Page 77 of Storm Echo

A piece of me to carry with you, baby boy. So you’ll know that I’m always with you.

“Leave it, Jin,” the other man said while Ivan listened to the memory of his mother’s voice. “It’s just cheap rubbish.”

Ignoring them, Ivan turned, looked at his mother, and said, “Good-bye, Mama.”

If she’d been alive, she’d have hugged him close, pressed kisses over his face. That was what she’d done in the good times between doses of her medicine. That was when he’d seen the sparkle in her eyes and the light in her face that made her so beautiful. Now and then, she’d be in such a good mood that she’d sing the spider song.

Spider, spider, my beautiful spider.

He’d asked her why she sang it and she’d said that sometimes, when she took her medicine, she saw an “astonishing” web glittering with fire. Ivan hadn’t liked the spider song, but he’d liked how happy she’d looked when she sang it. But those times had come less and less and less, until he couldn’t remember the last time his mother had been his mother.

He didn’t want his last memory of her to be of cold skin against his lips, against his body. So he didn’t kiss her good-bye, and he didn’t hug her good-bye. But he couldn’t leave her like that, on the floor, without care. Still ignoring the man who clearly wanted him gone, he went to the bed and got a pillow, then dragged off the thin blanket.

Jin made as if to grab Ivan by the shoulder, but the other man stopped him with a shake of his head. He must’ve telepathed Jin. Whatever he said, it made Jin walk out of the room and stand outside the door. The one who’d stayed behind watched as Ivan put a pillow under his mother’s head, then covered her up with the blanket.

“What will they do to my mama?” he asked.

“The Bureau will decide, but given that you’re claiming to be a Mercant—was your mother the Mercant or your father?”

“My mother.” Ivan didn’t know his father.

“In that case, it’s possible her body might be held in cold storage until the Mercant family either verifies your claim or repudiates it.”

He didn’t like to think of his mother in cold storage, and it made the blue fire burn the white even hotter. So before it could burn away altogether, before he could become like the man on the street corner who held his head and screamed at nothing, he took one last look at his mother, at how peaceful she seemed now, asleep on a pillow, and then he walked out of the motel room.

Chapter 37

Luc, the comm conference is up and running. Full encryption and authentication enabled. Ena Mercant will be dialing in in the next two minutes.

—Dorian Christensen, sentinel, to Lucas Hunter, alpha (8:30 a.m.)

TEARS ROLLED DOWN Soleil’s face, the image of a small boy standing up to those two heartless men over the body of his mother burned into her memories. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, touching her fingers to his jaw.

“It was a long time ago,” he said, and she saw in his eyes the same sepia distance she had from the memories of the deaths of her own parents.

But where she acknowledged that the loss still hurt, she knew he never would. “I’m glad you found your family. They obviously came for you.”

A slow lowering of his lashes, and when he raised them back up, his eyes were obsidian, eerie and lovely. “I was fourteen when I started to question the improbability of my grandmother losing one of her children, much less one of her grandchildren.

“If you knew her, Lei, you’d know that Ena Mercantneverloses track of one of her own. The one time anything like that happened, she wasn’t responsible for the child, and shestillhad that child under her care in a matter of months.”

A frown. “But you said your mother was a security specialist, good with computronics.”

“Not good enough to escape the reach of my grandmother—the Mercant network would’ve been scanning constantly for her DNA, would’ve tagged her one of the many times she ended up in jail for low-level possession. They always take DNA during booking, add it to the main system.”

“Wait, wait.” Soleil held up a hand. “Where were you while she served her jail terms?”

“The terms were short and she wasn’t so deep into her addiction to the crystal flower by then—she managed to make arrangements with some trustworthy street people.”

Soleil covered her mouth with her hand but didn’t interrupt. He understood her shock. Now that he was an adult, he could hardly imagine the scenario in which a mother would leave a vulnerable child with other junkies. He had to have been younger than three the first time around.

“No Mercant would ever make that choice,” he said. “It’s just not in their bloodline. I knew that, like I knew they’d never have lost track of me. So I went looking for the truth even though I didn’t want to find it. Iwantedto be a Mercant more than anything, part of a family that is as much a pack as DarkRiver or StoneWater.”

He could still remember that day, every cold second of it. “I broke into closed medical records, confirmed that I have no Mercant DNA. None. It was another one of my mother’s grandiose lies.”

Soleil searched his face. “What happened?”

“I was so angry. My Silence has always been less than perfect due to my mother’s drug habit and how it impacted me in the womb. She also gave me small doses when I was a boy.”

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