Dead Reckoning

weekend and they wanted me to come. I said I’d see, that sounded wonderful.
    It was a huge relief when all the humans were gone.
    I would have thrown myself in the chair and read for thirty minutes or watched an episode of Jeopardy! before starting to clean up if I hadn’t had the two men waiting in my kitchen. Instead, I had to march back laden with still more plates and cups.
    To my surprise, Dermot was gone. I hadn’t noticed his car go down the driveway, but I assumed he’d blended in with all the other departing guests. Mr. Cataliades was sitting in the same chair, drinking a cup of coffee. He had put his plate over by the sink. Hadn’t washed it, but he’d carried it over.
    “So,” I said, “they’ve left. You didn’t eat Dermot, did you?”
    He beamed at me. “No, dear Miss Stackhouse, I did not. Though I’m sure he would be tasty. The ham sandwich was delicious.”
    “I’m glad you enjoyed it,” I responded automatically. “Listen, Mr. Cataliades, I found a letter from my grandmother. I’m not sure I understand our relationship correctly, or maybe I just don’t understand what it means that you are my sponsor.”
    His beam intensified. “Though I’m in a slight hurry, I’ll do everything I can to dispel your confusion.”
    “Okay.” I wondered why he was in a hurry, if he was still being pursued, but I wasn’t going to be sidetracked. “Let me sort of repeat this back to you and you can tell me if I got it straight.”
    He nodded his round head.
    “You were good friends with my birth grandfather, Fintan. Dermot’s brother.”
    “Yes, Dermot’s twin.”
    “But you don’t seem that fond of Dermot.”
    He shrugged. “I’m not.”
    I almost got off on a tangent there, but I stuck to my train of thought. “So, Fintan was still alive when Jason and I were born.”
    Desmond Cataliades nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, he was.”
    “My gran said in her letter that you visited my dad and his sister, Fintan’s actual children.”
    “I was here.”
    “So, did you give them—us—a gift?”
    “I tried, but you couldn’t all accept it. Not all of you had the essential spark.”
    That was a phrase Niall had used. “What is the essential spark?”
    “What a clever question!” Mr. Cataliades said, regarding me as if I were a monkey who’d opened a hatch to retrieve a banana. “The gift I gave to my dear friend Fintan was that any of his human descendants who possessed the essential spark would be able to read the minds of their fellow humans, as I can.”
    “So, when it turned out that my dad and aunt Linda didn’t have it, you returned when Jason and I were born.”
    He nodded. “Seeing you wasn’t absolutely necessary. After all, the gift had been given. But by visiting Jason and then you, I could know for certain. I was very excited when I held you, though I think your poor grandmother was frightened.”
    “So only I and—” I choked back Hunter’s name. Mr. Cataliades had written Hadley’s will, and she hadn’t mentioned Hunter. It was possible he didn’t know Hadley had had a child. “Only I have had it so far. And you still haven’t explained what the spark is.”
    He gave me an arch look as if to say he sure couldn’t get anything by me. “The essential spark isn’t easy to pin down in terms of your DNA,” he told me. “It’s an openness to the other world. Some humans literally can’t believe there are creatures in another world besides ours, creatures who have feelings and rights and beliefs and deserve to live their own lives. Humans who are born with the essential spark are born to experience or perform something wonderful, something amazing.”
    I’d done something pretty amazing the night before, but it surely wasn’t wonderful . . . unless you hated vampires.
    “Gran had the essential spark,” I said suddenly. “So Fintan thought he’d find it in one of us.”
    “Yes, though of course he never wanted me to give her my gift.” Mr. Cataliades looked wistfully at the refrigerator, and I got up to make him another ham sandwich. This time I sliced some fresh tomato and put it on a little plate, and he piled every single bit on the sandwich and still managed to eat it neatly. Now that was supernatural.
    When he’d finished half the sandwich, Mr. Cataliades paused to say, “Fintan loved humans, and he especially loved human women, and he even more greatly loved human women with the essential spark. They aren’t easy to find. He adored Adele