That my mother couldn’t have been a monster like Tucker and Mab and Deirdre.

But I couldn’t force out the denial, no matter how hard I tried, so I ended up shrugging instead. “Why would he lie about something like that? He was either going to blackmail me into working for him or kill me outright. He had nothing to gain by lying.”

I cleared some of the raspy emotion out of my voice. “Whether everything he said was true or not, there’s something going on here, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

Finn reached over and placed his hand on top of both of mine. “We’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

I tightened my fingers around his. “You’re damn right we are.”

* * *

Just before noon the next day, I was standing in Jo-Jo’s kitchen with Finn and Owen. The dwarf had healed me, and I’d spent the last several hours resting and recuperating. Jo-Jo had packed up her supplies to go help a client who was in a beauty pageant, and Sophia was covering the Pork Pit for me. Finn and Owen were sitting across the butcher-block table from each other.

“I said I was sorry for everything I said to you at the Pork Pit that day.” There was a wheedling note in Finn’s voice. “What more do you want from me?”

Owen crossed his arms over his chest and glared at my brother.

I rolled my eyes. Finn had been apologizing to Owen for the last five minutes, and Owen had been pointedly holding a grudge. I ignored them and went back to layering pasta sheets, spicy marinara sauce, and mounds of mozzarella and Parmesan cheese in a large casserole dish for my homemade lasagna.

Finn snapped his fingers. “Ah. I know what you want.” He got to his feet, went around to Owen’s side of the table, and held his arms out wide. “C’mon, Grayson. I’ll give you a free shot at me. Surely that will make you feel better.”

Owen frowned, but he made no move to take Finn up on his offer. Finn waggled his eyebrows in invitation, and Owen huffed in response.

“Fine,” Finn muttered. “If that’s how you want to be—”

Owen surged off his stool and plowed his fist into Finn’s jaw.

Crack!

Finn staggered back against the counter, a dazed look on his face.

“You’re right,” Owen rumbled, shaking out his hand, even as a smile quirked his lips. “I do feel better.”

I rolled my eyes again. “Boys.”

I reached into the freezer and grabbed two bags of frozen peas. I tossed one to Owen for his bruised knuckles and the other to Finn for his jaw. The two of them settled back down at the table, the silence between them far more companionable now.

Forty-five minutes later, I’d just taken the lasagna out of the oven and started dishing it up, along with a Caesar salad and garlic breadsticks, when the front door slammed open and Bria strolled into the kitchen.

“That smells amazing,” she said, shrugging out of her jacket and placing a manila folder on the counter.

“Sit down, and tell us what you found,” I said.

We all gathered around the table and dug into our food. I breathed in, enjoying the scents of cooked tomatoes, melted cheese, basil, oregano, and other spices that rose from the lasagna, which tasted even better than it smelled. It was the perfect warm, hearty dish to chase away the phantom chill of Deirdre’s Ice magic that still lingered in my mind. Lasagna was also great comfort food, and we could all use a little comforting after everything that had happened.

Bria took several bites of her lasagna and sighed with appreciation before starting her story. “Xavier and I found Deirdre’s body in the shipping yard, right where Finn shot her.”

“But?” I asked.

“But the rest of the place was clean. All the papers and files had been cleared out, all the computers had been smashed, and Xavier found a dozen cell phones torched in a trash can. Whoever Tucker really is, he was certainly thorough. We’ll follow up and chase down all the leads, of course . . .”

“But you don’t expect to find anything,” Owen finished.

She shrugged. “Probably not.”

We finished our food in silence. Bria was the first to push her plate away, and she grabbed the folder she’d brought off the counter and placed it on the table. Owen cleared the dishes, and we all gathered around the table again.

Bria looked at me. “Remember when I told you that I had seen Deirdre’s rune somewhere before?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Well, I finally remembered where, thanks to those photos Mallory gave you.”

She opened the folder and drew out a photo. It was another shot of that long-ago cotillion ball, just like the one Mallory had shown me several days ago. But instead of a group of girls, this photo showed only two: Deirdre and our mother, Eira. Both of them were smiling and holding out their rune necklaces toward the camera.

Finn let out a low whistle, and Owen tilted his head to the side. All I could do was stare at the photo.

Bria tapped her finger on the picture. “Mom had a photo just like this one. I remember her pulling out a whole album of photos and looking through them with me whenever she would tell me those bedtime stories about those old cotillion balls. But it’s not even the most interesting picture.”

She pulled out another photo, this one of Eira and Deirdre standing with another girl, Mab Monroe.

The three girls were clustered together, with Deirdre standing in the middle and smiling at the camera. Eira and Mab were on opposite sides of her, and neither one looked particularly happy to be so close to the other. In fact, Mab had her head turned, staring at a guy standing at the very edge of the photo.