Page 70 of Wicked Deeds

A thought struck me like a bolt out of a clear sky. She’d wanted to use me for the demon all along.

Bile rose in my throat. Was it possible? Could she have planned that far ahead? Had a kid because she thought she could make a bargain with the demon for whatever it was she wanted? It was the only thing that made sense to me for her not wanting to stick with Jack, at least long enough to saddle him with me and leave with a nice payoff.

Holyshit. Was that why she’d gone underground in middle America? Determined he’d never find out about me until she knew whether I had power and could be traded to a demon? I bent over, bracing a hand on the back of a chair, trying to remember how to breathe. Had my mom really been that callous? Or crazy? Jack was no picnic, either. What the hell did that say about me if those two had provided my genetic material? Was I one short straw away from cracking and trying for world domination?

“Maggie?” Damon said, crouching down beside me. He put a hand on my back, rubbing it gently. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry. I just figured out my mom was worse than I thought.” I stifled a half hysterical laugh and straightened. Gwen stared at me, looking thoroughly confused and paler than ever.“Can we find out if it is Jack?” I asked Damon. “Another way, I mean. A…less direct way?”

He frowned. “I’m not sure. Those databases will be locked down tight.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Are you telling me you couldn’t do it?”

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “I’m not supposed to break?—”

“Not ‘supposed to’ being the relevant part of that sentence,” I said, making air quotes. “We need to know. Jack will have been notified his medical history was accessed, too. I mean, he knows about Gwen, but what if he decides he can use her in some way? She’s half-Fae…” Half-Fae and half-witch. Untrained. Vulnerable.

“Fuck,” Damon pulled a face.

“Exactly,” I said.

“Someone want to tell me what’s going on…what did Jack do?” Gwen asked.

“We can’t tell you. Not without the Cestis okaying it,” I said. “We can ask Cassandra when we tell her about this.”

“Why would Cassandra need to know?”

“Because Jack’s a witch. Which makes you…well, I’m not sure. More than tanai. I don’t know how common that is, but we have to tell Cassandra.”

Gwen half rose from her chair, as though she was going to flee. I put a hand out, catching her arm instinctively. “Hey, none of this is your fault. No one’s going to be mad at you.”

Mad, no. Concerned about her magic, yes. I didn’t need to be Cestis to realize that.

“It will be okay.” I put gentle pressure on her arm and she thumped back down into her chair.

“She doesn’t necessarily have witch magic, does she?” Damon asked. “Not all witch’s kids do.”

Gwen perked up. “Yeah, maybe I don’t.”

“She has some magic. She’s tanai. I don’t know about the other part.” Other than Jack was strong. You couldn’t summon imps if you weren’t.

“You can’t tell from her—” he waved his hand at Gwen, an encompassing swirl of his hand around the general outline of her body. “You know, energy field.”

“It looks a little smoky, like Callum and Cerridwen. Other than that, well, she hasn’t used magic around me. And, if she did, I’m not sure I could tell whether it’s Fae or witch magic she was using. Cassandra probably could.”

Damon shook his head. “So we ask Cassandra.”

Gwen slumped back in her chair. Obviously not so keen on the idea of the Cestis here getting interested in her.

“Which brings us back to who her—our—dad is. And why we need to know. If it’s just Joe Normal from the middle of nowhere, then we can all relax.” How Joe Normal would meet and knock up a Fae was the hole in that argument. I mean, it had happened back in the day…Fae stealing humans away, but not since the contract.

“Gwen can refuse a request if he tries to make contact,” Damon said. “Doesn’t that solve the problem?”

“She can refuse the request,” I said, “but we know Jack has friends who have no scruples crossing the lines of data privacy and hacking. He might choose to pursue other avenues of access, too.”

Damon’s expression turned dark. He could hardly argue that Jack was going to play by the rules. I could see him turning the possibilities around in his head, his brain running at its usual genius speed as he analyzed the problem. I let him think until he shook his head once and squared his shoulders. “So the first thing we want to do is get your records out of the database. He can’t hack information that’s not there.”

He had a point. “How?”

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