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I strode across the aisle and snatched it up.
‘Watch it, love,’ Mad Max snapped out sharply, ‘you damage that and I’ll take it out of your hide.’
I shot him a frown, then studied the book. It was tooled black leather with each corner protected by silver, and an ornate silver lock and clasp keeping it closed. Mad Max’s diary, maybe?The silver burned my fingers as I undid the clasp, and as the book fell open where it had been bookmarked by a black silk ribbon, the faint perfume of roses rose like an ethereal ghost.
On the left-hand page was another family tree; a small hiccough of hysteria lodged in my throat that this was the second family tree I’d seen in two days. But it was the page opposite the tree that truly captured my attention. It was dated: 18th June, twenty-six years ago, and written at the top in large, almost childish script was: Brigitta’s fifteenth birthday.
Below the heading was a faded, pressed pink rose, and next to the pressed flower was a strip of four small photographs, from one of those ‘instant photo’ booths. The first three photos were headshots of two giggling girls with a silver-haired Irish wolfhound sitting proudly between them—Mad Max in his doggy persona, presumably. The dog was holding a pink rose in his teeth. The last one showed the same two girls, with Mad Max in his human shape, still with the rose in his fangs, looking like some platinum-blond vampire Valentino.
One of the girls was obviously Helen, a much younger version. The other one I’d never seen, but if her hair had been less strawberry blonde and more my own blood-amber colour, and if the pale gold colour of her sidhe eyes had been darker, she could’ve been my twin sister. She had to be Brigitta.
All three of them looked young and happy, and like they were having a great time.
I looked at the family tree on the page opposite.
I stared at the photos and the handwritten family tree, trying to take it in.
I wasn’t my mother’s only child.
She’d had another daughter, Brigitta … who was twenty-six years older than me and looked like my twin—
But Brigitta was dead, killed by the vamps, and I’d never even met her. Rage, and an odd grief for the sister I’d never known, rose like a surging tide in my chest and I wanted to smash something—
‘Of course,’ Mad Max’s loud drawl broke me out of my thoughts and I swallowed my anger back as I turned to glare at his cheerful, smiling face, ‘your batty mother—Angel, as she likes to be called now—kept changing her name’—he pointed at the book in my hands—‘which rather makes a mess of the whole thing, love.’
My fingers clenched on his book. With all the family skeletons coming out of the bloody cupboard, maybe he’d tell me about one more. ‘So how did my sidhe mother end up in possession of a long-lost Fertility spell right at the time when she met my vamp father?’
‘Ah. I’m afraid the blame for that is mine.’
I dug my nails into my palms to stop from screaming at him. ‘Tell me.’
‘Well.’ He crossed his arms again. ‘When my barmy sister was returning the Fertility spell to this nasty moth-eaten old thing here’— he dug his heel viciously into the Old Do
‘At which point youdecided to test it out—on Helen!’ I looked down at the diary in my hands. ‘And on Brigitta—’ I stopped, appalled. ‘Brigitta was your niece! My half-sister!’
‘What can I say’—he gri
‘So my father didn’t rape her?’ I said, feeling oddly numb that I’d spent the last eleven years believing something about my parents’ relationship—and my birth—that wasn’t true. And after all this time, if there was a baddie in all that, it wasn’t my father, but Clíona and The Mother.
‘Good God no!’ He shot me a horrified look. ‘More like the other way round, if you think of it—not that he objected, no, he was quite the strutting peacock with it all.’
So why did she leave me with him?But I didn’t ask. I was pretty sure the curse and The Mother had something to do with the answer. Instead, I carefully closed the diary and put it back next to the glass coffin. I’d had as much of my family history as I could cope with for now. I dropped the grief and pain and anger away into a dark hole in my mind to deal with later. I needed my wits about me for my sunset appointment with the Morrígan.
‘Right, miles to go,’ I said briskly, since there was still Problem Number Two—the Old Do
‘You’re not thinking about resurrecting him, are you?’ Mad Max asked in an offhand drawl.
‘No.’
‘All yours then, niece.’ He tipped an imaginary hat to me and started sauntering to the doors. ‘I’m off to see if I can resurrect the shambles you’ve made of the business. Have fun, kiddo.’
‘Wait—’
He turned and flashed me a knowing, fang-filled grin. ‘Mr Inscrutable’s gone back to spend some quality time with His Royal Brattiness. After all, none of us want Him putting in an appearance, do we? And old Malik’s the best man to keep him occupied, what with all that True Gift immortality thing he’s got going on—’
Fear, panic and anger that Malik had gone back to the Autarch hit me like a sucker punch right under my heart. Stupid, idiotic vamp.
‘—but he’s bound to turn up like the bad pe
‘He’s not another long-lost uncle, cousin or whatever, is he?’ I blurted out. Any of which would be like a major ick, I added silently.
Mad Max gave a barking laugh. ‘Worried he’s into incestuous relationships like the rest of our dysfunctional family, are you, niece?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not his thing at all, love.’
Relief slammed into me like a high wind in a hurricane and I let out the breath I’d been holding.
‘Oh,’ he added, ‘and speaking of dysfunctional families, if you see my little bitch of a daughter, tell her she’ll have to deal with you direct for your blood from now on. It appears my middleman’s gone walkabout.’
His daughter—? Oh right, Ana, who I now clicked was another relation … my cousin, or niece, or both … Mentally I shook my head, not sure I wanted to work out exactly how all the family co
‘Your little fang-pet? Nothing as far as I’m aware. Perhaps I should’ve said my middlewitch, since it’s the beautiful Helena who’s done the old disappearing trick.’