I slid a thin volume out from Alex’s backpack and opened it, leafing through the handwritten pages. “This one looks more like a journal,” I said.
Alex looked over my shoulder. “That’s the journal of the last guy who was seeking the Vessel.”
“What happened to him?”
Alex shrugged. “Don’t know. I didn’t get a lot of back-story with the books.”
Nina kicked her feet up on the table and crossed her ankles. “Hmm. I’m guessing that means you didn’t pick these up at our local Barnes and Noble?”
I watched Alex’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “No. I sort of took them. From Ophelia.”
I felt myself gape. “You ‘sort of’ took them?”
“Okay, I completely took them. And pretty soon she’ll come looking for them.” Alex poked the journal I held in my hand. “Especially that one.”
I flipped the journal to the first page and froze, my eyes set on the name inscribed. “Lucas Szabo,” I murmured.
“Yeah, that’s the guy. He’s some mortal guy who obviously has a serious desire for some power. There’s no other reason to seek out the Vessel. Apparently, he got pretty close. It should help us. The guy was really detailed. He listed who guarded the Vessel, included drawings, pictures—where he last tracked it. Everything.”
My heart started to beat in the rapid thud-thud-thud of a panic attack. My palms started to sweat and the inscription on the yellowed page swirled as tears started to pool.
“Are you okay, Sophie?”
“Sophie?” I felt Alex’s hand on my shoulder, but his voice sounded far away.
“Lucas Szabo,” I murmured again.
“Yeah, he was the hunter who was looking for the Vessel.”
I shook my head and with leaden hands, pulled the book toward me. I tried to form saliva to lick my parched lips, but I couldn’t. All I could do was choke out the name “Lucas Szabo.”
“Sophie, what’s wrong? You’re scaring me.” Nina was standing up, rushing toward me, her coal-black eyes the size of saucers. I heard her voice, but it was a million miles away—distant—like the feeling of Alex’s hand on my shoulder.
“Lucas Szabo is my father,” I answered.
Chapter Four
Nina’s eyes widened. “Your father?”
I felt the sickening weight in my stomach again.
I knew my father by name only.
He had only spent four days with me—the first four days I was alive—but his identity had never been a secret. The fact that he was tracking the Vessel of Souls, however, had.
“I don’t understand though,” I said, resting the journal on the table. “Mom was looking for someone normal when she found Lucas, someone who had nothing to do with the supernatural realm.”
Like my grandmother, my mother was a seer. But unlike my grandmother, my mother hated what she could do. She shut out her powers in any way she could—first with drugs and alcohol, and finally, with Lucas Szabo. The way Grandma told it, my mother and Lucas fell in love immediately. To Lucas, my mother was a classic beauty, a strong-willed woman who guarded her privacy and her serenity with everything she had. To my mother, Lucas Szabo was a stable man who wore cardigans rather than capes, who drove a sensible Ford Taurus and had a pantry full of cream of mushroom soup and Ovaltine rather than our standard eye of newt and freeze-dried bat. He taught mythological studies at the University of San Francisco, but rather than conjure or cohabitate with magicks, he debunked them. One by one Lucas went after the fake fortune tellers and mystics that pandered to the Pier 39 tourists. My mother thought his disdain for the mystical world was perfect and envisioned a future attending Junior League meetings and eating deviled egg sandwiches at Crissy Field. The perfect, normal family.
Nine months later I came along, and four days after that, Lucas Szabo disappeared.
Alex’s hand closed over mine and squeezed gently. His touch was comforting but did little to dispel the surge of emotions roiling through me.
“He left her because of me.”
“That’s not true, Lawson.”
I shook Alex’s hand off mine. “Yes, it is. Apparently, he was looking for a kid that had some powers. After four days of gurgling and sucking on my toes I wasn’t able to pull a rabbit out of my hat, so daddy dearest took off.”
“If he didn’t believe in any of the supernatural stuff, why would your lack of abilities be a problem?” Nina wanted to know.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s just the way the story goes. I don’t know anything else about him. According to my grandmother, he never tried to contact me, not even after my mother died. He didn’t even come to her funeral.”
I felt a stab of pain mixed with the sting of anger. What kind of father abandons his child?
“Well, maybe there was something more to it,” Nina said hopefully. “The rest of these books are super old. Maybe that one is, too. Maybe—maybe your dad died. I mean, not that that’s necessarily a good thing but ... do you even know if he’s still alive?”
Nina and I both looked at Alex.