Chapter 20
When Hugh’s entire body stiffened behind hers, Gwen knew she was right.
His arms loosened slightly around her as she flopped over to face him, then tightened again once she’d resettled.
“You’ve had your secrets revealed to me against your will. I suppose I can offer another of mine in recompense.” He exhaled slowly. “You’re correct. I’m a weak empath. So was my sister.”
Gwen didn’t understand his resigned tone, and she didn’t understand how he and his sister could share their empath talent. The odds of half-human fraternal twins both having Enhanced powers was infinitesimal enough. But the same ability?
Evidently sensing Gwen’s confusion over that point, he clarified, “We’re identical twins. Eloise transitioned in her early teens.”
“Got it.” Speaking his sister’s name seemed to dispirit him, and Gwen cupped his cheek in a mute attempt at comfort. “So that’s how you knew how much I hated lying at the verification test.”
“Yes.” His beard pleasantly abraded her hand as he nodded. “I could also sense your desperate need for help when you arrived at my apartment yesterday.”
That new knowledge went a long way toward explaining why he hadn’t immediately dismissed an improbable, wild-eyed story told by an infamous liar. “Thank you for telling me.”
“I’m glad you know. Just…” His exhalation ruffled her hair. “Please don’t tell anyone else about my ability. My parents have tried their best to keep it hidden.”
She took her best guess as to why. “They don’t want anyone reminded of your half-human background?”
He laughed, the sound bitter and sharp. “No, they definitely do not.”
When he fell silent, she stroked her thumb over his angular cheekbone and waited him out. Because she might not share his empathic ability, but she could still tell when someone she cared about needed to talk.
He began haltingly. “My father, Timothy Dealey, was born into a chaotic human family of money-strapped liars and grifters. After graduating from high school, he cut off all contact with them and worked his way through college and law school. That’s where he met my mother, Marlee.”
Which brought them to the question Gwen had been asking herself since he’d first shared his parents’ disparate backgrounds. “Did he know she was a demon? Did she tell him?”
Before the Battle for Containment, confessing the existence of Supernaturals to a common human would have been a death sentence for Marlee if anyone had ever found out. But not confessing would have involved so much secrecy, Gwen couldn’t even imagine how it would’ve worked.
“She was glamoured as a human the entire time they courted, and so was her family whenever he met them.” Against the edge of her hand, his jaw hardened.
“They heartily disapproved of him, and he assumed it was because of his lack of social and financial resources. That accounted for part of their displeasure, obviously—”
Obviously. Gwen suppressed an eye roll.
“—but not all of it. They were—and are—anti-human chauvinists who believed their daughter was dating, then marrying, beneath her station. What they didn’t understand was that he agreed with them.
” Hugh gave an unamused huff at the irony.
“He changed his name to hers upon their marriage for just that reason. And he’s spent the past five decades becoming the most successful, most upright member of the Blacke clan, both before and after he knew the rest of them were demons. ”
“To prove himself worthy of the name.” When Hugh dipped his chin in affirmation, Gwen asked the obvious question. “When did he find out the truth about your mother and her family?”
“Not until the Battle for Containment, when Eloise and I were nineteen.”
She gaped at him, flabbergasted. “She kept the secret even after giving birth to children with horns on their heads? How?”
“She didn’t allow him in the delivery room,” Hugh explained. “My sister and I were glamoured from birth and able to pass as full humans. We remained in disguise until Mom finally confessed everything.”
Hugh and his sister had endured almost two decades spent concealing who they really were, even from their own father. Gwen tried to imagine that. Couldn’t.
“In front of her family, we didn’t need our glamours, of course.
” A soundless sigh raised and lowered his chest. “Since they and most of their cronies despised our father’s background, though, she told us never to mention the Enhanced ability our half-human genetics had given us. Not to the Blacke clan. Not to anyone.”
In reality, then, he and his sister hadn’t ever been allowed to be fully themselves—except with each other. “That sounds…lonely.”
“Eloise hated every moment spent hiding crucial parts of her identity.” The corners of his mouth quirked downward.
“Once she realized she was a girl, she said if she had to be glamoured at all, she should at least be able to present as her real gender. But my mother discouraged that too, so it took a few years for El to transition. And even then, she still loathed the human ruse. She told me she’d already spent far too much time pretending to be something she wasn’t, and she shouldn’t have to playact with her own father. ”
Aching for his sister, Gwen shook her head. “That must have been so hard.”
“As soon as Mom confessed, Eloise never donned another glamour.” Hugh’s pride in his sister glowed in his eyes. “Not even to reassure her human clients.”
One notable perspective had been missing from Hugh’s account of events. “How did you feel about being in disguise all that time?”
A deep crease bisected his brow. “I didn’t love it, but…it didn’t bother me the same way. I just wanted to keep the family peace. If that meant being glamoured around the clock, so be it.”
A diplomat, even as a child.
She eased her calf between his. Hugged him tighter as she asked her next question. “Once your mother confessed, how did your father react to the news?”
“He was thrilled. Proud of how powerful his wife truly was and how she’d flouted the conventions of high demon society to have him.
