Page 24 of Heir of Ashes

Without blinking, Logan inclined his head and shifted his attention to the food. He took one of the chairs, opened a carton, and began eating rice with a plastic fork.

“It’s good,” he said and looked at me. “Aren’t you hungry?”

I stared at him—a little dumbfounded. Was he doing this on purpose, trying to catch me off guard? For what? My stomachgrowled, reminding me that off-kilter or not, I was still hungry. I snapped the journal shut, placed it on the nightstand, took the chair opposite his, and began to eat.

“How’s the hand?” he gestured to the newly bandaged limb.

“Healing.” Fortunately, it was. In fact, it looked like it was a couple of weeks old. The blisters were almost gone, looking now more like angry pimples, and where the skin had been charred just a few hours ago, it was now a patchwork of healthy, pinkish skin. I had applied the same miracle treatment that he had earlier, using first one type of ointment, then the other before re-bandaging it.

He nodded and went back to eating his food in silence. After we finished, I resumed reading the journal while Logan went out again.

“Bedtime story?” he asked when he returned, peering down at the journal.

I snapped it shut before he could read enough to make sense of it. He gave me a questioning look. I supposed I was being rude, but I wasn’t about to let him see the journal.

Without a word, he moved to the other side of the bed and extracted his laptop from its case.

“What’s your mother’s name?” he asked as he typed in a password.

“Elizabeth Deninsky Whitmore.”

“Her last known location was Sacramento?”

“Hmmm.” I supposed I would have to tell him that was ten years ago.

“What about your father?” he asked.

“He died in an accident a few days after I was born.” I was glad there was something I was willing to talk about. I had never met my father, and there was only some sense of regret for never getting the chance.

“Car crash?”

“No. Hunting accident. He was attacked by a bear.”

“Oh?” There was a brief pause. “What was his name?” he asked with a strange expression. Something in his tone caught my attention.

“Yoncey Fosch,” I said and straightened.

He was doing nothing to mask his shock. I could practically see the wheels turning inside his head.

“You’re … you’re Yoncey Fosch’s … daughter?”

I licked my lips. “You knew him?” I had estimated Logan to be in his late twenties, but with a preternatural, it was hard to tell. He could be anywhere over twenty, even over a century.

Or that’s what I had read in the journal. Preternaturals, especially weres, tended to pretty much heal any infection, diseases, and injuries when they shifted to their animal form, which allowed them to live a long life—provided they didn’t meet a fatal accident first.

“Not really,” he said, shaking his head for emphasis. “I knew who he was, what he looked like, but I never had any reason to interact with him.” He raked a hand through his hair, tousling it. “I should have made the connection though,” he murmured, looking at the screen, seemingly distant in his thoughts. “I should have made the connection,” he repeated, but I could tell it was more to himself. Then he looked at me, his shrewd eyes examining me with new intensity. “What’s your name?”

I was about to tell him Eliza Daniels when I gave it a second thought. If he knew about my father, then maybe he could give me answers. Besides, he knew I hadn’t given him my real name. Apparently, neither had the PSS. “Roxanne. Roxanne Whitmore Fosch.”

“Ah, fuck me. Why didn’t you tell me that before?” He shook his head once, as if lamenting the fact he hadn’t knownwho I was. “How old are you? No, no …” He waved a hand as if to erase the question. “How old were you when the Society took you?”

“Twelve.”

The fierce glint in his eyes made me want to squirm. “For how long?” he demanded tightly.

“About nine years.”

Something flickered in his eyes but was masked before I could decipher it. He returned his gaze to his screen, staring blankly at it. “Tell me her last known address.”

---