For the first time during our sisterly one-on-one, La Sorcière reacted. She snorted then muttered something. It sounded French, but it wasn’t Canadian French or Cajun French, so I was screwed when it came to understanding anything.
Eugenia—on the other hand—chuckled. “She says ‘Even the most obvious answers sometimes do not bite a foolish man in the ass.’”
Oh yeah. We were related.
“I won’t force you to come back,” I told Eugenia.
“You are strong, Secret, but I have the witch on my side. You couldn’t force me.”
La Sorcière clucked her tongue and waved her cane menacingly. I couldn’t tell if she was adding a visual element to Eugenia’s threat, or if she was scolding the girl for wielding grandmotherly power like a weapon.
Either way, Eugenia ignored her and plowed ahead. “If I come with you, it will be up to you to explain to Callum that me coming back doesn’t mean I’m staying. I’ve been out of the pack a long time, and I don’t know if being a lone wolf has screwed me up more than the magic did.”
“I’ll try to make him understand.”
Then she changed the topic. Drastically. “What’s she like? Our mom.”
“How much did Callum tell you about Mercy before you left?”
“That she was complicated. Wild. I always figured I was a lot like her.” Her faint smile made my stomach hurt.
“No. You’re nothing like Mercy. You have a soul.”
That knocked Eugenia on her proverbial ass. Her expression was that of a child learning Santa Claus wasn’t real. I felt like shit for being the one to kill her fantasy of who Mercy was. But if she ever met our mother, I didn’t want her thinking it was going to be a touching family reunion. Mostly because the next time I saw Mercy I would rip out her intestines and wear them as a sarong.
What can I say? Bitch not only tried to kill me, but my mate too.
I wanted to explain Mercy without tainting the story too much with my experiences. “Eugenia, Mercy isn’t complicated. She’s very simple. She loved my father and he died. When I was born, she got it into her head his death was somehow my fault and abandoned me. Her sadness never went away, and it made her go bat-shit crazy. Since then, she continues to blame me for everything she’s lost. She tried to kill me.”
“She…you mean metaphorically?”
“No, I mean she shifted her hand into a claw and made pretty solid effort of shredding the meat off my face. That was after she held a bullet between my ribs for six hours so I couldn’t heal.”
Eugenia’s mouth formed an O shape, her eyes wide and a little wet.
Now I had not only told her Santa wasn’t real, I’d told her the Easter Bunny went on killing sprees to eat the children who didn’t find his eggs.
“But…”
“I’m sorry.”
“Maybe—”
“I don’t want to be cruel.” I stood up and rubbed my hands against my back pockets to rid myself of the film of sweat that had accumulated while I told my story. “Once, there was a good Mercy. But that girl is gone. Our mothers are the women who raised us, not the woman who gave birth to us.”
A bunch of thyme hung loose in her hands, perilously close to slipping to the floor. Eugenia turned to La Sorcière. “Did you know?”
The witch shrugged.
“Of course you knew. You know everything.” The girl sighed. Shaking off the stupor, she finished wrapping twine around the herbs. Once she had set the bundle in a basket with the others, she placed her hands in her lap and took two deep breaths. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll come with you.”
I had to sit down again.
“You’re right. The one who raised me is my real parent, and it wasn’t Mercy, it was Callum. I owe it to him to go back and try to be part of the family he made for me. And you risked your life to come here to ask me to come with you, not to force me… So yeah, I’ll come.”