves and vampires. I didn’t really want to take it. He had four of a kind, but I had a straight flush. He never could spot a tell.”
“Family failing, apparently,” I muttered, turning the book carefully in my hands.
“I held on to it,” he said, guilt tingeing his voice. “To teach him a lesson about bringing enough cash to the games. I always meant to give it back . . . I’m sorry. I think he would want you to have it.”
I smiled up at him. “Thank you, Mr. Mayhew.”
* * *
I leaned my head back against the car’s seat, clutching Mr. Wainwright’s book to my chest.
“Hey, hey.” Jed slid across the seat and tried to put his arm around me. Instinctively, I pressed my hand against his chest to push him away, but my arm went limp. I let him wrap an arm around my shoulders and pull me close. “It’s OK. We knew it was a long shot.”
“I don’t know what to do now,” I said. “I don’t know where to look. And I looked closer at those locator spells. You’re right. That is definitely some Dark Lord, point-of-no-return sort of stuff.”
“You tried one of them, didn’t you?”
I held up my thumb and forefinger, measuring a tiny amount of evil. “Just a little one.”
“And since we just harassed a perfectly nice old lawyer, I’m assuming it didn’t work?”
I shook my head and buried my face in his shoulder. He stroked my hair away from my face to press a kiss against my forehead. “You’re exhausted. Let’s get you home, honey.”
I closed my eyes and stayed quiet for most of the ride home. What the hell would I do now? I had used up all of my luck, all of my happy coincidences and convenient clover patches.
What had I missed? Although I’d already done it a dozen times, I reviewed each find in my head and the steps that led up to it. Could anything be repeated? Mined for more information?
And I was back to blind luck again.
I must have dozed off, because I woke to Jed carrying me up the porch steps and using my keys to unlock my door. I should probably have objected to this. He was still the guy who had lied to me for months and stolen priceless artifacts from me. But he also smelled like the forest and fresh laundry, and every time his chin brushed my forehead, a little thrill zipped up my spine.
I let him stretch me across my bed, opening my eyes long enough to catch his hand and drag him down next to me. Jed scooted in behind me, pulling my back against his chest, and laid his face against my hair.
“If you keep all that sad to yourself, it’s going to leave a bruise,” he murmured against my neck.
“I don’t think there’s such a thing as emotional contusions,” I whispered back, wrapping his arm around my waist as I rolled onto my back, facing him.
“I meant here,” he said, drawing a finger over my heart.
I stared intently at the ceiling, willing away the anxious despair that seemed to have a choke hold on my throat. “What was Nana Fee thinking, leaving this task to me? I never showed any interest in being the family’s leader. No one ever asked me if I was ready or even wanted the job. It was just shoved in my lap because I happened to be a good nurse. And I am drowning here. Why didn’t Nana send Penny or Uncle Jack or someone who actually embraces their abilities and might have gotten through this with some dignity?”
“Maybe she knew you needed it more,” he suggested gently, playing with a lock of my hair. “You needed to come here so you could get to know your grandfather.”
“If she was that concerned, she could have sent me here before Mr. Wainwright died. She could have told me about him, let him know me,” I shot back, my tone more than a little bitter. “She could have let my mother know him. Then maybe she wouldn’t have turned out to be such a . . .”
Jed propped himself on his elbows. “What?”
“Anna McGavock wasn’t a good mother. She wasn’t even a good person.” I smiled to cover the odd little sob that escaped through my nose. “Everything she touched was tainted by her bottomless need for whatever she thought she deserved but wasn’t getting. Nothing was ever enough. Maybe if she’d known her father, she wouldn’t have felt like she had some missing piece she had to make up for. Or maybe she was always meant to turn out to be a cancer on the backside of humanity. Who knows?”
“The Kerrigans told me she died a while ago,” he said quietly, and the mention of his former employers didn’t exactly calm the little storm of nerves brewing between my temples.
I took several deep breaths, nodding and concentrating on slowing my heart rate. The last thing I needed was some magical spike that took out the bedroom windows. “I got a call from the Florida State Police about three years ago. They said that her remains had been found in some burnt-out fleabag motel in Sarasota. It’s a wonder they were able to contact me. We hadn’t spoken in more than ten years.”
Jed tilted his forehead against mine, tucking my body against the curve of his hip. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not,” I admitted, in a voice so soft it was a wonder that he heard me. “It was a relief.” And now the tears were slipping down my cheeks in earnest, gathering in the hollow of my throat. “It was a relief to know that she wasn’t coming back, that she couldn’t hurt us anymore. She had a particular talent for hurting Nana, who always seemed to think she could just love Mom out of being bat-shit crazy. Every time she hurt us, it only proved that I was right not to trust her. For Nana’s sake, I pretended I was just as shocked as she was when Mom was arrested in Jacksonville for soliciting or that time she took Nana’s money for rehab, only to spend it on a three-day bender in Atlantic City. But I’d come to expect it. I feel guilty for not loving my own mother, but I feel even worse for letting Nana believe that I did.”
