“Mac!” Jack exclaimed, rushing me the moment I stepped in the door. “Oh, God, we’ve missed you, baby!”
I disappeared into a bear hug that smelled of peppermint and aftershave. They say scent is the strongest memory association we possess. The smell of my daddy’s hug peeled away the months like calendar pages tossed into a trash can.
I wasn’t Fae, I wasn’t possibly the Unseelie King, I wasn’t going to doom the world. I was safe, protected, right, loved. I was his little girl. Always would be.
“Daddy!” I pressed my nose to his shirt. “And, Mom,” I choked out, burying my face in her shoulder. The three of us clung to one another, hugging like there was no tomorrow.
I pulled back and looked at them. Jack Lane was tall, handsome, and composed as ever. Rainey was smiling radiantly.
“You guys look fantastic. And, Mom, look at you!” There was no trace of grief or fear in her gently lined face. Her eyes were clear, her fine features glowing.
“Doesn’t she look great?” Jack said, giving her hand a squeeze. “Your mom’s a changed woman.”
“What happened?”
Rainey laughed. “Living in a glass room with the queen of fairies might have something to do with it. Then there’s the music coming up through the floors at all hours. And let’s not forget all the naked people dropping by.”
Dad growled.
I smiled. I’d wondered how my parents were handling that. Mom was getting a crash course in bizarreness. “Welcome to Dublin,” I told her.
“Not that we’ve gotten to see much of it.” She shot a pointed look at the glass, as if she knew exactly where Ryodan was standing. “Anytime now would be nice.” She glanced back at me. “Don’t get me wrong. I had a difficult time when we first got here. Your father had his hands full. But one morning I woke up and it was as if all my fears had melted away while I slept. They never came back.”
“Because so much was weird that fear didn’t have any place anymore?” I asked.
“Exactly! None of the rules that I’d lived by for so long applied. Things were so far outside my box, I had to either go crazy or throw the box away. I’m excited to be alive in a way I haven’t felt since you girls were little, since before I began to worry about you and your sister all the time. Now the only thing I’ve been worried about was when I might get to see you again, and here you are and you look amazing, and, Mac, I love your hair! The shorter look is perfect on you. But you’ve lost weight, honey. Too much. Are you eating? I don’t think you’re eating. You can’t be eating enough and be so thin. What did you have for breakfast?” she demanded.
I looked at Daddy and shook my head. “Is she still making cheese grits and pork chops for breakfast? Are they letting her in the kitchen here?”
“Lor sneaks her in every now and then.”
“Lor?”
“He likes her hoecakes.”
I blinked. Lor snuck my mother into the kitchen to make hoecakes?
“Your Barrons prefers my apple pie,” Rainey said, beaming.
“He’s not my Barrons, and there’s no way that man eats apple pie.” Barrons and apple pie were as wrong together as … well, vampires and puppies. It was hard to even hold them in the same thought.
“But no ice cream. He hates ice cream.”
My mother knew more about Barrons’ eating habits than I did. Unless one counted all the animal scraps he’d left when he was in beast form. I knew he didn’t like the paws, and the only bones he chewed on were marrow-filled. The hearts were always gone, even if he ate nothing else.
“I hear they plan to try the ritual soon,” Jack said.
“Do they tell you guys everything?” I said, exasperated. They trusted my parents but not me? That was just wrong.
“The Keltar men talk,” Rainey said. “Their wives visit.”
“And we might pry a little.” Daddy winked. I wondered how long it would take the Keltar wives to realize all that flattering, focused attention Jack Lane could turn on at the drop of a hat that made you feel like the most special and interesting person in the world was a cover for his interrogations. That he was methodically turning them inside out, looking for admissible—and nonadmissible—evidence. He’d pulled more confessions out of his charmed, disarmed prey than any attorney in Ashford and the surrounding nine counties.
“Speaking of talk,” I said, “I have a confession to make.”
“You came to see us in January but you didn’t stay,” Rainey said. “We know. You left us a picture of Alina. We were surprised you put it in the mailbox. We might never have looked there. We found it only because your father went after a nest of wasps that had taken up residence in the milk can that holds the post.”
The simplest things elude me. “Duh. There’s no mail running.”
“They kept it up for a while, but too many postal workers were getting killed in those dimensional shifts or attacked by Unseelie. Nobody’s willing to run the routes,” Jack said.
“We found it the day that man came and abducted us,” Rainey said.
“That’s not when I left it, though.” I looked at Daddy. “I was there one night when you and Mom were out back on the lanai, talking. About me.”
Jack searched my eyes, left to right, rapidly. “I think I remember that night.”
“You and Mom were talking about how there were things you guys had never told me.” That was nice and innocuous. I knew Ryodan and Barrons were outside, listening to every word we said. I wanted to know about the prophecy but not enough to ask up front. Considering I’d just set off the wards, I was worried that if we said anything about me dooming the world, I’d get shut out of the ritual. And I needed to be there. I wasn’t going to be excluded from the big showdown. I had a part to play. A good, wholesome part. All I had to do was fly the Hunter and point at the evil Book.
“Yes,” Jack said, watching me, “we were. You always think of things you’d wish you’d said when you’re afraid you might never get another chance. We weren’t sure we’d ever see you again.”
“Well, here I am,” I said brightly.
“And we missed you so much, baby,” Jack said.
I knew he’d gotten the message.
We all got a little teary-eyed then, hugged some more, and made small talk. They told me about Ashford, who’d lived and who’d died. They told me the Shades had tried to take over (they’d known only because of the husks), then the Rhino-boys had come, but “that handsome fairy prince who is utterly infatuated with you, and you could certainly do worse than a prince, honey, and you know it, he could protect you and keep you in style and safety,” according to my mom, had arrived and saved my hometown single-handedly.
I encouraged her to gush unabashedly about V’lane, hoping it would drive Barrons and Ryodan away. Or at least nuts.
The time went much too quickly. Before I knew it, nearly half an hour had passed and someone was rapping on the glass, barking that it was quarter to twelve and my time was up.
I hugged them both on the way out and got teary-eyed again. “I’ll be back to see you again as soon as I can. I love you, Mom.”
“Love you, too, honey. Hurry back.” I clung to her for a moment, then turned to Daddy, who wrapped me in a bear hug.
“Love you, too, Mac.” Against my ear he whispered, “The crazy woman was Augusta O’Clare from Devonshire. Had a granddaughter named Tellie she said helped your mother get the two of you out of the country. You’re sunshine and light, baby. There’s not a damned thing wrong with you, and don’t you ever forget that.” He pulled away and smiled down at me. Love and pride blazed in his eyes.
Tellie. It was the same name Barrons had mentioned in his phone conversation with Ryodan the morning after I’d discovered he was alive. He’d wanted to know if Ryodan had located Tellie yet and instructed him to get more people involved in the search.
“Get on with saving the world, baby.”
I nodded, lower lip trembling. I could hunt monsters. I could have sex with men who turned into beasts. I could kill in cold blood.
And Daddy could still make me cry just by believing in me.