I still couldn’t speak since he hadn’t released his telekinetic gag, but Veritas wouldn’t know that. I turned around with him, gripping his hand to convey thankfulness that words wouldn’t cover anyway.
Bones squeezed back, a silent pledge that we were in this together. Now I truly felt like we had a chance. Together, we’d been able to do amazing things.
Veritas let out what sounded like a sigh.
“You realize what will happen if the council discovers that you’re lying?”
Bones glanced over his shoulder with a shrug.
“We’ll be sentenced to death?”
“Nothing less,” she said shortly. “If you wish to revise your responses, you may do so now, without repercussion.”
Like a piece of tape ripped away, I felt Bones’s power leave my mouth. Giving me a chance to recant if I chose.
For a moment, I wavered. The memory of his shriveling in my arms was still fresh and unspeakably awful. I never wanted to experience that again, but if we went after Katie, it could result in Bones’s death.
He might have read the fear in my gaze. Or maybe it was my scent that betrayed me. Very slowly, he brought my hands to his mouth and kissed them.
“I love you, Kitten,” he breathed against my flesh.
Then he dropped them, turning to give the Law Guardian a hard look.
“We gave you our answer, Veritas. Now, if you don’t mind, shut the door behind you when you leave.”
Thirty
Veritas didn’t take Madigan with her. Bones wanted to kill him since we no longer needed him to find out who his backer was, but I had a few questions for my former nemesis. Trove could have falsified the records he posted online, yet somewhere in Madigan’s shattered mind, he knew the truth about Katie’s biological mother.
It took hours to get it out of him. In addition to the Grand-Canyon-wide gaps in Madigan’s memories, he also had the attention span of a ferret on crack. By dawn, however, he’d managed enough lucid tidbits to verify Trove’s claims about Katie being my daughter. If ghosts could pass out, Don would have fallen over when he realized that’s where the trail of questions I had him ask Madigan led to.
I was tempted to do that myself over suddenly becoming something I never thought I’d be—a mother. This was one challenge where all my fighting skills were totally useless. My childhood hadn’t been a hallmark example to draw from, either. Due to my father vampirically brainwashing my mother, I’d been brought up believing I was half-evil. I’d hated the otherness that made me different from everyone else, and now I had a child with a double dose of that “otherness” in her.
Of course, that meant I knew everything not to do. For example, I would never tell my child that being different was something to be ashamed of. Katie might have to hide it to survive, but if it took everything I had in me, she’d know that her unique nature wasn’t the problem. People’s prejudices were. And she’d never, ever have to fear that one day, she’d do something to lose me. I hadn’t had that assurance growing up, and I might not know much about mothering, but I knew how badly it hurt when it felt like you were one mistake away from losing your family.
If I had anything to say about it, Katie would never know that feeling. But first, I had to make sure no one killed her, either before or after I had a chance to officially meet her.
That was why Bones and I didn’t go to Detroit, despite my longing to rush straight there to find my child. Instead, after a few hours’ sleep so we’d be at our fighting best, we went south.
A tropical storm churned up the waters in Lake Pontchartrain, tossing around the boat we’d stolen as if it were a toy in a bathtub. That wasn’t what had my stomach clenching in nervousness, though. Compared to what I was about to do, having the boat capsize would be a fun.
In the distance, the coastline we aimed for wasn’t lit up as much as usual. The storm had knocked the power out in several places, but loss of electricity was never the biggest concern for New Orleans. It was the levees. The Crescent City was getting a direct hit, though luckily, with a tropical storm instead of a hurricane strong enough to breach the levees.
I didn’t know if the bad weather would help us or hurt my mission, but when Bones said, “Now, Kitten,” I jumped off the boat without hesitation. The weights I’d strapped on kept me well below the surface, yet as intended, they weren’t enough to send me to the bottom. The storm had made the water murky, though. Even with the mask keeping saltwater out of my eyes, my vision was limited to only a dozen feet in front of me, disorienting me.