Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Kit
AS OUR CAR CREPT ALONG A WINDING drive, rain pattered on the windshield.
Fog rolled through the trees like wispy ghosts curling around their trunks and skimming over moss and ferns.
My heart hadn’t stopped pounding the entire way.
I couldn’t believe we were finally closing in on my brother.
I couldn’t believe Gus had pulled it off.
But since I’d heard he hadn’t been able to see Ted and Mary-Alice, I’d started to worry.
Ted wasn’t responding to me. What if someone else had found them first? What if they were already dead?
Beside me, Gus was tense in the driver’s seat. We’d taken a longer route than necessary, Gus doubling back more than once, then stopping to wait and watch for a tail, but there wasn’t any sign we were being followed. In back, George stared out the rear window, keeping an eye out for trouble.
It was strange how fast I’d gone from antipathy toward George to trusting him—trusting both of them to help me.
Once Gus stopped in front of a rickety camp house, I was out of the car in a shot.
Caution was probably a virtue, but I didn’t possess a single patient bone in my body tonight.
I pounded on the door, not caring if I scared the daylights out of Ted.
He’d terrified me for weeks. “Teddy, open this damn door.”
“Kit?” came his confused voice. “How? What are you doing here?”
I kicked the bottom of the door, pulse pounding in my ears. “Let me in already. You owe me an explanation!”
Gus’ big, warm hand on my arm only partially soothed the hot, messy razor wire squeezing around my ribs. Relief at hearing Ted’s voice and fury I’d been so frightened created a racket in my mind. My hands were trembling.
The door creaked open a fraction and a flashlight blinded me. “Gus? George? What are you doing here?”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, Ted,” came a woman’s voice. “Invite them in, it’s raining.”
“Right. Yeah, come inside I guess.” Ted opened the door fully and stepped out of the way, revealing a small room with a mattress on the far side piled with blankets and a couple of pillows. In the other corner, a small wood stove crackled with fire.
A lovely heavy-set woman with a heart-shaped face lit up at me in recognition. She elbowed Ted and cleared her throat. He glanced at her, startled for a moment, before realizing she wanted him to introduce us.
“Oh, right. Kit, this is Mary-Alice. My wife.” I raised my brows, and Ted blushed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I mean, you knew that, of course. But um. Mary-Alice, meet Kit.”
She smiled fondly at Ted before turning her bright-eyed gaze on me. “It’s lovely to meet you. I’ve heard so much from Ted. He worships you, you know.”
Ted’s face grew redder, and he shuffled in place. “Mary-Alice.”
“What? It’s true.” Her dimples deepened adorably.
“It’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance,” I said, and the absolute truth of the statement hit me. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to meet sooner or under better circumstance, but your letter found me.”
She bit her lip and shifted closer to Ted. “I shouldn’t have sent it. If Ted had told me what was happening, I wouldn’t have, but I was scared. I really shouldn’t have involved you, Kit. It’s put us all at so much more risk.”
“What did you get yourself into, Ted?” Gus asked, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms. “Whatever it was, you had to have known you could come to me for help.”
Ted grimaced. “Normally, yeah. I absolutely would have. But this was… well… you have a personal connection that complicates everything.”
“A personal connection?” George asked, glancing between Gus’ puzzled expression and Ted’s guilty one.
Ted let out a gusty sigh, but Mary-Alice got there first, protecting him from having to say it. “Your father told us not to involve you, Gus.”
Gus’ entire body went stiff. “Since when are you in contact with my Dad?”
The apology in Ted’s eyes only grew. “It’s a long story.”
Clearing his throat, Gus tapped his fingers against the side of his thighs. “Start at the beginning.”
“Kit asked me in a note if I knew Albert Salter.”
“You told me no,” I said, crossing my arms. “But I thought you were lying.”
Ted shifted uncomfortably, scratching the back of his neck.
“I was.” I knew it. Even in writing, Ted was a terrible liar.
“Salter said he tried contacting you first, but didn’t hear back, so he found me instead.
He wanted to talk to you. I think he had a bit of an obsession.
He thought you were the greatest thing since the invention of the radio.
Anyway, Salter’s getting up there in years.
