A Darker Past (The Darker Agency #2)(57)

“Mother. Oh my God. She and Samuel weren’t the ones with the thing. It was her and Charles!”

Mom shrugged. She wasn’t the least bit surprised. If anything, she’d put it together before me. Damn. I needed to up my game. “They worked together closely. It happens.”

“Kendra couldn’t find much about Lorna, but at the Town Hall exhibit, it said she left Penance in 1880. Maybe she left Penance to hide the pregnancy and have the baby in secret.” I closed the book. “But I don’t understand why they would hide it? I mean I get the whole unmarried stigma, but why keep it a secret? It said she never came back, but Samuel is in our records, so obviously the baby came back to Penance.”

“I imagine the choice was not on Charles’s end. If I had to guess, she wanted to keep it a secret from the coven. I would guess she left to have the baby, then gave him to Charles to raise after he was born.”

“Lorna told me herself that the coven refused to support the Darkers and the work they did. If she told them she’d just had a kid with one…”

Mom set down the journal and nodded. “Witches are very strict about pure blood. It was probably bring the secret to her grave, or die at the hands of her sisters. Polluting the gene pool is a serious offense. The baby would have been in danger.”

Then I had a thought. I snatched the book from the bed and tore it open, finding the page with our tree. Finger to the page, I went down until I found Mom’s name, and mine, then followed it up to the top. “Charles. Ma, we’re descended from Charles’s line. From Samuel.”

It took a minute, and I allowed myself a rare moment of hah-I-found-it-first, but Mom caught on quick and her eyes widened. “Belfair blood.”

“That had to be what Valefar meant. He said I had everything I needed to take care of this. If only a Belfair could do this, then we’re set. You and me, we’re Belfairs.”

“But the Belfair magic has faded, remember? And we’re Darkers, Jessie,” she said, taking the book away and closing it slowly. “Maybe this is all true and there’s a little bit of Belfair blood running through our veins. That small amount won’t be enough to do real magic. That’s why the witches are sticklers about preserving the lines. Magic fades when diluted. It would never be enough for you to trap the demon on your own.”

I threw my hands up. “Then I give up. I have no clue where to go from here.”

Mom picked up the paper I’d scribbled my notes on. “We can do this. Darkers don’t give up. Your Dad’s out following a lead for me, and—”

“He can’t. Lucifer said he couldn’t help.”

“Don’t worry,” she said with a wicked grin. “We’re covered. You said Valefar told you we had everything we needed to take the bad guy down. We just need to put all the pieces together.”

How many times had we done this? Brainstormed cases until the early-morning sun broke the Penance hills? It’s what we did, and normally I loved every second of it, but with Lucifer’s threat hanging over our heads, the fun was kind of sucked out.

“We know that the demon wants his Master’s prison—assuming in exchange for Kendra.”

“Agreed,” she said. “He wouldn’t have taken her otherwise. I think he’s sure Cassidy knows where it is and this will force her hand.”

“But what if she does know?” The thought crept up, and as much as it terrified me to think about it, it wouldn’t be pushed aside. “Say she has it and hands it over. That’s bad in a super volcano way. But, say she doesn’t have it. Say none of us know where this thing is and we can’t find it in time? Then what happens to Kendra?” I took a deep breath to control the tremor in my voice. “I know you’ve always taught me the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, but how the hell am I supposed to choose between my best friend and the world?”

She set the list down and grabbed my hands. “You won’t have to. We’re going to fix this, Jessie. I promise.” She nodded toward the notebook. “What else do we know? Come on, focus.”

“According to Lorna, we know the Belfair magic is weakened. We know she has some connection to Samuel Darker, possibly maternal. And we know Cassidy is hiding something.”

“Okay. So where do we start?”

“I feel like this is a trick question…”

“It’s not,” she said. She brushed a stray hair from my face and tilted my chin up. “I want to know what you think. We’re partners and this is your case. Where do you want to go from here?”

There was only one reasonable path to take.





Chapter Twenty-Three


I wasn’t sure how we’d make Cassidy talk if she didn’t want to. She was my best friend’s mother, and bitch-of-the-year attitude aside, how far could I really go to make her tell me the truth? Kendra’s life was at stake, so…

Pretty damn far.

“You ready for this?” Mom said as she killed the engine. We were outside the Belfair house, and I was feeling twitchy. Time was running out, and every second we wasted here was another second Kendra might not have. If Cassidy wasted our time…

I took a deep breath and unfastened my seat belt. “Ready to resort to methods à la the Godfather if that’s what we need.”