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I never knew my real father. I’d seen him in visions and dreams, a dark, penumbral presence, like a piece of black sky torn from the middle of a storm. La tormenta, in Spanish. Hah. I was learning.

Sometimes Lucian called me la tormentita, his little storm.

Kevin Corday was the father I’d known since I could remember anything. Twenty-six years ago he was just a stranger on his way home at night, taking a shortcut through Oppenheimer Park. He found my mother lying unconscious, bloody and broken. He brought her to the hospital, and from that moment onward, he was always a part of our lives. Even then, I was a tiny seed growing inside of her, the product of a violent assault. My mother said she didn’t remember anything about that night, except for Kevin holding her hand in the hospital room and, afterward, the pain of recovery.

But I wasn’t so sure. I can’t see how you could forget something like that.

And in my vision, she’d recognized him. My “real” father. She’d stared into his ancient, reptilian eyes, and she’d known him.

I could see her, holding her athame with its pearl hilt. Standing before the creature who’d nearly torn her apart years ago, numb to her screams.

You won’t see her. As long as I live, you won’t ever know her.

But that promise couldn’t be kept anymore. I needed to know him, to know it, the pureblood demon who’d sired me. He was in my dreams more and more, whispering from some dark, wrecked place within my mind. He could see me. Like a tourist from another world, he was watching me fumble and fall down and try to get through each day without having a complete mental breakdown. And he was enjoying himself, disporting himself and taking his pleasures.

If he was going to reach out and meddle with my life from another world, at the very least I’d get some answers from him.

Of course. All you have to do is find him, and figure out a way not to get killed while doing it. Simple as putting together furniture. Connect h-bolt to c, and then shoot yourself in the head, because it’ll hurt far less than what he might do to you.

I stood up. The blinds were half-closed, and rain-filtered light seeped into the bedroom, giving everything the grayish cast of a silent film. I needed an outfit that would go with the rain. Something gortexy. It was bad enough that I had to wear a bra at all times in the house now, since we were living with two teenagers.

I felt too tired to put an outfit together. Too tired to even drag myself across the room, let alone reach the kitchen. I guess having your ass kicked by a primordial demon could do that to you. But that was a year ago, and I still felt like my insides were raw. Like my body was nothing but scar tissue, held together by stitches, bandages, and the dumbass neurons that refused to stop firing. I loved my job, and I loved my family, but all I wanted to do was close my eyes and let myself be washed away.

I stood still for a moment, relaxed, and tried to align myself with the earth.

When I was a little girl, and my power was at its height, I used to be able to hear the convection currents deep beneath the crust. For some reason, they sounded like distant dogs barking to my twelve-year-old ears. Now I could barely feel the layers of mud, sediment, and bedrock beneath the house, creaking and settling within their dark matrix. The power didn’t flow through me like I was a naked lightbulb anymore. Lately, it felt more like trying to coax an old transmission into second gear, with every nerve in my body screaming a complaint.

If I felt this way at twenty-six, how would I feel at forty? No wonder mages died young. The golden years weren’t much to look forward to.

I threw on a sweater and ventured into the hallway. Derrick was cooking something, and I could smell coffee. My senses perked up. Materia couldn’t rouse me in the morning, but coffee was a different story.

The kitchen was a strange domestic tableau. Mia sat at the table, drinking coffee and doing her homework, or at least something that looked like her homework. Even Derrick, who had a flair for handwriting analysis, could barely decipher what she wrote in the margins of her notebook.

Miles was sitting next to her, looking over her shoulder. He signed something to her that I didn’t catch, and she shook her head.

“No, I think I’m supposed to solve for y. But I could be wrong. I stared at this same problem for, like, a thousand years last night before going to bed, and it still doesn’t make any sense.”

“Math never really helped anybody.” Derrick put a plate of bacon and eggs in front of her. “Except for bloodstain analysts. But they’re creepy.”

She tasted the eggs and made a face. “Did you put rosemary in these?”

“I may have.”

“God, is there anything you don’t put rosemary in?”

“I can think of several things.”

“All I’m saying is that, sometimes, you can just let eggs be eggs, you know? They don’t always have to be fancy.”