Even more determined to prove she hadn’t made a mistake in marrying him.
” His fingers flexed against Gwen’s hip, then relaxed again.
“He began glamouring himself as a demon, and he agreed that Eloise and I should keep our empath abilities a secret. If it were up to my parents, all demons currently alive would forget that the Blacke family tree ever included a human branch.”
When Gwen imagined an ambitious human man who’d grown up in utter chaos and probably hated every moment of it, she kind of got why Hugh’s father had been attracted to the law and a high-society demon.
Why he’d been desperate to fit into her lofty social and professional circles, both before and after discovering her true identity.
But that didn’t give him an excuse to impose his own obsessions on his children.
Gwen couldn’t seem to summon any warm feelings toward either Timothy or Marlee.
And despite all the familial context Hugh had just given her, she still found it difficult to understand why he’d confessed his very useful Enhanced ability to her without even the slightest hint of joy or pride.
As if he and his twin were embarrassingly good at foosball instead of possessing the talent to read others’ emotions.
“Demonic reputation aside, though, surely being an empath is a benefit to you?” Gwen studied Hugh curiously. “Doesn’t the ability to sense your constituents’ and colleagues’ emotions help guide your decisions?”
To her shock, he shook his head. “I didn’t and don’t use my ability that way.”
Utterly bewildered, she blinked at him. “Why in the world not?”
She’d spent a lifetime encouraging and leveraging every infinitesimal scrap of talent she possessed, all in hopes of creating even a minimally sustainable existence for herself.
Against that backdrop, his cavalier dismissal of his own unearned power—however slight—and his unwillingness to employ it for good felt like a careless, disfiguring splash of paint over the canvas. Like an obscenity.
She lowered her hand from his face and leaned away from him, distancing herself as far as she could without toppling off the couch or ending their embrace entirely.
“Both my parents are lawyers, Gwen.” The line carved between Hugh’s brows had deepened as he watched her subtly separate herself from him.
“Our family’s official motto might be Semper rectior, but the unofficial one is ‘Feelings don’t change facts.
’ As far back as I can remember, my mother and father emphasized rationality over emotion when dealing with others. ”
She halted her slow retreat, considering whether her failure to take his parents’ profession into account had been unfair.
For centuries, demon lawyers had brokered high-stakes agreements among Supernaturals and Enhanced humans.
While glamoured, they’d done the same for the wealthiest and most powerful common humans too.
Even she, in all her unexalted lack of glory, had heard about those lawyers’ infamously complete adherence to and ruthless enforcement of the letter of the law.
Feelings and extenuating circumstances be damned.
Still, Hugh was no longer a child. He didn’t even practice law himself anymore, so—
“It disturbed me.” The words were stark, his eyes faintly pleading. “As a child, when I flexed my talent and read my parents’ emotions or the emotions of anyone in their social and professional circles, I’d have nightmares afterward.”
Shocked by such a private, pained admission from such a reserved man, she froze.
“There was very little warmth, even in my parents. Very little empathy. In the face of others’ pain, they and everyone in their orbit typically felt nothing.
” The memory of it left his expression stricken.
“The only emotions I sensed from them were deeply unpleasant. Rage. Disdain. Arrogance. Greed. At some point, I stopped reading anyone but my sister, because I didn’t want to know, Gwen.
I didn’t want to know how little they cared about everyone else and how single-mindedly devoted they were to their own selfish desires. ”
She edged closer to him again. “Didn’t your parents care about you and Eloise?”
Ambivalence knitted his forehead. “My parents love each other. But from what I could sense as a child, they considered my sister and me to be extensions of themselves. Possessions or tools rather than beings whose individuality and happiness they should want to cultivate.”
With the pad of her thumb, she tried to smooth that deep vertical slash between his brows, but it wasn’t going anywhere.
He leaned into her touch, still talking. “Around the age of eight, I began trying to disrupt my emotional connection to our parents and their friends and colleagues, using distraction or physical pain or whatever seemed to work. Eventually, I managed to sever that connection almost entirely.”
Gwen winced, guilt stricken. “I’m so sorry.”
How could she have judged him for not using a talent that had brought him such pain? How could she have expected him to behave differently under the circumstances?
“No, Gwen.” He huffed out a short, wry laugh. “I’m not asking for pity or apologies. I just want you to understand why I didn’t employ my talent as widely as I’m now realizing I should have or cultivate it as assiduously as my sister did.”
She smoothed a dark eyebrow she’d accidentally rumpled. “Eloise didn’t shut down her connection to others’ emotions the same way you did?”
“Just the opposite. She worked to make it stronger. For better or worse.” His jaw worked. “She was always more social than me, so she found friends outside my parents’ community. According to her, most demons were actually friendly and warm. Just not the ones Mom and Dad knew.”
Reassuring to hear, since Gwen had encountered very few demons in her life before now—and those surrounding Hugh seemed pretty uniformly terrible.
An earlier point had caught her attention, though. “Why do you say ‘or worse’?”
That had been a loaded phrase if she’d ever heard one. So freighted with emotion it should have sagged under its own weight.
Hugh didn’t hesitate. “Because in the end, her empathy killed her.”