Anyan ran his hands through his poofy black curls, then ran one hand over his jaw. I’d never seen him so discombobulated, and suddenly I started to worry.
“Jane, I’m no good at these things.”
I blinked at him, confused, as my anxiety spiked.
“At what?” I began, but he interrupted me.
“I’m so sorry, Jane. Someone else should be here to tell you. I don’t know how to do this, I don’t know what to say…”
“Anyan,” I said sharply, growing concerned. “What’s going on? What happened? Is it my father?”
“No,” the big man rumbled, coming toward me. “Not your father.”
“Then what?” I said, relieved. That relief was short-lived.
“Your mother.”
My breathing hitched. “My mother? Have you seen her?”
“Oh, gods, I’m so sorry to tell you this.” Anyan took another step, reaching out a large hand. “Your mother’s dead.”
I stared at him, then looked down at his outstretched hand. It was grimy, like he hadn’t had time to wash. Meanwhile, I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I wouldn’t hear it. I shook my head.
“No,” was all I said. It was impossible. She’d only just come alive for me again in the past year, when I’d learned my true heritage. How could she be dead?
“Jane,” Anyan said, his voice breaking, “I’m sorry.”
His hand moved to take mine, a movement that up until now I’d fantasized about. But this was no dream, and instead of letting him touch me, I drew back.
“No.”
“Please,” he said, taking another step forward.
“Anyan, no,” I said, walking away from him across the cove. I’d never heard my own voice so hard, so cold. He didn’t follow me.
I stood, facing the rough stone of my cove wall, my back to him. It felt as if my brain were stuttering like a car engine. It would start to turn over, then it would stop. I couldn’t think past the feeling that my entire universe had wrenched to a halt.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I hate having to. I’m so sorry.”
“How?” I asked eventually.
He paused and I finally turned to face him. “Tell me how, Anyan.”
The barghest looked down at his feet, raising his eyes to meet mine only in the last second before saying, “She was murdered.”
I felt my legs drop out from underneath me, and suddenly I was kneeling on the soft sand of my cove.
“Murdered? How?”
“Jane, we can talk about this later. Let me get you somewhere warm. Safe.”
“Fuck you, Anyan. Tell me how.”
Visibly startled by the vehemence of my tone, the barghest knelt down in front of me.
“Jane, please, let me take you somewhere…”
“Tell. Me. Now.” My voice, at this point, wasn’t even my own.
The barghest wrung his hands—actually wrung his hands! As if he were the one who had just been told he’d never know his own mother. I gritted my teeth, suddenly hating him with a ferocity that astounded me.
“You know I have contacts in the Borderlands?”
I nodded sharply. How could I forget? During the Boston debacle, Anyan’s contacts in the Chicago area had been both controversial and priceless. The information they’d gathered for us had been vital, especially considering no one, and I mean no one, who had anything to do with the Alfar power structure was supposed to know anything about what happened in the Borderlands.
Ryu had nearly popped a blood vessel when he found out Anyan had been keeping something so big a secret.
The barghest continued. “When I asked for help with the investigation in Boston, some stuff was uncovered in Chicago. In looking into that stuff, they found a thread connecting a bunch of halfling females who’d gone missing. Eventually, that thread led to an abandoned laboratory. It was a human fertility clinic once, just like where Conleth was kept. But this one was only recently destroyed, on purpose, to hide evidence. My friends in the Borderlands have far more access to human technology than we do, however, and they took DNA samples. Some of the DNA belonged to the missing women. So they dug up the ground behind the laboratory, and found the bodies.”
I shuddered, suddenly feeling deathly cold. But my voice was surprisingly calm.
“Was my mother one of them?”
“No. This was right at the beginning of the investigation, days after we got back from Boston. I went to the Borderlands to help, since I owed my friends a favor. When I was there, we found a connection between that lab and some purebred females from inside the Territory who’d disappeared in the past year. At that point, I was brought in officially by Orin and Morrigan to investigate. Ryu was kind enough to tell them about my contacts, and I’d been dodging that bullet since. But once they needed me, I knew I was safe enough. I told them I’d work with my contacts, but they couldn’t interfere. If I did this, I wanted no one else knowing where I was or what I was doing. Not even Jarl. Surprisingly, they agreed. Well, almost—”
This was all very interesting, but not what I wanted to know.
“Anyan?” I interrupted, with a growl that sounded vaguely barghestian. He had the good sense to look sheepish.
“Friday night, we raided a laboratory outside of Chicago. Or at least we tried. By the time we got there, the staff had cleared out and the patients had been… disposed of. That’s when we found your mother. I came as soon as I could, to tell you.”
I let the full weight of what Anyan had said settle on my shoulders. Or at least I tried to. But I didn’t want to hear it. So I focused on everything else rather than what really mattered: the fact that my mother was dead.
“So you’ve known for almost two days, and I’m only finding out now?”
Anyan’s fists clenched on his knees. “I’m sorry, Jane. After we verified your mother’s identity, I got right on my bike and rode straight through. I got here as quickly as I could.”
I glared at him, unable to speak through my rage.
Anyan sat back on his heels. “Maybe we should have called. It just didn’t seem right to tell you like that, after everything you’ve been through—”
I stood up, cutting him off with a strangled sound that emitted from my throat without conscious thought.
“Don’t you dare presume to know what I have been through, and don’t you dare presume to know what I can and cannot handle.”
Anyan watched me, obviously upset. “Jane, I…”
“No, Anyan. You don’t get to come out of nowhere and tell me these things. You don’t get to do that.”
“Please, I want to…”
“It doesn’t matter what you want, Anyan. I don’t want my mother to be… I don’t want any of this. Get away from me.”
But the barghest didn’t move. His long face was sad, and it was the pity in his eyes that pushed me over the edge.
“Fuck you,” I said, starting to pull off my jeans, much to his evident consternation. “You’re not some hero riding in to save me from myself. You come here telling me my mother is dead, and act like I should be grateful? Who the fuck do you think you are?” I was garbling, but it was all I had. My anger was keeping me from breaking down. Part of me recognized that what I said was unfair, that what I was doing to Anyan was cruel and that he didn’t deserve it. But I didn’t know how else to keep from losing my tenuous grip on… on everything. On my emotions, my sanity, my reason. I was losing me at that moment. And Anyan caught the brunt of my loss.
I stripped off my shirt and threw it at him. He let it drop into his hands and stood holding it, not knowing where to look as I stood naked in front of him.
“You don’t know me, Anyan Barghest,” was my parting shot as I ran into the ocean and to one of the only people who did.
“Jane, what are you doing here?” Iris asked. She sounded concerned, as she should, considering the state I was in. I was still naked, shivering as if I were freezing, but more from shock than from the cold. I’d swum to Eastport then walked to her boutique, dripping wet, down Main Street. I only just remembered to keep myself invisible to the mortals.
Iris pushed open the door and ushered me upstairs into the lush little apartment over her shop. She stood me in the front hall until she’d retrieved a towel and a blanket. The towel she wrapped around my dripping hair; the blanket she wrapped around me. Only then did I start sobbing.
I was so hysterical it took me awhile to get out what happened. After I’d finally managed to articulate that Anyan had shown up to tell me my mother had been murdered, Iris and I were cuddled together on her little sofa. She’d made me a steaming hot mug of chamomile tea, but I wasn’t drinking it. I just held it in my hands, letting it warm them, as I cried.
“Oh, Jane,” Iris murmured, stroking my hair. “Not that.”
Tears were still streaming down my face, but I’d stopped sobbing, finally, and could talk.
“I’ve been so stupid, Iris. This whole time, since I found out about all of you, I thought everything was just a matter of time.”