Men that old, they start worrying about the things they’ve done wrong, mistakes they’ve made. ”
I’d seen the same thing happen with injured soldiers, confessing their sins in case they died in hopes the admission would be enough to absolve them. “What did he tell you?”
“He told me he was the medical examiner when Dad died. He showed me documents, Kit. An original report of the death. The cause was listed as homicide. He didn’t fall, he was beaten, then frozen solid.
It was a cold night, yeah, but he was completely encased in ice.
It took days to thaw him enough for the autopsy.
The report says it had to have been magic, but Salter didn’t recognize what kind.
” Ted struggled with emotion. “Although…”
Mary-Alice slipped an arm around his waist. “He did recognize how it was used. He’d seen it before, the night they found your mother outside of Saint Mary’s Basilica. Mr. Salter was convinced the same person murdered both of them.”
I’d suspected as much, but it still compressed my lungs to find out for sure.
Knowing my mother’s murderer had gone unpunished, uncaught, had haunted me for years.
Knowing they’d come back and finished off what was left of my father prickled chills down my spine. Were they picking us off one by one?
“That’s why you spoke to Dad,” Gus said.
“It was Mr. Salter’s idea. He said your Dad was the one who investigated Mom’s death.
I know he was retired, but Mr. Salter thought if he knew all the facts, he’d know who could re-examine the case.
Only your Dad wanted to look into it himself.
Once Salter told him who paid him off to cover up Dad’s murder, he didn’t trust anyone else to do it. ”
“Who was it?” I asked, throat raw.
“Mr. Whitman,” Ted replied. “The department store guy.”
Mary-Alice had flinched, like hearing the name struck a nerve. Why? “Do you know him?” I asked her.
Her eyes widened and she quickly shook her head. “I’ve never met him. But I know what he is.”
“He’s fae,” Ted added. “If I’d told her all of this sooner instead of trying to protect her, maybe she could have warned everyone.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Ted. I couldn’t have. No one in my family can name what he is without breaking the truce. But if he’s making moves to get through loopholes now, so can I.”
Unease snaked through me, a flicker of surprise—though not shock—as pieces fell into place.
The strange feeling I’d gotten around him, the faint hum of that familiar tune.
Signals I hadn’t known how to interpret.
If he’d killed both my parents, he’d recognized me from the start.
Had he been toying with me the whole time?
Watched me wriggle for his amusement as I tried to find Ted?
“But why?” George asked. “If he and Kit’s mother were both fae, why did he kill her?”
“We don’t know,” Mary-Alice answered. “All I know’s my Granny saw it happen.
Saw him with his hand round her neck and ice spreading all over.
She couldn’t stop it, but she knew what he was, knew how to trap him into a truce.
The strength of their power relies on how they’re perceived, and Granny used her own magic to capture the moment for proof.
Tied it to her life force and passed it down our family line.
If he killed her or her people, it would set off.
Everyone in the city would see and hear what happened.
It was the only way to keep him from killing her too, then and there.
She made him swear not to hurt any human in the province, not if they didn’t attack him first. I guess Ted talking to Mr. Salter counted as starting something.
Enough that Whitman could get past the binding magic. ”
“Your Dad warned us to run,” Ted said to Gus. “That he had evidence Mr. Whitman was coming for us that night. So we took off.”
“But it doesn’t make sense,” I objected. “If there was a truce, how did he get around it to kill our parents?”
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” Ted replied, glancing around at the bare room. “Not a lot to do here other than think. What if the songs Mom sang to us were true? The bedtime one, the one about the fae who fell in love with a human, what if that’s them? You remember?”
The one I’d sang to Ted for years. My heart clenched hard. “The elixir.”
Ted nodded.
“Explain,” Gus demanded.
“In the song, the fae fell in love with a human and left her realm to be with him,” Ted told him.
“She kept her lover young, but his mortal mind couldn’t take centuries of memories, we weren’t designed that way.
So, every twenty years or so she poured fae magic into an elixir and made him forget.
They’d fall in love all over again. But then she died.
And when she was gone, he lost that. I think that was Dad. I think he started remembering.”
Closing my eyes and covering my mouth, I breathed through my nose and tried to get my feelings under control.
“Is that why he started drinking so much? Why he changed?” I’d thought it was just grief, and I’d hated him because of it.
What if it wasn’t his fault? “He must have been going slowly mad as it wore off.”