Divorce, Divination and Destiny Read online

  We have been lied to.

  Rudolfo didn’t even sign his name at the bottom of that entry. He must have been too rushed for time.

  “We have been lied to.”

  Those words would haunt me.

  9

  I spent the rest of the night scouring Rudolfo’s diary for any mention of the other half-fae. Grams and Mom both fell asleep on the couch long before I finished. I completed my section and then slipped the back part out of Grams’s sleeping hands to search it.

  But Rudolfo and Alessandra never found the other half-fae. The Council caught up to them before they could finish the journey, and Rudolfo never saw Alessandra again. He died in the jail cells of the Hunter’s Council, hung by their ruthless hands.

  And any answers I hoped for died with him.

  All I knew was that, at some point, there had been more of me. For all I knew, there could still be more out there like me. I had no idea how long a half-fae was supposed to live. I knew from Grams that elves and fairies lived for thousands of years, so half-fae might have lived nearly as long. Maybe our lives spanned hundreds of years instead.

  Though that idea was personally daunting, it boded well for our ability to find more. Maybe the ones Alessandra had been searching for were still alive somewhere. I knew from Rudolfo’s entries that there was one in Romania and two in Ireland.

  It was possible there were more. Grams clearly wasn’t the only witch to fall for a fae.

  By the time I finished my frantic search of the old diary, the beginning rays of morning sunlight had started to filter through the living room window. Grams snored softly on the couch, covered in a soft knitted blanket she’d managed to pull off Mom completely.

  My mother’s head tilted into a position that should have given her a terrible knot in the back of her neck. But she’d been falling asleep like that for as long as I could remember. When Grams and I used to have our classic movie marathons, Mom never failed to toss her head back and fall asleep within five minutes of the opening credits.

  The warm memories were quickly pushed away when I glanced back down at the broken pieces of the diary.

  It felt like the room was spinning, like I’d been dancing in circles on a rug, and then had it suddenly pulled out from under me, so I was at once dizzy and falling, with no reprieve.

  Our grimoire was gone.

  The fae woman was after me.

  There were more of my kind out there.

  And, perhaps worst of all—the Hunter’s Council knew about our existence.

  White cold fear shot through me suddenly.

  Hunter.

  What if that were the reason he’d disappeared? What if he’d gone to tell the Council about my mixed blood? What if they wanted me dead?

  Bile rose in my throat, and for the first time since undergrad, I felt like I was about to throw up. I shot up from my seat and dashed down the hallway, just barely making it into the bathroom before the minimal contents of my stomach burst up through my throat and made a dramatic appearance.

  Vomiting was probably one of the most unpleasant things I could ever do. There had been one time in college where I’d gotten too wasted at a party and upchucked, and that had been enough. I’d never again gotten that drunk, and I hadn’t thrown up in nearly twenty years. If I were honest, morning sickness was one of the reasons I’d never wanted to get pregnant.

  In short, I hated throwing up. I never threw up. But I was doing it right then. Maybe it was a combination of stress and sleep deprivation. Or maybe there was some sort of magical explanation for it.

  Or maybe, I was just terrified.

  One thing was for sure, though. I couldn’t sit any longer in that house and wait for Mom and Grams to wake up. They’d instantly know that something was wrong, and then they’d ask a million questions to try to help me figure it all out.

  When I was a kid, that had annoyed the heck out of me. Then, as an adult, I’d learned to appreciate it. But now, I wanted to keep them safe, without lying to them.

  So I picked myself up from the bathroom floor and strode out of the house, taking nothing but my ring of keys and a credit card. I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing.

  I ended up at Rockstar Coffee. I was the first person inside, slipping in just after they opened. The poor barista could barely keep her eyes open, so I made sure to toss an extra five-dollar bill into the tip jar.

  This time, I decided not to venture out of my comfort zone and just ordered a plain black coffee, extra hot. I sat down in one of the cozy, overstuffed chairs by the front window and watched as Portland woke up.

  The sun rose over the mountains in the distance, blanketing everything in a warm-yellow glow that made it seem almost heavenly. People started to trudge by on their morning walks or on their way to work. Some held leashes attached to dogs. Others cradled travel mugs full of their morning drink. And others walked on with their eyes focused straight ahead, looking at nothing but the path in front of them.

  For a moment, a hotshot of jealousy flared up within me. I used to be one of those people, hurrying down the crowded Boston streets with coffee in my hand, ready to get my day started and face the criminals head-on. It wasn’t what other people might call exciting, and it definitely didn’t leave much room for me to have any semblance of a life outside of work, but at least it was normal.

  Or as normal as a woman could get when she spent her days with murderers and drug dealers. There were some money launderers in there, too.

  Now, my life was the complete opposite of that, and I couldn’t help but feel just a little bit sad that I couldn’t be so normal anymore.

  As I was sitting there, contemplating the major, sharp-right turn my life had taken, I suddenly knew what I had to do. It was as if all I needed was to clear my head of the witchiness for a moment or two for the ideas to flood in.

