AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Yes. I’ve wiped the footage from our systems before it was backed up to the cloud.’
‘Good thinking.’
‘I’ll deal with the body bags.’ The smile dropped from his face and he cleared his throat, looking awkward. ‘There’s a personal fax for you.’
I laughed a little. ‘A fax? What is this, the nineties? Why do we even have a fax machine?’
‘It can be handy,’ he said defensively. ‘The dragons still use them.’
‘The dragons are allergic to innovation and technology,’ I pointed out. ‘Bar Emory, of course. Who faxed me?’
‘Jinx.’
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. ‘What on earth is she faxing me for?’
Greg cleared his throat. ‘Um, I saw it come in so I looked, I’m sorry if that’s an invasion of your privacy.’
I waved it away. I had no deep dark secrets that I needed to keep hidden from him; I had no deep dark secrets, period.
‘It’s your adoption papers,’ he confirmed quietly.
My breath caught in my throat and I tried to calm the pounding of my heart. Suddenly feeling hot and sweaty, I wiped my palms on my trousers.Play it cool, Lucy.
‘Oh, good.’ I picked up the pile of faxes, excitement and nervousness thrumming through me. Finally, some answers about my parentage.
Dry mouthed, I scanned the papers then sighed when I realised the papers were the same ones my mum had sent me, riddled with holes and blank spaces. ‘Dammit,’ I muttered. ‘You’d think the agency would have managed to keep a complete record.’ Despite my best efforts, disappointment tinged my tone. Jess is a private detective extraordinaire and I’d really thought she would pull off a miracle.
Greg cleared his throat again. ‘I’ve seen papers like those before. Many times.’ He was hesitant, nervous.
‘What are you doing filling out adoption papers?’ I asked, frowning.
‘Not all Others breed true. Sometimes, if the baby is shown to be Common, they get sent for adoption.’
‘That’s horrible. Parents in the Other get rid of their own child because they’re not magical?’
‘Most couples consult with the witches or seers to make sure they’ll breed truebeforemarriage or mating. It’s another reason why there are so few inter-species marriages. There’s less chance that mixed marriages will breed magical progeny.’
‘That’s insane.’
‘Is it? Imagine how hard it would be to always have to lie to your children. The Verdict forbids us to speak of the Other to anyone from the Common. You’d need an excuse every time you needed to go to the portal to re-charge, every time you were needed by the pack. If you had a Common child, you’d have to live off the mansion site because there would be too many odd things happening that you couldn’t explain.’
I opened my mouth to argue and closed it again. It seemed closed minded to me, not to mention horrifically cold. I could never, ever send a child of mine for adoption, not after I knew what it felt like to be unwanted by my birth parents. It had dictated every move of my life and filled me with a desperate need to be liked, to belong.
I focused back on the papers because this topic was too raw for me. ‘So, you’ve seen adoption pages riddled with blanks like this? Is it normal for agencies to be wholly incompetent and fill out barely half the paperwork?’
He shook his head. ‘The agency will have filled out the paperwork properly. The blank spaces are where the answers have been covered by privacy runes.’
I sat down heavily. ‘Runes?’
‘It’s another one of the jobs witches do, securing sensitive information from Common and Other alike. If you got a hold of the original papers, you’d be able to get a witch to undo the runes.’
‘What does that mean?’ I asked, but I already knew the answer. Dread was curling in my gut. I needed him to say it.
Greg met my eyes with sympathy. ‘It means one or both of your parents were from the Other.’
They were Other and they’d given me away because I was not.
Grim determination filled me. I was going to find them and, one way or another, I was going to teach them what a mistake they’d made.