“I’m sorry our kitchen doesn’t resemble a truck-stop diner. If you’d like, I can make some corned-beef hash for you.”

“Mmmm. Could you burn it a little? I love it that way.” He looked at Miles and signed: Any advice?

Miles shrugged and signed back: At least she’s eating breakfast.

“Morning.” At least I think that was what I said. It might have been “mgrngrl.”

Derrick put a steaming mug in front of me. “You’re up early. I thought you weren’t meeting with Tasha until ten.”

I let the mug warm my hands. “I have to stop by the trace lab first.”

“Is Cindée working with the armor that they found on Ordeño?”

“And Ben. He mentioned something about a Teichmann test for old blood, and it got him all excited.”

Mia closed her notebook. “Why was the dude wearing armor? Was he in one of those medieval reenactment societies? Because there’s this guy in my physics class, George Pearsall, and both of his parents belong to one of those, and they actually put on armor and fight with swords. I mean, she’s like a serving wench or something, but apparently his dad—”

“We’re not discussing the details of an active case over breakfast.” I eyed her mug critically. “Since when are you drinking coffee?”

“Since I started studying for AP exams.”

“It hardly seems healthy.”

“Didn’t you eat, like, a whole box of vanilla wafers before you went to bed last night?” She shook her head.

“That’s not just unhealthy; it’s sad.”

“I had low blood sugar. And you’re fifteen. You should be enjoying the tenth grade, not studying for college entrance exams.”

“They’re AP exams. The SAT is totally different, although I’m going to write that, too. It’s the only way I’ll get into Stanford.”

“Make sure to win a few scholarships in the meantime,” Derrick said. “We can’t afford to pay that kind of tuition.”

“Those grants are supercompetitive. That’s why I have to ace all of my AP exams and do extra-credit work.”

“Isn’t Stanford a little far away?” I asked. “What about UBC?”

“What about it?”

“They have lots of great programs.”

Mia folded her arms. “Tess, do you even know what I want to study?”

God, I hated when she said my name like that. Tess, do you even know what I’m talking about?

Tess, do you have any idea how lame you sound? I never talked to my mother that way. But Mia wasn’t my biological kid, and she knew it.

Miles made a quick sign while looking at me: He extended the index fingers of both hands and rotated them counterclockwise next to his head, while assuming an expression of vague authority.

“History,” I said. “Classics, right?”

Mia gave him a look. “That’s cheating. She totally didn’t know.”

He shrugged and spoke softly: “Just making conversation.”

I heard some shuffling in the living room, and Patrick emerged. He looked exhausted. He was pale, even for a vampire, and he hadn’t even bothered to use any of Derrick’s thirty-dollar hair paste. His five-o’clock shadow made him look older than eighteen, and slightly threatening, which I didn’t want to admit even if I felt it. Living with a young vampire magnate had its emotional ups and downs. Mostly, I tried not to think about the fact that he could drain my blood while I was sleeping.

If he wanted to borrow the car and stay at a friend’s place, I wasn’t going to stand in his way.

“Morning.” Derrick raised an eyebrow. “Looking a bit rakish, aren’t we? Did you sleep in a mausoleum?”

“Funny.” Patrick sat down and yawned. “Barely slept at all, actually.”

“I’ll make some more coffee.” Derrick grabbed another filter from the drawer. “Now, if I had my Gaggia espresso machine, I wouldn’t need—”

I raised my hand. “Don’t even. That matter was already settled.”

He rolled his eyes and poured more coffee into the machine.

I turned to Patrick. “Why aren’t you sleeping? When I was your age, I could sleep twelve hours a night.”

Of course, I wasn’t a vampire.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I need a nicer bed.”

“You got my old bed,” Mia said, “and I got the futon. So don’t complain.”

“You can have it back.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Right. Because you stole every pillow in the house anyway, so it doesn’t matter that you got the crappy futon.”

“Oh, my God, why are you still going on about the pillows? I took one extra pillow from the couch.”

“Yeah, the one I was using.”

“So why was it on the couch?”

“Just because it’s on the couch doesn’t make it—”

“Shut it. Both of you.” I drained my mug. “As long as you’re both living in this house, you have to learn to get along. That means respecting each other’s boundaries and actually making an effort once in a while.”

