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.”

“Are you sure both of you were?”

“Um, yes. I got a message, and I saw his.”

“And he absolutely couldn’t have sent yours?”

I stared at her. “Oh, no. Don’t you dare even suggest—”

“If you know what I’m going to suggest, that’s because you already suspect it.”

“No, it’s because I can follow a trail of leading questions.”

“I had a visitor who told me that Gabriel Walsh murdered your fiancé. Beyond any doubt.”

“Then your visitor has an agenda—”

“He also has proof.”

“I don’t give a damn, because you could show me a video of Gabriel murdering James and I still wouldn’t believe it.”

“James came to see me last week.”

“What?”

“He was desperate to figure out what hold Gabriel had over you. He thought, since I’ve worked with the man, I might know. We discussed our mutual concerns. Now, having someone tell me that Gabriel murdered James—”

“He did not. Which I know because I was in his condo that night. All night. And no, not in the same bed. I was there because James had tried to have me kidnapped.”

“Gabriel convinced you that James was a threat and persuaded you to stay in his apartment?”

“Didn’t you hear me? James was a threat. Look, I’m not getting into this—”

“You need to get into this, Olivia. You need to take a cold hard look at Gabriel’s behavior. He keeps you from your family. He turns you against James. I hear he even took you away from your job so you could work for him. Now you’re staying in his apartment? Don’t you see how he’s controlling you?”

I wanted to laugh, but her expression was dead serious.

I pushed my chair back. “This isn’t about James’s murder. It’s about distracting me from asking questions, while planting seeds of doubt about Gabriel, for whatever ridiculous reason—”

“For whatever ridiculous reason?” Pamela gripped the edge of the table. “To protect you, Eden. You may not like being called that, but to me you are Eden Larsen, my daughter, and I will do whatever it takes to protect you. I know you want answers, and you think I’m holding back. I’m protecting you. Nothing could make me happier than if you’d lived your life without ever knowing any of this.”

“Maybe, but it has nothing to do with Gabriel.”

“It has everything to do with Gabriel. Everything you want to ask me about? He’s part of it. James was a threat, so he murdered him. If your new boyfriend becomes a threat, he’ll do the same to him. If you don’t toe the line and give Cainsville what it wants, Gabriel will turn on you. They’ll make him turn on you.”

“If the Cwn Annwn are telling you this—”

“They don’t need to.” She leaned forward, her hands still on the table. “I can’t help you from in here, baby. All I can do is give you the most sincere piece of advice possible. Run. Get someplace they can’t find you.”

I got up and walked out.

—

Gabriel was waiting in the hall. As I came out, he caught my expression and said, “She told you something?”

“Yes. You’re evil.”

His brows shot up. “That’s news?”

I smiled as he fell in step beside me. “Sadly, that was the gist of the entire conversation. She wouldn’t talk about the hounds and the omens, because it was far more important to warn me against you.”

I’d decided I wouldn’t mention the ridiculous murder accusation, because even to put it into words seemed as if I gave it some credence.

I continued. “Pamela’s bloodline might be fae, but she has a connection with the Huntsmen. They seem to be warning her about you, just like they warned me. The question now is the nature of that connection. Edgar Chandler was involved in the murders of Peter Evans and Jan Gunderson and he was involved with the Cwn Annwn. Does that mean the rest of the murders could have been connected, too?”

We walked through a set of doors.

“Then there’s the significance of what was done to James,” I said. “We haven’t discussed that.”

“That’s what I was thinking about while I waited. Some aspects of the earlier crimes weren’t released to the general public. The court records are open, which means anyone could duplicate the crimes, but the way he was murdered does open a strategy for freeing Pamela.”

“Even if she hates your guts?”

“If I failed to give my best defense to every client who hated me, I’d have a very poor record indeed.”