Page 47 of Wicching Hour

“Sam? Quinn? Bridget’s daughter? How in the world would she know my sister?”

Declan opened my door but waited while Bracken and I spoke.

“She told us that Martha and her partner Galadriel, an elf, owned a fae bar near San Francisco,” I said.

He sat back in his seat, absorbing that information, and then a slow smile finally brought color back into his face. “She found love and a purpose?”

I nodded. “Apparently, they were together for something like fifty years.”

Sighing, he tapped his heart. “Oh, I’m so glad. She deserved happiness. As much as my family ignored me, they badgered her. She wasn’t as powerful as Mary, or our mother, or any of our siblings for that matter, so she was treated quite poorly, I’m afraid.”

“She was a necromancer,” I said. “That was how Sam met her. Sam’s a necromancer too. She went to Martha for training. Sam believes that her seeking out Martha is what called Abigail’s attention to her. Martha had stayed hidden in the twilight between this realm and Faerie for most of her life and then was murdered horribly a week or two after meeting Sam.”

“So,” he said, a look of disgust on his face, “Abigail not only trained Calliope in sorcery, she also killed her sister Bridget and her aunt Martha?” He shook his head. “We have to find that grimoire and destroy it. This has to stop.”

“We will,” I promised, not at all sure we had the ability to destroy an ancient demonic grimoire.

Bracken got out and moved in a slow circle, taking it all in. Declan stepped back so I could slide out.

“How old were you when you moved out on your own?” I asked my great-uncle.

“Hmm?” He looked up into the branches of the trees above. “I left for college when I was seventeen. I returned for short visits after that, but it was clear, even then, that they’d rather I didn’t.”

“You have a home with me now,” I told him as I slipped a gloved hand into the crook of his arm.

He patted my hand, the tension in his shoulders beginning to ease. “I suppose we should go in and hear what they’ve decided.”

When we approached the front door, it swung open. Mom stood on the other side and waved us in. Gran was sitting in her rocking chair by the fire. As we entered, she stood, her gaze on her younger brother.

“Bracken,” she began but then faltered. I’d never seen my grandmother so unsure of herself. She crossed the room and took his hand, so I moved back.

Declan pulled me to the side, his arm wrapped around me.

Blinking rapidly, she straightened her shoulders and said, “I don’t know how I can ever make it up to you, brother. Please forgive me.”

Bracken swallowed and then cleared his throat. “Can I ask? Why did you immediately believe I’d betrayed the family? I know I was an odd child, but why did everyone assume that oddness meant I was traitorous?”

I turned my head into Declan’s chest, and he held me tightly. I knew exactly how it felt to be the sketchy outsider no one trusted.

Gran shook her head. “I don’t know,” she responded slowly. “Mom believed it. Gran did too, so it had to be true.”

“I see.” He nodded, staring at his sister and then over her shoulder out the window. “I don’t believe I was our father’s son.”

Gran flinched and Mom’s hand went to her mouth.

“Research is what I do, you see,” Bracken explained. “There have been other eccentrics in the family. Why was I shunned? Given when I was born and my weight and size, I believe I was probably born to term. That being the case, I couldn’t have been our father’s. Forty weeks earlier, he was in Massachusetts at his mother’s deathbed. He’d already been there a month.”

He shrugged. “I have no idea of she had an affair or was attacked. Given the way Mother and Grandmother treated me, I lean toward the latter. Nothing was written about it, at least as far as I’ve found. And certainly no one spoke to me about it, so this is conjecture. I believe it to be correct, though.”

Gran, like Mom, looked stricken. I could see the wheels turning as this new information altered her memories. Looking more frail than I’d ever seen her, she stepped forward and hugged Bracken to her.

He stood stiff and shocked for a moment before finally wrapping his arms around her.

TWENTY-TWO

We Were Overdue for a Family Meeting

Once everyone was finally seated, Gran and Bracken on the sofa, Mom in Gran’s rocker, and Declan in my usual club chair—he’d pulled me onto his lap to sit with him—we got down to business.

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