Mia laughed. “Yeah, like he totally makes such an effort. Yesterday he ate all the leftover pizza and left greasy paper towels on the counter.”

“I asked you if you wanted some.”

“Yeah, when you already had two pieces in your mouth. And then you spent forty minutes in the bathroom, doing God knows what.”

“It’s called—”

“Whoa.” I stood up. “I don’t want to hear any more of this. I’m late for work. You’ll have to figure it out on your own.”

“But he can’t just hog the bathroom all the time. We all have to use it, and I’m tired of it smelling like Axe body spray.”

“You can use the downstairs bathroom.”

“There’s mold on the ceiling! And the toilet makes that weird noise.”

I walked into the living room, searching for my coat. “Then use the bushes. I don’t care. In the meantime, Patrick, I’ll pick you up another pillow.”

“It’s okay,” he called back. “You can just give me twenty bucks and I’ll pick it up myself. You probably don’t have time to visit the mall and shop for me.”

I poked my head back into the kitchen. “Nice try, but you still owe me for gas, groceries, and those PlayStation games that you rented.”

He sighed. “Fine.”

“Any preferences for your new pillow? Plain? Stripes? Something robust with cars and women?”

“I don’t care.”

“Okay. I’ll just get whatever’s machine-washable.” I smiled. “See you all tonight.”

“Can you pick up taco seasoning?” Derrick called. “We also need lime juice for the guacamole. It’s Fiesta Friday.”

“That’s never going to catch on, sweetie. But I’ll grab something.”

I closed the door on his mumbled reply.

I’d never admit it to any of them, but this was the best part of my day.

I sat in the waiting room, thumbing through a copy of Chatelaine. The people sitting nearby looked surprisingly normal. I didn’t know any of them personally, but I’d seen them working in different departments. Everyone was reading a magazine or sending text messages.

“Tess?”

I stood up and walked over to the desk. The receptionist gave me a friendly, uninterested smile.

“Follow me.”

The hallway was bland, with white walls and paintings of winter scenes. She led me to an open doorway.

“Have a seat. He’ll be with you shortly.”

“Thank you.”

Her expression didn’t change. She simply nodded and walked back down the hallway. I sat down.

Had I remembered to turn my cell off? I didn’t want to be obnoxious. I started to dig through my bag, but gave up after thirty seconds. It was buried so far down there, nobody would be able to hear it anyway.

I stared at the low desk in front of me. No family pictures or bric-a-brac. Just a computer, an accordion file, and an embossed leather appointment book. Maybe this was what Luiz Ordeño’s desk had looked like. Austere professionalism. The brass nameplate read DR. LORI HINZELMANN.

The door opened, and Hinzelmann walked in. He was three feet tall and impeccably dressed, all the way down to his size-five Steve Madden loafers. It was hard to tell with goblins, but I’d guess that he was anywhere from ninety to a hundred years old, which for them was something equivalent to late twenties.

“Good to see you, Tess.” He sat down behind the desk, taking a moment to adjust the height of his chair. “Do you want anything before we begin? Coffee, tea, or soda?”

“You have soda?”

“I think there might be a Coke Zero left in the break-room fridge.”

“I’m good. Thanks.”

“Excellent.” He set down a pen and a pad of paper. “We were talking a bit about your family on Monday. Did you want to start from there?”

“We might as well.”

“All right. Go ahead.” He smiled. His skin had the consistency of dark wood, impossibly grooved, as if his features had been carved out rather than formed through standard fusions of bone and muscle. I couldn’t tell if it was attractive or slightly unnerving. No more so than his yellow eyes with their delicate, felid pupils, which never seemed to blink.

“She’s been a little stressed lately. My mother.”

“How come?”

“Various things. Money. The usual.”

“That’s just one thing. What else?”

“I think she worries about Mia.”

“Oh?” He wrote something down. “Why do you say that?”

“It’s nothing specific. Just this vague sort of thing. Like, she’s not saying anything to me, but I can tell what she’s thinking.”

“What she’s thinking, or what you think she’s thinking?”

I shrugged. “We share the same DNA. Chances are we think alike.”