Page 122 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
Desmond Wilde.
31
For a moment, I can’t seem to form a thought, much less say something.
It’s not the shock at being interrupted here. Why wouldanythingbe easy in this long, painful year? It’s not eventhat muchof a surprise that—of course—someone turned up to make this hard.
What stuns me is that this isDesmond.
Not Carol or one of her cronies. Not even some evil black ooze.
My actual biological father.
He stands there, dressed in his crisp suit. He looks exactly the way a father of the bride should, but...
There is something wrong here.
Somethingmorewrong than this man having an affair with my mother and keeping the fact that he’s my blood relative secret for almost thirtyyears, that is.
“Are you...” I hardly know what to ask. “Are you reallyworkingwith Carol?”
I can’t fathom that this self-important man, someone who’s always been so... pompous yet ineffectual could be...actively engaging in black magic.
But he’s not the Desmond I’m used to seeing and dealing with, however distantly.
Today his eyes are a deep, terrifying black, and that’s new. Is it black magic or... is this just a Carol-controlled husk in the shape of Desmond? I certainly don’t remember his eyes being that black, or his smirk beingquitethat oily.
I definitely don’t remember him giving much of a shit about anything but himself and how he might become more important inthe highest levels of witch society. I never would have pickedhimto be a lackey.
Then again, he made sure to get that black magic necklace to me back at my pubertatum, didn’t he? So working with Carol can’tbenewfor him. Unless...
Desmond Wilde was a friend of my dad’s. And my dad doesn’t always live in the here and now, but he’s never been a fool. Ifhe thought they were friends, they were. They researched the secrets of the fabulae and the crows together when doing so wastraitorous—and the Joywood have always been fans of swift and brutal “justice.”
Why would anyone risk it if they didn’t believe in what they were doing?
But then Desmond had a sudden change of heart. And followed that up with an affair with my mother and a lifetime of cravenlyjockeying for status, which isn’t the same thing as power. It’s nothing but theappearanceof power.
It makes me wonder if the thing that changed Desmond was Carol all along.
“You were a mistake, you know,” he says to me, examining his hands, clearly expecting that almost casual comment to rip meto shreds.
But I laugh. “Shocking! A child from an affair was a mistake? Imagine that.”
He gazes at me with those empty black eyes. Like a living corpse. Like a Joywood zombie. In spite of myself, I have to fightto restrain a shudder.
“I should never have let your mother keep you.”
“So why did you?”
He frowns a little, as if he’s not sure why. As if he doesn’t quite remember.
Definitely a Joywood zombie, I think.
He indicates the cave with a tilt of his head. “Go on then. Have a look. Learn all the secrets of the Joywood.”
I laugh again in spite of the fear moving through me. “Yeah, I’ll go ahead and skip right into the cave of evil while youwatch.”
I call out to myrealdad and my coven, but there’s only an echoing silence.
