Davido drew close once more, standing behind her. He petted her head with his short, thick fingers. “My dear, you are among friends.”
“Am I? But for how long? And where will I go now? I was so happy here.” She glanced up at Batya, tears glistening on her long lashes.
Lorelei then stood, shook out her hands and straightened her shoulders. Drawing in a deep breath, she blew it out slowly. “Not your problem. I know that. If I leave, Margetta will not bother any of you again. I’m the one she wants. I’ll pack up now.”
Batya rose to her feet as well. “Well, eff that, Lorelei. You’re not leaving, so don’t even think about it. We’re family here.”
Davido nodded, an approving light in his eye as he met Batya’s gaze. “Listen to my most beloved daughter. She speaks the truth from her heart. You have a home here.”
Lorelei glanced from him to Batya. She nodded several times but kept her lips pinched tightly together. “Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”
Quinlan, whose hair now hung about his shoulders, scowled at Lorelei. “Help us to understand what’s going on here. Is she behind the Invictus?”
“She and my father, yes. You’ve probably heard him called the Great Mastyr, he is both vampire and shifter.”
“Sweet Goddess. Then you are vampire as well. Why didn’t you tell us that?”
She shrugged. “Because I’m a disappointment to my father. My vampire genetics are the weakest part of who I am. ‘Negligible’ is the word he used. I believe they’ve been searching for the right mate for me, that because I’m also part wraith, I’d be able to form an incredibly powerful Invictus pair.”
“This is insane.”
“Yes, it is. Papa considers himself to be a scientist but my mother carries the ambition in the family, though she’s happy to use my father’s abilities. Margetta wants to rule the Nine Realms. She has desired nothing else for the past thousand years.”
Batya’s mind spun, question after question rolling through like leaves swept along by a brisk wind.
Lorelei met her gaze. “Maybe, if I told this from the beginning.”
Quinlan sat down on the couch and Davido moved behind Lorelei to sit in the chair next to her. Batya picked up the teapot and tray, as well as the cup and saucer she’d dropped, putting them back on the coffee table. She sat down at the opposite end of the couch from Quinlan as Lorelei slowly resumed her seat.
Over the past two years, since Lorelei had served in the clinic, Batya had imagined several scenarios to explain who the woman was, even a past that involved Lorelei being a professional, high-end thief in one of the Nine Realms and that she’d moved to Lebanon to escape capture.
Never in her wildest imagination could she have pictured that the delicate woman opposite her, teardrops brimming once more in her eyes, was the product of gross genetic manipulation and the union of a shifter-vampire and a fae-wraith.
“Excuse me if I stare at you.”
“I understand.” She settled back in her chair. “I suppose for you to understand how I ended up here, I need to tell you about Genevieve.” She spoke of her troll governess that Margetta had kidnapped to serve Lorelei over sixty years ago, forcing the woman to school Lorelei until she was eighteen.
Margetta had erred, however, because the woman had been the salt of the realm-world and had imbued Lorelei with the values she held so close to her heart, of love and personal liberty, of realm-service, of kindness to strangers, all good things.
At the very moment that Margetta had come to take her daughter out of the mountain prison and put her to work in the family business of scientific evolution and Invictus pair creation, Genevieve had concocted a plan to escape with Lorelei.
All had gone well until Margetta arrived just a few minutes early, and Genevieve had died helping her charge make good her escape. “I didn’t know until I was well away, hidden by the disguise I could create, that she’d sacrificed her life for me.” She shook her head as though, even after all these years, she still couldn’t believe what happened.
“Where did you go?” Quinlan asked.
She smiled and glanced at Davido. “I lived in Merhaine for a long time, in Vojalie’s shadow. I was a troll servant in your home for twelve years from 1952 until 1964. I think you might have recognized me when you saw me in the doorway.”
“Of course I did. You called yourself Jenny.”
“I did, after the one who had saved my soul, altering my life forever. Did you know what I was?”
Davido shook his head. “No. Only that you were special, but even I couldn’t figure out what you were. I was intensely curious, of course, but Vojalie-the-wise told me to mind my own business and to let you be, that you needed to find your own way through life.”
“Your wife is one of the best women I’ve ever known.”
“Except perhaps for my beloved Batya’s mama, I would have to agree with you.”
Davido smiled sweetly at Batya. Her mother had died in childbirth, a rare occurrence in the Nine Realms.
Shifting his attention back to Lorelei, he said, “Then Margetta must have found you there. In our home.”
“Yes. Do you remember the night that you lost all those cucumbers to an inexplicable frost?”
“I do.” He leaned back in his chair, stunned. “And here is a mystery solved. Amazing. Eighty years later, I finally have the answer to the strange phenomenon that destroyed only the cucumbers.”
“I battled Margetta then fled. After that, I never lived longer than a year or so in any one town except Lebanon. I don’t know what it is, how she can find me, but I must emit some kind of signature that Margetta eventually locates, despite all my disguises and shields.
“After the first year passed in Lebanon, I thought maybe the earth-world would be my salvation. You can’t imagine how happy I was when I marked my second anniversary.”
“Oh, my poor child. If only you’d approached me or Vojalie. We could have done something for you.”
She smiled and extended her hand to him. “Knowing you both was enough.”
“Jenny,” he murmured. He took her hand, covering it with both of his own.
“It’s good to see you again, Davido. Truly.”
“Where did you go after Merhaine?”
She detailed much of her wandering life, from realm-to-realm, which meant that she knew a lot about all nine realms, more than most realm-folk would ever know.