Page 45 of Heir of Ashes

Six minutes later, I stood before the dark, ornate wood door at the back of the two-story mansion. Everything I had seen so far screamed money. Except there was no numbered pad to unlock the door, like Logan had warned me about. Just a normal-looking keyhole.

I raised my hand to knock, then lowered it again and tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. No alarms went off when the door opened. I hesitated, recalling how Mother had been a stickler for rules, and one of them had been to make sure all doors were locked at night. I closed the door behind me and found myself in my mother’s spacious, clean kitchen. Besides the enormity of the room and its cleanliness, I saw nothing else. All I could think about was the meeting ahead. How would she react to seeing me? Would I get to meet the little girl? My heart pounded, causing my skin to tingle and my breaths to quicken. Cold sweat broke under my arms, upper lip, and hairline. Even my palms were clammy. The realization that I was going to see my mother after all these years was finally sinking in. A nervous flutter stirred in my stomach, threatening to bring back the meal I had consumed earlier. Would she hug me? Shed tears of happiness?

I followed the low murmur of a TV through a dark hallway to a large foyer, then down another corridor, stopping at the entrance to a spacious living room with plush beige and brown sofas. There, my mother sat alone, watching some talk show.

I cast my senses outward, but if someone else was in the house, they were out of my hearing range. Half of her face was in profile, and I took advantage of the moment to study her unaware. She hadn’t changed a bit, just like I suspected from her picture. Disappointment panged in my chest at her blue aura. Some part of me had wanted her to be the preternatural.

Her makeup was subtle and perfect. She always had a professional hand when applying it. She made herself look like a woman in her early to mid-thirties instead of her actual forty-six.

“Come in, child, or are you going to stand there forever?”

I jolted at the sound of her familiar voice and reminded myself this was no dream. She was really here. Or to be precise, I was. I hadn’t realized, though, that she had known I was there. She had always managed to catch me unaware, and I had to suppress the guilty feeling now. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. This was my right.

She hadn’t even turned to look at me when she spoke—as if my presence wasn’t worth her attention. That stoked my resentment.

“I was expecting you,” she said, taking me aback. “Come here.” She turned to look at me. There was not a single crinkle around her eyes or mouth to mark the passage of time. There wasn’t any surprise or delight shining in her eyes either. But there was resignation, as if my being here was an inconvenience she was forced to endure. I moved into the living room.

“You’re very brave to have come here,” she intoned with a thin smile, her eyes direct. “But then, you inherited yourfather’s stubbornness. And, I suppose, his recklessness. He’d do anything, no matter how foolish, if he had his mind set on it.”

“You never talked about my father before. I always thought it was because it was painful. Guess you just didn’t love him. I mean, send your own daughter to a torture institution, then move on with your life as if I meant nothing at all? You must have hated us both.” There was no stubborn tear trying to escape. No, just a bitter resentment that kept growing.

“Not at all,” she said, then in a much softer voice added, “I loved your father very much.”

But she didn’t say that she loved me too.

“Why? Why did you let them take me?” This was so not the way I had envisioned our reunion.

She answered without a hint of guilt, “It was the agreement. I was allowed to raise you until you reached puberty.”

I stopped pacing and stared at her. “What are you talking about? What agreement? You sold me to the PSS? I heard they pay a lot of money.” I looked around at the luxurious living room.

“Foolish child. Don’t be so obtuse,” she snapped, annoyed enough to raise her voice. There was a faint trace of anger in her eyes. “I didn’t sell you. Sit down so I can straighten some facts for you.”

She primly brushed an imaginary spec of lint off her light-blue skirt suit. Her calm attitude was the exact opposite of my imploding turmoil. I sat on a deeply-cushioned chocolate-brown easy chair that matched the light brown and beige décor, facing her. I didn’t think she could shock me anymore than she already had, but her next words proved me wrong.

“I was never your mother,” she announced in a calm tone—as if she was talking about something as mundane as the weather.

Shock had me jerking upright, denial like a fireball stuck in my throat. “What? No,” I croaked.

Her lips curled into a thin smile as she gestured for me to sit back down. I perched at the edge of the seat, my hands clenching. Any moment now, I’d wake up from this nightmare. Any moment now.

“I only met your father a few times,” she began. “But your mother and I, we were very good friends, distant relatives. To make it short, she disappeared for a while, and when she came back, she was pregnant, full of stories about this man she’d met. I was happy for her. I didn’t know there were beings out there before you were born, people with extraordinary abilities. Your mother never talked about your father being something else. Really, I don’t know what alerted the Scientists to his other nature, but they started watching him long before she met him.” She leaned forward and poured tea into two china cups, proving she had been expecting me. How?

“What I know is that after he was outed, he assumed the role of a mediator between his kind and the human government. Sugar?”

It took me a couple of seconds to shift gears and focus on what she was asking. You don’t just drop that kind of news on someone and expect their brain to follow the conversation. I didn’t answer and accepted the delicate china cup. My mind was raging with shouts of denial, trying to protect me from her words.

“Drink. It helps with the shock,” she instructed. She was calm, her voice nonchalant. I guess she really didn’t care what her words were doing to me.

I took a sip, didn’t taste it, and didn’t care that it burned my tongue.

“The Paranormal Society watched both your parents and kept a close eye on your mother. I think they hoped she wasn’thuman, like your father. Or maybe, being a research facility, they already knew the high-risk pregnancy wouldn’t end well. Either way, I don’t think your father knew how risky the pregnancy was to your mother. I believe he cared dearly for her.” She sipped from the cup and lowered the china to the small plate. She wasn’t looking at me, and that irritated me. When you delivered such news to a person, shattering a fundamental belief, the least you could do was look them in the eyes.

She glanced at me then, her eyes calm, unsympathetic. “But the baby was not human; therefore, the delivery was not normal. I don’t know the details of the birth, only that your mother didn’t make it and that you had talons for fingers. Like I said, we were good friends, but I’m not sure if she was aware of the preternatural world and just didn’t tell me, or if he deceived her into believing he was human. Because I was her only living relative, I took you home with me.”

I looked down at my clenched hands and slowly unclenched them. They were trembling. How tiny would my talons have been then? What kind of monster was I? Because I was one. What else, besides monsters and demons, possessed talons?

“Just like that?” I asked softly. “You told them you wanted to take me home and they let you?”