A Glimmer of Hope (The Avalon Chronicles #1)(50)

“So, Tommy and Diana are the good guys?” Layla asked. “Doesn’t explain why Chloe is hiding something from me.”

“Maybe I can explain that?” a voice said from the front door.

Layla shot to her feet, ready to fight, as Tommy walked around the corner and into the front room.

“Not here to fight,” Tommy said softly. “Just talk. Diana figured out you’d absconded. I thought it was time you learned the truth about a lot of things. You can’t trust me to be honest, if I can’t trust you with that honesty.”

Layla relaxed and Tommy switched on the lights. “It’s okay, I’ve got half a dozen agents watching this place.”

“How’d you find me?”

“I’m a werewolf. I’d show you, but these jeans and t-shirt are nice and I don’t want to ruin them. You’ll just have to take my word for it.” He turned his hand over as his nails grew several inches. “That’s about as much as I can do without going all wolf. Who were you talking to?”

“One of the spirits. Her name is Rosa.”

“Hi, Rosa,” he said, without a hint of mockery. “You mentioned Nate’s name. He’s a friend of mine. My best friend, actually. That incident you read about where we saved those werewolves, he also saved my life and the life of my daughter Kase.”

Layla recognized the name Kase from somewhere, but couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She motioned for Tommy to sit, and he sat down on the sofa, while Layla took the armchair. “You said you’d tell me the truth. All of it?”

Tommy nodded. “We’ve kept you in the dark because we were worried how you’d react. You have a lot going on right now, and we didn’t want to add to that.”

“You were worried I’d let the demon out?”

“A little. Chloe told us you had that under control. And I trust her.”

“Why?”

“She works for me.”

Layla felt like she’d been slapped. “Works for you? She owns a coffee shop.”

“No. Well, actually, yes, but not in the way you think. Three years ago, she left the world of Avalon to get away from that life. I asked her to move to Ocean Village, and then I asked her to keep an eye on you.”

Layla felt like she couldn’t breathe. “Keep an eye on me?”

“You want the facts, or do you want to be angry?”

“Let him talk,” Rosa said softly.

Layla motioned for him to continue.

“Chloe is a highly trained employee of mine. Her job was to keep an eye on you because we know who your father is. And more importantly, we know what you father is.

“Your father is an umbra, Layla. He found a scroll way before you were born, and decided to use it to help others. Over time that turned into him killing lots of people because, as you may have noticed, he’s insane. But you are the only documented birth to an umbra. Ever. We had no idea what that power would do, so we kept an eye on you and your mother. Your mother knew for the most part. When she brought you to England, she went to my wife, Olivia, and explained everything, and Olivia told her we’d watch over you for as long as it was needed.

“But then your mother died, and now we had a grief-stricken daughter who may or may not have incredible power buried inside her head. As it turned out, you didn’t, not until a few days ago, but we didn’t know that at the time. Also, we knew that Nergal was looking for your father.”

“Why?” Layla interrupted.

“Your father’s power allows him to find anyone, anywhere, in any realm. He just needs to think of that person, or have something belonging to them, and he can find them. It’s how he tracked his victims. He’d find evidence at a crime scene and track it right to whoever it belonged. More often than not, it was the criminal responsible. Nergal wants that power so that he can track other umbra like your father. He wants to create an army.”

Layla couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Not only did Chloe lie to her all these years, but her mother had practically arranged it, and her father wasn’t a human. If her father was an umbra, and she was an umbra, maybe she was becoming her father in more ways than she’d ever imagined. Maybe that was how it started with him, and how it would start with her. She’d lose control and hurt people she loved.

“Anyway, back to Chloe. She was just meant to watch and report. That’s it. But she grew to like you. And you formed a deep friendship. The only problem was, she was lying to you. She asked me a dozen times if she could tell you the truth, but we weren’t sure what you’d do if you learned it. So she got deeper and deeper into her new life, and all it took was Elias to come along for her to be put in an awful place.”

“What awful place?”

“She’s an umbra. Like you. Like your father. She wanted to be the one to talk to you about her power, about your power, about how to control it. About the demon. But we said no. We weren’t convinced that having someone so close to you reveal her true self would pay off. We thought it might trigger the demon.”

“Why tell me this now?”

“Because we can’t have you running off to look for information, and we can’t have you thinking we’re keeping things from you. This won’t work that way.”

“Chloe has lied to me all these years? Pretending to be my friend?” A memory clicked. “She told me about Kase. They’re friends.”