A Darker Past (The Darker Agency #2)(8)

I groaned and Mom pinched me. Lukas snickered.

“Yes?” she asked. He held his phone up high so we could see the picture on the screen. It was hauntingly familiar. A black and white photo of a guy about eighteen. He was standing next to a petit woman with long, dark hair. His smile was devastating.

Actually, it was sinful.

“Is that who I think it is?” I whispered, taking the cell from the priest and giving Lukas a side-eye glance, then scanning the room. Craps. Was it my imagination, or were people staring?

He grabbed the phone from me. His face paled, and he clenched his jaw. A habit he’d adopted recently. According to him, before being fused with Wrath, he’d had some anger management problems. Now that he was free, he hadn’t exactly reverted to docile. In fact, he seemed to have more control issues than before. He’d only moved into his apartment two weeks ago, and already there were four holes in the wall and a pile of broken flatware. Mom theorized that Wrath left a stain on his soul. I was beginning to think she was right.

He took a deep breath, more than likely counting to ten, like Dad had taught him. “My God… That’s me.”

That would explain the strange looks we’d been getting from people. I squeezed his hand tighter and pulled him close so that our shoulders were touching. Some of the tension left his body, but he was still torqued.

Father Saunders leaned closer. “The Scott family was very influential in the early years of Penance. It makes sense that they’d be a featured part of this display. There’s a table around the corner. I recognized your…cousin in several of the pictures and thought it prudent to mention it.”

Mom didn’t seem as ruffled as I felt. “I see,” she said. “Again, thank you for bringing this to my attention. Lukas has had a rough time. I’d like to see him settled back in Penance without creating a scene.”

Without a scene? We were Darkers. There was no such thing…





Chapter Four


The Town Hall building was crowded. Wall-to-wall people milling around, looking at old junk.

At least, that’s how I saw it. Mom and Lukas seemed a bit more intrigued. Okay. Maybe that was the wrong word. Mom crept down the aisles, stalking the tables, while her gaze eagerly combed over the displays. I knew she was probably desperate to stop and take it all in, but she was a woman on a mission. Nothing distracted her while on a job. Well, except that one time where she swore she saw Rob Zombie go into the Quickie Mart…

Lukas followed close behind her. He, too, scanned the tables, but it wasn’t interest or duty in his expression. It was a mix of fear and anger. His past was a trigger we avoided. Really, Mom should have insisted he head back to the office. He couldn’t go nuclear and send the entire town into a fit of rage like when he was attached to Wrath, but he could still do damage. And worse than that, draw attention to himself.

Mom stopped in front of a table in the middle row and studied the plaque displayed prominently at the front. I rose onto my tiptoes and peered over her shoulder. She hated when I did that, so naturally I did it every chance I could.

“Scandal in Penance,” I read aloud. “Ha. Finally, something interesting.” I stepped around her to get a better look. Beside the plaque were several pictures of a petite woman in a poufy dress. “Lorna Belfair, of the well-respected Belfair family, was quite the subject of chatter in her day…”

Lukas picked up one of the pictures. “Is this the same Lorna—”

“That helped Simon?” Mom finished for him. “I believe so.”

“It says here that she disappeared in 1880.”

I bent down to get a better look at the writing on the card in front of one of the pictures. “That’s not all it says. Listen to this—Lorna was ostracized by her family due to rumors of nefarious conduct with unsavory characters. She lived alone on the outskirts of town, until one day in May of 1906, her cabin was discovered empty. Lorna was never seen or heard from again.”

Lukas put down the picture. His lips pressed in a grim line, he sighed. “So they drove her away?”

“It’s possible.” Mom put a hand on his shoulder. They’d grown close in the last couple months. She’d taken on the role of a surrogate, and Lukas seemed more than happy to accept. They’d sit for hours huddled together over books, soaking up knowledge like it was going out of style. “But we’ll never know for sure.”

We tried not to ask questions about Lukas’s past, but I couldn’t help it. “Did you know her?”

He looked at me, surprised, then nodded. “We met once. At Simon’s. She was a good woman. Not a typical Belfair.”

My best friend was a Belfair, and I should have been insulted on her behalf, but I wasn’t, because she wasn’t a typical Belfair, either. The rest of the family had a history of being self-serving and dark. They weren’t exactly pillars of the community. Lorna Belfair, though, was different. To help save lives, she’d aided Simon Darker in imprisoning Lukas’s ex, the powerful witch responsible for trapping him with the Seven Deadly Sins.

Mom continued down the row. “Let’s keep going. I want to find the Darker display and see what we’re dealing with here.”

I made a move to follow, but a wave of nausea rolled through me. My stomach felt like it’d been turned inside out, and there was a throbbing in my temples that rivaled the worst sinus headache known to man.