“After you . . . ?” She trailed off.

“After I what?” I said, my voice thick with warning. “What exactly did I do that strips me of the right to mourn James?”

You killed him. Maybe you didn’t wrap your hands around his neck and squeeze the life from him, but you caused this. You know you did.

I didn’t catch what my mother said; I only heard the accusation in my head. I lowered the phone. Gabriel reached over to take it, but I lifted it again to discover my mother had hung up.

—

“I know it’s important to you to go to the funeral,” Ricky said as he peeled off his muffin wrapper. The four of us were at the kitchen table. “You could do it exactly as you suggested. Go to the graveside service, where you can hang back—”

“There’s no reason for her to hang back,” Gabriel said. “She’s done nothing wrong.”

“It’s about propriety and respect,” I said. “I’d hardly honor his memory by turning his funeral into a prime-time news event.”

“Obviously, I’d like to go with you,” Ricky said. “But that would extend a big middle finger to his family. I’ll be nearby, in case you need me. Someone, though, should escort—”

“I will,” Gabriel said.

“Actually, I was going to ask Rose. James had you charged with assault and his mother was the one who called the police.”

“His mother won’t see either of us. For anyone who does spot us, my presence would merely signal that Olivia should not attend without accompaniment.”

We debated it some more, but Gabriel had made up his mind. If I was going, so was he.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The next day, Gabriel got a message that Pamela wanted to see me. I’d refused to visit her until she told me what she knew about omens. Now she was ready and, despite the bad timing, I had to go before she changed her mind.

We sat in the visiting room, which was almost a jail cell itself, so small and empty even our lowered voices echoed. Then the door opened, and a guard escorted my birth mother in.

I’d been told I look like her. While I didn’t see it, I could logically break down the component parts. My hair color came from Todd. Hers is dark, laced with gray. She’s only forty-five, but I now realized she looked older than he did, as if prison had taken more of a toll on her. Old pictures showed we shared a body type—tall and slender. She’d put on weight since and her looks had faded. When she saw me, though, her face lit up, and sparked memories of me looking up at her and thinking she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and how I wanted to grow up to look just like her.

Then she saw Gabriel, and that glow evaporated.

“I told you I wanted to see my daughter alone.”

“He knows about the hounds,” I said. “About the Huntsmen, the omens, everything I was asking you about.”

From the look on her face, you’d have thought I’d promised Gabriel my eternal soul. Or slept with him. For Pamela, either would be equally horrifying.

I met her gaze with a hard look. “I told you I needed help. You refused. Gabriel didn’t.”

“Of course he didn’t. He’d do whatever it takes to get into your bank account. You can’t trust him, Olivia.” She stared at Gabriel for two long seconds before saying, “You aren’t even going to dispute that, are you?”

“Whether I’ve earned Olivia’s trust is for her to say. I know I’ve lost it more than once. I’ll freely admit that. As should you.”

“You can’t even feign respect, can you, Gabriel?”

“Respect, like trust, is earned. Also reciprocal.”

She turned to me. “Why do you tolerate him?”

“Because I like him. Also because I respect him. Trust . . . ? Mmm, that’s a tough one. But I’ll bite the bullet and say yes, I trust him. And as fun as it is to dance this waltz again, I’m really going to ask that we talk instead.”

“Not with him here.”

Gabriel murmured to me that he’d wait in the hall, and got up and left us.

“You should ask yourself why he didn’t just do that in the first place,” Pamela said as he left. “He wanted to make an issue of it. If I ask him to leave and you defend him, then he wins.”

“I didn’t come here to fight about Gabriel,” I said. “Let’s talk about hounds.”

“That’s not—”

“Not what you called me here for? It damned well better be.”

I expected her to take offense, but she only smiled and shook her head.

“You look like your father when you put your foot down like that.”

“About the hounds . . .”

“We will discuss that, Olivia. First, though, I heard about James.” She reached out and squeezed my hand, quickly, before the guard noticed. “I heard you were the one who found him. You and Gabriel. The news said something about bizarre circumstances leading you two to James’s body. It hinted you were lured there.”

I didn’t tell her what had been done to James’s body. That wasn’t part of the media coverage. If I told Pamela about the way his corpse had been mutilated, she’d seize on the possibility that whoever killed James was the real Valentine Killer. That wasn’t where I wanted my focus right now. James deserved better.

“It’s no random murder,” I said. “Gabriel and I were summoned there.”