She braced herself. “Sebastian Deale brought his wife and three daughters to the settlement here in sixteen fifty-one. His eldest daughter’s name was Hester. Hester Deale.”
“Hester’s Pool,” Fox murmured. “She’s yours.”
“That’s right. Hester Deale, who according to town lore denounced Giles Dent as a witch on the night of July seventh, sixteen fifty-two. Who eight months later delivered a daughter, and when that daughter was two weeks old, drowned herself in the pond in Hawkins Wood. There’s no father documented, nothing on record. But we know who fathered her child. We know what fathered her child.”
“We can’t be sure of that.”
“We know it, Caleb.” However much it tore inside her, Quinn knew it. “We’ve seen it, you and I. And Layla, Layla experienced it. He raped her. She was barely sixteen. He lured her, he overpowered her-mind and body, and he got her with child. One that carried his blood.” To keep them still, Quinn gripped her hands together. “A half-demon child. She couldn’t live with it, with what had been done to her, with what she’d brought into the world. So she filled her pockets with stones and went into the water to drown.”
“What happened to her daughter?” Layla asked.
“She died at twenty, after having two daughters of her own. One of them died before her third birthday, the other went on to marry a man named Duncan Clark. They had three sons and a daughter. Both she, her husband, and her youngest son were killed when their house burned down. The other children escaped.”
“Duncan Clark must be where I come in,” Layla said.
“And somewhere along the line, one of them hooked up with a gypsy from the Old World,” Cybil finished. “Hardly seems fair. They get to descend from a heroic white witch, and we get the demon seed.”
“It’s not a joke,” Quinn snapped.
“No, and it’s not a tragedy. It just is.”
“Damn it, Cybil, don’t you see what this means? That thing out there is my-probably our-great-grandfather times a dozen generations. It means we’re carrying some part of that in us.”
“And if I start to sprout horns and a tail in the next few weeks, I’m going to be very pissed off.”
“Oh, fuck that!” Quinn pushed up, rounded on her friend. “Fuck the Cybilese. He raped that girl to get to us, three and a half centuries ago, but what he planted led to this. What if we’re not here to stop it, not here to help this end? What if we’re here to see that it doesn’t stop? To play some part in hurting them?”
“If your brain wasn’t mushy with love you’d see that’s a bullshit theory. Panic reaction with a heavy dose of self-pity to spice it up.” Cybil’s voice was brutally cool. “We’re not under some demon’s thumb. We’re not going to suddenly jump sides and put on the uniform of some dark entity who tries to kill a dog to get his rocks off. We’re exactly who we were five minutes ago, so stop being stupid, and pull yourself together.”
“She’s right. Not about being stupid,” Layla qualified. “But about being who we are. If all this is part of it, then we have to find a way to use it.”
“Fine. I’ll practice getting my head to do three-sixties.”
“Lame,” Cybil decided. “You’d do better with the sarcasm, Q, if you weren’t so worried Cal’s going to dump you because of the big D for demon on your forehead.”
“Cut it out,” Layla commanded, and Cybil only shrugged.
“If he does,” Cybil continued equably, “he’s not worth your time anyway.”
In the sudden, thundering silence a log fell in the grate and shot sparks.
“Did you print out the attachment?” Cal asked.
“No, I…” Quinn trailed off, shook her head.
“Let’s go do that now, then we can take a look.” He rose, put a hand on Quinn’s arm, and drew her from the room.
“Nice job,” Gage commented to Cybil. Before she could snarl, he angled his head. “That wasn’t sarcasm. It was either literally or verbally give her a slap across the face. Verbally’s trickier, but a lot less messy.”
“Both are painful.” Cybil pushed to her feet. “If he hurts her, I’ll twist off his dick and feed it to his dog.” With that, she stormed out of the room.
“She’s a little scary,” Fox decided.
“She’s not the only one. I’m the one who’ll be roasting his balls for dessert.” Layla headed out behind Cybil. “I have to find something to make for dinner.”
“Oddly, I don’t have much of an appetite right now.” Fox glanced at Gage. “How about you?”
Upstairs, Cal waited until they’d stepped into the office currently serving as the men’s dorm. He pushed Quinn’s back to the door. The first kiss was hard, with sharp edges of anger. The second frustrated. And the last soft.
“Whatever’s in your head about you and me, because of this, get it out. Now. Understand?”
“Cal-”
“It’s taken me my whole life to say what I said to you this morning. I love you. This doesn’t change that. So pitch that out, Quinn, or you’re going to piss me off.”
“It wasn’t-that isn’t…” She closed her eyes as a storm of emotions blew through her. “All right, that was in there, part of it, but it’s all of it, the whole. When I read the file she sent, it just…”
“It kicked your feet out from under you. I get that. But you know what? I’m right here to help you up.” He lifted a hand, made a fist, then opened it.
Understanding, she fought back tears. Understanding, she put her palm to his, interlaced fingers.
“Okay?”
“Not okay,” she corrected. “Thank God about covers it.”
“Let’s print it out, see what we’ve got.”
“Yeah.” Steadier, she glanced at the room. The messy, unmade pullout, the piles of clothes. “Your friends are slobs.”
“Yes. Yes, they are.”
Together, they picked their way through the mess to the computer.
Nineteen
IN THE DINING ROOM, QUINN SET COPIES OF THE printouts in front of everyone. There were bowls of popcorn on the table, she noted, a bottle of wine, glasses, and paper towels folded into triangles. Which would all be Cybil’s doing, she knew.
Just as she knew Cybil had made the popcorn for her. Not a peace offering; they didn’t need peace offerings between them. It was just because.
She touched a hand to Cybil’s shoulder before she took her seat.
“Apologies for big drama,” Quinn began.
“If you think that was drama, you need to come over to my parents’ house during one of the family gatherings.” Fox gave her a smile as he took a handful of popcorn. “The Barry-O’Dells don’t need demon blood to raise hell.”
“We’ll all accept the demon thing is going to be a running gag from now on.” Quinn poured a glass of wine. “I don’t know how much all this will tell everyone, but it’s more than we had before. It shows a direct line from the other side.”
“Are you sure Twisse is the one who raped Hester Deale?” Gage asked. “Certain he’s the one who knocked her up?”
Quinn nodded. “Believe me.”
“I experienced it.” Layla twisted the paper towel in her hands as she spoke. “It wasn’t like the flashes Cal and Quinn get, but…Maybe the blood tie explains it. I don’t know. But I know what he did to her. And I know she was a virgin before he-it-raped her.”
Gently, Fox took the pieces of the paper towel she’d torn, gave her his.
“Okay,” Gage continued, “are we sure Twisse is what we’re calling the demon for lack of better?”
“He never liked that term,” Cal put in. “I think we can go affirmative on that.”
“So, Twisse uses Hester to sire a child, to extend his line. If he’s been around as long as we think-going off some of the stuff Cal’s seen and related, it’s likely he’d done the same before.”
“Right,” Cybil acknowledged. “Maybe that’s where we get people like Hitler or Osama bin Laden, Jack the Ripper, child abusers, serial killers.”