Page 118 of Starry with a Chance of Nightshade

Drest continued to stare at all the photos I’d grabbed before we came down. He had them laid out on the coffee table. They were every single one I had of Aunt Rachael and Demi. He’d not pulled his gaze from them once in the last fifteen minutes. Nor had he spoken a word.

I touched his arm and eased closer to him, putting my head to his shoulder. “If Rachael is still staying off the grid, for lack of a better term, like she used to do, I might be able to help you narrow down where she’s been and where she might be now.”

He swallowed hard and looked to me, lifting his arm and wrapping it around me. He kissed the top of my head. “I missed you. And thank you for letting me see my daughter.”

“We’ll find them,” I said. “I know we will. Torid might be able to help.”

Drest glanced at me. “How so? We can’t just send him loose into the world. There is no telling the trouble he’d get himself into.”

I smiled. “I’m not saying we send him out into the world alone. I’m thinking that maybe you temporarily take over guardianship of him. He could help you look for them especially since he’s friends with the demon from Demi’s pendant.”

Drest stood fast, confusion coating his face. “She has a pendant too? She’s in the Keepers Guild? That guild is as deadly as the hunter one. Maybe more so.”

“I don’t know what you mean by Keepers Guild,” I confessed.

Stratton lifted a hand. “Take it easy, Drest. We don’t know that’s why she has a pendant.”

“Why else would she?” questioned Drest.

I stared between them. “Uh, someone want to tell me what the Keepers Guild is?”

Drest gave a nod toward Torid. “They’re kind of like game wardens for the worst of the worst. For things like demons, goblins, and any other Dark Fae that need supervised. Mostly it involves pendants but there are prisons that specialize in those types of things and probation monitoring.”

“Oh,” I replied, still a little lost on it all. “I didn’t realize that.”

“That should have been explained to Demi and you fully at her gifting ceremony,” he said.

Now I was super lost. “Thewhatceremony?”

“When she turned fifteen, if she was destined to be part of the Keepers Guild, there would have been a ceremony to present her with her first pendant,” stated Drest. “You didn’t have a ceremony because you were a special case. But Demi would have had one.”

My gaze shot to Stratton. There hadn’t been one of those. “Um, Demi got her pendant a few days after she was born. Like me.”

“No. Amice called in a favor for yours because of your special circumstances,” said Drest. “An exception was made. The Keepers Guild doesn’t let those pendants leave their control with any kind of ease.”

“Maybe Demi had a special circumstance too,” said Stratton. “And we don’t know everything that goes on with the Keepers Guild. Interdepartmental information sharing is kind of nonexistent most of the time.”

The color slipped from Drest’s face. He too looked to Stratton for guidance.

Stratton worried his jaw. “Astria’s pendant was given to her to mask her and hide what she is. Rachael would have known that. She’d have also known the best way to hide Demi would be with a pendant and a built-in protector in the form of whatever was housed in it.”

I stood as well. “One of the men in charge of checking on us when we were in the witness protection program helped Aunt Rachael get the pendant right after Demi was born. I was little still, but I remember him pulling Aunt Rachael aside and telling her he could sense Nightshade Fae all over Demi. That others would too. And that not all of them would be good people.” I locked gazes with my uncle. “And that it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out she was yours. And then they got into some discussion about the laws or rules changing at some point, but until then hiding who fathered Demi was and what she is was important.”

Drest managed to look even paler. As I looked harder at him, I realized while Stratton hadn’t aged a day since I’d last seen him, my uncle had. Not a lot but some. His temples had white hairs mixing in with the brown. There were fine lines at the corners of his eyes and other small differences that made him look like he was maybe a decade older than before, putting him in his mid-to-late fifties.

How was it that he’d aged some, but Stratton hadn’t?

Drest faced Stratton. “My daughter has enough Nightshade in her that it could be sensed at birth?”

Stratton offered a warm, gentle smile. “We’re from the most powerful family in the Nightshade Clan. It stands to reason the Bright family traits would be strong in her.”

Drest lowered his head, shaking it. “I left my mate, my daughter, and my niece to protect themselves.”

“You didn’t get a choice,” stated Stratton, a sharp tone to his voice. “Neither of us did, cousin. You know as well as I do that getting around the spell in place to keep us away from them all for no less than fifteen years wasn’t possible. Hell, we tried.”

“I don’t understand why you’d be blocked from seeing any of us,” I said. “Especially since Uncle Drest and Aunt Rachael are mates and she was having his child. You’d think the Nightshade Clan would want to celebrate one of their own finding their special someone and having a baby. From what I understand the Nightshade birth rate is kind of dismal.”

They glanced at one another and nodded.

---