“You need a ride home?” Teran asked.
Rowan shook her head. “No, I’ll walk. This weather’s no more bothersome to me as sunshine.” True to her word, she slid on a warm jacket, but no gloves or hat, and headed out into the still-raging storm.
As I shut the door and turned back to Teran, she said, “How much do you know about Rowan?”
I shrugged. “Mostly what I’ve seen of her and what little you and Tad told me.”
“What’s your basic feeling about her?”
I thought for a moment. “I feel like I need to be wary because of her involvement in the vampire community, but…honestly? I like her. I like how direct she is. I feel like I’ve known her longer than I have. Why?”
Teran sobered. “Now that you’re becoming more involved with her, I need to tell you something. Eventually, you would find out and Rowan and I talked it over. She agreed with me.”
This was sounding ominous.
“You know that she knew Great-grandpa Brian? That she helped him and Colleen to found Moonshadow Bay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
“So she’s old. She’s older than most of us who live here, with the exception of a few shifters and vampires. Witchblood is strong. But even among those of us born to the magic, there are varying strains of it. Some—like your mother’s and my line—are fairly strong and unless there’s an accident, we live a long, healthy life to around 150, 160. But some strains of witchblood are far more long-lived and resilient. They go back a long ways. Rowan is from one of those ancient families, and she can trace her lineage back to the Merlin.”
The Merlin was the father of druids. He had vanished and there were tales among the magical families that one day, he might appear again, but nobody knew if they were just folktales or not. But lineage back to the Merlin was impressive.
“All right,” I said, still not following why I was getting a lesson in Rowan’s family history. “She’s strong and probably going to live to be three hundred or older.”
“Right,” Teran said, frowning. She paused, then said, “Do you ever wonder why you never met your father’s parents? Your paternal grandparents?”
I shrugged. “Dad told me that they moved to Scotland, just like Grandma Karns—her name was Naomi—moved back to Ireland. He said they couldn’t afford to travel. Every now and then I received a present from them. I just assumed they were either dead or too old to make it over to Mom and Dad’s funeral rites, though I have wondered why I haven’t heard from them. You’d think they might want to keep the lines of communication open with their only granddaughter.”
Teran took a deep breath. “Here’s the thing, January. Your father’s parents were actually his foster parents. He was fostered out at birth, and they brought him up. They moved after he was out on his own. As much as they cared about him, they aren’t his blood heritage.”
I shook my head. “You’re trying to tell me something and I don’t get it. Please, just come out and say what you want to say.”
“Your father was born here in Moonshadow Bay. His mother had enemies at the time, and she was worried that he would become a target. She also knew that she didn’t have the time to devote to him. So she gave him to the Jaxsons to be fostered. He never knew they weren’t his real parents but your mother did, and she told me, in case anything should ever happen to them. And the only reason Althea knew was that her mother told her.”
“Come out and say it, please. If you know who my grandmother is, then shouldn’t I get to know? After all, if I ever need a kidney,” I said, joking, though for some reason I was very nervous.
“Put two and two together, January. Your grandmother is Rowan Firesong. Your father was her son, and she gave him up because she feared his life might be in danger.” Teran sat back, staring at me as my world exploded once again.
Chapter Fifteen
The shock waves kept coming. I sat there, trying to take in the information. Finally, I asked, “And my father never knew?”
Teran shook her head. “He never knew. When Rowan realized that your mother and I knew, she asked us to keep it quiet. Rowan Firesong has accumulated plenty of enemies over the years and she didn’t want the fallout to rain down on your father. Today, I told her I wanted to tell you and she reluctantly agreed.” She hesitated, then asked, “Are you all right?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer. Finally, trying to sort through the jumble of feelings I had, I asked, “What does this mean for me?”
“You have a strong line of magic from your mother, from our side of the family, but you have an even stronger line of witchblood from your father’s side. I’m surprised it hasn’t burst through before now, but then again, given you’ll inherit some of Rowan’s longevity, you’ve got a ways to go.”
I shook my head, taking everything in. It changed very little in some ways, and yet—it felt like my whole world had just shifted. At that moment, I heard Louise’s door open and footsteps in the hall.
I glanced up, expecting to see her on the stairs, but instead, I found myself staring at a dark, shadowy figure. He was darker than ink, darker than night, like a black hole absorbing all light around him. A cloud of fear swept toward us, rolling like waves off the ocean. In that instant, I knew that should he touch either one of us, he would drain us dry.
“Shadow man!” I jumped up.
Teran was already on her feet. She held her hands out, palms facing forward, and began to whisper an incantation.
I froze as images flooded back. I was barely three, and there was a very bad man reaching for me. He was the color of raven wings. As I stood there, the fear I had felt as a child swept through me. Then, just as quickly, I knew what I had to do.
“Druantia, protect us!” The words echoed off my tongue, feeling both alien and yet so correct. The shadow man paused, pulling back. In that moment, I caught sight of Rameer’s bottle, which was still on the coffee table. I yanked the stopper off.
“Rameer, help!”
He came flowing out of the bottle, looking a little confused. Then he caught sight of the shadow man and, fire blazing in his eyes, he shot forward, not even fully in form yet, and his mist collided with the shadow man’s smoke. There was a shower of sparks as the two energies clashed, and then the sound of sparking electricity reverberated through the room. Ball lightning appeared, then exploded before vanishing. The next moment, the lights flickered, went out, and then snapped back on.
Rameer was standing there, staring at the steps. The shadow man was gone.
Dazed, still not sure what had just happened, I shouted, “Louise!” and dashed past Rameer, taking the steps two at a time with Teran right after me.
I burst into the guest room to find Louise in bed, unresponsive. She was so pale that it looked like all the blood had drained out of her, and she was barely breathing.
“What do we do?” I asked Teran as she joined me. “I think he drained her.”
“He did. We can’t get a doctor over here fast enough—but I’ll call Dr. Fairsight and ask her to come if she can. Meanwhile, fetch me some hot water, a washcloth, and see if your mother left any Revival water in her herb closet. If not, we’ll have to improvise with mint—preferably peppermint—and lemon.” Teran pulled out her phone.