Page 80 of Necromancers Don't Raise

My mother’s gasp was harsh, and she looked at me like I’d betrayed her. There was fear in her eyes for the first time, not that she’d be revealed as a fake and a phony, but that my father would find out that she’d been unfaithful to him.

Barbara smiled delightedly at Mr. Good, her teeth in fairly good condition considering how long she’d been dead. “Mr. Good! I’m so glad you could join us. You’re going to explain why you turned over your business and money to Nova Star?”

“She’s my daughter,” he said with a shrug of his large shoulders. He made those manacles look so small and delicate, nothing close to strong enough to hold him.

“Nova Star is your daughter? And Mrs. Clarence…”

He shrugged again. “You see, her husband, who she loves desperately, couldn’t have children, so she came to me for help. She tried all the medical methods of conception, but nothing worked. She knew I’d be able to help her, although she didn’t expect me to offer my services personally.”

We all stared at him. My mind was completely boggled at his words, mostly because they went against everything he’d told me before, but here he was, trying to protect her from the threat that bothered her most. He really did care about her. Unbelievable.

“I see,” Barbara finally said, then cleared her throat and looked at her notes. “Was that your only involvement in the story about Patricia Watford, or can you add another angle?”

“Sure. I was her drug dealer. When she got pregnant, I cut her off, had her call her parents, and got to hear the exchange. This was early on, before Mrs. Clarence met her. Mrs. Clarence wasn’t involved in that kind of work, dealing drugs, doing collections. Calumny used her for her mind, her business sense, and I don’t blame him. She kept his books, that’s all. She was brilliant. Still is.” He dared to glance at my mother, who stared back at him with a perplexed look on her face. She didn’t know what to think about him coming here and trying to shine a flattering light on her, to make her a saint while he was a drug dealer.

“I also worked collections,” she said, still frowning at him. “I was vicious with my knives, but I never killed anyone. Calumnydidn’t like throwing away lives. Not like Salina.” She clenched her jaw and Mr. Good flinched at the vampire’s name.

“Who is Salina?” Barbara asked, looking concerned.

“The vampire who marked my family,” she said, forcing a polite smile as she looked at the undead reporter. “The vampire who slaughtered every member of the Seven who wouldn’t give their lives and souls to her.”

“She stays in Eastern Europe except when she hunts,” Mr. Good said, glancing at the dark shadows around us, invisible to us where we sat in the spotlight, like sitting ducks just waiting to be consumed. “She’s been hunting Mrs. Clarence for a long time now. She took a dead girl’s identity because there was no one who could save her. No harm done.”

“No harm done?” I said, scowling at Mr. Good. “The Watfords were burned alive in their own house.”

“It was an accident, and they deserved to die for the way they treated their daughter. They drove her to the drugs and killed her at the end by refusing to give her any of the help she desperately needed. They knew she would die, and they left her to it, telling her that she’d brought it upon herself. Truly, she could have made better decisions, but cutting her off like that…” He shook his head, lips pursed disapprovingly.

The man was so good at twisting the truth to suit his own world view.

I said, “The trouble with stealing someone’s identity is that sometimes death isn’t as embracing as you’d expect it to be.”

“Patricia Watford is alive?” Barbara asked, looking truly intrigued.

I shook my head. “No, but the baby survived. In the time when Salina was attacking everyone with her red army, the baby was born, the mother died, and the baby vanished. Twenty years later, that child went back looking for answers, and found records of her mother, Patricia Watford, only she was marriednow, happily living the dream, money, family, safety and security, while she had nothing but loneliness and desperation.”

“Surely that’s impossible,” my mother said, clearly stunned.

“That explains a lot,” Mr. Goods said, nodding. “Someone was asking around about Patricia. I guess she got someone to talk. I’ll have to look into the matter. It should have been a sealed case.”

I looked at him in exasperation. “You’re in a high security prison. You also dumped your entire business on me. You don’t get to look into the matter, threatening, torturing, or whatever you usually mean by that.”

His eyes twinkled. “Be gentle with them. They may all perish from your goodness.”

“Goodness?” a voice demanded, coming out of the darkness. It was my voice, how it had been before I’d died and come back to life, so I was only slightly surprised to see someone who looked exactly like me stepping into the camera lights, holding a gun, and aiming it at my head. Her grip was terrible.

Barbara gasped. “Please put down the gun, Miss. You don’t want to hurt anybody.”

She snarled, swinging the gun at Barbara before returning it squarely back on my head. I wouldn’t enjoy coming back from a bullet to the brain, and it might cause memory loss, which would bother Bones. It would bother me too. I hated not remembering.

“Welcome to the show,” I said, offering her a hard smile.

“Welcome?” Her eyes burned with flickering red that showed how close she was to igniting everything in reach. Happily, everything that was flammable had already burned. Other than us. “You stole my mother. You stole my fiancé. Your whole life was a lie, but you had everything. I was the real daughter of Patricia Watford, but I got nothing!”

I nodded. “You stole Callie’s life, didn’t you? How long did you play the part of my friend, trying to get an opportunity to steal mine?”

“Your life?” She gestured at me. “You’re not Cassandra Clarence. You were manufactured and held up as the perfect little angel, but you’re Mr. Good’s daughter! How is he not worse than a demon?”

We all looked at Mr. Good, who smiled diabolically as if to prove her point.

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