Chapter 11 #2
“Yeah.” I look up and thank the waitress as she sets my tea on the table, then gives a small smile as she walks away.
“I went to Vivienne’s bookshop yesterday, actually inside for the first time.
Tristan was given a key and told a cupboard on the second floor had something inside it that he was meant to have.
I needed to have a look inside the place because we discovered Vivienne was dosing herself with magically spiked gin. ”
Grumps looks a bit startled by that. “Gin? I’ve never thought of adding magic to gin before.” Then he cackles. “Bet that booze packed a punch.”
“You’re not kidding. The others apparently got absolutely smashed on one glass of it and ended up nicking an army tank and driving it over Tristan and Danny’s neighbours’ cars.”
This time he cackles even louder. It’s a wonderful and wicked sound. He slaps his thigh in delight. “I think I’m going to like your friends,” he declares, then makes a motion for me to continue.
“Anyway, I haven’t yet been able to figure out what magic it was spiked with or what it was supposed to do. I mean, I didn’t even think Vivienne knew how to use magic.”
“She might not have.” Grumps shrugs. “It’s possible she purchased it from someone else. Do you still have the bottle?”
I nod. “I sealed it with wax so no one else would accidentally drink from it.”
“Get it to me and I’ll have a look at it.”
My eyes narrow. “You’re going to drink it, aren’t you?”
“Sometimes one must make a personal sacrifice for the greater good,” he says piously.
“The greater good?”
“Didn’t Lazear allow himself to be bitten by a mosquito carrying yellow fever to prove his theory of transmission?”
“He died,” I say flatly.
“Well, I’m not going to die, so what’s the worst that can happen?”
I pick up my tea and sip. “I really don’t think you want me to answer that. Sam ended up in a tutu and sock suspenders, handcuffed to a traffic cone.”
Grumps gives a loud snort, causing the couple at the next table to turn around and eye him suspiciously. “Go back to the shop. What happened there? Something did, I can tell.”
“How?”
He taps the side of his nose. “Ah, ah, I’m not giving away any of my trade secrets. Let’s just say I know things.”
“My life is turning into an episode of Game of Thrones,” I lament.
“It’s lucky you don’t have any siblings then,” he replies. “Quit stalling. What happened?”
“I was watching Tristan retrieve an old manuscript from a cupboard, then I heard this whispering in my ear. Next thing I know, I’m in a different part of the house, surrounded by shadows and staring at a blank wall.”
“Something led you up there.” Grumps scowls when I nod. He scratches his chin. “You still wearing the talisman your parents gave you?”
I lift my hand to my chest to touch the small gold pentagram laying warm against my skin and nod again.
“Hmm, can’t hurt to have some added protection though.” He lifts his hand and pulls his sleeve back, then unfastens the leather bracelet I’ve never ever seen him without. “Here.”
I shake my head. “I can’t. That will leave you without protection.”
“I’m not the one caught up in the middle of a supernatural murder investigation,” he points out, grasping my wrist with his gnarled fingers.
Determinedly, he wraps it around my wrist and fastens the braided band of faded leather.
Woven into the braiding itself are tiny talismans—a pentagram, a triple moon, a triskelion.
I remember tracing them with my fingers when I was a small child curled up in his lap as he read to me.
“Grumps,” I whisper as I stare at it, feeling the leather still warm from his skin.
“There, that’s better.” His tone is brisk, and I know the subject is not up for debate. “Now, tell me how your friends took the news about you being Vivienne’s son.”
I can’t keep the guilt from my expression.
“Harrison,” he admonishes.
“I’m trying, but it’s like the words are stuck,” I confess.
“The Harry I know is braver than this,” he says, and it’s like I’m a little kid again. I hate disappointing him.
“Sorry,” I say, feeling miserable.
“You don’t need to apologise to me, you need to admit why you haven’t told them yet.”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do, and so do I, but I want you to say it out loud, to acknowledge it.”
A loud sigh escapes as I toy with the handle of my teacup. “I’m scared.”
“Go on.”
“I’m scared that they won’t understand. That they’ll think I had something to do with my mother’s murder.”
“I’m sure that’s part of it, yes, but it’s not the core of it.”
I stare at him for several long, silence-filled seconds. “I don’t want them to know my mother didn’t love me. That she gave me away because she didn’t want me.” My voice is barely more than a whisper. “For the first time in my life, I have friends. I don’t want them to think I’m?—”
“You’re?”
“Not…worthy. That there’s something wrong with me. That I’m…unlovable.”
“Oh, Harry.” He releases a slow breath. “You know that’s not true.
Your dads and I, and your grandmother, rest her soul, we all love you so much.
This insecurity of yours stems from your mother, but, sweetheart, I am absolutely certain she made the choice she did because she loved you.
I would bet everything I own that she did it to protect you.
You’ve only been in London for less than a year, you’ve barely scraped the surface of your birth family’s secrets, and what you have found is dangerous.
Vivienne’s instinct as a mother would have been to keep you as far away from that danger as possible, even if that meant she had to give you up. ”