  There wasn’t much I could do about the fae woman. Or the other halflings. But there was something I could do about the grimoire. I needed to find it first, and then we could deal with all of the other problems.

  Besides, with a spell book that old, there was bound to be something in there that could help us.

  I cleaned up my now-empty coffee mug and made a beeline for Magic for Real. Annabelle and I were the only ones on duty today, so I needed to get there early and see if I could work out this mystery myself.

  An hour later, I was in the back with the videotape, watching it for the sixth time. But, no matter how many times I froze it, rewound it, and squinted to see who the figure in the hood was, I couldn’t make out a face.

  I was fairly sure, though, that our robber wasn’t the fae woman. I’d only encountered her for about ten minutes when we’d fought, but the figure on the cameras seemed shorter and stockier than she had. Which meant I was likely dealing with two separate, problematic magical creatures.

  I couldn’t think about that, though. I had to remain laser-focused on the task at hand.

  In fact, I remained so laser-focused that I didn’t even hear Annabelle come into the store an hour before opening. It wasn’t until the break room door opened that I realized it was already nearing eight a.m.

  Quickly, I slammed my finger down on the escape key right before I watched the hooded figure appear out of thin air for the eighth time. Somehow, I didn’t think Annabelle would think that was normal.

  “Hey, Annabelle,” I said as soon as she stepped inside.

  “Morning,” she replied sleepily, dumping her satchel onto the table and thankfully not noticing the awkward position I was in.

  She quickly went over to our pod coffee maker and brewed herself a cup.

  And I just stood there, halfway in front of the computer, terrified to move. I had this crazy idea in my head that I’d move from the screen, and all of a sudden, the video feed would pop up and show a disappearing fae to Annabelle’s watchful eyes.

  Slowly, the teen turned around, sensing my awkward presence, and stared me up and down in the accusing, nearly vicious w
ay only a teenager can. “You’re acting peculiar,” she announced.

  “No, I’m not,” I shot back quickly, even though I knew it was a total lie. It was a good thing I’d never considered being an actress.

  “Okay,” she shrugged in response. “Oh, don’t forget, I have to leave at three today. I have my coding class to tutor.”

  “Right, of course,” I nodded, only vaguely remembering that she had mentioned it to me.

  My life had been a little crazy lately.

  Annabelle was just about to leave when her words actually hit me.

  “Wait, coding!” I cried out like it was some sort of magical new invention. “Is that like, hacking, and whatnot? With computers?”

  “Sometimes,” she nodded. “It’s kind of the basis of everything actually in the computer. A website’s coded, so are the applications and the extensions. Pretty cool stuff. I’m hoping to get a scholarship for it, if possible. I mean, they’re giving out video game scholarships now. Shouldn’t they give some for the people who actually make the games?”

  “Yeah, totally,” I nodded. “You can go ahead and open the store.”

  “Okay, cool,” Annabelle replied, in a tone that told me she was anything but.

  I supposed that’s what I got for purposefully hiring a high school genius. She could tell something was off with me but, like most teenagers, wasn’t interested in digging into the nitty-gritty of my strange little mood.

  Which was good, for now. Because a plan was beginning to form in my head.

  As soon as Annabelle closed the door behind her, I whipped back around and started up the video again. I watched as the fae appeared, right outside of our front door.

  Right in the eye line of the street cameras.

  If I could figure out a way to get into the system, I might just have a chance at putting a face to this dark and mysterious figure. I’d need someone who knew computer code to hack into the system for me and play the video.

  But there was only one problem: the only person I knew who had any knowledge about hacking was a completely non-magical, normal human who would probably flip her lid if she saw a person just appear out of thin air on a security tape.

  Quickly, I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed home.

  “Hullo,” Mom murmured into the receiver, her voice deep from sleep.

  Normally, I’d feel bad about waking her up. But today, I could make an exception.

  “Mom, I need you to help me figure out how to make a memory spell,” I told her.

  10

  It turned out that a memory spell wasn’t nearly as easy as I had thought it would be. And that wasn’t just due to my seeming incompetence with nearly anything magic-related at the moment.

  Grams wasn’t so sure how she felt about messing with poor Annabelle’s memory, no matter what it got us, so she left the spell-making up to Mom and me. We tried about a million different variations over the next week before we finally managed to stumble upon one that didn’t explode.

  It was a potion and spell combination. We used ground-up, dried leaves from the devil’s kiss plants that grew in our backyard, tossed them in with some moon water and a dash of mint leaves, and then spelled the potion to allow us a block of time where Annabelle could be awake and functional but simply wouldn’t remember.

  This way, she could hack into the system, and anything she saw would simply fade from her mind after an hour or two. Mom was completely confident that it would have no lasting effects, so we finally felt confident in giving it to her.

  The next day, I casually broached the subject with our in-house genius. And by casually, I mean, I nearly made a complete fool of myself.

  The traffic had slowed down as it neared lunchtime, and the two of us were on a short break since there were no customers in the store.

  “Hey, so this coding thing you do, have you ever used it to hack?” I asked her casually, playing with a tiny selenite wand to try and make it seem like the question was no big deal.

