Alex became engrossed in the upholstered arm of the chair, a tactic that looked a lot like my cuticle examination. Whatever he had to say, he wasn’t sure how I’d react. “I talked to Willem after the Elders’ meeting, and he’s been named interim First Elder. He sounded pretty jazzed about it.”
“I guess so. Not a big surprise, though.” Despite his recent lapse of discretion, Zrakovi was a distinct improvement over his predecessor, and I hoped he got the job permanently. “That was your news?”
“No.” Alex thrummed the fingers of his right hand on his knee. It was his one nervous tell; my anxiety level ratcheted higher again. “They’re issuing a warrant for Elder Hoffman’s arrest, by the way, along with Adrian, Etienne, and Melnick—there’ll be a new Elder to represent the UK and European Union.”
Which impacted me how? Not at all. “So?”
Alex squared his shoulders as if he were heading into a battle and expected to encounter heavy fire. “So, did you know Gerry had a brother?”
I stared at him, parsing out his sentence to make sure I’d heard correctly.
“Are you serious?” I should know that. True, I hadn’t discovered that Gerry was my biological father until just before he died, and the way I found out—in a journal entry and a couple of dreamwalks—still stung. There had been no time to find out vital details like siblings, and DJ the idiot child hadn’t thought to ask. Apparently, no one had thought to tell me. “Well, that’s a surprise.”
“I knew you’d never mentioned a family except on your mom’s side.” Alex leaned back in the chair, more relaxed now that the conversation had been started. What, he’d expected me to get hysterical over newfound relatives?
My mind stuttered and jumped from thought to thought. My mom had died when I was six, and Gerry had been the wizard who’d taken me a year later when my exasperated family wanted to get rid of me. Gerry had taught me how to be a wizard, how to question authority, and, like himself, how to be a bit entrepreneurial in my problem-solving skills. Or so people kept telling me.
Gerry had talked about growing up in Aylesbury, just northwest of London, and about the death of his parents in an accident when he was thirty. About school adventures. About wizardry and history and what stuffed shirts the Elders tended to be. He was teacher, mentor, boss, friend. Father, to me, was still Peter Jaco, the human man my mom had married, whose surname I still used, the one so freaked out by my magic he sent me to live with a stranger.
But what Gerry hadn’t told me could fill books. He never mentioned that he’d met my mom, much less gotten her pregnant. He made it sound like New Orleans was the place he’d chosen to be sentinel, but I later learned that he’d been exiled here by the Elders for being a rabble-rouser. He had never mentioned a brother.
“What do you know about this brother?” I paused. “Is he the only one?” I might have a huge family of strangers in England.
Alex raked a hand across his evening stubble. Like me, he’d been up more than thirty-six hours and looked tired now that his enforcer adrenaline rush had drained. “I asked that. He’s Gerry’s only sibling and is six years younger. His name is Lennox, and he’s probably going to be the new Elder, representing the UK and Europe.”
Lennox St. Simon. How terribly British. “Why am I just now hearing about him? He and Gerry obviously weren’t close.”
Other than myself and Tish Newman, Gerry’s longtime significant other, he hadn’t been close to anyone, which was kind of sad. Tish had been dead only a few months, and the weight of losing her slammed into me all at once. With the prete craziness, I hadn’t dealt with her murder or Gerry’s either, not really, and their loss tended to wallop me upside the head when I wasn’t expecting it. Like now.
As I’d done every time before, I swallowed down the lump of pain that had risen in my throat. One of these days, it wouldn’t work and I’d fall apart. But not tonight. This time, once again, I held it together. “Is he Red Congress like Gerry?”
“Yep, and pretty powerful, I hear.” Alex moved back to the bed, kicked off his boots, and stretched out again. This time, I crawled up beside him and snuggled in tight. He was warm and solid, and I savored a flash of contentment before letting my mind veer back to this newfound relative.
“Did Zrakovi say what he’s like? Does he look like Gerry?”
“Don’t know what he looks like, but Willem described him as the anti-Gerry in terms of attitude. Very buttoned-up and proper.” Alex traced lazy circles up and down my arm with his fingers. “He’s against making concessions to the pretes, and thinks New Orleans is the place to make it clear they don’t belong in our world.”