Dead Reckoning

living room.
    “Good morning, guys,” I said. Even to my own ears, I didn’t sound too perky. “Did you remember that today was the day the antiques dealers come? They should be here in an hour or two.” I braced myself for the talk we had to have.
    “Good, then this room will not look like a junk shop,” Claude said in his charming way.
    I just nodded. Today, we had Obnoxious Claude, as opposed to the more rarely seen Tolerable Claude.
    “We did promise you a talk,” Dermot said.
    “And then you didn’t come home that night.” I sat back in an old rocker from the attic. I didn’t feel particularly ready for this conversation, but I was also anxious for some answers.
    “Things were happening at the club,” Claude said evasively.
    “Uh-huh. Let me guess, one of the fairies is missing.”
    That made them sit up and take notice. “What? How did you know?” Dermot recovered first.
    “Victor has him. Or her,” I added. I told them the story about last night.
    “It’s not enough that we have to handle our own race’s problems,” Claude said. “Now we’re sucked into the fucking vampire struggles, too.”
    “No,” I said, feeling I was walking uphill in this conversation. “You as a group weren’t sucked into the vampire struggles. One of you was taken for a specific purpose. Different scenario. Let me point out that at the very least, that fairy who was taken has been bled, because that was what the vamps needed, the blood. I’m not saying your missing comrade couldn’t be alive, but you know how the vamps lose control when a fairy is around, much less a bleeding fairy.”
    “She’s right,” Dermot told Claude. “Cait must be dead. Are any of the fairies at the club her kin? We need to ask if they’ve had a death vision.”
    “A female,” Claude said. His handsome face was set in stone. “One we couldn’t afford to lose. Yes, we have to find out.”
    For a second I was confused, because Claude didn’t think that much about women in terms of his personal life. Then I remembered that there were fewer and fewer female fairies. I didn’t know about the rest of the fae, but it seemed the fairies were on the wane. It wasn’t that I lacked concern about the missing Cait (though I didn’t think there was a snowball’s chance in hell that she was alive), but I had other, selfish questions to ask, and I was not going to be diverted. As soon as Dermot had called Hooligans and asked Bellenos to call the fae together to ask about Cait’s kin, I got back on my own track.
    “While Bellenos is busy, you have some free time, and since the appraisers are coming soon, I really need you to answer my questions,” I said.
    Dermot and Claude looked at each other. Dermot seemed to lose the conversational coin toss, because he took a deep breath and began, “You know when one of your Caucasians marries one of your Negroes, sometimes the babies turn out looking much more like one race than another, seemingly at random. That likeness can vary even between children of the same couple.”
    “Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard that.”
    “When Jason was a baby, our great-grandfather Niall checked on him.”
    I felt my mouth drop open. “Wait,” I said, and it came out in a hoarse croak. “Niall said he couldn’t visit because his half-human son Fintan guarded us from him. That Fintan was actually our grandfather.”
    “This is why Fintan guarded you from the fae. He didn’t want his father interfering in your lives the way he had interfered in his own. But Niall had his ways, and nonetheless, he found that the essential spark had passed Jason by. He became . . . uninterested,” Claude said.
    I waited.
    He continued, “That’s why he took so many years to make your acquaintance. He could have evaded Fintan, but he assumed you would be the same as Jason . . . attractive to humans and supernaturals, but other than that, essentially a normal human.”
    “But then he heard you weren’t,” Dermot said.
    “Heard? From who? Whom?” My grandmother would have been proud.
    “From Eric. They had a few business dealings together, and Niall thought to ask Eric to alert him to events in your life. Eric would tell Niall from time to time what you were up to. There came a time when Eric thought you needed the protection of your great-grandfather, and of course you were withering.”
    Huh?
    “So Grandfather sent Claudine, and then when she grew worried she couldn’t take care of you, he decided to meet