22. Chapter 22
Chapter 22
I suddenly remembered Becky – Rebecca – telling me that her father had ordered the Coven not to harm me, and that he’d been furious when she’d tried to bomb me. At the time I had thought he must still feel some sort of paternal affection for me, but in truth it had all been about the harkan crystal.
My father was protecting his investment, not me. Placing Jeb in my Coven to woo me, to win me over to the dark side, was just another ploy to get me to help him. I felt sick.
‘Hey,’ Bastion murmured. ‘Come here.’ He lifted me out of the chair, sat down with me on his lap and wrapped his arms around me. He didn’t utter any empty platitudes about how everything would be all right; he just let me fall apart, his solid presence promising he’d be here to help me pick up the pieces.
I let Bastion look at the pictures and he agreed with Mum’s assessment that I shouldn’t see them. They were an extra source of blackmail, nothing more.
There was also a data file with Shaun’s date of birth, National Insurance number and all his previous addresses. Mum had compiled a full family tree, outlining three generations of relatives. She’d noted who his friends were, though there was a small NB from mum that she couldn’t assume any of them were evil witches.
Bastion showed me one photo, a picture of Shaun and his other wife with Becky and Edward as kids. I didn’t recognise the wife but I did recognise Edward. The name and his cursed actions should have been a clue, but for some reason I hadn’t realised that Edward was my half-brother until that moment.
I frowned. ‘But he’s a wizard.’
‘So is Louisa.’ At my blank expression Bastion clarified, ‘The wife.’
Crikey, Shaun sure liked to surround himself with Ls: Louisa, Luna and Lucille.
My eyebrows rose. ‘So much for magical purity, then.’ The evil Coven was one of those organisations that propounded the virtues of magical purity, or so the bedtime stories said.
Bastion shrugged. ‘We all make different choices when we’re in love.’
I wanted to ask Bastion if he had ever been in love; it seemed unlikely that he hadn’t during two centuries of living. I’d had him and Jake – and I was only in my forties. I didn’t ask, though; I wasn’t brave enough and this wasn’t the right moment.
‘Hard to imagine my father and “love” in the same sentence,’ I said instead.
‘He loves you ,’ Bastion disagreed. ‘He wanted you safe at the auction house.’
I snorted. ‘Because of the harkan! He wants me to unlock its full potential, and I couldn’t do that from a Connection jail cell – or if they’d killed me by mistake.’
‘Maybe,’ he conceded. ‘But things are rarely black or white.’
‘Bastion, I do believe you are an optimist.’
He clapped a hand to his heart. ‘You wound me!’ he joked, making me smile. His smile faded. ‘What do you want to do now, Bambi? ’
I huffed a breath. ‘I want to go and shout at Oscar, and kick the ass of that duplicitous grimoire, but as he is currently residing in my dear friend Benji I’ll give him a firm telling off instead. And Oscar can have a ticking off, too.’
‘Oscar has already been through a lot,’ Bastion pointed out gently.
‘Maybe so, but the damned grimoire hasn’t.’
I jumped off Bastion’s lap and marched out of my office to confront my grimoire, who had helped persuade my mum that giving a piece of her mind and soul to a cursed crystal was a good idea.