  “You know that when grown-ups ask me stuff like that, they’re usually fishing for some sort of confession, right?” she replied with a quirked brow and squinted brown eyes.

  God, this kid reminded me so much of myself; it was a little terrifying.

  “Well, yeah, but not me,” I snorted.

  Annabelle appraised me for a moment before she must have decided I was actually serious because she shrugged and said, “A couple of times. Why?”

  “The police can’t find anything out on the robbers. They claim they tried to use the street cameras to get a facial ID, but that it didn’t work.” I rolled my eyes in annoyance, attempting to make my lie seem very realistic.

  “So, you want me to hack the street cams and see if they’re telling the truth?”

  I couldn’t tell how she felt about my unstated request. The continued raised eyebrow told me she was pretty dubious, but the mischievous little smirk on her face told me she liked the idea.

  “Only if you’re comfortable,” I said quickly.

  “If I can find the guy who tied me up and threw me into a closet, count me in,” she replied seriously. “Break room.”

  Suddenly, the tables turned, and it was as if I were the employee and she was the boss. We passed my mom, and I gave her a slow, single nod, movie style.

  She, of course, rolled her eyes at me but hurried to turn the lunch hour sign on the front door and twist the lock closed.

  In the break room, Annabelle pulled out her laptop and flipped it open, typing away instantly. She was hunched over it just like a perfect hacker, staring intently at the screen.

  “Don’t look,” she barked at Mom when her redhead attempted to peek over the top.

  Mom hopped back, giggling a little until a glare from Annabelle shut her up. This was serious business for her. After all, in the kid’s mind, she’d been tied up and shoved into a dark, tight, little space by this guy.

  Again, my heart sank when I thought about how our very existence had roped her into this. Suddenly, I felt a little less bad about the potion I was planning to sneak into her drink.

  “Annabelle, do you want a Coke?” I asked casually, opening up the break room fridge.

  “Please,” she replied. “With three cubes of ice.”

  I pulled out the ice tray and popped exactly three cubes into a fresh glass, then twisted open the plastic bottle of Coke.

  Here came the tricky part. I slipped the little vial of pink potion from my back pocket, popping it open and gripping it in my hand with the Coke bottle, pouring the two liquids into the glass at the same time and attempting to hide the little glow.

  I watched at the drink glowed for a split second longer before the liquids incorporated with each other and left with what looked like a perfectly normal glass of soda.

  “Here ya go,” I said, slipping it across the table toward Annabelle.

  “Thanks,” she murmured. And then she took a big, long sip.

  There was no going back now. We were about to find out exactly who had stolen the grimoire from us.

  Hacking, it turned out, took a whole lot longer than I expected. The movies were terribly misleading when they showed genius tech people sneaking in through the FBI’s mainframe in about five minutes.

  I blame the Ocean’s Eleven series. They had given me false hope for the speed with which a hacker could move.

  In fact, it took Annabelle nearly an hour before she was able to get inside Portland’s city security system. Mom and I had estimated that the potion would work its magic for about two hours, so hopefully, we still had a little time.

  Either that, or our estimations were wrong, and we were about to expose a human to the dark underbelly of the magical world.

  Finally, though, Annabelle sat back with a massively satisfied smile on her face. “I’m in.”

  Two words Mom and I had been waiting to hear. We both flew up from our perches—mine against the counter and hers on one of the chairs—and crowded over Annabelle’s shoulder. And
then discovered we were staring at a computer screen full of gibberish.

  “You’re in where, exactly?” Mom asked.

  “The security system,” Annabelle replied as if it were supposed to be obvious. Which, I supposed it probably was. “It’s just an absolute mess. They really need to get someone in here to reorganize their tapes. Here’s the one we’re looking for.”

  And, just like that, Annabelle clicked on a tiny little green square in the bottom corner of her screen, and a video feed came up.

  It was real-time and showed the front of our store as it looked right then. I could even see the little closed sign hanging behind the glass.

  Quickly, Annabelle switched the camera views, so we were staring out at the street from the corner just above the front door. It was a view used to catch the faces of people who decided to speed through the red light out front like reckless teenagers, but today, it was working to help us catch a fae.

  Hopefully.

  “Can you scroll back to the day of the robbery?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Annabelle nodded.

  Suddenly, the feed was zipping fast, backward. I watched myself walk out of the door facing the store, and then people flitted in and out, or out and in, as time rolled back by over a week.

  Finally, Annabelle stopped on the morning of the robbery, nearly a minute before our fae would appear.

  The street was mostly empty, save for the occasional passerby who seemed more interested in their phone or the sidewalk than anything else.

  My heart picked up speed, but I couldn’t tell if it was in anticipation of seeing this person’s face, or if I was nervous for Annabelle’s reaction.

  Or both.

  Finally, the seconds ticked by. I knew exactly when he’d appear, having watched our feed so many times that morning. Then, right on cue, our fae showed up.

  Annabelle shrieked. I gasped. My mom let loose a string of curse words that would make even the most experienced sailor blush. Annabelle flew up from her chair and was across the room in an instant, pointing at the computer with a shaky, terrified finger.